Ces Butner, a Port of Oakland Commissioner, has so far spent 20k on candidate & independent expenditure committees. He supports the most conservative candidate in every Council race: Jackson, Walton, Johnson thru direct exp--via PACs, McElhaney & against Fife/Kaplan #oakmtg
One of these is from his wife. Usually when there's a power differential like this in the marriage--Teresa isn't employed-- its just a way for the more powerful partner to make an extra contribution, but I can't state that as an absolute fact, so.
If people paid attention to the Port appointment process, they'd have to ask under what possible rubric you'd keep appointing this fella. But its obvious that a Port Commission appointment is an influence/favor factory
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At Finance now, Director Erin Roseman: "reduced revenues and overspending in police department..."
City's revenues are trending downward from last year, the most significant being Real Estate Transfer, then Business License Tax...some are trending upward, but not enough to counteract the declines"
Current decline in RTTF is akin to what happened in great recession...after 2006 going to 2008, revenues from RTTF declined, same pattern is visible if you look at chart in 2021...steep decline in 2022 and 2023...large part of this is due to things beyond city's control.
Despite never numbering more than twenty people on the ground, the finance/real estate backed Price Recall rallies always attract a large share of media, often more than 50K protesters taking over a freeway. Ask why, and you have the answer to many of Oakland's problems.
These rallies are the only ones where I'm ever actually over on my head count. It's not even twenty, and I said two dozen earlier as a mocking joke, but they were just above one dozen.
Another w/no details about changes. It's ironic that the accusation from the recall backers is that BOS is trying to "confuse" voters, when its Velena's vacuous reporting doing that. She doesn't even get what's at issue right. nbcbayarea.com/news/local/eas…
There definitely is this weird cottage industry in sports where fans love to follow pundits that get everything wrong time n again, with Howard Terminal as the clearest example of that. None of these doofs ever knew what they were talking about, they still obviously don't.
Case in point, I believe these grant numbers are inflated & City never provided an in-print total, Regardless, they reveal dishonesty of pundits & even Thao, who claimed Oakland is "88 MM" or "100 MM" away. Assuming these numbers aren't also invented--a big if--it's nearly 200 MM
What I find interesting in all this is once the deal became impossible, Thao collaborated with local sports reporters to start throwing out numbers that can't be verified; there's no City report on any of this. They are wildly inventing it all with clear goal of conning fans
The special meeting to introduce Council President Bas' amendments for the budget has begun. That's the first item. Not likely there'd be a vote today at all on the whole budget
Bas is introducing the amendments, she says there've already been hard decisions made. Going through the list, I've already covered this in threads. Reversing the OFD brownouts, adding 2 MM in DVP; ambassadors for biz corridors; traffic safety 1 MM; 2 civ police investigators
Adding a dedicated MACRO team for Oakland libraries, a new fund to create rapid housing for homeless
Just after beginning serious negotiations, Kaval/Fisher broke them off to instead launch a pressure campaign with sports/mainstream media more than willing to help
The pressure campaign's narrative was that the A's had offered a generous package to the City on HT, but that evil Council members were blocking it. The truth was that Fisher ordered our City to pay what could be a billion dollars in offsite infrastructure.
At Public Safety, OPD recounting new IAD policy practices as a result of the Armstrong issues:
It's an absolute fact that thanks to dumbing down by corporate media for decades, no one actually understands how police are made, how an academy is created and the actual fact that the number of people who want to be police AND CAN is extremely finite.
The Oaklandside story on payments for witnesses came up during Public Safety. Not surprisingly, OPD didn't budge on it oaklandside.org/2023/06/13/oak…