Council Does Damage Control

The City's Community Policing Advisory Board (CPAB) has called a public meeting on Measure Y for July 6. Councilmembers and high City officials will tell you why you should be happy with too few police while you pay the Measure Y parking and parcel taxes.

The event's panel includes not one plain citizen (a "civilian" in the snide lingo used at City Hall) who could respond with a critical evaluation.

Worse, the only way you can ask a question is to write it out, submit it to the evening's moderator so that he can pre-screen and select all questions, and listen to the bigwigs, with no opportunity for a followup query. Not even President Bush runs a press conference under such suffocating rules.

Why this event? The CPAB announcement says, "Lack of information and misinformation are raising doubts even among the supporters and friends of Measure Y, making this clarification of the situation necessary and timely."

CPAB chairperson Don Link gave examples of questions to set us straight:

"Is OPD dragging its feet to save the city money by having funding for 739 positions, but not filling those positions? Is the Measure Y architecture an elaborate bait and switch scheme to get tax revenues for one thing than then use them for another?"

Unfortunately for Mr. Link, in any year that the council collects Measure Y taxes, it owes Oakland residents 802 police, not 739. That's what the money is for! (Plus, of course, social program grants that councilmembers are already shoveling out the door.) And no one has accused the Oakland Police Department of dragging its feet. Remember the classic version of this question: Have you stopped beating your wife, yes or no?

If you enjoy verbal tricks, go to City Hall council chambers at 6. p.m. Wednesday. It might even be interesting to see whether the councilmembers:

1) admit that you won't get 802 police officers in 2005-06 while the City taxes you;

2) just ignore the Measure Y requirement for 802 police officers;

3) patiently explain that Measure Y does not require 802 officers (thus giving the lie to their insistent statements last year that you would get 802 officers); or

4) claim the City will go from the 699 officers Oakland employed on June 8 to 802 police officers in less than a year.

Postcript before the event: A dedicated activist was in a position to convey the above criticisms to the Community Policing Advisory Board. To his credit, he did just that and reported back to us. The format will not be changed, with one exception. There will be a brief open forum period for audience members to speak for a minute or two at the beginning of the event. The open forum scheduled at the end of the meeting will stay on the agenda.

This activist gives us a revealing detail: "We wouldn't have gotten many of the panelists to come if we had a more adversarial or debate type setting." The panelists are councilmembers and other City officials. No one asked for a debate, just five to ten minutes for one independent panelist after the hour or two of official pronouncements, and the right of audience members to ask questions without pre-censorship and with one followup. Something is rotten in Oakland when your representatives agree to appear only when they can stage manage every detail of a show.