Highlights from last night’s Council meeting

Did you skip the show last night? Had something better to do with your Tuesday evening than stare at KTOP for seven straight hours? Don’t worry. I watch these things so you don’t have to. Here’s what you missed: Read more

Don Perata for Oakland Mayor?

How funny, I was just talking about this last night. I’m not particularly interested in speculating on who’s going to be Mayor two years from now - I’d rather focus on what’s happening in the City right now. But I’m sure that Chip Johnson’s column today about Don Perata, barring indictment, running for Mayor of Oakland in 2010 will get some of my readers fired up, so rather than having the issue clutter up the comments section of an unrelated post, I’ll give you guys a space to duke it out. Read more

Jean Quan and elementary math

My little sister has this, like, handheld video game thing. It’s like a game boy except that it’s sleek and has a color, not sepia-tone screen, also, the screen is much bigger than on a game boy. In fact, there are two screens, and they both respond to touch. Also, it recognizes voice. So I guess it isn’t actually that much like a game boy after all. Anyway. She will sit on the couch for hours and hours playing this totally inane “game” that’s supposed to help prevent Alzheimers or something. Why she can’t just read a book or pick up a crossword puzzle, I couldn’t say. Wev, I spend my free time watching DVDs of months-old City Council and Planning Commission meetings (you should see my collection!), so I’m hardly in a position to judge. Read more

Save the arts? At the expense of what, exactly?

So, tonight the City Council hopes to finally pass their second budget for the year and close the $42 million deficit hanging over our heads. The biggest point of contention tonight is likely to be suspension of the Cultural Arts funding program.

What program, you ask? Here’s the deal. Every year, we award grants to roughly 70 non-profits and individual artists to, well, make art. Read more

We’ll be keeping the park rangers after all

So, it looks like the City won’t be shutting down on Fridays after all. (Or closing parks!) You may recall that when Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums submitted his budget proposal a couple of weeks ago, he left a $10 million deficit and told the Council to figure out how to close it (offering them three options). Subsequently, Dellums explained that he actually didn’t want the Council to make their own decision, and instead expected to save the money by closing the City every Friday, cutting the pay of every non-sworn employee by 20%. Read more

Jane Brunner and Nancy Nadel say no to anti-nepotism ordinance

So earlier this summer, Oakland City Council Ignacio De La Fuente introduced an anti-nepotism ordinance (PDF). It first came to the Finance and Management Committee before recess, and it failed to pass onto Council.

A revised ordinance (PDF) came back to the Finance and Management Committee today. Read more

Banner summer for Oakland

So, to recap.

The general political climate in Oakland at the beginning of the summer was best summed up by the Trib in their Council race endorsements, which they introduced by saying “If there were ever a city crying out for leadership, it’s Oakland,” then proceeded to endorse the re-election of every single incumbent. Oakland voters followed suit at the polls in early June, and sent Nancy Nadel, Jane Brunner, Ignacio De La Fuente, and Larry Reid back for four more years.

Mid-June news of a large-scale gang bust by the Oakland Police Department was almost immediately eclipsed by allegations that Oakland City Administrator Deborah Edgerly had interfered with the 2-month investigation by tipping off her nephew, a member of the Acorn gang and City of Oakland employee, that his phone was tapped.

Faced with widespread citizen outrage, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums took the opportunity to demonstrate his unique ability to find the absolute worst possible way to handle a municipal crisis, first giving her until Monday, June 23rd to either resign or be fired, then pre-empting his own deadline by sending out an e-mail on Friday, June 20th directing all department heads to report directly to him. Nevertheless, Edgerly remained at the helm at the beginning of the following week.

Then on Tuesday, June 24th, Dellums held a press conference announcing that Edgerly would retire from her post, at the end of July (although she would continue to work for the city for as long as six months while selecting her own replacement) but claimed that the announcement was unrelated to the brewing scandal, saying her retirement plans had been in place since January. When pressed for details on the search for Edgerly’s replacement by Chip Johnson on KQED Forum, Dellums Chief of Staff David Chai remained insistent that the plan had been in place since January, but refused (or was unable) to answer follow-up questions about when the search for a replacement had begun.

By Friday, June 27th, Councilmembers Ignacio De La Fuente and Pat Kernighan were calling publicly for her to be placed on administrative leave until her retirement date, and Dellums finally did so that night, naming his interim CEDA director Dan Lindheim acting City Administrator. Edgerly fired back the next Monday, claiming that Dellums didn’t have the authority to appoint her replacement, in response to which, the Mayor finally fired her on July 1st, then told reporters the following day that claims he had behaved indecisively were “absurd.” Ultimate fallout of the Edgerly scandal is yet to be determined, awaiting the results of an FBI investigation, for which subpoenas were issued in late August.

Reaction to the Edgerly mess from the rest of City Hall varied widely. Oakland City Attorney John Russo, Oakland City Auditor Courtney Ruby, and Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente stepped in with government reform packages, offering proposals ranging from a new anti-nepotism law to an audit of hiring practices to records reform, while District 3 City Councilmember Nancy Nadel called such actions “opportunistic power grabbing (PDF)” and warned that we should wait for all the facts before “rushing to judgement.” Calls to eliminate waste in Oakland’s government were met with derision by District 4 Councilmember and wanna-be Mayor Jean Quan, who announced in a newsletter that she believes the worst case scenario is that the City has less than a million dollars in waste that could be cut.

The administrative crisis was compounded by a financial one. The Council passed a mid-cycle budget with $15 million in cuts in June, but got two bits of unpleasant news the next month. First, in response to findings of vote counting irregularities with LLAD from activist David Mix and ORPN founder Charles Pine, the Council admitted defeat and agreed not to collect the tax, putting them another $12 million in the hole. Then Dellums acknowledged that the revenue estimates he had presented in his (late) budget proposal were inaccurate by millions of dollars and announced he was bringing in former City Manager Robert Bobb to sort out the mess and find a replacement for Edgerly. Bobb announced two weeks ago that the actual deficit was somewhere between forty and sixty million dollars. Matier and Ross later reported that Oakland’s fund reserve dropped from over $60 million last year to $22 million currently. Although the City is unable to account for where the money went, Finance and Management Committee Chair Jean Quan tried to put a rest to concerns, saying “It’s not like the money was stolen.”

Things just got worse in August, when the City experienced a spree of local business robberies that appeared to have no rhyme or reason, with targets ranging from a pizzeria on Skyline to a nail salon in Temescal to a monument to mediocre cuisine in Rockridge. Dellums responded by blaming the economy, informing the citizens that the apparent crime rise is perception, not reality, and calling in the volunteer Guardian Angels to patrol our streets. The spate of high profile crime wasn’t limited to restaurant robberies - Oakland residents also got to deal with arsons in West Oakland, a four year old boy getting hit by a stray bullet, and this weekend, the second murder this year of a pregnant teenager. A Labor Day shooting in East Oakland brought the year’s homicide tally to 95, up from 88 this time last year.

In response to rising concerns about crime, the Council agreed to place a parcel tax on the November ballot that would hire 105 additional police officers and 75 additional police service technicians over the next three years, at a cost of $275/year for Oakland homeowners. Dellums named former County Health Department director Arnold Perkins as his temporary Public Safety Director. Although the public will have to wait until September 11th to see the Mayor’s full public safety program, residents got a preview of Perkins’s answers for the Oakland crime problem in a Trib editorial this weekend, where Perkins suggests to Martin Reynolds that citizens combat the crime problem on their own by bringing fried chicken to the groups of young men loitering on their streetcorners.

You know, following this stuff day to day, you’re always angry, of course, but as with anything, after a while you just sort of get used to it. There’s outrage, sure, but somehow it just gets dulled over time. I had a wake-up call this weekend, watching the way people not from Oakland reacted to my telling them, in this kind of jaded, matter-of-fact way, about the restaurant robberies and the statements in response from Dellums and Tucker. Their response, which was just complete disbelief that anyone would tolerate living in such a place, made me realize just how totally, totally fucked-up the situation is in this town. (I am sorry for the language. Although I may have a few sailor-like tendencies in person, I do try to restrain myself on the blog, but sometimes there are no other words.) The people of Oakland deserve better, and there is absolutely no reason we should tolerate the status quo even a day longer. Immediate action is needed from City Hall. As for what that action should be, well, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow on my thoughts there. Today is just about reveling in completely justifiable outrage.

Don’t believe your eyes

As Oakland residents grow more and more frustrated with the inept management of this town and fear more and more for their safety as they wake up every morning to headlines about shootouts and restaurant robberies and little kids being hit by stray bullets and the Mayor being desperate enough to ask for the help of the guardian angels, our leaders, thankfully, are stepping up to the plate and offering reassurances. The Mayor, at last night’s Silence the Violence Day at the Coliseum, said not to worry, things just aren’t that bad:

Mayor Ron Dellums said Wednesday there’s a perception that crime is on the rise in his city, but it’s not the reality.

The attitude is hardly limited to the Mayor’s office. Jean Quan staffer Sue Piper, in response to a post about local crime statistics, informed readers of one local listserv:

A word of caution about the crime stats– one needs too look a little deeper. One reason the crime stats are high is a significant increase in the reporting of domestic crime. The City has made a concerted effort to provide support systems and coordination to encourage victims of domestic crime– especially sexually exploited minors– to report to the police. And if you compare this past year to previous years, you will see that homicides are actually less.

On the other hand, burglaries, especially auto burglaries, are up.

So…which is it? Perception? Reality? Shall we take a look? Below, you’ll find year to date comparisons of reported Part 1 crimes in Oakland.

And by the way, if you, like Jean Quan, want to discount the reported domestic crimes from the numbers, since, as she’s constantly telling us, they’re being reported more, not actually happening more, feel free to subtract those figures from the aggravated assault totals. Year to date 2007, 317 of those 2184 aggravated assaults were domestic problems. This year, 326 out of 2455 were.

Public Service Announcement

I have some excellent advice for all my readers. Back up your hard drive. Now. No really, right now. Do it! Because if you don’t, you could lose everything at any moment. You could be, for example, happily putting the finishing touches on a project you’ve spent a month creating, when poof! Computer dead! You already know this, of course. Sometimes you say to yourself, “Gee, I really should back up all my music and photos and work and papers and like 40 blog drafts that all took hours to research. Because it would really suck if they all went away forever. Eh. I’ll do it later.” Don’t do it later. Do it now. Seriously. If you don’t have an external hard drive or some other back-up method, go out and buy one. Immediately.

Now that I’m done playing Ann Landers, I’d like to thank Kent Lewandowski, Chris Kidd, and Vivek B. for very kindly filling in while I was taking my little break. If you somehow missed their excellent posts about the clean trucks Port rally, the Estuary Specific Plan, and crime trends since 2005, you should go read them immediately. Well, immediately after you back up your hard drive, which, seriously, you should do right now.

Anyway, I’m feeling a little out of practice here after my little vacation. I’m going to need to ease back into this blogging thing. So I’m just going to start out today with some pointless whining about something that frustrated me.

So Tuesday was National Night Out, right? Which I think is really nice and everything, for people to say that once a year, they feel comfortable standing outside on their street for an hour in the early evening, or whatever. There was no party in my neighborhood as far as I could tell, so I went with a friend to an event elsewhere downtown. I had some soda and chips and got a City of Oakland refrigerator magnet and a cool coloring book and talked to some nice people. I hear that Lincoln Park had an awesome party with like 10,000 people and music and dancing and like an Olympic ping pong player or something. That was more exciting than the event I went to, which was kind of winding down by the time I got there, a little after 8. Anyway, National Night Out overall seems like a nice holiday or whatever, although I do have to wonder, what with all the promotion I’ve been seeing for months, just how much money the City has spent on this year’s National Night Out, and whether it’s, you know, the best possible use of tight funds.

I also find it super lame that despite the endless promotion, the City couldn’t like, put together a list of all the registered National Night Out parties so that you could find one near where you live. A friend of mine wanted to attend an event in his West Oakland neighborhood, but didn’t know where there was one. I suggested (in retrospect, I have no idea why, I should have known better), checking Nancy Nadel’s website to see if she had a list of parties. Of course she didn’t! She just had a link to the City’s National Night Out page, which does not list parties that are happening. It just tells you how to register your own party. Compare this to Jean Quan’s National Night Out page, which lists every party in all of District 4. By beat! Then I suggested (again, foolishly) trying the Mayor’s website, but that was also a bust, featuring no information at all about National Night Out except for a press release (PDF), dated August 1st, begging people to register parties before the deadline of 5 PM July 28th. Unable to determine where there was a party, my friend ended up staying home. If the City wants people to celebrate National Night Out so bad, maybe next year they’ll think about telling people where to go to do it.

Council says no to Jean Quan’s Kids First Compromise

The vote was 6-2, with only Jean Quan and Nancy Nadel voting in favor.

Pat Kernighan and Ignacio De La Fuente patiently provided the large audience of extremely rude teenagers very clear explanations of why the City simply cannot afford the increase, although Pat said that she would be requesting the Council increase the Oakland Fund for Children and Youth funding to either 3% or 3.5% of the unrestricted General Fund (up from 2.5% currently). I’m not entirely sure how that’s going to fly in light of a budget deficit rumored to be around $90 million, but I guess that’s an issue to be worked out later.

Ignacio De La Fuente said that placing a compromise measure on the ballot would only lead to further ballot box budgeting, and that if they consented to this, they could expect similar set-asides for seniors, parks, and whatever else people desperately want and just doesn’t get enough funding.

Jane Brunner made me happy by including a brief comment in her remarks about how programs funded through OFCY should be scrutinized more heavily for their outcomes, so that we can give more money to the ones that work better. That’s all I’m saying!

More later.

Jean Quan on waste in City spending

In Councilmember Jean Quan’s most recent newsletter (and by the way, no matter how many negative things I have to say about Jean Quan, that woman deserves major props for putting out an incredible weekly newsletter), she has a section where she discusses the parcel tax for police the Council just voted to place on the ballot, including a helpful little Q&A section, in which she addresses the issue of waste in the City budget:

Why can’t you just cut the waste/corruption?

Following from above, while I believe we can be more efficient and we may find some inappropriate and unapproved expenditures, the worst case scenario numbers we are looking at are probably not near a million at this point. There is not $40-60 million in waste or misspending. $1 million would fund about 4 officers. (emphasis added)

In the same newsletter, she discusses her proposed Kids First 2 compromise ballot measure (PDF), which the Council will consider at a special meeting (PDF) Tuesday morning. Quan’s proposal would gradually increase the amount of unrestricted General Fund revenue that gets set-aside for the Oakland Fund for Children and Youth, from 2.5% currently to 5% starting seven years from now, an increase from $10 million this year to $12.7 million next year to $23 million in the seventh year. On this subject, she says:

While I am still generally opposed to measures that tie the hands of the Council basically forever; this proposal is significantly better. It is less and would be phased in over much longer period of time. Most significantly, it requires that at least 25% of the funds be done in collaboration with City agencies and that partnership should be positive. If done well, it might not mean cuts in other city programs and in the short term could increase funding if city proposals are competitive.

So…am I the only one who’s seeing something of a disconnect here? There’s less than a million dollars in waste in the entire city, but we can somehow double the amount of funding we’re providing to the Oakland Fund for Children and Youth without cutting any other City programs? How does that work?

Read more about Kids First 2 on the Oakbook.

Jean Quan continues to be totally out of touch

So this morning, Ron Dellums and Sandre Swanson held an event at the new Forest City Uptown Project to, I don’t know, talk about how great it is or something. Never one to miss an opportunity to stand in front of a camera, Jean Quan showed up. She jumped in to share her thoughts about the project, telling everyone that it’s important to remember that unlike most new developments downtown, the Forest City project is rental units, not ownership. This is true. It is important to remember that. Not nearly enough rental housing gets built in this town. But then she lost me, when she followed that statement with:

This ensures that families who can’t afford to buy condos can live downtown.

She then repeated variations of that sentence like 4 times, with multiple references to “working people.” (As if everyone who buys a condo just sits around all day eating peeled grapes and living off a trust fund or something.)

So, there’s no question that Uptown is totally drool worthy, and a wonderful addition to downtown. I’m not planning on moving in, but I am hoping to make friends with someone who does, so I can hang out at their pool. But at $2,400/month for a two bedroom apartment, I’m thinking Quan has a very different idea of what’s within the reach of all these “working people” than me or just about anyone else in Oakland.

Related Posts:

• 07.15.2008 Police parcel tax will be on the November ballot
• 07.11.2008: Jean Quan to Oakland: Please, give more of your money to non-profits
• 06.11.2008: Jean Quan doesn’t believe crime is up
• 04.24.2008: Jean Quan: out to lunch in San Ramon

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