I wrote last month about the many problems confronting Oakland’s transportation planning process. With civic leaders pushing new ballparks, my thoughts turned to the transportation aspects of planning a major entertainment destination. Two of the announced sites were West of Jack London Square, including a site called Jack London North that has stirred significant interest (and is the most popular plan in a poll at Oakland Local). But it poses some serious transportation access problems, including being certainly outside of what can be considered reasonable walking distance from BART (as is AT&T Park in San Francisco, of course). Without an up-to-date downtown transportation plan or even summary information, it’s hard to blame decision-makers for not knowing the transportation context of grand plans. But what is really striking is how important many downtown plans consider ferry service to be, from Jack London Square developments to the proposed shuttle service, yet those making the plans clearly are unaware of the ferry’s serious shortcomings, including the likelihood that Oakland will lose its ferry service in five years.

All the information below can be found in WETA’s Transition Plan.

The City of Alameda, in partnership with the Port of Oakland and Alameda County (ACTIA), provides a commuter ferry to San Francisco called the Alameda – Oakland Ferry. Its operations are contracted to Blue & Gold Fleets, using two publicly-owned ferries. Alameda, like many other cities, subsidizes this transit service out of its General Fund, and the Port of Oakland also contributes a significant sum yearly out of general revenues, for a total subsidy of about four million dollars. Next year, the new Water Emergency Transit Authority will take over operating the service, but WETA is only committed to maintain current service for five years. So here’s the problem: the Port doesn’t want to keep paying, and WETA wants to expand service to South San Francisco, which will require increased subsidy. With Port and City budgets squeezed, the future of ferry service is very much up in the air.

The present state of ferry service is also a big problem. Everyone seems to assume that people use the ferry, but the truth is that almost nobody rides it. Ridership declined ten percent from 1997 to 2008, and has dropped 15% in the current fiscal year. The ferry’s maximum roundtrip capacity is only 2328 passengers a day,* and average daily ridership is a pitiful 640 people**, with two-thirds of commuters coming from Alameda (though most weekend trips originate in Oakland). Because Jack London Square and Alameda are so far from BART, and SF’s Ferry Terminal is in a major job center, there are several thousand people that could use the ferry to commute, but they don’t. The ferry is slow, expensive, and frankly, unpleasant to ride. There’s no signage, no ferry employees outside of the ferry itself, no waiting area, the ferries’ interiors are shabby, and the snacks and alcohol bar is woefully underutilized. On top of that, tickets are expensive. And what kind of “emergency” transit closes during a rainstorm? Unless WETA addresses these problems, ferry ridership can’t increase significantly enough for the ferry to be a real transit option.

If City officials are going to say that Jack London Square’s ferry pier is a transportation option, or attempt to make any plans including it, Oakland must determine the future of the ferry. The City should ask the Port and Alameda to explain their plans for ferry subsidy over the next ten years. Oakland should tell WETA in no uncertain terms that if they want Oakland to commit to long-term funding, WETA’s multimillion-dollar planned investments in Berkeley and South San Francisco should be matched by investments in Oakland. To determine how much of a commitment public agencies should make, Oakland should also find out what plans WETA has for increasing ferry ridership, because current levels don’t justify a continued subsidy. Local leaders are making plans based around a ferry service that is clearly failing, with no plan to improve it or to ensure it doesn’t disappear. Burdened by a chaotic and unfocused transportation bureaucracy and decision-making structure, it’s unclear who is keeping an eye on Oakland’s transit infrastructure, even as it slips away.

** 466,818 trips in FY 2007-2008, divided by 365 days, divided by two trips/person, means an average of only 640 people rode the ferry each day during that period. Remember, this includes Alameda as well as Oakland; Alameda passengers represent about 2/3s of the riders, so the Jack London Square ferry terminal is only serving about 220 people on an average day.

Last week I wrote about the problems with Oakland’s transportation decision-making process. Existing problems include not only a lack of planning for future investment, but flawed approaches to oversight of public and private transportation projects for compliance with city goals, poor coordination with other cities and agencies, and an almost incoherent division of transportation responsibilities both within the bureaucracy and at the City Council level. A Transportation Commission is floated as one solution to that problem. Before thinking about what a Transportation Commission or other changes to transportation decision-making would look like in Oakland, it’s instructive to look at other cities’ approaches. I examined the transportation structures of a dozen West Coast cities, and Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan’s office shared their research on Transportation Commissions with me.

Rather than list all of the cities and their different approaches to transportation decision-making, I will summarize three different models of transportation decision-making and use representative examples. Many cities have advisory-only transportation commissions with no real power and a limited or unclear mandate for review, much like Oakland and its Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (which I chair). Some cities have Transportation Commissions with some real power, and City Council Committees that unify transportation policymaking. And two cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco, have powerful independent transportation authorities with a clear mandate and substantial, though appealable, authority.

Advisory-only transportation committees

Berkeley, Portland, and Seattle all have advisory-only committees. All three cities have both Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committees, with varying levels of oversight mandates. Portland and Seattle have regional transportation authorities, and don’t have city-level Transportation Commissions. Berkeley has a Transportation Commission, but its only role is advisory, and it doesn’t have a clear mandate (for example, the Planning Commission, not the Transportation Commission, reviewed both Bus Rapid Transit and the new ferry service). Berkeley’s City Council has no committees beyond Rules, so there’s no transportation committee; Seattle’s Council coordinates its transportation policy message to regional agencies with a Council Committee; and Portland has a very different governing structure than California cities. None of these cities encourage its transportation commissions to examine private development projects. All in all, these cities do not have a very different approach to transportation decision-making than Oakland.

Some independent transportation authority

Alameda, Long Beach, and San Diego are examples of a middle ground between advisory-only and authoritative Transportation Commissions. In San Diego, the Land Use and Housing Committee of the City Council hears all transportation-related issues, including parking and encroachments, making it easier to have a coherent policy. The city does not enjoy a Transportation Commission, or even a bike or ped advisory committee, but does have a Community Planning Advisory Committee and an Airports Advisory Committee, with substantial oversight over some aspects of transportation. Long Beach doesn’t have City Council Committees, but has an independent Public Transportation Commission that oversees its city-run bus system (Oakland, by the way, does have a city-run bus system, and is planning to expand it, yet has no transit authority figure).

Alameda’s Transportation Commission not only has a clear mandate to review transportation policy and the transportation aspects of major projects (and Environmental Impact Reports), but serves as the public appeal board for decisions made by the Department of Public Works. In Oakland, the Planning Director’s decisions are appealable to the Planning Commission, but other internal decisions are either unappealable or only appealable directly to the full City Council. By providing a venue to appeal decisions on minor encroachments, for example, the Alameda Transportation Commission relieves the City Council of some time-consuming tasks, while reinforcing the unity of the transportation decision-making. The Alameda Transportation Commission, however, has multiple vacancies, and Alameda does not seem to be doing a great job with transit planning (though at least they have some ideas!).

Transportation commissions with real power

Los Angeles and San Francisco have institutional structures devoted to transportation. The LA City Council has a Transportation Committee, and San Francisco has an independent Metropolitan Transportation Authority with significant power. Los Angeles operates a Department of Transportation (LADOT), unifying all transportation-related service in one organization, as does San Francisco, whose MTA arose from a combined Department of Public Transit Parking and Traffic and MUNI in 1999. LADOT has an advisory committee roughly equivalent to a Transportation Commission, with significant authority over transportation decision-making, including ambulance licenses, off-street parking, transportation planning, and encroachments; In SF, all such decisions are made by Mayor-appointed SFMTA. Both LADOT and SF have separate Taxi Commissions. The LA City Council and SF Board of Supervisors maintain ultimate authority over transportation decisions but rarely get involved on non-budget issues.

Conclusion

It is apparent that there are several models for expanding and unifying transportation decision-making with an independent body. For City Councils, the LA and San Diego model of placing all transportation issues in one committee seems to work well. But there is a huge difference between the SFMTA, whose decisions are hardly ever appealed to the Board of Supervisors, and the Alameda Transportation Commission, which is clearly subservient to the City Council and doesn’t have much budgetary authority. LADOT’s Board of Transportation Commissioners are invested with similar powers to the SFMTA, yet their decisions are more explicitly subject to City Council review.

The virtue of creating an independent authority would be to tap expertise in the community while relieving the Council of some of its more mundane duties, like examining encroachments. The BPAC is meant to advise city staff, yet has no mandate over anything but the bike-ped program so has to resort to wheedling to hear private or redevelopment projects. The LA Commission is structured to advise staff, but in reality has similar powers to the SFMTA, which is meant to be the final word. Both the Alameda and Berkeley Commissions are mandated to merely advise the Council, yet Alameda’s Commission has real power and unified authority while Berkeley’s has neither. Other cities vary in their Transportation Commission’s bureaucratic placement (ie, advising staff versus advising the Council), power and mandate, and scope of authority. Oakland has many models to examine when planning its own Transportation Commission, but which one is best?

The lack of coordination on transportation extends to the City Council level. Transportation issues are split up among different Council Committees, making it harder to have a coordinated policy: parking fees are at Finance, investments and most policies go to Development, most right-of-way issues go to Public Works, and taxi regulation goes to Public Safety. Meanwhile, Oakland’s representatives on major transit agencies are scattershot: Rebecca Kaplan is our representative to ACTIA (the County’s main funding agency for transportation), Jane Brunner is our representative to the MTC-ABAG Joint Policy Committee, and CM Reid is Oakland’s voice on the Congestion Management Agency, which is the County’s transportation planning authority. A casual observer of transit issues will know that these three Councilmembers don’t see eye-to-eye on transit issues.

Though Oakland’s economy and cityscape is defined by transportation more than any other factor, the city has ignored transportation planning and has no coordinated or formalized means of addressing a whole host of transportation issues, from parking ratios for new buildings to bus stop locations. There is absolutely no planning whatsoever for transit improvements, and, frankly, CM Reid seems to be intent on preventing Oakland from making any transit investments now that he has approval for the Airport Connector, using his positions on the Congestion Management Agency and the Bus Rapid Transit Steering Committee to undermine BRT without doing anything that his bus-dependent constituents would even notice. In 2006, the Mayor’s Transportation Task Force recommended (PDF) creating a Transportation Commission “to develop. implement, and prioritize transportation strategies,” yet this idea was only half-formed and didn’t address many of the problems outlined above.

Can these problems be addressed with a Transportation Commission? Does the City Council have to restructure its own appointments and committee system in order to address transportation issues? Do City agencies need to be reorganized in order to create a Transportation Department, or can the Task Force’s suggestion of a “go-to person” and a working group be sufficient? Do you agree that the issues outlined above are real problems, or is Oakland doing just fine transportation-wise? Like almost everything else that came out of the Mayor’s Task Forces, the Transportation Commission idea has gone nowhere, but if the idea is worthwhile, there may be an opportunity to revive it. But that begins with identifying the problem. In this case, the problem may be bigger than the proposed solution.

UPDATE: I added a link to the Transportation Task Force report (PDF).

Today, the attention of the blogoaksphere has turned to the open seat on the AC Transit Board. The largest bus-only transit agency in the United States will appoint a member to replace Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, and transit activists as well as other concerned leaders are weighing in. I am proud to report that East Bay transit advocates have conducted an endorsement process, and chosen Elizabeth Echols (PDF) as the best candidate to replace Ms. Kaplan.

Last year I asked a respected community leader to apply for this seat. After seriously considering it, he declined due to other commitments to important causes. Since I did not know any of the candidates personally or from their work as transit advocates, I felt it was important for transit activists to have a role in the process of choosing our new transit director. In January I invited several leaders of different transit advocacy groups to meet and discuss the open AC Transit seat. We decided that, instead of putting forth one of our own as a candidate, we would offer our joint endorsement.

We put together a detailed questionnaire and sent it to the candidates that we had heard about (including three of the four finalists). The questionnaire was created with input from leaders of every East Bay transit advocacy group: Walk Oakland Bike Oakland, Friends of BRT, the No on KK Committee, Alameda Transit Advocates, the City of Oakland Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, Bicycle-Friendly Berkeley, Livable Berkeley, the East Bay Bicycle Coalition, and TransForm. (I am on the Oakland BPAC and was on the No on KK campaign committee.)

We scheduled interviews with the respondents and talked to them about their qualifications, their vision and priorities for the agency, and followed-up on some of their answers to our questions. I attended all but one interview, and found them incredibly informative. The candidates explained different facets of the challenges facing AC Transit: one explained exactly how the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s totally ass-backwards financing priorities screw AC Transit (apparently they think bus stops are just as useful to the regional transportation infrastructure as new desks for administrators), another had a very in-depth understanding of the position of the drivers and mechanics (they are concerned about working conditions, and understand the agency’s financial pressures), and another related his experiences as a rider advocate and how the agency works with community groups (rather well, in his opinion, as long they know about a project).

Walking to our endorsement meeting in transit-proximate Old Oakland, I didn’t know who would be our consensus choice. There are many strong candidates. But one offered the combination of experience, new ideas, and appropriate priorities that appealed to everyone at the table: Alameda County Democratic Central Committeemember Elizabeth Echols. A former Google executive who served on the technology cluster of the Obama-Biden Transition Team, she has a fresh perspective on the agency, new ideas about improving service using technology and data, but also a solid grasp of the importance of service reliability to attracting and maintaining an expanded ridership base. Her energy and political connections will allow her to help the agency get approval for the best Bus Rapid Transit system in the next few months, and help her work with regional, state and federal officials to improve the agency’s long-term financial health. I am pleased to be one of many local transit advocates to endorse her candidacy, and I am confident she is able to help guide AC Transit through its troubling financial times without sacrificing the needs of both “choice riders” and the transit-dependent.

It is no secret that there are many qualified individuals applying for this seat. When the Board voted on its four finalists, a former Boardmember who had applied was not among them – that’s a clear signal that the agency is extremely pleased with the quality of those who want to join the Board. With the overwhelming electoral victories racked up by AC Transit last November (78% voted no on Berkeley’s anti-BRT measure KK, and 72% of the district’s voters backed a parcel tax to make up for last year’s state budget cuts), and the caliber of those vying to lead it through a recession, it is clear that AC Transit is on the right track. All transit advocates are pleased by these developments, and the phrase “embarrassment of riches” to describe the selection of a new Boardmember has been used by more than one observer. This is a far cry from six years ago, when Rebecca Kaplan was the only well-qualified applicant for this open seat. Though transit advocates will be satisfied with any of the four finalists to represent us on the East Bay’s largest and most important transportation agency, Elizabeth Echols is the best choice, and we hope that Board will agree.

For a list of all five blogs that today endorsed Ms. Echols, see A Better Oakland’s Elizabeth Echols for AC Transit

Tuesday January 20 2009 the Oakland City Council will vote on final environmental and legal approval of the showcase Oak-To-Ninth (O29) development on two peninsulas comprising 64 acres immediately east of the Jack London District straddling the Lake Merritt Channel. 170 boat slips in two marinas, 200,000 square feet of retail space, 32 acres of waterfront parkland and bike/ped trails, and 3100 homes (including 465 low-income family-sized apartments), will transform a long-abandoned break-bulk cargo facility. Despite the obvious benefits of such a landmark development, the small group of activists who waged a referendum and then a lawsuit attempting to halt the project are still objecting to its construction.

Yesterday, Joyce Roy published an op-ed in Berkeley’s NIMBY mouthpiece, the Planet. She rehashed many of the false and misleading claims of the anti-O29 referendum committee, who grossly oversimplified redevelopment agency financing and mischaracterized the open-space and transportation elements of the plan. A brief rebuttal: the city is not paying out-of-pocket for the affordable housing, the land price is discounted because of enormous environmental cleanup costs, living near a freeway is normal in Oakland, and AC Transit and Signature are committed to establishing new transit service once the area is developed. This blog documented these falsehoods during the referendum campaign, and using the same arguments City Attorney John Russo successfully defended the city against the referendum. With a few technicalities left for the city to clean up, opponents still haven’t given up.

Oakland’s neighborhood listserves have for about a month hosted a concerted campaign to stir up opposition to O29, seemingly to little success, perhaps because Oaklanders have other things on their minds. This week, some called for the delay of the Council’s vote, because their meeting on the 20th conflicts with Barack Obama’s inauguration as President and so would inconvenience those who want to speak on the item. But the City Council meeting Tuesday evening does not conflict with the inauguration, which is in the morning. One does not have a constitutional right to party. The vote was not rescheduled. In contrast, the sidewalk liability ordinance was delayed by Jane Brunner’s Rules Committee, presumably to provide more opportunity for public input.

Because there has been plenty of public input on the Oak-To-Ninth project. One the petitioners’ more outrageous claims was that there had not been adequate public involvement in planning the O29 area, invoking one of Oakland’s sacred cows. To the contrary, O29’s plan was developed with three years of public and private meetings between Signature Properties and community members and groups, in addition to the formal planning process which provided a dozen opportunities to plead one’s case to decision-makers. Not only did Signature carefully develop a landmark plan with extraordinary public involvement, but they struck a deal with a large coalition of special interest groups to provide community benefits in the form of apprenticeship and local hiring programs, and to ensure that the affordable housing truly serves community needs (unlike, say, BMR condos).

The real issue on the table is not whether O29 inappropriately demolishes a 1950s warehouse or should contain 540 housing units instead of 3100. The court did not void the approvals of the project or uphold many of the opponents’ claims. Basically, three parts of the Environmental Impact Report were found inadequate: analyses of cumulative impacts, of earthquake risk, and of traffic. After receiving further technical studies, the city found that cumulative impacts are insignificant and earthquake risks are mitigated by California’s strict building code. The city did, however, find that traffic delays at five intersections would be unacceptable in 2025. That means that drivers in the future (assuming that people don’t drive any less) may have to wait two minutes to pass through a green light. The Oakland City Council is asked Tuesday night to legally declare, “tough titties.” It’s time they did so.

A new year presents the opportunity to dream and hope for the new. It may seem that this is not the best moment to hope for new transit service: not only will a slipping economy mean less sales-tax revenue from which to fund local transit, but one state budget-balancing idea includes stripping local transit agencies of operating subsidies in order to jump-start the construction of High Speed Rail. This rests on a calculus that High-Speed Rail will create construction jobs, while transit service merely takes people to their existing jobs. From this government-centric perspective, efficiency and broadly-shared benefits lose to glamorous and expensive new projects. Similarly, BART wants to cut existing service while still building new stations in suburbs where ridership is likely to be low. But the East Bay is about to see enormous transit improvements that are incredibly cost-effective, and a less-cost-effective project is getting another chance.

The handful of choke points connecting Alameda to Oakland’s transportation system have long bedeviled planners. Car access is considered adequate, and only a new bike/ped/transit crossing is being studied, with options to be presented to Oakland and Alameda later this year. However, the need to fit a large Coast Guard ship on the estuary is a major physical barrier to building a bridge. A drawbridge would be useless to buses because it would introduce delays, and building a tall crossing would be prohibitively expensive. But Alameda has figured out how to create reliable transit service with just a bucket of paint: bus queue-jump lanes leading to the Posey Tube. By prioritizing buses over private traffic through the tube, buses avoid a significant bottleneck and restore reliability, at basically zero cost to the public. The lanes should be painted soon.

Though not quite free, Bus Rapid Transit is extraordinarily low-cost transit service that can accommodate tens of thousands of daily riders in its eight-mile corridor for only $250m, all of which has been secured. The Measure KK vote in Berkeley shows that the general public strongly supports Bus Rapid Transit, which confirms my personal experience: everyone I tell about it immediately grasps the concept and the benefit of bus-only lanes, and very few grumble that rail would be better or that cars deserve every last inch of asphalt. The project qualifies for the Federal Small Starts program because of its cost-effectiveness (a metric often not met by rail projects), and all funding has been secured including a generous allotment for overruns. Such a large transportation benefit for little cost, though perhaps uninteresting to state-level politicians, is the perfect project for a recession.

Ironically, as BRT proves its popularity and its cost-effectiveness becomes more valuable, several developments may have made an Oakland streetcar idea more feasible. Unveiled in 2001,  the multi-jurisdictional Long-Range Investment Study looked at BART to Jack London Square, improved transit connection to Alameda, and various Rapid Transit options (BRT, LRT, and a streetcar). Ultimately most ideas were found to be expensive or otherwise infeasible. Out of this study only the aforementioned transit plans are progressing. A MacArthur BART-Downtown-JLS-O29 streetcar circulator was found to be very expensive and have no identifiable funding source, and a cheaper “rubber-tire trolley” suggested by Councilmember Nancy Nadel was not studied. Yet, in the five years since a Congestion Management Agency meeting I attended in 2003 where those conclusions were reached, several funding sources for a downtown streetcar may have presented themselves.

Without radically rejiggering the Central District Redevelopment Area’s spending formula (which provides the vast majority of funds for citywide affordable housing projects), there is no obvious financing mechanism for a downtown streetcar. The City Center and Lake Merritt office districts alone could not bear the costs, and those property owners would be unlikely to see great benefit in shipping their tenants off to Jack London Square for lunch. But the Jack London Square II project is building a substantial amount of office space, and if O29 is approved soon, there will be thousands of new residents needing new transit service. But the real clincher is the Conley Report proposal for a Mid-Broadway large-scale retail district. Since there’s no BART station between 20th and 40th Streets, and the city will be hard-pressed to fund thousands of parking spaces to support new retailers, new transit service will also be needed at the other end of the proposed streetcar route, up Broadway to the MacArthur BART station. With a mix of new retail, office and residential large-scale development along the proposed streetcar line, the prospects for its funding are much brighter, especially as it combines transportation with economic development, and is a large infrastructure project that would create jobs.

As promised in her inauguration speech, Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan will tomorrow present an urgent proposal to the Oakland City Council Rules Committee. She will ask that Oakland add actual infrastructure projects to its federal stimulus request which was woefully lacking when drawn up by the mayor, and adopt a strategy for lobbying Congress to get as many projects funded as possible. Transportation projects are expected to get additional attention, from implementing the Bicycle Master Plan to repaving every street and sidewalk in the city. Even though simple and cost-effective transit solutions are becoming more apparent, with the opportunities presented at the federal and local level (from Obama’s stimulus to Oakland’s retail revitalization plan), new transportation improvements are getting a fresh look and perhaps a fresh start.

Though Oakland does not have a Transportation Commission, the city does plan major transportation improvements. However, there’s no one resource for learning about proposals, no regularly scheduled meetings on transportation policy, and no consistent decision-making process. In the next seven days, three important public meetings offer the opportunity to aid the city’s transportation needs.

Bus Rapid Transit

Bus Rapid Transit, the world’s most successful transit service, has proven controversial in Berkeley, with bus opponents launching an initiative to “leave our streets alone” (I am part of the campaign against this measure). Heated rhetoric aside, this is a major transportation improvement that deserves more attention from Oaklanders and policy-makers. North Oaklanders, and indeed anyone who plans to ever take transit to North Oakland destinations not adequately served by BART (like Temescal or Koreatown), are invited to learn more about the proposal tomorrow. (Thanks for the reminder, Becks!)

Jane Brunner’s Community Advisory Meeting on BRT

Saturday Oct 11, 10a

Peralta Elementary School, 460 63rd St

UPDATE: Becks reports on the BRT meeting at Living in the O.

Taxi Service

Think Taxi service in Oakland is adequate? Never waited too long for a taxi? Never spent hours calling the only two cab dispatchers in this city of over 400,000 people? Never resorted for a female friend’s throaty phone voice to get you a taxi back from a West Oakland warehouse party? Never missed an Oakland Opera performance because there just weren’t any cabs at 7pm in the DTO? Then this meeting is not for you.

Biannual meeting on adequacy of permitted taxi service

Monday, Oct 13, 7p

Hearing Room One, City Hall

(If you cannot attend the meeting, comments can be sent to Assistant City Administrator Barb Killey, bkilley at oaklandnet dot com)

UPDATE: Not many people came, but everyone who spoke was a regular (at least weekly) taxi user and said Oakland needs more cabs. I also heard from several people that they didn’t know about the meeting, and there was no notice on the city’s website.

Oakland – Alameda Transit Connections

With the expected development of the rest of the former Alameda Naval Air Base, the issue of providing improved public transit access from Oakland to Alameda is even more pressing. Proposals range anywhere from amphibious buses to Bus Rapid Transit to a “futuristic” monorail. Oakland’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, of which I am a member, invites the public to comment on ways to bridge the Estuary.

Estuary Crossing Study

Thursday, Oct 16, 5:30p

Hearing Room 4, City Hall

Once again, the heat is unbearable, and the Interweb is cool. Links for this holiday Friday follow.

Nationally-focused but Oakland-based blogger Impetuous Young Whippersnapper tells you “how (to) know your elected officials are incompetent.” Hint: it has something to do with handling crime.

Jesse Douglas Allen Taylor of the Berkeley Weekly Planet suggests Mayor Dellums convene a task force to get a handle on crime (it’s at the very end of his 1666-word column).

The OakBook reports that Estaban Sabar Gallery, the first high-end art gallery in Uptown, is closing so that Mr. Sabar and his husband, painter Marty McCorkle, can escape to tropics to focus on making art instead of running a business. Mr. Sabar promises to come back, but First Friday will never be same.

The Alameda Sun reports on a community meeting about the Naval Base redevelopment. Both proposals presented would require repealing Measure A, which limits housing density on The Island to duplexes (!). What’s in it for Oakland, you ask? Well, having jettisoned the ski lift to BART proposal from years ago, developer SunCal wants to build a Personal Rapid Transit system, also advocated by one of the leading proposals for the Oakland Army Base reuse. The Sun brings up several problems with this “monorail,” besides that, you know, there isn’t a single successful example of this technology in the entire world.

CBS5’s Eye on Blogs take a break from vacation to post a hilarious error from SFGate.com.

Opinion-Maker In Chief Chip Johnson indulges in the “royal we” while being the first to report that Mayor Dellums is actually, officially, formally, admittedly, on indefinite vacation.

Ballot arguments have been filed for local propositions. Call the City Clerk and ask for them if you don’t want to wait a month. Four local ballot questions impact Oakland. OUSD’s school tax, opposed by both anti-tax types as well as the teachers’ union (because it dares to share the proceeds with fast-growing charter schools), is Measure N. In Berkeley, a proposal that would complicate the regional Bus Rapid Transit plan centered in downtown Oakland is Measure KK. Back in Oakland, the police parcel tax is Measure NN, and Kids First 2 is Measure OO. What do NN and OO spell, when presented vertically as on the ballot?

N N

O O

Happy Labor Day!