4. Explain how you, as a member of the City Council, would address these issues facing Alameda: falling revenues, increasing costs, deferred expenses and Alameda Point redevelopment.

Revenues. The recession hasn’t had the same impact in Alameda that it has had in other cities, and, indeed, City staff projects that revenues will remain relatively stable through fiscal year 2016-17. The City’s revenues come from taxes, and there are only two ways to increase tax revenues: increase tax rates or expand the tax base. The voters’ recent rejection of Measure C suggests the electorate doesn’t favor the former option. But exploiting the latter option is more complicated than simply proclaiming support for a “vibrant” business community. Different businesses offer different opportunities. Retail stores generate sales taxes. Office buildings generate property taxes. We’ve got to go after both. And we shouldn’t kid ourselves by touting “out-of-the-box” – some would say, off-the-wall – notions of minting money by making
Alameda a tourist destination.

Renewing Alameda Point potentially would have the most dramatic impact on revenues. Currently, the revenue from commercial leases barely covers the City’s costs. Once the City takes title to the developable area of the Point, we should undertake an aggressive program to market commercial buildings for sale or long-term lease. In exchange, we would want the buyer or lessee to invest in infrastructure and capital improvements. This is the approach that we chose for the Golf Complex – and it can work at the base, too.

Costs. The familiar refrain is that the City has “cut costs to the bone,” and there is simply nothing more that can be done. I don’t buy it. My approach would be to identify the core services demanded by Alameda residents of their government and then determine the most cost effective ways of providing them. If the conclusion is that Alamedans already are getting only essential services at the lowest possible cost, so be it. But let’s be sure.

Here’s an example of what I mean: Fire protection obviously is a core service provided by the City. Back in 2009, the City engaged a consulting firm – the International City/County Management Association (“ICMA”) – to analyze whether it was doing so in a cost-effective way. ICMA came up with a report contending that the City could reduce costs yet maintain acceptable service levels with fewer fire stations and fewer personnel. The Acting City Manager shelved the report, and it was never publicly discussed until it surfaced during the Measure C debate. At that time, both City staff and the firefighters’ union ridiculed the report as full of flaws. They may well be right. But – this time – let’s open up the topic for discussion. If I were on the Council, I’d invite the proponents and opponents of the report’s recommendations to make their case publicly and take questions from not just the Councilmembers but also the public. Who knows? We might learn something. Maybe it will turn out that those who see nowhere to cut expenses are right. Then we’ll have to explore the options of saving costs by out-sourcing services in whole or in part; entering into “public/private partnerships” in which we rely on the generosity of contributors to pay the costs of offering services once provided by the City, or charging citizens “user fees” for services they once got for free.

Deferred expenses. Like unfunded liabilities, deferred expenses are another elephant in the room. When the Fiscal Sustainability Committee was doing its work, the Public Works director estimated that the total cost of improving the City’s infrastructure – e.g., streets, sewers, storm drains, parks and the like – was a whopping $662 million. Nevertheless, the fiscal year 2012-13 budget included only $17.8 million (of which only $1.2 million came from the general fund) for capital projects. Obviously, spending at that level leaves a lot of work left undone. As with the unfunded liabilities for pension and retiree medical benefits, we’re not going to be able to tap the general fund to fill the gap all at once. Bringing the operating budget under control is a necessary but not sufficient first step. We’ll still face a series of hard choices requiring trade-offs between maintaining the current level of services and ensuring that the infrastructure doesn’t disintegrate in the meantime.

Alameda Point. A number of the issues involving the Point bear a striking resemblance to the issues I confronted involving the Chuck Corica Golf Complex: deteriorating infrastructure, unrealistic “master plans,” years of inaction. And my approach to the Point will be similar to the one I took for the Golf Complex: gather and analyze the data; find out what the public wants and what economic reality will permit; seek creative solutions – and get going. Based on what I know now, I would concentrate on three areas:

Ensuring that the western portion of the Point is made clean enough to permit its intended use for a wildlife refuge, open space, and parks;
Proceeding with the planning such as a master infrastructure plan and a base wide environmental impact report that will allow the City to act quickly on proposals for developing sections of the 918-acre eastern portion of the Point; and
Developing the Point in phases but emphasizing, in the first instance, commercial reuse and redevelopment of the Historic District, including, as I discussed above, marketing cleaned-up buildings for sale or long-term lease.

I recently attended a meeting of the Restoration Advisory Board (“RAB”) and came away more convinced than ever that this City has a lot of smart people who think analytically and creatively in identifying problems and proposing solutions. The RAB, of course, focuses on environmental issues, but I’ll bet there are other Alameda citizens with business expertise and no axe to grind who can be enlisted in the effort to renew the Point.