Today is a Furlough Friday, when the City of Oakland’s non-emergency services are closed to the public. Because of the Martin Luther King holiday, the City has a four-day weekend. Branch libraries will be closed on Tuesday as well. Oaklanders have come to accept that our ever-worsening budget crisis will mean a decrease in City services, but is closing up shop the best way to reduce expenses? The experience of furloughs over the last year, especially during the holiday season, has severely and unfairly impacted citizens, without addressing the long-term sustainability of the City payroll.
Closing the library over the holidays was criminal: it was in total contradiction to an important educational goal of the library system. When students aren’t in school, the library allows them to continue or catch up on their studies, and eases the burden on their parents. We didn’t need a Chronicle article to tell us how awful it was to have this vital public service completely closed exactly when it was most needed. The library furloughs are in addition to losing a day of branch library service every week, an 18% cut. Some Councilmembers like to say that they were able to balance last year’s budget without closing libraries: in fact, the libraries are now closed a lot, and of course the budget isn’t balanced.
For most people, the library (along with senior centers, rec centers and parks) is their primary use of the service side of Oakland City government (as opposed to the enforcement side). But for many others, losing access to various city services is a major hassle. Like other active citizens, I often contact Code Enforcement, the Planning Department, and Council staff. Professionally, I use city services, whether it’s the permit desk, the business license department, the bike/ped program, the facade improvement program, or Business Attraction. Removing 5% of city service hours has a commensurate impact on the private sector, and of course the City’s sclerotic bureaucracy can’t easily adjust to odd schedules.
Because Oakland’s budget problems are only going to get worse, short-term fixes like furloughs deprive citizens of needed services without providing a long-term budget solution. The City unions prefer furloughs to pay cuts because furloughs are theoretically temporary and don’t affect baseline pay, and because they want the public to feel their pain. But the public deserves access to services, not painful closures. If the City is going to downsize services, we should reduce the nature and breadth of services, not cut service hours. Students shouldn’t be punished because the City can’t afford its payroll, the highest in the nation according to the US Census. Oakland has a part-time City Council, but we deserve a full-time City.
I do not disagree with you that furloughs are a poor solution to structural problems. Furloughs only work if you are experiencing a temporary problem. Unfortunately, Oakland has serious structural problems, yet still needs to solve short-term budgetary needs. The good thing is that in the long run everything is variable. We can only hope that the city leadership stops catering to the needs of the few M OO and the unions and actually implement policy that is for the good of Oakland.
The city has justified paying police OT because it is cheaper than hiring additional cops and paying their benefits. Used responsibly OT can leverage an existing workforce (assuming they’re not so tired they make dumb or dangerous misjudgements, or develope high disability rates as OPD has).
Furloughs are the anti-OT: Because many of the most expensive benefits paid to city workers are fixed amounts, we are screwing ourselves by paying higher benefits per fewer employee hours of service to the residents. Arguably we are also screwing the employees by giving many of them false hope that the good ol days are just around the corner.
-len raphael
temescal
Much better to cut benefits, but the unions would strike, sue and otherwise continue their work to bankrupt the city and state, just like they bankrupted GM, Chrysler, TWA, etc etc.
initially furloughs had the one benefit of giving employees a chance to look for other jobs (lol right now) while still employed. for all i know our mayor really believed his own rhetoric that he was going to secure enough grants to save the day. cc just wanted to delay massive cuts until the citizens finally understood that we’re facing fiscal and service disaster.
regardless of motivations, at this point furloughs just give false hope to the employees and increase the deficit making even worse cuts necessary.
Much better solution to reduce salaries and benefits. Oakland public employees rank with the most overpaid in the entire country, per the City’s own survey.
All salaries over 100k reduced 20 %, especially fire. And yes reduce police overtime spendf
All salaries over 70k reduced 10 %
All salaries over 50k reduced 5%
Budget problem solved with no reduction in services.