Len Raphael on Crime, City Budget, Safeway: Oakland District 1 Council Candidates Speak on the Issues

Editor's Note: Rockridge Patch recently asked the seven candidates for the District 1 seat on the Oakland City Council the same three questions — about neighborhood safety, the city budget and the College Avenue Safeway. We also asked how long they have lived in District 1, which includes Rockridge, Upper Rockridge, Temescal, the North Oakland Hills, a portion of Montclair and other North Oakland neighborhoods. The District 1 seat is being vacated by long-time incumbent Jane Brunner, who is a candidate for Oakland City Attorney.

We are publishing the candidates' replies in the order received. Previously: Oct. 25: Richard Raya. 

Today: Len Raphael. You may read his responses below. For more information on Raphael and his positions on other issues, see his campaign website, lensforchange.com.

1. Public safety/neighborhood crime prevention: What, specifically, would you like to do to address District 1 residents' concerns about robberies, home burglaries and other public safety issues in Rockridge? Would this include increasing the number of Oakland police officers? If so, how would you pay for the increase?

Please see Question #2, where I discuss the Oakland Police Department in detail.

2. City budget: How would you address Oakland's city budget crisis? Would your plan include the possibility of lower pay and benefits for public safety employees? Are there specific city programs or services that you think could be cut or scaled back? Ones that you think should not be cut?

In office I will work closely with other Council members to:

1. Reduce the pay of Council members and the mayor by 25%.
2. Declare a health emergency because of the violence here.
3. Declare a fiscal emergency so that all contracts can be renegotiated.
4. Repeal the binding-arbitration clause that prevents police and fire pay cuts and protects bad cops.
5. Reduce police and fire pay (which now averages $200,000 per year) to affordable levels. Police and fire costs consume more than 75% of our General Fund.
6. Fire bad cops with a record of repeated flagrant abuses.
7. Manage and monitor OPD more effectively.
8. Double the number of police as quickly as we can afford to.
9. Sunset all anti-violence programs and replace them with ones that are effective.

You know how bad the crime is. The City’s fiscal situation is even worse. Our dire fiscal condition will prevent us from doubling the number of cops and implementing the effective anti-violence programs needed unless we take steps now. If the City’s fiscal condition is left unchecked we will have to gut all city services just to pay for a skeleton crew of police and fire, and to make payments on our more than $2.5 Billion of unfunded retirement and infrastructure debts.

That is unfair to younger residents, who will be stuck with paying for the costs of retired employees.

I won’t sugarcoat the crime or the fiscal problems like most of the other candidates. Unlike what some of my opponents claim, there is no magic anti-violence program that will reduce our crime levels. There are many effective anti-violence programs and strategies available, but none will work here as long as our politicians use them to reward their supporters.

The fiscal problems are much too big to “outgrow.” All the easy cost-saving moves have already been made. Residents can’t bear an additional parcel tax that would be big enough to fix our fiscal problems. Such a tax would also make it impossible to pass an additional parcel tax for schools.

I will encourage the other Council members to make the tough choices to cut police and fire compensation and adjust pay for all other employees to sustainable levels.

Three of the other candidates — Amy Lemley, Dan Kalb, and Richard Raya — are supported by the very public-employee unions whose contracts they will be approving if elected. They have pledged to continue the average $200,000-per-year pay and benefits package of police and firefighters. Adding just 200 more cops at $200,000 each would amount to an additional $40 Million a year. That is a race to bankruptcy.

These other candidates have also pledged to continue the protection against departmental discipline given only to cops and firefighters by the City charter’s “binding arbitration” clause. Binding arbitration means that many times, when a cop is so bad that even OPD wants to fire him or her, the arbitrator rules in favor of the cop. Binding arbitration also means that every time we try to reduce fire and police pay, an outside arbitrator does a compensation survey of nearby cities, such as SF and Berkeley, that happen to be wealthier and can afford higher rates of pay, and the arbitrator denies the pay cuts.

We have to reduce our city’s labor costs in order to provide the services we need to thrive.

We can’t grow our way out of our fiscal problems fast enough to afford to pay for 500-600 additional police, let alone pay down more than $2.5 Billion of unfunded retirement and infrastructure debts.

Tough questions. No easy answers. No magic bullets.

People often tell me that they agree with my positions but want to know how I’d work with council members who would resist my positions tooth and nail.

I explain that I’ve worked informally with several of them on the pension obligation bond issue.  I also have a good relationship with the two main candidates for Nadel’s seat. I’ve supported IDLF in his Mayoral run; and supported Kaplan in her first Council run.  I am on good terms with their chief of staffs.

Realistically, for starters I’d push for a two-tier compensation system for new hires to all depts., especially police and fire. That should be a no brainer, but if I have to imitate Jerry Brown and go over the heads of the council members to their constituents, that’s ok too.

To a large extent the voters have moved past their elected council members on crime and fiscal matters. Voters have heard the steady drum beat of muni bankruptcy and bad guys kicking in their doors, and bad cops shooting tear gas cannisters at vets, even if the Mayor and council are tone deaf.

3. Safeway expansion: What's your position, if any, on the proposed expansion of the Safeway store at College and Claremont avenues?

I oppose the current Claremont Safeway plan as submitted to the City because it is out of scale with existing neighborhood and because bringing in that many more retail square footage would likely harm the existing small retailers along College. College is one of the few retail success stories in Oakland but like all small retailers, they are extremely vulnerable to competition from national chains.

At Pleasant Valley, I also oppose Safeway’s plan but for very different reasons. That stretch of Bway (very close to my backyard) could easily absorb high density mixed use on the Safeway parcel.  It could jumpstart the area with minimal impact on the low density surrounding Rockridge and Temescal single family homes. The City should use all of it’s permitting and zoning department power to push the owner and Safeway (the tenant) to put in high density mixed use housing/retail. I checked with a local land use attorney who said cities often use their power informally to achieve that result. Oakland is too timid to stand up to Safeway.

4. Biographical: How long have you lived in District 1? Feel free to mention any other specific activities/ties to Rockridge or the district as a whole.

I’m a certified public accountant who has lived in various parts of North Oakland’s District 1 for 35 years, studied sociology at Columbia, and earned BS and MS degrees in accounting and taxation from UC Berkeley and Golden Gate University. My wife Betty, a nurse and CNA member, and I raised our two sons, who both graduated from Claremont Middle School and Oakland Tech. 

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