Two Bakeries and Half a Police Force

The bakery business is topsy-turvy these days. Supermarkets add bakery departments in their stores. Coffee shops stock more and better pastries, supplied by industrial-scale producers. The traditional standalone bakery in the middle cannot do business as usual.

Neldam's Danish Bakery at 3401 Telegraph Ave. is in financial trouble. As reported in the Oakland Tribune, the owning Neldam family is desperate to sell the real estate to meet a maturing debt. At the beginning of the year, the bakery laid off eight of its 40 employees. (Feb. 21, 2008)

Neldam's Danish Bakery

Also at the beginning of this year, the Merritt Bakery on 18th St. by Lake Merritt needed a loan. It is for improvements and additional working capital, but the owners of the business had a problem. For unexplained reasons, they could only satisfy the bank with guarantees covering 90 percent of the $270,000. The bank insists on 95 percent guarantees.

The solution? Ask the City of Oakland to guarantee the last five percent, backed by a weak secondary claim on the bakery assets.

Sure enough, the city council voted on Jan. 15, 2008 to guarantee the debt for the Merritt Bakery. Why? The council resolution offers general blather that the Merritt has been "in operation for fifty-five years in the City of Oakland, one of Oakland's largest retail employers and has a special place in the minds and hearts of many Oakland residents and visitors." (Council resolution 81029)

Neldam's has been in operation for 80 years, has customers from near and far who've been shopping there for 55 years, and is an employer on a similar scale. "Mike Neldam has gone to the city's economic development agency for help several times over the years. But he was unable to get an emergency small business loan from the city." (Tribune)

How does the city council pick which private business to subsidize and which not? Why is the City in this game at all?

Neldam's is in the district currently represented by Nancy Nadel. The Merritt is in councilmember Kernighan's district. It is the politics of petty favoritism.

Meanwhile, the big, basic question that plagues all of Oakland is the crisis of depolicing. The council as a whole refuses to confront the fact that Oakland has half a police department.

Oakland is ranked the fourth most dangerous city in the United States. People can discuss endlessly the historical causes of our plight. People can talk about what needs to change in this country in order to address deep-seated inequality and social problems. None of that changes the stark need to increase the police force from 731 today to at least 1,100 officers – so that Oakland can achieve the relative safety of an average American city.

The council unanimously approved the gift to the Merritt Bakery, and the council unanimously refuses to make the commitment to an adequate police force. The need for fresh blood at City Hall is obvious.