5 to 3 vote at City Council approves 4-hour parking in district
This evening, after an at times dizzying and confusing discussion, the City Council voted by 5 ayes to 3 noes to approve the Public Works Committee proposal to adopt 4-hour parking throughout the majority of the Jack London District, but without any mixed-use permit scheme. After the vote community members in the public audience expressed their dismay audibly with boos before leaving.

Prior to tonight's meeting the four person Public Works Committee had been unable to find majority support for the mixed use permit plan proposed by the community based ad-hoc on-street parking improvement committee. Eventually the Nadel and Quan moved that the committee approve four-hour time limited parking in the district but without the permit plan. The hope was this would at least get the issues in front of the city council and give a chance for other council members to add support to the community's desire for a mixed-use permit scheme.

In the debate at city council our local district representative Nancy Nadel lead out with justifications why she believed the city should consider a mixed-use parking permit plan in the district. Nadel cut down "transit first" arguments with the fact that bus services to the area had been reduced in recent times from three to one, and that many of our workers come from areas not served by transit. This added to previous public comments that the reason residents were parking on the streets was because they were sometimes or always taking public transit to work, hence preventing daily resident parking would actually have the reverse effect of encouraging residents to drive to work!

Nadel also addressed the parking meter revenue comparison arguments used by Brooks by arguing that there are many areas in Oakland where parking meters had been introduced and are unused all day. This is because they are in areas where no one can meter parking or even if they can is able to leave work several times a day to feed them. Without a strong base of hourly parkers frequenting the district there is no justification at all for introducing hourly charged parking, or pricing based on a comparison with hourly parking. "Its comparing apples to oranges", said Nadel.

Jean Quan seconded Nadel's motion to support the original Ad-hoc committee's mixed-use permit plan. She emphasized that the plan sunsets after three years and addresses the needs of a neighborhood in transition while protecting the city from copy-cat resolutions for other areas where the same conditions simply don't apply. Quan also whacked at transit-first arguments by citing how Oaklanders are finding its easier to take a bus to San Francisco than to their own downtown. Clearly transit first doesn't just mean anti-car, it also requires active investment in making transit a better alternative.

Unfortunately the four members of City council who are not on the public works committee were unable reach a consensus.

While councilmember Larry Reid made no comments at all, Danny Wan quizzed city planning commissioner Claudia Cappio. Being concerned that four hour permits would leave workers with no place to park he asked Cappio if there was sufficient off-street parking. Cappio could only answer that there "was availability" and that neighborhood lots were "not at saturation". With 1700 or more workers in the area and probably several hundred residential cars on the street this was a vital question.

Unfortunately Wan did not pursue Cappio to find out how many spaces were available and at what price which was lucky for Cappio because this information is not known. However it is know that the Jack London Square redevelopment project if banking on taking all the excess capacity from the Washington St. garage, our neighborhood's lot with most excess capacity, currently estimated at 350 spaces. That project will also require a seven level 1000+ space garage on the site of the current Amtrak lot which will be completely utilized by planned developments.

Wan was also very concerned that approving a permit scheme in our neighborhood would set a precedent and "open up Pandora's box". Eventually he concluded he had no problem with residential only permits but believed that business employees must purchase spaces in off-street lots. Wan also said that if parking meters were the proposed alternative then he "could see the problem". "I don't see parking meters proposed anywhere here as an alternative", he said. In doing so he ask Cappio if that was the case and was told no parking meters were being proposed. While it is true that in front of the council was no such proposal, such a statement was in direct contradiction to the original proposal by the city to local residents of parking meters everywhere that prompted the formation of the Jack London District ad-hoc parking committee.

Councilmember Brunner asked a lot of questions about the specifics of the proposed permit plan. She then pointed out how Rockridge already has a permit scheme that allows businesses to have parking permits. Although only one permit per business is allow she believed this meant there is a problem (business parking) to be solved everywhere in Oakland. Brunner said she believed any permit scheme must not be subsidized and hence must be revenue neutral or positive. Although Rockridge already has business permits she believed that the mixed-use permit plan proposal is precedent setting regardless of any 3 year time limit because so many neighborhoods are wanting just such a thing concluding, "Once we do it it'll be here forever and everywhere".

Ignacio De La Fuente concurred with Brunner that a mixed-use permit scheme would be precedent setting, but went on to raise many issues supporting such a precedent. In his district he had teachers struggling to feed meters for parking near their schools and such a scheme would clearly benefit them and many other workers. While thanking the community for their hard work in formulating such a solution he noted "we have to be careful" and cited problems of businesses with lots of money buying all the permits and stopping residents from getting any. He also cited his personal experience that at 7:30am when he has meetings at the local Cuckoo's Nest restaurant there always seems to be lots of parking. This error which was thankfully corrected by Nadel - by 8 or 9am all parking is gone leaving retailers and visitors with nowhere to park.

Councilmembers Desley Brooks and Henry Chang trotted out their same old objections expressed in the public works committee. Chang reiterated that a mixed-use plan was clearly against the transit-first policy and that the city could not subsidize parking. In the same breath he contradicted himself by saying he had no problem at all with a residential permit scheme in the area indicating he believes "transit-first" only applies to businesses, something it clearly does not. Brooks choose not to hear Nadel's earlier arguments and again cited her comparison of the ad-hoc committee's permits costs with meter revenues.

In a second round of comments Jean Quan emphasized the revenue aspects of the communities proposal and how up to $60,000 in profit could be made from it which included hiring 1.5 extra city staff for administration and enforcement. She also noted that staff's analysis and no ones comments failed to take into consideration loss of revenue caused by established businesses with hundreds of employees leaving the district. Del la Fuente suggested the Public Works Committee 4-hour proposal should be accepted with a provision that City Staff go and work on solving the issues of a mixed-use permit scheme for the various districts of Oakland.

Jane Brunner took the opportunity to call Planning Commissioner Cappio on an earlier statement. She asked why the permit scheme is limited to three years to allow time for additional off-street parking if there was already sufficient off-street parking. Unfortunately ah-hoc chaos prevailed and no answer was forthcoming from Cappio even though Brunner has clearly hit on an important issue in staff's arguments about the permit plan. Concluding Brunner emphasized that clearly our district's problem of parking an business retention is one widely shared and that there was definitely a need to find solutions that work throughout Oakland. "Ultimately", she said, "we either want to keep these business, or we don't".

Eventually the original public works committee proposal for 4-hour parking was moved with a rider that at a later date City staff investigate mixed-use parking permit plan solutions that could be applied throughout the city. A vote of 5 to 3 for was quickly passed. Nadel, Quan and Brunner dissenting preferring that the mixed-use permit plan be solved first before introducing 4-hour parking.

What happens next?

It seems likely the next step will be for the City to follow through tonight's motion by:

a) implementing the time limited zones in the Jack London District through a City Council resolution; and

b) draft a resolution to amend the City's budget by revising revenue expectations and increasing appropriation (omitting reference to the permit parking revenues and decreasing staff time to account for the elimination of the permit parking system administration)

This will give district residents, workers and business owners additional time to lobby their councilmembers and also to turn up at City Council to speak when future resolutions are voted on. Currently there is no indication of how quickly this will happen, and what the chances are that the community can sway the opinions of another two councilmembers to back its permit plan, or reject the 4-hour parking resolution until something better is proposed.

To express your opinion to the three councilmember who might still back a Jack London District mixed-use permit scheme contact:

Danny Wan, District 2; 510-238-7002; dwan@oaklandnet.com
Ignatio De La Fuente, District 5, President; 510-238-7005; idelafuente@oaklandnet.com
Larry Reid, District 7; 510-238-7007; lreid@oaklandnet.com

Those that would like to give thanks to those councilmembers that did support some kind of mixed-used permit plan, and perhaps encourage them to continue to lobby their council collegues, contact:

Nancy Nadel, District 3; (510) 238-7003; nnadel@oaklandnet.com
Jean Quan, District 4; (510) 238-7004; jquan@oaklandnet.com
Jane Brunner, District 1; (510) 238-7001; jbrunner@oaklandnet.com
Posted 6/01/2004