Sam Liccardo Biography
Sam Liccardo is an American attorney and politician from California, serving as Mayor of San Jose. Liccardo was elected mayor in November 2014. In 2006, Liccardo was elected to the first of his two terms on the City Council, where he led efforts to revitalize its downtown, preserve San José’s hillsides and open space, boost funding for affordable housing, and open a world-class soccer stadium for the San José Earthquakes.
Sam Liccardo served as a founding board member of Cristo Rey San Jose High School, an innovative Jesuit school that propels students from low-income immigrant families to college and beyond.
Sam Liccardo Age
Sam Liccardo was born on April 16, 1970, in Saratoga, California. Sam Liccardo grew up in Saratoga, California. Sam Liccardo is 49 years old as of 2019.
Sam Liccardo Education
Sam Liccardo grew up in Saratoga, California and graduated from Bellarmine College Preparatory in 1987. Liccardo studied at Georgetown University and earned his law diploma at Harvard Law School. Prior to his election to public office in 2006, he served as a criminal prosecutor in the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office.
Sam Liccardo Wife
Sam Liccardo is married to Jessica García-Kohl in 2013. Sam and his wife, Jessica, live in the Northside neighborhood, north of Downtown, within blocks of Jessica’s childhood home, where Sam’s father also grew up, and where Sam’s grandparents operated a neighborhood grocery store. Sam descended from Sicilian and Irish immigrants, as well as from the first Mexican settlers in the Bay Area.
Sam Liccardo Education
Sam Liccardo attended the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California.
Sam Liccardo Family
Sam Liccardo was named for his paternal grandfather, who owned and operated a neighborhood grocery store in downtown San Jose, the Notre Dame Market. Liccardo is descended from the first Mexican settlers in the Bay Area and is also of Sicilian and Irish descent.
Sam Liccardo Net Worth
Sam Liccardo is an American attorney and politician who has an estimated net worth of $ 7 million dollars as of 2019.
Sam Liccardo Attorney and politician
In 2006, Sam Liccardo ran for San Jose’s District 3 Council seat. After placing first in an eight-candidate June primary with 43% percent of the vote, Liccardo went on to place first in the November runoff election, this time with 61.3%. In June 2010, he won his reelection to the City Council with 80.16% of the primary vote.
As a councilman, Liccardo advocated for more high rises in San José’s downtown, including the construction of the $135 million, 23-story high rise at One South Market. In 2014, Liccardo ran for Mayor of San Jose to succeed termed-out Mayor Chuck Reed. He placed second in a five-candidate June primary with 25.7% of the vote and placed first in the November runoff with 50.8% of the vote.
The mayor offered policy suggestions in a brief book, Safer City, Smarter Government. In his first year in office, he helped guide negotiations on an agreement with all 11 of the city’s employee unions that could save the city $3 billion in pension costs over the course of three decades.
In the 2016 elections, voters approved the agreement by passing Measure F with more than 61% of the vote. This measure replaced a contentious pension reform plan, which has faced a series of legal challenges since its 2012 passage. The city has engaged in a number of efforts to expand its tax base.
The city launched five new, direct international flights from the Mineta San José International Airport in 2016. Large Silicon Valley companies, such as Apple and Google, will also bring campuses to North San José. Residents approved a quarter-percent sales taxes increase in June 2016, with a vote of 62% in favor.
City officials estimate the tax will generate $40 million annually. In 2016, the San José City Council allocated $17.7 million of that new tax money to road repair, including potholes. In 2017, the Mercury News reported that Amazon will move its innovation division, Lab126, to San Jose’s downtown.
In addition, Liccardo advocated for a half-cent sales tax increase called Measure B on the 2016 November ballot, which passed with over 70%. The tax is devoted to transportation, with funds dedicated to expanding BART, reducing traffic congestion, and filling potholes.
Despite the majority vote, it has become a controversial topic throughout Santa Clara County as the tax measure has also attracted negative reception from Saratoga, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Cupertino, and Mountain View as well as San Jose Sharks Sports & Entertainment, LLC who have harshly criticized Liccardo with wasting millions of dollars on insufficient roadway projects, lack of focus on local transit and bus service, and insisting that the BART subway through Downtown San Jose be a single bore rather than the traditional double bore.
The City also launched a youth employment program called SJ Works during Liccardo’s first year in office, with a goal of serving 800 youth and teens. In 2016, the City allocated funding to expand the program to 1,000 participants. In Liccardo’s second year, the City Council voted unanimously to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2019.
This culminated in a regional effort Liccardo began with mayors from Santa Clara County, including Los Altos, Mountain View, Cupertino, and Palo Alto. In March 2016, Liccardo unveiled a Smart City Vision, with the expressed goal to make San Jose the “most innovative city in America by 2020.”
This vision received unanimous approval from the City Council in March, and in June 2016 the city created an Office of Civic Innovation to meet its goals. Since then, Liccardo formed a partnership with Facebook to deploy the company’s wireless, high-speed internet technology called “Terragraph” in downtown San José, and the City of San José launched a project to bring free wireless internet to two schools in San José’s East Side Union School District.
Sam Liccardo advocated for ways to house the homeless, including rehabilitating two deteriorating motels, the Plaza Hotel and the Santa Clara Inn. According to a city staff report, such motel conversions represent a cost-effective way to house homeless households.
On Veteran’s Day in 2015, he also launched a campaign to get homeless veterans off the street called “All the Way Home” with non-profit Destination: Home and Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese. One year after launching the program, the group announced it had found homes for more than 500 homeless veterans.
On February 21–22, 2017, after one month of heavy rainfall, Coyote Creek flooded parts of San Jose, displacing 14,000 people. Residents complained that the city failed to uphold its duty to protect and warn its citizens. Liccardo and other city officials accepted responsibility for failures in their emergency response, but also put some of the blame on the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
In May 2017, the San Jose City Council unanimously agreed to start up a Community Choice Energy program, becoming the largest city in the country to do so. Mayor Liccardo advocated for the adoption of a Community Choice Energy program as a way to take action against climate change while President Trump’s administration turned back to fossil fuels. Liccardo was elected to a second term of office on Tuesday, June 5, 2018.
Sam Liccardo Mayor
Sam Liccardo serves on a number of boards, including the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Valley Transit Authority (twice as Chairperson), and serves as co-chair for Joint Venture Silicon Valley. Sam Liccardo is a senior fellow for the American Leadership Forum-Silicon Valley and is a Rodel Fellow at the Aspen Institute.
In Sam’s prior public service, he prosecuted a range of felony cases as a federal and local criminal prosecutor, from sexual assault and child exploitation to international narcotrafficking. In 2006, voters elected Sam to the first of his two terms on the City Council, where he led efforts to revitalize its downtown, preserve San José’s hillsides and open space, boost funding for affordable housing, and open a world-class soccer stadium for the San José Earthquakes.
Sam Liccardo served as a founding board member of Cristo Rey San Jose High School, an innovative Jesuit school that propels students from low-income immigrant families to college and beyond.
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