Posted on 06/22/2010 10:00:48 PM PDT by thecodont
(06-22) 18:26 PDT OAKLAND -- Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums offered a budget proposal Tuesday that would lay off 53 of the Police Department's 776 officers, a plan he unveiled just two days before the City Council is scheduled to reckon with the city's downward-spiraling finances.
Dellums' proposal, similar to one option that the council was already set to consider Thursday night, is ultimately a gamble. It assumes voters will temporarily suspend a mandate in November that the Police Department employ a certain number of officers in order to receive the proceeds of a parcel tax.
If voters don't go along - and they reject a separate $54 million parcel tax that would cost the average homeowner about $360 a year - the number of police layoffs could balloon to 216 by the end of the year.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/22/BA5V1E391S.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0reIvc3dw
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
A cop left a voicemail for me pleading for support against the Oakland budget cuts. Oakland is crime-ridden enough already.
I am sure there are wasteful social welfare programs that can be cut in Oakland and elsewhere. Police are one of the few government agencies/programs that should only be cut as a last resort.
Every town, city & state should be slashing education. We spend way too much on each child and get precious little in return. Education is the big fat cow the unions are trying to protect at all costs.
Dellums owes the IRS over $300,000 and per his calendar, works 25 hours a week...cooperated with the Contras in the 1980’s against US interests, a son in prison for life for murder and a former Black Panther...oh, Barbara Lee was his prodigy.
A true Commie, big city Democrat failure.
Sounds like they should lay off Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums.
Not one mention of cutting fat pension or benefits, only cops.
Idiots, thank God I sold my house there last year.
Screw Oakland, it’s a Lib cesspool.
Read the book “Crazy Like A Fox” by Ben Chavis and Carey Blakely. Chavis is an Indian who become an educator and takes over a charter school in Oakland that had been created for their American Indian community. When Chavis gets there, the kids are drinking 40’s, smoking pot and having sex on a mattress behind a tool shed - and it is a middle school, in disrepair no less. There is an absentee rate of 35%, the kids cannot read nor write and they are blanking on the state tests. The liberal intelligentsia of Oakland, fools that they are, are teaching the kids bead making and banging on drums to keep them in touch with their Indian “heritage”. You will be cheering as Chavis throws the bead bums out, fires the idiots and spits the Oakland establishment in the face. He attacks the Democrats, even though he is one, for trashing the education of minority children. They have run it for decades and produced nothing but union contracts, while the kids cannot even read. He yells at them for always throwing too much money at the problem and having no accountability. He spends less money but gets great results.
This man does a job and he takes a school of illiterates, writes new rules, drops the truancy to almost zero, rips off the makeup, pulls up their pants, shaves the heads of disobedient students, stops rotating kids in different classes by anchoring them with one teacher and makes the school reach the top 5 schools in California based on standardized tests. He beats the rich white schools in the suburbs. Well, then the Governor, the press and even Laura Ingraham shows up. This guy Chavis has answers and I think he could make big things happen in inner city schools if he was given the helm. He gets results where the Democratic led education establishment has failed for decades.
Chavis loves No Child Left Behind because it makes schools accountable - and that is why the teachers unions hate it.
Oh and guess what - the education establishment hates him - what else is new.
Nasty cuts are required across the board to get our bloated municipal and state budgets under control. But where will this lead?
If police and other municipal workers won’t accept SHARP pay cuts (and they won’t, thanks to their unions) then Oakland will eventually go from 776 officers down to 7 officers.
Government regulations — from heavy taxation to minimum wage laws to mandatory health benefits and a host of other intrusions — have made it uneconomical (if not downright suicidal to your organization) to hire people. And this applies in both municipal and private settings. Add unions and you’ve got an intractable problem that simply will not go away.
Nobody can afford to hire people anymore. And it’s the government’s fault.
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