& ANOTHER THING by Jeannette Sherwin
Arnie and the Environment; State Assembly and Mayoral Rumors; Fire Assessment District; Will There Be Another Library Tax or Bond Measure on the Ballot? Prostate Cancer? Read this
Gossip coming to us from a pair of 800-pound insider gorillas: Version one says that Governor-elect Arnold is going to name Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to head California's Environmental Protection Agency. Bobby Jr. is currently a senior attorney with Natural Resources Defense Council. The Chamber of Commerce had a brief meeting with the Governor-elect on this delicious topic and my source says it went like this:
C of C: Governor, you can't name him. He'll ruin everything for us! Arnold: Three things. First, I promised I would protect the environment. Second, he's family. Third, I'm the Governor, so fuck off. (Or possibly it was words to that effect.)
The other version says that Bobby has already turned the slot down and that all of the other appointments Arnie is going to make at Fish & Game, Resources and Forestry are f***ing terrible.
If we are exceedingly lucky Arnold will keep his campaign promises about protecting the environment and won't be being pushed around by the Wilson-era creeps. Then let's see if people who know Arnold and Maria can introduce them to the idea of compassion with funding for the various suffering and needy populations of California. We might then have a horse race.
**** Council member Desley Brooks (District Six) has outpaced even City Clerk Ceda Floyd in staff turnover. Brooks has fired, or has had quit on her, 13 people between January 1st and the middle of October.
***** In the pool of names of people who are rumored to be considering running for mayor in three years: Dan Siegel, Ignacio de la Fuente and Nancy Nadel.
**** City Attorney John Russo has confirmed that he is considering running for the State Assembly, depending upon what happens with the strong mayor ballot petition. That Assembly race will be crowded.
***** A reader sent in this request: "Can you please talk about the Wildfire Assessment District? I would like to know how others in the district feel. I feel that people below Highways 13 and 580 should not be assessed.
"It's a no-win situation for people living below Highways 13 and 580, because even if they all voted 'no' they would still lose because the number of people living in the assessment district below Highways 13 and 580 are far less than those living above it.''
Before you get too worried, my friend, remember that the last time a proposed extension to the fire assessment district came before voters, it lost. It lost because people above Highways 13 and 580 voted against continuing it.
Other comments from readers about this ballot proposal?
**** From another one of our most favorite readers comes this hot tip: "I wonder if George Musgrove is moving -- to D.C. (following Robert Bobb) -- or simply moving. The Musgrove house on Skyline at Manzanita (north end) has a "for sale" sign in front of it.''
Say it ain't so! There is so much more to write about Taura Musgrove (George's 20-something daughter) and the nepotism and cronyism that continue to corrupt and plague Oakland.
Did we remember to write about Taura being put in charge of the Alice Arts Center? Almost her first job was to tell the renters there that they were being shifted to month-to-month leases. She left that meeting and found all four of her tires slashed. A week or so later she had another meeting with the same tenants, left, and found all four of her tires slashed. Taura, not the swiftest bird in the flock, wouldn't park two blocks away at the Downtown Merchants Garage. She went back to the Alice for a third meeting, left and - this time they only got two tires.
Taura is also the dedicated worker who was spotted by a fellow gadfly buying shoes on Piedmont Avenue in the middle of a non-holiday weekday, aka "workday'', afternoon. Nepotism has so many privileges it puts American Express to shame.
***** Don't try to get anything done at City Hall from November 8th through November 11th. First there's a weekend. Next, almost everybody is either taking a holiday or a furlough (unpaid leave) day. That explains those four days, but why can't we get anything done at City Hall the rest of the time?
Here's a small example of bureaucratic and individual inertia running the city: A bunch of Temescal residents, including me, emailed comments to the Planning Department opposing a massage parlor on Telegraph Avenue. I received an email back from the city planner saying that if I waned to be notified of the outcome, then I had to send her a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE).
I emailed Leigh-the-planner back, with a cc to Claudia Cappio ("Interim Director of Development" - note, not Planning, not Zoning, just almighty great DEVELOPMENT). I said No. No, I wasn't going to waste my time, my money, plus their time and their money when Leigh could simply email all of us back in one message with the decision since she had an email list. I heard nothing from Leigh. (We won, by the way). Nothing from Claudia Cappio.
I then called Gary Patton, the barrel-chested Zoning administrator you see at the Planning Commission hearings every other Wednesday night. Called him twice. Nothing from him, from Cappio or from Leigh.
Petty and stupid describe this best, I think. Stupid, inefficient and wasteful come to mind. Lazy and thoughtless have also been suggested.
*****
We know why Rosie Rios was fired as Director of Redevelopment: Ms. Rios disagreed with Jerry ("Beans") Brown in a teeny-weeny public meeting. For you comparative newcomers to the state, to Oakland and to the state of Jerry Brown's criminal thinking, this isn't news. But bear with us. This is exactly what Jerry did during his second term as governor. Right now Oakland has so many "Interim" department heads it's a civic disgrace. All of them are fearful of losing their jobs. They suppose that Jerry will stay in Oakland long enough to notice that one of them made a decision, maybe even a difficult one.
Au contraire, Jerry is spending at least two days a week fundraising in Southern California for his (doomed, we hope) run for Attorney General. With whom is Jerry slithering around down south? Michael Milkin and his ethically challenged pals.
Meanwhile, excellent people like Interim City Manager Deborah Edgerley act like they need a hall pass. There's a conflict between the council and the mayor about how many people he can fire. Can he sack anyone? Only Agency heads? Department heads, too? Or, as the wise ones have it, how many people can Best Mayoral Buddy Jacquass Barzaghi get fired, sometimes just to show that he can?
**** Name the group of City workers who are by taking by light years the greatest amount of time off with injuries that always heal as soon as their comp tie is used up? Hint: They all have the same doctor, and the City cannot challenge his "diagnosis." Wrong! It isn't Public Works. No way, it isn't the police department. Amazingly, it isn't even Parks and Recreation. It's the firefighters.
**** We were polled a couple of weeks ago by a company that is going to suggest to the city council whether voters will support either a new $84 parcel tax on single family homes for libraries, or a $200 million bond also to support libraries. this company will also suggest who has the greatest percentage of "favorable" comments from those of us who were polled.
Pollsters work with a big pile of politicians and their pots of money, so they always ask your opinion about your council member and the at-large council member, Henry Chang (deliver us from Henry, for he is a spineless, lazy chump). Bizarrely, they asked our opinion of our county hospital (drastically under-funded). Testing the waters to see who should sign the ballot endorsements and petitions for the voter's handbook, we were asked to tell how we felt about Jerry Brown, the Oakland Public Library, the Oakland Police Department, the Oakland Fire Department, the Oakland School District and kids programs in Oakland. We enjoyed answering that question. We answered it with gusto, with relish and with zeal.
"Would you support a ballot measure to extend the existing parcel tax for libraries to $84 on single family homes if you knew that that money would be used to support children and teen programs and that it would stop five branch libraries from closing? That it would prevent staff lay-offs and longer waits for help?'
"NO," we said, "We will not support a parcel tax increase. We will not support another #%**%)*_(%# 'children or teen program' in the libraries at a time when the Director of the Library still has her #*)%(*%*#_% boyfriend on the library payroll, working for her at the Main Library running the "Teen Zone" under her supervision. We will only support programs for middle-aged people of low to moderate means who would like to sit in a quiet library to read and conduct research. We are tired of our libraries being turned into day care centers. And brother, are we tired of the Cult of Children and Teens!"
"NO!" we almost screamed at the next question, "We will not support a $200 million bond to pay for four (4) new branch libraries and six (6) libraries attached to schools, for computer and electrical upgrades and meeting rooms." (We particularly berated them for adding meeting rooms.)
We were told that one of the new branches would be a new "Piedmont' library. We suggested to the very nice pollster that she tell her bosses that they were idiots. There is the village of Piedmont, which could afford to build its own library any day if they didn't have so many anti-tax Republicans in the place, and there is a tiny Piedmont Avenue branch library very much in North Oakland. We suggested that when Kaiser builds its new hospital by 2010 at the MacArthur Broadway Center, Kaiser should have to donate space for a new Piedmont Avenue branch library right there on the ground floor. This would be Kaiser's way of thanking the residents of the Piedmont Avenue neighborhood for the hell Kaiser has put them through over the years of constant building and growth.
Then we got to the heart of things.
"NO!" we said, "We are not going to help Jean Quan fulfill her badly thought-out campaign promise to bring a branch library to the Laurel district. That isn't the job of voters in Oakland when the economy is bad, our city debt is staggering and the next three years will be worse financially. Neither the state nor the feds have any money and we see no new, large businesses coming to town - unless they get to rape us financially." (We were thinking of the Uptown development, which wants a $65 million subsidy, and Clear Channel Communications, which churlishly threatened to leave Oakland if it couldn't put two monster billboards in District Three.)
We were just getting started, but felt sorry for the lady at the end of the line. But this is where the poll went a little crazy: We were asked to state our feelings, positive or negative, about the following people: George Bush, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, Condoleeza Rice (!), Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Mad Arnold, Bill Lockyer, Phil Angelides and Steve Westley.
One of the council members to whom we mentioned this last question ran the gamut of facial expressions, from mild disbelief to pain from a severe bladder infection. We felt that pain.
***** A friend was told that he had prostate cancer and was given the usual ghastly choice of radiation (iffy) or surgery plus incontinence and impotence. Instead he found a doctor who told him about the Proton Beam Radiation treatment for prostate cancer at Loma Linda Univ. Medical Center. He says, " The side effects were insignificant, AND all systems work!"
Aetna's Coverage of Proton Beam Radiotherapy, such as that provided by Loma Linda University Medical Center: http://www.aetna.com/cpb/data/PrtCPBA0270.html
A patient's overview of the Proton Beam Radiotherapy at Loma Linda University Medical: http://www.protonbob.com/patient.asp
Check it out, friends.
For the sake of clarity most Oakland firefighters return to work as soon as they can. It is a great job. There is however a high rate of injury and the typical modality for treating soft tissue injuries like sprains and strains require a a certain amount of time for healing. Just getting a doctor's appointment can take weeks.
Having said that, I agree there are some bad actors out there that take advantage of the system. Bruce Nielsen secretary-treasurer IAFF Local 55
Good for you Bruce! I'll bet no other union would admit that they have bad actors who abuse the system.
I put this item into the column not because of any dislike for firefighters, but to remind these men and women, and all city staff, that residents of Oakland are feeling more than a little taken advantage of right now. We have a Mayor who is so strong that he's invisible. We have not-elected Presidents of the nation and of the city council who are in it for themselves and their friends, and who sure as heck do not represent our needs or interests. We have a bizarre new governor slipped in by George Bush et al.
Residents of Oakland pay to use public parks for
birthday parties. We stand in long lines to get help, we are put on hold for ages, and then we are
disconnected.
We are, I think, angry and spoiling for a fight. It's that old chestnut -- if you aren't for us, you're against us. So maybe you could talk to your
brethren and sisteren and encourage them not to top
the charts next quarter, or the quarter after that.
I'm sure Public Works staff is eager to take the top spot.
RE: The 'plague' of Taura Musgrove:
Complaining that someone shouldn't be parking too close to the Alice Arts Center so her tires were slashed not once, not twice, but on three different occasions is just mind numbing! And then insinuating that this person's insistence that she be able to park on the street is 'a plague on Oakland' is too way over the top!
On exactly what principle does one make a stand that in Oakland you should EXPECT that one's tires get slashed after meeting with some folks so OF COURSE you park blocks away?
Please tell me where any employee would show up at a public meeting only to be assaulted like this?
Give me a f'g break - this woman was 'only the messenger' for what ever the business on hand was. It is hard to fathom that on three different meetings in that neighborhood this person's tires were slashed.
Instead of dissing this woman she should be given the badge of courage for NOT being intimidated by the PUNKS that slashed her tires.
The even sadder part of this story is that the folks of the Alice Arts Center come off looking really really bad - how come they (or the writer) didn't make ANY stink about this knifing?
We are to take away what message from this tire-slashing story? Hello Oakland!
Calling the behavior of PARKING 'the plague' instead of the KNIFING is unbelievable. This is all just sick to think that this type of assault is condoned (by the tone of this story.)
And what's with this business of 'spotted' shopping on Piedmont Avenue? And? I think the key phrase here is "shopping on Piedmont Avenue." And we are to understand that the 'spotteree' is privey to any and all reasons why someone might be shopping in midday? Come on...
There ARE things in Oakland that could be done better, but this type of innuendo is not constructive. There are issues, and then there are issues. Please, let's focus on real material issues.
And yes! SHOP OAKLAND!
Leal Charonnat
Go back and read the item again, Leal. I didn't say that Taura was a plague, I said that nepotism and cronyism were plagues corrupting Oakland.
Taura, daughter of Deputy City Manager George Musgrove, is a perfect example of nepotism. George ("I follow Robert Bobb everywhere he can find a job for me") Musgrove is also a devotee of cronyism.
George Musgrove gave permission to the Director of Library Services, Carmen Martinez, to bring her live-in boyfriend up here with her from SoCal and to hire him. GM is beyond redemption.
I certainly didn't imply that tire slashing was okay. I implied, and I hope the rest of you readers inferred, that when you send a girl to do a woman's
work, you ought to expect trouble. Taura was given
two plum jobs in a row. The Alice Arts Center job was a tough one and she was not competent to do it.
My sources say she blew the meetings sky high from the moment she walked in.
Do I think it is funny that she had her tires slashed as a result of her daddy giving her a job she wasn't able to do, and the fact that her high and mighty attitude pissed everybody off? Hell yes! I think that it's great when nepots and cronies get what they deserve, instead of making the rest of us suffer because they're incompetent. But don't fret, Leal, I'm sure that we taxpayers had to cough up for dear Taura's tires.
The "behaviour of parking?" What are you on? What is your justification for letting Taura spend our money shopping on a workday afternoon? Are you
sweet on her? She's allowed to get away with behaviour that anyone else would get fired for, and it's all because of her daddy.
Why do you think that Piedmont Avenue is the issue?
It isn't. It was just another fact to flesh out the story. I don't report where Public Works Director Claudette Ford gets her manicures and pedicures on
city time only because I can't remember the name of the business.
Sheesh.
Posted by: Jeannette on November 12, 2003 12:22 AMIgnacio, dan seigel, nancy nadel for mayor?
Makes one want to walk out in the middle of 880 and end it all.
Did the city pay for the ten new tires? I suppose the Alice Arts people have feelings of rage and mistreatment mixed in with a large dosage of entitlement. Still seems rather inappropriate, but who am I to judge/condemn.
It seems like a collision between Oakland's official bureaucratic corruption with its gimme-gimme-gimme detractors.
Do you know for sure the shoe shopping wasn't done on a lunchbreak? Not that I'm defending the behavior, but hey, who doesn't run errands during lunch? Besides, for a gossip site, you need more salacious details, like were they F-me pumps, thigh high boots or what?
What was the Rios firing about? You allude to a dispute with Brown, but umm, to quote Walter Mondale, "where's the beef?" We need the back story....oh and hey, noone puts up an oversized billboard in this town...unless Don Perata gets his cut.
Taura was not on an extended lunch break and no one
cares what sort of shoes she was buying. Or if she ust cruised the store and bought nothing. Follow
the point, please.
And again, the point about Rosie Rios was that all it took for Jerry to fire her was for her to disagree with him in front of a few other people. It could have been about the color of the carpet -- Jerry loathes being made to look ridiculous, and being wrong is, to him, almost the same thing as being actively ridiculed.
Why do you think Perata is the only one to get goodies from billboards? The jerks from Clear Channel are Jerry's pals. Don't you think that he and ever member of the city council (possibly excepting Nadel)will go after them for campaign contributions after the final vote? I sure do.
Clear Channel is the humungous outfit that banned
its radio stations from playing the Dixie Chicks records after one of them said she disagreed with Bush for bombing Iraq. You know, Republican hardball -- exercise your First Amendment rights and either get boycotted or sent to prison.
If you think that the Library Director having her live-in boyfriend is so bad. You guys should ask about the Library Director's decision to create a new position with Tax-payer money for the City Manager's daughter, without the normal hiring process, interview, etc. All to apease a request by the City Manager to the Library Director. Ask anyone at the West Oakland Branch 238-7352, about this. Sure, the Libraries need money, but first let's make sure the money goes to the Libraries and not to pet projects and politics.
Posted by: Dennis Washington on November 13, 2003 08:14 PM
I am disappointed that you maintain your anti-youth rhetoric with regard to library programs for children and teens in “And Another Thing” of Nov. 11th. It makes me wish these young people would write back and tell you off in the same striking prose. But since most do not have access to your Internet paper, it does not appear they are in a position to defend.
You are certainly entitled to feel alienated by the 21st century library if you are averse to the swirl of postmodern library activity, of restless bodies settling down to mindful concentration, of the meetings of minds when those minds have voices and speak aloud. Your voice, too, speaks loudly, and not always so pleasantly, I might add. The Oakland Public Library is actually aware of the need for different kinds of spaces for different kinds of customers – quiet areas, group areas, teen areas, meeting areas – and are trying to fashion these spaces into an improved library system (see the Oakland Public Library Master Facilities Plan for details). You don’t seem to see this issue long term. You cringe at the noise level of this active and inquisitive next generation as they make a transition from school to library. Well, you try making a transition with those kind of hormones. The point is, they’re making the transition; they have other choices after school, many of which are unsavory. And the next point: this is the generation that’s going to be taking care of us down the road. For my money, I’d rather have them well familiar with the public library, and civic participation, and the democratic values the library represents. In fact, the more time they’ve spent in the library in their coming of age, the more comfortable I’ll be.
Are you this intolerant of all the children and youth programs? Story time? Puppet shows? The PASS homework program? The Youth Leadership Council whose members go to Sacramento and lobby for your library services and branches? We are one of the most forward thinking library organizations in the nation with respect to teen services. I would think you would find a way to be proud!
Very truly yours,
Victoria Kelly
OPL Library Advisory Commission, Vice Chair
Kelly and I are friends who have agreed to disagree about another library parcel tax. That said, Kelly is wrong. The job of the Oakland City Council is to fund basic city services. These services include:
Sewers (we were just nailed with a new, huge sewer tax);
Street lighting (we pay a special assessment to the Landscape and Lighting Assessment District, the LLAD);
Road repair (most cities figure to repair their roads every 10-15 years; Oakland's streets are on an 80-year circuit);
Libraries (Measure O was supposed to be a supplement to General Fund money, but it is now being treated like the sole source of funding for
libraries);
Fire prevention (see discussion re the brand new Fire Assessment--tax-- proposal and remember -- the land that would be cleared with those funds is CITY property, not homeowner property);
Capitol maintenance and improvement (how many items from Measure DD fall into "permanently deferred maintenance until we can make taxpayers believe that they should pass another tax on themselves because we are such nitwits"? -- Lake Merritt, Studio One et cetera).
Right there is the biggest problem I have with the
newest library tax. Oakland isn't a staggeringly poor city, but our council members through the years have wasted money because it was, to them, free. Remember, no council member lost his or her job over the Raiders debacle, which we still have another 20 years to pay on. Oaklanders are tapped out. We have paid and paid and paid and it is time
to call a temporary halt.
We have just started paying another huge bond for new schools and school repairs, yet the Trib mentioned last week that entire schools might have to close due to declining enrollment. What's the logic in paying for school repairs when Randolph Ward, the bloodyminded new Schools chief, won't take the necessary one step -- cameras-- to prevent vandalism, drug and alcohol parties, and arson, at every Oakland school?
Oakland also passed an appalling measure called "Kids First!" which, as far as I am concerned, is about the most wrongheaded thinking possible. Aside from the fact that it serves very few of Oakland's 50,000 children, there is this: Why not Seniors First! Why not Disabled First! Why not Blacks or Asians or Caucasians First! Because measures like that wrongly give precedence to name-the-interest-group when equality and good service for everyone is what is needed.
Children and teens don't vote. If their parents care, then they vote.
The Oakland Public Library system does not need to be all things to all people, otherwise each branch
would be a small version of the Main Library. "Meeting rooms" and "group areas" sound redundant to me and again, I don't think that the library system should have to provide these spaces. There
is City Hall (decent parking, centrally located), there are churches all over and there are businesses with nice big meeting rooms.
I don't accept the premise that being a hormonally challenged teenager means that you are given a free pass to be as noisy as you want in a library.
Questions about whether or not I "tolerate"
PASS, puppet shows et cetera are almost unworthy of
answering, except to say that I read aloud to children for many, many years and only stopped when the principal of my local elementary school said she wanted me to create a Saturday morning library program "like the one they have at Temescal Library" instead. I think those are terrific programs when they are done well so that other readers and researchers can enjoy the peace and quiet of a library.
Bottom line: Don't think that every time you, other library commissioners or Jean Quan wave a flag and scream "children and teenagers" you will get a warm and fuzzy reception.
How could I have left this out? There is also talk of another ballot proposal to fund more police and crime prevention services, which are also a basic city service.
Our incredibly weak-kneed city council members are spending money on another poll to see if voters will support the Nancy Nadel written take-a-poverty-pimp-to-dinner at the Bay Wolf restaurant. They don't trust their intuition enough to make a decision without a poll, nor do any of them talk to a wide enough group of residents to get a feel for what we want.
Out of the money from this latest, dumb, magic
bond/parcel tax/and or hotel tax 40 percent would go to police and 60 percent to job training and anti-bad behaviour classes, or something like that.
Write if you are lucky enough to be polled by the
pollster who confuses everyone when she asks about, "PARE- o -LEES."
Taura, Taura, Taura
"Cronies and despots get what they deserve." So slashing this woman's tires is OK - that is EXACTLY what Oakland News is saying.
One more time - there is ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE FOR ANYONE TO HAVE THEIR TIRES SLASHED. The operative word here is ANYONE.
Also - the translation of your statement: "There is so much more to write about Taura Musgrove (George's 20-something daughter) and the nepotism and cronyism that continue to corrupt and plague Oakland." directly insinuates that since she is the daughter of another employee that that is nepotism and that nepotism is a plague on Oakland, therefore she is part and parcel of this plague - yes SHE is the plague.
And why does Oakland News call Ms. Mosgrove, "a twenty something" a girl? That is completely uncalled for. That is just school-yard name-calling, if not even on the verge of a hate crime. What's next, caling a son of someone a 'boy?' Oakland News should not even be going there with this language. It is not constructive.
Oakland News offers no direct evidence of any incompentence on this woman's part. These inuendos are demeaning to Oakland News and Oakland, not to say the Alice Arts Center (no where does this report say anyone from the Alice Art Centtried to 'protect' her from a second or even that third slashing?!) not to mention the remarks against Taura Mosgrove.
Rather by inference, there are folks associated with the Alice Arts Center come off quite mean a
nd dangerous!
And another thing...what's with this complaining of "antother gadfly spotted her shopping..." And exactly HOW DOES THIS 'GADFLY' KNOW OF THE EXACT SITUATION? This inuendo stuff is not what Oakland News should be about.
Hopefully, Oakland News can concentrate on REAL issues and not gossip.
Posted by: leal charonnat on November 17, 2003 12:50 AMIt's good to know that Leal doesn't think that cronyism and nepotism are enormous problems in Oakland and that he can fixate on everything else.
Your comments are simply bizarre and have been
intentionally taken out of context. Therefore they don't get addressed a second time.
The good news is that both George and Taura Musgrove are gone from the city of Oakland.
No one at OaklandNews ever said that anyone from the Alice Arts Center slashed Taura's tires -- we have no idea who did it. We abhor the practice and we still think that's it's funny that it happened to her THREE times.
OaklandNews delights in printing occasional rumors and bits of gossip. We call it entertainment and keeping just plain residents up to date with what's going on at City Hall. We acknowledge that sometimes these are wrong -- Bobby Kennedy Jr. is not joining Arnie's forces of darkness, and indeed most of Arnie's environmental appointees are disasters. But we preface rumors and gossip with
words like "Gossip" and "Rumor."
Scanning the most recent articles in OaklandNews, I think anyone but you would say that we are doing a fine little job of dealing with issues of substance. Since I'm the editor, I am not going to beat readers up with a constant barrage of
misery.
Jeannette--
Fantastic breakdown of the tax system and how the politicians abuse our taxes, then come begging us to set up more mello-roos districts/bond measures/property tax (which are then passed through to renters)...oh, its only 10 cents per square foot of improved property for a new library (that will be open two days a week), new squirrel preserve/ oxygen assessment district....then you start adding it up.
Libraries should be for books and periodicals. If you need meeting space, rent some space elsewhere. If it's an informal meeting--have it at your own house/cafe/bar/park. A library is a place for QUIET reading and research, not a rainy day homeless shelter/place to act out antisocial youth behavior.
A real problem is that the school libraries have been depleted because the district's attitude is, hey--send them to the public library! Let it come out of someone else's budget and give the rest of the money to Al Davis!
That said, I think you were too harsh on Leal and Victoria.
As far as the tireslashing goes, you seem overly gleeful about it.
As far as the shoe shopping, this anonymous charge is some lame hearsay suitable for Fleet Street.
It would be like someone saying that they saw two fellows whose initials are both JB sharing the restroom at Sears.
(It was James Bond and John Barton and they used seperate stalls)
My neighbors have been so flattered to have the City "elevate" us to the Hills district. Then, of course, it is just our money that is wanted...the teeny little map on the ballot shows that the City and their consultants have determined that all the properties from MacArthur Blvd east to the border of the City with Contra Costa County will be able to pay $65 a year to keep goats munching weeds and native plants to their little hearts desire. Because the "slants" in East Oakland are needed to keep the fee to a level that even hill folk will vote for it, we are now a fire abatement area. We who live in the more densely populated Glenview, Dimond, Laurel, Millsmont, Oak Knoll/King Estates areas will, in effect, subsidize the safety of the less dense (but with greatly higher appraisal value) properties in the Skyline, Ridgemont, Montclair, Knowland Park area. One editorial in the Tribune indicated that it was just "for just the price of a few pizzas"....except for some of my elderly neighbors $65 is more like a couple weeks groceries. If this were to be presented to just those properties that would truly benefit from the abatement, the fee would likely be so high that even they would never approve it and the City would be forced to do its job within its budget and stop screwing around with the General Fund.
I urge my neighbors to return their ballot with a NO vote.
Maureen Dorsey
*This discussion has been closed. No more comments may be added.*