If you want to immediately be safer, and not see your money wasted by people who’ve shown you they can’t be trusted, invest in self-defense courses, tools, private security.

her budget “errors” gave our mayor and most of the council members the political cover they needed to repay their union supporters with pay increases to dig our hole deeper.

maybe that’s why pat k. and jane b. were so complimentary of deborah’s years of past service in their recent mass emails. deborah knew which side her bread was buttered.

-len raphael
temescal

After elections ratifying the leaders’ behavior, Mayor & council proposed a parcel tax for more police, called for reform, and said the budget deficit of the budget they voted to pass was understated.

Voters have been tricked, hoodwinked, and bamboozled. They’re being manipulated to make a Sophie’s choice between increasing our willfully understaffed police force or funding a deficit at least 3 times what leaders told voters it was last month. Familiar faces are now grandstanding to say we need reform and their leadership.

What’s disingenuous is that they all were not long ago feeding at the same trough – either benefiting through others or directly, or passively neglecting the more honorable duty of oversight and vociferously notifying the public of the corruption and budget problems defaming Oakland as much as it’s intractable crime.

Oakland deserves more. It may take recall and prosecution to obtain it.

I agree with Donald that the failure of this measure will offer some political cover of the “well, if you all wanted police, you would have voted for them” variety. However, anyone in favor of more police, such as myself, can reject this tax based on the inability of the City to hire the police we’re all already paying for through Measure Y.

The ballots going to be crowded with money, too: high speed rail, water bond, AC Transit, EBRPD, and now this. Folks may just say no to all of it.

I live in D4. Quan is an idiot. By her logic, lets just raise taxes to pay for everything that the government wants as long as each tax is less than it cost to fill up her 40 gallon tank. What is she driving?

How do we start a stop this campaign?

Also, parcel taxes like this one create at least two revenue streams for the police department: one from the general fund and one from the special tax. What is to prevent some future council from reducing the general fund allocation? Or reducing the normal increase of the general fund allocation?

That would effectively use the parcel tax to fund other priorities.

I think it makes more sense, and is more honest to just go to the voters and ask for a property tax increase. I would vote for that, but only if I thought the Council and City Manager were careful custodians of the city bank account. I don’t see the discipline, however. I think the city should be run more like a business and less like the church it has become.

I’m with Ignacio on this one. Kudos to him.

I wish I could offer a solution instead of complain… I can only hope that a competent person will be running against her when the D4 Council seat comes up for election.

You know, by putting this on the ballet they can point their fingers back to the public when it doesn’t pass and people complain about crime. “Well, you didn’t want to pay for more cops, so you’re not going to get more cops.” I can see it now. What a lose/lose for the City.

It’s not that I expect the disfunctional to suddenly become functional, but can there at least be some movement towards rational?