u/mk1234567890123

Rant

Old proverb: teach a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

The city has a massive problem with not maintaining the equipment they already have. This has been pointed out by many including insiders at the DOT and council public works committee. The city is not maintaining equipment or vehicles, or hiring vacancies for mechanics, that Public Works relies on to operate critical services. The city should have spent this money in the right ways over many past Measures and previous COVID era federal funding. Where did the money go? One time programs, ballooning pension costs, police overtime, and expensive rentals. Instead of hiring more police, refinancing pension costs, and investing in mechanics and maintenance of existing equipment, the City perpetually blows millions on one time expenditures, rentals and third parties that endanger its fiscal health.

And what capacity we do have for service delivery is distributed unevenly. Jestin Johnson once admitted at a D5 budget forum that the city focused on the areas that generate the most tickets- not the poorest areas hit hardest by illegal dumping. And the police distribution across the city is wildly imbalanced.

One example I keep coming back to is after two library funding measures, in 2018 and 2022, the city renovated the main branch and rockridge branch while trying to defund east oakland branches including Fruitvale. Likewise, after a windfall in Measure income for parks and federal funding, the city matched the DOGE playbook and defunded many of our parks and cultural amenities. The parks by me are literally bootstrapped by community volunteers and private capital, I hardly ever see the city do anything but maybe cut grass in 1/10 of the park at a time. I doubt they have many working lawnmowers. Got to any other east bay city below 580 or even 880 and the difference is shocking.

The city has failed in developing an economic development plan to complement the General Plan. The city needs to attract tax paying private, for profit and nonprofit, and public institutions to sustainably raise its tax base, or at least recover from the institutions that fled since 2015. Over the past ten years the city has ratcheted up regressive sales and property taxes on regular working citizens and we’re getting less services than when the city had smaller budgets not long ago. Average neighbors are also being squeezed by utilities and federal austerity. We’re becoming a suburban bedroom community with a lack of jobs in our own borders with all the social problems of a large city.

We need to hire and elect leaders that are laser focused on investing in service delivery - I.e. maintaining what we have and expanding - and economic development. Asking for one time increases isn’t benefitting QOL for average citizens.

Ok before I get called out or whatever, I know all my neighbors, including our long term unhoused folks, regularly volunteer every week to clean the streets and help out at our park, and work with our local organizations. I show up. I’m out at regular times with my dog so I notice when something is off.

Last evening I noticed an unusual sudden uptick in new people, all men, coming thru the neighborhood. Many appear to be here this morning or are other new people. All of them were pretty disheveled, one had broken into a fence on city and school property, another was cutting up something with a payment card not far from our local kids at the park. These were just two of other strange, out of place behaviors from others.

We sometimes have random individuals pass through, it’s a city of course, and the sidewalks are public, but in this small corner of the flats in the east the *sudden* influx of new people and odd behavior was striking. I tried talking to a few of them but they’re either too zoned out or standoffish, which is also weird because people around here generally act upright and are friendly or acknowledge each other.

Tried to check the city website on encampment closures to see if maybe they had come from somewhere else but the city hadn’t updated their closure log since 2025.

My neighborhood is centered around schools and a park so I am concerned for our seniors and kids that there is a drastic influx of strangers lurking around.