Have you ever met anyone who used that tired, throwaway line that ever accomplished anything of merit?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/28/MNH114UUC3.DTL&type=politics&tsp=1

It includes comments about crime–already fairly thoroughly discussed here statistically by V Smoothe.

But as a downtown Oakland worker, I’ve seen a resurgence of street prostitution over on MLK between 14th and 16th. It was there (and over onto Jefferson) in 1998, when the State Building was being finished. At that time, it was not unusual to see folks doing the deed in cars parked on Castro. Then, under Jerry Brown, it was pushed elsewhere–I always assumed across I-980, into West Oakland (where I live)–and I got used to walking there at night without being propositioned.

In the past year, it has returned–these two blocks are of particular interest because they feature an indoor soccer gym and a fencing gym that have a fair number of kids around at night. The cops do show up when called, but in terms of Dellums’ tenure, the trend is going the wrong way.

I agree with you regarding the opening of the Fox Theater. It should do wonders for Oakland’s nightlife. I can’t wait to see the Paramount and Fox having shows on the same night with their beautiful marquees lit up. Having those two magnificent theaters at capacity could mean 5,000 people downtown during the evening.

I’m hoping they can sign a restaurant for the commercial space at the Fox. Also, I wonder if anyone knows what the commercial structure being renovated on Telegraph is going to be? The structure I’m speaking of, I believe is three stories tall, and also has a frontage on Broadway. It’s a beige colored building with large plywood covering the front ground floor facades on Telegraph and on Broadway. Is work still going on? It seems to have been under renovation for quite some time. It would make a great multi story nightclub with perhaps a large restaurant on the second floor overlooking the Fox and Uptown.

Also, Oaklandhappenings, the restaurant featured in the Mrs. Doubtfire restaurant scene was Bridges, in Danville. It finally came to me.

http://clerkwebsvr1.oaklandnet.com/attachments/20953.pdf

the projections are accompanied by well written explanations of the categories, and assumptions. a little weak on the methods used to predict future revenues, but that’s crystal ball stuff no matter how you do it.

looks like the document was overseen by someone like Bobb who was given orders to come up with something that’s credible but doesn’t panic the bond rating agencies or engender anything like the successful kidsfirst initiative.

the revenue assumptions look like what is given as “reasonable”, but in between conservative and optimistic. This is not a normal business cycle, so we need to see both the reasonable and the conservative (pessimistic) projection.

If the reasonable assumptions about real estate values and sales, business gross receipts tax, sales tax collections, Calpers losses, and calif state revenue sharing are wrong, we’re in very very deep sht. eg. How bad our finances will be if real estate market doesn’t “recover” by 2010-2011 as this report assumes.

The 100Mill deficit assumes freezing all wages including cops. it assumes we delay an additional 13Mill per year of funding actuarial shortfall for retiree medical benefits (do they get lifetime 0 copay medical and dental or ?)

Tables are given showing the effects of making employees pay for a pct of their med insur, weekly city shutdown, delaying repairs and trying to raise local sales tax and fines for false alarms. Other than increasing local sales tax rate, and the weekly shutdown, the other stuff barely makes a dent in the deficit.

ottomh, if 75% of the 500mill general fund goes for personnel costs, and we’re “reasonably” short 100Mill, and the revenue tinkering amounts to maybe 10Mill, then we need to cut people costs by close to 25% less the other cost cuts that don’t seem to add up to huge amount. Since i assume cops and f ire have higher average people costs, we might have to lay off fully 25% of non public safety if you assume that cops and fire are untouchable.
(i’m being lazy and not double checking this numbers against the document. )

How Dellums is going to use this as an opportunity to make our town into his Model City will be subject of the upcoming HBO series on Oakland produced by the Wayman brothers.

-len raphael
temescal

If a tree pushes up a section of sidewalk half an inch and somebody trips on it, breaks their wrist and sues… to me that person is a clumsy litigious douche.

But where to draw the line?

As far as city vs. personal liability, since we’re stuck with litigious douchebags all around, I guess we have to figure that one out too.

This new scheme is totally unfair, because exactly as you say Len, liability doesn’t match maintenance obligation. What’s unfortunate is that we have no recourse to minimize litigation passing an ordinance that classifies certain reasonable levels of damage to sidewalks as normal, and the accidents caused by them as automatic no-faults. We can’t do this because of state law, right? messed up.

if there are no sidewalks, the owner is still obligated to maintain the walkway and arguably could be forced to pay for sidewalks and curbs (curbs are very expensive).

so yes this is one case where oakland legitimately doesn’t have to do any maintenance unless the city caused the damage.

somewhat odd, but liability doesn’t mirror maintenance obligation in that the city has the obligation for slip and fall under current state and local law. the idea might be that it is often unclear who caused the sidewalk damage and the city is best position to handle slip and fall claims. that the city has an obligation to monitor sidewalk conditions and has the power to force owners to repair before someone gets hurt.

considering that a high percentage of sidewalk buckling and cracking comes from city planted trees, it’s a reasonable deal. especially reasonable because several speakers pointed out there was no possible way that the city’s index card system could have accurately kept up with the city’s tree planting program over the last 20 years, so who knows who planted which tree.

(of course why should that even matter, if a property owner doesn’t want to wait two years for the city to plant a scrawny sapling, and plants an approved healthy tree at their own personal expense. city shouldn’t punish that behavior by making the owner fully liable for future sidewalk damage)

Now along comes the council and Russo proposing a change (which some other cities have also made) to put the slip and fall liability on the owner. theoretically reasonable, because in other cities the municipality actually fixes sidewalks broken by city planted trees. and most of the trees are planted by the cities. Of course in oakland, the city staff described the sidewalk situation as “vast amount of damage and so little resources”. Staff proposed and committee passed it to full council, that for the next five years the only repairs done by the city will be on transit and commercial corridors, and in response to law suits and ADA complaints. forgetabout residential sidewalk damage caused by the city. unless you know a handcapped person who will file an ADA complaint for your walking route from major corridor to where you live, there will be 0 residential sidewalk repairs done by the city for next five years.