Finance counsels

San Jose Councilman Sam Liccardo is suggesting waiving fees, offering free parking and reimbursing companies for the taxes they generate to encourage businesses to locate in the city's downtown.

Liccardo, whose council district includes the downtown, said Monday that as the country emerges from the worst recession in 75 years, the city must seize opportunities to create jobs.

"We need to take some risks," Liccardo said. "If the recession is over, nobody in my neighborhood or business district have yet received the news."

Liccardo said that the proposals mean foregoing revenue to the city coffers, but he doesn’t see much choice: "Starting where we are with a very anemic economy — the idea of declining to take risks to try to get business moving again would really leave us condemned to the current status."

The councilman said he plans to ask City Manager Debra Figone and Harry Mavrogenes, head of the city’s Redevelopment Agency, to assess the costs at the Feb. 8 City Council meeting and return on Feb. 23 with a strategy to put the proposals to work. Mayor Chuck Reed supports the proposals as do Councilwomen Nancy Pyle and Rose Herrera.

"The most important item in there is providing whatever additional resources are necessary to work at the speed of business," Reed said. "We want to allocate additional resources for development so the staff can work overtime to meet tight deadlines no fax needed payday loans."

Specifically, Liccardo proposes to:

— Waive license fees for new small businesses employing up to 8 employees that apply for a business license between March 1, 2010 until the end of Fiscal Year 2010-11;

— Waive fees on parking leases at city-owned parking lots for two years for businesses that sign or renew a lease in a downtown office or retail building, under the following conditions: each business may have only up to 50 parking spaces; number of parking spaces is dependent on the amount of office/retail space leased by the company; the program will stop when an agreed-upon number, such as 1,000 spaces, have been taken.

"These ideas … can work effectively if packaged together to sell San José to the rest of the world," he said in his memo. "The underlying principle of each of these ideas is simple: We need to generate business activity to shake our economic doldrums, and to use any 'net new' tax revenues as an incentive for that activity.”

As he noted the proposals if adopted by the City Council will mean losing short-term tax revenues, but, "Defending the status quo, however, merely assures us that the city coffers will receive the same percentage share of zero.'

Source

Filed under: legal by Guru