hard to see how very low income oaklanders could agree on the priorities with middle and upper middle income folks.

poor oaklanders distrust the trickle down theory many good govt activists hold dear: that making this town a safe place to live and work, which attracts and retains businesses , with an efficient responsive govt, will improve all of our lives. they might say that’s a town they can’t afford to live in, and one that eliminated some of the social programs that inefficient as they may be, are part of the fragile social safety net for them.

if MOB wants to become more than a broader based league of woman’s voters, it could get a good start by uniting older hills people with younger temescal, dto, and west oakland gentrifiers.

-len raphael
temescal

Also, Bruce—kudos on a terrific job running the meeting! As someone who runs lots of community workshops in “real life” (and is consequently incredibly nit-picky about them!) I was impressed—one of the stronger volunteer-led meetings I’ve been to. So, thanks!

I thought I saw you there, but then I looked around for you after the meeting was over and you were gone! Come say hi next time!

Re: FAQ. Something similar is already in the works. I don’t really want to say anything more about it right now, and it won’t be ready until early December, but it’s going to be extremely cool.

Good morning, and it’s nice to be awake.

What a great idea an faq would be (albeit an awful lot of work for somebody). Us somnolent hill types know there’s a wealth of stuff out there we don’t know. Frankly, I can’t think of a better resource than having V, Becks, Len and others who’ve been following this stuff for ages give us their perspective.

Thanks to you both for coming. Somnolent hill types realize we have much, much to do.

great to see hills people waking up from their long muni govt sleep.

there was quite a bit of people reinventing the wheel, deciding to do or get experts to do the analysis that V and others have done here and on other Oakland blogs and yahoo groups re opd management, the Rider’s settlement, compstat , crime rates etc. Interesting new points were brought about examining the opd to overcome opd’s omerta re opd’s inefficient management and continuing bad community relations and charges of abuse in highest crime parts of town.

lol on broadening the membership base to the rest of oakland. good intentions and smart, fairly aware of their limits, but it still will be very hard to avoiding coming across as patrician to people in the flats.

Just succeededing in organizing hills people around improving their three core areas, and pressuring elected officials to perform would help the rest of the city.

-len raphael
temescal

Unfortunately, I was mistaken about the time of the meeting – it starts at 7:30om, so I will not be able to attend MOB Now at all.

Bruce, in the event we have more than one candidate for mayor, I could get down for this. Noble goals but honestly how are you go to pay for it. It is not like Oakland has one of the higher bay area per capita incomes. And homeowners are sprinting to the assessors office to get assessments lowered.

Honestly, I think the best thing that could be done to preserve these vitals functions is to increase the tax base, followed by stong public/private partnerships. You can only tax the middle and upper classes so much to pay for these services. At some point, you need to figure out how to make a bigger pie. The pinheads in council can make chocolate but they have no idea how to make pie. The only person who knew how to make pie was Jerry B.