East Bay Conservative

In case you hadn’t heard, Berkeley took only 9 minutes to fill up the slots for its “innovative” program to pay for rooftop solar installations over time using property taxes.

Proponents lauded this measure, which passed handily, for allowing the average homeowner to pay the hefty $28,000 pricetag for a typical system by tacking on only $182 a month to his property tax bill.

On the surface, this seems like a good deal, and some have even suggested that it could be a model nationwide. Sadly, not only is it a bad deal, it’s an environmental disaster.

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By now most readers have heard the news that the Oakland Police Department graduated a new class of cops, bringing the total staffing above the magic 800 number for the first time in recent history. At the same time, there’s a fair bit of bellyaching that this accomplishment will not make a significant difference to the city.

There also is some discussion of how this feat serves as some sort of vindication for Mayor Dullums. Let me counter that assertion first and then move on to the question of what this will mean for Oakland residents.

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Rather than submitting a list of endorsements or suggestions for your review this election day, I’d like to suggest that you reconsider the value of even participating in the process at all.

There’s been a lot of discussion of various platitudes this election season, as there is every four years. I see people on the television telling me that they expect some resurrection of “hope” or “change” if one candidate or another wins the election. The same thing goes, to a lesser degree, for local elections.

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