On the Record: San Jose District 3 Special Election candidate Phil Dolan

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

In the first hundred days of office, I would like to see meet and understand what potential and ongoing developers for the city of San Jose need to help them build more housing within the city of San Jose.

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

Closing the budget shortfall, for example, the community centers have trio communications that feed are elderly and they feed our elderly for free. To close the budget gap, I would implement everybody paid two dollars for their lunch. I would also urge the city to close a community center across the street, from Sacred Heart on Alma. About two miles away, we have another community center that is on Virginia. Closing one community center and moving everything to another community center can help alleviate the budget gap immediately.

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

I will take the leadership role and bring in all the biggest developers and have a sit down meeting. Ask developers, what is the problem that they’re facing in the city of San Jose, and why they cannot develop. Once we can identify the problems, we can cut through that red tape and streamline the process of building more affordable housing in the city of San Jose. Cutting through tape will save thousands if not millions of dollars for developers. If developers have a friendly city councilman, they’re more likely to want to develop more and more versus having a hostile city council towards development.

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

Making San Jose more economically vibrant. For instance, San Pedro Square should have an overhang over the street, just like Fremont Street in Las Vegas with zip line. We also need more Nvidia-like conferences in San Jose. We live in the tech capital of the world. We should have a conference every weekend bringing in and attracting thousands into the downtown region. As a knife sharpener, I see the economic impact firsthand ground zero walking in and out of restaurants, what a tech company and their conferences do for downtown.

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

First, we need to identify all women and children. They should be given first consideration for shelter. Family’s second. We need to identify each and every person if you have family somewhere, we will attempt to get a hold of your family. If it’s because of job loss, we can always put you in some type of training to get you a new job. People that don’t want services. And just want to be homeless. I feel we need to just put them on a bus and send them somewhere else.

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

We have a sixty million dollar deficit. The last thing that should be cut is public safety. We need more recruitment and more police officers. Officer response times are eight minutes out until they show up at your front door. As city councilman, I will actively go on ride alongs with police officers. Being on the ground with police officers will give me a sense of what police officers need to help them do their job on a daily basis.