City budget should ensure security, safety and superior services

San Jose's city budget should maintain and support security and public safety, provide superior services to neighborhoods, protect the environment and encourage a vibrant cultural life in a community-friendly, efficient way, the Community Budget Working Group believes.

The Working Group's meeting Saturday produced three informed and detailed discussions that will shape its report to the City Council: "Neighborhood Services and Safety," "Efficient and Open Government" and "Increasing Revenue and Strengthening the Tax Base." The subject areas and the topics within them were distilled from the Working Group's initial meeting in December by an independent financial analyst and targeted for greater scrutiny by the public.

Working Partnerships USA, which originally convened the group, expects to produce a final report to the City Council in a few weeks.

"The City's financial situation evolved over years," said Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, WPUSA's executive director. "We need to realize that it will also take time to solve these problems, and that it's better to take time to come up with the right solutions than the quickest ones."