Actually the first official to publicly acknowledge that we are broke might be Lindheim at one of the Nik Nak City Council meetings. Don't remember his precise words, but he was quite matter of fact about it, and the city council members ignored his comment and went on about their business of the night.

In early January of 2011, Pat Kernighan at a Lakeshore community meeting on the budget was much more direct, in response to my question she essentially said that without some drastic improvement in revenue or cost reductions, we will be unable to pay our bills in about two years.  People's jaws dropped. When asked why the council members hadn't told this to their constituents Councilmember Kernighan replied quite reasonably that they had tried to do so at some local hearings but no one wanted to hear the bad news. Her further point was that until their own ox was gored, libraries, parks, cops etc. residents did not want to make the hard choices needed here.

I suppose that viewpoint depends on what you see as the responsibility of an elected official, but like our fiscal situation, certainly not unique to Oakland pols.

Anyone who thinks the recent contract settlements will do anything more than delay the inevitable more than a year is drinking Mayor Quan's koolaid that the economy is just about to bounce back and all those new restaurants and a few refugee social networking startups will make it all ok here.

Actually the first official to publicly acknowledge that we are broke might be Lindheim at one of the Nik Nak City Council meetings. Don't remember his precise words, but he was quite matter of fact about it, and the city council members ignored his comment and went on about their business of the night.

In early January of 2011, Pat Kernighan at a Lakeshore community meeting on the budget was much more direct, in response to my question she essentially said that without some drastic improvement in revenue or cost reductions, we will be unable to pay our bills in about two years.  People's jaws dropped. When asked why the council members hadn't told this to their constituents Councilmember Kernighan replied quite reasonably that they had tried to do so at some local hearings but no one wanted to hear the bad news. Her further point was that until their own ox was gored, libraries, parks, cops etc. residents did not want to make the hard choices needed here.

I suppose that viewpoint depends on what you see as the responsibility of an elected official, but like our fiscal situation, certainly not unique to Oakland pols.

Anyone who thinks the recent contract settlements will do anything more than delay the inevitable more than a year is drinking Mayor Quan's koolaid that the economy is just about to bounce back and all those new restaurants and a few refugee social networking startups will make it all ok here.

Most of the upscale restaurants and bars are opening here because Oakland does not require employee health insurance coverage, has a lower minimum wage, and offers much lower rents than popular sections of SF.

From the city's point of view, at least low wage restaurants pay taxes and collect sales tax that can go to funding services for residents, including impoverished residents. That's more than you can say for minimum wage paying, completely tax exempt non profits that maybe provide health insurance for their workers.

-len raphael, cpa

temescal