This discussion today emphasizes the importance of choosing a jobs to employed residents ratio that San Jose actually wants to achieve. There’s no question that from an environmental perspective, a 1:1 ratio is the best one. Any higher ratio requires unplanned housing to be built elsewhere and for those workers to commute into the city, most likely from sprawling bedroom communities in Central Valley.
Last year when I raised this issue in several one-on-one discussions, the reply was that the City would be most likely to underachieve on job development, so it’s better to set a higher jobs ratio than you actually want.
We don’t think that’s good planning. Setting stretch goals that you might not actually achieve are okay, but only if you are pleased should it turn out that you achieve that goal. Here, staff have clearly indicated that the neighborhood level planning they’re doing is based on jobs to employed residents ratio.
It’s clear that there would be difficulties with the ABAG total jobs and total housing numbers. We suggested last year that a scaled-down scenario with fewer jobs and less housing than ABAG would be feasible, and this appears to fit with the demographic projections that we’ve heard today.
We hope that a scaled down, 1:1 jobs to employed resident ratio will be included in the General Plan, or considered as a mitigation for many of the environmental impacts from the City’s future growth.
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