TO: HONORABLE MAYOR AND FROM: Councilmember Campos
CITY COUNCIL
SUBJECT: SEE BELOW DATE: March 17, 2025
Approved Date: 3/17/2025
SUBJECT: Approval of the Fiscal Year 2025-2026 Mayor’s March Budget Message
RECOMMENDATION
1. Accept the memorandum from Councilmembers Campos, Salas, Mulcahy, Doan, and Casey.
2. Accept the memorandum from Councilmembers Cohen and Candelas with the following modification:
a. Amend Recommendation 1 to read: “Direct the City Manager to work with the County Executive to develop, in consultation with the Chair of the San José Rules Committee and the Chair of the Santa Clara County Finance and Government Operations Committee, an agenda for a joint meeting on homelessness, affordable housing, and coordination with other initiatives including behavioral health and transition plans into permanent supportive housing. The joint meeting shall be held no later than June 30, 2025.”
3. Direct the City Manager to prepare an MBA evaluating resources needed to initiate a General Plan Four-Year Review.
DISCUSSION
I appreciate the significant efforts of the Mayor and his Budget Brown Act to prepare this document. I am particularly grateful for the Mayor’s proposals to invest in services that support and protect our immigrant community; improve the City’s wildfire prevention and response efforts, including evacuation notification; support Vision Zero and the crossing guard program; provide one-time funding for RLEI; identify additional lots for safe parking; and support business associations and the creation of new BIDs.
Within the now five City Council Focus Areas, many of the proposals are ambitious, complex, and innovative. With 124 discrete actions to consider through this Budget Message, we must recognize the extraordinary workload implications of so many policies approved in one motion.
COUNCIL AGENDA: 3/18/2025
FILE: 25-242
ITEM: 3.3
The directives in the City Charter regarding the delivery of the Budget Message are clear, concise, and fiscally-oriented:
SECTION 1204. Fiscal Administration; Submission of Budget and Budget Message ...
(b) The Mayor shall deliver a budget message which shall include:
• A statement of the fiscal priorities which the City should adopt for the ensuing year.
• Which Departments, Offices or Agencies the Mayor proposes to be expanded or to receive reduced budgeted allocations.
• Specific recommendations concerning any proposed additions to or deletions from the budget.
I am concerned about the process of introducing policy proposals that do not have an explicit connection to the budget. Consideration by the Rules Committee or through the Priority Setting process would enhance transparency, allow for meaningful public participation, clarify impacts to staff capacity and any trade-offs necessary to implement these initiatives, and ensure thoughtful deliberation by the City Council. I urge my colleagues to scrutinize the Budget Message and think carefully about the operational impacts of many of the individual policy proposals in the Budget Message.
Notwithstanding, I have prepared this memorandum in a good-faith effort to achieve consensus and allow the City Manager to begin preparing a balanced budget.