Feds crack down on legal business as gunman kills 7 By Neill Franklin Huffington Post
As I sit and watch video after video of Monday’s senseless federal raid of Oaksterdam University and other medical cannabis-related facilities managed by Richard Lee, the orchestrator of California’s historic Proposition 19, a few serious concerns come to mind.
I noticed agents from at least three federal agencies: the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Internal Revenue Service. I’m not talking about two agents here and a couple more there. There were several dozen federal agents spending their day on the scene.
Meanwhile, just blocks away, a deadly shooting was taking place. While federal agents were using a battering ram, a sledgehammer and power saws to break into a business that complies with state and local law and pays taxes, a gunman was murdering seven people at Oikos University, just three-tenths of a mile away.
As a retired police officer who wore the badge for more than 30 years, this is not how I want our law enforcers to be spending their time. Rebecca Kaplan, a member of Oakland’s City Council, said it best: “We have a serious gun violence problem in Oakland. If there are extra law enforcement resources available, they should be focused on fighting illegal guns and gun violence.”
VIDEO:
Beyond the human toll, what’s the fiscal cost to taxpayers of this federal raid? For Monday’s multiple-hour operation, I would estimate at least $22,000 to $30,000 just in man-hours alone, for straight time and not overtime. The planning for this raid is even more draining upon man-hours — at least another $20,000. What about the many hours of investigation follow-up, which will most likely carry on for months if not longer? Throw in likely judicial cost, and when all is said and done, we could be looking at a taxpayer price tag of $250,000 or more for a raid of Oaksterdam properties, which will result in … what?
Let’s take a look at the results of this “successful” raid upon those who care for the sick. The first indicator of success is one of public safety. That’s why we have such enforcement activity in the first place — law enforcement and public safety should be synonymous. Will the raid make the community safer? Will there be fewer homicides?
Oh, wait, there never were any on-site at Oaksterdam. They occur blocks away while we, “the police,” do our thing here. Will there now be fewer robberies in the neighborhood?
Just the opposite: Violent crime has been down in the area since Oaksterdam became operational. Well, maybe there will now be less “pot” being sold to kids in the neighborhood. Actually, expect that to increase now that any marijuana being sold in the area, post-raid, will be done by drug dealers on the corners who don’t check ID.
Oh yes, one more observation: Patients will no longer have access to safe medicine in safe environments. They will be forced to acquire cannabis from the dangerous illegal marketplace, lining the pockets of criminal organizations, gangs and thugs instead of universally supported local businesses that pay taxes and create jobs.
What about the success of this raid for the IRS? If its goal is to put more people out of work, causing less people to pay federal and state income taxes, call it success. If the goal is to have the state collect fewer taxes from cannabis sales, call it success.
And as for the U.S. Marshals Service, I’m still trying to figure out its role in this. Maybe it was to apprehend members of the Mexican cartel lurking in the classrooms of Oaksterdam U? Oh wait, this wasn’t a cartel operation. It was a legal state and city business where employees were U.S. citizens and members of a workers union.
It’s clear to see that this raid will be far from any true success. This raid is undoubtedly counterproductive to public safety. More people out of work, a staple of business removed from the community, patients forced into the dangerous illegal marketplace, thousands if not millions of dollars back into the pockets of criminals, fewer tax dollars for the city of Oakland and homicides occurring just blocks away while so many law enforcement resources were being squandered raiding medical cannabis facilities.
Am I accusing law enforcement of being responsible for the seven murders just blocks away? No, but what I am saying is that they are misguided and focused upon those things that will not improve public safety. It is their duty and responsibility to prioritize things of public safety first, not politics.
Our commander in chief, President Barack Obama, the head of the executive branch, carries that ultimate responsibility for the actions of federal law enforcement. Last week, he let the city of Oakland and this country down.
At a time when 80 percent of the public supports medical marijuana, I can’t for the life of me imagine how this fits into the president’s re-election strategy.
There’s still time for President Barack Obama to rein in the federal thugs who work for him and seem hell-bent on intimidating the medical cannabis industry out of existence, but the hour is growing late.
Neill Franklin, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, was a narcotics cop in Baltimore.
Federal agents busted Oaksterdam University, one of California’s most prominent medical marijuana institutions. The raid of the school in downtown Oakland and other dispensaries yesterday brings into sharp focus the disconnect between state and federal policies on medical marijuana.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I’m Audie Cornish.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
And I’m Robert Siegel.
Federal authorities raided several medical marijuana-related businesses in Oakland, California, yesterday. They were targeting one of the biggest backers of the cannabis industry in Oakland. Nishat Kurwa of Turnstyle News has the story.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Hey, hey. Come down.
NISHAT KURWA, BYLINE: A few hundred supporters of Oaksterdam University filled a block on downtown Oakland’s main street while federal agents carried out green trash bags full of items taken in their raid. The self-proclaimed university is one of multiple businesses founded by medical pot impresario Richard Lee. Lee has spearheaded the growth of this industry in Oakland, running pot dispensaries and classes for people who want to jump into the lucrative businesses and driving legislation to legitimize it in the city and the state. Here’s Lee talking to CBS’ “Morning Show” about his businesses’ impact on the city.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “MORNING SHOW”)
RICHARD LEE: People around here love it because they see how much we’ve improved the neighborhood.
KURWA: Looming over an empty parking lot across the street from Turnstyle’s offices, there’s a large-scale mural with Oaksterdam University emblazoned across images of Oakland landmarks. Business owners in this area have a love-hate relationship with the pot business. It’s been part of the downtown revival but has also brought new problems. King Solomon is the manager of the Triangle Gift Shop across the street from Oaksterdam’s offices.
KING SOLOMON: I think they have a lot of influence for the simple fact that a lot of kids have interests in marijuana and right, you know, with Oaksterdam being right there on Broadway, now, you know, they could ask a buddy to purchase it for them or something like that. I don’t agree with that kind of stuff, but, yeah, I think they’re too close to, like, schools.
KURWA: In 2009, Oakland residents passed a measure to tax and regulate the medical marijuana industry. City officials have supported the development of the industry, especially since revenue has helped the city’s coffers, amounting to about $1.5 million last fiscal year. But that’s caused tension with the federal authorities who are concerned that California’s liberal medical marijuana laws are being abused. The U.S. attorney in San Francisco, Melinda Haag, has been cracking down on pot dispensaries near schools and parks.
Oaksterdam’s businesses fall into this category. As the downtown area has been revitalized, a proliferation of charter schools, entertainment venues and pot clubs have all intermingled in the same neighborhood. Oakland City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan is an avid supporter of medical marijuana. She says, since the raids, she’s been flooded with calls from constituents.
COUNCILMEMBER REBECCA KAPLAN: And so some of the people who are calling me very upset, they aren’t just people who care about medical cannabis. There are plenty of people who actually don’t really care one way or the other about medical cannabis policy, but they are outraged about why, if there’s extra law enforcement resources available, why aren’t they being spent fighting guns and fighting violence?
KURWA: Turnstyle talked to several teachers in the neighborhood who didn’t want to go on tape. One charter schoolteacher told me her students are independent thinkers, probably more influenced by their peers than the pot clubs that share their neighborhood. Others say they’re concerned because their students have walked into school carrying leaflets from Oaksterdam, advertising marijuana smoke-outs. For NPR News, I’m Nishat Kurwa.
SIEGEL: Nishat Kurwa is a reporter for Turnstyle News, a project of Youth Radio.
Federal agents have raided the home and businesses of medical marijuana activist Richard Lee. Lee is the founder of Oaksterdam University, a medical marijuana trade school.
Drug Enforcement Agents, Internal Revenue Service agents and federal marshals descended on Oaksterdam University Monday morning, serving search warrants there and at several other places in Oakland all connected to long time marijuana legalization activist Richard Lee. DEA agents loaded black bags of marijuana plants taken from Oaksterdam’s grow room. They took a safe and boxes of paper records.
Around the corner they also raided the Oakland Cannabis Buyer’s Club office on 15th Street and on 17th Street the coffee shop Blue Sky. All of those locations raided were rented or run by Richard Lee, a 49-year-old founder of Oaksterdam University and a force in the fight to legalize marijuana.
“I think they were going after anything and everything that they deemed affiliated with Richard Lee because Richard is one of the leaders of the movement to try and regulate cannabis legally,” said Gale Sky Jones from Oaksterdam University.
Jones told ABC7 she’s a chancellor of Oaksterdam University and Lee’s home was also raided.
A spokeswoman for the DEA said agents were serving search warrants on multiple locations, but that there were no arrest warrants and that all the information in the search warrants is sealed by a court order. That is all she would say.
The raids attracted an often belligerent crowd of protestors, some who tried to persuade the police and others who screamed obscenities. Some protestors tried to keep the DEA from leaving the site, even as they were shouting at them to go.
Andrew DeAngelo is the general manager of a medical marijuana dispensary in Berkeley. He said, “Richard Lee is a real hero to us, he’s a real activist to us, his university is a beacon of change and innovation in our industry.”
Oakland City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan said federal enforcement of federal marijuana laws is out of place in Oakland.
“My constituents’ top priority is to be fighting gun violence and stopping gun crime,” said Kaplan.
And of all days to make that argument, Monday’s shooting at Oikos University certainly underscores the city councilwoman’s statement.
Rebecca Kaplan, an Oakland City Council member who has been a long-time advocate for medical marijuana, questioned the federal raid Monday on some of the city’s most recognized pot businesses, including the internationally known Oaksterdam University.
She noted that the budget-strapped city, which had to cut its police force, is struggling with rising gun violence, including a shooting Monday at Oikos University that involved multiple victims.
“It’s so unfortunate. I mean, we have got in Oakland a real need for law enforcement resources on real crime that’s a threat to people,” said Kaplan, who went to the scene of the raid. “If there’s extra law enforcement resources available, it would be nice if it would be devoted to illegal gun crime and stopping illegal gun dealers.”
The Oakland city official who oversees its medical marijuana laws declined to comment on the action, which targeted Richard Lee, who put a legalization measure on the ballot in 2010 and who operates a dispensary, a nursery and the nation’s first pot trade school.
“No comment right now, do not have enough information,” Arturo Sanchez, the assistant to the city administrator, wrote in an email response.
Kaplan noted that Oakland has some of the tightest regulations in the country and said it has had no trouble from its four dispensaries.
“We’ve ended up with very well-behaved facilities, and it’s really been a success story in terms of how regulation can work,” she said.
She wondered why the federal government was not focused on unapproved dispensaries or dispensaries that are creating problems in their communities, including those in Los Angeles.
“Why not go after the problem ones? Oakland has had a very strict set of regulations,” she said. “We haven’t had violence. We haven’t had crimes.”
Kaplan credited Lee’s operations, which are all within easy walking distance from City Hall, for helping to resurrect a seedy section of downtown. Lee has become a prominent and easily recognized figure in the city.
Kaplan described him as “an exemplary community member,” noting that he just finished a term as the head of his neighborhood crime prevention council.
“It does raise the question: What is the goal? Is it a political goal? Is it about sending a message?” she asked, noting that Lee is an outspoken marijuana legalization activist. “It certainly raises the concern that people may be targeted for their political speech.”
Kaplan suggested that federal officials could find that the move backfires politically.
“The public response has been outrage,” she said. “Even people who don’t care one way or the other about medical cannabis are expressing outrage about the resource waste in these raids.”
She declined to say what the official response might be in the city where every council member supports medical marijuana, saying that she did not have enough information on the raid.
For the second consecutive time, the Oakland City Council’s finance and management committee failed to meet because not enough members showed up. The lack of a quorum—only Councilmembers Jane Brunner (District 1) and Patricia Kernighan (District 2) were present—shelved a resolution that would have taken away the power of the City Administrator’s Office to extend the city’s banking contract with Wells Fargo past this year, instead giving the power to the city council to negotiate a new deal.
The role of banks in the foreclosure crisis needs to be examined by the council, and the city’s contract with Wells Fargo should not automatically be renewed without input from the city council when it expires at the end of this year, according to a resolution that is being proposed the offices of Councilmembers Brunner and Rebecca Kaplan (at-large). The city’s three-year deal with Wells Fargo expires at the end of this year, and the bank hasn’t supplied the city with information its requested on foreclosures and loan modifications, according to a report from Brunner and Kaplan’s offices.
On Tuesday afternoon, about a dozen members of Oakland Community Organizations (OCO), a network of community groups that is encouraging Oakland residents to move their money from large banks like Wells Fargo to community banks and credit unions, were on hand at City Hall to lend their support to the resolution. They were among some 30 members of the public who had showed up to speak about the items on the committee’s agenda.
But with only two of the four members present—Councilmembers Ignacio De La Fuente (District 5) and Desley Brooks (District 6) were absent, without a reason given—the committee could not officially meet. “This is not a committee, this is not a committee meeting,” Kathleen Salem-Boyd of the City Attorney’s Office said before walking out of the Sgt. Mark Dunakin Room at Oakland City Hall at what would have been the start of the meeting.
But Brunner said she did not think it was “appropriate to cancel two meetings in a row,” especially with community members present to speak about the agenda items. So even though the committee could not officially meet, members of the public were invited to speak about the issue to Brunner and Kernighan.
Brunner told the crowd that in the course of working with banks about foreclosure issues in recent years, the city had requested that Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Chase “provide information for Oakland on how many loan modifications have been made in the city” or on how many properties have been foreclosed upon here. But, she said, the banks either refused to disclose those numbers or gave only national numbers.
Brunner said that one way for city officials to get that information is to request it during negotiations for a new banking contract after the city’s three-year deal with Wells Fargo expires at the end of this year. “We need to find the right bank for the city,” she added.
Elinor Buchen, a legislative analyst for Brunner’s office, made a similar statement when reading from their office’s report discussing the proposed resolution. “In recent years, the city has struggled to get local information on foreclosures and loan modifications from banks, including from its current contractor, Wells Fargo,” she read. The resolution is to “ensure the city’s contract is not automatically renewed without council review and input,” Buchen said.
A few members of the public spoke, including OCO co-chairman Richard Speiglman, who told Brunner and Kernighan that it was important to “evaluate bank performance and divest funds from irresponsible banks.”
“We saw the toxic impacts of big banks like Wells Fargo in our neighborhoods, thousands of families displaced from their homes, blighted properties abandoned by banks, a sharp decline in home values and countless individuals thrown into crisis,” Speiglman said.
Kernighan said she had previously heard from the City Administrator’s Office that there are only a few banks large enough to handle the capacity of a large city like Oakland. But she said she is asking city staff to “do some serious investigation into whether there are some smaller banks that have the capacity to serve the City of Oakland,” she said.
“There are,” members of the audience responded.
Kernighan added that while the city can’t change the big banks’ “behavior in the past,” it can make sure the council has a voice in the next negotiations to “put pressure to incentivize better behavior in the future.”
“What we want to see is banks actually renegotiating loans and keeping more people in their homes,” she said.
Brunner noted that the finance committee does not meet again until April 24, and the next city council meeting at which a resolution regarding the city’s banking practices could be heard will be May 1.
Speiglman said that members of OCO heard earlier in the day that there may not be a quorum, but members wanted to show up anyways to try to “start the discussion.”
“We need to give Wells and the other banks notice that they’re not going to get away with this,” Speiglman said in an interview after the cancelled meeting. “To the extent we have control over our resources, we’re going to get them out until they clean up their act.”
An Oakland City Council committee held a hearing Tuesday on a resolution that would require any extension of the city’s banking contract with Wells Fargo be approved by the council.
But the Finance and Management Committee didn’t take any action on the proposal because it didn’t have a quorom so the matter was referred to the Rules Committee.
Councilwoman Jane Brunner said she expected that the item would return to the Finance Committee in late April and to the full City Council in early May.
Brunner said she and other council members want more information from Wells Fargo about whether they’re actively working with Oakland homeowners who have problem loans to modify their loans to keep them in their homes instead of foreclosing on them.
“We want information on how many foreclosures and loan modifications they have made,” Brunner said.
Oakland entered into a three-year contract with Wells Fargo in 2009 to handle all of the city’s depository and custodial banking needs. The contract, which expires at the end of the year, also includes the option for the city administrator to extend the contract for two one-year terms.
The resolution supported by Brunner and Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan would require that any extension of the banking contract with Wells Fargo be approved by the City Council.
Brunner said, “We want to make sure that the bank that holds the city’s banking contract is a model for transparency and community investment.”
Wells Fargo spokeswoman Holly Rockwood said less than 2 percent of the bank’s owner-occupied home loans nationwide proceed to foreclosure sales but she doesn’t have information about such loans in Oakland.
Rockwood said the bank is trying to help homeowners stay in their homes and recently opened a home ownership preservation center in Oakland to help people with loan problems.
She said Wells Fargo has increased its small business lending in Oakland by 35 percent so far this year and it provided $58 million in lending at below-market interest rates to organizations in the city in the past year.
The bank also invested $21 million in Oakland in the past year, Rockwood said.
The Oakland City Council joined several other East Bay cities and the Alameda County Transportation Commission this week in moving forward a $7.7 billion transportation investment plan that could create unprecedented enhancements to area infrastructure, public transit and road quality.
The ATC finalized the plan in late January, which outlines how Measure B funding will be spent if re-authorized in November. Since the commission’s passage, cities including Fremont, Hayward, San Leandro – and now Oakland – also have signed on.
“This plan represents a generation’s worth of job creation, major improvements to the way we get around and a profound improvement to both our infrastructure and our environment,” Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, who represents Oakland on the county transportation commission, said. “Thanks to hard work from many leaders and organizations in our community, we’ll be able to fix potholes, support BART and AC Transit, significantly improve bicycle and pedestrian safety and create transit-oriented development projects of the future.”
Kaplan said she thanks the many community members, organizations and other officials across the county for a major victory of collaboration between community advocacy groups and elected officials. She noted that the plan’s development, improvement and passage at the commission was the result of more than 40 meetings with community members and organizations who helped craft and improve the plan to ensure response to community needs, fiscal responsibility and improvement to quality of life and mobility in our communities – including environmental, labor, business, neighborhood organizations, advocates for seniors, youth, bicyclists, pedestrians and more.
The plan includes funding for:
-Public Transit – $3.7 billion / 48 percent (BART, AC Transit, regional rail, etc.)
-Local Road Repair – $2.3 billion / 30 percent (Paving, Pothole Repair, Seismic Retrofits)
-Freeway Repair and Enhancements – $677 million / 9 percent
-Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Improvements – $651 million / 8 percent
-Transit-Oriented Development Projects – $300 million / 4 percent
-Technology and Innovation – $77 million / 1 percent
Funding for AC Transit, for example, would increase from $18.6 million per year to $40 million initially and again to $63 million by 2023. Enhancements to rail would receive $355 million. Key bridges and roads in need of repair and maintenance also will receive vital support.
The plan includes funding for innovative programs like the Broadway “Streetcar” project, a program to fund free youth bus passes, and a significant increase in support for transit-oriented development – funding that Kaplan noted could significantly mitigate the loss of city redevelopment funding by supporting key projects at the Coliseum BART station, the area surrounding the Lake Merritt BART station and more.
Oakland City Council President Larry Reid, who represents Dist. 7 and serves as Oakland’s other voting representative, also hailed the plan.
“This will create a profound investment to public infrastructure that will create jobs and keep people moving,” Reid said. “Building a coalition to approve this much-needed funding was a dynamic process – and I’m really appreciative of being able to work with Councilmember Kaplan in negotiating on Oakland’s behalf.”
Measure B, first passed in 1986, created a half-cent sales tax to fund transportation and was re-authorized in 2000 with more than 81 percent of the vote. If passed by a two-thirds vote in November, it would re-authorize the tax and extend it to one cent to provide full funding for the plan.
The plan includes comprehensive accountability measures, including the creation of an independent watchdog and requires the commission to regularly review expenditures.
Proposal aimed at limiting foreclosures
By Matthew Artz Oakland Tribune
The foreclosure backlash is spreading to Oakland, where two council members are trying to pressure Wells Fargo to keep people in their homes.
A proposal that goes before the council’s Finance and Management Committee on Tuesday would rescind the city administrator’s authority to unilaterally extend Oakland’s banking contracting with Wells Fargo past this year, giving council members an opportunity to seek new provisions regarding foreclosures, loan modifications and the maintenance of foreclosed property.
“The bottom line is we’re trying to put some pressure on the banks to refinance mortgages, so people can stay in their homes,” said Councilwoman Jane Brunner, who is co-sponsoring the proposal with Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan.
In the wake of the foreclosure crisis, several major California cities have sought to tie banking contracts to banks’ performance in limiting foreclosures and helping small businesses. San Jose and San Francisco both have adopted policies to consider foreclosure rates as criteria in awarding banking contracts, and Berkeley is considering divesting from Wells Fargo.
Oakland pays Wells Fargo about $300,000 a year to handle key banking functions such as payroll direct deposits, vendor payments and custodianship of city investments totaling about $540 million.
The city is satisfied with the banking services, but has been frustrated by the unwillingness of Wells Fargo and other major banks to provide information on local foreclosures, according to Brunner and Kaplan.
With the city’s banking contract up at the end of the year, they want to compel Wells Fargo to accept new accountability requirements before getting the two one-year contract extensions that the city can exercise.
Wells Fargo spokeswoman Holly Rockwood wrote that the bank had been a good corporate citizen, making below-market loans to a variety of city organizations and giving more than $3.3 million to local nonprofits. The bank also has sold at foreclosure less than 2 percent of its homeowner-occupied loans over the past year, Rockwood wrote.
Assistant City Manager Scott Johnson said he has spoken to Wells Fargo officials about providing more information regarding foreclosures and city properties held by the bank, which could help the city fight blight.
Although the bank’s contract expires at the end of the year, city leaders prefer sticking with Wells Fargo rather than opening the contract up to other banks. A request for proposals would take about six months to prepare, Johnson said. He added that there also are only a few banks capable of providing the same services as Wells Fargo and that switching banks is a complex undertaking that can be difficult to implement.
Oakland plans to overhaul its scandal-plagued blight enforcement division, but will the reforms work?
By Laura Hautala East Bay Express
Anisa Moore-Williams hated to see the cars piling up in the vacant lot across the street from her house. So she called Building Services, the city division that handles blight in Oakland, and made a complaint. She talked several neighbors into complaining, too. “Pretty soon, people could see that, okay, they’re picking up cars,” Moore-Williams said. It was the first step in a decade-long battle to get the lot cleaned up.
But soon after the cars were gone, the lot’s owner drove his rusted Chevy van onto the lot and lived out of it. Then he began pushing shopping carts onto the property; at one point, Moore-Williams counted 28 of them. Next, the neighbor started scavenging garbage cans from foreclosed houses and dragging them to the lot. Moore-Williams said she realized at that time that her neighbor was mentally ill. Neighbors tried to buy the property from him, but he wouldn’t sell.
Moore-Williams, an Oakland native who’s lived in her West Oakland home for more than twenty years, made it her mission to keep the lot clean. When a new pile of junk appeared on the lot, she and her neighbors would complain to Rich Fielding, an inspector at Building Services. “Rich Fielding would send him a nice little letter, then [the junk] would disappear,” Moore-Williams said.
Eventually, only the van sat on the lot, its registration tags pointed away from the street. “It took over a good ten years,” Moore-Williams said of her efforts to clean up the lot. “Probably longer.”
Moore-Williams has become a neighborhood crusader. She’s taken on abandoned, unkempt, and unsafe properties on her block and beyond, and, in the process, she’s seen how challenging it can be to maneuver through Oakland’s bureaucracy, even on its best days. Moore-Williams said Building Services needed constant prodding from her. She got results, she said, “because they got tired of hearing from me.”
That’s why she’s keen to see what will come of the city’s complete redesign of the Building Services division. The program is slated for a total makeover that the city council may begin debating later this month. The changes come in the wake of a scathing report from the Alameda County Civil Grand Jury that found evidence of corruption, excessive fines, and a nearly nonexistent appeals process in the Building Services division. The grand jury members wrote that they were “appalled” by the practices they found.
The extensive review being conducted by the office of Oakland City Administrator Deanna Santana may eventually reshape the division’s approach to blight, moving away from a system that relies almost entirely on complaints from people like Moore-Williams — and the use of hefty property fines — toward a more holistic approach to cleaning up neighborhoods.
The proposed reforms have won praise from some critics of Building Services, but it remains to be seen whether they will work. For example, it’s extremely uncommon for cities to tackle blight without relying on complaints from residents. Officials from San Jose and San Francisco, two cities that the grand jurors compared to Oakland in their investigation, contend that their code enforcement departments could not function without complaints. There’s also the question as to whether the overhauled program, which may move away from costly fines and liens, will become yet another financial drain on the cash-strapped city.
For Oakland residents like Moore-Williams, the stakes are high, and she is eager to see if the revamp of Building Services will allow neighborhood activists to still address blighted properties that attract drug sales and violence.
The definition of blight fills out a lengthy chapter of Oakland’s municipal code. It ranges from the simple offense of overgrown plants to an abandoned building that squatters have gutted and set up as a drug house. The longtime goal of Oakland’s Building Services division is to deal with all of these kinds of blight, regardless of severity. But this practice has caused bitterness from some property owners who feel they’ve been charged excessive fines for minor infractions, like leaving their garbage cans in the driveway too long.
It’s hard to say exactly when a badly kept property turns from an eyesore to something more troubling. What Moore-Williams knows is that property covered with garbage and graffiti can foster crime. “That starts the illegal activities, like drugs, or prostitution,” she said.
Leila Moncharsh, an attorney who has worked with Moore-Williams and other Oakland residents to improve their neighborhoods, agrees that abandoned buildings set the scene for crime. An abandoned property often attracts squatters, who strip copper and other valuable metals from the house, or use the property for drug dealing. And when squatters stay in the house, things get ugly. “The water will get turned off, so the toilets won’t work,” Moncharsh said. “They start using other ways to get rid of their excrement, like putting it in a bucket in the backyard, or even in the house.”
Next, Moncharsh said, “crime goes right up. … Sites erupt, the drug dealing escalates, and then we end up with a shootout.”
Clearly, abandoned buildings aren’t the only factors in neighborhood shootings. But in a city that battles drug dealing and gun violence with an increasingly limited police force, cleaning up properties that set the scene for these activities could go a long way toward making the city safer. From Moore-Williams’s perspective, the challenge is clear: “How do we get drug dealers to not think this is a place they want to be?”
With homeowners continuing to feel the crunch of the recession, more and more abandoned properties are sure to line Oakland’s streets. The city’s foreclosure rate was more than double the national average in late 2011, according to the real estate service RealtyTrac.com. That’s why the current problems in the city’s blight abatement program are so crucial to residents, and why the success of reforms is so important.
As it currently functions, the city’s code enforcement division relies on complaints from neighbors to find blighted properties. In the 2010-11 fiscal year, there were more than 8,500 such complaints in Oakland. The Building Services division looks into the complaints, and then uses a combination of inspections and fees to coax property owners into action. After finding one or more city code violations on the property, the inspector is supposed to send a notice to the owner — who might be a homeowner, a landlord, or, increasingly, a bank. The owners then have between thirty and sixty days to fix the problem, and if they miss the deadline, the city will send out a contractor to do the job for them. The city charges the property owner a fee for this service, and the fee turns into a property lien if not paid in seven days.
This process, however, has been plagued by serious problems. The Alameda County Civil Grand Jury, made up of private citizens whose job is to investigate government agencies, detailed a series of abuses in Building Services in a report released last July. Oakland property owners testified to the grand jury that when they tried to contest citations, the inspector who cited them (or his or her direct supervisor) denied the appeal without sending it out of the division. Some owners said that contractors came to clean up their properties before their deadline to fix it, resulting in expensive liens.
What’s more, the grand jury investigation looked into the division’s history of corrupt contracting practices. A review of the code enforcement contracts with cleanup companies by this reporter confirmed what the panel members found: a disproportionate percentage of high-value contracts went to a company owned by Arthur Young. City documents show that while he won over one-third of contracts awarded in the fiscal years between July 2006 and June 2011, Young pulled in more than half the money paid to contractors during that time.
The Oakland Tribune reported in September that Young had been married to the sister of Building Services Inspection Manager Antoinette Renwick. Oakland resident Michelle Cassens, whose complaints about Building Services helped prompt the grand jury probe, had pointed out a relationship between Renwick and Young as far back as 2010. Cassens also had noted that Renwick had received a $50,000 loan from Young; Renwick resigned in October of 2010. The grand jurors reviewed evidence that they said confirmed the relationship, and said the contracts created a “perception of impropriety” at Building Services.
City Councilwoman Jane Brunner and other public officials have demanded that city staff find a way to strengthen the conflict-of-interest policy in the Building Services division, which apparently didn’t flag the relationship between the contractor and the building inspection manager.
These bad practices, meanwhile, have been compounded by a perception that Building Services is out solely to make revenue for the city. Homeowners like Cassens and her husband Gwillym Martin also have contended that the fines and liens levied by the city amount to more than the cleanup costs. Cassens and Martin have dug for evidence of bad behavior from Building Services since they fought against the division’s order to demolish their West Oakland home in 2009. They detail their efforts publicly on their website, and Martin is currently suing the city for allegedly illegal fines generated by code enforcement; in the suit, he contests the idea that the fines reflect the actual cost of cleanup work.
But the perception that Building Services is just out to make money for the city is inaccurate. According to the city administrator’s office, the Development Services Fund, a cost-recovering fund that includes all revenue from Building Services, has spent $8.4 million more than it brought in since the 2006-07 fiscal year. Last fiscal year, the fund barely broke even for the first time since 2007, bringing in about $880,000.
Nonetheless, city staff has been designing reforms that move away from neighbor’s complaints and revenue generation, in part because of the public perception that the city is just out to make money. “The goal of the new program design is for code enforcement to focus its regulatory activities on priority community revitalization issues,” a report from the city administrator reads.
The reform effort is expansive. First, a private consulting firm, Management Partners, has looked at how fees are structured and complaints are resolved — essentially the best-practices angle on reform. For the goals of addressing larger Oakland problems like asthma and decrepit apartment complexes, an Oakland-based public policy firm, Public Health Law and Policy, is working pro bono with the county public health department.
In an effort to get feedback on the suggestions that result from all of these efforts, city staffers are taking the proposed changes to a task force made up of Oakland property owners and tenants, as well as professionals from government and the real estate business. The task force is reviewing the ideas for reform now, and their feedback will be included when the city administrator’s office takes the plan to council later this spring.
The resulting plan so far emphasizes proactive enforcement, which would be a sea change from code enforcement’s current practice of only reacting to complaints. This approach would charge a majority of the department’s inspectors with addressing problems like slum conditions in multi-unit family housing complexes, as well as public health problems like mold and lead exposure, said Margaretta Lin, deputy city administrator. “We are focusing primarily on aligning our code enforcement for being a vehicle or tool of addressing those problems,” Lin said.
The holistic approach Lin outlines may well be merited. As Anisa Moore-Williams knows, blight is a symptom of a larger problem. “It’s definitely connected to poverty.”
And code enforcement won’t ultimately solve the thorny problem of squatters on its own. Moore-Williams relied on police to have squatters removed from her neighborhood. And she feels for the people who squat in empty buildings, who often used to live in the neighborhood. “But now they don’t have any place to be. They were incarcerated, and when they came out, everybody’s gone,” she said.
For this reason, the city administrator’s goal to enhance “collaborative efforts with other City departments, public agencies, and community organizations” may produce positive results.
But it’s not clear how the city will pay for a program that’s more focused on social issues than revenue generation. The reforms aim to reevaluate the amount of fines that code enforcement can charge as the division launches a potentially costly community improvement campaign. The proactive inspection plan has five parts, and only two have some promise of built-in funding so far.
“The short answer is, we don’t know partly what the fiscal impact will be,” Lin said. “We are looking alternatively and creatively around what’s going to pay for all these activities.”
If city council approves the reforms this spring, Building Services will have a year to try out the changes and see both how they work in the community and how expensive they are. “The test is in the practice,” Lin said.
In addition to deemphasizing revenue, the proposed reforms move away from using complaints to identify blight. Currently, the system depends heavily on complaints to find and cite blighted properties. Building Services received more than 8,500 complaints about blight and habitability between July 2010 and June 2011, which generated more than 30,000 inspections.
Complaints lead to citations and fines, which is the most effective way the city currently has to pay for code enforcement. The most common complement to a complaint system is a registry for abandoned or foreclosed buildings, but registries almost always work better when complaints are also a major focus. San Francisco’s building inspection department started an abandoned building registry in 2009, requiring owners of vacant properties to register, pay a fee, and pass an inspection of the building’s upkeep.
But even though the registry has helped San Francisco find and cite blighted properties, “we still rely and have always relied on the complaint process for people to let us know whether there might be a vacated or abandoned property,” said William Strawn, a spokesman for the department.
If San Francisco had to work without complaints, “that would certainly make it more difficult,” Strawn said. “It stands to reason to me that someone living next door to a building that might be abandoned has a much stronger incentive to let the building department know about it than whatever random effect we would have looking for one. I don’t think that would be as cost effective or as efficient as what the complaint system is.”
Lin, Oakland’s deputy city administrator, said the city won’t do away with complaints completely. Instead, complaints will be sorted into different priority levels. “The complaints that come in that hit the top priorities for the city will get top priority for inspection,” Lin said. Previously, the division’s policy was to treat each complaint as equally important.
But this reform worries Moore-Williams the most — that she might be left unheard if staff is less focused on complaints. “There’s only so much a person could do with not enough staff,” she said.
However, critics of Building Services say the complaints system can devolve into neighborhood feuds, and some egregious cases bear this out. The grand jury heard testimony about a case where an Oakland resident was given blank Building Services citations sheets and wrote up a neighbor for plants that allegedly blocked the sidewalk. The complaint allegedly led to real city citations and a drawn-out appeals process.
But for people like Moore-Williams, who are more concerned with drug houses than a neighbor’s overgrown plants, complaints are vital. Moore-Williams said her neighbors currently think the city moves far too slow on keeping neighborhoods clean.
“Neighbors have a lot of power but we sort of give it away,” she said. “But, at the same time, they [the city] need us to be, like, screaming at them.”
From a crime-fighting perspective, Moore-Williams would like to see more nosy neighbors, not fewer. “We also need to be participants in that,” she said, “not just say, ‘You should fix this.’” Neighbors should be offering the city “suggestions on how, and what’s happening, and really be involved.”
One aspect of the proactive inspections that Lin says does have the potential to cover its own costs is the effort to crack down on blighted, foreclosed properties that are owned by banks. This is a pet project of At-Large Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, who has frequently argued that it’s time to hold banks accountable for their neglect of foreclosed properties.
“There are banks and large investment conglomerates that, through foreclosures, through predatory loans, and through sleazy banking practices, have come to acquire thousands of properties in Oakland, which they do not upkeep,” Kaplan said at a city council meeting last fall. “They make more profit by not bothering to upkeep those properties.”
However, a closer look at the numbers shows that fines won’t be that high on banks that foreclose on blighted homes. The proactive inspection plan would intensify code enforcement’s current focus on bank-owned buildings by looking at banks one at a time, and asking the banks to account for all foreclosed properties they hold in Oakland. The city’s foreclosure registry has pulled in some money to the Development Services Fund already — almost $1.3 million since July 2010. But most of the money came from registration fees, not from blight inspections. Blight violations brought in about $330,000 in collected fees. In contrast, the overtime payments accrued by city employees who maintain the registry came to $256,500.
The biggest obstacle to cracking down on blighted foreclosed properties is that banks are legally required to keep up only a small portion of Oakland’s foreclosed properties. About 82 percent of the city’s more than 3,300 foreclosed homes are still in the default or auction stages of foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac.com, which means the city can’t charge the bank fines or cleanup fees.
“There’s a pretty significant problem with blight on those properties, and the banks are not taking responsibility,” Lin said. “And legally, they don’t have to.”
Lin proposes that the city council change Oakland law so that Building Services can go after these pre-foreclosed properties, whose owners have often lost interest in caring for them. “The owners live there, but they’re just disconnected,” Lin said.
In the case of Moore-Williams’ neighborhood in West Oakland, it’s the involvement of neighbors that has kept abandoned houses from falling into the hands of drug dealers. Moore-Williams gets to know all her neighbors and helps organize a street party for National Night Out every year. If she drives to work, she makes sure to swing past industrial areas of her neighborhood to make sure garbage isn’t piling up on the streets.
She’s been threatened for getting involved, but says she’s not scared. “They put nails in my tires,” she said, but “it’s just a nail.”
Moore-Williams also keeps close tabs on city government. On a recent Saturday, she flipped through her Blackberry messages for alerts from her District 3 council member, Nancy Nadel. Since Nadel has decided not to run for reelection this year, Moore-Williams wants to bring up her concerns over the Building Services reforms to a couple of potential candidates she knows.
If the city can’t dedicate as many resources to fielding complaints from her neighborhood, Moore-Williams said she’s ready to do even more of the work herself.
“It will really mean we’ll have to get in it,” she says. “We’ll have to clean the streets — be vigilant — so our neighborhood can remain like this.”
Not all neighbors will have the time or energy to pitch in. But Moore-Williams — along with all the residents, city staff, and community activists invested in improving Building Services — know it’s not for lack of caring. “It’s really sad that people think just because folks live in West Oakland, that they don’t care about their block or their neighborhood,” Moore-Williams said, “because it’s just the opposite.”
East Oakland has long been the epicenter of professional sports in the Bay Area, and on Tuesday night the City Council pressed ahead with a plan to keep its teams where they’ve been for decades.
To the delight of several Black Hole regulars, Oakland lawmakers approved $3.5 million toward efforts to redevelop the Coliseum complex along with adjacent land west off Interstate 880.
The A’s, Raiders and Warriors are all being courted away from the complex they have called home for more than four decades. The A’s have for years sought to move to San Jose, the Warriors are considering a proposed arena in San Francisco, and the Raiders are potential tenants in stadiums proposed in both Santa Clara and Los Angeles.
With funds unavailable to acquire land for a waterfront baseball stadium near Jack London Square, Oakland is hoping to draw private investors interested in transforming a more 750-acre Coliseum site into a modern sports and entertainment complex.
The city is allocating $1.6 million to pay a development team led by JRDV Architects, Forest City Enterprises and HKS Sports and Entertainment to begin talks with the teams and determine the viability of new facilities. The council also is allocating $1.9 million for planning and environmental work both at the Coliseum site and on more than 700 acres to the west between I-880 and the airport, which the city is hoping to remake into a hub for technology firms.
The study is expected to take a little over a year.
While the council hopes the Coliseum plan might save Oakland’s teams, during a committee meeting last week, council member Nancy Nadel offered fans some words of caution.
“I hope everybody realizes that we have no money,” she said. “As much as you might love the teams when you have no money, it’s a very different game.”
