Half of this City's property taxes go to redevelopment and cannot by law be used to fund any city services such as: parks, police, public works etc.

In order to make up for tying half of our property tax dollars up in redevelopment, which can only fund developers, the recourse for the city and the school district are parcel taxes.

Public Works is projecting a deficit for the next five years. The LLAD is supposed to sunset but this City runs on all if being asleep at the wheel so we pay. A perfect example is the recent "Mayor's" Townhall meeting at Maxwell Park. The rhetoric was the usual shell game tactics.

Dear Citizens All:

Our tax code already provides for money to pay for landscape and lighting. A vote in favor of this increase would transfer the burden of payment from the sales, property and other taxes and directly onto you. This would in turn free up the monies normally allocated in the budget for "Landscape and Lighting" so it could be used for "FAVORED PORK" benefits.

Look what is happening to your Measure Y money. It is being openly rerouted in front of your face. If you let them get away with it, they will rob your pockets dry. The only difference between them and the thugs on the street is, the thugs use a GUN to rob you and the politicians use a PEN.

ELIMINATE the pork and support and protect the safety of citizens. If this was done, CRIME would be down, TAXES would be down, and City services would be up. Make politicians accountable. If they spend our money wrong or don't take care of us, kiss them good by. They are totally replaceable by us if we stick together as a group. The favored tactic of the crooks and the politicians is to divide and conquer. If we citizens of Oakland gather together as a group, we are strong, powerful, and listened to. If we continue to just sit and squawk as individuals, we will continue to be fed manure and be ignored. We aren't mushrooms, don't let them treat us as though we were. STAND-UP and VOTE.

I have very mixed feelings about this tax proposal. And I'm tired of the vagaries of my mistrust of how our money is spent. I also would like to know where the root of the corruption exists, how to identify it and then how to work to eradicate it. Who is responsible for this state of affairs? And, can the president of the Oakland city council really do any better job at this, by changing hats and acting as our mayor?

It doesn't look pretty to me. I propose the City get its act together on current assessments before we go permissing it an additional $10 million of our hard earned money.

Don't go asking me for your monthly allowance, blow part of it soda pop and candy, lose half of it in the gutter, come home with nothing to show for it, and then go asking me for another $20.

Here we have another tax proposal where the tax may or may not end up funding what it is proposed to fund. Yes, parks and streetlights need funding, but giving the city a near blank check just isn't the way to go about it.

Before local officals and their supporters go on about "making Oakland a safer, better looking, and cleaner community," they must make sure that tax proposals are completely truthful and straightforward.

After all the corruption is gone, we can talk about necesary and fair taxes.

We've been promised so much and left empty handed too many times to be duped again.

The LLAD citizen review board will probably be made of up people who supported the measure and who are friends of those politicians who created it – a board that only fawns over the tax measure which spawned it.

I believe very strongly in property taxes going to support the needs of all our citizens. But given the track record of late, it's very hard to believe that another tax will really be used in best and most necesary manner.

Money for these expenses should be coming from the General Fund and not another special, regressive parcel tax that can be increased year after year without being brought to a vote again.

I love parks and trees and well-lit streets, but Oakland cut down many of the trees in our neighborhood instead of dealing with the drug dealers who hid drugs in their branches. The city installed a six-foot fence and closed the park in our area rather than police it, because we have no police to spare. I voted for more police, but the only thing that has changed is the increase in my property tax bill.

More than a year and half down the road from Measure Y, murders are now being committed in the so-called "safe" areas of the city. When I called the police a few weeks ago about late night noise, the dispatcher apologized and told me that the call probably couldn't be answered at all because "we just don't have enough police." She told me that nothing would ever get better for us until we organized and demanded that City Hall give us more police officers.

So, no, I won't be voting to increase my taxes to free up more pork dollars for the city council. I surely wish I could "find" $8 million I didn't know I had, like they did!

I was appalled to see that the LLAD is now trying to cash in on our fears. The lastest flyer asks us to vote for another tax increase because we need streetlights to prevent crime. Streetlights are a basic right and should come from the General Fund, not another pickpocket parcel tax.

Sorry for the rant, but I'm tired of hearing how Oakland has failed to manage our money.

I recently bought a house in Maxwell Park. I resent the LLAD proposal because my property taxes are almost $8,000 a year. I resent that someone is now asking for even more money from me, as that's already a lot to ask, seeing that I live in a small home in an okay part of town with marginal city services. I'd love to see the parks cleaner and more beautiful, but I think Oakland should use the extra money they're going to be earning each year from house sales (both in transfer tax and extra propery taxes) to pay for cleaning and maintaining the parks.

It's not hard to miss how many sales are happening each week in this neighborhood and around Oakland. I wonder what is happening to all of that money.

I see the city of Oakland is at it again – trying to stick it to the homeowner.

He [LLAD tax hike supporter N. Vigilante] doesn't have to deal with the daily breakins and stolen vehicles, armed robberies, and murders near his home. I'd probably be more worried about our parks, too, if I wasn't so worried about my own safety.

Until the elected officials show us that they can effectively make us safer and show consistent competance in how they appropriate the funds we've already given them, I feel that we cannot trust them with more of our hard-earned cash when things are so mismanaged and no one takes accountability.

The issue of redevelopment is part of the problem. The Oak Knoll proposal is to build over 800 new homes on the site. The tax money will not be available to the City's general fund because Oak Knoll was placed in redevelopment by the City Council. All that tax increment money goes to the Redevelopment agency to subsidize developers downtown. Oak Knoll will contribute almost nothing to the General Fund to pay for essential City services like police and fire and parks and lighting. The rest of us get to pay for police and fire for the shiny new development at Oak Knoll.

One side says, "This is an incredibly worthwhile cause! Who doesn't use the parks? Who doesn't want well-lit streets? Who doesn't want tree-lined streets? These things benefit every neighborhood--they make Oakland a beautiful place, they give kids something to do, they help abate crime. But they're not free. We have to pay for them somehow."

The other side says, "Every year my taxes go up. And every year, the City Council comes to me with--in addition to a higher tax bill – a demand that I pay some new or increased assessment request so that I can save some worthwhile cause. First it was emergency services and paramedics, then the libraries, now it's parks, trees, and streetlights. For heaven's sake, what does the general fund pay for anymore? Yes I like trees and parks and what-not, but I'm being bled dry a little more every year. These worthy causes are killing me!"

One side says this is a very worthwhile endeavor (which it is) and it's only $44 more a year, while the other side rhetorically asks, where do we draw the line?

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll state immedicately that I fall into the second camp. I also vote every year, haven't yet decided for which mayoral candidate I'll be voting, and love trees, parks and streetlights.

My response to statements I've heard from those in the first camp is that I hate the idea that someone might think I oppose trees or don't value the good they bring to the neighborhood. The same goes for streetlights and parks. And yes, I know that it takes money to support them, and it takes more money every year. No argument. If money weren't an object, I'd whip out a checkbook and personally help underwrite these fine programs, on a very grand scale.

But money is an object. Since I don't have a lot of it, I like to know where my money goes, and how it's spent. And I hear and appreciate the sincerity of those in the first camp saying, "There are safeguards in place, the money won't be spent on anything but what it's intended for."

Here's the thing. My taxes have gone way, way up since I moved here ten years ago. I don't see the services provided keeping up with that increase, which is OK, since there's inflation, etc. But I also don't see the City staying even. I think there might be a bit of a decline, most noticeably in Police Services.

Why should I think that this LLAD increase isn't just another example of business-as-usual?

Developers are cementing and building on every last vestige of potential park land/open space in Oakland.

The Leona Quarry is a typical example. Please visit if you haven't seen the monstrosity that's being built there on what could have been additional parkland/recreational area – if providing park/rec land for the growing population was a priority of the city. That neighborhood protested the development for years with just cause, but the Planning Commission was in bed with developers (as they often are).

After reading all of the pros and cons and seeing continuous examples of the failings of the city to responsibly manage and appropriate general fund money as well as additional bond money (Measure Y, the libraries bond, etc) to the claimed cause, there is no evidence that this added tax money being requested for LLAD would actually be used responsibly for what it is professing to be used for.

I am a very pro-park person. I use several of our parks regularly and do volunteer work in one. But I question this new LLAD assessment.

We voters passed a special assessment for police and then the city fathers figured out how to cut back the general fund payments to the police, and we have no greater number of police. Our police services are worse.

We passed a special assessment to keep the neighborhood libraries open but the city put our money into new libraries. They have spent something like three hundred thousand making a plan to turn the Kaiser Center into a library. Before we do a fancy central library we need to help the neighborhood branches stay open ... actually much more important for ordinary people. They need a regular library nearby, not cutting edge hoo-hah downtown, expensive and time-consuming to access. (They also need to use library fines for books, not put them into the general fund.)

Under Jerry Brown the ordinary people are being treated like ATMs, and suburban developers and people in city government offices trot around town acting like God's Gifts to Creation ... bragging on themselves, telling us how we should be more "world class," and spending our money on their lunches and trips. Plus their designs are usually not particularly unique or related to our history/style.

Here's an idea: use the high taxes we're already paying for ordinary services which make our city safe, cared for and clean. We wouldn't have to pay developers to "care" about us. In fact, we wouldn't care if they did.

Councilmember Quan:

Can you tell me why these Park Ranger positions are being eliminated? Is it not the purpose of the LLAD tax increase to support our parks? I am a native Oaklander and stand behind my city but only for changes that benefit the citizens of Oakland.

I don't feel that asking Oaklanders for more money – presumably to pay for park and lighting maintenance services – is justifiable if the allocated funding will not be used as appropriated. How can the citizens of Oakland trust the council people to make good decisions when we the people keep hearing through honest sources that the councilmembers are not acting appropriately and are not making change in the better interest of this great city of ours?

This is not meant to be an attack on you Jean. You have done wonderful things for the city and for that I am grateful! Thank you very much for your commitment! I just feel it necessary to question the Oakland council as a whole to see where they plan to take Oakland.

If the City does plan on eliminating valuable resources, then I feel it will be my duty as a concerned citizen to make sure that all responsible parties are held accountable for their actions. You will receive my praise when earned and my discontent when matters are not being handled with good ethical standards.

How many band-aids does it take to fix a broken city?

Every news story seems to be about putting a band aid on Oakland's safety issue. Politicians clamor for support and money, while the city remains broken.

We need to focus on safety and hiring more police officers.