Mountain Boulevard pavement provides an example of Oakland’s deteriorating road conditions. Oakland, Calif., Sept. 11, 2016 (Daniel Borenstein/Bay Area News Group)
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Oakland voters are being asked to double down on a deceptive and ill-planned roads-repair program that has blown through cost projections with no end in sight — a plan that would saddle property owners with more than $1 billion of tax debt over the next four decades.
Unfortunately, Measure U on the Nov. 8 ballot ties the roads program to an affordable housing funding plan that, had it been standing alone on the ballot, would deserve serious consideration. But the roads and housing proposals, along with funding to rehabilitate city facilities, are packaged together into one ballot measure. Voters should reject it.
They should send a message that, with strong general fund tax revenues, city leaders need to stop reflexively trying to reach into the pockets of property owners for even more money every election year.
The issue is not whether the city needs more money to fix its badly dilapidated roads. It does. The issue is that, when city leaders ask for new taxes, they need to come with clear budgets that ensure the money will be wisely spent — and data that demonstrate past tax revenues have been used efficiently.
That’s completely lacking with the roads portion of Measure U, a fiscally irresponsible $850 million bond measure that would allocate $290 million toward streets, $350 million for affordable housing and $210 million for city facilities. Measure U would be piled on top of Measure KK, a $600 million bond measure approved in 2016 for the same three uses. It’s clear now, six years later, that Measure KK was grossly oversold and has barely made a dent in improving the overall condition of the city’s streets.
Combined, the bond measures would total $1.45 billion. But bonds are a form of borrowing that property owners must pay back — with interest. Paying off Measure KK and Measure U bonds would cost the city’s property owners nearly $3 billion, of which nearly half would be for roads. Those taxes drive up the price of housing for homeowners and renters, whose landlords eventually pass on the cost.
Property owners are just beginning to pay off the Measure KK bonds, which by 2026 will cost the owner of a home assessed at $500,000 about $190 a year. If the Measure U bonds are added in, the property tax payments would jump to roughly $500 annually early in the next decade. Double those numbers for homes assessed at $1 million.
Ballot deceit
For all that spending, city officials should at least be straight up with voters about the use of the money. After a city survey earlier this year showed that crime was the top concern for Oakland voters and that Measure U could have a tough time passing, the ballot wording was altered to begin by claiming it would “improve public safety.”
To be clear, Measure U has nothing to do with public safety in the sense of reducing crime or bolstering the city’s badly depleted police force, which by the end of last year hit the lowest level in seven years. Nor would it address the city’s homicide rate, which in 2021 was the highest since 2006 — and is on pace this year to match that.
Rather, Measure U is a mashup of three unrelated funding areas that city officials have melded under the rubric of infrastructure. The elements should have been split so voters had the chance to decide separately whether they wanted to support affordable housing, street repaving and/or city facilities. They shouldn’t face an all-or-nothing decision.
But that combo strategy worked successfully for city officials in 2016 when 82% of voters approved Measure KK, championed by Mayor Libby Schaaf. At the time, Schaaf was completing her first two years in office after inheriting a backlog of deferred maintenance and liabilities, most notably the city’s failure to properly maintain its roads.
For decades, city officials had patched potholes while letting surrounding pavement continue to crumble. Measure KK contained $350 million for road repairs. Oakland officials claimed that money would cover most of the $443 million paving backlog the city said it had at the time. It’s for that reason that we backed the measure.
Unfilled promises
It’s clear now that the problem was worse than city officials portrayed it and that they have barely begun to deliver on their promises. Six years after Measure KK was passed, Oakland still has some of the worst roads in the Bay Area. The average condition of the city’s streets, measured last year, has barely changed from 2015.
Meanwhile, no one has bothered to even analyze whether the city has been spending the Measure KK money efficiently, starting with how Oakland’s road-repair cost per mile compares to other Bay Area cities.
A consultant’s report completed in April concluded that the city now needs to spend $898 million on pavement maintenance and rehabilitation over the next 20 years to repair its streets so they can then be maintained with ongoing preventive maintenance. That should be the goal. But city officials could not provide a budget for getting there, for how much would be covered by annual road maintenance money the city receives from the state and the county and has in its own general fund, and how much more property owners should be expected to kick in.
It seems that, after promising six years ago to repair most of the city streets with Measure KK, city officials are looking for a regular and endless series of bond measures that would saddle future generations with debt. Indeed, with Measure U, the city plans to stretch the bond payments over 40 years, a decade longer than a typical home mortgage. The unconscionably lengthy term, like any long-term loan, would drive up the interest costs for taxpayers. It’s fiscally reckless.
But it’s not surprising for a City Council and mayor who are unable or unwilling to responsibly manage the tax revenues they already have. It’s time for city leaders to start finding ways to live more within their revenues. After all, the city’s general fund budget has increased 69% from the 2014-15 fiscal year. Property tax revenues are up 73%.
During that eight-year period, in addition to Measure KK, voters have also approved new or increased special taxes for libraries, housing the homeless, maintaining city parks and Schaaf’s children’s initiative. And they have increased the tax on property sales, giving the city a bigger chunk of homeowners’ equity.
To ask for even more, city officials need to clearly articulate the need and demonstrate the money will be responsibly spent. When it comes to the Measure U, they have failed to do that.
Originally published at East Bay Times editorial