Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: The City the BABA Podcast where we bring together top actors in the smart city arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations.
I am your host, Tamlin Shimizu and I hope you will enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
Smart in the City is brought to you by Babel Smart Cities. We enable processes from research and strategy development to co creation and implementation. To learn more about us, please visit the Babel platform@babel smartcities.eu so welcome back everyone. I hope you have been enjoying all of our US Episodes.
I've certainly been enjoying recording them and I also hope that you've been enjoying our Mayor's Mic series where we're talking about leadership and a lot of important issues that mayors are dealing with. And today we're back with another one. While I was in the Golden State, otherwise known as California, I guess a few months ago now, I got the chance to get to know the guest of today's episode and I thought his insights and work he's doing would be valuable to bring to you.
So without further ado, I'd love to introduce you to Bilal Aftab. He's the mayor at the city of Saratoga in California, in the U.S. welcome, Bilal.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Thank you. Tamlin, how are you?
[00:01:32] Speaker B: I'm doing very well, thanks. Excited to talk to you on this sunny Friday here in Germany and you're on the other side of the world. Thanks for waking up early to record, to record with us. I'm excited to. Well, I got the chance to talk with you. We had a lovely lunch in Saratoga, in your city that you're the mayor of, the lovely place in the middle of Silicon Valley.
And I want to understand more and also let the listeners know more about it. But before we get started, I like to get us started with a little bit of a teaser question, a warm up.
And so I wanted to ask you what is a one fun fact or one little known fact about the city of Saratoga?
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Sure. So Saratoga is true, it's in the heart of Silicon Valley. And but a little known fact about us is that we have one of the oldest Japanese gardens in the Western hemisphere in the city of Saratoga. And it happens to be a city park, so it's open to the public.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Yeah, lovely. I was excited about that because my heritage is Japanese also, so and my family is actually from the Bay Area as well.
So that's a, that's a really nice one.
I want to let the listeners know also a little bit more about you as a person. You have a really interesting background. Can you tell us more about your background and what led you into your role today?
[00:02:58] Speaker A: Sure. I grew up in Saratoga, which is where I'm the married today, where we have a lovely, beautiful city like we mentioned, in the heart of Silicon Valley.
I went to Berkeley where I studied business and I minor in English and had a lovely time there. My career has been in a couple different areas. I started off my career in finance doing traditional investment banking. So spending many late nights reading financial statements and doing financial analysis sounds like my nightmare.
It's actually a great job, I think at a young age because you right out of college you just develop a bit of a skill set around reading really complicated sets of information and data in the form of financial statements, learning how to analyze it, and then also just getting a sense of how markets operate. Not that I know how markets operate today either. Yeah, but it's just useful context.
So I started off my career in finance. I spent a year and I was able to do that actually in San Francisco and Dubai while spending a lot of time in London and New York. So got to get a sense of markets and how transactions take place and how companies think about strategic and financial issues in multiple geographies. Spent a year as an investor, spent a couple of years at a health and wellness startup. And I've been in technology for a number of years now, largely in business development and partnership roles, primarily in payments technology.
But given the scope of what I do, ends up being quite broad across a lot of different. I work with a lot of different segments within not just technology, but with the economy at large, which is pretty interesting and fun, I get to work on a global level in terms of outside interests. I am the mayor of the city of Saratoga, which is something I really enjoy doing.
About a little under 10 years ago, I decided I wanted to get involved with the city a bit more in a bit more of an active way. I joined our city's traffic safety commission, which basically works with. It's a resident led commission where residents can come and say, hey, there's excessive speeding or a really unsafe corner in my neighborhood. What can we do about it? And so I really enjoyed that problem solving aspect of working with your neighbors and fellow residents to actually make your city safer and cleaner and a better place to live. And so ended up leading that commission twice and then had a crazy idea that after leading the commission because you end up working much more closely with the city and with our city staff that, hey, I'm.
Maybe I should try running for city council.
And so ran in 20, didn't win, ran in 22 and won.
And I'm mayor now, which has been phenomenal.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: Amazing story.
I also want to paint us a bit more of a picture of Saratoga as a city.
I think a lot of people, when they hear Silicon Valley, if they've never been, they just picture kind of this super crazy tech hubby area.
What does it look like to you? Can you paint the picture?
[00:05:53] Speaker A: Sure. And I would say absolutely. We have the Googles and the Ciscos and the Intels and the Nvidias of the world, all of which, by the way, are within a 15 to 20 minute drive of Saratoga, if not much closer. Actually, Apple is in the city next door, so that's about 10 minutes to headquarters there and Netflix is about five minutes from here. So the funny thing about Saratoga is that we kind of by design, we're a residential community. So we don't have any major tech companies here. But what you do have, you have people who work at virtually every tech company living here.
But just to zoom out a bit, like, picture a place where there's sort of foothills in the background. You have the Santa Cruz mountains, you have, you know, heritage oaks that aren't just in, you know, big parks, but really in every neighborhood. That's Saratoga. We're a city that's tucked into the base of Santa Cruz Mountains.
The way a friend described it once is like when I'm in San Jose, I think like more urbanized, I think neighborhood.
And then as I move towards Saratoga, I just think about it getting much greener and there being a lot more trees.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: And so that's really how I think about Saratoga. We are sort of urban on our, our eastern side, and then we get a bit more semi rural as you go west. And then we do have a portion of our city in the hillsides.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's a really beautiful place, I think. Definitely get the chance to visit if you, if you're ever in the area.
I wanted to talk a little bit about your vision because I guess you don't have too much longer left as your time as mayor.
So what does success really look like to you by the time you leave office?
[00:07:39] Speaker A: It's a great question.
I came in with a few priority areas that I wanted to focus on. Traffic safety, neighborhoods, community.
Naturally, what happens is you have priorities and then life happens, things happen. And so I would say the two things I added on to that list are just disaster preparedness. You know, we had massive wildfires in January of this year in California, not the first time that's happened even in this area.
And just economic development. How do we actually help our city grow? So what does success look like? To me, success is making as much progress as possible on those priorities. Tangibly, for me, my number one priority has been traffic safety. I say that as a former traffic safety commissioner and also knowing that most city councils are comprised of former planning commissioners or school board members. And I think we do a fantastic job here in Saratoga of making sure that our schools are looked after largely by their school boards, but partnering with them to make sure we do that well, but then also in making sure that we're making thoughtful planning and housing decisions. But on the traffic safety side, I think there are a number of things that we can be doing to make our streets safer, to make it more accessible, to make it easier not just for kids to walk and to bike to school, but for folks across all age ranges to be able to go for a walk in their neighborhood, to go ride a bike and feel like that's okay, but also, if you are driving, to feel like when you're driving, you're driving in a neighborhood and in a city that's safe, and that balances your ability to get from one side of the city to the other with a sort of a steady stream of traffic, but at the same time, getting you there expeditiously and safely.
One of my sort of key issues is how do we actually engage the community? How do we work with our community to bring people together?
And so if there's one ultimate goal I have there, it's just getting us talking to each other more, being kinder to one another, because I think those are things that also have a direct impact on making our city safer and now neighborhoods. I mentioned that as well. That, for me, is, I think, just making sure our neighborhoods in our city continue to be a welcoming place. And as we continue to change, that we're ready for that change and that we're supporting our region more broadly, too.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: Yeah, with. With the subject of traffic safety, I know that's been a big priority for you, and we. We touched on this briefly, I think, when we were in Saratoga around the issue about data that you're kind of lacking this better data that you really need to push forward in traffic safety.
Can you talk a little bit about that and help us understand from your perspective what would really break down these data silos that often happen in cities?
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Sure. I'll start off by taking a step back and acknowledging for a second that I work in the technology industry.
And so I work where we have literally billions if not trillions of data points on a daily basis related to whether it's a transaction, whether it's a piece of software. And so that's sort of the framework with which I operate.
I work on a daily basis. And fun fact, 90% of cities in the state of California are like Saratoga, where the city council is elected. Yes, by the city, but being on a city council, being a vice mayor, being a mayor is a part time role. And most city council members have a full time job. So a full time job. And then I do this on nights and weekends and sometimes during the week. It just depends on what's possible or what's necessary. So I say that just to give you that context. Right. If you think about the example of you checking out and when you're purchasing something on the Internet, there are hundreds if not thousands of data points that we can grab, right?
What computer are you using? Are you using a mouse? How fast is that mouse moving around? How long did you take to actually type in your address?
What is the size of your screen? There are so many different data points that we can grab when you're doing that. And that can help us form a better picture without being in the room where you are, of what the experience is like of actually purchasing something at checkout and taking that and then ultimately receiving that product at home. So let me bring that back to the city of Saratoga. I'll put it into like four broad categories and I'll talk about each. I would say there's sort of data in itself.
There's where the data is stored, there's how the data is analyzed, and then how you execute on that. So we talked about traffic data.
I think we assume whether you watched a lot of TV or you just see the world that we live in, or you operate on your phone, that we all have all this data that's easily accessible.
When it comes to traffic data, it's a bit harder to grab. It's not like it's necessarily, like I mentioned, you can track something at checkout.
We don't necessarily have that access, and part of that's by design. Right. But when I think about data that I love to see, data loves to play with, and we have some of this data accessible, but not always accessible, things like traffic data. Right. How many cars are going through a certain neighborhood or on a certain street any given point in time? Or how about on our major roadways. What about traffic time?
What are the number of cars going through a certain intersection, the number of people, the number of bikes? That's data that's really important. We have signals, right? We have traffic signals. Seeing how long you're waiting at a signal on average. Sometimes that's timed, sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's related to a sensor.
We have police data, right? The number of tickets, the number of times you pull someone over.
But also a really important corresponding piece of police data is what is the enforcement level out there? Do we have one traffic enforcement officer out there? Do we have four? Did for two weeks. Because we were seeing that people at the high school were parents were behaving badly, as you like to say, and they were dropping off their kids and in a really unsafe manner. Is that an example where we want to send directed enforcement to that area so we're going to have more tickets there by design than we would otherwise? So those are just examples of different sets of data that we can collect, but they're all collected in different silos, to your point. And what I'd like to see is a centralization of that data. You know, the way I see it at a technology company is we have all these data tables, right, that are pretty deep internally, or if you think about technology is right, it's like you're essentially grabbing all of this data about what's happening in the real world, reading that data, seeing how that data, how it corresponds and correlates and leads to different actions and outcomes, and then using that data with code to actually talk to it, right, and talk to each other about it. And so when I think about sort of. Sort of talking, going back to sort of that, that core framework, we have all this data, I think centralizing it in one place where it's all easily accessible is really important. I'll give an example, and I think I share this example with you when you were in person, Tamlin, where basically we. On every other month as a traffic safety commission, we used to get, and we still get a report from our police department which says, here's the number of tickets, the number of DUIs, the number, you know, times you pulled someone over, just a whole list of data.
We also get other data, by the way, things like the number of burglaries, the number of auto burglaries, residential burglaries, retail burglaries. And so I wanted to just generate some analysis on this and say, hey, like, what are some of the trends over the last couple of years. And so what I did is I threw it into an AI tool. And the first thing AI tool said is, I can't read this. And so because it was basically a printout that had been scanned.
So I basically then took those same printouts, those same PDF files, and then I put it into a separate software that was basically able to generate tables and data, so basically better able to read the text. I then took all that same data, dumped it back into the itool and said, analyze this for me. And I was able to get a really coherent picture of trends when it came to traffic safety and when it came to crime and public safety generally.
What I'll say is there were no surprises there. Right. Like, we've been tracking these numbers for a few years.
We track this regularly. So there wasn't anything that was shocking there.
The one thing that was lacking, though, for example, was the example I gave of, hey, we saw a spike in the month of May, for example, in the number of DUIs. And by the way, in Saratoga, that means going from zero to three sometimes. Right? That's a lot of DUIs in a month. Right.
Why did that happen? Right. Like, what's sort of the story behind what happens? And that's what then becomes hard to pull out. So there's sort of the data itself centralizing it, there's analyzing it, and then there's acting and executing on the basis of that. And so that's an example of where I love for us to get tighter. We do have the ability, for example, let's say there's a problem intersection or a problem street that we have that's been flagged or raised to us.
We do have the ability to literally lay out physical cables and measure the cars that are going in and out of. Right. Kind of a rudimentary method, but also still very powerful and one that respects privacy. And so when I do think about government and technology and data collection, there are other elements that respect privacy and respect other rights that we value that I think are also equally important to think about here.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: I really like your way of thinking about this because you can tell that you're coming at it from someone who's used to dealing with a lot of data. And there's so many people in government who are not used to working with data like your expertise is.
And so then the question I have in my mind is, how can we integrate this way of thinking about data like you, how you broke it down in these four pieces even is helpful. But do you have any other tips or advice potentially for city, for city leaders on the best way they can approach the data and data silos.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: I wish I was smart enough to say this is what every city should do.
And what I also say is I do think that different cities have different sets of resources. Right. Like we're a small city, about 31,000 people, our budget's about 27 million annually.
You know, the biggest line items in our budget are supporting our staff, our police department. Right. We're spending a lot of money putting it back into our roads. But then there are city, you know, and we're a part time city council, but we do have about 55 full time staff. You go to a city like San Jose or San Francisco or New York City and you have multibillion dollar budgets and there you probably have a chief technology officer that is actively thinking about how to do this within a city setting. Going across, think of it like a company in all the different departments in the city saying how can we upgrade the technology and make sure that technology is being used effectively?
Yes.
Here's what I think. I think being data driven is always valuable and I think it's always going to help you make better decisions. And so I think it's important for each city to figure out how and where they're going to be including and letting the data help them make their decisions. It's not going to be the decider, but it needs to be a critical part of that. And so that's how I think about it. And I think technology is a tool that enables you to collect and act upon much better quality data than you would otherwise. That's of course if it's implemented properly.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a, it's a shift in the way of thinking and prioritizing data driven decision making. I really like that approach.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: Part of that Tamil add there is like, because the funny part is like you're getting data as a council member or elected official all the time.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Because you're meeting with residents, residents are coming to council meetings and they're saying hey or you're meeting with them one on one and they're saying hey, here's a problem I'm observing and there's always a tricky balance between okay, I might be able to visually see this, but how prevalent is this problem actually? Like hey. And as you know, there's a range of outcomes or perspectives on the thing. Right.
To one person there's this construct in the state of California that the 85th percentile that there's always going to be a certain Percentage of people that sort of above the 85th percentile, that no matter what you do, are just going to speed. There's nothing you can do about that. And there's a person in the neighborhood who accepts, understands that. And there's another person who says even one person speeding on the street where I have small kids is too much. And so I think that's where the data helps us figure out how can we make a risk adjusted or a thoughtful, data driven decision.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that a lot.
I want to go to a point that you mentioned very briefly, and this is around the threat of wildfires, earthquakes in your area. This is a thing also, of course, many cities are dealing with. Right.
And how are you approaching this? What, how are you preparing? What is, what is your strategy here?
[00:20:35] Speaker A: Absolutely. You know, talk about things that keep a mayor or city council up at night. This to me, disaster preparedness, whether it's wildfires, because we are in a fire hazard safety zone. There's a lot of fire hazard here. In general, like I mentioned, Saratoga is really beautiful. You have a lot of greenery. We, you know, about a quarter of our cities in the hillsides with a lot of really pretty trees. But that's also a massive fire risk as well. In 2020, we were under the evacuation warning and there was a wildfire that had spread and ended up coming about 1.7 miles away from the city. But everyone in the city of Saratoga was told and informed, be ready. You may have to move really quickly and literally lightning struck and started that fire. So if lightning had struck closer, we may have had to evacuate and not been so lucky.
So I think it's critical for any city to be prepared. To be clear, wildfires aren't the only risk we have in California. Earthquakes are a major one. You also have landslides, climate events in general. Right. As we ourselves are seeing it. And I have a lot of stories there that I won't, that I won't go into.
But I think as I take a step back, it's something we as a council and as a city have been, have been thinking about for a number of years. Right. These issues of fire have been going on. Issues and concerns around fire have been a concern in the Bay Area and in California for centuries, not just the last couple of months or the last couple of years.
And so the way I think about it, and we've done a lot of work this year at our council meetings, in public forums to really educate our community on, hey, here's all the work that actually has gone into being prepared, I would bucket into a few categories. I would see there's sort of advanced planning, communications, funding, and then just execution.
On the advanced planning side, that to me is threat assessment, understanding what are our problem areas. We just did a study this year which was basically saying, if there is a fire on the hillsides, what are the evacuation routes?
How well prepared are we for that? The dirty little secret, and the unfortunate part of this is that most cities in the country, if not in California, actually, I want to talk about the country, but we don't necessarily. We have major risks here, right. If there is a wildfire that comes through like the one that came through in Southern California, every professional firefighter I've talked to has said with winds that powerful, there is very little they could do to actually stop that fire from spreading. So how are you preparing in advance if you know that a fire like that might come through for you to be ready to let people know that they have to get ready, that they have to evacuate?
For example? This is a fun fact. You can dramatically increase the chances of survival of a community by making sure that everybody in an affected area leaves in one car instead of two, because that's a great way of reducing gridlock and making sure that the roads are accessible, especially in hilly areas where the roads can be narrower and at a higher chance of failure because of a climate event or just all things going wrong. So that advanced planning is absolutely critical in terms of scoping out the threat assessment, making sure that people are aware of the hazards around them. But then a critical part of that is things like thinking through things like drills through preliminary warnings. It might mean that we ask you to evacuate just out of an abundance of caution, and it ends up being totally fine.
But just in general, I think being mindful of the threat that might come and just being ready for that, a really important part. And this is where I could spend hours talking about this. So I'll make this brief.
I'll sum this up soon, I promise. But a critical part, when you think about this, right, there's different agencies at different levels. We're a small city, there are cities, there's counties, states and the federal government at the city level. The thing that we have the ultimate control over, our building codes.
And also when you're building your home, how are you building it? So when you think about, like, one of the most important things for preserving structure is something like defensible space. Hey, is. Are there. Is there a wooden fence attached to your house? Like, that's. That's Very likely to lead to if that lights on fire, your home being lit on fire. And so what are building codes that we can implement, monitor and then also enforce in partnership with other local agencies to make sure that when we look at this from a planning perspective, that we're actually, in the event of a fire, as prepared as we can be because we made thoughtful decisions about what is and isn't in our cities. Communications is absolutely critical before making sure people are informed, but then also during knowing that they can get out there. This is one where I think we have a lot of work to do.
And I think there are situations where we as a city are in the driver's seat. But in most of these situations, for example, a wildfire like we'd be talking about, we're actually a relatively small city and we have a number of neighboring jurisdictions as well. And so it's equally important for us to partner with our neighboring cities as well as at the county level. And so making sure that our communication strategy is in sync while largely accepting. We don't have all the resources to do sophisticated, best in class disaster preparation on our own. So especially when it comes to things like communications, we are leaning on our county and neighboring jurisdictional partners and then on funding. All of these things cost money. I'll give you an example. When it comes to things like the city of Saratoga, we had a meeting on this. Our last meeting in July, we had a pretty sobering conversation, but it's a conversation we've had multiple times over the years where especially in our hillsides, we have about five areas that are highly concerning from a infrastructure perspective where we worry that we actually have some slow moving landslides that we've basically gotten lucky on. And I think if you go into every city, there's a story or 2 or 5 or 10 or 30 of potential problem areas that we've just gotten kind of lucky on. And so I think recognizing that, sizing that and then trying to get ahead of it. And then of course, last but not least is with all these things, executing, making sure that like we do have a disaster council as mayor that, that the mayor chairs every year, making sure that we're ready for that all of our city employees are prepared and trained as emergency workers as well. We have an incredible group of people called cert, which is our community Emergency Response Team, which is comprised of volunteers in the city of Saratoga. So there's a lot of really high quality work here that happens. I'm not even talking about what the fire department does and the police Department and a lot of other great agencies.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: Really interesting insights there. Obviously, I like a lot of what you were saying also about the big education piece too.
When I was in Saratoga, we were also speaking. We were sitting in the downtown, like on the main street right outside. And you were talking about kind of redevelopment of this street and some challenges there for you.
Can you talk us through a little bit of this downtown area redevelopment that you're working on? And how do you really ensure something like this benefits all the citizens?
[00:27:59] Speaker A: For sure. And I wouldn't call it redevelopment because that's not our vision here. I would say our vision is like, how do we ensure community vitality? How do we bring foot traffic? How do we ensure there's a good level of foot traffic? How do we make sure that businesses in Saratoga feel supported and that they're businesses that residents want to go to? And there's sort of that virtuous cycle of high quality businesses that lead to residents going there. And it just makes it an active and fun place to be around. That I think is ultimately good for everybody because it's a place where you can go when you can bump into people, you can feel a sense of community.
The funny thing is, I remember when we were sitting there and we're talking about this, you know, I just want to like, highlight how small a city this is. We're sitting there like on. On Big Basin Way, which is our main street in our. We have a beautiful village that is maintained. You know, we have lovely flowers, all of which, by the way, are maintained on a volunteer basis. And like, while we're sitting there from a few doors down, the property owner, and she has a vacant property right now, happened to walk by and she just happened to see me and wanted to talk about things.
That's Saratoga in a nutshell, right? Because we have about five commercial districts. Our biggest one is our downtown.
But it's just a great example of sort of. This really is also community driven. Our downtown is about 0.4 miles, not even. And so it's relatively small. Also, the main street going through a Big Basin way also happens to be estate highway. And so there's. There's. We don't have full control of that. As I think about how do we drive foot traffic, how do we make it a really vital place? A place where you see and you feel a lot of energy. I would bucket into three categories, policies, programs, and then, yes, maybe some redevelopment. And I think about each of those things in terms of like a short, medium and long term timeline on the policies front, you know, to me a short term policy that we implemented this year and that we actually enhanced was a vacant storefront ordinance which basically says, let's say you do have an empty property, please make sure it looks pretty. If you're just going to not look after it because there's no tenant there, that just makes it look worse for everybody. And then your neighboring tenants aren't happy either.
There are longer term policies you can implement as well, things like active use, which we do have an active use ordinance, but just being thoughtful around that, which basically says hey, we shouldn't have office on front facing real estate. Right. Because there isn't a lot of activity going in and out of that. And what's the kind of activity you want to encourage? Now there's always tricky balance in government right between you don't want to dictate what the market does. Right. But you want to give flexibility as well. But for example, if there's a co working space, that to me is an example of an office environment that is quite interactive and has people going in and out of the street. But an active use ordinance to me is something that's more of a medium to a long term policy from an impact perspective. And yeah, so on programs to me that is how do we activate our downtown? One thing we've been doing is we start for the first time this year, we're calling it Sarasotoga Nights. It's the first Thursday of every month from April to October.
We have concerts, you have beer, wine, you have food. All the restaurants are giving discounts. We've actually blocked off a certain part of our downtown for people just to gather. And there are stalls and mini stores and things like that. And so that's been pretty exciting. That to me is a short term example of how we can really quickly activate and bring foot traffic in. And then long term is actually how are we thinking about our funding strategy for different organizations? Whether it's our chamber of commerce? How do we think about maybe funding a business district which would have to go to a vote. There are a lot of longer term programs and things like that that we can be doing there.
And then last but not least is just redevelopment which is, yeah, you know, some of our, some of the buildings there are from were built 100 years ago, not necessarily class A real estate. And there is the opportunity to actually rethink what should be.
You know, there are some beautiful examples we have like, you know, Sue's Cafe, which was basically redeveloped as a cafe on the front and with some condos on the back. And that's a way that you can actually, as a property owner, sort of help fund the construction while creating a more active use area on the front face of your property.
And so those are just a couple of examples of how we think about how do we actually activate and revitalize our downtown?
And just a fun story is like, not even just a data point to our conversation. There is, you know, about six months ago, we had about 13 vacancies. Our most recent count is down to nine vacancies. Right. Each one hurts, but that is some improvement, and it's important for us to keep on tracking that.
[00:32:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess I used the wrong word there with redevelopment, but more around this revitalization aspect, I think on really how you activate the community and activate the vibrancy of downtown life.
We also spoke about house prices as being a challenge.
You're in a very expensive area, I would say. And I remember you also talked to me about, basically, it's not affordable for young families to come.
So your medium home price, if I remember correctly, that you told me, it's around 4 million.
And yeah, so there's obviously not much room for affordable housing.
Do you think that there's still room for changing this housing price, housing affordability, housing crisis? And how do you, if so, how do you instill this into your citizens?
[00:33:43] Speaker A: Absolutely. And this kind of speaks to that. The second part I mentioned, which is around neighborhoods and housing, which is we have with a beautiful city that is in the heart of Silicon Valley, but our city has become increasingly inaccessible because the cost of living in general across the Bay Area has gotten so high. But in Saratoga specifically, it's very high. It's about $4 million is the median cost of a home in the city today. We benefit from having beautiful scenery, beautiful nature, some of the best schools in the country.
I do think, though, that there is a way, a path forward on this. I think the real bit is that we as a city don't operate in a silo. We operate as a city within a state that has a broader affordable housing crisis, where that's been the biggest priority of the governor and a number of other elected officials.
And so what you've seen is this a lot of pressure coming at the state level towards cities saying if you don't facilitate the construction of new housing, we will.
And so the way I've always thought about this is I think we have to be open to change, but if there's going to be change, I'd rather we control it. Than let someone else dictate what that change can and will look like. And so for me, when I think about the city of Saratoga, I think about housing.
I'll just give a personal anecdote. A number of my close friends who grew up here who are all well to do. Doctors, engineers, people working in technology or, you know, working in social services or whatever it might be.
None of them have chosen to move back here, and they're all relatively well to do. Now, I don't know if they're $4 million well to do, but in general, they're moving to parts of the Bay Area where they can get more bang for their buck. And that means their parents are here, but they're about an hour away. Sometimes use some distance. That's not the worst thing. But at the same time, it does mean that it's harder for when you are my age and you're my late 30s, and maybe you have a young family and you want to think about stretching your dollars, that becomes harder and harder to do. And that's a different equation. And I'm not saying Saratoga was like cheap 40 years ago.
For a number of years, it's been a relatively affluent area. But that equation of affordability has gotten really out of whack in the Bay Area in a way that's become really challenging and problematic. How does that affect Saratoga? I'll give a few examples.
Growing up, our soccer league used to about 1500 kids in it on a regular basis. Now we maybe have about 400 kids.
Our school enrollment, especially at the lower levels, if you may be used to have, you know, I don't have an exact stat here, but this is what I've heard from school board members is in the 90s is if you had, you know, four fourth grade classes, maybe you have one and a half to two now.
And so in general, it's harder for younger families to move here because that cost of living is so high. The rate of sort of enrollment going down is a little bit slower at the high school level because it is easier for folks moving in later in life to be able to afford a home here. Now, look, there are other factors at play here. People are having less kids in general, not just in the country, not just in California, but across the country and in many parts of the world.
And so. So that also is definitely playing a role here. I also think it's much more common to see dual income families now, which was just a change from the 70s and 80s in a way, and well before that. So there are some Other factors at play here.
Just to give you a sense of what's happening in California, I mentioned that the state is really forcing a lot of cities to either make that change happen yourself or we will. And so to that end, and, you know, some of this is by design, some of it is not, we have more development coming into Saratoga in the next couple of years than we've ever had, and so I think that will be nothing we've ever had. You know, we went from being a City about 2,000 to 31,000. So there's been some development over time.
We're talking about. We have about 11,500 units of housing across the city of Saratoga.
And if all the new development products get built, we're building, we're adding about 600, which is, you know, not a massive number, relatively speaking, but is a lot on a percentage basis for a city like Saratoga.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: Yeah, this. The housing crisis is a topic in many places. I mean, 4 million is just a wild number, of course, for a median. And so many cities are, you know, looking for ways. I mean, I know that there's also a challenge, right. Residents don't want their housing prices to go down, their housing values to go down at the same time. So there's almost this internal community that is propelling also this housing crisis in some areas. I guess you probably also experience that somewhat in your communities that they. They want to hold on to those high housing prices, right?
[00:38:45] Speaker A: Absolutely. Look, I. I think no one likes change.
I think that's the reality of a lot of it. Sometimes I would argue, and this is maybe a hot take and controversial, but, like, I think even if we build all the houses and then. Then some that are in our development pipeline right now, I don't think our housing prices would go down much. If anything, they would just keep on going up. And that's because the supply demand imbalance in the Bay Area and in California generally is so off that there is no shortage. To me, when I talk to school board members, they'll quietly tell me we need more kids. And so I actually do.
There is absolutely, I think, a desire for things to stay exactly as they are. And one element of that, I think, is preserving property values. But one element of that is understandably, hey, this is the community you moved to. You bought your property here, you pay the price you did for it as is, and you don't want to see that change. I can understand that, too.
But what I also want folks to remember is that these. Saratoga used to be a bunch of apricot Orchards.
And so this city and this area have undergone change before.
And I do think, unless we are willing to keep up with, you know, the. The store. I was at the community college this week.
We have a community college in Saratoga, West Valley College. It's a remarkable institution. They're doing some of the, like, really innovative, leading stuff when it comes to community colleges in the state and in the country in two ways. If you are a resident of the city of Saratoga and in the district that they serve, your tuition is free.
Starting this fall, they're starting a program where food is free if you're a West Valley College student. Why is that? Two thirds of the students in the community college within our city limits are either food insecure or housing insecure, meaning they're concerned. They don't know where they're going to sleep at night, and they don't know where they're. Or they're. They don't know where they're going to get that next meal.
And so I feel that, you know, I was raised with the values of Saratoga, that we look after everyone, right?
Obviously, we can't provide everything, but to the extent that we can make that easier, I think it's really important. Why does that matter? Why am I giving this example? I wouldn't be here in Saratoga if it wasn't for the affordable housing and accessibility in California writ large. My father immigrated to California from Pakistan in the 1970s. He went to community college. That was the step up that he needed. That allowed him to transfer to UC Berkeley, study engineering and move to the Bay Area and stay in the Bay Area and get a great engineering job here and. And really build a lifestyle for us and move to Saratoga. And so I do think that, you know, and you hear these stories in Silicon Valley of someone working, you know, renting a garage or starting a startup out of a garage or whatever it might be.
Those stories will be harder to come by unless we provide the ability for people to come here. I'll tell you, I work in technology. Most tech companies are not trying to hire her anymore if they don't have to. If they can hire somewhere else because it's cheaper for them, they'll do that. And so that is a reality that I think another term for this is called Dutch disease from a time, I don't know, a couple hundred years ago, where I think it was tulips or some other industry that was leading to a significant rise in a lot of wealth creation within the Netherlands and Amsterdam that didn't sort of didn't keep up with the rest of what you need to maintain a healthy society.
And they sort of lost that over time.
So I, you know, and there's. And the US is filled with examples like that.
[00:42:21] Speaker B: Yeah, you need to be able to afford the garage, I guess, to build the garage from the startup for the startup too. Right.
So looking at the big picture, what do you think when we're talking about all these challenges that your city is facing? What do you think you're really missing, like, a tool in your toolbox? What would it really help you accelerate change that maybe you don't have right now?
[00:42:47] Speaker A: That's a great question.
The answer that comes to mind is actually running around communication. How do we engage with the community in a deeper way that is just hard to do without going door to door? And to be clear, I love going door to door. I did that when I was campaigning. But I do think some of the communication tools that we have.
Getting the information, even getting information out to neighborhoods on here's how to be ready for a Wildfire is extraordinarily difficult. And we utilize every tool in our toolkit. We use all the social media platforms, Facebook, next door, Instagram, et cetera. We send mailers to literally every house in the city.
Right. But even that, it's hard to get people to engage. And so when I think about a toolkit, I don't have it in my head, in my hand right now, but something that allows us to be able to communicate effectively, engage and, like, get that feedback in a. In a really virtuous way, I think would be really helpful. Not that I'm. I'm going to sit here and change anyone's mind on what they do or don't want for their neighborhood.
But I think the reality is we're better. I actually think our residents are way smarter than me and our city.
We're a very lucky and privileged city.
80% college educated. Like I mentioned, employees at every major tech company, Nvidia, Apple, Cisco, Zoom, you name it, they're here.
And so I actually think there's a lot of really thoughtful solutions and thinking in our neighborhoods. And every time, I think sometimes you tend to hear the loudest voices the room. And the last voices tend to be the most extreme voices. And the extreme voices are no new housing ever, or we need to be building like, Manhattan. And I think the reality of it is, I think most people, when I have the time to have a thoughtful conversation, we can figure out, hey, there's actually something in between that we can all agree on.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I Think a lot of cities struggle with these engagement, communication tools to really effectively reach all types of. Of people and hear all voices. So definitely echo that on many different sides.
I want to ask you as a. I love the topic of leadership.
[00:45:04] Speaker A: Can I have one more thing on that?
[00:45:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:45:06] Speaker A: And that is a debate we have, or I have with our staff in general, too, because I don't have my phone in front of me. But I think that's the real estate that we all compete for now. Right. In terms of. And we live in a world where, okay, Saratoga used to have, like, five newspapers. Right. So you actually get information about your city, what's happening at the local level, what's happening at the high school. Right now we largely, like a lot of local journalism has died.
You get a lot of national and international news, and you have a. And the most common real estate that. That you are spending your time in is your phone, your technological devices.
And there's a question of, like, where do we, as a city actually fall into that? Right. In terms of, like, the information that we need to get to. Because. Because a lot of the companies or the agencies or entities in the world that are buying that real estate to get your attention, they're willing to pay top dollar for it because they have a certain end in mind.
We're not trying to be in your face all the time. We're just trying to make sure the roads are smooth and safe and clean.
That, hey, if you're going to remodel your house, that you actually do it the right way so that the roof doesn't fall on your head.
Right. So we're actually also not trying to be front and center in every capacity, but just try and be engaged with you on the core issues that matter, that affect your neighborhood.
[00:46:24] Speaker B: Yeah. There's this competition, though, right, for everybody's attention. So people just feel bombarded all the time with information. So it's hard to get even if it doesn't have to be the top spot. It's hard to even get a spot in people's minds to engage with. Right. In their daily lives. So, yeah, absolutely.
I. I want to ask you about leadership. I love this topic. When I'm talking to different people working in leadership positions at cities.
What do you think has been, in your time as mayor, what do you think has been the hardest mindset shift that you've had to make to drive change?
[00:47:07] Speaker A: I'll start with myself. I think that's, like, the important one.
And I'll give, like, two examples.
First off, I can Be pretty impatient.
[00:47:20] Speaker B: Same.
[00:47:23] Speaker A: I also think it's the world we live in these days though, right? Where it's like you press a button and a box of the thing that you want is delivered to your door. And so that when you get told, hey, the process for getting X and Y permit is going to take 30 days, you're like, what?
And you don't even. And by the way, even the process of getting that thing is super convoluted and not clear. So I think there's a level of understandable impatience because I think a lot of our corresponding entities that we interact with on a day to day basis, you're not going to the shopping mall anymore, you still might, but a lot of it is digital.
I don't know that government has kept up with that. In fact, I would say we definitively haven't.
And I do think that that is a, I call it impatience, but also I think an expectation of how and where government should be serving you and in what speed and in what capacity and how well. And yeah, like, so I do think that there's just a fundamental disconnect there in a way that is fully understandable and pretty incredible.
I always think people are fairly understanding and accepting of it in a way that's unfortunate because like, oh, it's just government, right? Government's slow, government's this, government's that. Because on the flip side, I think we have some remarkable examples where we do government really well. Right. And so I do think that that is one that I think has been a, a hard one to wrestle with and deal with both my own and personal impatience, like I recognize it myself.
And, and then also I think just looking at that like sort of of writ large across the city and maybe impatient is the wrong word, but expectations around how and well, how or why.
[00:49:10] Speaker B: Things should work, that's a hard one. I love that you brought that up because I think so many, I mean so many of the amazing cities that I work with and this people, they do have a sense of urgency, right. About these topics, because these are a lot of these topics. They are urgent because you're talking about people's lives, you're talking about people's livelihoods and you're talking about their quality of life and you're talking about an overarching way of living for all the humanity on earth. Right. In some ways, if you want to take it even more macro.
So that's an interesting one, how you should have a sense of urgency. Maybe you should be a little impatient. Right, right. To get Things done in government, to not accept things as just government, but at the same time having a way of understanding that also.
[00:50:02] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:50:03] Speaker B: I also need to be a little bit more patient on some things. That's a difficult balance, right?
[00:50:08] Speaker A: Very much so. I think a lot of life can be about expectations management though. I feel like I learned that at a young age.
But it's a hard thing to get right, Because I think when you are like, okay, I'll give an example. Like, I used to work in finance. I've joined. I got on the city council for years ago. It took me a year or two to understand the budgetary process. And if it takes me that much time as someone who's on the council, imagine what that's like for a resident.
Right. And so I think sometimes government can be a little insular around.
But I also think it's a set of systems that have been designed to ensure that there is a process.
It's a democratic process and that many people can provide input it. But that can easily get lost. So I think there's a lot of good intention around it, right. Around designing the process the way it's designed. But it's also just hard to follow. And it also just takes a long time because the number of times I talk to somebody, oh, come to a council meeting and talk about it, and then they're like, okay, they come to the meeting and they have to wait like two hours to speak on the thing they wanted to speak on. And then, you know, and I'd love to just be like, hey, just come at this exact time and do X, Y and Z. But. But that becomes harder to do.
So I do think there's also a way in which of like government engagement, sort of both in both directions, I think can be challenging and understandably opaque in a way that. And I think for some enjoy that by design.
I anchor on and lean on transparency because I think that it just helps us all make better decisions.
[00:51:39] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. I like that a lot. Well, with that I have to take us because we're running out of time, unfortunately.
I feel like I could talk about this ages with you around a lot of these topics.
I want to take us to our segment and the segment that we chose for you today is called Hot take of the Day.
Hot Take of the Day.
We want to hear an opinion of yours that may be slightly controversial or debated.
I think you already gave us a semi hot take earlier. I wonder if you have another hot take that you want to share with us.
[00:52:21] Speaker A: Okay, here's a hot take. I do think that the impact of technology may be more limited than we think on government services.
But here's what I mean by that.
Let's say we introduce a software tomorrow that makes our permitting process 10 times.
Any software or piece of technology, right, is like, tied to the process that it's trying to improve.
And what I often find is that our processes aren't bad.
They're actually pretty good.
Sometimes though, they, you know, maybe we stop tracking a certain thing. Maybe we were doing it really well for a while, and maybe we are, but then sometimes just like happens with humans and it gets a little. Goes a little off track and maybe slows down.
So I do think there is, like, great. I think there's a potential for, hey, software might help me with my data to like, track that process, which I can then go back and analyze it better. But there's also stuff you can just do, like, without the technology to do that. So I do think sometimes the technology is limited. That being said, I think software is different from AI and I do think that.
I think there are some interesting tools that we can implement from a resident facing perspective that I think can actually be very impactful. So I think technology from a government process perspective is only so impactful because I think there's just a lot of context and knowledge that our employees have that otherwise would just be hard to get.
But what I do think can be helpful is, hey, I'm a resident. I come to the city of Saratoga website. I want to get a roofing permit. What do I need to do?
And right now I have to go and I have to, like, figure out, okay, I don't. I'm not. I don't know that I know this. Now, some of the council. You have to go into the city council website. I have to go to the community development department or planning department, depending on the terminology that we use. Click through a bunch of things and get that. I would love just to be able to type what do I need to do for a roofing permit that says, here's the process you need to follow. And then like you mentioned, here's the timeline. It'll take you 10 days to get this. And this should take. Whole thing should take like, like six months or two months or whatever it might be. And maybe getting a solar panel permit takes 20 minutes. Right. But it just kind of depends. So that's my hot take where I think in some capacities, technology will have a very limited impact on government process and in other ways you can have a very meaningful impact.
[00:54:49] Speaker B: Interesting. I like it.
So now is the final question that I ask every single guest. And, and it's the question of to you, what is a smart city?
[00:55:01] Speaker A: Oh, wow, that's a great question. I remember I asked you this question. I was like, how do you define smart city?
I'll start with my initial context for this. So when I was working in investment banking, I did spend a little bit of time covering clean tech companies. And I remember my first kind of exposure to even the word smart was smart metering, which is basically at that point in time you have your utility company that's measuring your electricity usage. And the real innovation then, and this is like 15, 18 years ago, was like putting a smart meter in your home, which basically just is able to get much better data on your electricity usage, the times where it's peaking and the trough and all that sort of stuff. And so to me, what is a smart city? A smart city is a data driven city city where we have the ability to get objectively high quality data that helps us make better decisions as to how our city can and should operate.
[00:56:02] Speaker B: I like it.
[00:56:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And that could be with technology or without technology. Right. But ideally technology leads that objectively higher quality data. But it's hard. But yeah, those are all terms that that are, are debatable too.
[00:56:17] Speaker B: Qualitative data too, right? Yeah, yeah, very good with that. I have to close us out. I, I have to also really give you a big thank you for taking the time early in the day to, to talk with me.
I, I've learned a lot. I'm thinking and pondering a lot and I'm sure our listeners are as well. So thank you so much.
[00:56:39] Speaker A: All right, thank you so much, Tamlin. Have a great one. Happy Friday.
[00:56:42] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you very much. And to all of our listeners, don't forget, you can always create a free account on Baba SmartCities EU and you can find out more about smart city projects, solutions and more. Thank you very much.
Thank you all for listening. I'll see you at the next stop on the journey to a better urban life.
Sam.
