Every year, Oakland spends more than a half billion dollars of taxpayer money via the Redevelopment Committee. That committee is our town council.  The mayor has no vote and no veto. These funds are spent on “development” projects, such as Uptown and the Fox Theatre. The lion’s share of this funding pays outside consultants and developers who are not directly on the city payroll. The lion's share of the jobs are for people who do not live here. 

We as a city spend more money on “redevelopment” than police, fire, parks, libraries and all direct city services combined. 

Oakland has more than one budget. 

1 - We have a general fund budget of under a half billion dollars a year. 
2 - We have a “redevelopment commission” budget of over a half billion dollars a year. 
3 and 4 - We also have a school district budget and a port budget. 

When Mayor Quan stands in front of the Fox Theatre to defend “redevelopment,” she is talking about that half billion a year that your City Council controls without much oversight as our Redevelopment Committee. I am very much in favor of redevelopment and not in favor of how the Redevelopment Commission is spending a half billion of our tax dollars every year. 

The Fox looks very nice. But there is very credible reason to believe that the net effect of “redevelopment” spending is not positive in jobs and business growth. 

 Look around Oakland.  Do you see a half billion dollars per year worth of public benefit? It has been a lot of years. 

And there is a better way we could be spending the money.

We could close the redevelopment commissions across the state, as the governor proposes, and spend the cash in our general funds. Quan and the other mayors are in position to cut a deal. Let the state take half of those tax revenues and use it to fix our state budget and the cities can take the other half and use it to fix our local budgets. 

That is a lot of cash. Could Oakland use another 250 million dollars in general funding? That sure would fix a lot of problems would it not? Personally, I would split it 50-50 with the schools. One hundred and twenty five million dollars in the Oakland general fund and another $125 million for the school district would fix a lot of problems. That would mean a lot of jobs where we are understaffed. 

Helping our state fix its budget problem is a very good idea. Do we like California’s cut backs on education? Do we like the other cuts? Do we like the job losses? 

Oakland could contribute a quarter billion per year and when you add together all the redevelopment dollars being spent up and down the state, the amount of funding that would bring in would be a big help. 

One of the things the cities might ask for in return is a cap on prison spending and more local rehabilitation instead of failed incarceration. There is a lot of agreement on that from the cities. The state has good reasons to question the effectiveness of the redevelopment dollars, but the cities have good reason to object to the state’s failure in the bloated prison and parole systems. There is more than one emperor in need of clothing in this mix. 

So what happens to redevelopment?

Is there anything we could do to improve our real-estate values and our business climate more effectively than a turnaround in our public safety and public education?  Bring our schools up and our crime down and Oakland becomes even more attractive of a place to live, work and invest. 

Who gets cut out? You cannot take away a half billion dollars a year without someone being hurt. The developers will have a hard time of it. We are subsidizing jobs for people who live in places like San Ramon and there will be changes in where they work. They will have to find end clients for their building projects and will not have that easy option of getting Oakland to guarantee their projects wholesale for them.  They will also have to face the economic risks. 

If these developers are not willing to take those risks without the redevelopment dollars, then why is Oakland taking that risk right now? 

Our City Council will lose a lot of power. It will have to do things the hard way. It will need to look at zoning, permitting and local tax policies in a general sense and decide what we can do for redevelopment. It will have to help the developers when they do find end clients. It also will have to go out and raise the support and funding for any big infrastructure projects, where now it just gets the half billion every year and decide on their own how to spend it. 

If left to open debate, I think most people in Oakland and the Bay Area as a whole would agree that our biggest infrastructure need is transit, not some speculative mixed-commercial apartment complex. That is another discussion, and we should have it out in the open. What we do now is give them the funding and then they look for ways to spend it. 

And what happens if Quan and the other mayors continue to just defend their local redevelopment commissions? Our former mayor and current governor was not too impressed by the redevelopment spending and many analysts are not sold on the net effect either. So, probably Gov. Brown and the legislature will take most, if not all, of the money and we do not get any deal at all. 

Or, if the redevelopment commissions win, we can expect them to continue to spend more money on developers than the general fund, year after year. 

I would rather spend these public dollars in the public sector where I think they will do the most good. 

About Don Macleay

As a local citizen, Don is an activist who attends meetings, volunteers at his kid’s schools and puts up flyers in the park. He calls the police when necessary and takes time to make sure the area around his home is safe. He has been involved in progressive politics since he was a teen in his school and his union. Later he moved to Nicaragua and worked there for several years. Since living in Oakland for the past 20 years he has been a member and supporter of local progressive groups. He donates regularly to the KALW, KPFA and supports the San Francisco Mime Troupe along with more political groups like GreenPeace, the ACLU and Amnesty International. As a responsible local small business owner, Don has been managing a business in Oakland since 2000. Currently he has invested in an Oakland building for his business and home. He participates in the Oakland Chamber of Commerce. He has helped with the Oakland Small Business Symposium on most of the years it was produced. He does what he can to help with public safety in his work. He has twice hired workers who have been on parole. He has also provided internships to local kids.