The Continuing Story of a City

Making sure this never happens again

Tonight, after almost two months of discussion, the Oakland City Council will finally adopt a budget that closes our $83 million General Fund deficit. Mostly, discussion surrounding this has been all about what we’re going to lose. But in between all the devastating cuts and annoying fee increases, there are some positive things happening in the budget process too. Here’s one of them. So, Oakland used...

The rest of your ballot

Well, people certainly have strong opinions about Measure D. Honestly, I don’t get it. If you’re seriously concerned about Oakland being better run, or government spending being less wasteful, there are like 10 million things you could spend your time on that would be more helpful. Voting no and screwing Oakland out of $3.6 million isn’t going to help you or anyone else, and it won’t force...

Budget decision coming on Tuesday

After like two months of discussion, the Oakland City Council will finally pass a budget on Tuesday. Last week, Councilmembers Brunner, De La Fuente, Kernighan, and Quan submitted a revised version of their proposed changes to the Mayor’s budget (PDF), which you can read in its entirety here (PDF). Here are the highlights, and I’ve noted the places where this proposal differs from what was discussed on...

Measure D: Hold your nose and vote yes

So you’ve probably received your ballot by now in Oakland’s special vote by mail election. Make sure to send it in by the 21st! Your ballot contains four Measures, three of which involve changes to various city taxes. And then there’s Measure D, a charter amendment. Here’s the story with Measure D. In 1996, Oakland voters, by an overwhelming margin, passed Measure K, which established the...

Open Thread

Want to talk about something I haven’t covered? Do it here. You can find the previous open thread here.
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