Dirty Tricks for Another Regressive Parcel Tax

City councilmembers, fresh from imposing Measure Y taxes in defiance of its police requirement, have launched their campaign to sock you with yet another regressive parcel tax.

A flyer inserted in Waste Management's garbage bill envelope complains, "Unfortunately, the LLAD [Landscape and Lighting Assessment District] did not include a cost of living increase" back in 1993. In other words, councilmembers not only want to increase your assessment, they want to build in an automatic increase. It's not clear how trees and lights should be tied to a "cost of living."

Why should anyone believe a word of the councilmembers' propaganda? They campaigned for Measure Y insisting Oakland would get 802 police officers. After the tax passed, the same councilmembers turned around and said you wouldn't get 802 officers for years. In fact, the number of officers is below the July 2004 count, when the council wrote Measure Y. Oakland today has fewer than 700 police.

That does not stop the council from collecting the Measure Y taxes. The money for 802 officers is going elsewhere. So who can believe City claims and statistics about how LLAD tax money will be used?

For example, the flyer boasts that Oakland planted 10,000 more trees in 15 years. Since the City also claims that it now has 75,000 trees, a little math shows an average claimed increase of less than 1% per year. And how many trees have died or been removed?

The flyer's headline dares to call Oakland a safe city. People in flatland neighborhoods east and west know it isn't so. For example, Oakland is number six in the whole country for vehicle thefts.

Since the LLAD is supposed to help maintain parks, one of the bitterest betrayals of safety happened when councilmembers gutted the Park Rangers unit in the 2005-06 budget. First they floated a proposal to abolish the unit, then they called themselves heroes for keeping it alive. They didn't tell you, however, that they reduced the number of budgeted positions. Read about it here.

The LLAD is a regressive tax. Someone struggling to make payments on a $400,000 home pays basically the same as the owner of a $2 million mansion in the hills.

Check out the increase in your property tax bill from last year to this year. Most of the jump is due to the addition of Measure Y and several other assessments approved on the November 2004 ballot. It's time to put a stop to the endless parade of new and increased parcel taxes.

The flyer complains that, after undisclosed raids on the LLAD money, the city council was recently forced to use several million dollars of general fund money to cover maintenance of parks and street lights. My goodness, actually providing routine public services out of the general fund! The very thought of it chills the councilmembers' bones.

Councilmembers will tell you that the City must resort to parcel taxes because it has no other source of revenue. However, the City budget has swelled year after year while service declines. The giveaways for the Raiders at the Coliseum, the Forest City development, the Lincoln Court senior housing fiasco, and a host of other insider deals have taken their toll. Completely lacking in credibility, the councilmembers and City Hall executives have no right to ask Oakland residents for more money.