SJSU Debate Transcript
Introduction:
A little bit about me and my experience. I’ve lived in downtown for 33 years.
Housing: I’ve been a housing provider for 33 years with rent-controlled apartments.
Mental Health: I have a masters’ and PhD in Psychology. I’ve worked in a psychiatric hospital for children with severe mental illness.
Working with Government agencies: I have my law degree from Santa Clara and I’ve been a pro-tem judge for the past 15 years and also currently an administrative hearing officer for Santa Clara County.
Getting the most out of our budgets: I was a senior financial analyst at IBM for over a decade.
Jumpstarting small businesses: I founded and grew three local businesses in downtown.
Coordinating with nonprofits: I founded and was president of Business and Housing Network — San Jose, for 7 years.
A broad scope of skills like this, is what our next council person needs.
I am running because D3 is in a crisis, we need action, we need a sense of urgency, but city policies remain stuck in the muck and are proven failures for D3. Their response has been to pour in more mud with the same plans and then spend more money trying to get out of the mess they created. With this type of pattern, it’s worth looking at who benefits from all this? Big benefits. Big government, big business, big nonprofits, big special interest. And who loses? Little Loses. Our neighbors, small neighborhoods. Small nonprofits. The guy living on the sidewalk being told to stay there just five more years while we build, the mom-and-pop business owners that are struggling to survive. I’m running because I can see solutions clearly without the mandated tinted glasses issued by special interests. I am that new voice that can shake off the muck and my D3 recovery plan is the beginning of our answer.
5-step plan to get D3 back on track
Rebuttals:
Mr. Torres, please stop the name calling. I am not a slumlord. I am not a lobbyist.
Mr. Torres, that is not correct. I am 1000% in favor of affordable housing, of permanent supportive housing, and of new construction. I am against leaving unhoused persons on the sidewalks and parks until housing is built — it’s inhumane and we can do something better with the Incremental Ladder of Housing Success.
Mr. Torres that is not correct. Rental vouchers are not a federal only program. San Jose and other cities are already doing their own rental voucher programs; San Jose has vouchers with rapid re-housing but it only lasts two years and it is not sufficient. We can do our own program and stop relying on the federal government.
Mr. Torres previously agreed with no parking requirements for new buildings in the debate at the Tabard Theatre 9/9/22 with the San Jose Downtown Association.
Putting The Car Before The Bus When It Comes To Parking
Q. What responsibility does the City of San Jose have to assist unhoused residents of San Jose? What actions would you recommend that the city take to deal with homelessness in San Jose?
A. I am the only candidate in this race with education and experience in both mental health treatment and actually providing housing. And here’s what that expertise tells me — we have three main responsibilities:
· Put together a smart, effective plan to start treating unhoused persons in a more humane manner
· Spend money wisely to help the most people possible
· Make changes if our strategy isn’t working.
We’re doing none of those things. City Hall is stuck on a dogmatic embrace of its flawed Housing-First strategy since 2011; we have focused our efforts on building million dollar a unit new housing that will be available a decade from now. It’s ridiculous.
Here’s what we need to do:
1.) Shelter and stability first: My Incremental Ladder of Housing Success Plan. Incremental Ladder of Housing Success
2.) Provide local rental vouchers — an SJ version of Section 8 — that provides a safety net right now for the working poor and prevents homelessness.
3. Placement-First: better use and re-use of existing spaces, housing, and shelter stock.
Here’s why the city’s approach to homelessness is a failure: it’s just a re-traumatizing hamster-wheel of abatements — allowing, and then dismantling homeless encampments. Abatements are not a solution, and the lack of accomplishment is causing severe distress: among the unhoused, on neighborhoods, and on small businesses.
My plan is very similar to San Diego’s Community Action Plan on Homelessness, which has been very successful in cost-effectively and quickly addressing the needs of their unhoused neighbors — and Tacoma where encampments are not allowed to start.
We can do this. right. now.
“I really hope he can get into Elmwood Prison”
Q. The Independent Police Auditor’s report found that 25% of officers received at least one complaint in 2020 and 31% of officers were named in at least one complaint in 2021. Mayor Liccardo established a “walking patrol” in downtown and “high-need” areas which added twenty officers to SJPD (and cost $3.7 million). First, do you support more “walking patrols” and, second, how would this policy improve not only public safety, but also trust between residents and police?
A. There’s a lot in that question so let me answer it by talking about the reimaging police report that touches on these issues. I think this an area where Mr. Torres and I see things very differently. The City’s Police Reimagining Task Force put together a lot of recommendations which I think Mr. Torres has spoken favorably about — he can clarify that tonight. However, I find many of the Reimagining Task Force’s recommendations to be misguided, dangerous, and uninformed.
Here’s why: fundamental to the Task Force’s approach, is to address crime by replacing badged police officers with citizens from other professions, or just regular community folks.
Some examples: 1. the Task Force envisions mental health professionals, instead of cops, responding to dangerous issues with the mentally ill or on domestic violence calls. 2. It envisions regular community members taking responsibility for de-escalating situations that could lead to violence. 3. It wants to put Department of Transportation bureaucrats in charge of traffic stops.
Honestly. This is terribly misguided. Look, I’ve been a mental health professional. I worked in a triple-locked psychiatric hospital. And I can tell you definitively that no mental health professional wants to be responsible for handling criminal activity.
So I’m opposed to most of the Reimagine Task Force. I’m for more badged police officers, more foot patrol, more strict citizen oversight, more MCAT. But I am opposed to the deprofessionalization and decentralization of our public safety efforts. It opens the door to huge accountability problems and potentially more crime and violence.
My website has a full list of my disagreements with the Reimagining Police Task Force.
What is MCAT and why is it so important these days?
Q. For many years, the city has attempted to revitalize downtown’s St. James Park. The most recent effort involves the city partnering with a private foundation, Levitt Pavilion, to help build a new multi-use pavilion, dog park, and playground. As a member of the city council, what would you do to help the revitalization of the park and surrounding neighborhood?
A. As a councilmember, I can’t just look at St James Park in isolation and I need to look at the impact on the rest of D3. I have to take a big picture approach, and this is how I would look at it.
This is a good question because it highlights how so many issues in D3 lead back to our housing crisis. St. James is a park. But it’s not working as a park because it’s really an unhoused living spot.
So that makes it unusable for its stated purpose and designed purpose.
To reclaim the park, as a park, we have to address the unhoused encampment issue; not just move the encampment to another park for a month or so. If we don’t have the ILHS we will only be pushing people out much like the constant retraumatizing hamster-wheel of abatements. We need to take a big picture approach and not just force people out. We’ve seen how that works at the FAA site. They are forced to leave with nowhere to go, and they go somewhere else and then that area will need to be abated and revitalized. It’s just cruel.
That’s why my incremental ladder of housing success is such a lynchpin idea: by getting people off the parks and creeks and sidewalks now — not ten years from now — we can start to fix the downstream problems caused by rampant street homelessness.
We can’t start designing new uses of St. James Park, which is an actual home to so many — until we fix the current crisis there.
Q. If you were given an unlimited budget to promote four of downtown’s best assets, what would those assets be and how would you promote them?
A. With all due respect, I’m going to shift the premise of the question just a bit. We don’t have unlimited budgets. So, I don’t want to get into the habit of thinking like that.
But I’m happy to explore the question of: What are four of downtown under-realized advantages, and how can we take better advantage of them.
1.) We have a lot of underutilized built space — whether it’s empty office buildings, hotels, or older commercial buildings, which would be repurposed to shelter and to housing. We should make it easy to do that.
2.) We have a great, calm street layout with lots of existing parks and mature trees: we should make DT SJ the most walkable downtown in California and the #1 downtown for outdoor dining and strolling and music. We could be as vibrant as Barcelona — we’ve got the layout to do it.
3.) We have a world class university with a stunning campus right in our midst: we need to find ways to better integrate the campus and town and make the borders of the university and downtown more permeable.
4.) We have a vibrant collection of fantastic small businesses that we need to support more. I believe the city could and should launch a Downtown Shop Local program that rewards for those patronizing downtown small business.
Q. Councilmember Peralez has proposed permanently closing San Pedro Street to traffic to help support bars and restaurants in San Pedro Square. The City Council recently voted to do further study on a permanent closure. What is your view on this? Should San Pedro St. be permanently closed?
A. I want all of downtowns’ restaurants and businesses to thrive, not just San Pedro. I want folks to come downtown for a variety of restaurants and a variety of events. We need to promote them all, not just San Pedro.
What I’d like to see is a full plan for all of downtown to explore street closures. Remember though, street closures can sound like a good idea, but they take away parking and drive-by awareness. California is littered with failed street closure programs — from Fresno to Santa Cruz. We need to be careful and make sure that we actually deliver more business, not just a feel-good measure. Not every street is like San Pedro and has a big city-owned parking garage down the street.
I don’t want to privilege San Pedro at the expense (for example) of South First St.
All that said it does look to me because of the parking structure it would make a lot of sense to close it, but I would want to see data. If it increases business let’s do it.
Q. How important is the relationship between the city of San Jose and San Jose State University? What, if anything, should the city council do to strengthen this relationship?
A. Students feel the housing crisis in a unique way. The number one thing we can do is housing. Any student who is sleeping in a car and going to classes and potentially also working is doing an incredible job and should get assistance. First, we need to ease the housing construction permit process. Second, we need to make sure that we have a placement-first strategy in place, just like Milpitas. Milpitas gave a call to action for unhoused teachers in the area and asked homeowners with an extra bedroom to help out. We too can incent owners to open a bedroom for more housing options for students.
In addition to housing San Jose needs to re-evaluate its’ traffic safety plans. We have had 28 pedestrian fatalities in San Jose and the number is growing. I would recommend a traffic coalition formed between the city and SJSU to recommend traffic calming and life saving measures that would help both students and neighbors.
A few other thoughts -
I know we have worked on this before, but I would like to see the joint MLK library hours extended even further for the community and students.
And lastly, I’d like to expand Apprenticeship programs at the city level and work with SJSU to overhaul college and high school dropout prevention policies. Because providing jobs for our youth is arguably the most important upstream thing, we can do to solve D3s long term problems and work with SJSU at the same time.
Q. It has been well-documented that downtown has suffered economically during the pandemic. One recent study, as reported by San Jose Spotlight, showed tax receipts had declined by almost 40%. What is your plan to help the downtown economy recover?
A. Let me start off by saying there are two big things we have to STOP doing if we want to revitalize small biz in D3. And they revolve around doing it ourselves.
We need to STOP relying on the federal fairy godmother to bail us out. I’m happy to take the money and we got a lot of money for COVID, but that won’t last. Second, the mayor running around with a donation basket to Sacramento and D.C. is not a financial model. We need to build this ourselves from the ground up.
Look, I’ve founded, run, and struggled to make 3 small businesses work in downtown. Lots of local governments have developed ingenious interventions for small businesses, San Jose is not one of them. In office, here are five things I would pilot:
1. Encourage “Shop local.” Akron, Ohio, is actively encouraging shopping online with local businesses by building the Akronite app. which connects shoppers to local businesses and offers points that lead to discounts. We could do the same thing for D3 small businesses.
2. Streamline internal operations. San Jose can be way more invested in the success of small businesses by walking them through the onerous permitting process and providing outreach and headlights into options that would best serve their business in D3.
3. Help local businesses shift to online sales. For example, some local governments are supporting their businesses to convert to an online presence through tech grants. Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula does this. The SJ downtown association should be linking to all small businesses in D3.
4. Invest in workforce training programs aimed at future economic activity in conjunction with SJSU. Charlotte, North Carolina, has created a workforce training and placement program that targets fields the city would like to grow in — specifically, advanced tech and renewable energy. We could do this with support from our tech partners and SJSU.
5. Make it easier for small businesses to contract with the government. Local governments contract for all kinds of services — we should be privileging local small business for these opportunities.
Q. Several news outlets have reported on the city auditor’s annual report of city services which notes that police response times have failed to hit target goals. Priority 1 calls, like those for shootings or murder, took about 7 minutes on average, while the department’s goal is 6 mins. Priority 2 calls, like those for assaults and burglaries, average 21 minutes. The department’s target is 11 minutes. How do you respond to residents concerned about response time? What should the city do to help the police reduce response time?
A. We have the lowest number of police officers for any large City in the USA and less than San Francisco — even though they have a smaller population and less miles of ground to cover. We need to increase the number of sworn officers back to 2012 levels where we were the safest big City in the US. The mandatory overtime requirement for officers is negatively impacting our ability to attract new officers and is more expensive than getting new officers.
Two key areas need to be addressed while we wait for more officers -
1. Other departments in San Jose need to do their jobs and stop letting SJPD pick up the slack. When I speak with officers, they talk about how many calls they take for vehicle abatement and code enforcement. These departments need to step back up and use their enforcement capabilities so that the police are then freed up to respond to emergency calls more effectively.
2. The police do not make these kinds of reports, — but 22,000 calls came in from encampments fires over the past two years, to the fire department. The strain encampments place on the police and fire department are extraordinary and response times for other emergencies have increased as a result. Once unhoused personas are located in the destination locations for one stop shopping for: services, safety, showers, and sanitation — many of these calls, caused by one-on-one violence in the encampments, will cease and officers will have much better response times for other calls.
Additionally, we have other issues such as — inadequate technologies, burdensome report writing databases, and a shortage of emergency dispatch operators.
And lastly, but importantly — we need to start addressing our mental health crisis. Because mental health is not a crime and should not be the responsibility of police officers.
Q. How will you incorporate community feedback into your work as a councilmember? Use one of your campaign proposals as an example to explain what your process might look like.
A. I have proposed an Office of Public Listening — too many times residents tell me the city is not listening to them and the frustration is growing. The city doesn’t hear them on the need to park, vehicle abatement, encampment fires, safety, and others. By having a department of public listening, we can use cutting edge technology to improve two-way communication.
The way City Hall gets constituent feedback right now is a mess. There’s no loop that says, ‘we hear you’, ‘we can do this’. It’s all scattershot emanating from separate city departments.
My plan for an Office of Public Listening requires the city to employ cutting edge, customer relations techniques to give us sharper insight into public opinion.
I would model that in my D3 office:
- Transparent Monthly Polling on Key issues — published continually.
- Serious transparent analysis of public opinion on key issues.
- A rolling dashboard of public opinion and feedback on key issues.
- And of course, regular public meetings and conversations — always summarized and made available for asynchronous viewing.
An Office of Public Outreach: Improving citizen input, City outreach, and trust in government
Closing:
Thank you. These were great questions and a very well-run forum.
The question before us in D3, do we want more of the same or do we want a fresh start inspired by the incredible potential of D3?
This forum highlighted what the race is all about.
It’s this — Do we go down the same old road or do we turn onto a new road?
We are choosing between following our old habits or consciously choosing a change agent.
My experience in business, mental health and housing leads us forward with the real-world expertise that D3 desperately needs.
Thank you SJSU and thank you for your time, your attention, and your questions.
Q. In March 2022, the city passed the Gun Harm Reduction Ordinance which requires gun owners and those in possession of guns to have a current liability insurance policy for their firearm and requires those who own or are in possession of firearms in the city to pay an annual Gun Harm Reduction Fee to a Nonprofit Organization designated by the city and which would be spent on providing services (such as suicide prevention and gun safety classes). Are you in support of this law? How do you respond to critics who argue that that law is unconstitutional?
A. The law has passed and so we will have to wait and see what the courts themselves say.
This ordinance does nothing to address real violence or reduce gun violence. We need to take a much stronger stand on a wider variety of guns. We must consider illegal ghost guns and 3-D guns and how we can more effectively remove these guns from our environment. And we need to better regulate super-charged automatic weapons.
I would like to see age related gun access restricted to age 22 and over. There are many studies now on brain development and how risk assessment isn’t fully formed until about age 22.
And ultimately, what are the underlying causes of violence in our society? We can’t just focus on guns — we must focus on mental health and support folks and change lives. I have proposed that we put mental health in the school curriculum starting in kindergarten, in after school programs to support the curriculum, and offer mental health programs at the library which can involve both children and their families.
Q. In your view, what is the least attractive aspect of downtown? Why do you believe this is so, and what would you do to improve it? Would this be an incremental change or an overhaul?
A. #1. Lawlessness.
Take a walk around downtown for ten minutes and you’ll see a handful of misdemeanor crimes being committed that go unnoticed. Drugs, Traffic, and property infractions happen all the time.
The downstream impact of this lawlessness creates a negative cycle where fewer businesses open, fewer people come downtown, and it just spirals downward.
The answer is twofold: increase badged police presence so they can enforce the laws. And give our unhoused neighbors a place to go where they get shelter, security, and services.
Downtown will never prosper if it’s a lawless zone.
#2. Filth.
Downtown is dirty. Keeping our streets clean also solves the broken window theory. It shows potential illegal dumpers and others thinking of committing crimes that Downtown neighbors and small businesses care about their neighborhood and are paying close attention.
