Here we go again, looking at another parcel tax to fund a very few cops, and lots of dubious programs for job training blah blah. How many people have been successfully trained in one of these programs and have stayed working and out of jail?
To Joel Tena, aide to council member Nancy Nadel:
Could you please tell us if this is the same 40-40-20 measure and how much this parcel tax will be? Also, how about the monies that are set aside in the General Fund specifically for youth? The ordinance that former Councilmember Sheila Jordan got passed? Can these monies also be used to the above purposes?
Also, I notice the intitiative makes no mention of police officers. Will any be hired under this program? What specific family and job training programs will you be using? There are many, many job traiing programs, but no jobs. Could you be any more specific please? What occupations and under whose auspices do you intend to train people? Are you using the building trades council apprenticeship programs for electricians, carpenters and plumbers? Which organizations do you have in mind to operate the family and violence prevention part? Are you utilizing existing organizations, and if so, which ones? Can you put a copy of the ordinance or attach it to this website so we can read it? This is all pretty short notice. Councilmember Jordan's ordinance which set aside something like 5% of the city's general fund to be spent on youth had a small group of insiders funneling monies to certain groups. I'm concerned that this measure is just going to be another one of those. How do we know true target groups will be reached? Sincerely, Val Eisman
Office of the City Clerk
Subject: Prevent Violent Crime Measure - Ballot Measure From: Councilmember Nadel
Recommendation: Adopt a Resolution submitting, on the Council's own motion, to the Electors at the March 2, 2004 Election, a proposed ordinance creating a special tax to fund youth, family and violence prevention programs; consolidating the Election with the Statewide Presidential Primary; and directing the City Clerk to fix the date for submission of arguments and provide for notice and publication in accordance with the March 2, 2004, Statewide Presidential Primary Attachments:
03-0306.pdf:
http://clerkwebsvr1.oaklandnet.com/attachments/3352.pdf
Item 24 12-2-03:
http://clerkwebsvr1.oaklandnet.com/attachments/3588.pdf
Item 24 SUP 12-2-03.pdf:
http://clerkwebsvr1.oaklandnet.com/attachments/3781.pdf
From Val Eisman
I just gave an telephone interview to Laura Counts after reading the measure on the link Joel Tena provided. I want you to know that I would vote for it by gritting my teeth although I am opposed to parcel taxes, view them as regressive, to the fact that Nancy Nadel bypassed the Sunshine ordinance and the fact that the city didn't put another "free money" proposal together.
My neighborhood's position is that they are against more taxes, especially parcel taxes, when the rich are getting more rebates. Also, some seniors on fixed incomes will have to dip into savings, will have to choose between heat and food. This parcel tax, if passed, could hurt renters, seniors and others on fixed income. This greatly upsets me. I don't know how to resolve this issue.
The city council, who also co-operates as the redevelopment agency, has chosen to allocate more monies for developers than for the police, libraries and fire services. The money exists now to pay for all of this. They simply have chosen not to appropriate it. And they are doing it in a very, secretive and backdoor attempt.
I will vote for this parcel tax, and only this tax and grit my teeth. I will tell myself that it is a "contribution" to the youth so that more of them don't end up in prison the way I send money to the Alameda County food bank so people want starve. It deeply hurts me to think of the lives wasted in prison--HUMAN LIVES over very small crimes and offences. Meanwhile white collar criminals like the attorneys, accountants and investment brokers who have defrauded thousands if not millions of their life savings through misleading information about companies go scott free. These people are merely "fined", not prosecuted or imprisoned as they should be for hurting people 'BIGTIME' ROBBING THEM OF THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS. The legal system in our country is highly skewed in favor of the rich.
Yes, I wil vote for this parcel tax as a small step to counterbalance the huge, injust social, political and economic inequities that exist in our society, but I will not vote for any other parcel tax. Our city council has us over a barrel. They have forced us to make very tough decisions; decisions that will hurt either one group or another. They dishonestly refuse to acknowledge this and I have lost my respect and faith in them because of this.
Please put this in Oakland News too, Jeannette. This is the totality of my position.
Thanks,
Val Eisman
My 1981/82 property tax has a total ad valorum tax rate of 1.3136% and one parcel tax (for the flood control district) of $10.22. The most recent tax bill shows an a/v tax rate of 1.3385% and 13 parcel taxes totalling $427.04, not to mention the additional taxes which appear on other bills (such as the sewer tax on the EBMUD bill and the utility taxes assessed on cable TV and telephone bills). This is the kind of nonsense that makes people leave Oakland. We wonder why libraries and other essential city services can't be funded with normal revenues? We have only to read Randy Hamilton's columns in the Oakland Tribune of several years ago. The city fathers (and mothers) play upon our liberal guilt to fund special measures to make up for all the funds that have been quietly diverted to programs that benefit only a very few people in this city, through well-meaning programs which get distorted into parodies of their original intent. If we want to get potholes filled or trash cleaned up, we're reminded that the city is in a financial crisis - we're made to feel as if our expectations are unreasonable. I'll tell you what's unreasonable, and it's not us.
Posted by: Tom Cluster on November 28, 2003 09:28 PMThe parcel tax has two fatal flaws:
1) The tax ignores quality-of-life issues. We are fed up with streets where cars blast stereo, where drug dealers and their admirers take over corners, where motorized scooters whine their engines and race by pedestrians, where abandoned cars sit for days, where men drive around without license plates (although they can afford huge speakers in the trunk), where stop signs and speed bumps provide fun and games instead of designating rules of the road.
The crazy thing is that the Oakland Police Department could address these quality-of-life issues without more tax money: fines from citations would pay for the enforcement. However, OPD does not even tally assaults by window-rattling car stereos and the like. These are crimes, and we are victims, but there are no statistics. The mayor judges OPD on its crime stats; OPD judges officers on stats in their beats. No stats on crimes against quality of life means OPD ignores them, with rare exceptions.
According to email broadcast by Don Link, the committee that brewed the tax proposal consisted of OPD Chief Word, people from PUEBLO, social workers, job training experts, etc. That is, no one represented the suffering residents of Oakland.
2) The tax ignores community policing. As I write, the proposed resolutions are not posted online. Link's email uses the words "community policing," but he clearly misses its essence: one officer who has to meet with residents from a defined area, residents who tell him about specific problems.
When you have a real community policing officer, you can work with him and get things done. We had it for a couple of years; we know. Today's problem-solving teams and endless reorganizations of the chain of command are not community policing. No officer is accountable to us.
Why should we vote for a regressive tax that does nothing to solve our neighborhood problems?
By the way, this parcel tax proposal does not set liberal versus conservative. The tax advocates talk about "the need for rebuilding the lives of those who are caught up in the cycle of offending, incarceration, and release to re-offend and be incarcerated again—the revolving door." (Don Link's email) You are not going to save 50,000 youth with an $11 million tax ($220 per youth). You need fundamental, national economic change. You need jobs for everyone at good pay. A hundred parcel taxes would not add up to anything real, so don't insult us by saying it is a first step.
We have a right to peace and quiet in our homes and on our public streets. We are taking neither food, jobs, nor economic opportunity away from hooligans, thugs, and gang-bangers when we demand an end to their noise-making, their reckless driving, and their usurpation of our neighborhoods.
If the Council does the wise thing and forgets about parcel taxes for now, good. On the other hand, if this pathetic measure goes on the ballot, the campaign against it will raise awareness of what Oakland really needs: genuine community policing to deal with today's endless quality-of-life disturbances.
No, Ms Schnitker, you've got it wrong. The only love that lasts forever is unrequited love.
Posted by: Frank Grimes Jr on December 10, 2003 02:34 PM*This discussion has been closed. No more comments may be added.*