The Committee got an update from staff on the City’s budget situation for this year. In addition to next year’s $58 million or whatever the number is today for the expected deficit, it had been looking like we were also running short on money for this fiscal year which runs through June.

At the meeting, staff explained that they had identified a solution to the year-end deficit. It turns out that the City has spent less on medical costs than we had projected, and therefore had some extra money in the medical account lying around. It turns out that the extra money in that account ($9 million) is very close to the shortage the City was facing ($8 million). So instead of making more cuts to close out the year, the City is simply no longer having departments pay into that fund. And it all evens out and everything is dandy through the end of June.

After listening to the description of this solution, District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan observed that it was like “magic,” but then quickly corrected that term to the less desperate sounding “lucky.”

District 5 Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente was not amused by the characterization, and went on a little rant about how terrible it is that the Council is always doing tricks with the budget that we know won’t work out in order to put off the day of reckoning.

District 6 Councilmember Desley Brooks was not about to let that go by without comment, and went on a rant of her own about the City’s budgeting process

It’s worth watching the whole thing, but here are some of the highlights:

I think our budget strategy is luck. You know, we pray for, we hope for that we’re going to find the money like we did this time, and purely by luck instead of a thoughtful process.

We find nine million dollars, but that’s like putting your finger in a gaping hole and trying to plug the leak.

We have serious structural deficits. We have a systemic problem with our budgeting process. And we will never get to where we need to be if we continue to manipulate the reports.

We know that this is a shell game. And we’ve got to stop.

Then, later:

Luck should not be a strategy for budgeting in a municipality, and that’s what we’re doing right now. The importance of understanding the information before us is that we can’t look for just cuts. We can’t look for just cuts. If we don’t change our budgeting process, we are going to bankrupt this city. Because we are at a point where we no longer have anything to sell, we have limited bonding capacity, as so there’s no place else to get it from. And so unless we change structurally how we do business, then we’re forever going to be looking for these one time cuts. We’ve done them all.

She’s right, of course. But I have been watching most of the Council say pretty much the same things over and over again for years. Yet somehow, the budgets always end up being balanced through trickery or one time solutions. Even the Mayor, who has talked about how she’s ending the reliance on one-time solutions every time I’ve heard her speak about the budget, “balanced” her proposed budgets on phantom property sales.

So when will it end? Who knows. Either when we go bankrupt or the Council finally acknowledges that we simply do not have enough money (and will not at any point in the forseeable future) to provide all the services and grants we want to provide and has the stomach to make the necessary long-term cuts.

You can watch video of the whole discussion below.

I have more than enough on my plate trying to keep up with what’s going on in Oakland, so I have to admit, I don’t pay a ton of attention to what goes on in our wealthier neighboring cities where nobody lives. But a few months ago, as I was paging through a very large folder of feeds, a post in Piedmont Neighborhood News caught my eye. It began with a big, bold quote from their City Administrator from a recent Council meeting:

Such an extraordinary, such an unpleasant, such a difficult recommendation. The recommendation is mine and I am responsible for it.

How’s that for melodramatic? You understand why I had couldn’t help but click through and read the whole thing.

Anyway, so it turns out that this incredibly difficult decision that the City Administrator had to make was about whether or not Piedmont should spend one third of its general fund to subsidize the undergrounding of utility lines in front of 144 houses in the fancy part of Piedmont. No, I am not making that up. And yes, his recommendation was to go for it.

So ever since then, I have just not been able to get enough of this ridiculous controversy. Basically, what happened was that this neighborhood, “Piedmont Hills,” decided they wanted their power lines undergrounded. So they made an assessment district to pay for their undergrounding, and the project went out to bid. The bids that came back ranged from $1.5 million to $2.5 million. I am sure it will not surprise to learn that the $1.5 million bid was choosen.

So this company got to work on the undergrounding, and were shocked when they started digging and discovered that the ground there is actually rock. Um, yeah.

So then, this company is all “Oh, it’s going to cost another million dollars to dig through all this rock” and the people of Piedmont Hills were all like “Yeah, we don’t want to pay a million dollars” and went out and raised $30,000 instead. So the City Administrator was like well we have to finish it (PDF) one way or another. They would find the money from their General Fund reserve.

Reserve [ri-zurv]

OMG, I am so sorry!

I bet that last line totally confused the hell out of a lot of you Oaklanders out there. My bad. You see, a reserve is this neat-o thing that some cities have where they take some of the money they get and instead of spending it, they put it away somewhere else.

Yeah, I know it’s confusing. Go back and try reading it again slowly.

No, you don’t spend it on something else. You put it somewhere else.

No, not even if there’s something you really want to spend it on. You just put it away and let it sit there. Then, if something terrible happens, like, oh, I don’t know, if say revenues were to suddenly plummet or you unexpectedly had to bail out some beautification project in a ritzy neighborhood, then you would have money sitting there that you could use to deal with the problem. So you could take care of the issue without having to like, lay off half your park maintenance staff or whatever.

Think of it sort of like a savings account, but for the City. It sounds crazy, I know. But trust me when I say it actually is fairly common practice in other places.

Piedmont’s undergrounding problems

Anyway, so Piedmont had $3 million in their General Fund reserve. That probably doesn’t sound like a lot, but you have to remember that Piedmont is super tiny, so it is actually quite a bit of money per person. Good for them.

Anyway, so back in December, the Council approved this emergency resolution to spend a third of their reserve to bail out this underground project. But it doesn’t end there. It turns out that the project had even more problems (PDF) than they had realized in December, and to get it finished was going to cost another $1.15 million. Oops! People were seriously pissed.

Underground Utilities in Oakland

I am sure you are all wondering right about now why on earth I am talking about Piedmont’s undergrounding controversy. Mostly, because I find the story pretty entertaining (in a oh-god-government-is-so-depressing way, of course), and figured that since I was writing about undergrounding anyway, it would be fun to mention it.

And why am I writing about undergrounding at all, you ask? Why, because the Public Works Committee was talking about it earlier this week, of course.

You guys know what underground is, right? It’s when you take the power lines and other wires on poles in a neighborhood and you put them underground. We had underground utilities in the town where I went to high school. It was nice. Power lines are really unsightly. Also, they get knocked down in storms and your power goes out, and having your power out sucks. Plus, downed electrical lines are like, you know, extremely dangerous and a fire hazard.

First Come, First Served

So, if neighborhoods in Oakland want their utilities undergrounded, the way it happens is they ask they City for undergrounding and then they get on a list. Then the wait. Usually for a very long time. Then, once they get to the top of the list, the City goes and looks to see if that neighborhood meets one of the four eligibility requirements set by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for undergrounding. (If you don’t meet any of the criteria, you can still have undergrounding if you really want it, but you have to pay for it yourself. You can’t use money from this undergrounding fund that we get from PG&E). Anyway, the CPUC’s eligibility requirements are as follows:

• heavy overhead electric facilities

• heavy volume of auto and pedestrian traffic

• civic area or public recreation area

• arterial street or major collector

There are 23 neighborhoods on the list right now. 23 probably doesn’t sound like a lot, but undergrounding is expensive. Most of it gets paid for out of this pot of undergrounding money we get from PG&E every year, but also the property owners in the neighborhood pay some too. Right now we get like $3.6 million a year from PG&E, and for the neighborhoods that get the undergrounding, the cost to the property owners is like $15,000 each. Based on the current funding, all the neighborhoods on the list will get their utilities undergrounded within the next 40 years.

We’ve been doing it that way since 1968.

Priorities for Undergrounding

So, the City Council’s Public Works Committee got a report about this undergrounding list (PDF) back in September, and they were like “Maybe just giving this to whoever asked first isn’t the smartest way to do it. Maybe we should have, like, criteria or something to decide who gets undergrounding.” So they asked staff to come back with another report about how other cities decide what neighborhoods get undergrounding, and that happened on Tuesday.

As it turns out, like, nobody else makes this decision based on who asked first. Crazy, I know.

Instead, they look at factors like (PDF):

• Whether the area is has other projects going on, like major street construction

• Whether there is a safety issue related to the overhead wires

• Whether the undergrounding would be near major public facilities (schools, parks, rec centers, commercial corridors, etc.)

• Cost/benefit analysis of doing undergrounding in the area

• Whether the undergrounding would happen on a major street

Seems reasonable, right? After all, if it’s going to take 40 years before we get all these projects done, it seems logical to do them in some sort of, you know, rational order, based on where undergrounding is more needed.

So, there weren’t very many speakers on this on Tuesday, but the ones who did show up said that whether overhead utilities is a safety issue should be the number one criteria. The meeting in September had more speakers, and they were also really adamant that safety issues should be the top criteria.

Here’s former Oakland City Councilmember Dick Spees making the case for safety at that meeting back in September:

It’s kind of hard to argue with. District 6 Councilmember Desley Brooks said she was supportive of safety as a criteria, but made sure to note that overhead utilities are not a safety issue exclusively in the hills. She is unhappy with the fact that most of the undergrounding gets done in ritzy neighborhoods.

District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan said it wasn’t quite so simple as all that, noting that the next neighborhood on the current list is in her District, and that they really really want their undergrounding, and that it isn’t fair for them if we just go and change the rules after they have been waiting for like 30 years and if we do they will get really angry.

I definitely feel bad for people who have been waiting a long time for something and don’t get it. But what’s more important? Being fair? Or a fire? Fair? Fire? Fair? Fire? Kinda seems like a no brainer to me.

You can watch the whole discussion here:

If you have some time, you should watch it. It’s interesting. I’ll try to upload the September discussion later.

What do you think?

The report on Tuesday was just an information item, so nothing happened then. But the Committee did schedule the undergrounding issue to come back on May 11th, this time as an action item. That means they might actually adopt new criteria, not just talk about maybe doing it. If you have feelings about what the criteria should be, you should contact them about it.

The contact information for the Public Works Committee is as follows:

• District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan
  E-mail: pkernighan@oaklandnet.com
  Phone: (510) 238-7002

• District 3 Councilmember Nancy Nadel
  E-mail: nnadel@oaklandnet.com
  Phone: (510) 238-7003

• District 6 Councilmember Desley Brooks
  E-mail: dbrooks@oaklandnet.com
  Phone: (510) 238-7006

• At-large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan
  E-mail: rkaplan@oaklandnet.com
  Phone: (510) 238-7008

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.

Now, if you were one of the 70,000 people who voted yes on Measure DD, it’s possible you did so because you love Studio One or Children’s Fairyland and you wanted to see them improved. Maybe you were really excited about the East Oakland Sports Center. Or maybe you voted for it because you’re just super concerned about Lake Merritt’s water quality. But if you’re like most Oaklanders, chances are you said yes because of this:

Click to enlarge

That would the the transformation of the world’s shortest freeway between Lake Merritt and the Kaiser Convention Center into a pleasant, walkable, tree-lined, 6 lane boulevard. The 12th Street reconfiguration was Measure DD’s marquee project. When you hear people complain about how they voted for DD and nothing’s happened on it in 8 years and they’re never going to vote for a bond measure in Oakland again because of it’s been such a waste, they’re often referring to their frustration over seeing no progress on this particular project.

So I’m sure you guys will all be absolutely delighted to learn that the 12st Street reconstruction actually is about to finally happen. Well, maybe. Maybe not.

The City put the project out for bid and had hoped to award a contract for the reconstruction project a few years ago, but they only got one response, which came in at about $10 million more than the City had to spend. So it was back to the drawing board.

Or more accurately, back to the computer, to look for new funding sources. And lo and behold, they found one (PDF) – $13.3 million from the Federal Highway Bridge Program. Two years later, the funds were finally secured, the project went back out to bid, came back with more responses, and on February 9th, the City Council’s Public Works Committee was asked to award a contract (PDF) so we can finally build the damn thing. Simple, right?

As it turns out, not so much. You see, in Oakland, we do this thing called local hire for businesses contracting with the City, where we require 50% of the work on contracted projects to be performed by Oakland residents. The idea is that when we spend money that we get from Oakland taxpayers, we should make sure it helps create jobs for Oakland residents. The merits of any specific local hire policy are, of course, debatable, but conceptually, it isn’t unreasonable, especially in a City with such a frighteningly high unemployment rate.

Problem is, when you’re using Federal money, you don’t get to use your own rules about hiring on projects, you have to use theirs. Federal guidelines require that 30% of the work performed on a project be completed by minority employees (on a craft by craft basis), and they also specifically say that you aren’t allowed to mandate local hire.

Do you see where this is going? That’s right, this contract (PDF) the City wanted to award for the 12th Street reconstruction would have no local hire requirements. And as I’m sure you can imagine, some Councilmembers were none to pleased to hear that.

Specifically, District 6 Councilmember Desley Brooks and District 3 Councilmember Nancy Nadel extremely displeased to hear about the lack of local hire. Desley Brooks asked about a dozen times why the City couldn’t just unbundle the project so that there would be one contract for part of the project to be funded with City money and a different contract for part of the project to be funded with Federal money, and even though staff said every single time that doing so not possible at this point, she just kept asking. Calling the idea of spending tens of millions of City dollars on a project that doesn’t guarantee jobs for Oakland residents “unconscionable,” she insisted she would not vote for the contract, and that was that.

Nadel, out to lunch as usual, said that she had no idea there was federal money being used on the project and wanted to know when that decision had been made. (Hello! When you voted for it (PDF), lady!) Although she expressed strong concerns about the lack of local hire, she took a somewhat more pragmatic approach than Brooks, saying she wanted more information about what would kind of time and costs we’d be looking at if we decided to unbundle the project and restart the Federal funding application process, and that she’d make a decision once she had more information.

District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan, no doubt thinking about how desperately she’d like to be able to point construction work on the bridge while campaigning for re-election this year, was adamant that the project can’t wait a minute longer than it already has, local hire or no. And At-large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, ever the pragmatist, noted that the issue of local hire being limited by Federal dollars isn’t unique to this one project, and should be addressed on a broader policy level instead of quibbled over on individual projects. She pointed out that other some jurisdictions substitute local hiring requirements with something called “impact area hiring” when dealing with Federally funded projects, which does not violate Federal guidelines, and suggested that the Council explore a similar policy so we don’t have this problem in the future.

In the end, they decided to have the question return to Committee, and it will be back on Tuesday morning (PDF). The supplemental report (PDF) on the item basically reiterates the point made repeatedly at the previous meeting that there’s no way to unbundle the project to allow for local hire without starting the whole process completely over.

So what will happen? Will the Committee, and later, the Council, move this long-awaited project forward? Or will they decide that it’s not worth doing without the local jobs guarantee? Whatever the outcome on Tuesday, we can be relatively sure that this won’t be the last we hear about the issue. Darrel Carey of the East Bay Small Business Council made that abundantly clear at the last meeting:

The Public Works Committee will take up the issue again this Tuesday, February 23rd (PDF). The meeting starts at 10:30, although the 12th Street project is last on the agenda. If you can’t make it down to City Hall, you can always catch the fireworks on KTOP.

A previous stab at creating a vacant building registry came before the Council last March (PDF). The proposal, introduced by District 6 Councilmember Desley Brooks, would have required the owners of vacant residential and ground floor commercial units to register their property with the City (PDF) after it had been vacant for 45 days. The proposal also included a fairly complicated fee escalation program, which would charge property owners anywhere from $175 to $5,000 for registry, depending on how long the space had been vacant. The properties would then be listed in a database maintained by City staff.

The concept isn’t unique to Oakland. Similar registries exist in Chula Vista, Fresno, Riverside County, Stockton, and San Jose. The idea is that by maintaining such a registry, cities will be better equipped to deal with the blight impacts of all the foreclosed properties they’re stuck with.

While I recognize that the large number of foreclosed and vacant properties in Oakland creates problems for the City with respect to blight and blight enforcement, I did not think, back in March, that the proposal was particularly well thought-out, and never really saw how it was going solve any of the problems it was supposed to address. A number of property owners who spoke on the item in March raised concerns that, because of the way the ordinance was written, property owners who the registry was not really intended to target would be caught by the registration requirements and fees, such as a commercial building that has even a simple vacant ground floor retail unit, empty for only a brief period of time.

In the end, the Council agreed that the proposal simply wasn’t going to work as written, and several Councilmembers said that they wanted to take a stab at their own version of it, which they would bring back later.

Now, most of the time when that happens at Council, it means that you’re never going to hear a word about it ever again. Maybe in like, three years or something. But I’m happy to report that the vacant building registry is back, and – gasp! – better. OMG.

The new ordinance, sponsored by Councilmembers Larry Reid, Desley Brooks, and Rebecca Kaplan, will require registration of residential buildings (PDF), up to four units in size, that have been foreclosed. The registration requirement kicks in once the property has been vacant for 30 days following foreclosure, and is the responsibility of the foreclosing lender. As part of the registry, the property owner must provide a maintenance plan detailing how they will keep the property compliant with the City’s minimum standards (grass no taller than 6″, no pests, no debris, no graffiti, no broken doors and roofs, etc.). In a multi-unit building, if any of the units is legally occupied, registration will not be required.

Happily, the bizarre fee escalation system has been dropped as well, replaced by a flat annual $390 registration processing fee for every building, plus an annual inspection fee of $110, for a total of $500.

So this version is clearly less burdensome and will apply to a smaller number of properties than the previous one. But how does it solve the problem of address blight in foreclosed properties? Well, that will be helped by the annual inspection. But also, the registry will ensure that the City has current information for whoever is responsible for securing, cleaning, and otherwise maintaining the property. This will make it easier to enforce existing blighted property regulations.

Isn’t it refreshing to see the City do something right?

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.

At first, most Councilmembers insisted they would not be willing to roll back the parking meter hours unless they could find a way to make up the revenue from “within the parking world,” so that the rollback would not further impact City services. When it became clear that there was not some magic way nobody had thought of before to generate another million dollars a year from parking, they changed their minds, and consented to rolling the meter hours back to 6 PM anyway. The lost money was to be supplemented with a combination of parking enforcement measures backed by unrealistic revenue assumptions and revenue from a future billboard agreement. The angry people (most of them, anyway) went away, and Council meetings are once again relatively quiet.

Another part of the agreement to roll back the meter hours was that staff would conduct a citywide parking study to inform future parking-related decisions. On Tuesday, the Public Works Committee discussed what exactly that study will involve.

Staff’s presentation was great. They propose a departure from the City’s current approach to parking management, where parking is looked at not simply as a revenue source, but as a “tool to enhance economic and community development,” and looking at revenue generated by paid parking as only a secondary function, the primary function being that people coming to commercial districts always have a place to park.

To guide the study, staff proposed the following set of principles:

• Parking should be actively managed to maximize use and economic development
  • Parking should be treated as an asset that works to bolster the economic vitality of neighborhood commercial areas
  • Parking should be managed to achieve an approximate 85% maximum occupancy per block, so that there will always be some parking available to shoppers and visitors
  • Parking should be priced to achieve usage goals (“market pricing”); market prices may vary by area, and by time of day
  • Whenever possible, a portion of parking revenue should be reinvested directly back to neighborhood commercial district improvements, potentially through a mechanism such as a parking benefit district
• Parking should be easy for customers
  • Costs, rules and penalties should be easily comprehensible
  • A variety of fare media (prepaid cards, credit cards, cash) should be available
  • If possible, and where appropriate, time limits should be avoided in favor of market pricing
  • The role of tickets should be minimized in generated parking revenue; it should be easier to pay parking fees, which may lower the incidence of tickets
• Parking policy and regulations should help the City meet other transportation, land use, and environmental goals
  • Pricing and policies should encourage a “park once” approach, rather than driving from store to store within a commercial district
  • Parking should be part of a multi-modal approach to developing neighborhood transportation infrastructure, which also includes bike, pedestrian and transit facilities

It’s an excellent, common-sense list.

Using these guiding principles, staff would spend the next X months conducting the requested parking study. It would go like this. First, staff would attempt to work with stakeholders (property owners, businesses, and residents) to identify their parking issues through a combination of public workshops, interviews, and surveys. Based on this, a set of pilot study areas would be selected.

This would be followed by a period of data collection in the pilot study areas, where parking inventory (on and off street) would be cataloged and parking occupancy in different areas and different times of day would be measured. The information would be used to “develop a parking profile that identifies when parking is actually being used – weekday/weekend, midday/evening – and who’s using it, and why.”

The parking profile would be then used to create a parking management plan, which would then be brought back to stakeholders for feedback and refinement.

In terms of a timeline, the stakeholder outreach period would begin this winter, and staff would return to Council in the spring with a set of policy recommendations and three pilot study areas. Data would be collected during the late spring, recommendations for hours, rates, and so on would be offered up for stakeholder feedback over the summer, and Council would look at a final proposal next fall.

But it wasn’t just that staff’s presentation and proposal were so good that made the meeting so enjoyable. The discussion among the Committee was great as well.

District 6 Councilmember Desley Brooks was insistent that parking not be explored in a vacuum, but as part of a more wholistic and comprehensive transportation policy. Other Committee members agreed, and asked for a reordering of the study’s principles, so that the last one (about parking policy helping the City meet other goals) would become the first and most important.

Most of the conversation was focused broadly, although At-large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan raised a few specific issues, saying that the needs of delivery vehicles in particular should be looked at, and finding ways to encourage the use of transportation alternatives for employees should be a major concern, since a single parking space can accommodate multiple customers throughout the day if it is not being occupied by one employee.

Kaplan went on to suggest that before the parking study is completed, the Council work with their State lobbyist to change some State laws in ways that could help the City better manage parking, and also help financially. She noted, as many people have over the past six months, that much of Oakland’s on-street parking supply is occupied by cars with disabled parking placards, many of which are clearly not legitimate. This City’s ability to enforce against this problem is limited, but perhaps the problem could be ameliorated to some degree by the removal of the primary incentive for such abuse – free parking.

Personally, I’ve never thought it made sense to not charge cars with disabled placards for parking meters. The point of the placards is to give those with limited mobility better access to close-in parking spaces. Anyway, it turns out that it’s State law that mandates disabled parking be free, so Kaplan suggested we work to get that changed.

She also raised a second State issue, which is that Oakland is currently forced to use two separate vehicles (and therefore staff) for street sweeping – one to sweep and one to give tickets, because of limits on how tickets can be issued. In order to adopt a money-saving model like that in place in Washington DC, where only one vehicle is used and tickets are issued automatically through cameras on the street sweeping vehicles (similar to the process for red-light cameras), State law would also have to be changed.

After the discussion, the Committee asked staff to return to the next meeting on December 15th with their requested revisions and for further discussion. I was sad about the rollback of the parking meter hours in October, but I’m very happy that at least this time, the Council seems committed to a thorough, evidenced-based process for making parking policy changes.

There are no links in this post at the moment due to severe internet connection problems. I will come back and add them when I can, hopefully tonight, maybe Saturday morning.

Nobody thought Orloff was going to run for re-election next year, but the sudden retirement (he wants to spend time with his grandchild) was unexpected. At the same Board of Supervisors meeting, he asked the Board to appoint his Chief Assistant, Nancy O’Malley, to fill his seat until next year’s election, when she will run for the office herself, and, according to Orloff, win. That last part is of course a lot more likely when she has the advantage of incumbency.

I will keep any specific issues I have with Tom Orloff his office to myself, except to say that as a general rule, I have very little patience for politicians, particularly longtime officeholders, who leave their office unexpectedly shortly before the end of a term in a manner that practically guarantees the election of a hand-chosen successor. I understand why people do it, obviously, but I find the behavior to be extremely contemptuous of the democratic process and I have a very difficult time respecting anyone who chooses to end their career in this way.

Anyway, I’m not the only person who thinks this whole thing is creepy. District 6 Councilmember Desley Brooks also does not like the idea of the Board appointing Orloff’s suggested replacement to the County’s top law enforcement position with no public input and only a week’s notice. She sent out the following e-mail last week asking people to come to the Tuesday’s meeting and protest.

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors will appoint a new District Attorney Tuesday, September 15, 2009, at 9:00 am. The item is #8A on their agenda. They appear set to appoint Nancy O’Malley at the request of Tom Orloff.

This is an elected position. While the Board has the authority to appoint; it should only do so pursuant to a public process. In the instant case they are making an appointment with less than a week’s public notice and without a public process.

We need to pack the Board chambers on Tuesday and demand a public process for the selection process. Please help turn out as many people as you can. This position is too important for them to make this appointment in secret.

You can also send an e-mail directly to the entire Board of Supervisors, asking for a public process, straight from this page.

I can’t make the meeting because of the Airport Connector coming to Public Works that morning, but I did send a message about it. Some people think Orloff has done a great job (see today’s MediaNews editorial), while others seriously hate him (see the comments on today’s MediaNews editorial), but whether you like Orloff (or O’Malley) is not the issue at hand. This issue is transparency and the public’s right to have a say in who holds public office.

Everyone will have until next week to submit their ideas in writing to be considered on the 30th (when the final budget is passed), but seriously, it’s getting a little late at this point. I mean, everybody had all weekend to respond to the proposal submitted on Friday, so it was really weird to see all this consternation absent basically any suggestions at the meeting last night. At one point, District 3 Councilmember Nancy Nadel, who was irate over the proposed cuts to the Second Start Adult Literacy program, said that more cuts will need to be made elsewhere, but she didn’t know where, and that she’d have to talk to the various department heads to figure out what other cuts should be made. HELLO! WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN DOING FOR THE LAST MONTH AND A HALF, WOMAN! O.M.F.G. Anyway.

While I was hoping to write up something about the meeting for today’s blog, the late of hour of adjournment, combined with my need for at least some sleep, means that I wasn’t quite able to get it together. But don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you with nothing.

A blog doesn’t really lend itself to live coverage of public meetings. But you know what does? Twitter. dto510 loves Twitter. I kind of hate it. Regular readers know that parsimony is not exactly my strong suit, and Twitter’s 140 character limit hardly lends itself to thorough and fair discussion of public policy. But it does have its uses, and live meeting coverage is one of them.

Anyway, in lieu of a real blog for today, I offer you an archive of my twitter updates from last night. There’s a lot of stuff in here I want to write about in more detail later, but I figure this little preview is probably helpful for that, because if people have questions about anything, they can ask them in the comments and I’ll make sure to address them in the post.

Vsmoothe: JQ: Property taxes now expected to be down 4%, higher than estimated previously

V Smoothe: Local 21 (Oakland’s professional employees union) opposes Council proposal to NOT plunge city into $50 million greater debt

Vsmoothe: Carl Chan (Chinatown Chamber of Commerce) threatens to bring 100 people to next meeting if Council cuts Neighborhood Service Coordinators

Vsmoothe: KTOP feed obviously overtaxed, barely working, sound in and out, very annoying.

Vsmoothe: Council on 30 minute break, will return at 7 to resume budget discussions. Accepting speaker cards until 7

Vsmoothe: Public comment over, Council discussing budget now

Vsmoothe: Nancy Nadel says 30% of adults in Oakland don’t read above 4th grade level and that the figure has nothing to do with ESL

Vsmoothe: Nancy Nadel strongly opposes proposed cuts to library adult literacy program, says it is a public safety issue.

dto510: @vsmoothe Isn’t fourth grade level reading considered literate? I agree literacy is important, but library isn’t best place. OUSD maybe?

Vsmoothe: Nancy Nadel says she doesn’t know what else to cut, would have to go back and ask department heads about what they think

Vsmoothe: Desley Brooks opposes elimination of small projects design group, who are building her recording studio. Calls them “necessary.”

Vsmoothe: Desley Brooks opposes cuts to Second Start, thinks we should open branches fewer hours instead.

Vsmoothe: Rebecca Kaplan thinks its fine to charge for using Tool Lending Library, since it will still be cheaper than Home Depot.

Vsmoothe: Rebecca Kaplan also wants to retain Second Start program

dto510: @vsmoothe Um, aren’t libraries supposed to be free? They’re not supposed to be revenue-producing, but a public service

Vsmoothe: Rebecca Kaplan: We are spending to much money on police at special events where they aren’t needed

dto510: @vsmoothe Don’t event permit fees include police costs?

Vsmoothe: Pat Kernighan: would like to charge a fee on every car in the city, but does not like charging high fees for parking tickets.

dto510: @vsmoothe Is it just me or does that make no sense?

Vsmoothe: @dto510 We used to not make festivals pay for all of the police costs. Now we do, but festivals can’t afford it and are getting cancelled.

Vsmoothe: Jean Quan: this is a rolling budget, will have plenty of opportunity to revise later.

Vsmoothe: @dto510 It doesn’t if you know anything about the issue. Someone should buy her a copy of HCOFP for her birthday

dto510: @vsmoothe: When’s Pat’s birthday? If only she were on Facebook

Vsmoothe: Larry Reid wants to know how he can get his ideas to balance budget considered, besides saying them at the meeting

Vsmoothe: Jane Brunner says she’s learned that determining what is core is a process you need a seasoned public administrator to help you with.

Vsmoothe: Rebecca Kaplan: runaway overtime costs undermine the budgeting process, how do we keep police dept. overtime in check?

Vsmoothe: Jane Brunner: We have 10 public hearings ahead of us, need to be moving faster.

Vsmoothe: Council approves sending layoff notices to employees proposed for layoffs in Mayor’s budget, but that have not been objected to by Council.

Vsmoothe: Pat Kernighan says she can’t find anything in police department that is not a core service

Vsmoothe: Desley Brooks says lots of things in police department aren’t core, we have too many people in dispatch

Vsmoothe: Desley Brooks: should be a cap on overtime officers can work. V Smoothe: would we need less overtime if we had more police?

Vsmoothe: Parks and Rec appears out of nowhere to say that if the Council doesn’t pass the full budget tonight, it will be disaster for them

Vsmoothe: Jane Brunner to Parks and Rec: where the hell have you been for the last month? why tell us this NOW?

Vsmoothe: Assistant City Admin: don’t listen to them, it’s fine.

Vsmoothe: Now onto public hearings, Sanjiv Handa out of room

Vsmoothe: On every item, Brunner makes a big show out of calling Sanjiv Handa for comment Everyone in room laughs uproariously every time.

dto510: @vsmoothe Why does Parks and Rec need budget immediately?

Vsmoothe: Rebecca Kaplan recuses self from item on delinquent business taxes, then leaves. Pat Kernighan speculates RK must owe delinquent taxes

Vsmoothe: @dto510 Nobody knows.

dto510: @vsmoothe So, is it over? Any decisions? Are the NCPCs losing their budgets?

Vsmoothe: @dto510 No decisions on budget, layoff notices will be sent out to employees proposed for layoffs, except layoffs those Council objects to

Vsmoothe: @dto510 Not yet, NSCs reorganization item not up yet. Currently, Sanjiv Handa is taking his 20 minutes to speak.

Vsmoothe: Jean Quan: We narrowly missed downgrade from one agency, will probably get downgrade from another

Vsmoothe: Desley Brooks and Rebecca Kaplan: City organizational restructuring should not be discussed tonight, should go to Committee first

Vsmoothe: Pat Kernighan and IDLF: OK with voting on restructuring tonight, support all parts of it except moving Neighrhd Svc Coordntrs out of OPD.

Vsmoothe: Council votes on restructuring, Neighborhood Service Coordinators will remain in OPD

dto510: @vsmoothe: NSCs are the most controversial, but what else is involved in restructuring?

Vsmoothe: Onto Master Fee Schedule, Rebecca Kaplan says we should raise meter rates to $2, not $1.75.

Vsmoothe: Jean Quan opposes raising meters higher than $1.75, opposes any fees on Tool Lending Library.

Vsmoothe: @dto510 Move Personnel out of Finance & Management, to become its own department, Human Resources, move marketing to CEDA.

dto510: How many people are following the #Oakland budget with @vsmoothe’s Twitter instead of the TV? It’s like Iran up in here.

Vsmoothe: Pat Kernighan opposes raising peak hour meter rates, thinks we need to talk about it more and warn public first.

Vsmoothe: Pat Kernighan: I would rather raise all meters to $2/hour than raise some to $3/hr during peak hours.

Vsmoothe: Why is it SO HARD for the Council to understand the basics of what they need to vote on and what they don’t? It’s pathetic.

Vsmoothe: Jane Brunner: OK with pilot program for increased peak hour parking rates, but only in small area, see how it works.

Vsmoothe: Pat Kernighan: Can we start pilot program in your district, then?

dto510:@vsmoothe OK, I don’t care when her birthday is, Pat is getting a present from me next week.

Vsmoothe: Rebecca Kaplan opposes proposal to eliminate proposed fees for Tool Lending Library from Master Fee Schedule.

Vsmoothe: Pat Kernighan thinks if we raise peak hour meter rates, every restaurant in Chinatown will close.

dto510: @vsmoothe: @transbay It does seem fair to apply peak-hour parking pricing to places other than downtown. Like Rockridge

transbay: @dto510 Are you getting her Shoup??

Vsmoothe: Rebecca Kaplan says a small pilot program for peak hour parking is good idea, suggests Uptown as location

Vsmoothe: @transbay Watching this, I think I need to buy copies for the entire Council. It’s horrendous.

Vsmoothe: Nancy Nadel opposes higher peak hour parking for Uptown because there is a parking shortage there. UGH!!!!

dto510: @vsmoothe Uptown is too small and too dead to be a good test for peak parking pricing

Vsmoothe: @dto510 I agree it’s stupid to do it in such a small area, but Nancy’s logic is wrong

dto510: @vsmoothe @transbay Also, parking shortage is reason to do peak pricing. It doesn’t work there b/c parking surplus.

Vsmoothe: Peak hour parking proposal = $3/hour from 10-2, busiest times.

Vsmoothe: Council votes to approve fees to use Tool Lending Library. Nancy Nadel abstains because she doesn’t understand.

Vsmoothe: Council confused about proposed parking ticket fees (PDF). New fees would cost $10 more each than on chart, b/c of prev aprvd state pass-through.

Vsmoothe: Council not capable of adding 10 to numbers before them, pulls fee proposal. Will discuss when it returns next meeting with new chart.

Vsmoothe: Nancy Nadel opposes imposing parking tax on large diesel truck parking, says truckers are too poor to afford it.

dto510: I gotta replace my #Oakland library card before the fee doubles

MaxAllstadt: I think the Council should fine people $5 every time they refer to San Francisco as “The” City in a meeting. It ain’t the only city!

Vsmoothe: Nancy Nadel: you shouldn’t tax people when they do something you want them to. R Kaplan: Then I should not pay sales tax to buy a bicycle?

Vsmoothe: Pat Kernighan: I am “flopping back and forth in the wind on this issue.”

dto510: @vsmoothe Hehe. What are they talking about?

MaxAllstadt: This is ridiculous. I’m going to bed.

Vsmoothe: @dto510 Imposing parking tax on large truck parking.

Vsmoothe: Pat Kernighan and Jean Quan suggest we have a lower parking tax rate for truck parking.

dto510: @vsmoothe How is parking big-rigs something the city wants ppl to do? I have no idea where NN is coming from on this.

Vsmoothe: @dto510 The idea is if they parking in special areas just for them, it keeps them out of neighborhoods.

dto510: @Vsmoothe Ah. Well, the city should just ban big-rig parking in neighborhoods. Lotsa ways to justify that

Vsmoothe: Scott Peterson: Chamber of Commerce convened a meeting, and concluded that tax incentives for businesses would be helpful to Oakland

Vsmoothe: Scott Peterson cont.: Also concluded that study is needed to see if incentives would be revenue negative, positive, or neutral.

Vsmoothe: @dto510 Re: big-rig parking. It is already illegal in neighborhoods.

Vsmoothe: Jane Brunner doesn’t like using stimulus funds for traffic signal improvements. Thinks we should do something “unique” and “creative.”

Vsmoothe: IDLF opposes golden handshake proposal (PDF).

Vsmoothe: Rebecca Kaplan and Pat Kernighan support golden handshake (early retirement)

VSmoothe:Glde Hndshke = Eligible employees would have option of retiring early in exchange for 2 years additional service credit towards retirement

[I don't know why I didn't write anything about the conclusion of this issue. Maybe because I was struggling with how to talk about it in so few words. Basically, they decided to do it, but only for certain classifications.]

Vsmoothe: Pat Kernighan: There are many very narrow streets where people routinely park on sidewalk. Those people should not be fined.

Vsmoothe: Rebecca Kaplan: We have an incredible epidemic of abuse of disabled parking placards, should be enforced as much as possible.

Vsmoothe: Council not comfortable raising fine for locking a child into a car (PDF) from $30 to $100.

dto510: @vsmoothe There is no excuse for parking on the sidewalk. If a street is too narrow for parking, then parking shouldn’t be allowed.

Vsmoothe: Jane Brunner: If your kid gets locked in the car, it’s pretty scary. The police come. You shouldn’t have to pay a fine also.

Vsmoothe: Jean Quan: Um, sometimes people leave their kid in the car and the kid dies. Jane Brunner: Oh yeah, nevermind.

Vsmoothe: Meeting is over! Bedtime!

transbay: @vsmoothe Is Pat aware that sidewalk parking is a violation of both state and federal law?

Vsmoothe: @transbay She says it shouldn’t be enforced in areas where the streets are so narrow that people have to park on sidewalk.

Vsmoothe: @transbay She says she’s okay with the fine is someone is parked perpendicular across a big sidewalk on a normal street

Vsmoothe: @dto510 Pat says that if they do enforcement of that in certain neighborhoods with narrow streets, there will be a “revolt”

dto510: @vsmoothe Those streets should be fixed! I know where she’s talking about, but it’s not her district

At last week’s budget meeting, District 6 Councilmember Desley Brooks suggested that it would be helpful, in determining how we should balance the budget, for the Council to step back and think about what the core functions of the City are. That is, go through each department, item by item, and decide what are the absolutely fundamental services the City is expected to provide.

Council President Jane Brunner had each Councilmember go around and list what they see as core functions, which wasn’t, well, terribly enlightening, because the discussion was so general, but for what it’s worth, here’s how that went. District 4 Councilmember Jean Quan listed libraries, recreation, and senior programs as the City’s core services, and noted that it’s important to look cumulatively at how residents will be impacted, not just by our cuts, but by those at the State level as well. She stressed that the City has a responsibility to look after the most vulnerable members of the community, particularly seniors, who will be particularly hard-hit by the State budget. She said she is not willing to eliminate the rangers, who patrol the City’s parks, from the police department.

District 5 Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente said that while public safety is the most important function the City provides, every department needs to share the pain, and he’s not prepared to shut down libraries to protect the police department from suffering any cuts. In order of importance, he listed police and fire as number one, followed by libraries, then recreation and senior centers, then maintaining streets and sidewalks and generally keeping the city clean, and called everything else “secondary.” District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan agreed, noting that she views recreation centers and libraries as part of providing public safety, and adding that she was uncomfortable with neglecting infrastructure maintenance to the point that it costs us more down the road in terms of repair. She also said that while some argue we shouldn’t spend money supporting cultural institutions, City money spent on cultural activities often leverages large outside sums.

District 3 Councilmember Nancy Nadel agreed that police and fire are core services, but said that that doesn’t necessarily mean everything in the police or fire departments are uncuttable, using the police helicopter as an example. She said City owned buildings were as important as streets and sidewalks in terms of maintenance, and disagreed with a suggestion put forth during public comment that the adult literacy program is not a core part of the library’s functions. Later, she added that anything focusing on environmental compliance and sustainable development should be considered core, because those departments keep us “future oriented” and on the “leading edge.” Okay.

Jane Brunner said that when identifying what’s core and what isn’t, it’s important to look at the critical functions of each department in terms of how they impact service delivery. Using the fire department as an example, she said she viewed the critical service as response to fire and medical calls, but noted that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s critical to have five people on a truck responding to a medical call. She added that senior centers and feeding the homeless are critical functions of the human services department, and that she, too, views recreation centers as part of public safety.

Desley Brooks said she was also not willing to cut the rangers, and felt it was essential to retain the neighborhood service coordinators. She stressed that any cuts need to be thoughtful, and noted that she would not be amenable to cutting the gang unit in the police department. At-large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan preferred to address the question by looking at what isn’t core, asking how much police time gets spent responding to false alarms from home security systems. (This issue (PDF) was recently discussed by the Council’s Finance and Management Committee.) She agreed with Desley Brooks about the importance of the neighborhood services coordinators, saying they leverage a large number of volunteer hours from the community. She said the number of police officers we require for special events seems excessive, and should be reduced, and that any efforts around business and job attraction is a core function. She added that the Council should be careful not to cut any revenue generating positions.

So saying that police, fire, libraries, and parks are essential city services is kind of a no-brainer, and in that sense, the forty-five minutes the Council spent repeating it was somewhat of a waste of time. I mean, it’s not like anyone was going to be like “I think having lots of bureaucrats in City Hall is a core service.” So in hopes of making the exercise more productive, each Councilmember was assigned specific departments to look at in more detail, taking time to examine every function within that department through the lens of whether or not it was, in fact, an essential service.

I think this is a really good way to look at the budget. Realizing that even if the economy improves over the next two years, the City of Oakland is not going to be flush with extra cash any time in the forseeable future, it’s important that we identify what is absolutely necessary to provide, rather than simply making cuts willy-nilly.

I think it would be a good exercise for my readers as well. What do you view as the core functions of the City? What do you see as expendable? I’m not talking about employee pay – yes, compensation must be, and will be cut, but beyond that, we still don’t have enough money to do everything we want to do. So what programs are absolutely vital to your experience of living somewhere, and what programs are simply nice to have when we can afford them?

To get a sense of what functions are contained within different departments, I’ve posted the Mayor’s proposed budget, broken up by department, below. (All files are PDF.) Obviously, most people will not have time to sit and read through all of them. But I encourage everybody to pick just one and take some time to look at it. Examining what we spend money on, what brings money in, how staffing and budgets have changed over the recent years – it’s a good learning experience. I look forward to reading your comments.

• Mayor
• City Council
• City Administrator
• City Attorney
• City Auditor
• City Clerk
• Contracting and Purchasing
• Information Technology
• Finance and Management
• Human Resources
• Police Services
• Fire Services
• Musem
• Library
• Parks and Recreation
• Human Services
• Public Works
• Community and Economic Development
• Non-Departmental

Open Forum was dominated by representatives of LaRouche PAC, demanding that the Council support their proposal to freeze all mortgages and ban foreclosures. Apparently, not supporting their legislation is traitorous and those who decline to adopt it are guilty of treason. Sure.

You may recall the post I wrote in December about the proposed new performance standards for recycling facilities. This is part of the new industrial zoning code adopted last year – the recycling regulations will go in that code, but were not adopted along with the rest because the Council couldn’t reach agreement on them.

Anyway, the new rules (PDF) basically say that recyclers have to adequately maintain the appearance of their facilities, post signage about their hours of operation, and comply with certain noise standards. District 3 Councilmember Nancy Nadel, a neighbor of a recycling facility, had requested stricter standards, asking that representatives of the recycling facilities regularly attend NCPC meetings and clean up the carts and trash within five blocks of the facility.

Nadel wasn’t able to garner much support for her request, and last night the Council approved the new performance standards (PDF), which were pretty much the same as what staff had proposed in the first place. Recyclers will now have to submit a shopping cart management plan to the City, pick up carts within one block of their facility (the report I linked to says two blocks, but this was changed to one), and attend two NCPC meetings a year (Nadel wanted 6).

Before the public speakers started, Nadel admitted defeat and moved staff’s recommendation. Council President Jane Brunner pointed out to the 40 speakers who had signed up that the Council was going to do what they want, so they might want to do everyone a favor and not use all their time in what was a very busy meeting.

Then we got to watch what has to be the most disgusting and offensive spectacle I have ever seen at a Council meeting. Jay Anast of Alliance Metals got up and gave an unbelievably self-righteous speech about how the people he serves have no voice and how he’s going to hold off on ordering equipment and hiring people if the City continues to subject him to performance reviews. The whole time he was talking, he had a stream of homeless people walk up and display signs for the Council to see, and while I wasn’t able to read the signs, from what I gathered, they were about how recycling is their only source of income.

When he finished, an irate Desley Brooks interrupted the public comment to yell at him about how offensive and exploitative his little parade was, and I could not agree more.

The rest of the presentation was pretty much the same. Lots of talk about how the recycling center offers the only source of income for the neediest in society and if it gets shut down, they will all return to a life of crime (ex: “I don’t understand why you would take away shopping carts and put guns in people hands. Cause that’s what you’re gonna do.”). They even trotted out someone they had hired, not once, but twice, to conduct a study and prepare a report about desperate and poor all the people who rely on recycling cans for income are.

The whole show was just gross. Clearly, all these people Alliance bused in had been told that the Council was trying to shut down the facility, which was never the case. They were being asked to clean up the mess they create and be willing to talk regularly to the neighbors of the facility about the problems the facility creates, and the Council declined to require even that. The Alliance presentation basically tried to paint the recycling center as a social service, but responsible service providers do not lie to their clients in order to further their own ends and escape their responsibility of being a decent neighbor.

Moving on. The Council voted to place a measure on a future ballot that would raise the City’s hotel tax (PDF) from 11% to 14%. Half the money generated from the tax would go to the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, and the other half would be split evenly between the Oakland Museum, the Oakland Zoo, the Chabot Space and Science Center, and the City’s cultural arts programming, including festivals and parades.

A number of public speakers argued that Children’s Fairyland should also receive funds from the hotel tax, which the Council did not end up agreeing to. The discussion from the Council was bizarre. They kept talking about how tough the budget cuts are going to be, but how they would protect the funding for all these other cultural institutions anyway. Desley Brooks seemed to be the only one with any sense of reality, and pointed out that it was irresponsible for the Council to make promises about maintaining funding for anyone outside of the budget process.

So…I’m against increasing the hotel tax. I support all the cultural institutions that will be receiving the money, but at some point, the City of Oakland needs to figure out a way to live within their means. We cannot just keep raising taxes constantly! If it passes, the increase would give us the highest hotel tax in Alameda County, and tie us with San Francisco for the highest in the Bay Area. How is increasing the cost of visits going to encourage more tourism in Oakland? How is it going to encourage construction of more hotels? It isn’t.

I just don’t know how to reconcile our insane tax rates with the abysmal levels of service provided by the City. We have the highest fees, we have the highest taxes. We have the highest transfer tax in the area. Now the Council wants us the have the highest hotel tax. Stayed tuned in the next couple of weeks for them to pass an outdoor dining tax (that may sound like a joke, but it isn’t). At some point, enough is enough. The City has to stop looking for ways to bleed more money from its residents and business owners. And their moms who come to visit.

I’m especially disappointed in District 5 Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente for his support of the hotel tax increase. When your whole thing is that you want the City to be more efficient and accountable, where do you get off supporting tax increases? In the last two weeks, De La Fuente has sent out two messages to his mailing list about how he opposes new taxes on residents, and complaining that the City does not use its existing funds well. To insist that “the City hasn’t shown it knows how to use your existing tax dollars wisely” mere hours before voting for a tax increase is terribly hypocritical. Raising taxes is raising taxes, and to draw a distinction between taxes on homeowners and taxes on hotels makes no sense when the premise of your anti-tax argument is that the City isn’t managing its funds properly.

OO. We got a little under an hour of public speakers demanding that the Council not place a repeal of Measure OO on the ballot. After-school programs are important, we shouldn’t cut their funding, without them the kids will have nowhere to go and will be reduced to a life of crime. My favorite speaker was a woman who came up and told the Council that she had participated in an after school program when she was younger, and it was so good for her that now she’s the Executive Director of a non-profit that gets OO funding, so they should increase funding for these programs because it will create more people like her. I get that she was trying to point out that she’s successful, but telling the Council that they should spend money to create a new breed of people who are going to come demand non-existent funds from them isn’t exactly persuasive.

During the extensive testimony about how valuable all these programs are, all I could think about was that maybe in addition to helping kids with their homework, some of these service providers might want to offer some lessons in manners, because it is just unbelievable how rude, disrespectful, and disruptive these crowds of teenagers that keep showing up are.

Nancy Nadel patiently explained, again, that the Council was not trying to cut youth programs, they just can’t afford to double the amount of money that goes to them.

Rebecca Kaplan explained to the audience that Measure OO was not, as some of the speakers had claimed, in the spirit of Obama, and that setting aside money for certain functions without creating a source of revenue for those functions is irresponsible.

Desley Brooks gave the best speech, saying that she did not support a compromise, and that the Council should stop pandering to interest groups and promising them money at the expense of core City services. Word.

The Council split on what to do about the repeal. Ignacio De La Fuente, Desley Brooks, and Jane Brunner wanted to place a measure on the ballot that would repeal OO and return funding to the levels previously established under Measure K. Nancy Nadel, Jean Quan, and Pat Kernighan wanted a measure that would repeal OO but provide greater funding than Measure K would have. Neither proposal could get the five votes needed to pass and we get to do this all over again at the next meeting. Fun.

The final hot ticket item on the agenda was the creation of a vacant building registry (PDF), introduced by District 6 Councilmember Desley Brooks. The idea is that owners of buildings (residential and commercial) that have been vacant for 45 days would have to register their building as vacant with the City. They get 30 days to register the building after it has been vacant for 45 days, and the registration costs $175. If the building remains vacant, the registration fee goes up every year. So if the property stays vacant for a year (and BTW, the definition of vacant includes a commercial building that has even one empty ground floor retail space), the registration cost for the next year is $1000. The next year, it would be $2000. And so on. If property owners failed to register their vacant properties, they would be fined $5000.

So, I’ve watched all the discussions on this proposal, listened carefully to Brooks’s arguments, and read and reread the reports, but despite all of that, I still totally fail to see what the point of creating this database is. I’m all for collecting information, but not if the information is never going to be put to use, and nobody has ever explained how the information from the registry would be used. Brooks keeps talking about how vacant, foreclosed, and abandoned properties are a terrible problem for Oakland’s neighborhoods, and I agree with her, but try as I might, I can’t see how this registry would do anything to reduce the number of vacant properties. In fact, I can’t see how it would do anything except create more bureaucracy and take more money from people, which I’m sick of the City trying to do at every turn. Yes, blighted properties are a problem. We have a blight ordinance that we don’t enforce. We should start enforcing that.

Nobody else on the Council seemed to be willing to pass it as written, so after lengthy discussion about whether we should send it back to Committee for further review, they decided to just do nothing, but several Councilmembers suggested they would work on their own new versions of a similar law, which they would introduce at a later date.

First, they got a report on the 2009 Public Art Projects plan (PDF), which was neat to read about just because I always like seeing the City find ways to make our public spaces more visually exciting.

So, whenever the City does any kind of capital improvement project, 1.5% of that project’s budget gets put aside to pay for public art. Which doesn’t sound like that much money, but it really does add up, and the 2009 public art projects all together are costing about $2.5 million. That’s the total cost for all the projects, not just the cost in 2009. Many of the projects will take a couple years to complete. They include stuff like sculptures around Lake Merritt and in Raimondi Park, integrated art in areas that are getting streetscape improvements and at Fremont Pool, the new East Oakland Community Library, the new East Oakland Sports Center, and so on. Basically, wherever there’s a capital improvement project, there’s some art to go along with it.

Which is great, right? Great for the places that get capital improvements, anyway. For the rest of the City, there’s generally no money available for public art. Which is kind of sad. How nice for us, then, that we’re getting a $100,000 grant (PDF) from the Open Circle Foundation to fund public art elsewhere. The grant will create an opportunity for community organizations throughout the City to partner with local artists on little public art projects in their neighborhoods, where the organizations come up with their own sites and concepts. It’s a really exciting opportunity.

So everyone seemed very pleased with this, but Desley Brooks was concerned about how the money would be distributed. Would community groups be able to apply for any amount of the money? How many projects would get funded? How would we be sure that the projects weren’t concentrated in one part of the City at the expense of others? She suggested the available funding be distributed equally among Council districts:

I think you can have parity, that doesn’t impact – in terms of the distribution of the funds, that doesn’t impact the ability to work with community groups. In fact, if you distributed the money equally across the city, then within the different districts, you may be able to fund more than one project or not. I would be concerned that – you just made the statement that there’s no limitation on what one could apply for. I’d be concerned if all the money went to one project to the exclusion of all others throughout the City. And so, I think we do need to look at those things. And I think probably the easiest way to ensure that there’s parity is by allocating seven ways since there’s seven districts. I think that it’s really important that we incorporate art into the neighborhoods, and that’s every neighborhood throughout this City. When people start to see art in their neighborhood, they get a different appreciation for it. And so I think that the more that we can educate children at a young age of the value of art, people see it more than just an aesthetic thing, but a quality of life issue, cause I really think it is that.

Jean Quan wasn’t so thrilled with that, agreeing that the projects should be distributed throughout the City, but suggesting that a totally equitable distribution by district would be too rigid, and wondered if that was what the grant provider had intended. So then it turned out that the money is coming from an artist who lives in Vermont who just decided she wants to support community art projects in Oakland, and just wanted the projects to be spread throughout the city, not just in downtown, but hadn’t specified anything beyond that.

So I found that really interesting. Like, what motivated this woman from Vermont who has never lived here to give her money to Oakland? Did she visit a friend here at some point and decide we need more public art? Did she read a newspaper article about how sad and broke we are and decide to help? Why Oakland and not Fresno or Newark or St. Louis? Did she have multiple cities in mind as potential places to donate to and drive around all of them to see which she thought needed it the most? I swear, I spent the better part of the night last Tuesday imagining different scenarios that could have led to her decision.

I also thought it was an interesting example of how the Council looks at things in a totally different way than most people. Like, this woman probably isn’t even aware how many Council districts there are, why would it ever even occur to someone who lives in Vermont to think about that? She gives us money and says to spread it around, it should be simple.

But then if you’re Desley Brooks and you’re looking at this money that community groups can apply for, you’re probably thinking about how many more well-organized little organizations there are in Jean Quan’s district and Jane Brunner’s district, and how they’ll probably be able to get it together to write really nice responses to the RFP and your constituents are totally going to get left out in the cold. I know I was totally making a little mental list of the different groups I’d expect to apply during the discussion, and it was heavily weighted in favor of wealthier areas. So she wants to make sure East Oakland gets stuff too, so giving each district their own pot of money to apply for totally makes sense, even if the donor never would have thought of it that way. I suppose I don’t have much in the way of a point here, I just found the whole discussion really interesting. Meeting video below.

The Committee settled on asking for an equitable distribution of projects by district. Staff is currently developing the RFP, and a call for artists will go out in March for projects that can be completed by the end of 2010.

If you find all this talk of public art as fascinating as I do, you may want to consider attending the Visual Arts Town Hall tomorrow, put together by the Present Group. The event runs from 3-5 on Saturday, February 21st and will take place at 465 9th St. in Old Oakland. It will feature two panel discussions about the visual arts in Oakland. The first panel will be me, ProArts’s David Huff, Invisible Venue’s Christian L. Frock, and Queens Nails Projects’s Mike Bianco. The second panel will feature the artists Amy Balkin, Steven Barich, Helena Keeffe, Chris Sollars, and David Stein.