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City: Have a Budget Surplus, So Let's Raise Taxes
The City's $8.5 million budget surplus made the newspaper Sunday, April 2. The same article ended by reporting, "the [city] council is considering increasing the property assessment about $40 or $50 a year." (Oakland Tribune) The reference is to the so-called landscape and lighting tax (LLAD).
Most of the article in between the good-news opening and the concluding word of a tax hike discussed various ways to spend the surplus. Not one proposal was integrated into a long-term plan to bring Oakland's half-a-police-department from today's 700 officers up to at least 1,100 officers. Public safety should be the first job of a city government, but not in Oakland.
Councilmember Nadel wants to open two downtown shelters for the homeless. Of course, this would create an ongoing need for funds to keep the shelter open, a great way to spend a one-time surplus.
Councilmember Quan, after joking that the council had already spent the surplus five times over, wants to grab $300,000 for the Chabot Science Center, despite the support that we understand the center already gets from yet another parcel tax that was passed in 2004, Measure E. Her joke appears quite cynical, indeed.
Councilmember De La Fuente suggested putting the money in reserve. That might sound fiscally responsible, or it might just be that he would rather spend the money as he wishes if and when he becomes mayor. On a long-term goal for police staffing, De La Fuente has refused to commit to anything beyond 802, calling instead for yet another study.
Homeowners, however, must be most attentive to the gloomy conclusion that despite the surplus, they should pay an even bigger LLAD tax. This is the classic council shell game: you should pay a parcel tax to help out with something that sounds nice (parks in the case of the LLAD, police in the case of Measure Y). The actual effect is to free up general fund money for council pet projects.
The Tribune statement that "the council is considering increasing the property assessment" for the LLAD is not quite correct. The councilmembers are already determined to increase it. However, the council must conduct a mail-in ballot of property owners, which will be sent out early in May. So the council and insider developer Phil Tagami have started collecting large donations for a big campaign. Meanwhile, the council will stuff propaganda that portrays the LLAD as the greatest thing since sliced bread into the ballot mailing, while excluding any balanced arguments pro and con. This is cynical democracy in action.
– April 2, 2006
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