San Jose is sending half its city council to Dublin despite budget woes

With San Jose facing a $50 million budget shortfall this year, the message coming from city hall this spring was clear — the council must make “difficult decisions” and get “back to the basics.”

However, a looming taxpayer-funded Sister City trip to Dublin, Ireland had some questioning whether the city was following its own missive.

San Jose had considered sending a delegation of at least eight, including six councilmembers, to Dublin next month, before two councilmembers withdrew their requests Tuesday, bringing flashbacks of a fiery debate from the city’s previous administration about the questionable optics of travel, fiscal responsibility and the benefits the city stands to gain by sending a large traveling party.

City policy allows five councilmembers to travel at the same time as long as it does not disrupt city business, meaning the council needed to approve a waiver for travel because it would have forced the cancellation of public meetings due to the lack of a quorum between Sept. 9-12.

Taxpayer-funded travel has previously led to tension on the dais when former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo attempted to spur reform in 2018 after five members of the City Council traveled to Okayama, Japan for another sister city event.

At the time, Liccardo argued that the city should only fund travel for one participant, adding that more elected officials on trips offered only marginal value. He also said that if taking a trip was important to residents, district offices would likely be able to fundraise for them.

“My concern is that our office budgets don’t belong to us,” Liccardo said during a Sept. 18, 2018, City Council meeting. “They belong to the public … The majority of the residents we represent don’t believe the cost of these trips is justified by the benefit to them.”

Liccardo, however, fought a losing battle as several councilmembers raised concerns about limiting the autonomy of their offices while touting the benefits of the trips and providing examples of finding other ways to pay travel costs — including how then-former Councilmember Raul Peralez redistributed unused campaign funds to cover some of his colleagues’ costs.

Initially, six councilmembers — Rosemary Kamei, Sergio Jimenez, Omar Torres, Peter Ortiz, Dev Davis and Pam Foley, who is also a Sister City International board member — had requested to join this year’s Dublin delegation, which also includes City Manager Jennifer Maguire and City Clerk Toni Taber.

With Mayor Matt Mahan unable to attend, he appointed Foley as the delegation’s leader.

Representatives from Foley’s office did not respond to requests for comment from The Mercury News.

Had all six councilmembers gone to Dublin, it would have forced the cancellation of four public meetings, including a City Council meeting, but that issue has since been averted because Ortiz and Torres have since dropped their travel requests.

Each of the traveling councilmembers’ taxpayer-funded district offices will cover costs associated with the trip, according to a resolution passed Tuesday. It’s unknown just yet how much the jaunt to Dublin will ultimately cost taxpayers.

Jimenez and Davis, who represent Districts 2 and 6 respectively, have smaller office budgets than their peers because they are set to leave office in a few months when their terms expire later this year.

The sister city relationship between San Jose and Dublin spans 38 years with representatives from the Irish city visiting San Jose earlier this year. It is one of eight sister city affiliations San Jose maintains.

Representatives from San Jose last visited Dublin in 2018. According to city records, the council that year authorized travel for two of its elected members but only Councilmember Lan Diep accompanied the members of city staff that made the trip.