QUANGMINH - PHAM FOR MAYOR OF SAN JOSE
In the last four years, San Jose has become too expensive and unaffordable. Residents are moving away because of the housing shortage and high rental market. What San Jose needs is a project, practical and realizable, aiming to:
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Help home owners build additional rental properties to alleviate their financial burdens so they can stay in San Jose.
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Reward long-term renters with home ownership at low mortgage and reasonable interest rates.
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Moderate the rental market and eliminate the housing crisis.
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Build 100,000+ housing units on existing residential lots without additional traffic congestion; and form “Block Partnerships” owned by home owners and of which revenue is proportionally divided among home owners.
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Revise and/or rescind old ordinances and codes to make enforcements just and residents’ lives more comfortable.
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Redesign the city’s traffic to reduce traffic congestion and pollution.
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Initiate a “tenure” ordinance to fairly treat tenured residents, e.g. reducing service fees. Companies have long rewarded their employees with tenure.
I strongly believe that the residents of San Jose, having paid taxes and fees to help build the City to where it is today, deserve to stay in San Jose and to enjoy the benefits and proceeds from their decade-long hard work.
I have a message to home owners: with my leadership, do not sell your home, In Silicon Valley, it’s a valuable piece of land producing fruitful income for the rest of your lives and for your beloved kids.
The seven steps listed above must be achieved to make San Jose magnificent.
You know now why I am running for Mayor. Together, we can and will do it.
I need your support and your votes.
WHY IS PHAM RUNNING FOR MAYOR OF SAN JOSE?
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San Jose welcomes necessary economic growths. These growths bring with them housing and traffic problems to the Bay Area including San Jose.
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Big high-tech companies are able to provide housing needs to their employees; most other tech companies are not. San Jose welcomes all companies.
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While welcoming these growths, San Jose does not have a good, practical, and suitable solutions to deal with the problems. With the current capability of the City, housing and traffic, correlative; cannot be solved separately. They must be solved as integrated parts of an entire project that present city leader could not invent or design.
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Traffic congestion makes residents’ lives harder and miserable, is un-necessarily time consuming, and causes environmental pollution. The traffic within the City is getting worse; traffic lanes and traffic flow must be redesigned. Main streets are to be widened. Crucial exits to freeway are to be added.
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We all realize that renting a home is losing the money that one works so hard for every month, and owning a home is saving the money for his/her future retirement. That is why a good housing project must aim at helping City residents own their own homes with reasonable mortgages and low interest rates. After more than 7 years with the City Leadership, the current city leader was not able to design a good housing project for the City.
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Also if there is a good housing project available, City leaders can negotiate with tech companies to divert their housing funds into the City’s housing project that will effectively lower mortgage loans for residents purchasing their own homes from the City’s project. Unfortunately, current city leaders do not have a good housing project to work with companies planning to move to San Jose.
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Under the current City Leadership, the City is not ready to invite tech companies to San Jose, in order to generate revenue for the City’s budget, by providing housing to their employees, having land available for them to build their offices and facilities. The City should not just wait for a random offer from a company with its terms and conditions. The City should be in an active position of promoting a business.
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Many other issues such as outdated ordinances, old codes, high fees must be addressed to make our residents’ lives more comfortable.
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City leadership must find ways to help its residents lower their financial burdens so they will feel comfortable staying in San Jose. We all do not want our City to be owned by a small numbers of wealthy investors. This is not right, unfair and unhealthy for the City.
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My San Jose Reconstructive Operation is designed to serve the needs for all the residents who want a better San Jose for us now and for generations to come.
RESIDENTS OF SAN JOSE NEED A NEW LEADERSHIP FOR THE
NEXT CRITICAL FOUR YEARS. THAT’S WHY I AM RUNNING.
SAN JOSE RECONSTRUCTIVE OPERATION
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Build over 100,000 housing units to solve the housing shortage
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Turn properties into income-producing properties
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Help keep San Jose residents in San Jose with better housing options and less financial burdens
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Review, revise, and/or rescind outdated civil codes and some ordinances that are being abused.
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Lower rent by building more rental units
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Build public parking lots in crowded areas to solve parking space shortage
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Reduce current fees: parking meter fees, permit fees, ….
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Propose ordinances to allow additional living spaces on properties; especially, properties surrounding universities and colleges; goals are no fees and no permits required with minimum inspection fees.
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Propose City of San Jose as a Mortgage Lender to generate more money for the City’s budget
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Set up criteria to reward long-term San Jose residents to own properties with low mortgages and good interest rates
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Set up criteria to reward San Jose veterans to own properties with low mortgages and good interest rates.
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Propose an ordinance aiming to protect property owners affected by use of eminent domain.
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Build a San Jose Sky Mall to generate solid annual revenue to the City’s budget.
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Propose a Corner Ad Program to bring in annual revenue for the reductions of fees mentioned in #7
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Fix traffic problems caused by bike lanes. Bike lanes are necessary but need to be redesigned to allow better traffic flow.
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Help reduce air pollution by redesigning the traffic flows on the City streets to minimize travel time and traffic-jam waiting time.
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Modernize the Reconstructed City to reduce Police work of con-trolling crimes and to protect firefighters in dangerous life-saving jobs.
18. Propose:
A. Good Service Spirit Award Ordinance to promote good service to residents visiting City Hall
B. An Opinion Box in front of City Hall to receive feedback from residents receiving services from the City.
The Law Is Good. Appropriately Enforcing the Law Is More Important. The Latter Makes Residents Smile
QUANGMINH PHAM FOR MAYOR - 2018
Dear Friend;
I am QuangMinh Pham, a Vietnamese refugee born in October 1945. My father was president of a popular political party; my mother was a high school teacher; my uncle was a senator; my brother-in-law was mayor of Da-Nang; I was president of a student association in Saigon; I ran my own publishing company. After the Vietnam war which caused me to lose all my properties and my company, I was admitted to the US in July-1975. Politics, leadership, social dealings are assimilated into my blood since my early youth.
The City of San Jose has a good management system; however, it lacks an independent leader with creativity. San Jose faces serious problems: the housing shortage, homelessness, high crime rates, high fees, high taxes, abusing ordinances, outdated civil codes, etc. .
These problems can not be solved separately. They must be solved together as integrated parts in a whole project such as the one that I designed and calledOur San Jose Reconstructive Operation. This process must be implemented by an independent leader with a good heart and with great creativity.
Living in the City of San Jose since 1983, I have had an opportunity to observe the City’s population grow from 300 thousand people to now 1.1 million. I’ve seen residents selling their homes to move to somewhere else because living in San Jose has become too expensive and unaffordable.Each time I see a big tall building rising up, I wonder how many long-term residents have sold their homes and moved away! I’ve watched different mayors come and go without a significant life lift for residents living here decade after decade. These residents
deserve to be rewarded fairly by the City, but the City did not do anything to help.
Unfortunately, now I see these residents being callously forced out of the City in a systematic and inhuman way, while the rich come to the City to enjoy the benefits and proceeds from the growth built by those long-term residents with their sweat. This is truly an unfair situation because these residents have paid their dues, taxes and fees to help the City survive to this day. To correct this unfair situation and to help solve multiple problems our City faces, I have decided to run for Mayor of San Jose, my home city, to generate a solid annual revenue for its budget and to fairly reward housing affordability to its long-term residents. Our Reconstructive Operation also will make San Jose a safer community for our police to fight crimes and a modernized fire-controlled environment to lessen dangerous work for firefighters.
Together, we must stand up to fight for ourselves, to protect our properties, to speak up for our rights to be fairly rewarded after decades of paying taxes, fees, dues.
From a penny-less refugee to now a mayoral candidate for my home city, I am an outsider, outside of the established circle of the city politics. This provides me with a good perspective about how to sympathize with and to lift up the city’s voiceless vulnerabilities.
Running for Mayor of San Jose is a very tough job. I believe Our Operation, something that San Jose’s residents desperately need, will attract enough voters to win the June-2018 election. I hope I will have your support.
Respectfully Yours
QuangMinh Pham, PhD.
San Jose, 02-06-2018