San Jose budget taps federal COVID-19 funding

$4.5 billion plan calls for using money to help avoid projected deficit and avert layoffs

San Jose leaders approved a $4.5 billion budget on June 15 that leans heavily on federal coronavirus relief funding and pays for initiatives that help small businesses recover from the pandemic, get young people back into the workforce, clean up blight and create housing for homeless residents.

Although the worst of the pandemic’s financial impact may be over, the city still had to tackle a projected $38.3 million shortfall in its fiscal 2022 budget. But instead of laying off employees or cutting programs, the city is using $133.9 million from the American Rescue Plan — a sweeping, $1.9 trillion federal COVID-19 relief package signed into law in March — to balance the new budget and fund some one-time high-priority projects and programs.

The city intends to spend the remaining $78.4 million from the $212.3 million total American Rescue Plan Act funding to avoid deficits the following fiscal year and to continue pandemic recovery efforts. San Jose has until the end of 2024 to spend the federal money.

The city plans to add 147 staff positions this year.Here are some of the major funding priorities outlined in San Jose’s budget for this fiscal year.

An equitable recovery

• $20 million to create a Resilience Corps, with the goal of employing young adults in high-poverty and high-unemployment neighborhoods in jobs such as tutoring, food distribution, wildfire safety and disaster resilience

• $1 million for the San José Small Business and Manufacturing Recovery Initiative, which will provide technical assistance to small businesses and manufacturing sector support

• $700,000 to expand San Jose’s alfresco outdoor dining program by installing temporary parklets in street parking spaces, providing traffic safety barriers and covering permit and inspection fees

A cleaner San Jose

• $20.8 million to refine and refocus San Jose’s BeautifySJ program, an initiative that aims to clean up blight and trash

• $1.4 million to bolster cleanups at Guadalupe River Park and along Coyote Creek. Such work will include litter and trash pickup, pruning, pressure washing equipment and repairing benches and fencing.

• $900,000 to enhance the city’s Vehicle Abatement Program by patrolling neighborhoods to identify and remove vehicles that are posing a significant safety or blight concern

Homelessness and affordable housing

• $17.5 million to operate San Jose’s eight dozen interim housing sites for formerly unhoused individuals, including tiny home developments, emergency modular housing units constructed during the pandemic and two hotels that provide transitional housing

• $13 million to expand San Jose’s Homeless Services Outreach Assistance and Resources Program — also known as SOAR — to provide unhoused residents in the city’s largest encampments with more services

• $2.5 million to help fund construction of a fourth emergency interim housing site near the downtown police headquarters