Only one of three ballot measure proposals survived an Oakland City Council meeting last week, with one being approved, one being pulled from consideration and one voted down.
On wildfire prevention efforts
The only approval was a unanimous council vote Wednesday to place a special tax on the November ballot that, if passed, will raise roughly $2.67 million per year for wildfire prevention efforts in the Oakland hills.
The tax would only apply to homes and businesses in the city’s “Wildfire Prevention Zone,” primarily neighborhoods in the hills above and along Interstate Highway 580 and state Highway 13.
If approved, the funds would be used to implement Oakland’s Vegetation Management Plan, which was adopted by the council earlier this year and focuses on fire prevention efforts for more than 1,400 acres and 300 miles of roads.
The measure, introduced by Councilmember Dan Kalb and Janani Ramachandran, would sunset after 20 years and requires a two-thirds majority to pass. It would initially authorize an annual special tax of $99 per residential property and $65 per unit for multi-family properties and vacant lots.
Businesses would be charged based on the square footage of their buildings and the size of their property’s street frontage.
The funds would be spent on enhancing fire patrols on high fire danger days, hiring more goats to eat up dry vegetation and performing annual property inspections, among other things.
On strengthening Public Ethics Commission
Also on Wednesday, the council voted 5-3 to kill a proposed ballot measure designed to strengthen and modernize the city’s Public Ethics Commission.
The proposal, authored by Kalb, would have set a minimum staffing requirement — from two to three employees — starting in 2026 for the notoriously overworked commission.
It also would have allowed the commission to hire outside lawyers if the City Attorney’s Office has a conflict of interest on specific issues, prohibited commissioners from accepting gifts from elected officials and moved the power to set the mayor’s salary from the City Council to the commission, among other things.
“It’s always important, especially now, that we show some consensus here when it comes to supporting and buttressing, if you will, if that’s the right word, our public ethics commission and their important work,” Kalb said. “I’ve always felt it’s an important agency even though it doesn’t always get the attention it should.”
The agency’s role has been highlighted in recent days in the wake of an FBI raid on Mayor Sheng Thao’s house and the homes and an office associated with the prominent and politically connected Duong family, which runs the city’s recycling company.
Since 2019, the commission has been investigating Thao, two members of the Duong family and their company, California Waste Solutions, along with other local elected officials over alleged campaign finance violations.
It’s unclear if the FBI raids were related to the commission’s investigation.
Kalb’s proposal ultimately failed, however, even after he removed the mayoral salary provision to address earlier objections from councilmembers and despite the fact that more than half the commission’s 140 investigations into allegations of official corruption are currently on hold due to low staffing.
Councilmembers Kevin Jenkins, Treva Reid, Noel Gallo and Carroll Fife voted against the proposal on the grounds that, given the city’s $177 million budget deficit, setting a minimum staffing level and adding one more employee to the commission’s staff, in addition to the cost associated with putting the measure on the ballot — roughly $600,000 — was too expensive.
“Under good times normally this is something I’d support, my challenges are the cost of this,” Jenkins said.
“This is hard for me, this is really, really hard for me but I also understand the challenges that are facing us in the upcoming budget cycles,” Fife said.
Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan also voted no.
Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas said that while she respects her colleagues’ worries over the proposal’s cost, she said strengthening government transparency and oversight are worth the price.
“There are very important cases, which some of my colleagues have mentioned, looking into corruption of city staff, there’s an ongoing investigation into our former mayor, there is a very old investigation that is very timely in terms of what’s in the newspapers that includes people who currently serve and have served on this dais,” she said.
Kalb later called the vote embarrassing for the city and said he’d try to get the proposal placed on the council’s July 2 agenda for reconsideration.
“It’s crazy,” he said. “I’m just baffled by it.”
On $182M bond for cultural institutions
The other proposed ballot measure — a $182 million bond to support five of the city’s cultural institutions — died before getting to a vote Wednesday, when Bas pulled it from consideration at the request of its primary backers.
That measure was on its second reading and was unanimously endorsed by the city council at its June 12 meeting but was pulled from the agenda over concerns that voters in November will be facing too many competing ballot measures, as well as a recall of both Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price.
Also, given the city’s current fiscal imbroglio, supporters felt like the time wasn’t right to ask voters for more money, which would have gone to urgent repair and upgrade projects at the Chabot Space and Science Center, Children’s Fairyland, the Oakland Museum of California, Peralta Hacienda Historical Park and the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts.
“We just saw that the confluence of issues, the distractions in city government, the urgency and concern with the budget crisis, we felt that the timing just wasn’t right and voters were going to be focused on other urgent issues on the ballot,” said Oakland Museum Director Lori Fogarty.
Fogarty said she hopes the measure can get onto a ballot in the next couple of years.
Fortunato Bas said that in the meantime, she hopes the city can conduct an inventory of all its facilities, including parks, recreation centers and civic buildings, in order to assess the need for critical upgrades and repairs over the next ten years.
