OAKLAND — A likely special election next spring has placed Oakland in a time crunch — not just to find a mayor and fill a City Council vacancy but also to secure new revenue streams that could help address a historic local recession.
Next Tuesday, the council will consider going to voters for a parcel tax to financially support the independent oversight bodies that keep a5en eye on the Oakland Police Department and watch for potential ethical violations by public officials.
A separate sales tax under consideration would funnel revenue into the city’s general purpose fund, which mostly pays for salaries and daily operations. The fund is also the epicenter of the city’s present financial crisis, with projections placing it at a $130 million deficit by next summer.
Officials are still ironing out details of the two tax measures before deciding whether to put them on the April 15 special election ballot, which otherwise is intended to fill vacancies in the city’s leadership after Mayor Sheng Thao was recalled and Councilmember Nikki Fortunato Bas elected to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.
But the council may need to move quickly next Tuesday. A subsequent meeting in January — the first held by a new council lineup — will be the final opportunity for a majority of the council to place the measures on the April ballot.
City leaders will also be tasked with convincing a historically tax-friendly voting base that an increased burden is worth it; the sales tax would be passed down to customers at a time when the city’s businesses are struggling to stay afloat.
“I want to consider the potential ramifications of the budget deficit,” Councilmember Carroll Fife said at a meeting Thursday, “but also how taxpayers are feeling the implications of (it) — and a host of other things that make me deeply concerned about moving this (tax measure) forward.”
The sales tax in Alameda County, at 10.25%, is already the highest of any county in California and three percentage points above the statewide rate. Over a half-dozen cities in the county go even higher, per state data, but Oakland does not have its own local sales tax.
District 6 city council candidate Kevin Jenkins is greeted at mayoral candidate Loren Taylor’s election night party at For the Culture in downtown Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. Jenkins helped introduce an ordinance for a new sales tax proposal that the City Council will consider next week. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
Meanwhile, property owners pay roughly $1,109 a year in taxes for land parcels they own, including to fund educational access for children, park maintenance and violence prevention.
Residents in the forested Oakland Hills will add $99 to that yearly total when a parcel tax increase, Measure MM, begins generating revenue.
It was approved by 71% of voters against a two-thirds threshold in the Nov. 5 election, while a $50 parking-tax increase for violence prevention, Measure NN, received 70% voter approval — far more than the required simple majority.
New taxes could prove painful in a city with a high cost of living, even as Bay Area home prices finally begin to dip amid relaxed federal interest rates.
But the realities of Oakland’s budget woes have inched city leaders to the point of desperation.
With the prospect of layoffs looming, council members are preparing to draw money from the local emergency reserve and self-insurance liability fund, which pays out legal claims, countering a previous warning from the city’s finance director that every available lever already had been pulled.
The parcel tax proposal before the council on Tuesday could financially boost the city’s Public Ethics Commission, volunteer-led Oakland Police Commission and related investigative bodies that independently sort out claims of misconduct.
A report last week by Nicolas Heidorn, the ethics commission’s executive director, painted a bleak internal outlook — that a single investigator is handling 141 complaints of ethics violations following the recent departure of Enforcement Chief Simon Russell.
The city’s general hiring freeze has strained the commission’s ability to fill vacancies, a problem similarly faced by the Community Police Review Agency, which reviews police
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at shomik@bayareanewsgroup.com.