Oakland is beautiful and we deserve better - Letters to the Editor
Also: Two Oakland school board members accept our dinner invitation; Billboards evoke strong response; Charter reform debate; Potholes are bad for everybody; and more thoughts from our readers
Letters to the Editor is a curated selection of the thoughts, ideas, observations and questions we receive from Oakland Report readers. The selections are ones that we, the editors, find interesting, noteworthy, or otherwise worth elevating in a formal letters column.
The views expressed in the Letters column do not necessarily reflect the views of Oakland Report or its contributing authors. Letters may be edited for clarity, length, and conciseness.
Two Oakland school board members accept our dinner invitation
Re: Dear Oakland school board: Dinner’s on us, Dec. 14
I just wanted to say how impressed I was by your note to the Oakland school board. Inviting people to break bread, set aside the agenda, and simply get to know one another struck me as unusually thoughtful and effective. It addressed the human layer most efforts skip. For me, it read as a respectful vote of confidence in the board’s ability to find common ground. Well done - and thank you. I look forward to the mixer on January 8.
Rich B.
Oakland
Rich, thank you for your kind note. As of this writing, two of the seven OUSD board members have accepted our invitation – Rachel Latta and Mike Hutchinson. We have not heard back from the other five board members yet.
Misinformation is dangerous
Re: Billboards over Lake Temescal, Dec. 19
Thank you for clarifying this issue and getting to the truth! Misinformation and fake images are so dangerous.
LuAnn Aakhus
Oakland
Better to ban digital billboards entirely
Re: Billboards over Lake Temescal, Dec. 19
Thanks for all of your efforts on our behalf. You do great work. While I do appreciate you pointing out the distortions in the Nextdoor post, the fact does remain that digital billboards would be intrusive to a great number of people. After all, you can see the digital billboards down on 880 from up on Grizzly Peak. A better resolution would be to ban them entirely for all the light pollution they cause for all residents.
Victor Gold
Oakland
When lying, distortion and insinuations degrade the debate, everyone loses
Re: Billboards over Lake Temescal, Dec. 19
It’s interesting to note that, to date, neither the billboard proposal company (Outfront/Foster Interstate), nor its City Council sponsors (Wang, Gallo), have posted any meaningful details about the proposal (are they deliberately waiting to the last minute to limit pushback on the plan?). And yet, the author of this piece seems to have all of the information about the proposed locations. It begs the question: What is the author’s relationship with Outfront / Foster Interstate? I was hoping that the Oakland Report would do their own research and unearth the real facts about this proposal instead of posting an opinion piece full of misinformation from a company trying to win a sweetheart deal with the City of Oakland.
Rich S.
via Substack comment
Rich, the author of this piece, Rajni Mandal, has publicly stated her opposition to placing billboards in the PG&E Temescal sites in discussion groups. This piece is not advocating for the billboards, as it clearly stated. It is advocating for honesty in public debate.
Rajni wrote this piece because of her belief that fabrication of information is not a route to democratic decision making, even when such fabrication advocates for her own point of view.
Lying and distortion is a negative sum game. Any victory obtained through such means takes us one step closer to disorder, and one step away from freedom.
Unfounded insinuations and character assaults devoid of evidence are yet another example of the destructive behaviors that have degraded public decision making. It quells the sharing of perspective by those in the community who may be unwilling to combat such mud slinging.
Oakland Report shares Rajni’s perspective on truth, honesty, and verifiability, and has written it into our operating principles and editorial guidelines, as you can see in our About page. We will and do share opinions different from our own, so long as they meet those standards. – Tim Gardner
A consensus based on truth
Re: Counterpoint: Billboards over Lake Temescal, Dec. 21
Despite the counterpoint author’s disappointment with the original article, I personally feel rather upbeat about a community writing platform that brings out the best in all of us and helps us eventually reach a useful consensus based on some truth. Thank you for taking the time to write such a useful response. Another fascinating Oakland conversation that we are all now party to.
Duncan Essex
Oakland
Oakland is beautiful — we deserve better governance
Re: Commentary: Oakland Should Return to the Model City Charter, Dec. 22
Whatever has been going on with Oakland’s city charter – it obviously isn’t working. If it’s this difficult to figure out basic sanitation and rule enforcement, we’re in a lot of trouble. Oakland’s a beautiful place, full of beautiful people. We deserve better governance.
Katie Hart
Oakland
What person in their right mind would take a job at the pleasure of the Oakland City Council?
Re: Commentary: Oakland Should Return to the Model City Charter, Dec. 22
I really appreciate your efforts to improve city governance, which absolutely needs improvement. My primary concern with making a city administrator accountable to the entire city council is: have you seen our city council?
What qualified person, in their right mind, would take a job that serves at the pleasure of the Oakland City Council? We can’t even keep a police chief. Can you imagine being harangued every week by Ken Houston AND Carol Fife? After watching the non-stop grandstanding, politicking, kowtowing, and jockeying for position from our city council (not all of them, true), I just find it hard to imagine them letting any qualified city administrator do her or his job.
The last 20 years have convinced me that what we really need is an adult in the room. I would support the Model City Charter if it included a strong city administrator. Someone to actually administer the city government, and not be jockeying for higher office. And I’d want that person to have some real protection from the blow-hardiness and short term thinking that’s all too common on our council. A long term contract, terminable for cause, for instance. Or by a unanimous or near unanimous vote of the council and the mayor’s approval, also for cause.
Otherwise, I fear when they’re all in charge, we still have no one in charge.
Doug Berman
Oakland
Doug, thank you for your comments. It’s true that almost everyone is subject to influence, but it matters who exerts the influence and to what degree.
An elected executive (i.e. strong mayor) would be directly influenced by political donors and key supporters and voting blocs.
An appointed executive reporting to a city council would be subject to the council members’ influence as bosses, but it would take a majority vote of council members to make that direction/influence official, not just a single one of them. Also, an appointed employee would not— or at least, should not—be subject to direct influence by political donors.
With respect to having nine council members for bosses -- yes, that can be a challenge. But a capable CEO can work with their board to make the organization thrive. You are spot-on that professional qualifications and protecting the executive’s ability to do their job without undue interference are important.
Council members are flying blind
Re: Oakland’s quarterly financial report is delayed until March, amplifying budget risks, Dec. 24
I can’t believe that Council Members are flying the “City of Oakland” airplane blindfolded because the most recent comprehensive city financial report is almost 9 months old!
Loren Taylor
Oakland
Financial analysis is important
Re: Oakland’s quarterly financial report is delayed until March, amplifying budget risks, Dec. 24
Tim, thank you for this important analysis of Oakland’s finances.
Sam Singer
Berkeley
Waiting for an audit doesn’t sound right
Re: Oakland’s quarterly financial report is delayed until March, amplifying budget risks, Dec. 24
Unprecedented, inexplicable, inauspicious.
Waiting for the release of the financials doesn’t sound right. The audit fieldwork would have been completed a couple of months ago, and the financials and footnotes drafted several weeks later. The reports would now be waiting final review by the CPA firm partner and, possibly, comments from Oakland.
It would be unusual for there to be major changes to the drafts previously given to the City for comment.
Len Raphael
Oakland
See this related article:
Potholes are bad for everybody
Re: Orinda leaves Oakland in the dust on fixing potholes, Dec. 7
I was disappointed to read the following in Oakland Report:
“It takes a certain special skill to safely navigate Oakland’s streets. One must always be alert to wayward pedestrians, kamikaze cyclists, piles of trash, broken down vehicles and makeshift shacks spilling into the right-of-way, not to mention potholes big enough to roast a pig in.”
— Sean S. Reinhart, “Orinda leaves Oakland in the dust on fixing potholes”
This unfairly casts pedestrians and cyclists as irrational road users, primarily to be thought of as just obstacles to people in cars. It also omits what I regard as the #1 hazard when navigating Oakland streets: dangerous drivers. Speeding, red light running, and distracted driving are what I worry about most, whether I’m walking, biking, or driving.
We should design streets that encourage safe and responsible use by people, regardless of their mode of transport -- certainly including (though not limited to) pothole repair.
Arvi Sreenivasan
Oakland
Member, Montclair Community Corridor
Arvi, thank you for your email, and for reading Oakland Report. In our defense, we were not disparaging pedestrians or cyclists as a group. Some pedestrians are indeed wayward, while others are not. Some cyclists are indeed kamikaze in style, and others are not. We used those qualifiers to describe those specific, real behaviors that some, but certainly not all engage in.
Our article goes on to describe a couple of specific examples of how Oakland’s dangerous road conditions have harmed pedestrians and cyclists, resulting in big lawsuits for the city. In that respect, we were attempting to shine a light on how Oakland’s poor maintenance affects all road users — drivers, cyclists and pedestrians alike.
Many thanks for raising the question. It is always great to hear feedback from our readers. Let us know if you’d like to have a phone call to chat. We would love to hear more about the Montclair Community Corridor.
Editors’ note
We recognize and love that Oakland is a complex city of nearly half a million people with so many unique lived experiences and perspectives. It’s what makes Oakland so beautiful. In that spirit, we don’t need to agree with every viewpoint we share in Letters. However, we also don’t have the time, space, or inclination to publish letters that are not helpful or that don’t meet our standards.
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