THE TROUBLES WITH HARRY, AND OTHER STUFF

One has to wonder how long the City Council will continue to take the rap for Harry Edwards.

A couple of weeks ago, the Friends of Oakland Parks and Recreation organization gave a slide show presentation at Council meeting, showing the results of their recent survey on the state of Oakland’s public parks. It was pretty disheartening. Among other things, the slides showed a park system that allowed drug paraphernalia to remain openly discarded on picnic tables, bathrooms filled with filth and graffiti, trash cans overfilled and overturned, broken playground equipment, and…in one bizarrity…a swing set with no swings. The ruin seemed to be spread evenly across the city.

Council took the presentation with much apologetic head-shaking, vowing to do a better job. But why should they take the blame? After all, Council only allocates money for the parks and mandates what programs should be operated. Spending the money, operating the programs, and keeping the parks in good shape is the job of Parks and Recreation Director Edwards. And Edwards is hired by Mayor Brown…through the City Manager’s office…not by Council.

Typically, Edwards himself made no public comment about the Friends of Oakland Parks survey and, in fact, didn’t even bother to show up at City Council for the presentation. No one called him to task or publicly asked him to explain how he let things in the parks get so out of hand. Can’t see as I blame him, though. His boss, Jerry Brown, is more worried about reigning in a multi-million dollar casino than he is about operating the parks we already pay for. And Council seems to think it’s better to take the heat themselves than to call Edwards into account. Why, I don’t know.

And while we’re talking about city department heads…

More than once, I’ve seen Council back off a fire department-related policy after learning that Chief Gerald Simon believes it to be a fire hazard. The typical comment you’ll hear from Councilmembers is that there is no need in hiring professionals if you’re not going to rely on their judgment.

That being the case, you wonder why Council has never questioned Police Chief Richard Word about his assertion that the police department "probably made a mistake" last year in chasing the sideshows out of Pac ‘N Save parking lot and onto the city streets. Word has reportedly made the observation—in public—on more than one occasion.

If Nate Miley were still on the Council, he would have called a public hearing before the Council’s Public Safety Committee and brought in representatives from all sides, including the sideshow participants themselves, to try to shake things out and come up with a solution. But Miley is no longer on Council, nor chair of Public Safety. That position has been taken over by Councilmember Larry Reid, who long ago decided that a police crackdown was the best way to deal with the sideshows. A year later, the police overtime costs alone are at least a million dollars, and rising.

And while we’re talking about International Boulevard…

Although it hasn’t gotten much attention in the public or the press, International is going through a slow economic revival, led primarily by Mexican-American food merchants. And I’m not talking about the Fruitvale…which is booming…but in the area going south from Seminary to the San Leandro border. Mexican-American-run grocery stores, mostly Mom and Pop affairs, have been sprouting up in that area for several years now. They’re prospering because they provide the community with something badly needed when the supermarkets pulled out…fresh food, good prices, and a clean environment. And if it weren’t for the after-hours burrito trucks along International every ten blocks or so, I’d have starved on many nights. Some of them now look like they are putting down concrete roots and turning into real restaurants. Meanwhile, you’re beginning to see such operations in the area as an urban cyclery bicycle shop and meat and fish markets. Gradually, a diverse business district is filling in again from what was once a dismal collection of nail shops, liquor stores, auto repair garages, and vacant storefronts. There’s money to be made out here, for those who understand and respect the community.