(No final decision will be made at this meeting, but input and Q&A will be important).

Supplemental Agenda Materials online at:
http://clerkwebsvr1.oaklandnet.com/attachments/22692.pdf

The Rules Committee was cancelled again today. The Council has not yet decided whether or not to get an update on the Connector.

Due to furloughs, Rules Committee will not meet June 18th. Will meet Thursday June 25th!

I believe that both of htese are very bad ideas. The NSCs are a very good liason between the police & the community. Edith Guillen, our NSC is a real asset, who goes well above & beyond the call of her job.

Putting the NSCs under the control of the Mayor’s office to work w/ parolees & probationers is a real waste of the NSCs skills. NSCs are a real valuable resource in involving citzens with the police.

Laying off cops is also a very bad idea, as crime is finally coming down around here.

Please suggest that the Mayor look around at his own staff for some budget cuts. I would start with his driver.

Thank you,

The city (Dellums office, specifiaclly) wants to sack all the NSC, which are quite a valuable resource in crime plagued ‘hoods, like mine & yours.

http://www.mtc.ca.gov/funding/ARRA/index.htm

ARRA transit funds are channeled through the traditional Section 5307/5309 transit capital programs, and have the same requirements. For urban areas with more than 200,000 populaton, only capital, not operating expenses are allowed (with the one exception of paratransit operations). Capital includes “preventive maintenance”, so a significant portion of typical bus maintainance can be funded (and if you look at the project list on the MTC website, you’ll see that’s how AC directed most of their money, more so than most other districts). But you can very definitely not fund bus drivers, or fuel, which are both very big ticket items for bus operators.

If the $70 million were defunded, AC would get about $7 million of that by formula (on top of the $25 million they’ve already received). Again…to fund capital projects, not operating expenses.

I strongly disagree with the idea that it’s late in the game to be raising objections. BART should have come to Oakland when they dropped the intermediate stops, or when they decided to no longer support airport expansion, or when the fare estimates starting climbing drastically. But they want to pretend the project hasn’t changed in ten years, so Oakland gets no input on these key decisions.

The OAC was dead a year ago. Then BART and MTC staff decide that every last penny, from stimulus funds to airport expansion charges to seismic rehab funds, should be shifted to bring back the project. Since the currently-proposed OAC is the worst possible option, Oakland is risking nothing by examining it closely.

The reason this is all happening so late in the game is entirely MTC, BART and BART Board’s fault.

Through multiple meetings, transit advocates have illuminated damning data and dissembling by advocates of the OAC, but time and again, the powers that be have chosen to believe whatever was convenient to their goals, regardless of hard facts to the contrary.

That said, I agree with you that we can get a beautiful system for way less than $500 million. If this is an economic stimulus project now, lets think of how deluxe and trendsetting a BRT system could be. Even at three times what TransForm estimates, the system would cost a third of the current proposal.

So what could you get if you spent $150 million on BRT and why is it so much better than an overhead rail connector? Envision a high-tech Road-Tram, with a train like interior, in a well maintained dedicated lane, with magnetic guidance for most of it’s route. Envision it running an express direct line to the airport but also having local trams that stop at intermediate stations, skipped over by the airport express. And envision the local stops extending past the coliseum BART all the way to the Eastmont Mall.

With that vision in mind, envision this Road-Tram line as a rib, and BART as the spine. A successful rib on this spine would lead to others, and lead BART into potentially running a much more effective and extensive system in the east bay.