Mahan’s budget proposal passes

The meeting covered municipal bonds, houselessness encampments and the city budget

By Christine Tran STAFF WRITER

Mayor Matt Mahan, council members and the general public met at San Jose City Hall on Tuesday, where Mahan’s budget proposal passed unanimously.

The meeting discussed policies that represent San Jose’s City Service Areas for strategic planning, policy setting and investment decisions the city has for the community.

Some action items on Tuesday’s agenda included municipal bonds, houselessness encampments and Mahan’s city budget proposal.

Mahan called his budget proposal a “back to basics” approach, which focuses on public safety, reducing houselessness and economic recovery, according to a Tuesday San Jose Spotlight article.

In his plan, Mahan wants to build 500 temporary homes for the houseless community, hire 30 more police officers and fill job vacancies, especially for city staff, according to the same article.

A presentation was given at the council meeting by Julia Cooper, director of finance for the City of San Jose, and her colleagues about what municipal bonds are and why the city invests in them.

Cooper said municipal bonds are similar to loans, where investors lend money to government agencies to fund projects, including libraries and schools.

Government agencies are expected to pay off municipal bonds and the interest as it matures.

“We use a whole team of people across the entire city organization to help us

[develop the preliminary official statement],” Cooper said. “And that was the training that we did last week for the staff. And we go through the fact, finding the due diligence to ensure all the risks are identified. We also go and seek a rating from the rating agencies, and that involves a process of presenting their credit.”

Katie Dobson informed the council of the risks that can occur if San Jose goes against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s actions, as one of its responsibilities is to protect investors.

Dobson has been a shareholder at Jones Hall, a professional law corporation, for a decade.

She said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought its first case against Orange County in 1996 because of the county’s risky investment strategies to balance its budget.

“The SEC said that the Supervisory Board of Supervisors failed to take steps appropriate under the circumstances to assure that [Orange County]’s financial situation was being adequately disclosed to potential investors,” Dobson said.

She also said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation against San Diego in 2006 and found that in years prior, the city issued $260 million of bonds through five separate issuances.

“The SEC alleged that city officials had engaged in securities fraud for failing to disclose material information in its official statements, its audits and information provided to rating agencies,” Dobson said.

“It had adequately disclosed large unfunded liabilities for pensions and retiree health care obligations. The officials had falsely certified that there were no mysterious material misstatements or omissions in the documents and this is typical in every issuance of debt, which the city of San Jose does.”

A public comment forum during the meeting let public speakers express their concerns, and many commented on Mahan’s budget proposal and how they believe it criminalizes houselessness.

To reduce houselessness, Mahan outlined in his plans that he will “move 1,000 unhoused residents out of encampments and into safe, managed environments this year,” according to the Monday San Jose Inside article.

Mahan said having a no encampment zone is not criminalizing houselessness.

“We have areas where we say it is not safe, it is not appropriate,” Mahan said. “It is so impactful in a negative way on the rest of the community that there are going to be some places where we don’t allow encampments, but if you read the message, you will see that as a very small note toward the bottom.”

Two San Jose State students spoke publicly to share their concerns about Mahan’s budget proposal aiming to “double the hiring rate for new police officers from the 15 approved last year to 30,” according to the same Monday San Jose Inside article.

Political science

sophomore

Anthony Medina-Alvarez said he didn’t have a plan to speak to Mahan and the council members.

He said he only came to observe the council meeting for an assignment in his local politics class, but he researched the San Jose Police Department’s budget on his own.

“What I really experienced . . . is that many communities are not given the funding they need and they are demonized and criminalized time and time again, and I don’t think that’s a very appropriate approach,” Medina-Alvarez said.

Political science senior Hazel Jacome said she noticed that no one at the council meeting was talking about the plan to increase the number of police officers in the budget. She said it’s unsafe for Mahan to cut down on the requirements needed for someone to be a police officer when they need more training to deal with life and death situations.

“Doctors have to go through years of medical school, to get my degree I have to go through three, four years,” Jacome said. “So why do they only go to six months of training and then get handed a weapon? It doesn’t seem correct.”

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Correction

On Tuesday, March 21, the Spartan Daily published a photo collection titled, “SJSU groups put on talent show,” in which we misidentified the event being held. It was a cultural show.

The Spartan Daily regrets this error.