March 5, 2008

Lincoln look-alike

Oliverio reflects on first year in office

By Carol Rosen
Editor

It’s been nearly a year since Pierluigi Oliverio took office and he notes that a majority of his work has landed in the success column.

Pierluigi Oliverio talks about his goals for District 6 and in particular, Willow Glen. The District 6 council member plans to wear his Lincoln-like beard until the city makes progress on eliminating the structural budget deficit. Photo by Carol Rosen

In some of his early work, the District 6 council member says he “initially shot for the moon and fell, on a star.” The quip is reminiscent of his first act as a council member, when he set out to get volunteers to help with park chores that were not getting met because of layoffs and budget constraints.

The proposal shocked most of the city council and many park employees were concerned they would lose their jobs. That motion went down to defeat with only Oliverio and Mayor Chuck Reed voting for it.

Not quite 10 months later, a group of 200 volunteers calling themselves Friends of the San Jose Rose Garden, pruned and cleaned up the garden.

Meanwhile, “we’ve been able to open the door for corporate volunteers and it allows a volunteer coordinator to come in and hire them. People from various companies are not going after park jobs; they are trained to work in software or other fields. But they do want to volunteer and this gives them the chance, at no one’s expense,” adding that all park staff remains on the job.

Oliverio says he got what he wanted. “Before this month’s vote [on Feb. 12 allowing corporate volunteers to help out], there was an unwritten law that no one could volunteer to help. Now, it’s like Junior Achievement in high schools--we can supplement the program without taking away anyone’s job.

Parks and trails
That’s just one of the items Oliverio lists in his success column. Another, that also has to do with parks, is the new Del Monte Park that was unanimously given a green light by the city council. “We have more than a 100,000 people and no dog park,” he told the Times. “Two-thousand people petitioned and demanded a dog park.”

The new Del Monte Park, which will be completed in 2009, will not just have a dog park, it also will have a bathroom. The council member noted that it’s quite hard to get an area for dogs in already-established parks. So the new 2.25-acre park was the best place for it. Some residents initially were against bathrooms because they fear these will bring out bad elements of society. “But people who visit parks need bathrooms and drinking fountains,” he said.

Since taking office, Oliverio also held a park forum during which he discussed each park with residents and park staff to develop a list of problems and priorities. From this list, park staff created priorities and is working on them.

He also has been instrumental in pushing the Willow Glen Spur Trail. More than 120 people attended a meeting prior to the City Council vote, which allowed questions to be answered and problems to get out in the open. The trail now involves multiple government agencies including the Open Space Authority, city and county governments and various grants.

Airport
Oliverio says the first thing he accomplished after his election was to deal with the Mineta San Jose Airport curfew. It was about to expire, “so I jumped on it. I got in and dealt with it because that is what the community wanted and my job is to do what the residents in District 6 want me to do.” The curfew remains.

During his campaign, Oliverio told constituents he would put together a database so that they could track issues they were interested in or concerned about on the Internet. “It took me three weeks,” he said, “and some 1,700 to 1,800 cases are on the Web site. At least half of those who have called in, have logged in to track where the issues are going.”

In addition, his technical background has allowed him to help city staff look to find less costly options. For example, last May, Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services were about to implement a software deal with Oracle that would cost $1.6 million. He asked the staff questions about the deal’s return on investment. The staff then pulled back and found an identical Web-based solution from the same vendor that cost only $125,000.

The deficit
Saving city money and getting rid of the structural budget deficit has become an important goal for Oliverio. It’s so important, that he started growing a beard the day of the State of the City speech and will not shave it until “the city makes progress eliminating the budget deficit.”

During the vote on the new police substation, he reminded his council colleagues that had they not spent extra money to rebuild Fire Station 2, they would not have had to take money from the public art budget for the Southside Substation.

In addition, he has disagreed with city staff to save money. Last December, when the city was ready to use eminent domain to remove a billboard in District 6, he initiated talks with Clear Channel—which owned the billboard—and they willingly took it down for other options saving the city money.

“Sometimes you have to disagree with staff,” he said. “You have to push back for the right reasons. We have to do things without spending cash, because we don’t have the luxury of large budgets. We have to be more prudent.”

Following through
While campaigning, Oliverio made a big deal about not accepting endorsements from labor or business groups as well as lobbyists and developers, allowing him “to do things on behalf of residents and not owe any favors,” he said.

Part of that was to institute a land use policy on his first day in office. “I get lots of calls for development. I refer all of them to the Planning Department first for a preliminary review. It’s not my job to give opinions on land use issues until these have been to Planning and to the community.

“I also suggest that they do not close escrow before a community meeting is held. Developers should know the policies and what is tolerable and not tolerable with the community before they purchase the land,” he adds.

He is against rezoning industrial land for housing developments. “The private sector needs jobs and we need to save our industrial land so that we have places to encourage industry to move here. I don’t support conversion of land without any policy. All the development over the past eight years was done without the planning commission’s approval,” he said.

Following that tract, Oliverio has put a survey of 20 questions on the District 6 Web site about neighborhood preservation. His idea is to get resident feedback on how to maintain private property rights without harming the “integrity and character of the neighborhood.”

The survey is open to all District 6 residents and asks such questions as: “Why did you move to your existing neighborhood? How large do you perceive your immediate neighborhood? Should government control what property owners build on neighborhood streets? Describe what makes you street or neighborhood unique or distinctive. Should non-historic neighborhoods be considered in neighborhood preservation?” among others.

Among his other goals, and like his predecessor Ken Yeager, Oliverio wants to maintain traffic-calming measures. To do so, he began chairing traffic calming meetings in each of the city’s 10 districts last fall.

“If I want to help my area, we need a citywide policy [on traffic calming]. I’m happy to have this opportunity. Basically, we are making modifications to traffic-calming policy within fiscal constraints. For example, Gov. Schwarzenegger is sponsoring a bill that allows schools to have slower speed limits, increasing safety for pedestrians.”

Oliverio also noted spending time with the head of the police department’s traffic enforcement division, which had sent a team to do enforcement on school streets. “He didn’t realize the impact of speeding in neighborhoods,” Oliverio said.

Last September, during the Founders’ Day weekend, a car speeding down Blewett Avenue hit parked cars, knocked down a sign and ended up on a family’s lawn. In February, city crews headed out to Blewett and spent a Saturday installing speed lumps. A pilot project, Blewett Avenue is the first San Jose street to have the lumps installed, and according to Oliverio, the neighbors are pleased.

On the negative side, he says 11 months hasn’t given him enough time to get things done. However, he has managed to put together meetings on emergency preparedness, an identity theft forum and a safety fair, a fall family movie night, which he again plans for September, and an animal fair that attracted many people looking for pets.

And, while he says he truly “enjoys being an elected official,” he doesn’t like the closed session meetings!

Meanwhile, it appears that the early days of council meetings, when he and fellow Councilmember Sam Liccardo would make jokes or outrageous statements, are mostly over. Or maybe not, during a recent council meeting, Reed announced that Oliverio would have his own cooking show on the city’s cable channel, but Oliverio has yet to define the show.

The council member has filed to run for the District 6 council office again this June. As of Feb. 24, he is running unopposed.