Our Future
Introduction
While we have focused primarily on the near-term issues of public safety — the budget and jobs — leadership requires a broader vision for San José and its future. Our discussion of San José’s future should start with our children. We should also recognize the challenges and opportunities presented by our rapidly aging population, a need for a new strategy to ensure stable water supplies and San José’s critical role in the future vitality of our Valley. This conversation should include a host of other topics as well, ranging from transportation to the arts to our parks to our libraries, only some of which are touched upon in this book. Nonetheless, we can all agree that we should begin with our kids.
A. Our Children
From stronger schools to after-school programs to playing fields, a great city must provide great opportunities for its youngest residents. [READ MORE]
B. The “Silver Tsunami” and Our Aging Population
In coming decades, San José’s senior population is expected to quadruple. That presents challenges that we work to resolve now and opportunities in harnessing the terrific talents and experiences of this growing demographic. [READ MORE]
C. Our Water: Ensuring A Sustainable Supply
The prolonged drought conditions bring into stark view the need to do much more to replenish and conserve our water supply. This is a long-term effort that we must begin today. [READ MORE]
D. Our City: San José’s Role in Silicon Valley
The success of our City will hinge in large part on our ability to attract and retain a highly skilled workforce. To win the “War on Talent” we must embrace our potential as the Silicon Valley’s “urban option.” [READ MORE]
A. OUR CHILDREN
1. Why Should Mayors Engage in Education?
Over a year ago, I launched a public conversation with San José parents, residents and educators about schools. More specifically, we discussed how we could marshal the resources to extend learning time in a child’s day, particularly for the many kids lacking access to after-school programs and sports. Parents cheered. Their eight-year olds groaned. Some politicians and pundits have since weighed in, arguing that my focus on schools would divert me from more “mayoral” priorities like hiring cops and repaving streets.
It’s certainly true that San José’s mayor shouldn’t take over schools. There’s plenty of politics in schools already.
Yet if we share concerns about a Valley with a widening income gap and opportunity gap, then our schools need our engagement — not just a Mayor’s involvement, but everyone’s involvement. According to the Silicon Valley Education Foundation, sixty-two percent (62%) of the teens entering high school in one of San José’s three major public districts will fail to graduate satisfying the minimum entrance requirements of our California State University system. Consider that statistic for a moment: almost two-thirds of our San José students don’t graduate high school with a clear path to college. Even worse: three San José students drop out of high school for every 10 that graduate.
Without college attainment or even a high school diploma, what chance do our kids have at a career that will enable them to afford to continue living in our Valley?
Very little. Economists can predict most of the difference in per capita incomes between American cities with a single statistic: the percentage of adults with a college degree. Our residents’ future prosperity hinges on our collective focus on college attainment. Inaction condemns another generation to low-skill jobs, widening San José’s already-yawning gap between rich and poor, and much of that gap remains color-coded by race.
Even beyond these socio-economic imperatives, every mayor should care about safety, and good schools reduce crime and stymie gang recruitment. Indeed, the California Dropout Research Project estimates that halving the dropout rate in San José high schools would prevent some 228 violent crimes here.
Better schools also generate new tax revenue for cities without raising tax rates. Why? A district’s Academic Performance Index (API) scores drive property valuations, as any realtor can attest. Property tax constitutes the City’s largest source of revenue. Good schools can help us pave more streets and hire more cops.
There are many more reasons why mayors — and each of us — should care about schools. Not the least of those reasons should be the wellbeing of our kids.
2. What City Hall Can Do To Support Public Education
Naturally, many elected officials agree, so we support libraries, crossing guards and campus safety — all important endeavors, to be sure. I’ve pushed to expand library hours and the crossing guard program during Council budgetary battles. Beyond these traditional city services, though, what can a fiscally-strapped city really do for our students?
More than we might think. In Chapter 1, I describe several youth-related initiatives that we can expand to provide palpable public safety-related benefits. For example, creating more summer and after-school jobs for at-risk teens will undermine gang recruitment. Partnering with school districts to expand the city’s truancy abatement program can reduce the number of kids who cut class, increase revenues to the schools and actually reduce the incidence of neighborhood property crime.
Additionally, new partnerships with school districts and key stakeholders can drive our children’s achievement and our common success.
- ENABLING EVERY CHILD TO LEARN AFTER THE SCHOOL BELL RINGS
Under Mayor Susan Hammer, San José embarked on an ambitious expansion of homework centers. This successful effort ensured that thousands of “latchkey” kids had access to a safe learning environment in the afternoon hours until their parents could return to work. Where well-managed by knowledgeable non-profits or city staff, these centers helped children achieve, provided a public safety benefit for neighborhoods and better accommodated the demanding work schedules of many parents — particularly hard-working single moms — to support their families.
Sadly, the program suffered a death by a thousand budgetary cuts. Two recessions later, the City’s budget could no longer support the homework centers. The passage of Proposition 49 in 2002 seemed to commit state dollars to those programs through After School Education and Safety (ASES) funding, providing $550 million to local school district budgets statewide. So, with the hope of state support, San José pulled back.
However, funding remains inadequate for many San José families who lack safe, affordable after-school options. San José’s largest school district, San José Unified, for example, relies upon ASES grant funding to provide after-school programs through nonprofits like Think Together, Catholic Charities and the YMCA for about 1,400 primary and junior high school children. Yet the District has more than 10,327 K-8 students who come from families in poverty (defined as having a sufficiently low income to qualify for free or reduced-price lunch). Overwhelmingly, this is the demographic most needing subsidized education and enrichment because their parents cannot afford sports leagues, dance classes or Chinese lessons. The tale in Oak Grove School District is similar; they serve roughly 540 K-8 students with ASES funding but 4,839 students qualify for free and reduced lunch.
By giving every child access to learning after the school-bell rings, we could brand San José as the most child-nurturing major city in the U.S. Beyond the civic pride in such an appellation, imagine how it would help our schools attract the best teachers. Imagine how it would help our companies attract the most talented young employees. Imagine how it could focus our energies and resources on the future.
Doing so will require collaboration and coordination among key partners, starting with San José’s nineteen (yes, 19) school districts, parents, teachers, key funders, foundations, non-profits, corporations and other key stakeholders like the Silicon Valley Education Foundation (SVEF) and the Santa Clara County Office of Education.
How to pay for it? Certainly, the City can do its part. In 2016, the City Council could put a measure before the voters to increase the tax on marijuana dispensaries by 10%, generating some $6 million for after-school programs. We could supplement that by diverting a portion of the federal grant funding the city already receives through the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program.
More importantly, we can secure far more resources working together with our 19 school districts than we can working separately. For example, eight urban districts in California applied for a collective waiver of federal “No Child Left Behind” requirements, thereby becoming eligible for a grant of some $110 million in additional federal Supplemental Education Services (SES) funding for extended-day learning. None of these districts were in San José, however. If we want to expand our resource base for education, we need to work together.
Similarly, corporate donors and foundations that might have previously shied away from navigating a dizzying sea of 19 separate school districts will more willingly engage where collective action exists, as SVEF teaches us. Collective advocacy for other federal dollars, such as through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, can also boost our chances.
In each of these examples and others, mayoral leadership can make a difference: convening key players, forging common goals and bringing resources to the table.
How far can a few million dollars go? Very far, if we partner intelligently with resourceful local non-profits. Organizations like Boys and Girls Clubs have ample experience in leveraging volunteers, matching grants and other means of stretching scarce public dollars to serve kids. Think Together already provides award-winning after-school programs in dozens of South Bay schools that focus on academics, enrichment and athletics, for less than $9 per student per day (or about $1,600 per year). They’re also leveraging technology in blended learning approaches — consider Khan Academy, for example, or any of the increasingly sophisticated “freemium” educational software products — to better engage students, even in environments with relatively low adult-to-student ratios. The Valley’s burgeoning educational software industry could provide a promising source of funding and free software, particularly where they seek to test the effectiveness of their learning tools. ‘
With these resources, we can set ambitious goals, as Mayor Hammer did. We would roll this out with a target of serving 5,000 students annually within two years with high-quality afterschool learning and programs and expand our reach as resources allow. Thousands more relieved parents will also benefit, and with proven success, we can attract additional philanthropic and corporate investment.
Of course, all of this costs money, both public and private. Yet consider the options: from childcare to tutoring to doing nothing for latchkey child in a gang-infested neighborhood. By comparison, $9 per day looks like a bargain.
- ENGAGING THE COMMUNITY TO SUPPORT OUR KIDS
In California, 90% of fourth-graders in our low-income communities cannot read at grade level, and 65% lack even basic reading skills.1 These statistics present ominous indicators of our future.
Fortunately, this is a problem that each of us can do something about. Academic research shows that caring adult volunteers can do much to assist students struggling with basic academic deficits. One 2001 study found that struggling 1st and 2nd graders who worked with untrained college students for 80 minutes per week could improve their reading grade levels 1.2 grades within six months, a rate of improvement four times greater than their peers.2
Amid our educational deficits, we live in a Valley with thousands of the most high-skilled, well-educated adults in the nation. Many are willing to offer an hour or more of their time each week to help a young child, if we make it easy for them. Yet many of those hardworking tech and professional workers don’t know what volunteer options exist near their homes or workplaces.
I attempted to address this challenge by piloting a tutoring initiative with Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Carl Guardino, which we called “1,000 Hearts for 1,000 Minds.” We brought over a dozen great non-profit tutoring programs together, such as Reading Partners and YMCA, to create a single umbrella organization and website that could create a “one-stop shop” for prospective volunteers. We pitched dozens of local companies and their employees during brown-bag lunches, and I spoke at numerous Kiwanis and Rotary meetings. Several of my council colleagues helped us with the launch, and in a year and a half, over 500 adults joined to commit to tutoring public school students through these programs for at least four months. With the benefit of a Mayor’s bully pulpit, we could scale this program and others like it, and really move the needle on student success.
- SUPPORTING PROMISING INNOVATIVE SCHOOLS: SITES AND ZONING
City Hall can also ease the biggest obstacle for expanding innovative, high-performing public schools: securing sites and permits for new campuses. Both traditional public districts and public charter schools have demonstrated the benefits of efforts to launch “small schools” and charters that can offer more innovative approaches to education that particularly succeed for kids in struggling neighborhoods.
In my own district, I assisted the launch of Rocketship Mateo Sheedy Elementary in the Washington neighborhood, where a high percentage of children live in poverty and come from Spanish-speaking households. Within two years, their “Rocketeers” achieved API scores on par with wealthy schools in Palo Alto. Many other high-performing charters, such as KIPP and Downtown College Prep, along with small, innovative district schools, are demonstrating that regardless of poverty, all children can achieve.
Of course, public school districts, their boards and parents share understandable concerns regarding educational oversight and foregone funding with every new charter school in their district. We need a mayor who can bring both sides together to help public districts and public charters flourish in the same city. San José can help ease burdens on cash-strapped districts with accommodations for new facilities, such as by engaging in joint use agreements for parks and community center usage. We can also ensure that the site-location decisions for new schools are made collaboratively with districts.
Regardless of the politics, we all need to remember that we’re all serving the same kids.
PATHWAYS TO COLLEGE
Generations of San José families have shared the joyous announcement of their “first” — those enterprising, promising students who are “the first” in their extended families to attend college. My own father was “the first” among his extended family when he entered Santa Clara University in 1952. Thousands of immigrant families celebrate this rite of passage today. Yet, as I noted earlier, for as many as two-thirds of our public high school students, college remains “off the radar” — and their futures constrained accordingly.
One key reason lies in their lack of awareness. Too many teens believe that college is simply unaffordable, or unattainable. The majority of our high-school students do not have parents who have college degrees, and state funding shortfalls have gutted staffing for college and guidance counselors at our local high schools. Simply, too many of our teens lack a clear sense about how and whether they can get access to a college education.
Here’s where a mayor can lead: convening local universities, school districts and stakeholders to provide a clearer pathway for teens to college. Former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, for example, launched “Café College,” providing a one-stop location for students needing assistance with college applications, SAT preparation, financial aid guidance and career exploration.
Another education-focused former mayor, San José’s Ron Gonzales, has quietly begun to assess whether we can adopt a similar model here. Redeploying an underutilized community center or shuttered library, a leading nonprofit like the Hispanic Foundation could create a welcoming environment where knowledgeable staff can help demystify college applications, financial aid and entrance requirements for students and their parents. An accompanying website can also help, for example, providing students with clear guidance regarding the classes they need to take to satisfy their requirements for CSU admission. With a mayor’s engagement, we can do much to build a bridge for our youth to college and a brighter future.
3. Expanding Our Inventory of Sports Fields and Parks
As child obesity rates have surged in the last two decades, health risks to our children have come into clearer focus: the National Council of La Raza predicts one of every two Latino children (San José’s largest young demographic group) born in 2000 is likely to be afflicted with Type 2 diabetes in adulthood under their current lifestyle.3 Organizations like the Health Trust are leading important battles to improve nutrition in school lunches, and to bring more fresh fruits and vegetables into the “food deserts” of our poorer neighborhoods.
Another critical component of the health equation, of course, is exercise. Athletics kept more than a few of us out of trouble as kids — and I’ve got the school detention records to prove it — but they also gave us an opportunity to play, compete, build friendships and develop healthier lifestyles.
Too many children in San José lack walkable access to a park or playing field, however. Soccer, softball and football league organizers and coaches frantically scramble every year to reserve public fields for games, and (more rarely) for practices. Disappointed parents bemoan of the dearth of playing fields citywide.
I’ve pushed mightily for the construction of several more parks and sports fields during my tenure in office, and we’re thrilled to see some of that come to fruition in my own district: a public multi-soccer field complex under construction around the future Earthquakes stadium, the Abronzino Soccer Bowl at Watson Park and a new field under construction at Martin Park. San José remains notoriously parkdeficient, however, well below our Greenprint’s goal of 3.5 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents.
In older, built-out neighborhoods, we need to find more creative ways to develop sports fields and parks, because little opportunity for parkland development remains. We would do well to better utilize the existing inventory of sports field and parkland in those neighborhoods — starting with our schools. Too many public schools have sports fields and gymnasiums, paid for with taxpayer dollars, closed to the public during the weekends and during the evenings. Cash-strapped school districts, understandably, don’t want the liability for any injuries while they’re unable to supervise the activity, and they don’t want to maintain fields used by non-students.
We can better partner with our school districts to ensure children access to their fields after school, if we leverage one asset: a fund consisting of $57 million of accumulated park fees that housing developers pay to help buy parkland and build parks.
Why aren’t we already spending this $57 million to serve a park-starved community? State law imposes rigid restrictions on the use of the money that makes it challenging to spend. For example, park fees can only be used for ”capital” costs — buying land, building playgrounds, installing grass and the like. We cannot spend those dollars for maintenance or utilities. The law also requires that the park benefit the new residents, so the money must be utilized within close proximity to the housing development that provided the source of the fees. The best opportunities to buy land and build a park often don’t lie within the geographic radius where the dollars can be expended.
While those obstacles make it more difficult to spend park trust fund dollars, we can creatively leverage these dollars in partnership with the school districts to open their playing fields to local youth. Schools often lack the resources to upgrade their facilities — such as by building bathrooms or replacing play equipment. More often still, the ongoing maintenance and operations of their fields, gymnasiums and play equipment significantly drains their limited budgets. The City can help dramatically reduce maintenance costs for the Districts, for example, by replacing grass on playing fields with artificial turf. By contributing the capital money for such projects, the City can persuade districts to provide greater public access to their facilities on weekends or after school.
Such “Joint use agreements” have emerged in recent years to enable public access to school facilities, but they take many months and even years to negotiate, as the competing bureaucratic silos take turns ensuring that liability, costs, risk and work burdens are properly allocated (universally, “properly allocated” usually means “allocated to somebody else”). Here, mayoral leadership can make a difference; we should negotiate with our largest school districts — such as San José Unified and East Side High School District — a uniform “joint use” agreement that can apply broadly to all of the schools within their district. By setting clear expectations about responsibilities and resources, we can accelerate the process of opening these playing fields and gymnasiums to the public, and substantially expand the inventory of playing fields and gymnasiums for youth and adult sports leagues.
There are other creative opportunities to build more parks. Sometimes the most dire of circumstances give rise to innovative ideas, such as when Mayor Dave Bing of Detroit proposed purchasing abandoned, foreclosed homes for reclamation of open space in blighted neighborhoods in that long-suffering city. During every market downturn, every city must confront the blighting impacts of foreclosed, bank-owned, decaying homes that can sit for years in neighborhoods, generating dozens of complaints for code enforcement and dragging down property values for all of the neighbors. Here, opportunity masks itself in despair. The City could identify clusters of two or three foreclosed or neglected homes in park-deficient, blighted neighborhoods and utilize park funds to buy the houses, demolish them and create neighborhood-enhancing parks on those sites.
We know that parks, trails and playing fields can often enhance the values of surrounding properties. Since higher property assessments create more tax revenues that benefit cities, counties and school districts, why not partner with those agencies to form joint financing districts to issue bonds for park construction, financed by the increment of higher property tax revenues within that neighborhood?
These and other opportunities exist for a mayor creatively seeking to leverage scarce resources, but it requires a commitment to ensure that San José has parks about which every child can be proud.
B. THE “SILVER TSUNAMI” AND OUR AGING POPULATION
We’re getting older. While unremarkable, there’s more to this statement than meets the eye. San José’s senior population will quadruple in the coming decades, a rate of growth rate far exceeding any other demographic. This emerging “Silver Tsunami” will dramatically change our city. We’ll see 80,000 more new households headed by over-65 residents by 2030 than in 2000 (by comparison, we’ll see only 14,000 new households headed by someone in their twenties or early-thirties).4 By 2040, one out of three of San José’s households will be headed by somebody over 65, roughly twice the proportion today.
Observers have warned the growing burden of the Silver Tsunami on medical care, paratransit and other costs to local governments. I see extraordinary opportunity in these changes, however. If we engage with this valuable but largely untapped pool of expertise and experience, and if we ensure that this population remains healthily engaged in the life of our community, San José will emerge stronger.
1. Civic Leadership Fellowships
As Baby Boomers retire in rapidly increasing numbers, our very talented, very experienced workforce will increasingly be doing something other than working. Many of them will happily enjoy their days in retirement, caring for grandkids and travelling, but many more would like something different. Many want to remain engaged in their professions or in their communities — just without the daily demands that they weathered for their 45 year-work lives. Their skills and experience constitute an untapped asset. This group of retirees is highly educated, have many bilingual members and all share ample experience in multiple sectors. What better a resource for serving a community as diverse and complex as San José’s?
City Hall, in contrast, lost some 2,000 employees through the Great Recession and its aftermath, among them the most experienced, skilled members of our workforce. We remain the most thinly staffed major city in the United States by virtually any measure. Hiring during this time of rapid Silicon Valley economic growth presents challenges for local governments, including San José’s, with a shrinking available supply of skilled labor. At a time when the City remains perilously short of veteran staff, it seems ideal to tap the wealth of experience all around us.
I propose that we launch a “Civic Leadership Fellowship” program. At very little public expense, we can leverage the expertise and experience of our retiree-force in service to the community, while they provide supplemental city services, research, analysis, consulting, auditing, translation, community outreach and even management that we cannot provide within our current budget.
Some seniors would simply volunteer — as many do today, in our libraries, community centers and parks. Others — where tasked with greater responsibility and workloads — might receive a stipend, to formalize their commitment and set clear expectations for performance. Under federal regulations, retirees can earn up to $15,000 in supplemental income without risk of reducing their Social Security payments. That $15,000 might serve as the annual upward limit on any stipend we might pay those seniors who commit to substantial hours and energy to their positions, giving some a needed dose of additional spending money and others a clear sense that their work is valued.
The Civic Leadership Fellowship is hardly a new idea, of course; President John F. Kennedy launched the Senior Corps nationally in the early 1960’s for example, to boost volunteerism among retirees. This is about more than merely encouraging volunteers: we’d be directly employing retirees in our core municipal functions. Our Civic Leadership Fellows could set a new standard nationally for meaningful engagement of our greatest asset: our residents’ talents. Hundreds of San José seniors will be rolling up their sleeves in the good work of their City, all at a price of pennies to the dollar of expanding or improving services in more traditional ways.
2. Mobility — for Seniors, and All of Us
A city consisting of over 310,000 seniors — the population projected for San José in 2040 — needs to operate differently. We need to think differently about everything — our parks, roads, community centers and even our sidewalks — for an aging population. Some cities are getting ahead of the Silver Tsunami. In Ohio, for example, Springfield Township began designing an “adult playground” adjacent to a senior center to encourage seniors to engage in greater physical activity with durable outdoor exercise machines.5
Transportation becomes an increasingly critical issue as we age. A growing number of us will no longer be able to drive. Increasingly, we’ll face challenges in getting to medical appointments, shopping or opportunities to socialize, and the resulting isolation threatens our mental and physical well-being.
Many of us will need more time to cross a street before a signal allows cross-traffic to proceed. We may need assistance using transit. Of course, others will still be jogging to the store, to our great admiration.
For seniors without cars, transit becomes essential. Bus stops remain beyond walking distance for many seniors in San José. VTA offers a shuttle program, “Outreach,” that many seniors use yet Outreach’s limited budget constrains its geographic scope, its timeliness and its cost — particularly for those who do not qualify for a discount.
Ultimately, we need to expand the range of options for seniors who do not drive. For example, we have a vastly underutilized pool of some 700 taxi drivers in San José, now challenged by competing internet-based services like Lift and Uber. Although taxicab companies like Yellow Cab traditionally offer a standard 15% discount to seniors, the cost of a taxi ride remains beyond the reach of many seniors on limited incomes. In conversations with one taxi company owner, it has become apparent that the drivers’ incomes drop steeply during non-peak hours at the airport, typically between 10 am and 2 pm. This time range corresponds with the same period when many seniors might readily schedule a medical appointment, shop, pick up a prescription or dine out.
Working with the non-profit People Acting in Community Together (PACT), I’ve explored the prospect of advertising a steeper discount to low-income seniors during this mid-day period of low demand. To their credit, a couple of cab company owners are open to the idea — but finding the right discount is critical. The price needs to be high enough to ensure drivers will respond to the calls and low enough to be affordable for the intended beneficiaries. The City could partner with participating companies to advertise the lower rates to boost call volume for many struggling drivers, while giving more seniors an option.
3. Protecting our Seniors from Abuse and Isolation
Elder abuse has become a major public health problem. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over a half-million American adults over 60 report abuse, neglect or financial exploitation each year. The number of reports vastly underestimate the problem; however, since many victims are unable or afraid to tell the police, family or friends about the violence or exploitation.
Studies of elder abuse demonstrate that financial exploitation and physical abuse of seniors typically begins when a caretaker, such as a conservator, isolates the victim from her family and friends. By denying visitation privileges from loved ones, predatory individuals can more effectively inflict physical harm, engage in financial fraud or other harm without detection. Recent modifications in state law clarify the rights of seniors who have conservators to require access to loved ones.
Nonetheless, San José’s (like virtually every other city’s) police duty manual hasn’t yet caught up to the law. We do not respond to complaints of family members who are denied access to their parents. Working with the District Attorney’s Office, we can improve protocols to respond to those complaints — particularly relying upon community service officers and County social service employees, who can take reports and gather evidence. Becoming engaged when those first signs of exploitation emerge can do much to save our elders from subsequent abuse and victimization.
C. OUR WATER: ENSURING A SUSTAINABLE SUPPLY
Drought: The “New Normal”
As we endure another year of drought, we should come to accept that water scarcity will become the “new normal” in San José. While climate change has uncertain impacts on California’s water supply, few doubt that population growth will continue into the foreseeable future statewide. A Malthusian competition pits California’s agricultural Central Valley against coastal cities for increasingly scarce water from a diminishing statewide supply of snowpack runoff and reservoirs. In “normal” years, Santa Clara County depends on water imported from the Sierra Nevada Mountains for 55% of our need, yet in the last year, federal and state authorities have halted routine allocations of this critical supply.6
Two lessons emerge. First, we’re on our own. We cannot sensibly continue to depend on imported water. Second, drought restrictions will be increasingly common and severe. If we do take action to address our long-term water needs, these restrictions will impact our quality of life, health and economy.
We can find a more sustainable path, but only if we confront these two emerging realities, and only if we think differently about our water supply.
1. A Better Approach to Water Recycling: Groundwater Recharge
Gold-plated solutions often grab headlines and controversy, and water policy is no different. Competing proposals for desalination plants, peripheral canals and large dam projects increasingly resemble the baseball equivalent of what I call the “Manny Ramirez solution” to a team’s batting slump: voracious energy consumption, disruptive environmental impact and very steep costs. While technological improvements may make desalination more feasible in the future — particularly for brackish groundwater — cost-effective, sustainable large-scale implementation will require many years. We can do better by focusing on more affordable solutions within our reach, or better said, beneath our feet.
Our underground aquifers provide the most reliable source of water we’ve got. Replenishing aquifers is not a terribly new idea. We’ve been replacing groundwater supplies for 80 years in this valley with percolation ponds and other fresh-water sources.
As we exhaust these freshwater supplies, however, we must look to a new source: recycled water. We currently recycle waste water sufficiently to boost our existing water supply by some 14 million gallons. San José’s water sewage plant purifies water for reuse by commercial customers for their landscape and industrial uses, but not for drinking water.
For years, I have agreed with several leaders of the Santa Clara Valley Water District that we push farther, by embarking on “groundwater recharge.” That is, we should not merely use recycled water for factories or lawn sprinklers, but for replenishing our underground reservoirs. If we can purify the water to exceedingly safe levels, and recharge our groundwater basins, then that water will further improve with natural filtration through soil and rock, safely supplementing our mainstream potable water supply.
While it takes some public education to overcome the “ick” factor, the safety of recharging potable water supplies with highly purified recycled water is proven. Orange County has safely implemented groundwater replenishment since 1976, pumping 35 millions of gallons of recycled water back into the ground each day.7 El Paso has used a similar process since 1985, recycling over 10 million gallons of water back into the Huelco Bolson groundwater basin. In Fairfax, Virginia, residents drink water out of the Occoquan, a surface reservoir that receives recycled water from a purification facility nearby. These examples appear rare, however, in the U.S.
Fortunately, the Water District and the City of San José have made considerable progress in recent months, by opening a state-of-theart advanced water purification facility. This long-awaited project can recycle sewage water to a purity exceeding state drinking water standards. Relying on three advanced treatment processes — microfiltration, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet light — the plant will provide 8 million gallons of highly purified water for commercial customers. The $72 million plant isn’t cheap, but it comes at a fraction of the cost of a desalination plant.
While the facility lays the groundwork for a future transition that will save both water and money, it doesn’t solve our challenges in providing potable drinking water. The purified water will merely serve to reduce the salinity of existing recycled water and expand its appeal for the same commercial recycled-water customers for landscape watering.
If we hold fast to the belief that we should forever segregate recycled water from drinking water, we will have spent a lot of money purifying water for landscaping. We’ll also have spent a lot of money expanding an otherwise redundant system for distributing recycled water — the extensive, 142-mile “purple pipe” system that currently delivers recycled water to our commercial users. Building owners will have wasted a lot of money to install dual plumbing in buildings, and ratepayers will have paid to operate separate, redundant distribution systems.
A more efficient approach would consolidate the recycled and fresh water distribution systems by replenishing underground aquifers with highly purified, recycled water. Relying on water ratepayer fees, we can invest in the capital infrastructure to do so and still likely save millions in capital costs. Most importantly, we will ensure a secure, safe and sustainable water supply.
The Water District has already identified groundwater recharge as a long-term goal. As Mayor, working in partnership with the Water District, I’ll push to make this a near-term reality.
2. Smart Growth and a Youth Water Conservation Corps
All of that will take several years of planning and development, of course. In the short run, we still have a drought. How can we affordably manage that problem?
Conservation offers the most accessible path.
First, we need to follow the path of “smart growth” development that reduces per capita water usage. Lawns and other landscaping consume half of all residential water use. If we allow for more construction of sprawling single-family homes in the San José’s hillsides and open spaces, water demand will grow. Fortunately, we have sufficient suburban-style, single-family development to meet the demand in San José; demographers tell us that Bay Area households will continue to dramatically shrink in size in the coming decades. Why? Couples increasingly delay childbearing and marriage. Meanwhile, our senior population grows rapidly.
By focusing new residential growth in locations such as Downtown and near future BART stations, where transit-oriented, high-density condominiums and apartments appear appropriate, the only yards needing watering are common-area landscape. Per-capita water use drops dramatically.
Second, many conservation-related tasks involve relatively simple projects that could be accomplished by well-managed youth engaged in their first jobs, coordinated by an experienced nonprofit like the Conservation Corps or TeenForce. As described in the first chapter of this book, a well-designed program could constructively focus the energies of dozens of San José teens tearing up lawns, planting drought-tolerant species, constructing grey-water cisterns in yards and distributing conservation tips to local homeowners. A sustainable program could emerge with funding from the Water District, local retailers and the City, as well as a pay-for-service system from individual customers seeking to reduce their monthly water bills. As the drought continues, and as water prices ratchet upward, more homeowners and business owners will happily sign up for new yards.
I proposed such an initiative in August of 2014, and it remains under study. In the meantime, we can all do better for the next generation — and this one — by reducing the watering of our yards and shortening our time in the showers.
D. OUR CITY: SAN JOSE’S ROLE IN SILICON VALLEY’S FUTURE
We face another long-term threat to our City’s continued prosperity, but it is rarely discussed publicly. It should be, because the battle for San José’s — and indeed all of Silicon Valley’s — economic future lies in winning the “War for Talent.”
Every major metropolitan area in the U.S. has sought to capture the young, innovative engineers, coders, designers and professionals that drive our fastest-growing tech companies. Those cities that succeed in doing so — Austin, Boston, Manhattan, San Francisco and Seattle, among them — attract those employers seeking that talent, and their cities reap the rewards: more jobs, more revenue and better services and quality of life.
Silicon Valley’s success over the last half-century has depended on its ability to grow and attract a highly skilled workforce, but troubling signs have emerged. Young tech innovators — including many graduates of our own local universities — increasingly flock to more urban, vibrant communities over the predominantly suburban Santa Clara Valley. Even if “Generation Yers” could afford to live in Valley suburbs (and they can’t), they won’t. They increasingly choose to live in cities with more diverse social offerings, more urban amenities or an edgier cultural scene.
Why should we care?
Where goes the talent, so go the companies. Consider the many young stars in the tech constellation — such as Twitter or Yelp — that have launched San Francisco headquarters along with larger but still fastgrowing companies like Salesforce. Others, like Pinterest or Pulse, moved from the burbs into San Francisco to better attract talent. Even more commonly, headquarters for Adobe or Samsung will remain in San José, but the majority of the hiring will happen in San Francisco or Austin. When Facebook launched its Manhattan engineering office in 2011, an executive told the media, “We are looking for the smartest folks, the best place by a large margin was New York.” Ouch.
More than one observer has rung the alarm over the diminishing role of Silicon Valley as a magnet for young, innovative talent, relative to the fast-growing start-up scenes in San Francisco and elsewhere. Where those employers go, thousands of other jobs follow, since many businesses exist to support those driving industries.
Our next mayor must be focused on cultivating, attracting and retaining the most innovative, creative, skilled private sector workforce. To do so, we must “grow our own” talent, as I’ve described earlier in this chapter, and our mayor must play a leading role in supporting education. But we must also better retain the talented engineering, design and business graduates of San José State University and other nearby colleges who increasingly choose to move elsewhere to begin their careers.
1. Silicon Valley’s Urban Option
So, we must create Silicon Valley’s “urban option”: a vibrant Downtown and surrounding “urban villages” that will retain and attract those residents — young and old — that want to live in a more vibrant, amenity-rich environment.
How, exactly, do we do that?
It helps to start by reflecting upon what we all crave about the cities we love. One fact is certain: we do not experience great cities chained to the steering wheel of our cars moving 45 miles per hour down an expressway.
Rather, we experience great cities on foot. And we love great cities for their great outdoor public spaces. In the parks, plazas and paseos of our city’s villages, we can encounter a farmer’s market, an outdoor café, a guitarist playing for passersby, a show of oil paintings or an outdoor zumba class. It requires an attention to the details that capture our fancy — as Connie Martinez calls them, the “little wonders” — such as a distinctive mural, an inviting storefront or appealing landscaping. In those public spaces we encounter each other, and a city’s identity is forged.
These are the experiences that we all crave — and that talented urbanites flock to. And we can have them, but only if we collectively engage and care about how we design and build our city. We can focus on those public spaces that provide opportunities for great pedestrian experiences. Well beyond Santana Row, we can provide those inviting urban experiences in Evergreen Village Square, on Alum Rock Avenue, Lincoln Avenue, North First Street and other neighborhood villages throughout San José.
2. Downtown
Of course, we can have the greatest impact in Downtown, because it offers the only location with capacity for substantial growth and development as a vibrant urban center. Other neighborhoods won’t tolerate traffic from high-rise office towers or noisy transit stops next door. In Downtown, in contrast, we can accommodate residential growth at a scale of 250 units to an acre.
My strategy for revitalizing Downtown has diverged from earlier approaches. In past years, City leadership depended on millions in public Redevelopment subsidies for development. A few of those bets paid off — such as the SAP Arena and the Convention Center — but others didn’t. Many taxpayers increasingly became disaffected by Downtown’s absorption of public dollars at their neighborhoods’ expense.
Rather than relying on public money for urban revitalization, I’ve focused on a different ingredient: people. Every retail broker and restaurant owner will tell you of the importance of seeing feet on the sidewalk. For too many years, Downtown had been devoid of people. One Downtown business owner sadly joked a few years ago that he could shoot a canon down First Street on a Saturday afternoon without hitting anyone. Subsidizing new stores and restaurants with Redevelopment dollars won’t change that dynamic. People will.
So, I’ve pushed various incentive programs to bring people into our core. I haven’t done so with taxpayer dollars, though. Rather, I’ve focused by cutting onerous city fees and committing to faster timelines for permits. A high-rise fee reduction that I championed has resulted in several new towers breaking ground, bringing some 2,500 new housing units into our core. Along the way, we’ll boost property and other tax revenues to the City by millions of dollars with that development. A new hotel will begin construction in the fall — the first in Downtown in over a generation. Anticipating the arrival of thousands of new residents, we’ve seen 43 restaurants and retail businesses open their doors in one 18-month span. A Whole Foods store is under construction Downtown, as is a U.S. Patent Office, and the University of San Francisco just launched a new satellite campus.
We’ve also focused on leveraging existing public resources without costing taxpayers more money. With hundreds of vacant parking spaces in 2011, I pushed to offer cut-rate parking in public garages for employers who sign leases in Downtown. Since that time, 161 businesses have signed up, bringing over 1,000 new employees into our core, filling over 600,000 square feet of previously vacant office and retail space. Our creative head of IT, Vijay Sammeta, partnered with forward-thinking companies like Ruckus Wireless and SmartWAVE Technologies to repurpose Downtown’s wireless infrastructure, creating the nation’s fastest free outdoor Wi-FI network. Local businesses, residents and visitors can connect to the network appropriately named “wickedlyfastwifi.” All of this came at little or no cost to the taxpayers.
I also pushed for transportation and infrastructure development that would bring people into Downtown, fundraising and advocating for the successful 2008 BART ballot measure, and pushing for a bus-rapid-transit system, both of which are under construction today. My longstanding efforts to bring car-share (“ZipCar”) and bike-share systems into Downtown resulted in successful launches last year, and we are finally starting to develop a transportation infrastructure suitable for a major U.S. city.
As the people arrive, our focus must turn to those public spaces I referred to earlier: the parks, paseos and plazas. The San Pedro Urban Market has demonstrated the benefits of a focus on creating vibrant public outdoor/indoor spaces for eating, live music and public gathering; developers have flocked to invest half a billion dollars in new high-rise towers nearby. We partnered with the Downtown Rotary Club to launch a large, fully accessible children’s play garden in Guadalupe River Park, a regional attraction that will bring vitality to the park needed to become the “Central Park” for our residents. We’re exploring a partnership with a national non-profit, the Levitt Foundation, to construct an outdoor pavilion that will transform the blighted but historic St. James Park into a public venue for live music, with millions of investment from Levitt and nearby developers. We’ve completed paving six miles of trails connecting Downtown with North San José along the Guadalupe River and are pushing south with new trail connections to Willow Glen and beyond. Working with businesses and arts venues on South First Street, we’ve used grants funds to recreate the Parque de los Pobladores into a community gathering space for performances and celebration at the southern gateway to our Downtown. With hundreds of new apartments under construction there, architect Thang Do will soon launch a public market nearby. We’ve even used street space for “curb cafes,” bringing restaurant and café patrons out into the streets on South First and East San Fernando.
Many partners have helped lead this activation of Downtown’s public spaces. The San José Downtown Association worked with the City to cut fees to encourage restaurants to open outdoor seating on sidewalks and streets, to entice outdoor vendors and food trucks and promote street festivals. Downtown businesses have agreed to tax themselves through a special district to bring flowers, murals, graffiti cleaning, street washing and additional police patrols to Downtown. A “live music” strategy thrives under the guidance of SJDA and San José Jazz, filling forty restaurants, hotels and bars with bands and crooners seven days a week. San José State University has opened its gates to community-wide events, such as Silicon Valley Symphony’s popular Target Pops Festival.
All of these community partners will rightfully share the credit for Downtown’s renaissance. We’re creating a Downtown that our entire city can increasingly enjoy for entertainment, restaurants and cultural amenities, but the renewed vibrancy does not come at a cost of pulling scarce public resources from our neighborhoods.
As a city, we need to rise above these turf battles about “Downtown versus the Neighborhoods.” As the entire Valley’s future will increasingly depend on our success in creating a vibrant urban center, we’ll recognize this as a false choice. We need both: a vibrant urban center for all of San José, and safe, attractive neighborhoods with great public spaces.
Of course, we’ve still got a long way to go. The question is whether we will have the leadership in the coming decade to take Downtown — and all of San José — to the next level. Fortunately, great possibilities await us.
1. This data comes from a 2010 survey. More recently, in 2013, the Kids Count Data Center (Annie Casey E. Foundation) found that 85% of California children qualifying for free lunch read below proficient level.
2. Fitzgerald, J. (2001). Can minimally trained college student volunteers help young at-risk children to read better?. Reading Research Quarterly, 36, 28-47.
3. “Young Latinos Have Fastest Growing Rate of Diabetes, Study Says,” Huffington Post, June 13, 2012.
4. Beacon Economics, The Future of Housing Demand in San José: 2008-2040, www.sanjoseca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/3299
5. Governing magazine, September 2012, p. 37.
6. Footnote: Santa Clara Valley Water District, Valley Water News, July 2014.
7. Orange County Water District and Orange County Sanitation District, Groundwater Replenishment System, http://www.gwrsystem.com/