May 8 - Mayor Libby Schaaf’s proposed city budget for FY 2021-2022 would avoid the large police cuts demanded by progressive activists who had recommended that $300 million be reallocated from policing to aid for the poor.
Within 12 hours of the budget’s release, eight more Oaklanders had been shot.
The mayor’s spending plan released May 7 includes $3.85 billion for operating departments like police, fire, and transportation, plus $284 million in capital projects like buildings, roads and sewers.
The mayor’s announcement stressed that every budget decision had been analyzed with a special budgeting “tool” that tilted all decision in favor of people of color, and took the impact on people of color into account on any budget cuts.
The mayor’s budget came one week later than scheduled, provoking oddly shrill protest from the more woke elements around City Hall who saw the brief delay as a signal that Mayor Schaaf was not entirely on board with a City Council task force scheme to grab half of the police budget for non-profits that provide services for low-income people, such as rent subsidies, public housing and aid for the victims of domestic violence.
It now appears their fears may have been were warranted. The mayor seemed to signal today that she has sided with a five-member minority faction of the task force that spoke up last winter, asking that any alternative kind of policing be proven and already in place before current levels of conventional policing were reduced.
The minority faction, led at the time by Mr. John Jones III of East Oakland, said it represented people in high crime neighborhoods. But the task force’s Defund majority fought Mr. Jones and his supporters virulently, finally bullying them into silence. Mr. Jones left town.
Having put down the Jones rebellion, the Defund majority went triumphantly for the whole hog – 50% of the police budget, approximately $150 million a year to distribute in various contracts for the benefit of the poor.
The mayor’s proposed budget throws a monkey wrench into those plans, leaving the progressive wing of City Hall inconsolable.
“Libby is incapable of imagining a safe Oakland that doesn’t include the mass policing, incarcerating and terrorizing of Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor Oaklanders,” sat Cat Brooks, leader of the Anti-Police Terror Project.
Coming right after the George Floyd murder, police brutality was a handy leitmotif behind the whole public safety task force project, but the intensity of the current budget machinations suggests that money may have always been the primary object.
The first City Council meeting about the proposed budget is Monday, May 10. Through the rest of the month most of the councilmembers have planned town halls to talk about the budget with their constituents.
“The road to passing a final budget plan by June 30 is bound to be rocky,” observed Oaklandside.
One major bone of contention is police overtime. Two large users of police overtime -- since they are rarely calendared in advance -- are sideshows and public protest demonstrations. Last year, both ran up large unexpected expenses until December when, faced with financial ruin, the Schaaf administration called a hard stop to all police overtime. It was not long before sideshow promoters knew they had the run of the city. Overtime authority has recently been restored.
In a citywide poll conducted by the mayor’s office last winter, 78% of respondents said they want the same or more police patrolling their neighborhoods. But 58% agreed it was a good idea to remove nonviolent public nuisance situations and mental health calls from the OPD workload, a plan called MACRO..
The OPD police union gave a full-throated endorsement to that recommendation, calling such a plan to be implemented “immediately”.
Coalition For a Better Oakland has also endorsed MACRO and will be monitoring its rollout closely.