blog pulse: Sanjiv Handa

Inever met Sanjiv Handa, but everyone who follows Oakland politics knew who he was. He passed away unexpectedly this week at age 55. Sanjiv was a fixture at city council meetings; a council meeting without Sanjiv didn't seem like a real meeting. He was best known for haranguing city officials about transparency in government, or to be more accurate, their lack of it.

Sanjiv always seemed to stay within the rules. When the council changed things to further limit speaker time (informally referred to as "the Sanjiv rule"), he collected speaker cards from others to maximize his speaking time, and he always used the full time allotted to him. And even though everyone on council certainly knew who he was, per the rules he always began by stating his name: "For The Record, I'm Sanjiv Handa, East Bay News Service."



Some blog posts and articles remembering Sanjiv:

• OaklandBecks - Living in the O
• Zennie - Oakland Focus
• Today in Montclair
• Jayson Landeza - City Brights
• Tammerlin Drummond - Tribune
• Oakland Tribune
• OaklandLocal
• SFGate.com

He wasn't universally loved, and was strongly disliked by more than one city official, but his absence at city council meetings will be noticed. Hopefully someone else can step up and work to try to keep Oakland's government working in the open as it's supposed to.

A memorial service is planned for Sanjiv this Saturday in Fremont. @OaklandBecks and others on Twitter also came up with the idea of riding bikes (to honor cycling advocate Ron Bishop who also recently passed away) to an upcoming city council meeting and delivering pastries and pizza for attendees. (Various remembrances above refer to him bringing food to share at meetings, and to victims of a fire not far from his home in Oakland.) Rest in peace, Sanjiv, though you'd probably rather haunt city officials to make sure they're following the rules.

• Matthai's coverage of the memorial service

additional reading:

• East Bay Express article on Sanjiv
• Oakland Sunshine Ordinance
• Brown Act
• California Public Records Act
• Maddy Act

some of Sanjiv's articles:

• Guess what, camping at Frank Ogawa Plaza may be legal
• Will Occupy Oakland Costs Exceed $3 Million?
• Nobody Cares About Public Safety? Huh?

we've got a budget!?

In a city council meeting that came right down to the June 30th deadline, Mayor Quan cast the tie-breaking vote to give Oakland a budget. At least for now, the $58 million deficit is covered. Starting with one of Mayor Quan's proposals and adding and removing things, the council worked back and forth until it was down to two sides which weren't that far apart. Given the various limitations, it wasn't possible to save everything, but they finally came up with a budget.

Following the budget process has been interesting. I don't envy the council or mayor their jobs. And while I was impressed that they came up with a solution at all, I disappointed with the acrimony in some of the council meetings. As Trib columnist Tammerlin Drummond said,

"the lack of civility displayed by some Oakland City Council members toward each other and members of the public was appalling."

You can follow along with city council meetings on Twitter with the hash tag #oakmtg, and watch it on KTOP (while it still has funding), either on cable or online. Or attend them in person and join in the fun.

The real questions are about the budget itself:

• It depends in part on concessions from some of the city unions, some of which are only tentative. And we don't know full details, other than what the firefighters are offering. Some of what has been heard is unsettling, including: Council members may no longer "support, endorse or sponsor" any proposal to change any City Charter provision relating to the police union. Mayor Quan thinks the pact is unenforceable.
• While the libraries were mostly saved, if funding for them falls much the city won't be able to collect Measure Q funds. That would greatly reduce the funding: Measure Q provides about 60% of the library's budget.
• The budget depends on the sale of the Kaiser Convention center for $28 million. The seller? Oakland. The buyer? Oakland. Chip Johnson calls it bizarre. The building is worth no where near that in the current market, but the city would transfer the funds from its (state budget-imperiled) redevelopment agency to the general fund. Whether the state will allow it remains to be seen.

Mayor Quan would like to pass an $80 parcel tax to help balance future budgets and restore some of the things that were cut. But as Max Allstadt said on Twitter,

Nobody should vote for a parcel tax without other much needed reforms. #oakmtg

Personally I'm wary of another parcel tax after the Measure Y debacle (i.e., the city was only supposed to collect the tax if they kept at least 802 officers; we're currently at about 637). I'm also not fond of parcel taxes in general, as they don't spread the load evenly. In any event, the city is having to call a special election (at the cost of $700,000) to try to get the voters to approve it. If it passes, it will bring in approximately $11 million a year, but it's a very big 'if'.

Deeper than the 'ifs' and 'maybes' is the fact that no real substantive changes were made. One of the underlying issues is that a large percentage of the city budget goes to public safety, yet people don't feel safe. The concessions from the unions help, but they're not a long-term fix to the problem by themselves. Then there are some of the social programs funded by Measure Y that have no accountability, yet aren't facing budget cuts the way basic services are. The $28 million sale of the Kaiser Convention Center is a one-time deal.

I don't know what all the right answers are, but I do know that the current budget doesn't address the basic problems. As council president Larry Reid said:

"I just know we're all going to be back here doing this again very soon."

Additional reading
...on the budget:
Sean Maher (Tribune)
Tammerlin Drummond (Tribune)
Chip Johnson (SFGate)
Bob Gammon (East Bay Express)
VSmoothe (A Better Oakland)

...on the parcel tax and special election:
Mayor Jean Quan (on OaklandLocal)
Ryan Phillips (Oakland North)
Matthai Kuruvila (SFGate)

...on the OPD reorg and budget:
Matthai Kuruvila (SFGate)
Harry Harris and Sean Maher (Tribune)
Chip Johnson (SFGate)
Daniel Borenstein (Tribune)

Finally, a big thank you to all those who make it possible to keep track of the goings on in Oakland: KTOP, all the people who tweet #oakmtg, and A Better Oakland, Sean Maher and Matthai Kuruvila for their reporting.

Oakland mayor's race

In a move that should have surprised no one, last week Oakland mayor Ron Dellums announced he wasn't going to run for re-election. That automatically extended the filing deadline to Wednesday.

After a flurry of activity, we now have 13 candidates running for mayor:

• Arnie Fields
• Don Macleay
• Don Perata
• Greg Harland
• Jean Quan
• Joe Tuman
• Lionel Young, Jr.
• Marcie Hodge
• Niki Okuk
• Rebecca Kaplan
• Sharika Gregory
• Terence Candell
• Tim Brown

OaklandSeen has a good rundown of the activity, plus the various elections for council districts 2, 4 and 6; SFGate's Matthai Kuruvila has a brief rundown of the 13 candidates.

I'm a long way from deciding who I'll vote for, other than Anybody But Don. I've heard Rebecca Kaplan and Jean Quan speak at council meetings and other city events, and Kaplan and Joe Tuman were amongst the people who stopped by the EBBC bike parking at the Best of the East Bay party in Jack London Square, but there are a lot of candidates to educate myself about before deciding.

According to the East Bay Express, Perata is nearing the campaign spending cap, and we're still a long ways from the election. The article also talks about the spending of Kaplan and Quan, which has been fairly limited so far. Tribune reporter and The Education Report blogger Katy Murphy has an article on late-comer Marcie Hodge, a Peralta college trustee. Rounding out recent coverage is OaklandLocal's article about the response of various candidates to the the idea of a local currency for Oakland, and a different view of the event from Oakland North.

I'm sure there will be lots more coverage in the weeks and months to come, and I'd be surprised if all 13 candidates are still actively in the race by the time the election rolls around. Whether they all are or not, I'm glad we're going to have ranked voting / Instant Run-off Voting this time. With this wide a field, it'll be easier to pick a 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice and hope one of them wins, rather than have no clear winner and require a run-off in a separate election requiring more money.

Bike to Work Day and Car Free Challenge

Tomorrow is Bike to Work Day, to encourage more people to bike (and take public transit as needed) instead of driving to work. To make the idea more palatable, Walk Oakland Bike Oakland (WOBO) and the Bay Area Bike Coalition (BABC) have set up energizer stations around the city. You can even ride into Downtown with your council member (and eat pancakes)! Can't bike all the way? AC Transit is supporting Bike to Work Day and has bike racks on the front of buses. Bikes are allowed on BART with some restrictions.

More reading:
WOBO's Bike to Work Day hub
BABC's Bike to Work Day hub
map of the energizer stations
post at Today in Montclair

As wonderful as it is, Bike to Work Day is a one-day event. Hopefully it will encourage more people to consider biking (possibly in connection with public transit). But if you want to show you're really committed (or some would say, really should be committed), take part in Bike to Work Day tomorrow and then take part in TransForm's Car Free Challenge the first seven days of June. Ideally you'd not ride in a car at all that week, but that may not be practical. So instead you register (for prizes, a t-shirt, and an after party) and then set your mileage goal as low as you can. This event also supports the work of TransForm. Join up with other Oakland bloggers and be part of the Blogoaksphere Car Free Challenge Team.

As a reminder for both events, Google Maps now supports directions via bike. That feature is still in development, but between that and the WOBO and BABC resources you should be able to figure out a bike route or bike + transit route to your destination.

Oakland Council Districts

Continuing with my map mania, I've created a Google map of the City Council districts. It's based on the City of Oakland Council District Locator map, but being in Google Maps means you can easily layer it with other maps. Some interesting things I noticed: District 1 includes a swath of the hills north of Panoramic Hill, all the way up to and beyond Grizzly Peak Blvd. -- I didn't know that was part of Oakland. Also of note are the large areas of the bay included in districts 3 and 7.

View Oakland City Council Districts in a larger map

As with the neighborhoods map, any errors are likely mine, not from the source map. In many places the district boundaries follow roads or streams, but I had to make a few guesses here and there, and the areas over the bay are approximations based on the original map.

How are the districts divided? According to the city charter, it's based on the previous districts, but every 10 years after 1993 or if significant territory is annexed the boundaries can be adjusted:

Section 203. Nomination and Election of Councilmembers... The districts shall be as they exist upon the taking effect of this section, until revised by ordinance. In the year 1993, and every ten years thereafter, and whenever any substantial territory is annexed to or consolidated with the City, the Council shall form new districts not exceeding seven. Districts shall be composed of contiguous territory, as equal as possible in population, and as geographically compact as practicable. No change in the boundary of a district shall operate to exclude an incumbent from office before the expiration of the term for which he was elected or appointed.