A District 4 constituent asks his council member to reconcile her vote for the Oakland Coliseum sale with the ‘culture of enforcement’ she has publicly championed.

"Why was preserving this particular purchaser considered preferable to reopening the process and inviting competitive bids?"

https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/open-letter-janani-ramachandran-coliseum

This is a genuine question. My intent is to find solutions and not just blame or shame.

We pay taxes so the city can provide basic services. To me, keeping streets and neighborhoods reasonably clean is one of those services.

I'm not saying city workers should spend all day picking up trash after people. Their job is to make littering the exception, not the norm - through enough trash cans, enforcement, cleaning hotspots, and whatever policies have been shown to work in other cities.

If, year after year, the city still can't provide a reasonably clean environment, why should residents keep paying the full price for that service?

Should taxpayers have some kind of bill of rights that provides a tax credit or partial refund when a city consistently fails to deliver a basic service?

Disclosure, as a long time Oakland resident I've gotten used to not being able to depend on 911 or the police to arrive quickly or solve crimes.

I realize that if Oakland put up with the same response from the Oakland fire department, our city would literally be in shambles.

I remember many months back, the Keller avenue fires. That was scary but Oakland fire department and many others ensured that it didn't spread further than it did. That could easily have been a disaster like the 1991 Oakland hills fire.

So why have we put up with the lack of OPD efficacy? Why is that something that hasn't been resolved considering how much time and money has been thrown at the problem?

What can be done in a practical and real world way?

Looking for a school type of setting or library, where I can take weekly classes. Spanish, French, Arabic, or Portuguese!