Secondly, I want to give my opinion on this recent Dellums/Edgerly situation. When I saw the video of the Dellums/Edgerly news conference yesterday, these two made me sick to my stomach! Dellums with his arms folded in a defensive posture and Edgerly, smiling and rubbing her chin like the cat who was served too much cream. I don’t understand how she was given so much power and is allowed to CONTINUE TO ABUSE IT! She said during that news conference (not word for word but close), “Make no mistake- I continue to have the full power and authority of my position as City Administrator now and when I walk out of this room.” How could this person continue to control this city?? Where are the sane people of Oakland? Why didn’t Dellums’ advisers and legal staff not take him in hand and have him stand up and demand her resignation??! Edgerly DOES NOT deserve to retire with her full pension! She should be fired and investigated by the City of Oakland, the Attorney General, AND the FBI. Anything less is insane and incomprehensible. Dellums should fire her or be recalled.

To me it’s both a policy and politics issue. Edgerly doesn’t run the city by policy, she has hidden behind city policy for too long.

If the functional inability to fire the administrator is the problem, then that part of the charter may need work, or the city and mayor just need to suck it up and fight it out in the courts someday. But fundamentally, having a top administrator who reports solely to the mayor can work. While I think it might be better to have the department heads also report to the mayor, do we think that would work much better given the current mayor? He wouldn’t fire them either if they screw up. And having the city administrator report to the council in addition to the mayor is just a receipe for a mess (imho). Multiple reporting structures lead to confusion in any organization.

Look at business structures for organization models. There is a board of directors (city council), that sets policy (or at least agrees to it). Other than shaping policy, their only realy power is the hire/fire the CEO (the mayor in our strong mayor system). Of course the council can’t really fire the mayor here, that is left up to the voters (shareholders). The CEO (mayor) then has sole authority on the day to day running and implementation of the board’s policies. If only he would. I think in the business world the city administrator would be the CFO, just one of may reports to the mayor, although a very influential one in most companies, since there are responsible for the budget.

With our system, the mayors only real function in governemnt is to monitor the administrator, and that could work fine as long as the two work together closely as a team.

But I completely understand loving policy and hating politics. One is often instrumental in destroying the other, however, so it seems a bit difficult to separate them.

But fairness is not going to happen. We have such a dysfunctional city government, starting with Mayor Sleepy, that I have zero confidence that the public’s best interest will be served. And serving the public’s best interest is their obligation, something I see absolutely no evidence of. Zip.

And the good citizens are not blameless, either. They keep re-electing the most irresponsible and incompetent leadership I could ever imagine. It is what Alexander Hamilton called “government ill executed.” And that goes especially for the election of the OUSD School Board, which managed to run the district into virtual bankruptcy and continues to graduate less than half it’s students.

The Oakland city government is the best poster child for bad government, and what it does to a city with incredible fundamental assets as a city, from it’s weather, natural environment, proximity to SF, quality of the residents, etc..

V. Smoothe may be most interested in policy, but that would have to presume that the city is capable of governing competently. Every single program adopted in this city presumes that the city is actually capable of operational competency. I do not believe the evidence supports that trust. To me, the only path to competency in Oakland is to radically reduce the scope of responsibility of city government. Public safety (and I don’t mean all those squishy programs), libraries and fixing potholes. Excluding those areas, we could drastically reduce the city government and size of the payroll. Later, if the city can prove it is capable of doing those things, then maybe they deserve our trust and added funds. The way it is now, we pay the highest tax rates and fees of any place in California (and California is among the most highly taxed places in the US) and in exchange, we get the most incompetently run city, wasting a great deal of money-a billion dollars per year, and it’s the most dangerous city in America west of the Mississippi. If it looks like I’m discouraged enough to pack in my bags, yeah. As soon as the real estate market turns a bit, after 28 years in this city, I need to find a place with a future where my daughter could prosper. I am sure it is not here.

Also, aww. Thank you, Max!

Mayor of Claycord? – Byotch crashed my firefox!

V, I voted for you the first day the poll was up. I’m willing to be that you got at least 4504 votes.