Join us for an enlightening conversation with the Mayor of San Jose, as he discusses his journey from the private sector to public office. Discover the nuances between running a business and managing a city, and learn about the challenges and strategies in tackling issues like homelessness, public safety, and civic engagement. Get an inside look at the importance of performance management, the role of technology, and the need for transparency and accountability in government operations.
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:27 Entrepreneurial Mindset in Government
00:49 Differences Between Private Sector and Government
02:18 Performance Management in Government
03:22 Motivation and Challenges in Public Sector
04:24 Setting and Achieving Goals in Government
04:54 Addressing Homelessness in San Jose
11:34 Community Engagement and Civic Participation
21:06 Balancing Priorities in Government
29:09 Rebuilding Trust in Government
34:12 Closing Remarks and Future Topics
About Evan Meyer
Tech entrepreneur and civic leader - he founded mygovtools.org, a platform to drive government efficiency, constituent representation, and civic engagement; BeautifyEarth.com, a platform accelerating urban beautification through art; and its sister nonprofit, transforming schools in underserved areas. He also co-founded RideAmigos.com, a platform that optimizes commuter travel globally. Previously, he served as District Director for the California State Senate and led many civic initiatives in Santa Monica. Through seminars and his podcast Meyerside Chats, Evan inspires civic engagement, innovation, and cultural growth.
He loves the outdoors, is a master of creative projects, is an avid muralist and musician, and finds the world fascinating in every regard.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (00:00):
Evan, thanks for having me on.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_15 (00:01):
It's a pleasure, sir.
Pleasure to see you.
It's a pleasure to have this,this time to talk about your
incredible journey.
And how far you've come from thecivic work that you've done for
so long and the businessesyou've created and Brigade
specifically I'm excited to talkabout and capture some of that
(00:23):
entrepreneurial mindset as the,the mayor of San Jose.
So how do you, as anentrepreneur, as a CEO of a
civic tech company, think aboutthe government space?
Where are the overlaps, thedisparities, government culture
versus the entrepreneurialmindset?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (00:42):
Yeah.
Evan, I, think, about that a lotand, and I think there's often a
shorthand people use.
That is not really fair that we,you know, people will sometimes
say, I just want government torun like a business.
And there are some reallyfundamental differences between
the two that we're not going tobe able to avoid.
I've been in business.
(01:03):
I've built startups that focusedon a customer.
We're incredibly agile and it'sa wonderful environment to be
in.
And there's a lot we can bringover to the government sector.
And I'll speak to that in amoment, but just on a couple of
the differences.
You know, in the private sector,you can offer a very narrow set
of goods and services orservices, and you can focus on a
(01:26):
very small segment of the totalcustomer base, the total
population in government.
We have a responsibility forserving everyone.
Without distinction, we have toserve everyone equally well.
We are in far too many lines ofbusiness that are not
synergistic.
We're doing wastewater treatmentfacility, running an airport
(01:50):
purchasing power, paving roads,providing police and fire
response, running afterschoolprograms in the libraries.
It's a very diverse portfolio.
And even when we do a reallygood job.
not like revenue just increasesand we can plow the profits back
into more R and D and betterproducts.
And, and you know, it's a,there's a real lag over time.
(02:12):
Good governance leads to morerevenue in the real long run,
but it's not a tight feedbackloop.
However, what I learned in theprivate sector that was just eye
opening for me going through theprocess of building a couple of
startups was the power ofperformance management, being
able to.
Pick a few key goals and, youknow, frame up hypotheses,
(02:36):
measure performance, and builda, a continuous learning
environment where you're lookingat data frequently, you're
making adjustments, and you'reholding yourself accountable for
making steady progress toward ameasurable outcome.
And I think we could, we wouldbenefit in government from
organizing ourselves.
In a similar fashion.
(02:56):
That's what I've been trying todo in San Jose.
My first two years as mayor.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (03:01):
Yeah.
How do you, how do you make surethat the, what your, you know,
in the incentives andmotivations are different in
business, right?
So how do you make sure thatfolks are incentivized,
motivated in a way to continueto hit those targets?
And I should say, how do you setthose targets and how do you
make sure people are motivatedto continue to hit them?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (03:22):
Yeah.
Well, you know, I actually findthat in the public sector
motivation is generally not asmuch of a challenge as people
think.
We get into the public sectorbecause we want to serve the
community.
We want to make our community abetter place.
And in the private sector, ifyou're doing it right, you're
obsessively focused on yourcustomer.
So that's an area where thereactually is more commonality,
(03:44):
whether you're customer centricor.
Or constituent centric.
It's a service industry.
You're focused on how to delivervalue to someone.
I think what's challenging ingovernment is that the
expectations can beoverwhelming.
We have come to expectgovernment to solve every
problem, to solve itimmediately, no matter how
(04:04):
entrenched, how complicated itis, or how much it actually
requires social change andcultural change.
And we often just want to payour taxes and throw it over the
fence and say government.
Go fix the broken school system,go fix the healthcare system
when so much of it is areflection of our society and
our culture.
And so that can be challenging.
What I've tried to do, at leastat City Hall, is identify the
(04:29):
top handful of goals that thecommunity has told us they
expect us to do better on.
Where it's within our purview,crime.
Reducing homelessness, cleaningup the city, speeding up permits
to build more housing, being aneasier place to bring a, bring
jobs and, and create economicopportunity, and then create
(04:51):
some metrics around those thingsand have a North Star goal.
I'll just take homelessness.
It's the most top of mind andmaybe easiest to explain.
Our community expects us to beon the path to you.
Zero people living outside intents.
That's a very worthy goal.
It's a goal we all share.
We're all motivated to achieveit, but then you have to start
(05:11):
breaking it down.
You have to start formulatinghypotheses and saying, okay, we
need to do a certain amount ofprevention to stop people from
falling into homelessness.
We need to intervene earlier anddo a better job of mental health
care and drug treatment.
We need to do a better job ofjail reentry because that's a
source of people intohomelessness.
We need to build basic shelterbecause when you do the math.
(05:33):
We can't wait to build a brandnew apartment for everybody.
It's too slow and too expensive.
So you start to formulatehypotheses, program your budget
around that, go execute, Andthen look at the data and say,
are we moving the needle or not?
And I'm trying to bring thatperformance management mindset,
that level of transparency tocity hall on an issue when I
think historically people havegenerally thrown their hands up
(05:55):
and said, I'm just going toblame somebody else.
I'm going to blame the federalgovernment, or I'm going to
blame the County or whatever.
I've tried to take a veryrigorous approach to how we
actually break it down and makesteady progress.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_152 (06:06):
How is, how is the homeless part of
that progress going?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (06:10):
Well, we we've made A bit of progress
in San Jose.
I'm excited about what's comingin the year ahead.
In my first two years in office,we had a very big debate around
our budget and the primarystrategies we were funding.
And I'm a believer in amultifaceted approach to
homelessness that focuses oncost per outcome.
(06:31):
Prior to taking office, we werespending 80 percent of our
dollars on homelessness on onestrategy.
Which was building brand newpublicly subsidized apartments
that would be deed restricted.
So affordable apartments as theprimary strategy for getting
people off the street or havingan alternative to the straights.
And we certainly need moreaffordable housing.
(06:52):
And that's a whole otherconversation around housing
supply, permitting fees land useconstruction costs that we
should get, we can get into ifyou're interested.
looking at the math, I came tothe conclusion and did some work
to get our council to comearound to the idea.
That we have an underdevelopedshelter and treatment system in
(07:15):
California.
We need to be much scrappierabout building basic dignified
shelter with securitysanitation, three meals a day in
case management, and get peopleconnected to supportive services
faster.
And that that's a better paththan waiting to build a brand
new million dollar apartment sixyears from now, just to get
somebody off the streets.
That was a very real debate.
(07:36):
We have shifted dollars and thisyear.
We will be opening over 1, 000new shelter placements, mostly
individual beds with a tiny roomwith a door that locks, many of
them modular units, some areconverted motel rooms, and we
will be able to double or morethan double our shelter capacity
and immediately move over 1, 000people off of our streets this
(07:58):
year.
So I'm very excited aboutsometimes it takes a couple of
years to really get there.
It's not as quick as buildingsoftware, but but we're making
steady progress and we've seenit.
Two years ago, over the last twoyears, we actually saw our
number of people living outsidedecline by about 15 percent.
The number bounces around, butwe actually measured a decline
two counts in a row.
(08:19):
The rest of the state was up.
So there's an indication therethe data's not perfectly, it's
not precise, but there's a sensethat we may have topped out and
that we're starting to comedown, which is a very good sign.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (08:31):
Sure.
Yeah.
It's always hard.
There's confounding variablesfor everything, so, you know,
every, and even if, even if,even if there's not, someone
will find them.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (08:41):
Yeah, even it's just as an excuse, but
yes, you're right.
It's complicated.
These are complicated.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (08:46):
Yeah, it is.
Do you find, do you find onissues like that?
That even when there is successthat folks will come up with
things confounding variablesthat may not be the primary
sources of concern for you orthat don't really invalidate the
data.
And how do you navigate thatsort of like those, those
(09:08):
difficult issues, those complextopics where that does happen a
lot?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (09:13):
Well, I think it's just human nature
that we want to simplify thestory.
We love store from the time.
We're children.
I have two little kids.
We love stories of just of goodand evil things that are just
black and white.
We it's just I think the way ourbrain is wired because
complexity is is hard I findmyself often in community
(09:37):
meetings.
Where people are wanting to tellme it's just one thing it's it's
just greedy developers havesomehow prevented us from
building the housing we needwhich doesn't actually logically
make a lot of sense but that's anarrative or everybody out there
is addicted and mentally ill andwe should just put them all in a
(10:00):
mental health hospital and youknow there are often there's
generally a kernel of truth inevery story.
of these popular notions,popular myths, we don't have
enough housing.
That's for sure.
The housing is not affordableand the cost to build it is too
high.
I happen to think of that moreas a, as a market failure in
(10:21):
part driven by governmentregulation.
We certainly have people on ourstreets who are trapped there
with untreated addiction andmental illness.
That is a major issue.
It's also true though, thatwe've got in our community, a
quarter to a third of folks outthere who are working.
And so, you know, it's just thereality is more complicated.
And so you've really got tobreak things down.
I think the nice thing abouttechnology these days is that it
(10:45):
is easier and easier to andvisualize and in this case sort
of triage.
the population and be able tosay to people, okay, we've got
roughly this many people in thissituation.
We've got this many families.
We've got this many people whohave a mental health issue and
we can kind of better thecommunity, honestly, what the
(11:07):
need is and not default to thisvery simple answer of, it's just
one thing.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (11:14):
Right.
And did, did, did they respondto that with an open mind in
general for you?
Mm hmm.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-1 (11:20):
Depends on how you do it.
I mean, I, I was, I'm a formerpublic school teacher before I
was in tech.
I'd spent two years doing teachfor America or beginning of my
career.
I taught middle school, seventhand eighth grade English and
history.
And I don't know how much itscales, but I really personally
enjoy being in that communitymeeting with 50 neighbors who
(11:45):
are rightly frustrated.
feel that their government isnot delivering.
For them.
And that's not at all specificto San Jose.
This is right now voters inCalifornia.
I'd say this is generally truenationally, but especially in
California are frustrated.
There's a gap between.
Their government and the dailyexperience they have, and they
(12:07):
don't feel that we're deliveringthe outcomes we need to deliver.
That's why I ran for mayor.
I saw that gap.
I felt that frustration as ahomeowner, a private sector,
entrepreneur, a parent.
And I wanted to fix things likehomelessness and crime and
invest in infrastructure and soforth.
So it's a great question.
I think people often initiallycome in with their frustration.
(12:30):
Sometimes their righteous anger.
But when you're face to face,one of the things I do like
about the offline world, eventhough I use technology so much.
that you can really looksomebody in the eye, empathize
with them, acknowledge theirvery valid frustration, but also
share with them some otherperspectives.
And I find that actually we'revery lucky, at least in San
(12:51):
Jose, to have a that'sempathetic and open and wants to
learn.
We're the capital of SiliconValley.
We've got a lot of people here.
with STEM degrees who aregenuinely curious about how
things work, and they ask greatquestions.
And so I love that.
I love that dialogue with thecommunity.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025 (13:09):
That's, that's interesting.
Do you find, I mean, in termsof, I mean, even in terms of age
of people getting involved, likeI've always found in, in, in my
civics journey I was alwaysprobably the youngest for a very
long time, in a lot of, by 20 or30 or 40 years in some cases,
right?
It's not very, it's not apopular thing to go to your
neighborhood of meetings and asa, geez, I was in my 20s.
(13:31):
When I started doing that,right?
do you find, because you're inSilicon Beach, that the people
who are involved tend to beeven, more, more than other
places?
I mean, I guess it would makesense that the folks, there are
Silicon Beach people.
Sorry, I live in Silicon Beach.
You're in Silicon Valley.
(13:51):
Do you find that there's more ofthose folks that do get involved
from the Silicon Valley,businesses?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (13:59):
Yeah.
We have a very engaged andeducated community here and
extremely diverse.
We are.
And this is true for Californiabroadly, but we're over 40
percent foreign born in San Joseand a really interesting mixture
of folks from all over theworld, over Latin America, Asia.
and, and other places.
And, and people really doconnected to their neighborhood,
(14:24):
their faith community, theschool, their kid attends, we're
a city as all cities are a cityof, of neighborhoods and
neighbors and at a great, youknow, fortunately a great place
to raise a family.
We're a very family friendlycity.
We're the largest city inNorthern California.
And as I look out from city hallhere.
sprawling neighborhoods.
As far as the eye can see, a lotof families here have built
(14:47):
their American dream in SanJose.
And what I find in terms ofcivic engagement is there, there
are different things that hookpeople to be civically engaged.
It's usually life experience.
a bad experience.
It could be a, I don't know, afamily member being
incarcerated.
It could be an inspire.
It could be a great experience.
It could be a civics teacher whoinspires you.
(15:09):
I do think we tend to see peoplebecoming more civically attuned
and engaged as they progressthrough life.
In part, maybe because they havea greater stake in society.
I find that when people buy ahome and they're looking at
their property tax bills, theystart to ask more questions when
people have kids.
They start to really think aboutthe broader societal issues.
(15:32):
They start to really think aboutthe quality of the schools,
safety in the parks, programmingat the library and the community
center.
So I think life events tend todrive civic engagement, but I do
think we're lucky to be in aplace here that has drawn so
much talent from all over theworld.
I think it leads to a reallyinteresting civic culture with,
with a lot of engagement.
I'll just give you one quickexample.
(15:53):
I came into office.
identifying this need for moreblight eradication.
I knew that city governmentcouldn't do it all ourselves.
Every Saturday morning at 9am wepartner with a neighborhood
association or a faith communityor a local employer and bring
volunteers together to do acleanup project or a
beautification project in thecity, whether it's picking up
(16:13):
litter, spreading mulch in thepark, covering up graffiti or
painting a sound barrier,painting a mural, planting
trees, whole variety of things.
And
evan-meyer_1_01-16-202 (16:22):
internet has videos of you out there
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (16:24):
Yeah,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (16:24):
doing that.
That's great.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2 (16:26):
much every Saturday, really.
And we've seen about a 300percent increase in
volunteerism.
At city volunteer events overthe last couple of years because
we're giving people moreopportunities in their
neighborhoods.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (16:41):
That's awesome.
You know, one of the things Iheard you say during your
brigade days was that increasedparticipation can solve
problems.
A lot of the problems thatpeople have with government,
right?
A lot I think the one youmentioned was like special
interests, for example, right?
The, the, the wash there, itcan, the wash, it can wash out
(17:03):
the, the power of specialinterests and the, and, and that
machine and so it's comfortingthat that's actually, it's
continually building for you interms of more people getting
involved.
Do you still feel that way?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2025 (17:19):
I do evan and you know, just
fundamentally always believed Inand loved the the grassroots
bottom up version of governmentand maybe I had a great teacher
and maybe I oversimplified in myown mind the sort of small town
Democracy at the founding of thenation, colonial democracy, the
(17:41):
small town.
And look, there were, let's bereally clear that it was
exclusive to white men withproperty for the most part.
I, so it's, there's never.
A perfect analog for this, butidea of people coming together,
forming government to, todeliver public goods, to deliver
(18:02):
for the common good and agovernment that was really close
to the people, reallyaccountable to the people and
where the people had a directrole to play.
discussing and debating theissues of the day, formulating
their, their needs andprioritizing them, deciding
through their taxes, what toinvest in solving that sort of
(18:22):
basic form of of a democraticrepublic that was the founding
story of our nation.
think we just have to keepadapting to our time and place.
We're a bigger, more complicatedcountry, but fundamentally I
think we get the best outcomes.
When we have the highestpossible levels of civic
(18:43):
engagement, when everyone'sinvolved, everyone's engaged and
educated, when a diverse rangeof people are running for
office, when people are reallyscrutinizing those candidates.
And I do think the more popularparticipation there is, the more
that we, we wash out or dilutethe power of concentrated
interest, concentrated money.
In the system and make thatgovernment more reflective.
(19:06):
I will say though, because thatcan, you know, verge on an
unhealthy level of, call itpopulism, it is a two-way
street.
And I think Ben Franklin's pithyquote about it's a, you know,
democracy or republic if youcan, if you can keep it, it, it,
it was so prescient because yes,we need a highly engaged
(19:29):
electorate that holds usaccountable.
And it's paying attention andensures that government is truly
working in their interest ontheir priorities, using common
sense, being highly accountableand pushing itself to deliver.
yet it's a two way street inthat public officials other
(19:49):
government leaders need to beable to communicate honestly
with the public about ourconstraints and our limitations.
And I referenced this earlier.
can't solve everything throughthe vehicle of government.
And sometimes our leaders needto reflect back to us.
That, it's also our culture thatneeds to evolve.
It's also our own individualdecisions.
(20:10):
I mean health is a great exampleof this.
We could simply pay our taxesfor Medicare and Medi Cal and
health, you know, the, theNational Institute of Health and
all the rest and say,government, make us all healthy.
Or we can have leaders who say,here's what we can do through
the healthcare system, buthere's what you, here's what the
research says and here's whatyou need to do, individual
(20:30):
American, to be healthy.
It's a two way street.
You cannot just throw it overthe fence and expect government
to solve every problem for youeither.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (20:40):
Yeah, and where, where's the limit in
people's minds where they havedecided, right, it's very
subjective of what they thinktheir taxpayer dollar is going
to and what should be done forthem, right?
I get the entitlements in thesense.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (20:55):
Yeah, and what's feasible?
You know, we pay a lot in taxes,but that doesn't mean the
government's capable ofdelivering everything or doing
all the things we want it to do.
And so we have to
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (21:05):
Right.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-202 (21:06):
We have to prioritize.
I've tried to be really clear.
I ran on this back to basicsmessage.
I was really honest with thecommunity.
There are like 200 things we doat the city.
I'm going to really focus onmaking sure these five things
are great.
You need to be able to call 9 11 and know somebody's going to
pick up and dispatch afirefighter, police officer
quickly and that you're going toget a high quality of service
and you're going to be safe.
You know, we need to, those arethe basics.
(21:27):
pick five things we're going todo excellently before we start
adding more things.
To our portfolio.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (21:35):
Yeah, when you say basics, I mean, it
literally means basics.
It's like Maslow's hierarchy ofneeds.
If people don't feel safe, thenhow, right, I mean, what else
matters after safety?
Lots of things, but if you don'thave that, you don't have, you
can't worry about anything else.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16 (21:52):
right.
And we have,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (21:53):
Right.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01 (21:54):
districts that are dedicated to education.
They need to be held accountablefor doing an excellent job.
have counties which areprimarily responsible for health
and other basic social safetynet services.
They need to be held accountablefor doing that.
Cities.
First and foremost areresponsible for public safety.
That's police fire, emergencymanagement, response,
(22:14):
prevention, infrastructure,roads, sewers, streetlights,
parks.
You know, these, these likebasic local infrastructure.
And then beyond that, You shouldbe able to expect that if you
are a property owner and youwant to invest in your land the
rules of the Road are going tobe clear and permitting isn't
(22:36):
going to take three years andcost hundreds of thousands of
dollars We need to make iteasier to facilitate people's
investment in their own propertybecause we land land use is
another local control that isGenerally given to cities.
So when you really strip down,what is the city responsible for
tends to be things like publicsafety infrastructure and land
use, basically permitting.
(22:57):
And then there's a lot of otherthings people want from us, but
we better be really good atthose things before we
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (23:02):
Right.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2025 (23:03):
a bunch of new programs.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (23:04):
Right.
You're boiling the oceanotherwise, I guess, as they say.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (23:08):
Yeah,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (23:08):
Right.
Heard that too many times.
I mean, I mean, I don't know ifthat's a business thing or a
software thing, but,
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-1 (23:15):
analogy many times.
I reference it occasionally.
It's a good one.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_15 (23:19):
Yeah or, or another one is you know,
businesses don't die ofstarvation, they die of
indigestion.
Have you heard that one?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (23:26):
Yeah, it's good.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (23:29):
Which is like, which is sort of
similar.
It's like if you don't focusyour resources on a problem that
you can solve and you spreadyourselves too thin with the
resources you have, would yousay that that's a similarity
between business and government?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (23:44):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think that and it'sit's even more endemic to
government because it's somebodyelse's money and the community,
the customer in this case isconstantly coming to us with new
needs and we're in a morevulnerable position in terms of
saying no, because we have to beresponsive to the community.
A, you know, Steve Jobs can tellhis customers, here's what
(24:05):
you're getting.
It's going to be great.
And he can say no to 1000 otherthings.
proverbial Steve jobs, right?
The great kind of corporatevisionary.
That's hard to do when, whenyou're up for election every 2
to 4 years and your,constituents who will vote on
whether or not you stay inoffice or asking you to do a
bunch of things.
So it is a constant battle ingovernment to constrain
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (24:27):
Right.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-20 (24:29):
And it's always this trade off of
are we in a moment where we cantake on another responsibility
and expand a bit?
Or do we need to double down anddo better at our fundamental
responsibilities?
I think it's very clear inCalifornia right now.
That we have overexpanded andwe're not delivering on the
basics.
I think that's
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_15 (24:46):
Yep.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (24:46):
clear variety of so that's a failure.
I think a major failure mode ingovernment is the desire to be
everything to everyone is alwayssay yes to our bosses, the
public.
And that's where you need matureleadership that says there are
trade offs.
We got to prioritize here.
And then another failure mode,of course, is, is special
interest capture, where thegroups that give the most money
(25:07):
in politics also.
Often drive some of theprioritization, the policy work,
the budget decisions, and thatthat could become a very
destructive feedback loop.
So I think there are differentways that we can we can go.
In in public leadership,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (25:25):
Sure.
Well, you do a really nice jobat explaining it.
I think part of what I've seenis that so, it's not explained
well to people, to the common,the angry person at the council
meeting, doesn't reallyunderstand that perspective,
right?
Doesn't understand thatdecisions are a matrix of
possibilities that you have toweigh.
You only get to do this on, whenyou vote.
(25:47):
But the decision could be 51 49.
And that's for the voting forthe president too.
It could be for anything.
Voting is up and down,
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (25:55):
Yeah,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_152 (25:55):
but the but the re the, the, the,
what made you pick that vote?
Everyone can have differentreasons for that.
And you know, you do a good jobof ex of explaining that.
Do you, are you able to do thatat council with, with with, with
folks who come in who are justheated
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2025 (26:11):
I tried to I, I told you, I prefer
the community meeting with 50people where we're having a long
form conversation about a topiclike homelessness, where I have
an hour with people to heartheir good questions and really,
Tell them, well, yeah, here's,here's what we're seeing in
other jurisdictions, or here'swhat we've tried, or here's the
actual, here's the data, here'sthe, you know, it's, it's just,
(26:33):
these things are always morecomplicated as you get into
them, and that doesn't meanthere aren't answers, but it's
worth having that context.
I think one of the challenges ofpublic meetings, and I don't
love the format, is because youget a lot of people coming in
wanting to speak on a wide rangeof issues, you just sort of give
everybody two minutesindividually.
That's not substantive.
I mean, we, it's useful.
It's an important outlet.
(26:54):
But people generally don't getwhat they need.
And actually, typically we haveso much volume that we're not
responding to each person.
We're listening.
Sometimes I'm taking notes orasking my staff to follow up
with people.
It's not the best, it's not thebest format.
For giving people what theyneed, is why we've tried a bunch
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_152 (27:12):
Hmm
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (27:12):
other things.
We we set up one of the things Iborrowed from my private sector
experiences.
We set up a ticketing system,basically a customer support
portal where you can go to thewebsite.
You can access FAQs.
You can submit a question.
We turn that into a ticket.
On the backend, we assign it toan agent, just like any, you
know, startup would have fortheir customer service system.
(27:33):
And we measure ourselves.
Our team in the mayor's officehere is held accountable.
We report out every week in ourstaff meeting to responding to
people within 24 hours and acertain threshold, 90 percent
resolved.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_15 (27:48):
hmm.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16 (27:48):
within 10 days.
And, you know, often it's,we're, it's an inquiry about a
permit, or it's reporting acrime and we gotta route you to
PD, or it's, or it's justfeedback.
I, I loved you did this, I hateyour vote on that, but people
deserve an answer.
to the best of our ability, wetry to get them a substantive,
honest answer in a timelyfashion and do it courteously.
(28:10):
And sometimes we can help peopleget in the bureaucracy where
they've been trying to get acity service that they just
don't know how to access.
So we, we actually handle about.
000 constituent inquiries peryear in the mayor's office in
San Jose, and we've got a wholesystem built around how to do
that.
Officially,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_15 (28:31):
Wow.
What is that average per day perperson?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-20 (28:36):
you know, it's
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (28:36):
That's a tough math question, right?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2 (28:38):
our.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (28:38):
Sorry.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2025 (28:39):
I mean, we have a small
neighborhood engagement team, ifyou will, neighborhood services
team.
know, they're averaging probably10 to 20 tickets a day, but
that's not their whole job.
They're actually out attendingneighborhood meetings and giving
presentations during the budget.
See, they're, they're doing alot of other things, but they're
often handling 10 to 20 ticketsa day that are coming in.
(29:01):
And again, some are really easy.
It's thanks so much.
Appreciate the feedback andothers are much more
complicated.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (29:07):
Yeah.
And all this sort of amounts toYou know, rebuilding trust like
we like we mentioned, right?
And if people can see thatperspective, that's usually a
sign that they may trust thatyour decision, even though they
disagree with it, may have beenwrong.
One that was founded on ethicaland ethical grounds, but, and,
(29:29):
and have impacts across thingsthat are important, safety,
education, economy, whatever.
Right.
And if they can trust thatthat's part of rebuilding trust,
I think.
How do you feel from when youset out on this journey?
With Brigade till now and now asthe mayor.
Do you feel like things areturning around a little bit in
(29:51):
the trust building venture?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2025 (29:57):
I do, but I don't want to take
anything for granted.
My view of our democracy and howthe system should work not
changed all that much beinginside government.
I have a greater appreciationfor the constraints.
I'm probably even more humbleabout what government can
achieve, but my fundamentalpremise when I was involved with
building brigade, the world'sfirst voter network, which you
(30:18):
were alluding to, and evenbefore that I worked on the
first app, which was causescalled causes on Facebook.
It was a little morephilanthropically focused, but
we had petitions and we builtadvocacy tools.
And so I spent about a decade, alittle over a decade, helping,
people building tools for peopleto self organize through the
(30:39):
internet, to talk about issues,do issue advocacy and through
with brigade actually supportexplicitly support candidates
for office.
And that.
Desire to see government be moretransparent, more responsive,
more bottom up and think aboutwhat the small town colonial
democracy of our democracy istoday in the 21st century with
(31:02):
330 some million Americanssomething that there's a through
line there for me from privatesector to public sector and I
feel strongly about theimportance of that.
As possible.
I do think we're, we're, we'remaking some progress, but in
California right now, I kind offeel like we're on a nice, a
nice edge.
And I think there's a lot atstake.
And I think you were pointing tothis.
(31:23):
I'm glad that you're so focusedon trust when government doesn't
demonstrate its competence anddeliver improved outcomes and
have that level of transparencyand direct communication.
and accountability.
That we've been talking aboutthroughout this conversation.
(31:44):
When we don't do that well, thatwe run the risk of losing our,
our democracy to an extreme.
Now, whether that's an extremeon the left or the right you
know, whether it's veeringtoward communism or fascist, I
mean, it can go eitherdirection.
It kind of is a big circle thatcomes back around, but, but
that's what motivates me bigpicture, which is I want people
(32:07):
to believe.
In not just in their government,I want them to believe in
themselves and our American wayof life and that government's a
vehicle for us to solve problemstogether and to create a better
life, collective life forourselves as a community.
And that's why I'm trying to befocused, trying to prioritize
(32:28):
the things the community caresmost about.
I'm trying to be verycommunicative, even when it's
painful.
I'm trying to be veryaccountable and be honest about
when we're falling short andhold everybody else accountable.
I'm trying to set appropriateexpectations.
I'm trying to move the needle ina measurable way on things like
safety and homelessness andcleanliness and permitting
speeds.
Because I think the best way tobuild trust is yes, transparency
(32:51):
and communication, but at theend of the day, people just want
things to work.
And if we fail California todeliver the outcomes our
community expects and deserves,the reasonable outcomes, again,
we can't be everything toeveryone, but communities that
are safe, that are clean, weWhere everyone is housed, where
you can get a decent educationat your local public school and
(33:11):
therefore have a, have a, havecareer options.
These kinds of things, where youcan, you, you own property and
you want to invest in it and,and build housing or jobs or
whatever it is, or improve it insome way, you're not waiting
years just to get permission forthings that we, we all generally
agree are good things.
Those are the kinds of thingsthat we will be measured on.
And ultimately we have to becompetent.
(33:33):
Government has to work and hasto work well.
And the stakes are higherbecause the private sector keeps
innovating.
I mean, the iPhone went from notexisting 20 years ago to being
an incredibly powerful tool.
And it's all in your pocket.
Expectate, I mean, the bar keepsgoing up.
I use Amazon.
I mean, as an analogy, I can,with a couple of clicks, have
(33:55):
something magically appear on myporch the next day, government's
got to up its game becauseresidents are also consumers of
all these other privateservices, and they keep getting
better every year.
And so that's, that's to mewhere the, where the battle for
trust really is.
It's in, it's in competence.
It's in making government workbetter.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_152 (34:14):
So, last question just to follow up
on that.
How, why is it taking so longfor, like why is the
accountability thing such a bigdeal now?
Probably should have been a bigdeal for, you know, 250 years.
Right?
But why now is theaccountability thing, and how do
we make sure that we cancontinue to, to, Transparency
(34:35):
and accountability.
Big, those are the big words.
Everyone says yes to them.
But, you know, but what do we,what do we have to do to make
that the reality that we dealwith to rebuild that trust?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (34:46):
Yeah, and I, I think these things
generally go in cycles, but theylook different in any given
moment because society'sdifferent and our technology's
different.
I mean, certainly there havebeen.
Moments of more and lessaccountability.
You had the robber barons kindof move in an incredible
concentration of power andwealth in the country and an
(35:07):
overwhelming on government fromvarious interests that led to
the backlash of the progressiveera and Teddy Roosevelt and this
sort of trust busting movement100 years ago.
And so you have these cycleswhere we have to renew.
(35:28):
We have to get back to basics,we have to get back to our core
principles, and recommitourselves to the American
project, reimagine it for thismoment, and what's different in
this moment, I mean one, we'regoing through a generational
change, you are seeing More.
I'm sort of an older millennial.
I suppose I was born in 82.
(35:48):
42 years old.
I mean, I think you're seeing anew generation politics.
And I'm no longer the youngestperson on the city council or
the youngest local elected.
There are others.
And so I think generationallythere's a shift.
But I also think technology, Italked, we talked a lot early on
about performance management andone of the most valuable lessons
I learned from working in techwas this approach to continuous
(36:11):
learning and improvement a realtransparency and honesty about
when things aren't working andthen pivoting quickly.
That's a cultural shift thattechnology is driving.
sure there have been pastversions of that.
It's just going to lookdifferent in this age.
And so we need to use, and wedidn't get into it deeply in
this conversation, but we'reincreasingly using artificial
(36:32):
intelligence to improve cityservices.
And that's the next bigplatform.
And that's going, that itself isgoing to change what governance
looks like in the comingdecades.
So I think it's just an everevolving.
evolving conversation.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1524 (36:47):
We didn't get into Gov.
ai, which San Jose isspearheading.
I'm part of.
It's a great thing.
Yeah, it's awesome.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (36:54):
maybe you'll have me back.
We'll talk about gov AI nexttime.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_152 (36:57):
Ah, yeah, that would, that would be
perfect.
But I, I want to thank you foryour time.
And I really appreciate what youdo.
By the way, I'm 42 also.
So we experience the world inthe same generational way, I
guess.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (37:10):
Yeah, I love it.
That's why this conversation wasso easy.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (37:15):
That's right.
That's right.
We've got a lot of overlap otherthan the hair.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (37:21):
Well, mine's all going gray anyway.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_15244 (37:24):
I do about one ball joke per day.
So you were, you were, you wereready.
You're right there for it.
Thanks for everything.
It was great having you.
And yeah, next time we'll getinto the, some of that other
stuff.
Thank you.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (37:36):
Well,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_15 (37:37):
It's good seeing you.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2 (37:38):
your time and, and you know,
appreciate what you're doingwith the pod, keep it up,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (37:42):
Thank you so much.
Take care.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2 (37:43):
take care.
Evan, thanks for having me on.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_15 (00:01):
It's a pleasure, sir.
Pleasure to see you.
It's a pleasure to have this,this time to talk about your
incredible journey.
And how far you've come from thecivic work that you've done for
so long and the businessesyou've created and Brigade
specifically I'm excited to talkabout and capture some of that
(00:23):
entrepreneurial mindset as the,the mayor of San Jose.
So how do you, as anentrepreneur, as a CEO of a
civic tech company, think aboutthe government space?
Where are the overlaps, thedisparities, government culture
versus the entrepreneurialmindset?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (00:42):
Yeah.
Evan, I, think, about that a lotand, and I think there's often a
shorthand people use.
That is not really fair that we,you know, people will sometimes
say, I just want government torun like a business.
And there are some reallyfundamental differences between
the two that we're not going tobe able to avoid.
I've been in business.
(01:03):
I've built startups that focusedon a customer.
We're incredibly agile and it'sa wonderful environment to be
in.
And there's a lot we can bringover to the government sector.
And I'll speak to that in amoment, but just on a couple of
the differences.
You know, in the private sector,you can offer a very narrow set
of goods and services orservices, and you can focus on a
(01:26):
very small segment of the totalcustomer base, the total
population in government.
We have a responsibility forserving everyone.
Without distinction, we have toserve everyone equally well.
We are in far too many lines ofbusiness that are not
synergistic.
We're doing wastewater treatmentfacility, running an airport
(01:50):
purchasing power, paving roads,providing police and fire
response, running afterschoolprograms in the libraries.
It's a very diverse portfolio.
And even when we do a reallygood job.
not like revenue just increasesand we can plow the profits back
into more R and D and betterproducts.
And, and you know, it's a,there's a real lag over time.
(02:12):
Good governance leads to morerevenue in the real long run,
but it's not a tight feedbackloop.
However, what I learned in theprivate sector that was just eye
opening for me going through theprocess of building a couple of
startups was the power ofperformance management, being
able to.
Pick a few key goals and, youknow, frame up hypotheses,
(02:36):
measure performance, and builda, a continuous learning
environment where you're lookingat data frequently, you're
making adjustments, and you'reholding yourself accountable for
making steady progress toward ameasurable outcome.
And I think we could, we wouldbenefit in government from
organizing ourselves.
In a similar fashion.
(02:56):
That's what I've been trying todo in San Jose.
My first two years as mayor.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (03:01):
Yeah.
How do you, how do you make surethat the, what your, you know,
in the incentives andmotivations are different in
business, right?
So how do you make sure thatfolks are incentivized,
motivated in a way to continueto hit those targets?
And I should say, how do you setthose targets and how do you
make sure people are motivatedto continue to hit them?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (03:22):
Yeah.
Well, you know, I actually findthat in the public sector
motivation is generally not asmuch of a challenge as people
think.
We get into the public sectorbecause we want to serve the
community.
We want to make our community abetter place.
And in the private sector, ifyou're doing it right, you're
obsessively focused on yourcustomer.
So that's an area where thereactually is more commonality,
(03:44):
whether you're customer centricor.
Or constituent centric.
It's a service industry.
You're focused on how to delivervalue to someone.
I think what's challenging ingovernment is that the
expectations can beoverwhelming.
We have come to expectgovernment to solve every
problem, to solve itimmediately, no matter how
(04:04):
entrenched, how complicated itis, or how much it actually
requires social change andcultural change.
And we often just want to payour taxes and throw it over the
fence and say government.
Go fix the broken school system,go fix the healthcare system
when so much of it is areflection of our society and
our culture.
And so that can be challenging.
What I've tried to do, at leastat City Hall, is identify the
(04:29):
top handful of goals that thecommunity has told us they
expect us to do better on.
Where it's within our purview,crime.
Reducing homelessness, cleaningup the city, speeding up permits
to build more housing, being aneasier place to bring a, bring
jobs and, and create economicopportunity, and then create
(04:51):
some metrics around those thingsand have a North Star goal.
I'll just take homelessness.
It's the most top of mind andmaybe easiest to explain.
Our community expects us to beon the path to you.
Zero people living outside intents.
That's a very worthy goal.
It's a goal we all share.
We're all motivated to achieveit, but then you have to start
(05:11):
breaking it down.
You have to start formulatinghypotheses and saying, okay, we
need to do a certain amount ofprevention to stop people from
falling into homelessness.
We need to intervene earlier anddo a better job of mental health
care and drug treatment.
We need to do a better job ofjail reentry because that's a
source of people intohomelessness.
We need to build basic shelterbecause when you do the math.
(05:33):
We can't wait to build a brandnew apartment for everybody.
It's too slow and too expensive.
So you start to formulatehypotheses, program your budget
around that, go execute, Andthen look at the data and say,
are we moving the needle or not?
And I'm trying to bring thatperformance management mindset,
that level of transparency tocity hall on an issue when I
think historically people havegenerally thrown their hands up
(05:55):
and said, I'm just going toblame somebody else.
I'm going to blame the federalgovernment, or I'm going to
blame the County or whatever.
I've tried to take a veryrigorous approach to how we
actually break it down and makesteady progress.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_152 (06:06):
How is, how is the homeless part of
that progress going?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (06:10):
Well, we we've made A bit of progress
in San Jose.
I'm excited about what's comingin the year ahead.
In my first two years in office,we had a very big debate around
our budget and the primarystrategies we were funding.
And I'm a believer in amultifaceted approach to
homelessness that focuses oncost per outcome.
(06:31):
Prior to taking office, we werespending 80 percent of our
dollars on homelessness on onestrategy.
Which was building brand newpublicly subsidized apartments
that would be deed restricted.
So affordable apartments as theprimary strategy for getting
people off the street or havingan alternative to the straights.
And we certainly need moreaffordable housing.
(06:52):
And that's a whole otherconversation around housing
supply, permitting fees land useconstruction costs that we
should get, we can get into ifyou're interested.
looking at the math, I came tothe conclusion and did some work
to get our council to comearound to the idea.
That we have an underdevelopedshelter and treatment system in
(07:15):
California.
We need to be much scrappierabout building basic dignified
shelter with securitysanitation, three meals a day in
case management, and get peopleconnected to supportive services
faster.
And that that's a better paththan waiting to build a brand
new million dollar apartment sixyears from now, just to get
somebody off the streets.
That was a very real debate.
(07:36):
We have shifted dollars and thisyear.
We will be opening over 1, 000new shelter placements, mostly
individual beds with a tiny roomwith a door that locks, many of
them modular units, some areconverted motel rooms, and we
will be able to double or morethan double our shelter capacity
and immediately move over 1, 000people off of our streets this
(07:58):
year.
So I'm very excited aboutsometimes it takes a couple of
years to really get there.
It's not as quick as buildingsoftware, but but we're making
steady progress and we've seenit.
Two years ago, over the last twoyears, we actually saw our
number of people living outsidedecline by about 15 percent.
The number bounces around, butwe actually measured a decline
two counts in a row.
(08:19):
The rest of the state was up.
So there's an indication therethe data's not perfectly, it's
not precise, but there's a sensethat we may have topped out and
that we're starting to comedown, which is a very good sign.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (08:31):
Sure.
Yeah.
It's always hard.
There's confounding variablesfor everything, so, you know,
every, and even if, even if,even if there's not, someone
will find them.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (08:41):
Yeah, even it's just as an excuse, but
yes, you're right.
It's complicated.
These are complicated.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (08:46):
Yeah, it is.
Do you find, do you find onissues like that?
That even when there is successthat folks will come up with
things confounding variablesthat may not be the primary
sources of concern for you orthat don't really invalidate the
data.
And how do you navigate thatsort of like those, those
(09:08):
difficult issues, those complextopics where that does happen a
lot?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (09:13):
Well, I think it's just human nature
that we want to simplify thestory.
We love store from the time.
We're children.
I have two little kids.
We love stories of just of goodand evil things that are just
black and white.
We it's just I think the way ourbrain is wired because
complexity is is hard I findmyself often in community
(09:37):
meetings.
Where people are wanting to tellme it's just one thing it's it's
just greedy developers havesomehow prevented us from
building the housing we needwhich doesn't actually logically
make a lot of sense but that's anarrative or everybody out there
is addicted and mentally ill andwe should just put them all in a
(10:00):
mental health hospital and youknow there are often there's
generally a kernel of truth inevery story.
of these popular notions,popular myths, we don't have
enough housing.
That's for sure.
The housing is not affordableand the cost to build it is too
high.
I happen to think of that moreas a, as a market failure in
(10:21):
part driven by governmentregulation.
We certainly have people on ourstreets who are trapped there
with untreated addiction andmental illness.
That is a major issue.
It's also true though, thatwe've got in our community, a
quarter to a third of folks outthere who are working.
And so, you know, it's just thereality is more complicated.
And so you've really got tobreak things down.
I think the nice thing abouttechnology these days is that it
(10:45):
is easier and easier to andvisualize and in this case sort
of triage.
the population and be able tosay to people, okay, we've got
roughly this many people in thissituation.
We've got this many families.
We've got this many people whohave a mental health issue and
we can kind of better thecommunity, honestly, what the
(11:07):
need is and not default to thisvery simple answer of, it's just
one thing.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (11:14):
Right.
And did, did, did they respondto that with an open mind in
general for you?
Mm hmm.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-1 (11:20):
Depends on how you do it.
I mean, I, I was, I'm a formerpublic school teacher before I
was in tech.
I'd spent two years doing teachfor America or beginning of my
career.
I taught middle school, seventhand eighth grade English and
history.
And I don't know how much itscales, but I really personally
enjoy being in that communitymeeting with 50 neighbors who
(11:45):
are rightly frustrated.
feel that their government isnot delivering.
For them.
And that's not at all specificto San Jose.
This is right now voters inCalifornia.
I'd say this is generally truenationally, but especially in
California are frustrated.
There's a gap between.
Their government and the dailyexperience they have, and they
(12:07):
don't feel that we're deliveringthe outcomes we need to deliver.
That's why I ran for mayor.
I saw that gap.
I felt that frustration as ahomeowner, a private sector,
entrepreneur, a parent.
And I wanted to fix things likehomelessness and crime and
invest in infrastructure and soforth.
So it's a great question.
I think people often initiallycome in with their frustration.
(12:30):
Sometimes their righteous anger.
But when you're face to face,one of the things I do like
about the offline world, eventhough I use technology so much.
that you can really looksomebody in the eye, empathize
with them, acknowledge theirvery valid frustration, but also
share with them some otherperspectives.
And I find that actually we'revery lucky, at least in San
(12:51):
Jose, to have a that'sempathetic and open and wants to
learn.
We're the capital of SiliconValley.
We've got a lot of people here.
with STEM degrees who aregenuinely curious about how
things work, and they ask greatquestions.
And so I love that.
I love that dialogue with thecommunity.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025 (13:09):
That's, that's interesting.
Do you find, I mean, in termsof, I mean, even in terms of age
of people getting involved, likeI've always found in, in, in my
civics journey I was alwaysprobably the youngest for a very
long time, in a lot of, by 20 or30 or 40 years in some cases,
right?
It's not very, it's not apopular thing to go to your
neighborhood of meetings and asa, geez, I was in my 20s.
(13:31):
When I started doing that,right?
do you find, because you're inSilicon Beach, that the people
who are involved tend to beeven, more, more than other
places?
I mean, I guess it would makesense that the folks, there are
Silicon Beach people.
Sorry, I live in Silicon Beach.
You're in Silicon Valley.
(13:51):
Do you find that there's more ofthose folks that do get involved
from the Silicon Valley,businesses?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (13:59):
Yeah.
We have a very engaged andeducated community here and
extremely diverse.
We are.
And this is true for Californiabroadly, but we're over 40
percent foreign born in San Joseand a really interesting mixture
of folks from all over theworld, over Latin America, Asia.
and, and other places.
And, and people really doconnected to their neighborhood,
(14:24):
their faith community, theschool, their kid attends, we're
a city as all cities are a cityof, of neighborhoods and
neighbors and at a great, youknow, fortunately a great place
to raise a family.
We're a very family friendlycity.
We're the largest city inNorthern California.
And as I look out from city hallhere.
sprawling neighborhoods.
As far as the eye can see, a lotof families here have built
(14:47):
their American dream in SanJose.
And what I find in terms ofcivic engagement is there, there
are different things that hookpeople to be civically engaged.
It's usually life experience.
a bad experience.
It could be a, I don't know, afamily member being
incarcerated.
It could be an inspire.
It could be a great experience.
It could be a civics teacher whoinspires you.
(15:09):
I do think we tend to see peoplebecoming more civically attuned
and engaged as they progressthrough life.
In part, maybe because they havea greater stake in society.
I find that when people buy ahome and they're looking at
their property tax bills, theystart to ask more questions when
people have kids.
They start to really think aboutthe broader societal issues.
(15:32):
They start to really think aboutthe quality of the schools,
safety in the parks, programmingat the library and the community
center.
So I think life events tend todrive civic engagement, but I do
think we're lucky to be in aplace here that has drawn so
much talent from all over theworld.
I think it leads to a reallyinteresting civic culture with,
with a lot of engagement.
I'll just give you one quickexample.
(15:53):
I came into office.
identifying this need for moreblight eradication.
I knew that city governmentcouldn't do it all ourselves.
Every Saturday morning at 9am wepartner with a neighborhood
association or a faith communityor a local employer and bring
volunteers together to do acleanup project or a
beautification project in thecity, whether it's picking up
(16:13):
litter, spreading mulch in thepark, covering up graffiti or
painting a sound barrier,painting a mural, planting
trees, whole variety of things.
And
evan-meyer_1_01-16-202 (16:22):
internet has videos of you out there
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (16:24):
Yeah,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (16:24):
doing that.
That's great.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2 (16:26):
much every Saturday, really.
And we've seen about a 300percent increase in
volunteerism.
At city volunteer events overthe last couple of years because
we're giving people moreopportunities in their
neighborhoods.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (16:41):
That's awesome.
You know, one of the things Iheard you say during your
brigade days was that increasedparticipation can solve
problems.
A lot of the problems thatpeople have with government,
right?
A lot I think the one youmentioned was like special
interests, for example, right?
The, the, the wash there, itcan, the wash, it can wash out
(17:03):
the, the power of specialinterests and the, and, and that
machine and so it's comfortingthat that's actually, it's
continually building for you interms of more people getting
involved.
Do you still feel that way?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2025 (17:19):
I do evan and you know, just
fundamentally always believed Inand loved the the grassroots
bottom up version of governmentand maybe I had a great teacher
and maybe I oversimplified in myown mind the sort of small town
Democracy at the founding of thenation, colonial democracy, the
(17:41):
small town.
And look, there were, let's bereally clear that it was
exclusive to white men withproperty for the most part.
I, so it's, there's never.
A perfect analog for this, butidea of people coming together,
forming government to, todeliver public goods, to deliver
(18:02):
for the common good and agovernment that was really close
to the people, reallyaccountable to the people and
where the people had a directrole to play.
discussing and debating theissues of the day, formulating
their, their needs andprioritizing them, deciding
through their taxes, what toinvest in solving that sort of
(18:22):
basic form of of a democraticrepublic that was the founding
story of our nation.
think we just have to keepadapting to our time and place.
We're a bigger, more complicatedcountry, but fundamentally I
think we get the best outcomes.
When we have the highestpossible levels of civic
(18:43):
engagement, when everyone'sinvolved, everyone's engaged and
educated, when a diverse rangeof people are running for
office, when people are reallyscrutinizing those candidates.
And I do think the more popularparticipation there is, the more
that we, we wash out or dilutethe power of concentrated
interest, concentrated money.
In the system and make thatgovernment more reflective.
(19:06):
I will say though, because thatcan, you know, verge on an
unhealthy level of, call itpopulism, it is a two-way
street.
And I think Ben Franklin's pithyquote about it's a, you know,
democracy or republic if youcan, if you can keep it, it, it,
it was so prescient because yes,we need a highly engaged
(19:29):
electorate that holds usaccountable.
And it's paying attention andensures that government is truly
working in their interest ontheir priorities, using common
sense, being highly accountableand pushing itself to deliver.
yet it's a two way street inthat public officials other
(19:49):
government leaders need to beable to communicate honestly
with the public about ourconstraints and our limitations.
And I referenced this earlier.
can't solve everything throughthe vehicle of government.
And sometimes our leaders needto reflect back to us.
That, it's also our culture thatneeds to evolve.
It's also our own individualdecisions.
(20:10):
I mean health is a great exampleof this.
We could simply pay our taxesfor Medicare and Medi Cal and
health, you know, the, theNational Institute of Health and
all the rest and say,government, make us all healthy.
Or we can have leaders who say,here's what we can do through
the healthcare system, buthere's what you, here's what the
research says and here's whatyou need to do, individual
(20:30):
American, to be healthy.
It's a two way street.
You cannot just throw it overthe fence and expect government
to solve every problem for youeither.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (20:40):
Yeah, and where, where's the limit in
people's minds where they havedecided, right, it's very
subjective of what they thinktheir taxpayer dollar is going
to and what should be done forthem, right?
I get the entitlements in thesense.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (20:55):
Yeah, and what's feasible?
You know, we pay a lot in taxes,but that doesn't mean the
government's capable ofdelivering everything or doing
all the things we want it to do.
And so we have to
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (21:05):
Right.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-202 (21:06):
We have to prioritize.
I've tried to be really clear.
I ran on this back to basicsmessage.
I was really honest with thecommunity.
There are like 200 things we doat the city.
I'm going to really focus onmaking sure these five things
are great.
You need to be able to call 9 11 and know somebody's going to
pick up and dispatch afirefighter, police officer
quickly and that you're going toget a high quality of service
and you're going to be safe.
You know, we need to, those arethe basics.
(21:27):
pick five things we're going todo excellently before we start
adding more things.
To our portfolio.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (21:35):
Yeah, when you say basics, I mean, it
literally means basics.
It's like Maslow's hierarchy ofneeds.
If people don't feel safe, thenhow, right, I mean, what else
matters after safety?
Lots of things, but if you don'thave that, you don't have, you
can't worry about anything else.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16 (21:52):
right.
And we have,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (21:53):
Right.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01 (21:54):
districts that are dedicated to education.
They need to be held accountablefor doing an excellent job.
have counties which areprimarily responsible for health
and other basic social safetynet services.
They need to be held accountablefor doing that.
Cities.
First and foremost areresponsible for public safety.
That's police fire, emergencymanagement, response,
(22:14):
prevention, infrastructure,roads, sewers, streetlights,
parks.
You know, these, these likebasic local infrastructure.
And then beyond that, You shouldbe able to expect that if you
are a property owner and youwant to invest in your land the
rules of the Road are going tobe clear and permitting isn't
(22:36):
going to take three years andcost hundreds of thousands of
dollars We need to make iteasier to facilitate people's
investment in their own propertybecause we land land use is
another local control that isGenerally given to cities.
So when you really strip down,what is the city responsible for
tends to be things like publicsafety infrastructure and land
use, basically permitting.
(22:57):
And then there's a lot of otherthings people want from us, but
we better be really good atthose things before we
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (23:02):
Right.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2025 (23:03):
a bunch of new programs.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (23:04):
Right.
You're boiling the oceanotherwise, I guess, as they say.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (23:08):
Yeah,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (23:08):
Right.
Heard that too many times.
I mean, I mean, I don't know ifthat's a business thing or a
software thing, but,
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-1 (23:15):
analogy many times.
I reference it occasionally.
It's a good one.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_15 (23:19):
Yeah or, or another one is you know,
businesses don't die ofstarvation, they die of
indigestion.
Have you heard that one?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (23:26):
Yeah, it's good.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (23:29):
Which is like, which is sort of
similar.
It's like if you don't focusyour resources on a problem that
you can solve and you spreadyourselves too thin with the
resources you have, would yousay that that's a similarity
between business and government?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (23:44):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think that and it'sit's even more endemic to
government because it's somebodyelse's money and the community,
the customer in this case isconstantly coming to us with new
needs and we're in a morevulnerable position in terms of
saying no, because we have to beresponsive to the community.
A, you know, Steve Jobs can tellhis customers, here's what
(24:05):
you're getting.
It's going to be great.
And he can say no to 1000 otherthings.
proverbial Steve jobs, right?
The great kind of corporatevisionary.
That's hard to do when, whenyou're up for election every 2
to 4 years and your,constituents who will vote on
whether or not you stay inoffice or asking you to do a
bunch of things.
So it is a constant battle ingovernment to constrain
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (24:27):
Right.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-20 (24:29):
And it's always this trade off of
are we in a moment where we cantake on another responsibility
and expand a bit?
Or do we need to double down anddo better at our fundamental
responsibilities?
I think it's very clear inCalifornia right now.
That we have overexpanded andwe're not delivering on the
basics.
I think that's
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_15 (24:46):
Yep.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (24:46):
clear variety of so that's a failure.
I think a major failure mode ingovernment is the desire to be
everything to everyone is alwayssay yes to our bosses, the
public.
And that's where you need matureleadership that says there are
trade offs.
We got to prioritize here.
And then another failure mode,of course, is, is special
interest capture, where thegroups that give the most money
(25:07):
in politics also.
Often drive some of theprioritization, the policy work,
the budget decisions, and thatthat could become a very
destructive feedback loop.
So I think there are differentways that we can we can go.
In in public leadership,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (25:25):
Sure.
Well, you do a really nice jobat explaining it.
I think part of what I've seenis that so, it's not explained
well to people, to the common,the angry person at the council
meeting, doesn't reallyunderstand that perspective,
right?
Doesn't understand thatdecisions are a matrix of
possibilities that you have toweigh.
You only get to do this on, whenyou vote.
(25:47):
But the decision could be 51 49.
And that's for the voting forthe president too.
It could be for anything.
Voting is up and down,
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (25:55):
Yeah,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_152 (25:55):
but the but the re the, the, the,
what made you pick that vote?
Everyone can have differentreasons for that.
And you know, you do a good jobof ex of explaining that.
Do you, are you able to do thatat council with, with with, with
folks who come in who are justheated
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2025 (26:11):
I tried to I, I told you, I prefer
the community meeting with 50people where we're having a long
form conversation about a topiclike homelessness, where I have
an hour with people to heartheir good questions and really,
Tell them, well, yeah, here's,here's what we're seeing in
other jurisdictions, or here'swhat we've tried, or here's the
actual, here's the data, here'sthe, you know, it's, it's just,
(26:33):
these things are always morecomplicated as you get into
them, and that doesn't meanthere aren't answers, but it's
worth having that context.
I think one of the challenges ofpublic meetings, and I don't
love the format, is because youget a lot of people coming in
wanting to speak on a wide rangeof issues, you just sort of give
everybody two minutesindividually.
That's not substantive.
I mean, we, it's useful.
It's an important outlet.
(26:54):
But people generally don't getwhat they need.
And actually, typically we haveso much volume that we're not
responding to each person.
We're listening.
Sometimes I'm taking notes orasking my staff to follow up
with people.
It's not the best, it's not thebest format.
For giving people what theyneed, is why we've tried a bunch
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_152 (27:12):
Hmm
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (27:12):
other things.
We we set up one of the things Iborrowed from my private sector
experiences.
We set up a ticketing system,basically a customer support
portal where you can go to thewebsite.
You can access FAQs.
You can submit a question.
We turn that into a ticket.
On the backend, we assign it toan agent, just like any, you
know, startup would have fortheir customer service system.
(27:33):
And we measure ourselves.
Our team in the mayor's officehere is held accountable.
We report out every week in ourstaff meeting to responding to
people within 24 hours and acertain threshold, 90 percent
resolved.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_15 (27:48):
hmm.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16 (27:48):
within 10 days.
And, you know, often it's,we're, it's an inquiry about a
permit, or it's reporting acrime and we gotta route you to
PD, or it's, or it's justfeedback.
I, I loved you did this, I hateyour vote on that, but people
deserve an answer.
to the best of our ability, wetry to get them a substantive,
honest answer in a timelyfashion and do it courteously.
(28:10):
And sometimes we can help peopleget in the bureaucracy where
they've been trying to get acity service that they just
don't know how to access.
So we, we actually handle about.
000 constituent inquiries peryear in the mayor's office in
San Jose, and we've got a wholesystem built around how to do
that.
Officially,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_15 (28:31):
Wow.
What is that average per day perperson?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-20 (28:36):
you know, it's
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (28:36):
That's a tough math question, right?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2 (28:38):
our.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (28:38):
Sorry.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2025 (28:39):
I mean, we have a small
neighborhood engagement team, ifyou will, neighborhood services
team.
know, they're averaging probably10 to 20 tickets a day, but
that's not their whole job.
They're actually out attendingneighborhood meetings and giving
presentations during the budget.
See, they're, they're doing alot of other things, but they're
often handling 10 to 20 ticketsa day that are coming in.
(29:01):
And again, some are really easy.
It's thanks so much.
Appreciate the feedback andothers are much more
complicated.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (29:07):
Yeah.
And all this sort of amounts toYou know, rebuilding trust like
we like we mentioned, right?
And if people can see thatperspective, that's usually a
sign that they may trust thatyour decision, even though they
disagree with it, may have beenwrong.
One that was founded on ethicaland ethical grounds, but, and,
(29:29):
and have impacts across thingsthat are important, safety,
education, economy, whatever.
Right.
And if they can trust thatthat's part of rebuilding trust,
I think.
How do you feel from when youset out on this journey?
With Brigade till now and now asthe mayor.
Do you feel like things areturning around a little bit in
(29:51):
the trust building venture?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2025 (29:57):
I do, but I don't want to take
anything for granted.
My view of our democracy and howthe system should work not
changed all that much beinginside government.
I have a greater appreciationfor the constraints.
I'm probably even more humbleabout what government can
achieve, but my fundamentalpremise when I was involved with
building brigade, the world'sfirst voter network, which you
(30:18):
were alluding to, and evenbefore that I worked on the
first app, which was causescalled causes on Facebook.
It was a little morephilanthropically focused, but
we had petitions and we builtadvocacy tools.
And so I spent about a decade, alittle over a decade, helping,
people building tools for peopleto self organize through the
(30:39):
internet, to talk about issues,do issue advocacy and through
with brigade actually supportexplicitly support candidates
for office.
And that.
Desire to see government be moretransparent, more responsive,
more bottom up and think aboutwhat the small town colonial
democracy of our democracy istoday in the 21st century with
(31:02):
330 some million Americanssomething that there's a through
line there for me from privatesector to public sector and I
feel strongly about theimportance of that.
As possible.
I do think we're, we're, we'remaking some progress, but in
California right now, I kind offeel like we're on a nice, a
nice edge.
And I think there's a lot atstake.
And I think you were pointing tothis.
(31:23):
I'm glad that you're so focusedon trust when government doesn't
demonstrate its competence anddeliver improved outcomes and
have that level of transparencyand direct communication.
and accountability.
That we've been talking aboutthroughout this conversation.
(31:44):
When we don't do that well, thatwe run the risk of losing our,
our democracy to an extreme.
Now, whether that's an extremeon the left or the right you
know, whether it's veeringtoward communism or fascist, I
mean, it can go eitherdirection.
It kind of is a big circle thatcomes back around, but, but
that's what motivates me bigpicture, which is I want people
(32:07):
to believe.
In not just in their government,I want them to believe in
themselves and our American wayof life and that government's a
vehicle for us to solve problemstogether and to create a better
life, collective life forourselves as a community.
And that's why I'm trying to befocused, trying to prioritize
(32:28):
the things the community caresmost about.
I'm trying to be verycommunicative, even when it's
painful.
I'm trying to be veryaccountable and be honest about
when we're falling short andhold everybody else accountable.
I'm trying to set appropriateexpectations.
I'm trying to move the needle ina measurable way on things like
safety and homelessness andcleanliness and permitting
speeds.
Because I think the best way tobuild trust is yes, transparency
(32:51):
and communication, but at theend of the day, people just want
things to work.
And if we fail California todeliver the outcomes our
community expects and deserves,the reasonable outcomes, again,
we can't be everything toeveryone, but communities that
are safe, that are clean, weWhere everyone is housed, where
you can get a decent educationat your local public school and
(33:11):
therefore have a, have a, havecareer options.
These kinds of things, where youcan, you, you own property and
you want to invest in it and,and build housing or jobs or
whatever it is, or improve it insome way, you're not waiting
years just to get permission forthings that we, we all generally
agree are good things.
Those are the kinds of thingsthat we will be measured on.
And ultimately we have to becompetent.
(33:33):
Government has to work and hasto work well.
And the stakes are higherbecause the private sector keeps
innovating.
I mean, the iPhone went from notexisting 20 years ago to being
an incredibly powerful tool.
And it's all in your pocket.
Expectate, I mean, the bar keepsgoing up.
I use Amazon.
I mean, as an analogy, I can,with a couple of clicks, have
(33:55):
something magically appear on myporch the next day, government's
got to up its game becauseresidents are also consumers of
all these other privateservices, and they keep getting
better every year.
And so that's, that's to mewhere the, where the battle for
trust really is.
It's in, it's in competence.
It's in making government workbetter.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_152 (34:14):
So, last question just to follow up
on that.
How, why is it taking so longfor, like why is the
accountability thing such a bigdeal now?
Probably should have been a bigdeal for, you know, 250 years.
Right?
But why now is theaccountability thing, and how do
we make sure that we cancontinue to, to, Transparency
(34:35):
and accountability.
Big, those are the big words.
Everyone says yes to them.
But, you know, but what do we,what do we have to do to make
that the reality that we dealwith to rebuild that trust?
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (34:46):
Yeah, and I, I think these things
generally go in cycles, but theylook different in any given
moment because society'sdifferent and our technology's
different.
I mean, certainly there havebeen.
Moments of more and lessaccountability.
You had the robber barons kindof move in an incredible
concentration of power andwealth in the country and an
(35:07):
overwhelming on government fromvarious interests that led to
the backlash of the progressiveera and Teddy Roosevelt and this
sort of trust busting movement100 years ago.
And so you have these cycleswhere we have to renew.
(35:28):
We have to get back to basics,we have to get back to our core
principles, and recommitourselves to the American
project, reimagine it for thismoment, and what's different in
this moment, I mean one, we'regoing through a generational
change, you are seeing More.
I'm sort of an older millennial.
I suppose I was born in 82.
(35:48):
42 years old.
I mean, I think you're seeing anew generation politics.
And I'm no longer the youngestperson on the city council or
the youngest local elected.
There are others.
And so I think generationallythere's a shift.
But I also think technology, Italked, we talked a lot early on
about performance management andone of the most valuable lessons
I learned from working in techwas this approach to continuous
(36:11):
learning and improvement a realtransparency and honesty about
when things aren't working andthen pivoting quickly.
That's a cultural shift thattechnology is driving.
sure there have been pastversions of that.
It's just going to lookdifferent in this age.
And so we need to use, and wedidn't get into it deeply in
this conversation, but we'reincreasingly using artificial
(36:32):
intelligence to improve cityservices.
And that's the next bigplatform.
And that's going, that itself isgoing to change what governance
looks like in the comingdecades.
So I think it's just an everevolving.
evolving conversation.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1524 (36:47):
We didn't get into Gov.
ai, which San Jose isspearheading.
I'm part of.
It's a great thing.
Yeah, it's awesome.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (36:54):
maybe you'll have me back.
We'll talk about gov AI nexttime.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_152 (36:57):
Ah, yeah, that would, that would be
perfect.
But I, I want to thank you foryour time.
And I really appreciate what youdo.
By the way, I'm 42 also.
So we experience the world inthe same generational way, I
guess.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (37:10):
Yeah, I love it.
That's why this conversation wasso easy.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_ (37:15):
That's right.
That's right.
We've got a lot of overlap otherthan the hair.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (37:21):
Well, mine's all going gray anyway.
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_15244 (37:24):
I do about one ball joke per day.
So you were, you were, you wereready.
You're right there for it.
Thanks for everything.
It was great having you.
And yeah, next time we'll getinto the, some of that other
stuff.
Thank you.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16- (37:36):
Well,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_15 (37:37):
It's good seeing you.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2 (37:38):
your time and, and you know,
appreciate what you're doingwith the pod, keep it up,
evan-meyer_1_01-16-2025_1 (37:42):
Thank you so much.
Take care.
mayor-matt-mahan_1_01-16-2 (37:43):
take care.
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