Oakland Council irked by $10 million overrun, but spending credited with cutting homicide rate.
By Heather MacDonald, The Oakland Tribune
OAKLAND, Calif. -- The Oakland Police Department is $10 million over budget, mostly because of a stepped-up enforcement effort credited with reducing the city’s murder rate, officials said.
However, city officials won’t have to scramble to rejigger their budget.
Thanks to the still red-hot real estate market in Oakland, city revenues are expected to be $10 million more than expected by the end of the fiscal year, said budget director Marianna Marysheva.
“It will all balance at the end of the year,” Marysheva said.
Despite the happy ending, Oakland City Councilmembers Danny Wan (Grand Lake-Chinatown) and Jean Quan (Montclair-Laurel) say they are furious the police department went so far over budget without Chief Richard Word notifying the City Council.
“The only power the council truly has is the power over the budget,” Quan said last week. “You are taking a windfall that could be used by the council in any number of different ways and spending it without consulting us. It should have been a conscious budget decision, not abdicated to the mayor by default.”
The violence reduction effort targets known “hot spots” of crime and drug activity with stepped-up patrols with help of officers from the California Highway Patrol and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department.
Mayor Jerry Brown, who has staked much of his political career and legacy in Oakland on reducing crime, developed the plan with Word and City Manager Deborah Edgerly and constantly touts its effectiveness.
“It’s working, there’s no doubt about that,” Brown said.
After a spike in killings in the first several weeks of the year, the murder rate is 24 percent lower than a year ago, Brown says.
As of Friday night, 20 people had been killed in Oakland in 2004. In 2003, 114 people were killed -- one more than in 2002, giving Oakland one of the highest per capita murder rates in the nation.
Wan and Quan want to force departments to return to the council if projections show they will exceed their annual budget, and are crafting new regulations. Both said they probably would have voted to use the extra money to step up police patrols.
“We are held accountable,” Wan said. “We must make clear decisions.”
Council President Ignacio De La Fuente (San Antonio-Fruitvale) disagreed with his colleagues, saying the police department must respond to major crimes or a rash of public disruptions, such as “sideshows,” immediately.
“They can’t wait to have the council approve the program,” De La Fuente said. “They have to take action.”
Word acknowledged he could have alerted the council sooner, although it has known for months the police department was over budget.
“That’s fair, and something I’ll do in the future,” Word said. “But the program is paying good dividends.”
The police department is also overstaffed, according to the budget, and must cut about 10 positions between now and the end of July. Word expects those positions will become vacant through attrition, and the department will be able to avoid layoffs.
“Neither option is good,” Word said.
The police department is not the only city agency over budget. The Community and Economic Development Agency is $500,000 in the red and the Parks and Recreation department is $400,000 over budget, Marysheva said. Those overruns are mostly due to overtime and personnel costs, she added.
The Alice Arts Center, which houses a charter school for the arts and stores some materials for the Oakland Museum of California, is $300,000 over budget, mostly because of janitorial costs incurred by the school and the need for round-the-clock security guards, Marysheva said. The school is scheduled to move from the center later this year.
The Financial Services and Public Works agencies, along with the library system and the Department of Human Services, are all under budget, Marysheva said.