Just The News

No Brad Pitt In Oakland?

We’re not sure if you follow all the celebrity and movie news, this being Oakland and all.  However Moneyball was supposed to start shooting here this summer, a cool Steven Soderbergh-version of Billy Beane’s life – as played by Brad Pitt.  Oakland was going to be blessed with Brad and his entourage.

GM Beane's Parking Spot

As the Oakland A’s general manager, Billy Beane probably would have been too busy this summer to pal around with Brad and hang out on the set.  His story – Billy’s and not Brad’s – is an interesting one, as we all know.  He’s still hard at work trying to make the A’s productive this season.

But the real news came out this morning:  the $50 million picture may be kaput.  According to Variety, Columbia Pictures head Amy Pascal didn’t like the final script.  The film is getting shopped to other major studios this weekend.  Otherwise, the production goes on hiatus until things get worked out – or likely not worked out.

Even though Brangelina sells magazines, the Brad half isn’t seen as the sole driver of box office.  The movie studio now fears this newfangled movie about baseball and whether it has sufficient worldwide appeal.  We think Billy and Oakland are worth risking $50 million, don’t you?

You Spoke: Thumbs Down For Pay-Go

The people have spoken, and it’s thumbs-down for Pay-Go.  Some 82 percent of voters wanted these funds to be red-lined from Oakland’s budget.  The rest of you split evenly between keeping them or not being sure what to do, yet still wanted to reduce the $125k allotment per City Council representative.

Thumbs Down

These results came from our non-scientific survey, launched yesterday and still open.  Thus far, respondents were 46 percent male and 54 percent female.  Over 30 percent said they lived in Rep Nadel’s district 3, while others lived in districts repped by Brooks, Brunner, De La Fuente and Quan.  Interestingly, no one cast ballots from Reid or Kernighan’s districts.

What else did Oaklanders say?  They offered varied opinions about how Pay-Go funds are or should be used by different Council reps – and all demanded better accountability.  Check out these comments left by survey-takers:

When times are good, pay-go would be o. k.  Now, no.  Pay-go should have some “rules” attached to it.  Ideally, it should be used to leverage other community $.

I agree with Ms. Brunner that Pay-Go is valuable in a City that seems to perennially pay attention to certain areas while completely ignoring others.  However, I think that more stringent rules should be placed on use – none of this “neighborhood party” business like in Brook’s district.  That is nothing short of vote buying.  Capital improvements only, with cursory permission via vote by other council members.  In that event, I support raising the amount.

Council members should admit and mea culpa their role in blowing the surplus we had a few years back, due to the house-flipping that jacked up transfer tax revenue.  Of course, the council had a feeding frenzy on that, and saved not one dime for a rainy day.  Not learning a thing, at least one council member continues to beat an old dead horse to rifle its saddlebags for money.  Money to buy his own glory to build a boondoggle which he probably wants to name after himself, while his district crumbles apart with no grocery stores or drugstores or youth centers, but lots of murders.

A majority of council members use these funds on projects that don’t get other funds because they are poor uses of money.  It is used to reward cronies.  Get rid of it.

Beyond Pay-Go, many respondents felt the need to suggest other Council budget changes.  Several of you wanted to reduce headcounts in staff offices or else make substantial cuts to the elected reps’ salaries.  One respondent went straight to the stomach, noting meals budgeted by the city clerk:  “The Council should pay for their own meals, not the tax payers.”  I guess every morsel counts during the 2009 recession.

June 20th Update: Still want to weigh in?  Please feel free to take this quick survey and share your thoughts.  Living in the O, which is an active Oakland-wide blog, has asked for survey takers and we’re wondering if these preliminary results will hold or change as survey takers pile on.

Our Council Rep, Jean Quan, also offered her take today on how Pay-Go gets used in our district.  These funds help “prime the pump” on city funding or else fill gaps when there are simply no resources available.

Continue reading →

Quan Says That $18 Million Is Ours

Today we visited the Save Your City site where anyone can upload videos that communicate their budget views to Sacramento and the Governator.  When I searched for Oakland, there was Jean Quan saying leave us alone – that $18 million the State wants to grab from property and gas taxes is ours.

Save Your City - Rep Quan

As the City Council’s finance committee chair, Quan forcefully makes her case along these lines:

The State of California has lived on credit cards and hit their limits.  They have already made enough funding cuts, directly impacting Oakland which has a higher percentage of seniors and poor residents.

The State wants to take eight percent of our property taxes, which is $11 million.  More recently, they want to take most of our gas taxes, which is around $6 million.  (This adds up to $17 million but later the $18 million is cited.)

Oakland is looking at an $80 million tax cut because our sales, property, real estate taxes are down.  This affects our quality of life – we need our libraries, police officers and streets maintained, etc.

Oakland has plenty of company, as there are 200 California cities declaring severe fiscal hardship.  When you search around other cities and their reps, you hear the same push-back on the property taxes grab and the same “leave us alone” echoes.

Save Your City is a grass-roots initiative organized by the League of California Cities.  They are encouraging folks to join the coalition or upload videos, and help deliver a thumbs-down message to elected officials in Sacramento.

My take?  As a citizen of Montclair Village, Oakland, Alameda County and California during the great recession of 2009, this feels like an internecine budget battle – but I’m siding with Oakland because this one’s patently unfair.

Update: Our State Assembly finalized and delivered a statewide budget on July 23rd.  The bad news is that Oakland must lend nearly $12 million in property taxes to Sacramento, and be repaid in three years.  Yet there’s some good news because Oakland gets to keep $6 million in gas taxes, along with 30 city workers who maintain streets and sidewalks.

Some Civic Things Are Budgeted

Right now, the City of Oakland is making all kinds of news with our budget shortfalls.  Like every major metro area, we are dealing with huge gaps and have to get to some final and solvent budget.

Mayor Ron Dellums’ first shot has been poured over and worked through by the City Council.  Beyond the big nut with police funding, four Council representatives have recommended many, many changes – including some civic-minded things that are now budgeted.

Oakland City Officials

We’re betting that you didn’t look at what our council rep, Jean Quan, and her colleagues adjusted in their budget.  It seems like Montclarions are so fed up that even paying attention to the shortfalls and responses can be headache-inducing, but some of our hot-button issues have been addressed:

  • Branch libraries stay open five days a week – While we won’t have six days a week, these hours are certainly better than two or three days which had been proposed by the mayor.  (It will be nice for Montclair to re-open on July 5th, finally.)
  • Two park ranger positions stay in place – There’s been lots of noise from Montclarions, and rightfully so.   This current staffing isn’t ideal, but we will take something rather than nothing!  We hope the rangers will attend to Joaquin Miller, Shepherd, Dimond and other key spots over the summer.
  • Twelve public workers keep their jobs – As Mother Nature takes its toll, it’s good to see four workers handling trees.  Of course, visitors also take their toll on our city parks and eight maintenance workers will be saved too.  This isn’t full-force, so volunteers are still needed to keep parks clean.
  • The CORE program will live on – Some sanity prevails, and the safety coordinator will still be training citizens in handling all the typical Oakland disasters.  We’re overdue for both fires and earthquakes, so it’s important that neighbors know what to do.  Apparently, the fire department agrees now.

What’s next?  The “first reading of the ordinances” takes place this Tuesday, June 16th at 6pm, in the City Council chambers.  This means the Council’s budget motion is reviewed at that session.  There’s a second reading scheduled for June 30th, which would include revisions and changes.

Meanwhile, the wheels spin slowly but sometime the budget does have to get done – even without clear understanding of the impacts from federal, state and county levels.

Yes, Montclair Schools Earn Top Scores Again

The most recent California academic test scores were released two days ago, and the Montclair elementary schools did just fine.  Take a look at the Academic Performance Indicators (APIs), where we show all the Oakland elementary schools which ranked at least “7” or more statewide, on a 1-10 scale.

Top Oakland Elementary Schools

Top Ten Scores

Based on these APIs, Thornhill and Montclair ranked in the top ten percent statewide, while Joaquin Miller fell into the second decile or top twenty percent of schools.

That kind of strong showing doesn’t surprise us at all.  After all, there are plenty of devoted parents who spend time working at the schools, organizing fundraisers for student activities, and helping their kids study and finish their homework.

Things get more interesting when you look at our schools versus “similar schools,” which is a politically correct ranking against statewide peers with matching racial and economic profiles.  Now you see that Thornhill, Montclair and Joaquin Miller have a little catching up to do.

New Super Looks At Inequities

Meanwhile Oakland has just appointed a new school superintendent, Dr. Anthony Smith.  He already lives in Oakland and has a kindergartner entering Crocker Highlands next year too.  Smith seems focused on helping the whole school system, especially the underachieving schools.

Smith has strong opinions about providing a good education rather than teaching for tests.  According to the Tribune, he is rather dismissive of No Child Left Behind which has been “soul-stripping for students and for teachers.”  He does want to ensure there are the right resources available to motivate learning.

Funding Sources

The newcomer wants to examine the current fundraising model, which effectively contributes to have and have-not schools.  In the hills, we work hard to raise funds all year long and deliver educational resources that aren’t available in the flats – like librarians and after-school activities.  Many Oakland schools don’t have the luxury of fundraisers, of course.

With the budget crunch, we believe that Superintendent Smith will consider how to fairly redistribute wealth from all the available pools.  Not to be greedy, but we wonder when it’s appropriate to “rob Peter to pay Paul.”  Should one school’s efforts directly or indirectly benefit another?

More info:   Take a quick look at the Oakland Tribune’s school blog, which covers all the latest district happenings from the beat reporter.  Also check out the school scores released Thursday by California’s Department of Education.  While this data took almost a year to collect and crunch, it still holds up to close scrutiny.