This coming Tuesday afternoon, Oakland’s City Council will begin making some of its most important decisions of the year.  The actions Council takes or does not take will have an enormous impact on Oakland’s short, medium and long-term ability to provide core services to its citizens.  Without courage and leadership, the city may soon be unable to provide even marginally adequate police or fire services, maintain its streets, parks and libraries, or fulfill many of the other tasks that are critical to everyone who lives here.

At the Make Oakland Better Now! budget meeting on January 11, we passed out a ballot asking members in attendance to give us their views on where the city should make the cuts that are going to be necessary to balance this year’s and next year’s budget.  We had around30 people at the meeting, but only about 15 cast their ballots.