Thanks for the read and your thoughtful comments, Christopher. I wholeheartedly agree with the importance of examining the cost side of government. In fact, I campaigned on making audits of city spending more consistent and implementing a KPI-based approach to city management to spur innovation and efficiency. I’m going to continue to push those ideas. They were beyond the scope of this piece, which was really looking at the jobs/housing ratio and how much it matters to SJ, but I will be exploring those ideas in future posts (along with examining past mistakes, including our redevelopment debt and unfunded pension liabilities). All of that said, San Jose is not special from a fiscal standpoint. All evidence points to us being about as competent/incompetent as every other city in California (proportionally, our spending by category, such as public safety, parks, pensions, in a comparable range as that in other CA cities) — the main difference, from a budgetary standpoint, is our relatively small tax base. Could we get 20% better efficiency out of our current government? Definitely, and I think it’s worth fighting to do that. But even then, we’ll still effectively have fewer resources per resident than Santa Clara, Mountain View and virtually every other city in the Bay Area and every large city in America. I’m not pushing for growth for the sake of it, but done right I think it is the best tool we have for improving services and I think it can also enhance our quality of life by creating interesting urban spaces (“villages”) that people want to spend time in. Thanks again for taking the time to comment. I’d love to keep the conversation going. Please reach out anytime. Happy 4th!