On the Record: San Jose District 3 Special Election candidate Adam Duran

If elected, what actions and policies will you prioritize in your first 100 days in office?

1. The first thing I would do is hire staff who are motivated, intelligent and want to serve our community.
2. I want to meet with the chief of police and his executive staff to work on hiring more police officers.
3. I would prioritize meeting with every neighborhood association on a regular basis
4. I would like to meet with small and large business owners in District 3.

How should San Jose close its budget shortfall and generate new revenue for city services?

1. The first thing San Jose needs to do is do a deep dive internal audit as to where we could cut unneeded, unfilled positions.
2. I would also put a hiring freeze on non-essential services and positions
3. To generate new revenue, I would offer tax deferrals and low interest loans to builders and new businesses who want to operate in downtown.

Name three specific things you’ll do to address the lack of affordable housing in San Jose.

1. I would streamline the permitting process for builders and developers so that we can build more housing.
2. I would cut into the regulation process which adds by some estimates 25 to 40% of the building costs to the builders.
3. I would utilize vacant, unused or underused city and county-owned land to build housing and work with our congressional representatives to get the federal government to turn over unused federal lands for housing.

What is your plan to make downtown San Jose more economically vibrant?

1. Support small businesses and startups with tax incentives, grants, and easier access to insurance.
2. Strengthen public safety and cleanliness in the downtown area so that businesses want to locate here and can even find insurers willing to insure them.
3. We need to tackle the homeless problem, but with compassion. I call it compassionate accountability.

How would you tackle the homelessness and mental health crises the city faces?

I would find out why San Jose’s homeless are homeless by finding out who has an addiction problem, who has a mental health problem, who are down on their luck and who just want to be homeless and why? I want to get to the root of the problem. I believe we need to be compassionate. However, with compassion comes accountability. We can’t tolerate our streets being turned into homeless encampments or our residents and tourists harassed, either verbally or physically.

What steps would you take to improve public safety in San Jose?

1. Hire more police officers and prevent a $12 million cut to the police budget.
2. Have our officers do more community policing by engaging our youth in schools.
3. Have more foot patrol officers in the downtown area and I would like to see San Jose bring back our Mountie police. This helps with more police presence and community.
   policing by engaging with the community and also serves as a tourist attraction for our city.
4. End the state policies permitting “smash and grab” vandalism of our merchants and storeowners.