Five issues to watch at Oakland's City Council meeting - TONIGHT, April 5
Oakland City Council meets tonight at 5:30 p.m.
Tonight's City Council meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. on the third floor of City Hall at 1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza. You can also watch the meetings on KTOP (local channel 10) and streaming online.
Here are our top five to watch tonight.
10: Special election on July 12
In March, when the state was preparing to schedule a special election on taxes in June, Oakland's City Council voted 5-2 to place a city-wide $80 parcel tax on that ballot.
A few days after Oakland's vote, state Republicans announced that talks for the state-wide ballot were stalled. Now, the state special election is limited to finding a replacement for District 36's house seat (in Los Angeles County), and Oakland must hold its own city-wide election to vote on the possible Oakland parcel tax.
Tonight, the City Council will vote whether or not to hold a special election for the parcel tax on July 12. If the election happens and voters support the parcel tax, the city could raise an additional $11 million per year.
At Saturday's, District 1 Town Hall meeting, Mayor Jean Quan supported the $80 parcel tax, calling it a more palatable version of former Mayor Ron Dellum's failed Measure NN. That measure, which was unable to meet the two-thirds requirement to pass in November 2008, would have raised a single-family homeowner's parcel taxes to $106 the first year, $177 the second year and $276 after that.
This summer's city-wide ballot also could see a new temporary telephone tax and an increase in the real estate transfer tax. Councilman Ignacio De Le Fuente blocked these taxes from proceeding to the statewide ballot, concerned that the city had not designated where these funds would go.
To vote you must be:
- A U.S. citizen,
- A resident of California
- Not in prison or on parole for the conviction of a felony
- 18 years old by July 12, 2011
- Not determined mentally incompetent by California law
To vote on July 12, you must register by June 27. If you've moved since the last election, you definitely need to register. If you aren't sure if you're registered, Alameda County residents can check their registration online. If you need to register, you can do so online or pick up and mail in a voter registration card at a library, post office, fire station, City Hall or several other public places.
S-16, S-17: Redevelopment of the Oakland Army Base
The city of Oakland is working with a developer to come up with a plan to redevelop the Oakland Army Base. Those plans are stalled by a dispute with the Oakland Film Center - OFC - located at the Base since 2004.
Tonight's proposals extend the exclusive negotiating rights to the developer with the city (S-16) and among other things, authorize the developer to leave out the OFC in its next plan (S-17).
You can expect this issue to see some debate tonight.
The OFC, which worked on "The Pursuit of Happyness," "Rent," "The Matrix Reloaded" and "Bee Season," among others, formed in 2004 at the base and helped make Oakland a destination for film and production work. They currently pay $0.16 per square foot of their warehouse. After their building is redeveloped, the new market price of their modern building could be as high as $0.75 cents, effectively evicting the OFC.
OFC supporters are asking the city to consider these current tenants in the new plans, but a specific phrase in S-17 suggests the city has lost its patience for the issue:
"Provide for … Elimination of the Requirement to Accommodate the Oakland Produce Market and the Oakland Film Center as Part of the Development."
While the site is under dispute, the city will vote tonight to continue paying the development team $14.1 million for design and planning work. Critics suggest these funds should be saved until everyone can agree on what to do with the OFC. It looks like the city and the developers may have reached a consensus of their own.
9.1: MacArthur Transit Village Stage One
After a series of public workshops, the first stage of the MacArthur Transit Village will go before City Council. If approved tonight, the city will hold an additional public hearing and vote to implement the first stage of the project.
The entire project would transform 6.84 acres around the MacArthur BART station in three stages:
- Parking garage, surrounding streets and BART plaza renovations
- Ninety units of affordable housing (scheduled to go before Council as soon as May 17)
- Market-rate and additional affordable housing units (potentially next year)
The final project could have up to 675 residential units, 42,500 square feet of neighborhood-oriented retail, 5,200 square feet of community center space and parking for BART customers, project area residents and shoppers. The buildings are limited to 68 feet (six stories). For more on the proposed transit village, browse the city's project page.
12: Ranked-choice voting follow-up
In November 2010, Oakland held its first ranked-choice election. The winner of the first round lost the overall election and blamed the system, while the overall winner won with a boost from a coalition of other candidates. Was the ranked-choice election fair?
Critics of RCV claim that voters don't understand the more complicated system and many don't make additional choices beyond their top choice. To "fully participate" in RCV, a voter must make more than one choice.
Tonight, the Council will review a report comparing the equity of ranked choice voting to the standard "winner take all" system. The report - provided by FairVote.org, a national advocate for RCV - finds that even accounting for the greater number of registered voters in 2010, voter participation increased over the 2006 election.
The report's "verdict": In all districts, ranked choice voting empowers Oakland voters.
Is this conclusive enough to satisfy Quan and RCV's detractors? Do you think RCV is fair?
7.4, 7.5, 7.6: Settlement agreements
At almost every Council meeting, our elected officials vote to authorize settlement agreements on a variety of lawsuits against the city of Oakland. There are three this week.
- A trip and fall accident near 3878 Fruitvale Avenue - $77,500
- An auto accident wherein an OPD vehicle spun out of control while the claimant was a passenger - $15,000
- A returning Iraqi War Veteran and other Port of Oakland engineers, denied their right to "bump" (they let go against the rules of their union) - a total of $110,000
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10: Special election on July 12:
Not accurate to call this a revamp of Measure NN. NN was money to fund policing. The proposed $80 parcel tax would fund a wide variety of services, including a redundant funding of youth services which already have mandates from Measure OO and Measure Y.
12: Ranked-choice voting follow-up
Ranked choice is flawed, but not fatally flawed. The biggest problem is majority failure. Due to exhausted ballots, there are two clear examples where winners did not win a majority of the electorate. In Oakland, Mayor Quan's total percentage of the entire electorate was in the 40s, because a substatial number of voters cast no 1st, 2nd or 3rd place vote for her or Don Perata. In San Francisco, Malia Cohen's total percentage of the entire electorate was far lower than 40% (21%, I think).
Both of these elections the root cause of the problem was simple: too many candidates, many of them hopelessly non-viable. There were 10 in the Oakland race, of them, only 3 or 4 had a real chance of winning. In Malia Cohen's race, there were twenty-one candidates.
There is a very simple, populist solution to this problem: dramatically increase the number of signatures needed to get your name on the ballot. Oakland currently requires 50 valid signatures. If we upped it to 200 or 400, many of the non-viable candidates would have been unable to get on the ballot.
The ability to organize and do outreach well enough to get 400 signatures seems like a reasonable pre-requisite to running for Mayor. The current rules, with only 50 signatures, has created a situation where at least two real-estate professionals ran hopeless campaigns, seemingly with the sole intention of getting tons of free publicity by having their name printed all over town, for a minimal investment.
Also, the other reason we need to up the signature requirement: If someone wanted to kill Ranked Choice Voting right now, it would be expensive for them to run a signature campaign and win an election that would revert us to the old system. However, for much less money, they could find 50 people, get each of those 50 people 50 signatures, and get them all on the ballot. This would create such voter confusion and outrage that Ranked Choice would be easily defeated.
So tell your councilmembers to up the number of signatures to get on the ballot, because without that, Ranked Choice is both flawed and endangered.
A few clarifications re Army Base item:
The plans are not stalled by the OFC. They don’t have that power; they just want the original agreement to accommodate them on the Base honored.
The OFC testified at the Committee hearing that they were willing and able to pay $0.75. (And, in my opinion, it won’t be a “modern building” but reuse of a portion of one of the huge existing warehouses.)
“city has lost its patience”? The city did not even consult with the OFC. They only found out about this change in a roundabout way. They feel betrayed. Councilmembers at the Committee hearing seemed embarrassed about their treatment and asked the developer to work with them.
The site is not under dispute. The $14.1 million is a new allocation of funds for infrastructure design, which will not go to the potential developer, but to the engineering firm doing the design work. It is a little strange that they would be doing this work before there is Master Plan and before there is a development agreement with a developer. There is only an ENA (Exclusive Negotiating Agreement) with a developer. The explanation may be that this is infrastructure that would be needed irregardless of the final Master Plan or the selected developer.
Creative job-generating businesses like the Oakland Film Center are exactly the kind of businesses the City should be working to attract to the Army Base.
Thank you both for the comments. Max, you summarize signature argument well. Joyce, thank you for sharing your (deep) experience on this issue, and the correction on the higher rent being an eviction.
RM, late i the game as it is, dig into the projections for the MacArthur Transit Village. The impression i got from listening to the managers at the public meeting in Temescal a fev weeks ago, was that since there is 0 financing for market rate anything, the only units going to be built in the forseeable future are subsidized housing units. Don't hold your breath for much build out of the retail space. The developers seemed quite realistic.
Unfortunately, most of the residents of Temescal slept thru the several years of hearings preceeding this approval. They were surprised to find that yes a large development 2 blocks away has widely felt impacts.