One of the things that always surprises me about watching City meetings is what issues catch my attention. I mean, you look at agendas, and you would think it would be obvious what is going to be interesting to write about. Take, for example, tonight’s Council meeting. There are several controversial topics on tonight’s agenda — criteria for awarding the marijuana growing permits, doubling the number of dispensary permits in Oakland, and municipal ID cards.

319 Chester Street

But watching the Committee discussions from two weeks ago, those weren’t the things that I found I had the most to say about. Instead, my attention was grabbed by the conversation about a little vacant lot in West Oakland, at 319 Chester Street, which is on tonight’s consent calendar.

For the whole story, you can read the staff report (PDF), and watch the video of the whole discussion below.

Basically, the City owns this vacant lot near West Oakland BART. The want to give it — well, “sell” it for no cost to a company called the Alliance For West Oakland Development, who will then use City affordable housing funds to build a house on it, which they will then sell to an affordable housing buyer, and then give the money from the sale back to the City so that it can be used to fund more affordable housing construction. Additionally, there is a job training for youth aspect to the construction. From the the staff report (PDF):

The Alliance for West Oakland Development, Inc. is a 501(c)3 community development corporation, established in June, 1999. They were formed to address the issues of rebuilding the West Oakland community. Their mission is to initiate, promote and facilitate the development of blighted areas of West Oakland through a Green Building and Construction Training Program. The program provides training opportunities for West Oakland residents and is geared toward “at risk” young adults (18-25 years) and is also open to all persons interested in entering the construction field.

So this sounds like a good thing, right?

At the Community and Economic Development Committee

So when this item came up at Committee, District 5 Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente is all “Um, so how does this make any sense when people can just buy houses for a fraction of that cost? Why don’t we just sell the damn lot?”

So staff responded that if we sold it, we wouldn’t have any guarantee that anyone would build on the lot, and also that the construction presents job training opportunities.

Now, I’m very sympathetic to the idea of doing it for the job training. But I found it very odd that there was like, no information about the specifics of this job training component in either the report or the presentation. I mean, if you’re going to invest all this money and the primary benefit is that it’s a job training program, wouldn’t you think there should be some more details about that program? Like, I don’t know, how many people it’s going to train? Even just a rough estimate? How people qualify to be part of it? Anything at all? It just seemed off to me.

So then, Igancio De La Fuente asked again about the cost. And staff was like “Well, we don’t actually know that it’s going to cost $375,000. Maybe it will cost less. And also, maybe property values in West Oakland will increase dramatically by the time we finish building this. So then it won’t be more expensive that everything else around.”

So then, Council President Jane Brunner is like “Okay. So we’re giving them $375,000 to build this place, plus $100,000 worth of land. So we’re talking about a $475,000 investment from the City?” And staff is like “Well, we’re going to sell it for at least as much as it costs us.” And Jane Brunner is like “You’re going to sell it for $475,000?” And staff is like “Well, we don’t know what we’re going to sell it for. If we sell it for $475,000, then yes, but if we don’t, then no.” And Jane Brunner is like “So you’re not going to sell it for as much as it costs us?” And staff is like “Yeah, sure. We’ll sell it for $475,000.” And Jane Brunner is like “Well, okay. That’s cool with me as long as all that money comes back to the City.”

So I don’t know if I’m just missing something entirely or what. But how is this house affordable if we’re going to sell it for nearly half a million dollars? I mean, nobody brought this up at the meeting, but it was the biggest question in my head when I was reading the staff report, which suggested that it was only going to be sold for $375,000. I mean, yes. I get that if we sell it to someone of a qualifying income level, then it technically qualifies as an affordable housing sale. But from a practical perspective, when you’re thinking about the actual goals of affordable housing production — well, I just don’t see how this fits with them.

So then District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan started asking about who is going to buy the house (participants in Oakland’s first-time homebuyer program) and what kind of affordability restrictions (45 years) there would be on it, and then was just like “Wait, how does this make sense? We’re going to sell this house for $475,000? Really?” And staff is like, “No, we’ll sell it for $375,000. Or however much it costs to build. Maybe it will cost $250,000. Who knows? The land is free!” And Pat Kernighan is all “But the land is worth money. And people don’t want to buy houses with resale restrictions when they can buy houses without them for cheaper. I do like the job training thing.”

And then staff was like “Yes! That’s why we’re doing it. Not for the money, for the job training. Also, it will revitalize the neighborhood.”

And then District 7 Councilmember Larry Reid was like “We’re going to do one of these in my District, too! It’s gonna be awesome!.” And then the Committee all voted for it except for Ignacio De La Fuente and now it’s on the consent calendar for tonight’s meeting.

Details seem to fall short

There are a lot of things about this that seem very admirable in concept. Affordable housing. Job training. Making productive use of vacant city-owned land. But you need more than a good concept. And the details on this thing — I just don’t see how they pencil out.

I mean, if we’re talking about selling a single-family home for almost $400,000, that doesn’t seem like a good affordable housing investment. Nor does it seem realistic to me in a neighborhood where comps are generally less than $300,000.

With no details on how many people we can even expect to be part of the job training, and what exactly they’re going to get out of it, I don’t see how we can evaluate if this is a good use of money for that purpose.

And of course, there’s the issue of money. The City is broke. We need money to provide services. So it seems like before we just go around giving property away, we should at least look into seeing whether we can sell it to someone who just wants to build a normal house on it, and maybe if we can get some much needed cash. Right?

It bothered me that the Committee was so cavalier about approving the whole thing. I mean, I guess they saw it differently, but when I was listening to the questions they were all asking, it really didn’t seem like they were getting very good answers from staff. There’s a tendency, on the part of the City Council, to act like if money isn’t coming from the General Fund, then we don’t have to think very much about spending it. But that’s a terrible way to approach running the City! And I can’t help but think that this attitude has a lot to do with the reason we’ve ended up in such a sucky situation with the budget.

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?

Since I’ve blogged plenty about this already, I’m not going to go into detail explaining the proposal again. The very short version is that this is part of the effort to update Oakland’s zoning code so that it complies with the General Plan, and would divide downtown into four distinct zones (one for residential areas, one for areas we want strong pedestrian oriented retail, one for big commercial areas, and one for the kind of outer parts of downtown that we don’t really know what we want to do with). All zones are unique to Oakland’s downtown. It also divides downtown up into 7 height areas, each of which has their own special limits on height and density and so on. It looks sort of like this:

Of course, those are just the highlights – there are lots of other density and bulk restrictions for each height area, which you can read in detail here (PDF) if you’re so inclined.

So those are the basics. If you want a refresher on the proposal beyond that, go read this post. Or the staff report (PDF).

So after spending a year at the Planning Commission, the zoning proposal made it to the Council’s Community and Economic Development Committee a couple of weeks ago. With 43 speakers signed up to talk about it, public comment on this one item took up practically the entire meeting. And it was mostly the exact same things we’ve been hearing for the last year, from the same three groups who have been at like, every last meeting on this: the Coalition of Advocates for Lake Merritt (CALM), the Oakland Heritage Alliance (OHA), and the Oakland Builders Alliance (OBA). Here are the highlights.

CALM remains hysterical over tall buildings by the Lake, calling all the existing high-rises along Lakeside Drive a “mistake” and demanding 55 foot height limits near the Lake. Nobody cares.

The OHA thinks that basically every part of downtown where there are old buildings should be zoned with a height limit the same as the existing old buildings. The idea behind this is that nobody will ever tear down an historic building if you’re not going to let them build something any taller in its place. Personally, I think this is a ridiculous way to go about historic preservation. The Planning Commission wasn’t into it either, and instead, the City is going to write up new findings you have to meet before demolishing an historic building. The findings are supposed to come to the Council at some unspecified date in the future, after they’ve been vetted by the Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board and the Planning Commission.

The OHA is also upset about the fact that the area around the Lake Merritt BART Station is included in the zoning proposal. This neighborhood is one of the three in Oakland that are currently in the process of getting a Specific Plan. Since the Specific Plan is going to come with its own zoning, they think we should hold off on rezoning it until the Specific Plan is finished. I suspect they are afraid that the new zoning will somehow put at risk all those wretched falling apart Victorians in that neighborhood that really should be torn down. While I do not share their concern for the horrible Victorians, I do agree that we should exempt this area from the new zoning, out of respect for the Specific Plan process. If we’re doing it for developers (see below), then it’s only fair we do it here as well.

CALM and the OHA have also both latched onto this thing about “view corridors,” which, frankly, I just do not get at all. The idea is that the zoning code should protect important or “historic” views, specifically, the views from a few random spots on the other side of the Lake to the Trib Tower and City Hall. They think you should never be able to build anything that would block these views.

Proponents of the protected views are quick to point out that it isn’t some crazy idea they just came up with out of nowhere one night, and that in fact, San Francisco has protected views too, like the view down California Street to the Bay and the bridge that they put on San Francisco postcards. I don’t know why they even bring this up, because to me, it’s a perfect illustration of why we should not do view corridors. I mean, when I hear that, the first thing that pops into my mind is like “It’s true, that is a really arresting view, of course you shouldn’t allow people to ruin it. My friend sent me that postcard when she visited San Francisco on Spring Break in high school and I kept it on my fridge for years because it was so pretty.” And then you compare that image to looking across Lake Merritt, where neither City Hall nor the Trib Tower is at all the dominant feature of what you see from any point, and you’re like “Wow, how are those the same thing at all? Oh, that’s right, they’re not.”

I also find it the suggestion really offensive that people who live on the other side of the Lake are somehow more important than everyone else in Oakland. As dto510, an Old Oakland resident, is fond of pointing out, nobody cared about whether you could see the Trib Tower from his street when they built 555 12th Street. I will also note that I live like four blocks away from City Hall, and despite the fact that my windows face that direction, I can’t see it from my apartment either.

Anyway, staff says they’re working on a study of view corridors and that a proposal for them is going to come back in like a year. CALM and the OHA hate the idea of passing the rest of the zoning now with the promise of doing the view corridors later. I’d be upset, too. “Come back with x later” is City of Oakland code for something that is going to fade into the ether and never come back and eventually everyone will just forget about it forever. Since I think the view corridors are inane, this approach doesn’t bother me in the least, but I understand why CALM and the OHA don’t like it.

The OBA has decided they can live with the current proposal, and turned out 18 speakers who urged the Committee to just pass the damn thing already, except they wanted two parcels where development proposals are already underway to be exempt from the new zoning. One is the lot right next to Snow Park, the site of the proposed Emerald Views project, and the other is across the street from the Alice Arts Center, the site of another proposed high rise.

Both of these buildings would be permitted under current rules, but both are taller than what would be allowed under the proposed new zoning. Since their applications were submitted before we came up with the new zoning, the new zoning would not apply to them. However, both projects still must be approved by the Planning Commission, and the OBA fears that if the Council passes a zoning proposal under which the proposed buildings would be prohibited, then the Planning Commission could interpret that as the Council saying they don’t want these buildings. They believe the buildings should be judged on their own merits, and that new zoning would create an unfair prejudice against them, so we should leave those two spots out of the new zoning until a decision is reached one way or another on both proposals.

Oh! And District 3 Councilmember Nancy Nadel also showed up and basically parroted the CALM agenda – she wants the Emerald Views lot downzoned, thinks buildings along the Lake should be limited to 85 feet (her rationale for this one was great, actually: she said that since we already have a bunch of 170 foot tall buildings on Lakeside Drive, we should downzone it so every building doesn’t look the same), and of course, she thinks we should protect views from across the Lake of City Hall and the Tribune Tower.

Anyway, the Committee seemed really into the view corridors idea, saying that the study should come back quickly and we should put in place interim measures to protect the views in the meantime. Annoying. They also agreed that the two lots of concern to the OBA should be exempt from the new zoning, although the support for that one was a little wishy washy, and I’m sure it will be a subject of debate again tonight.

District 7 Councilmember Larry Reid didn’t have a ton to say about any of the particular items of controversy at hand, but piped up at the end to inform everyone in the room that he wants to make it “absolutely clear” that he is opposed to “any height restriction,” adding that he’s visited Hong Kong sixteen times and that it has “always been [his] hope and inspiration for this city.”

And that’s it, I guess. The new zoning will be discussed by the City Council tonight, and will hopefully be heard not too long after 7 (it’s the second public hearing on the agenda (PDF)). There will probably be like ten thousand public speakers.

• Library: Do not accept proposed branch pairing. Instead, keep all libraries open 5 days per week, but reduce book budget by 10%.
  • Previously, the General Fund contribution to the Second Start Adult Literacy program was proposed for elimination. That idea proved wildly unpopular at the last budget meeting (on the 16th), and this cut is no longer part of the proposal.
• Public Works: Do not cut (as proposed by Mayor) 4 tree maintenance staff and 3 gardener crews. In exchange, 100 vehicles will be removed from the fleet, two vacant positions will be eliminated (vehicle maintenance positions), and we will not make $1.45 million in expected new vehicle purchases.
• Police: Do not cut the rangers (who patrol the parks) as proposed. 10% reduction in personnel budget, eliminate take-home vehicles (except for certain positions), and ground helicopter.
  • The big change from the last proposal we saw is, of course, the 10% personnel budget reduction ($13.35 million). You would have to have been living in a cave for the past two weeks to have missed the heated back and forth between City officials and the OPOA over the negotiations, which are not going well. This proposal basically says that whether or not the police agree to changes in their contract, they will take the same 10% cut as all other City employees. If a contract agreement is not reached, the cost reduction may be imposed through furloughs.
• Do not accept debt refinancing or suspended payments to internal service funds as proposed in Mayor’s budget.
• Parking: Do not raise parking fine for expired meter beyond $55 ($10 increase had been proposed. Extend meter hours to 8 PM. Increase rates in off-street parking lots so they’re the same as the meters. Raise meter fee $0.50, to $2/hour.
  • Two weeks ago, the proposal was to raise the meter fee only $0.25, but also to begin a pilot program that would charge $3/hour during peak hours (10-2) downtown. The peak hour pricing pilot program was pretty unpopular at the meeting on the 16th, and that proposal is now gone.
• Parking: Start charging parking tax on parking at the Coliseum (raises $1.5 million, will start September 1st) and on diesel truck parking.
• Marketing: Increase Cultural Funding Program Coordinator position from 0.5 FTE to 1.0 FTE. Reduce arts grants by $55k to offset cost.
  • This is new.
• Fire Department: save $6.1 million through employee concessions.
  • This was $6.4 million in the proposal two weeks ago.
• Mayor: 20% reduction from exempt positions budget, plus elimination of Pay-Go.
• City Attorney: 10% reduction of budget
• City Auditor: will have to share a receptionist with the Public Ethics Commission
• City Council: 20% budget reduction, including elimination of Pay-Go (for current year only).
• Voluntary 10% pay cut for elected officials.
  • This is an increase from the 5% proposed last time around.
• Reduce supplies across all agencies by 20%, saving $1.3 million.
• Renegotiate outstanding contracts for 5-10% reduction, saving $0.5 million.
• Reduce subsidies to Zoo, Chabot Space & Science Center, Cypress Mandela Training Center, Oakland Asian Cultural Center, etc. by 10%. Reduce subsidy to Schools of the Arts by 50%.
• Raise $4.5 million with 10% surcharge on tickets at the Coliseum and Arena.
  • This was estimated at $9 million in the previous proposal, but since so many tickets have already been sold, it’s clear we wouldn’t be able to bring in that much this year. $9 million is expected for next year.
• Save $2.1 million through Early Retirement Incentive program.

And again, that’s just a summary of the proposal. You can view the entire thing, along with the amount of money each step would cost or save this year and next year here (PDF).

Now on top of that, some other Councilmembers have submitted proposals of their own. District 7 Councilmember and Public Safety Committee Chair Larry Reid is asking that the police helicopter be restored to the budget (PDF), as well as take-home vehicles for senior-level and critical emergency staff. In exchange, he would like to reduce the police overtime budget by an equivalent cost ($378,000 for the helicopter, $80,000 for the take-home vehicles).

Reid is also proposing (PDF) that we reclassify the position of parking control technician to parking control officers. Parking Control Officers make like $1 more per hour than Parking Control Technicians (hourly rates are listed in the salary schedule (PDF)), but they also have more power. The idea is that if we did this, we would be able to use a combination of parking control officers and a small number of police officers for traffic enforcement at special events, which would cut the traffic enforcement cost for a typical event just about in half.

I don’t know how in tune everybody is with this special event issue – I’ve been meaning to write about it forever and just haven’t found the time. Basically, the City used to budget some money to cover the costs of having police provide security/traffic control for special events, parades, and festivals. Then that money got cut back in November, and now the festivals have to shoulder the full cost. But the festivals can’t afford it. This resulted in events like Cinco de Mayo getting cancelled. It’s a real problem. So this would be a way of reducing some of those costs.

District 3 Councilmember Nancy Nadel also submitted a list (PDF) of suggestions (PDF). Unlike the other proposals listed above, her memos do not include any estimates of the cost savings that would be achieved if they were adopted. A number of her suggestions are also included in the more detailed proposal outlined above. Additionally, she asks that we consider:

• Eliminate city paid parking spaces for employees
• Switch from auto allowance to a mileage reimbursement policy
• Suspend professional development allowances for one year
• Suspend merit increases for one year
• Raise rental rates at Parks and Recreation facilities so that they are completely cost covering.
• Reduce Zoo subsidy by 25%
• Reduce Chabot Space and Science Center subsidy by 40%

She further requests that the City explore whether we could save money on police vehicles by assigning officers two to each car.

State law requires us to pass a budget by July 1st, so a decision will be made on Tuesday. The meeting starts at 5 PM, and the budget is basically the only thing on the agenda (PDF).

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

I wrote about the proposal for the Oakbook two weeks ago, and Becks at Living in the O, John Knox White at Stop, Drop, and Roll, and Eric at Transbay Blog reminded you about it again before the meeting. If you missed all that, here’s the (somewhat) short version.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) is a Bay Area agency responsible for regional transportation planning. Most State and Federal funding for transportation in the Bay Area (both roads and public transit) goes to the MTC, which then distributes it for regional road and highway projects and among transit agencies. They are also the responsible body for administering regional transportation funds, like those received from bridge tolls. The basic idea is that having a regional body do all this will ensure better coordination between agencies and greater efficiency of funds than would happen if everyone was acting independently.

The MTC is governed by a nineteen member board, composed of local elected officials. San Francisco County, Alameda County, Santa Clara County, Contra Costa County, and San Mateo County each get to representatives on the Commission – one member of that county’s Board of Supervisors, and one person to represent the cities in that county. For us, that means Alameda County Supervisor from Fremont Scott Haggerty representing Alameda County and Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates representing the cities in Alameda County. Marin County, Solano County, Sonoma County, and Napa County each get one Commissioner to represent both the cities in the county and the county itself. The Association of Bay Area Governments and the Bay Conversation and Development Commission each get a representative, as does the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the US Department of Transportation, and the California Business, Transportation, and Housing Agency.

Got all that? Without getting too much into the chip I’ve got on my shoulder about the MTC, I’ll just note that our county representative is so far out that the interests of his District are much more aligned with Santa Clara County’s than most of Alameda County, and the ABAG representative is Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese. Santa Clara County is way over-represented and Oakland gets basically nothing. It’s not just me that thinks its unfair, either. The MTC is currently being sued over inequity in their distribution of public transit funds. The argument is basically that the MTC’s inequitable subsidies to local transit agencies violate Federal and State civil rights laws because they disproportionately subsidize agencies that serve affluent white customers while neglecting agencies like AC Transit which serves primarily transit-dependent people of color. This nifty little chart (PDF) illustrates the disparity. Bus advocates in Los Angeles won a similar case several years ago.

So the MTC was allocated by formula $343 million (PDF) for transit from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, usually referred to as the stimulus package. Local transit agencies and riders wanted the MTC to disburse all of that money to the agencies for system preservation. The combination of plummeting sales tax revenues and the gutting of transit funding by the State has left most of these agencies in dire straights, so the influx of stimulus cash is much needed. Instead, the MTC decided to give 79% of it to system operators, and reserve $70 million for the Oakland Airport Connector project.

So, this was a terrible decision. Bay Area transit agencies desperately need every penny they can get for system preservation, so they can maintain operations needed to get people to jobs (and also avoid putting people out of work). That angle has been pretty well covered, so I’m going to leave it at that. What is not getting enough attention is what a ginormous boondoggle the Airport Connector is.

BART has been wanting an improved connection between the Coliseum BART station and the Oakland Airport for years. They have decided that the best way to connect the airport to the BART station is to build an automated train in the sky. Partial funding for what was supposed to be a $130 million project was included in the expenditure plan for 2000′s Measure B reauthorization (that’s our half-cent sales tax for transportation). The BART Board certified the EIR for the project seven years ago. The plan back then was that the system would start operating in 2008.

Of course, sky trains are expensive, and even with significant public funding committed to the project from a variety of sources, BART decided in 2005 that they were not going to be able to finance the project without private assistance. In February 2006, the issued a Request for Qualifications seeking companies willing to enter into a public-private partnership that would build and operate the suddenly $388 million project. The got five responses, and ended up selecting three teams to respond to a Request for Proposals (RFP) to get the contract. The RFP was issued in May 2007, with an original due date of September 2007. The deadline was then extended to early 2008, with a goal that a contract would be awarded by summertime and service would begin in 2011. By the end of 2007, two of the three pre-qualified teams had dropped out of discussions, and that timeline started looking a little less feasible. Finally, last November, after five separate deadline extensions, the third and final team withdrew from bidding. BART said at the time that they would start looking for more cost efficient connection alternatives.

Of course, then the stimulus package came along. And despite Obama’s warning not to waste that money, the MTC decided to do exactly that and take $70 million from their stimulus award and allocate it to the airport connector. The project, as it stands now, is estimated to cost $529 million. Existing public funding (before the stimulus money) only amounts to $288 million (that represents a combination of funds from ACTIA (Measure B money), the Port of Oakland, the State Transportation Improvement Program, MTC bridge toll funds, and the Federal Transit Administration. The MTC plans to cover the shortfall with contributions from a bunch of different pots of money – savings from the Doolittle Flyover project ($30 million), toll revenue ($20 million), savings from the BART tube seismic retrofit ($50 million), and of course, $70 million from the stimulus package. If you’re doing the math in your head and thinking about now that it doesn’t seem to quite add up, you’re right. The existing public funding, plus all this additional public funding, plus the stimulus money still leaves the project $71 million short. The idea is that BART would find the rest of the cash, probably through an agreement with a private system operator.

The existing shuttle service between the Oakland Airport and the BART station is AirBART, a bus that operates in mixed traffic. AirBART’s reliability is okay. but nobody questions the need for a better connection. But a connection that costs $165 million per mile (assuming the cost doesn’t grow even more, which it obviously will) is insane. A reliable surface transportation service could be built using only part of the already allocated existing public funding, which would free up the rest of the money for other transportation improvements and would have the advantage of encouraging ancillary transit oriented development. All this was excellently summed up by TransForm Executive Director Stuart Cohen, in what was hands down the best public comment at the meeting:

Regarding the Oakland Airport Connector. When we were involved in Measure B and the negotiations for it and then the campaign to support it, that was a $130 million project. Go back to the ballot – $65 million from Measure B for it, we need 65 of matching funds. Today, that project is asking the region – money that is not yet used – $420 million just for the match. The match went from 65 to 420. Only a little bit of that is inflation.

This project is three miles long. This project is not guaranteed to be a huge success. I spent a lot of time in New York this summer, spent a lot on AirTran by JFK, not many people riding it.

What we are proposing is now that the congestion has been taken care of by the terminal – that was the reason the bus alternative looked terrible in 99 and 2000, to have a study of a rapid bus alternative that is 100% free to riders in perpetuity. And we believe that you could use the money that the Port is offering, and the RM2 money could be flexed to allow that, to fund that project. I think you’d have higher ridership, you’d have greater affordability, one of the goals we had a hard time meeting as part of this RTP. And with that higher ridership, you’d come in similar or better on greenhouse gas emissions.

We don’t need Star Trek to the airport, which, I’ll hard out a picture. Part of this $520 million, I’ll show you the picture of it, is to build Star Trek to the airport. It’s a unique technology, it needs a unique maintenance shop, and that’s why it’s such an expensive thing to build. Thank you.

Cohen’s voice of reason was preceded by the worst comment of the meeting, from our very own District 7 Councilmember Larry Reid:

My name is Larry Reid. I’m a member of the Oakland City Council. I’ve been on the City Council for 12 years. Prior to that, I was Chief of Staff to Mayor Elihu Harris for 6 years. So for 18 years, the City of Oakland has supported this project and even before then – the airport connector, which is in my Council district, that I’m asking this body to give consideration to approve the recommendation that is before you.

We’ve been working on this incredible transit village in my district. Where we have the Amtrak Capital Corridor train that comes into one of the most incredible jewels in the BART system, the Coliseum BART station. And this airport connector will allow people who will live around that BART station to travel back and forth to the most convenient airport in Northern California, helping to reduce congestion along that Hegenberger corridor, and allow people from around Alameda County, which voted and approved this measure, in Measure B, in the reauthorization it was approved by 81%. As a member of the Alameda County Congestion Management Authority, this has been a priority for the County, it’s been a priority for the City of Oakland, it’s been a priority for BART, it’s been a priority for the Port of Oakland.

And so I certainly hope that this body will approve the recommendation and allow us to have what San Francisco has – one of the most incredible extensions that move people to its airport. I wish Councilmember Dick Spees was here, who could give you the history of how Oakland took the back seat and didn’t raise an issue when the funding went towards the airport extension that San Francisco now enjoys. So I certainly hope that you would support the recommendation and thank you for allowing me to speak.

Normally, I like Larry Reid. He does, however, have an irritating tendency to behave in an incredibly (and inexplicably) short-sighted manner. This comment was infuriating. Larry Reid wants an improved transit connection to the airport. So does everyone else. He has also apparently forgotten that people living at the transit village will want to go places besides the airport. An elevated connection is not only a stupid waste of money, it’s also the worst approach to the problem for the Hegenberger corridor he’s so hell-bent on revitalizing. Surface transportation between the BART station and the Airport, like rapid bus (hell, even surface rail) would be dramatically cheaper than what BART wants to build, and it would also have the distinct advantage of not skipping over the entire street. A rapid surface transportation system could not only connect BART riders to the airport, it could also better connect them to jobs along the streets in between. Larry Reid, by advocating for giving stimulus money to BART for the Oakland Airport Connector instead of local agencies to maintain service, is not only screwing his constituents, but also acting against one of his own top priorities for his District. Infuriating!

After more than two hours of public comment, most of which was against the Airport Connector (the Commission also received 27 letters against the project, and only 2 in favor), the Commission voted nearly unanimously to allocate the funds to BART to build their sky train anyway. I was crushed. The only no vote was Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. Speakers in favor of funding the project argued that it was needed to create jobs. Of course, funding this project won’t create any jobs in the immediate future. If, and that’s a big if, BART can come up with the money to fill the funding gap by the end of June, they still don’t expect to award a contract until the end of the year. If they can’t find the money by June, the funds will be redirected back to local transit agencies.

Often, anti-police public comment at Council meetings is angry and irrational. The people who came out to speak in opposition of the proposed curfew were generally polite, respectful, had clearly taken time to prepare their comments in advance, and presented clear arguments. While I did not support the curfew, I did not agree with many of the arguments presented against it. Nevertheless, I found the manner they were presented refreshing, and I’d like to share some of them with my readers.

Before discussion on the item began, Larry Reid offered a short explanation of his reasoning in proposing the curfew, saying he felt moved to do something after years of seeing young people loitering on the street at all hours of the night.

The ordinance was written to be as hippy dippy as possible – punitive action for curfew violation was minimal, and youth violating curfew would be taken to special receiving centers to speak with counselors and get enrolled in empowering workshops and such. The almost over the top feel-good aspects of the proposal clearly were not enough to appease the concerns of those who saw the curfew as an attempt to limit the freedom of young people in Oakland and increase the power of the Police Department. The best comments were from the youngest speakers, and I encourage you to watch the two videos below, which were my favorite among the comments.

There were only two speakers in favor of the curfew. Here’s one of them:

Pat Kernighan, Jean Quan, and Nancy Nadel all agreed that a curfew wouldn’t work in Oakland, and that the timing of the proposal was particularly bad, but all asked the youth in the audience to work with them to craft solutions for the juvenile crime problem. Kernighan and Quan also noted that they saw little productive reason for anyone to be out of their homes after midnight, although at the end of the meeting, a young woman spoke at Open Forum and reminded them that attending Council meetings can keep people out until well past the hours of the proposed curfew. Although I didn’t want the ordinance to pass, I couldn’t help but feel bad for Larry Reid, who clearly believed strongly that his effort was in the best interest of Oakland’s youth, and was obviously very disappointed in the outcome and opposition.

Watching this discussion at Tuesday’s meeting prompted a great post from Becks which I strongly recommend you click through and read.

Lindheim, with his experience as an economist at the World Bank and as a longtime aide to Dellums while he was in Congress, is certainly more than qualified to serve in some sort of policy capacity, as an advisor to the Mayor, for example. But City Administrator is a whole different question. Let’s not forget that until just over a year ago, when Dellums named him interim CEDA director, Lindheim had no experience whatsoever in municipal administration.

Councilmembers Jane Brunner and Larry Reid praised Lindheim’s appointment yesterday, citing his intelligence and proficiency with budget issues. Even ignoring the problems that intelligence is not a substitute for experience and the budget he was so helpful with had to be developed with the assistance of outside consultants and relied heavily on direct service cuts (many of which were later fixed by the Council), Brunner and Reid are off base here. The Mayor is reorganizing the City Administrator’s office largely according to the recommendations in the PFM Group report (PDF), which means the Assistant City Administrator will be chiefly responsible for budget and finances. The City Administrator will not have direct responsibility for the budget, but instead be left to oversee direct services such as police fire, parks and rec, public works and so on.

The City Administrator is the single most powerful person in Oakland. With the police department currently in total chaos, why on earth would we hand responsibility for it over to someone who has no experience in such matters? Direct services to Oakland’s citizens and the primary responsibilities of City government – safety, blight clean-up, nuisance abatement – have been steadily eroding for the past two years. Particularly in light of the City’s forthcoming budget shortfalls, it is imperative that the person responsible for making the City run smoothly has experience in, well, making cities run smoothly. Or at all. Perhaps in boom times, when money flows freely to the City’s coffers, we might be able to afford a learning curve. But right now, we need someone who knows how to make do with less and who knows how to manage a large organization.

Lindheim lacks these skills and experience. While serving as interim CEDA Director, he frequently complained that the responsibilities of the office were beyond his capacity. When questioned about why this wasn’t happening or that wasn’t working, he would respond by talking about how hard it is to oversee 500 employees and that he doesn’t “have time” to fulfill all the demands of his job. While in this position, he ignored the direction of the Council, rendering them incapable of exercising their oversight abilities.

When Dellums fired Deborah Edgerly last summer, he said he was going to conduct a “nationwide search” for her replacement. But there appears to be no evidence that any such search was ever conducted. The only names ever floated for the position were formed City Manager Robert Bobb, who was currently consulting for the City and the Mayor’s longtime friend Dan Lindheim. It strains credulity to think that after spending an entire year hunting for candidates from all over the country, the most qualified person the Mayor was able to find to run the City had never worked in any similar capacity ever before. It appears that Dellums did not even make a good-faith effort to find the best person for the job.

The saddest thing about all this is that the City Council looks poised to confirm the appointment. The inclination is understandable. Nobody wants to further strain relations with the tremendously unpopular Mayor by rejecting his decision and his friend. Nobody wants to insult Lindheim, who is, after all, by all accounts, a nice guy, by telling him he’s unqualified for the job. And this is exactly what Danny Wan was talking about when he said that the desire to be civil and polite are holding Oakland back. Carlos Plazola is right – Oakland deserves better management.

The question now is, does the Council agree? We’ll find out next week, when the Council votes on Lindheim’s confirmation, what the priorities of our elected officials are. Do they care about providing Oakland’s citizens with the best possible leadership or are they willing to settle for mediocrity because they’d rather be polite?

The concern here is not whether Lindheim is nice or smart (I’m sure he’s both), but whether he has the administrative experience to run a City of over 400,000 people. Even the Charter says so:

Section 500. Appointment. The Mayor shall appoint a City Administrator, subject to the confirmation by the City Council, who shall be the chief administrative officer of the City. He shall be a person of demonstrated administrative ability with experience in a responsible, important executive capacity and shall be chosen by the Mayor solely on the basis of his executive and administrative qualifications.

Both Becks and dto510 are asking you today to please contact your representatives and let them know that you expect qualified and experienced management in Oakland. I’ll add my voice to the chorus. Oakland deserves better.

• Ron Dellums: I will comes to terms with the fact that a “strong Mayor” form of government means something, and in Oakland’s case, it means very specifically what Oakland voters amended the City Charter to say in 1998. I will accept that just because I personally am not impressed with what the Charter says about my duties, that doesn’t mean strong Mayor hasn’t been implemented, it just means that I don’t like what it is. I will stop constantly talking about how I am spending my time working to “streamline” the government to make myself an all-powerful dictator with no checks on my whims whatsoever, because it’s really actually kind of creepy. I will also eliminate the words “unprecedented,” “innovative,” and “revolutionary” from my vocabulary.

• Pat Kernighan: I will remember that people elected me to be a legislator, not a nanny, and I will keep my opinions about the morality of television shows and music lyrics to myself instead of trying to impose them on 420,000 people.

• Jane Brunner: I will read my agenda packet before all my meetings. If I don’t have time to do so, I will just keep my head down and be quiet. I will not waste an hour of everybody else’s time asking rudimentary questions about what’s going on.

• Rebecca Kaplan: I will not let down all the people who supported my campaign because they thought I would make informed, rational decisions by pursuing stupid things that have failed everywhere they’ve been done, and that Oakland has done before, but abandoned because it didn’t work. Like a land trust.

• Desley Brooks: I will recognize that even though it’s exceedingly frustrating to be like twenty times smarter than anyone else on the dais, that doesn’t give me license to be totally nasty to everyone else all the time. I will embrace my burden, and make a point of being extra patient with those I view as intellectually inferior to me from now on.

• Ignacio De La Fuente: I will either get the City of Oakland to adopt a 311 system and GPS, or I will find something new to talk about all the time.

• Larry Reid: When a vote doesn’t go my way, I will take it like an adult, and just type furiously on my Blackberry instead of storming out of the room in a huff.

• Jean Quan: I will realize that I’m not anywhere near as smart as I think I am, and also that it doesn’t hurt to listen to what other people have to say. I will not condescendingly lecture public speakers about how they didn’t bother to read the documents relating to a subject, scold them for daring to come to the meeting in the first place, and then give a speech where I get virtually every single fact I assert totally, 100% wrong.

• Nancy Nadel: I will work really, really, really hard to make my chocolate business successful. And once I succeed, I will do all Oaklanders a big favor and resign from the City Council.

• John Russo: I will always remember that seatbelt laws are for everybody.

• Courtney Ruby: I will start doing all the parts of my job delineated in the City Charter, even the ones that aren’t exciting enough to get me in the newspaper. Like reviewing major expenditures.

• And a bonus – every blogger using WordPress: I will take that creepy and distracting falling snow off my damn page.

What about you guys? Any special resolutions for 2009?

1. Christopher Rodriguez: 2008 got off to a decidedly inauspicious start when a 10 year old boy was hit by a stray bullet during his piano lesson on normally-safe Piedmont Avenue. Oakland residents rallied to raise funds for the now-paralyzed boy, while State Senate President Don Perata responded with a highly publicized gun buyback, which turned out to be a total fiasco, leaving organizers on the hook for $170,000.

2. City Council re-elected: Oakland residents eager for change staked their hopes on the June primaries, when four long-term Councilmembers came up for re-election. After running unopposed in 2004, Nancy Nadel, Jane Brunner, and Ignacio De La Fuente all faced energetic challengers.

   Despite being totally despised by both anti-development and pro-growth advocates, and getting hammered on crime by Bushrod activist Pat McCullough, District 1 Councilmember Jane Brunner coasted to re-election with 76% of the vote. District 3 Councilmember Nancy Nadel battled strident criticism from Covenant House director Sean Sullivan and School Board member Greg Hodge, but managed to escape a run-off fight by 114 votes. Things got especially nasty in District 5, where Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and challenger Mario Juarez both had campaign offices vandalized. Despite his disturbing personal problems, Juarez won strong support from longtime De La Fuente detractors, but even an election day blanketing of District 5 with Juarez propaganda wasn’t enough to keep the 16 year veteran from winning 53% of the vote. OCC Director Clifford Gilmore attacked Councilmember Larry Reid for neglecting District 7′s poor neighborhoods and failing to address the crime problem, but just like with everything else in East Oakland, nobody cared, and Reid walked away with 62% of the vote.

3. Deborah Edgerly: After allegations surfaced that City Administrator Deborah Edgerly had tipped off a nephew about an upcoming bust of a gang he belonged to, Oakland citizens got temporarily obsessed with corruption in City Hall while Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums spent two weeks dithering over what to do with her, issuing a new announcement about her status virtually every day, and finally firing her when there really weren’t any other options left. The next month, he hired popular former City Manager Robert Bobb to lead the search for her replacement, promising he would announce someone within three months. By December, the Mayor still hadn’t picked a replacement, and City Attorney John Russo finally stepped in and pointed out he’s obligated to do so by the City Charter. Dellums pushed back, indicating that he has no intention of doing so anytime soon. The Mayor claims that the Charter gives no specific timeframe for him to appoint a permanent Administrator, so he can keep Lindheim in an acting position as long as he feels is necessary. Too bad the appointment of Lindheim in the first place, as dto510 pointed out at the time, was totally illegal.

4. Restaurant robberies: In August, Oakland experienced a wave of restaurant robberies for the second time this year. Furious and frightened citizens demanded the Mayor do something about Oakland’s crime crisis, and Dellums responded by blaming the problem on the bad economy and calling in the Guardian Angels to patrol Oakland’s streets. Eventually, three suspects were arrested, and the robberies stopped. Everyone seemed pretty much satisfied with that and stopped worrying about crime, conveniently forgetting about all the teenagers getting shot in East Oakland at an ever increasing rate.

5. Financial meltdown: The Council managed to close a $15 million deficit during June budget deliberations, only to learn a month later that they were still short $40+ million and had spent all their reserves. The fiscal crisis dominated October’s City Hall news, and the Council eventually managed to close the hole with a combination of layoffs, one time fund transfers, and monthly city shutdowns, making just about everyone angry in the process. Frustrated by the service cuts and the general complete mess at City Hall, people started condemning the Council for letting salaries and benefit costs get so out of control and wondering how this bunch of clowns managed to stay in office for so long, conveniently forgetting that they were the ones who re-elected them all only a few months ago. After a two month rest, we get to start the process all over again in January.

6. Search warrants challenged: Fall brought more scandal for the Oakland Police Department, after news came out that a number of officers had been lying to judges for the last four years in order to obtain search warrants. The department defended the sworn affidavits which claimed that confiscated substances had returned positive test results when in fact the substances had never been tested at all by saying they were simply misstatements due to deficiencies in training, but that wasn’t enough enough to keep convictions from being overturned or the City from being sued over the scandal. Finally, a judge ordered the department to prove that some of their confidential informants actually existed. Turns out they did, although in at least one case they had lied about the informant’s previous work in order to establish credibility. The Department waved off the issue, saying it was enough that that officers did not exhibit “evilness” when they made the false statements.

7. Chauncey Bailey project: It’s been a year and a half since the Oakland Post editor was murdered in broad daylight in downtown Oakland. After a kind of rough start last year, the Chauncey Bailey project released a slew of scandalous stories revealing, at best, total ineptitude and at worst, outright malfeasance in the handling of the investigation by OPD. Dellums eventually caught on that this was a serious problem, and asked the State to look into it. Unfortunately, the articles, while incredibly informative and disturbing, were generally just way too long and dryly written for anyone but the most devoted media junkies to sit down and read all the way through, and most people were left with a nothing but a vague sense that things had probably been somewhat mishandled, but what else is new.

8. Oaklanders totally screw their budget: In response to citizen cries for more police, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums asked the Council to place a parcel tax on November’s ballot that would add 75 new officers to the force over three years, and they agreed. Then nobody bothered to campaign for the tax, and it went down in flames, leaving nobody with any idea how to even pay to maintain our existing force. Meanwhile, voters easily approved Measure OO, agreeing to take millions of dollars per year away from their parks and libraries and give them to youth-oriented non-profits instead.

   In other election news, the much anticipated showdown between Kerry Hamill and Rebecca Kaplan never materialized. Frantic rumors about Don Perata spending millions of dollars to install his puppet on the Council and a planned series of nasty attack mailers flew around town for months, but in the end, all Hamill was able to muster was a bunch of ugly and unpersuasive signs ineptly posted on fences around town. Endorsements from OakPac and the Oakland Builder’s Alliance undermined arguments that the former Green Party member would be bad for business, and Kaplan coasted to an easy and predictable victory.

9. OPD hits 803: After promising to bring the police force to full staffing by year’s end in his State of the City address, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums decided the best way to accomplish the goal was to spend a bunch of money we didn’t have. The Council agreed, we spent the cash, and the department victoriously announced a whopping 837 officers in November. The triumph was short-lived, however. With all the money gone, the Mayor, without consulting anyone, abruptly cancelled the next Police Academy, and now we’ll be back under 803 either by the summer or before all those new officers from November even finish their field training, depending on who you believe.

10. People finally started hating Ron Dellums: Although many who had opposed his Mayoral candidacy were critical of Dellums from the beginning of his tenure, most residents elected to take a wait-and-see approach. During his first year in office, people were generally content to believe the line that Dellums was working feverishly behind the scenes, but after two years of no visibility, no progress, no ability to make a decision amid rising violent crime, budget crises, and corruption scandals, almost everyone stopped buying it. The Mayor’s reputation wasn’t helped by media reports of a scandalously light work schedule and wasteful personal spending. A fall poll pegged Dellums’s approval rating at a depressing 27%, while his disapproval rating had risen to 55%. Organizers of the draft Dellums movement started apologizing, and talk of a Dellums recall gained steam, even though it’s pretty much too late at this point.

Well, that was depressing. Here’s hoping 2009 will bring better news.