 This week I attended the press conference hosted by Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and City Council President Jane Brunner, along with other community leaders and city administrators.
The purpose of the press conference was to announce the revenue measures that the Oakland City Council passed on Monday to put before voters in the November election.
More to the point, it was a press conference to begin the justification process to, first, amend the contentious parcel tax known as Measure Y, and, second, to let the public know that the City intends to again appeal to the public safety heartstrings of citizens as they put forth an new parcel tax to pay for Oakland police officers.
The case for a parcel tax was clear. Each participant in the press conference made a compelling case for the city maintaining the level of public safety services. There was the repeated acknowledgement that is difficult asking for a tax increase during tough economic times. But the one word I was waiting to hear from the array of speakers, “trust,” never materialized. To offer an amendment to the voters of Oakland void of an honest and frank discussion about how Measure Y was previously administered is an absolute insult. Could it be that no one in the city saw a need to acknowledge that reestablishing trust with the voter was in order? I understand the city can ill-afford to lose more police officers, but it is absurd to expect voters support a tax increase when the previous tax increase was mismanaged. The proposed $360 parcel tax represents a 48% tax increase on the fixed charges and/or special assessments for single-family homes regardless of property assessed value.
The city could alleviate my concerns by simply providing public responses to the following questions: • Can you provide a detailed accounting of the Measure Y funds collected between 2005-2010? If not why not?
• Did the Measure Y campaign know in advance that the amount of parcel tax initially placed on the ballot in 2004 would fall short of what was actually needed?
• What was the rationale to provide a legal defense that the city needed only to place a line item in the budget for the requisite police officers but was under no burden actually hire them?
• And how does that defense not conflict with the intent of the voters when Measure Y passed?
How quickly it has been forgotten that Measure Y passed with 70 percent approval? That translates to a coalition of homeowners and non-homeowners voting in support of a parcel tax that only a portion of the city will bear the direct burden for the perceived overall benefit of the whole.
Therefore, it is only fair that the city answer these basic questions forthrightly.
In the current political climate, it is rare when communities step forward to approve a tax increase. Without a full explanation (or should that be a mea culpa) there is simply no rationale to ask voters of Oakland to support a tax increase because of the city’s failures.
At the press conference, I asked Mayor Dellums how did he reconcile the expectations voters had when they originally passed Measure Y in 2004 with the very different outcome they received?
“If we’re going to the voters with a Measure Y fix, we should go with maximum integrity,” Dellums said.
The mayor is absolutely right; the city must go to the voters with maximum integrity. Part of the problem lies in the city maintaining the ridiculous legal defense to a preliminary injunction that sought to prevent the city from collecting Measure Y taxes because of a failure to maintain the baseline staffing. The city contended as long as it has a line item in its budget for the required officers, it has complied with the requirements of Measure Y.
The city’s response may be correct legally, but it fails to meet the standard of maximum integrity that the mayor offered because it violates the spirit of Measure Y when it was passed.
Council President Brunner offered the tax increase as $1 per day to ensure public safety. It is also a huge burden on the Oakland homeowner during tough economic times after the city failed to keep its word initially.
As Oakland City Council member Ignacio De La Fuente recently stated:
“The taxes we currently charge have not translated into the superior services residents deserve, so why do we expect to achieve a different result by adding more taxes?”
That is the question the city must answer. And each day they to fail to respond forthrightly is another day they fall short of going to the voter with maximum integrity as they ask for a 48 percent parcel tax increase.
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