San Jose's Liccardo Says City Still Going After A's

Incoming San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo sat down with KQED Newsroom's Scott Shafer this morning and spoke about healing the rift with public employee unions, competing with San Francisco for tech jobs and other issues.

One interesting topic: San Jose's ongoing, never-ending and, some might say, quixotic quest to bring the A's to San Jose. Earlier this year, San Jose sued Major League Baseball over its refusal to grant approval for the team's relocation to the city, something A's owners and the city both dearly desire. At a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hearing in August, the judges seemed quite dubious the city had a case, or even legal standing to sue. A decision is pending.

But Liccardo told Shafer he wasn't backing down from the legal fight.

"We know that the owner and the ownership of the A's are very interested in being in San Jose. Obviously, this will be decided by the 9th Circuit and then we expect perhaps by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"As long as this is a privately financed stadium and there’s no taxpayer money going into this, this is nothing but a win for our city. We’ve seen how transformative urban ballparks have been in cities from Baltimore to San Diego to San Francisco. ... We’re the 10th-largest city in America ... and we're a major league city."

Regarding San Jose's competition with San Francisco for tech jobs, Liccardo said:

"We’re not just competing with San Francisco, we’re competing with Bangalore, we’re competing with Shanghai. This is a global stage we’re on."

Liccardo went on to talk about San Francisco as if it were ... well ... over ... in terms of being able to sustain itself as an option for large groups of people wanting to live in a city.

"I think it fundamentally does start with creating a vibrant urban center in Silicon Valley, and San Jose is the only place with the capacity to do that," he said. "San Francisco is nearing capacity. BART is nearing capacity. Muni is moving at 5 miles an hour or less through much of the city. We see it in the housing costs (in San Francisco). So there needs to be an urban option in this region. Certainly Oakland is a good options as well. But San Jose is the largest city in the region and it's time for us to start acting like it."

Here's the full interview from KQED NEWSROOM.

You can also see, below, KQED's previous interview with Liccardo, in which he spoke about restoring San Jose's police force.

You can watch KQED NEWSROOM Fridays at 8 p.m. on KQED Public Television 9, listen on Sundays at 6 p.m. on KQED Public Radio 88.5 FM and watch on demand here.

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San Jose's incoming mayor, Sam Liccardo, is facing the monumental task of trying to lead a divided city after a hard-fought race.

The Democratic city councilman and defender of San Jose's pension reforms defeated union advocate Dave Cortese by just 3,500 votes.

One of Liccardo's priorities will be restoring San Jose's police force, which lost about 380 officers in the last five years. The department was at a high point in staffing right as the 2008 recession hit, and patrols have dwindled since then.

"I think we're going to be able to rebuild the department," said Liccardo. "It won't be at the pace that anyone would prefer. It's going to take time."

The mayor-elect says he expects pay increases for officers in next year's contract, as well as more aggressive hiring.

"We will continue to hire aggressively and as we are restoring pay, we'll be more competitive with other departments in other cities. And I expect we'll be able to come to an agreement with the police union to be able to offer an incentive to those officers nearing retirement age to keep those officers on board."

During the mayoral campaign, pension reform and reduced benefits were blamed for the recent exodus of police officers, but the number is a fraction of those laid off after the recession.

Liccardo said he will continue to uphold San Jose's pension reforms, passed by 70 percent of the voters in 2012. The reforms modified benefits for current and future city workers. A lower court overturned part of the city's reforms last year.

"We're getting sued, so the question is: Are we going to concede or continue defending what has been passed by voters?" said Liccardo.  "… There certainly are tweaks to the measure that we can enact around, for example, disability protections, but fundamentally we have to protect the will of the voters on this because it is our only path forward to be able to restore services."

Pension costs for local governments throughout California are expected to rise substantially over the next five years.