Mayor Pays City Administrator $140 Per Hour, 380 Gift Hours, ...

Public citizen Sanjiv Handa released the contract numbers for Deanna Santana, mayor Quan's choice for city administrator. According to Handa, the 40-year-old will get:

• $140 per hour to start, or $273,000 per year just for base pay

• A gift of 380 hours of sick leave, vacation, and "management leave" on the day she takes the position

• Accrual of leave from day one at the rate of a five-year employee

• A $10,000 relocation allowance; Santana comes to Oakland from a job in San Jose

Mayor Quan had the nerve to write a memo to the council asserting, "The proposed salary was negotiated to take into account the contributions being asked of all employee groups in the current negotiations." The rank and file employees sacrifice; the executives keep taking more.

Now Quan insists residents must pay yet another parcel tax. She threatens loss of "core services" if the tax proposal fails in a mail-in ballot. History shows, however, that there is no relation between giving Quan more money and getting any services in return. On the city council, Quan pushed the Measure Q tax for libraries, but we didn't get the promised library hours. Residents took on Quan's Measure Y tax, but we got fewer police, not the promised 802 officers.

However, City grants continue to Quan's partner in electioneering, Chabot observatory.

The fat pay for administrator Santana helps guarantee that she will not have the interests of ordinary Oakland residents at heart.