Sam Liccardo

In 2015, Mayor Sam Liccardo became one of the San Joss youngest mayors in San Jose's history. An advocate of pension reform, Mayor Liccardo quickly brought 11 labor unions together to resolve a half-decade of battles and litigation over retirement benefits, reaching a settlement that will secure $3 billion in savings for taxpayers. Last November, the voters approved this settlement, Measure F, which will critically help to rebuild the San Jose Police Department that had lost more than 600 police officers in a department that was already the nation's most thinly-staffed. Liccardo has launched the rebuilding of San Jose Police Department by resolving a contract to restore pay while ensuring greater accountability to taxpayers for performance. Liccardo also emphasized using smarter ways to tackle crime, such as the greater deployment of data analytics, a crime camera registry, expanding after-school programs serving low-income students, and the launch of San Jose Works, which provides more than 1,200 teens living in gang-impacted neighborhoods with their first paying jobs. Mayor Liccardo led efforts to address Silicon Valley's infrastructure needs, co-leading Measure B in November with the Silicon Valley Leadership Group to unleash more than $6 billion in transportation improvements, including the completion of BART to San Jose, doubling CalTrain capacity, and improving road repair. He has ushered the city's economic revival, landing several major tech expansions, and adding five international routes to the service at fast-expanding Mineta San Jose International Airport. Mayor Liccardo has confronted the Valley's affordable housing crisis by leading efforts to enact an inclusionary housing program and impact fee that will provide tens of millions of dollars annually for new construction of rent-restricted apartments, and to cut fees for high-density, transit-oriented development. A graduate of Georgetown University, Harvard Law School, and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Liccardo previously served as a criminal prosecutor, with a focus on sexual assault and crimes against children. He and his wife, Jessica Garcia-Kohl, live east of Downtown San Jose, in the same working-class neighborhoods where four generations of Sam's family lived.