San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan had his official inauguration on Wednesday at the San Jose Center for Performing Arts, where he discussed his goals for his term in office.
In the press conference, Mahan said he wanted to focus on bringing back the basics of managing the city, working to address issues such as houselessness, crime, public safety, community clean-ups and to promote residence engagement.
During the heavy rainfall that happened in early January, Mahan took action to support the houseless community by evacuating the streets and supplying them with emergency shelter.
Mahan also said he wants to extend new programs and projects to continue supporting the houseless community through providing quick-build shelters that will offer the “basics.”
“We can’t wait for the next crisis,” he said. “We need basic safe spaces and services.”
Mahan discussed allocating funds for individuals who are houseless, including families.
“It’s common sense to spend a few thousand dollars to keep someone stably housed, they look for a job or support from a family member,” Mahan said.
During the press conference, he said taxpayers pay an estimated $65,000 per unhoused person every year.
Mahan said many residents of San Jose have complained about the unhealthy environment the city lives in. To solve this problem, he wants to promote more residence engagement with clean-up programs that would uplift community beautification.
“We plan to get hundreds of residents out to directly play a role in cleaning up and beautifying their neighborhoods,” Mahan said. “We'll be working to expand programs like San Jose Bridge and Cash for Trash which employs homeless residents and citywide cleanup efforts, giving them dignity of work and income and the opportunity to gain better skills and employment and housing along the way.”
San Jose resident Carl McRorie said the mayor made a lot of good points in his speech but that there’s nothing concrete about the houselessness situation.
“The homeless problem is going to get worse, the trash is going to get worse unless there’s some kind of hard resolution to solve it, it won’t be solved,” said McRorie.
In discussing the housing problem in San Jose, Mahan preferred to talk about residents who may potentially leave the city because of complaints given on the campaign trail.
When the mayor was pressed regarding what he meant about residents potentially leaving San Jose, Mahan said he was worried about the perception of the city and what the city can do to keep residents.
“You know, what I was referring to was really more about the sentiment of our community,” Mahan said. “We have not seen a mass exodus of people or businesses. We've seen some folks leave some businesses but that's been at the margins.”
Mahan did not answer on plans to mitigate the cost of living in San Jose. When questioned, he circled back to his original plan about the basics of improving the quality of life.
To focus on public safety, Mahan said he wants to invest in more recruitment for the police department to solve the low staffing issue and prioritize diversity in the hiring process.
“Talking about low staffing levels in our police department and while our city council committed to increasing staffing by 15 officers per year,” Mahan said. “In the next five years, I'll be calling on us to double the rate at which we're hiring police officers so that we can improve our response times.”
The mayor also discussed prioritizing expanding the 311 city service’s hotline and decreasing response time.
“Today our priority is on response time,” Mahan said. “Seven minutes, 23 minutes more than double our performance.”
The mayor said he wants to invest in educating youth within San Jose by putting more funding into afterschool programs, tutoring and creating more job opportunities.
Mahan said all of these issues will be a collaborative effort with the members of the city council. He mentioned working with experts on these several issues respectively and will regard each issue as a priority.
“We have incredible frustration out in the community on issues like public safety play calls for us to be highly collaborative,” Mahan said. “Highly focused to get back to basics and to work together to deliver results. So I'm ready to work with all of my colleagues and I'm confident that the new appointees in addition to all my colleagues are ready to get to work.”
Mahan talked about reforming state laws by investing in affordable housing, quick-build housing for the houseless and mental health.
The mayor spoke about mental health reform to aid those who are suffering from mental illness and addiction, but he hasn’t made any proposals as to what specific services will be conducted to engage in the reform.
“For those who are suffering from severe addiction and mental illness,” Mahan said. “We need to enable family and law enforcement and bystanders concerned by standards and to give them the ability to help people get the care that they need.”
He said he wants to implement a CARE court system as a part of his mental health reform.
CARE Court is a “coerced, court-ordered treatment system that strips people with mental health disabilities of their right to make their own decisions about their lives,” according to the Disability Rights California.
Disability Rights California is an organization dedicated to preventing policies and laws that limit or interfere with the rights of individuals with disabilities.
The CARE Court system is one of the institutions that potentially enable discriminatory policies against disabled people.
Overall, Mahan emphasized on prioritizing the quality of life for San Jose by engaging in his “back to the basics” plan.
“If we focus on these basics, I'm confident the San Jose candidate will be a place where every resident newly immigrated or fifth generation blue collar tech founder, sort of a mailman or daughter of the mayor will find a brighter future and endless opportunity,” Mahan said.
