Park "Standards" – The 802-Cops Scam All Over Again

Does the Landscape and Lighting tax (LLAD provide money for parks and street lights – or is it a fiscal device that lets councilmembers dispense funds to political allies and favored developers?

City councilmembers want to hide the overall fiscal scheme, so they focused on park and lighting "performance standards" when they approved a mail-in ballot for a big LLAD tax hike.

For example, grass must not be over four inches high, according to the draft standards submitted to the council's April 4, 2006 meeting. Alternatively, councilmember Brunner proposed "less than ankle height." These are the questions that shape the course of history.

The $28 million question: Is the grass in this park too high?

The grass limit is only one of several dozen paper rules specifying the acceptable number of pieces of litter per square yard, the uniformity of grass color, the percentage of public urinals that must be clean, etc. Originally, City staff proposed to develop standards by October, several months after the May-June mail-in vote on the LLAD. At the March 28 meeting of the council's finance committee, councilmember Jean Quan insisted on standards right away. She said she needs performance standards for the campaign to sell yet another tax assessment to property owners.

A city staffer helpfully reported that someone had found a 1979 booklet of park standards. We can only note that if the document gathered dust for decades, it proves how little such standards are worth, at least in Oakland municipal government.

At the April 6 council meeting, Scott Peterson of the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce said the standards would not encourage efficiency. Actually, it is worse. The standards only sanctify the decline of City service. For example, Oakland is to trim 5,500 trees per year. The City boasts that it has 75,000 trees, implying that each sidewalk tree will be trimmed once every 13 years and 7 months. Longtime residents of Oakland remember when the City had these trees trimmed every two or three years. That was before the first LLAD tax in 1989, before we lost the principle that the general fund pays for public safety and basic infrastructure, not for political giveaways.

Coming from the Oakland city council, any promise is suspect. Substantially the same councilmembers insisted when campaigning for the Measure Y parcel tax that our money would provide a total of 802 police. Given the council's hiring freeze on the police department in effect at the time, given the known difficulty of recruiting, and given the constant stream of resignations and retirements from a department weakened by low morale, the councilmembers' promise of 802 officers was a display of either deep ignorance or willful deception.

After Measure Y passed, the public insisted on fulfillment of the commitment to 802 officers. The demand became more insistent from month to month, culminating in the historic March 7 "Enough Is Enough!" rally. Finally, the City attorney came out with the blunt reply in a legal filing: all we need to do is write a budget line; we do not have to hire even one officer. Councilmembers Quan and De La Fuente delivered the same message to a public hearing back in July 2005.

Today we have fewer than 700 officers, three dozen fewer than when the council wrote Measure Y in July 2004. Why would anyone believe a word of the performance standards offered for yet another tax increase?

Even the Oakland Tribune acknowledged the council's problem of credibility:

As city officials approved the increase [in the LLAD tax], they continued to confront criticism over the unrealized promise of Measure Y, which was approved by voters 18 months ago and raised nearly $20 million from increased property taxes and parking fees.
  Although city officials promised to use the money to hire 63 additional police officers and expand violence-prevention programs, the department still has about 100 vacancies, and the contracts for many of the programs have not yet been awarded. (Oakland Tribune, April 6, 2006)

"Park maintenance is among the most basic city services," said Jim Ratliff, who has worked to restore the Cleveland Cascade near Lake Merritt. "It is not a luxury. We do not have a choice." (Oakland Tribune, April 6, 2006)

Yes and no. Parks are basic infrastructure, and that's what the general fund is for. The error of Mr. Ratliff, who also campaigned to pass Measure Y, occurs when he says we do not have a choice. The LLAD tax is no more about landscape and lighting than Measure Y was about more police. Councilmembers always sell parcel taxes as though they guaranteed something comparable to motherhood or apple pie. The reality is that the new money goes into one city budget. The council takes money that is freed up by new parcel taxes for the seamy grants. You never vote on a proposal to give a subsidy to favored developer Phil Tagami. The choice is, should we increase taxes so that the council can hand over more money to Mr. Tagami? By the way, he just co-hosted a fundraiser for a campaign to pass the LLAD tax hike.

We can vote No on the "LLAD" bait-and-switch tax hike. We need to get more accountability from the council before we give them one more dollar.