Finding Your Polling Place in San José
With the November 4 election fast approaching, we have had many supporters ask what is the best tool to find their polling place.
We’ve taken a close look and we are recommending http://www.gettothepolls.com as an easy-to-use tool to find your polling place in San José.
Just type in your street address and you get a map showing your polling place and easy directions to get there.
Other ways to find your polling place in San José
This is just one of many tools you can use to find a polling place on November 4 – the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters also ...
Mercury News editorial: Misleading anti-Liccardo campaign all union backed
Appeared in the Mercury News on 10/27/14
The campaigns for San Jose mayor say a lot about the candidates -- but not necessarily in the way the interests paying the bills for them would like.
The campaigns by Sam Liccardo and by his supporters making independent expenditures are positive, ethical and forward looking. Liccardo's character, philosophy and approach to governing are laid out clearly.
This reflects well on him and on the business and community leaders, such as former Mayor Susan Hammer, campaigning for him. You get a full picture of the former prosecu...
I Prefer Solutions to Scare Tactics
Printed in the Mercury News
I've dedicated much of my career to confronting crime, and the fears that surround it. As a criminal prosecutor in San José, I spent many hours eliciting courtroom testimony from trembling victims, who mustered the courage to testify against their assailants.
Navigating this sea of fears poses a test for political leaders, particularly in an election season. Some respond with scare tactics. I prefer solutions.
Responsible solutions require money to pay for them.
I've made reducing crime my top priority, and have crafted a comprehensive plan ...
Why Did San José Really Lose 400 Police Officers?
The number of sworn officers in the San José Police Department has dropped from 1388 prior to the Great Recession, to approximately 995 today.1 Much has been made by the Cortese campaign and police union that “pension reform drove officers away.” Of course, it has not helped that the same police union bosses that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect Cortese have also engaged in a pattern of encouraging officers to leave San José to support their political argument that their pensions and benefits shouldn’t be reduced. They’ve invited other ...
The County’s “Balanced Budget” Under Cortese
Dave Cortese has repeatedly claimed that under his watch, the County has been a picture of fiscal balance, saying that he and the County Board “negotiated over $200 million in employee concessions” that have somehow resolved their pension problems.
Sadly for all of us, that’s far from the truth. In Cortese’s six-year tenure, the County’s unfunded retirement debt has ballooned from $2.0 billion to $3.3 billion in 2013. Even worse, the County still fails to pay its minimum “annual required contribution” each year for retirement costs – paying only about ...
San José’s Burglary Unit
In recent mailers, Dave Cortese and his allies have sent out mailers suggesting that Sam voted to eliminate the Burglary Investigations Unit. They fail to mention that the Burglary Unit actually still exists – an inconvenient fact for those claiming that Sam voted to eliminate it somehow. If you’d like to call detecives in that unit, you can reach them at (408) 277-4401.
Nobody doubts that the unit is understaffed, like most units in the Police Department. That’s why Sam crafted the proposal last year to identify the over $30 million in pension reform savings ...
Property Crime Rates on the Decline
Dave Cortese’s supporters want you to believe property crimes are skyrocketing. Repeated mailers show graphs with upward slopes showing large increases in burglaries or auto thefts between the years 2008 and 2012, suggesting crime has run rampant throughout the city.
The San Jose Mercury News editorial board attributed these misleading mailers to a “fear-mongering campaign by Cortese and his supporters” in a September 28, 2014 editorial. Why are the mailers wrong?
First, they completely ignore the data over the past two years, when property crime has dramatic...
Paying More to Retire then to Work?
Dave Cortese has said he would undo pension reform and believes, in fact, that police are “under pensioned”. However, with average pensions starting at above $100,000, with built in automatic 3% annual increases, it’s not long before many retired officers make more than those still on the job. Cortese has yet to explain how he’d pay for these continuing costs.
Cortese Doesn’t Say “No” to Unions
Dave Cortese likes to say he voted against pension increases in 2005 because he was concerned about costs. That’s not what he said back then though – back then the Mercury News reported, “He has said he did not object to the level of benefits, but he felt that a previous labor agreement required police and fire retirement benefits to be established together.” [Mercury News, 1/19/2006]
At the time, the firefighters had not yet reached an agreement because they were pushing for even more benefits. So had Cortese’s side won out, pensions likely would have been ...
A New Way to Engage Voters: Interactive Video
I first decided to run for city council eight years ago because I believed that the more San José residents engaged in civic life the better our government would be.
Serving on the council, that belief was reinforced nearly every day. I saw the power of regular citizens standing up for better policies and smarter government.
The challenge is that the big special interests have lobbyists and lots of ways to be heard. We need to make sure that the rest of us have a voice in our government.
That’s why I have been pushing so hard to make it easier for regular ...