Yet more pointless budget discussion tomorrow

On Tuesday, the Oakland City Council will once again meet to discuss reductions to the FY09-10 (this year) and FY10-11 (next year) City budget. If it seems to you like there are an awful lot of these meetings, well, that’s because there are.

The City of Oakland has been in pretty much continuous budget cutting mode since Spring of 2008. If that seems kind of ridiculous to you, it’s because it is.

Two year budgets

In Oakland, we theoretically adopt a budget every two years. This two year budget cycle should be a good thing for the City. It provides some measure of stability in service delivery and allows the Council to focus on other pressing issues in between budget discussions.

The adoption of a two year budget is, of course, no guarantee that nothing will get changed in the non-budget year. After all, nobody can predict exactly what revenues are going to look like a year in advance. If revenues turn out to be lower than anticipated, or expenditures turn out to be higher, then the budget will get re-opened after a year so the Council can make mid-cycle adjustments. That’s normal. If the adopted two-year budget was done properly, using realistic revenue and expenditure assumptions, then the mid-cycle adjustments should not be too dramatic.

Two week budgets

Of course, this whole two-year and mid-cycle budget process only works if you adopt, you know, realistic budgets. If you adopt a budget that happens to be “balanced” with imaginary money that you are crossing your fingers will somehow fall out of the sky, or if you, say, adopt a budget that, in addition to being predicated on fake money, is still not even balanced in the second year, then you’re going to have to go back and make changes a lot more often than that.

It also only works if you are willing to commit to, you know, balancing your budget when you find out just how little money you do have to work with. The Council received a set of dire revenue projections last fall that revealed multi-million dollar shortfalls in this fiscal year’s budget, and despite multiple meetings about how to deal with it over the course of five months, they have still not managed to adopt a budget that closes this year’s General Fund shortfall. Still! It’s outrageous.

District 4 Councilmember, Finance Committee Chair, and Mayoral hopeful Jean Quan got into this bizarre habit last fall of talking about how Oakland should start looking doing at five year budgets. Nothing against five year budgets or anything, but I’m sorry – what a freaking joke. How can you expect to do a five year budget if you can’t handle a two year budget? Hell, the Council for the past two years hasn’t even been able to manage a one year, or even six month budget.

The Council was, in fact, so obstinate in their refusal to adopt a realistic budget plan during the last cycle that by Spring of 2009, they were essentially operating with a two-week budget. To keep the checks from bouncing until the new fiscal year could begin, they ended up basically just shifting a bunch of costs into the next year’s budget, but only after toying with and rejecting a number of ham-handed budget hacks, like a last-minute proposal to close the City every Friday for the final six weeks of the year.

What’s on the table this time?

Councilmembers Jane Brunner and Ignacio De La Fuente have proposed that all elected offices be forced to take a 15% budget cut (PDF). At a meeting earlier this year, one of the budget balancing measures that had been proposed (PDF) was cutting 5.0 FTE from the City Attorney’s office. At the meeting, a number of speakers complained that it was unfair that the City Attorney’s office should be cut so much while the City Council was taking no cuts. So they decided to not do the City Attorney cuts at that meeting, and instead come back with this idea of cutting 15% from the budget of all the elected offices. Here’s what the savings from that would look like:

• Mayor’s Office: FY09-10: $45,120, FY10-11: $270,733
• City Council: FY09-10: $81,300, FY10-11: $487,774
• City Attorney: FY09-10: $91,080, FY10-11: $546,486
• City Auditor: FY09-10: $33,470, FY10-11: $200,826

Under the proposal (PDF), the City Council would eliminate 6.0 FTE, cutting the position of Legislative Analyst. The Mayor, City Attorney, and City Auditor would be tasked with figuring out on their own what to cut in order to realize those savings targets.

Is cutting 15% from everyone fair?

The City Administrator has responded to the proposal with a rather strongly worded memo (PDF) advising the Council that their plan is not quite so fair as they appear to think it is:

Across the board reductions for all elected offices would be disproportionate and inequitable, given that each office has taken varying levels of GPF budget reductions since July 2008. In particular, some offices have already eliminated staff while others have not. FY 2009-10 and FY2010-11 reduction targets should account for prior GPF budget and FTE reductions taken since FY2008-09.

The memo points out that the way the budgets for the elected offices have been treated during the past two years of budget slicing varies wildly:

Similarly, since July 2008 in budget terms, and netting out transfers to other officers or funds:

• the Mayor’s Office budget has been reduced by $.8 million or 30.7%
• the City Attorney’s Office budget has been reduced by $1.8 million or 34.7%
• the City Council office budget has been reduced by $.29 million or 7.7%
• the City Auditor budget has increased by $.08 million or 5.6%

The memo continues:

To now make a 15% reduction for all elected officers neglects the reality that both the Mayor’s Office and the City Attorney’s have already made major staffing cuts and the Council has made only minimal budget reductions.

For the Council make 15% cuts now would still leave them far below the cuts (less than half) already made by the City Attorney’s office and by the Mayor’s office.

As such, there are two equitable approaches: (i) have the 15% cuts proposed for all elected offices be limited to just the City Council and by some lesser amount for the City Auditor; or (ii) have the Council cuts match the level of cuts already made by the City Attorney and Mayor, which would necessitate doubling the 15% Council cuts to 30% and then make much lesser cuts to other elected offices

The Administrator’s point about how the proposal does not actually demonstrate equity in budget cuts among elected offices is well taken. However, it fails to address the larger problem with the proposal, which is that forcing everyone to take equal cuts is a stupid way to close a deficit. Taking the same amount of money from everywhere assumes that every function of the City has equal importance, which it doesn’t, and that our existing budget prioritizes resources in the best way possible, which it also probably doesn’t.

Can we expect it to get better anytime soon?

HAHAHAHAHA!

Do I really have to say any more than that? I suppose I should. Okay, here we go.

I don’t know if it’s that people have short memories or that more people are watching the budget meetings these days, but in the days following each of the last two discussions, I had a number of people talk to me glowingly about the Council’s acceptance that it’s time to “get serious” about the budget. Some people praise the general attitude in the room, and other praise speeches from one Councilmember or another.

They always seem shocked when I just roll my eyes in response. They ask questions like “Why aren’t you excited that the Council is really dealing with the budget finally? You’ve been complaining about how they won’t for months!” Which is true. But for those who have followed the Council’s efforts to deal with the budget crisis for the last two years, this is a nauseatingly familiar song. It’s easy to talk about how it’s time to “get real” or “get serious” or “make tough choices.” Evidence of just how easy this is can be found by reviewing the video of basically every budget meeting in 2009.

Clearly, following through on those promises is a lot harder. One can’t help but wonder how serious the Council is collectively about balancing the budget when only one member even bothers to press staff at these meetings for follow-up and progress/feasibility reports about previously suggested revenue generating measures. (I’ll give you one guess which.)

So tune into to KTOP tomorrow to see the budget action, or, you know, don’t. There will be plenty more budget meetings over the next few months, and probably again over the next year, and nothing ever happens at them anyway. I mean, at some point, I suppose, something is going to have to happen. But who knows when that will be. Given the Council’s track record, I would not advise holding one’s breath.

Council gets it backwards on new parking meters, should go learn from Shoup tonight

Do you guys remember all that noise about parking meters this summer and fall? Of course you do. How could you possibly forget. Aside from the fact we have a lot of crime here in Oakland, I can’t think of any issue since I’ve lived here that has received such relentless media coverage.

Anyway, as you likely recall, after two contentious meetings, the Council voted to reverse their June decision that extend the parking meter hours until 8 and to make up for the lost revenue through a combination of steps, including the addition of 250 parking meters Citywide (PDF).

So two weeks ago at the Council’s Finance & Management Committee meeting, staff offered a list of 400 possible locations for the new parking meters (PDF). The list included the following locations:

• Lakeshore to 22nd on International Boulevard: 160 metered spaces
• 38th to 54th on International Boulevard: 130 metered spaces
• 4th to 14th on East 12th Street: 70 metered spaces
• 15th to 20th on Telegraph Avenue: 40 metered spaces

Now, almost all of those meter locations are in Council districts 5 and 2. Normal people tend not to think about things in those terms, but elected officials certainly do. So, as you can imagine, District 5 Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente and District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan were, um, none too pleased with the list.

The Committee said that Council’s original direction had been for the new meters to be evenly distributed throughout all seven Council districts, and that staff should go back and do it that way. Staff then decided that the best way to handle that was to ask each Councilmember to make a list of where they think 60 parking meters should go in their district. I don’t think I need to bother explaining why this is an staggeringly misguided way to approach parking policy.

If it isn’t obvious to you why this is a bad idea and you happen to be free this evening, allow me to suggest an event that you will likely find enlightening. High Cost of Free Parking author Donald Shoup will be speaking tonight in Lafayette. I’m out of town so I can’t go, but reports from people who trekked down to San Jose last night for the show have been uniformly laudatory.

The event will be held at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center Community Hall from 6 to 9 PM at 7 PM (see Dan’s comments below) at 3491 Mt. Diablo Blvd in Lafayette (map here). And no, you don’t have to drive there! It’s less than a half mile walk from the Lafayette BART station.

Here’s the event description:

Mark your calendars!! On Thursday evening, February 25th, the cities of Lafayette and Walnut Creek will co-host a presentation on “Parking Policies in the Downtown” at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center. The speaker, Donald Shoup, is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and has served as the Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA. He has extensively studied parking as a key link between transportation and land use, with important consequences for cities, the economy, and the environment. His influential book, The High Cost of Free Parking, is leading a growing number of cities to charge fair market prices for curb parking, dedicate the resulting revenue to finance public services in the metered districts, and reduce or remove off-street parking requirements.

I really wish I could go to this, and I hope some of you will and report back to us. Shoup’s work gets referenced pretty frequently in policy discussions when parking comes up in Oakland, but the nuances of his research and suggestions are, frankly, very rarely stated accurately. I get that it’s a long book, and an expensive one, but I still wish more people would take the time to sit down and read it. Attending the presentation is certainly going to be a substantially faster way to learn.

Might have to wait a little longer for that 12th Street Bridge

If you lived in Oakland in 2002 and happened to make it to the polls that November, odds are that you, like 80% of Oaklanders, voted yes on Measure DD.

Measure DD was a nearly $200 million bond measure meant to finance improvements to Oakland’s creeks and waterways, public recreation facilities, waterfront parks, and of course, Lake Merritt. It’s Measure DD we have to thank for Lake Chalet at the Boathouse and the reconfiguration of El Embarcadero.

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Ignacio De La Fuente: Join me in demanding real solutions to Oakland’s financial crisis

Since the outset of the current financial crisis, I have encouraged the residents in District 5 and my supporters throughout the city to participate in the Budget process to advocate for the preservation of what I believe should be the focus of our City budget, CORE SERVICES. These core services are: Police; Fire; Parks; Libraries; Streets; Sewers; Sidewalks; and the most essential services for our Seniors and Youth. I have been pleading with my colleagues on the council to realize the urgency of this crisis, and I am again urging you to join me as I push them to stop delaying critical decisions that impact Oakland’s immediate and long-term fiscal health.

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The most depressing part of the budget: poor DIT

As I’m sure you guys are all aware, this afternoon the City Council will be holding a special budget meeting to address the shortfall in the City’s current year budget. But the fun doesn’t end there! After the budget meeting, we’ve got the regular Council meeting (PDF) to look forward to. Thankfully, the agenda is relatively short and looks like it won’t go too long, although you really never can tell.

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This Tuesday! City Hall! One night only! Budget magic show! Tricks galore! Smoke! Mirrors! Don’t miss!

Since I had like half a dozen people ask me yesterday, including people I don’t even know in the comments here – yes, I am okay! Nothing terrible happened, I’m just really busy. I apologize for abandoning the blog without warning. I am working on a number of different exciting projects at the moment (some related to creating a better Oakland, some not at all), and in all my excitement to do all sorts of cool things, I seem to have gotten myself way overcommitted. I’m confident that if I can ever catch up on all the things I’m behind on, I’ll be able to juggle the ongoing work okay. But if I am ever going to get caught up, something had to go temporarily, and unfortunately for you guys, that was writing new blogs and reading the news (I haven’t even opened my RSS reader in over a week, hence the lack of updates in the news feed. I’m terrified of what it’s going to look like when I finally do!)

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Free parking for City employees. Why?

This afternoon, the Oakland City Council’s Finance and Management Committee discussed, among other things, the issue of parking privileges for city employees (PDF). You may have caught the item about this from The Oakbook the other day. If not, here’s the proposal.

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Dear Council: 64,000 voters are the boss of you. You have to do IRV.

I have intentionally not said a word about Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) on this blog, because it’s one of those annoying topics, like PRT, that whenever you mention it, zealots on both sides of the issue from all over the country appear out of nowhere and hijack your blog with their never-ending comments of craziness. Alas, the City Council will be voting tonight on whether to implement IRV for this November’s election (PDF), and I’m becoming increasingly concerned that the vote will not go as smoothly as I had hoped.

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Vacant building registry returns to Council

The hot topic for tomorrow’s Council meeting is the adoption of Instant Runoff Voting for this year’s election, which means that we won’t have June primaries and will only vote on City Council and Mayor once, in November. If you want to read about IRV, the staff reports for the agenda items are here (PDF) and here (PDF), and Becks has a blog up about it today. But IRV is not the only important thing on tomorrow’s agenda. We’ve also got the return of the vacant building registry (PDF)

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Bruce Nye: Does Oakland have a budget crisis? Sure enough it does.

Bruce Nye is Board Chair of Make Oakland Better Now! The opinions in this post, however, are his, and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the organization. Make Oakland Better Now! will be holding an emergency city budget meeting to vote on the organization’s position on the city budget on Monday, January 11, 2010 at 6:30 p.m., at Oakland City Hall, 1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Hearing Room 4.

For some time, we’ve been hearing Oakland’s politicians talk about a budget crisis. And everybody should be forgiven if they’re numb to this whole discussion. But guess what? There really, really is a crisis, and it’s going to have a huge impact on all of us, particularly if we, as a city, don’t take action.

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League of Women Voters: What is Records Management – and Why Should You Care About it?

Records management is the practice of maintaining the records of an organization — in this case, the City of Oakland — from the time they are created up to their eventual disposal. This may include the classification, storage, securing, and destruction of records.1 Capability for timely record retrieval is also a key part of a modern records management system.

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Doing it right the second time around: parking returns to Council

It was a great pleasure watching the City Council’s Public Works Committee’s discussion of parking issues last Tuesday.

As most of you probably remember, the City Council voted to raise the hourly parking meter price to $2 and extend the operating hours of parking meters from 6 to 8 PM as part of this summer’s budget process. The changes, coupled with a widespread perception of increased aggressiveness in parking enforcement and one very angry business owner with a very large billboard, created significant outcry among both residents and business groups. In response to the vocal opposition, the Council agreed to revisit the parking issue.

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