High crime, tight budget, city on edge

It started out like any other Subway sandwich shop -- bright, open, accessible. Then the gunmen showed up, three times in 30 days. Owner Manoj Tripathi closed up shop, fearing for his workers’ safety. He didn’t reopen until a ceiling-high barrier had been built for their protection.

In searching for blame, Tripathi turns to former Rep. Ronald V. Dellums, who took office as mayor nearly two years ago in this embattled and changing Bay Area metropolis.

The septuagenarian rode to office on lofty talk of transforming Oakland into a “model 21st century city” of universal healthcare, green jobs, affordable housing and an unprecedented call to civic action.

But to Tripathi, those are just empty words, “social engineering.”

“Last year, when this was happening, Ron Dellums says no one wants to put too much police on the streets and make it a police state,” Tripathi recalled, indignant. “I’m saying, ‘Ron Dellums, you were elected to clean the streets, to have less crime, to clean the garbage. That’s what a mayor does.’ ”

Nearly halfway through Dellums’ first term, Oakland is in a state of near municipal meltdown. A string of high-profile restaurant robberies terrorized residents throughout the summer. The budget is $42 million in the red; service cuts and layoffs loom.

The city administrator was fired July 1 amid allegations of nepotism and interfering with a police investigation. That critical position remains unfilled, as does the head of economic development. The police chief is on leave, caring for his sick wife, and is expected to step down. The fire chief retires in about a week.

A website has cropped up calling for Dellums’ ouster, and nearly 1,000 have “signed” the unofficial online petition, which declares that “we cannot simply wait for the next election while our ‘Silent Mayor’ lets the city deteriorate.”

Warranted or not, taking potshots at Dellums -- a liberal lion who represented the region for 28 years in Congress and is known for impassioned oratory and a halo of white hair -- has become something of a civic sport.

Critics charge that Dellums, an unlikely combination of dignity and thin skin, has hardly been seen or heard from around town, even as a crime wave sweeps through many neighborhoods and the City Council devolves into bickering and paralysis.

“Anybody Seen Hizzoner?” wondered a headline in the East Bay Express. “Oakland deserves full-time real mayor,” insisted the San Francisco Chronicle. “Oakland hopes for year of action from iconic mayor,” the Oakland Tribune declared, polite but pointed.

Longtime Oakland-based political consultant Larry Tramutola calls this latest chapter in his city’s history “as difficult as any time, perhaps with the exception of the racial unrest of 30 years ago.”

The problem, he said, is “lax leadership. I’m not just talking about the mayor’s office. But it is the most obvious.” Dellums was “clearly, clearly, unprepared for the job.”

For his part, the 72-year-old lifelong politician said his mother’s recent death led to an “epiphany” and made him realize that “it doesn’t matter what other people think. Be focused on what you think’s right to do.”

The key, he said, is to tackle the critical issues facing the city whose helm he took with great fanfare in January 2007, and “let people play their own games.”

“What saddens my heart,” he said last week while talking to reporters during the Mayors’ Technology Summit 2008, “is that we diminish and burlesque the process [of governance] and attempt to reduce it to a personality struggle when this is way bigger than that.”

That said, Dellums acknowledged that being mayor is “absolutely” harder than serving in Congress, where he said he oversaw $300-billion budgets as chair of the House Armed Services Committee.

“I remember when I first got elected, right? I said, ‘Well, I’ve got a $1-billion budget. That’s cool,’ ” he recounted. “ ‘We can bring great change with a billion dollars.’

“And they said, ‘No, Mr. Mayor, half of that budget’s already earmarked, and that’s not in the general fund.’ So I said, ‘OK, I got a half a billion dollars, that’s still a lot of money.’ ”

But police and fire department budgets had to come out of that, his staff told him, so there’s more like $100 million in discretionary funds. Great, he said, “I can create some new programs.” But don’t forget the museums, they said, the libraries, parks and recreation.

“I said, ‘OK, so what do I have?’ ” he continued. “It came down to . . . $2.1 million to create new programs to change the world.”

Not much to work with, particularly for a man who never actually wanted to be mayor. Working as a political consultant since leaving Congress, Dellums was planning a quiet retirement when a local coalition circulated a petition urging him to run.

Outgoing Mayor Jerry Brown had had notable success at boosting local tax revenues, in part by wooing developers in a booming economy. He brought thousands of market-rate housing units to a deserted downtown and instituted a system to gather crime statistics for use in community policing.

But some felt that the boom had passed them by. Crime plagued poorer neighborhoods. Affordable housing had become scarce. The African American community in particular felt that Brown refused to hear their concerns.

An increasingly diverse city -- 34% white, 30% black, 26% Latino and 16% Asian, according to the Census Bureau -- Oakland was in the throes of an identity crisis. Dellums, many felt, was the leader who could unify rich and poor and bring together the city’s multiethnic pieces.

It was a tough job when he took office. It has only gotten tougher.

During Dellums’ first year in office, Oakland was named the fourth “most dangerous city” in America. Although the city sought to discredit the ranking, officials cited it in April when asking the City Council to approve and pay for a new crime-fighting program.

FBI statistics released last month showed Oakland with the highest rate of violent crime in 2007 of all big cities in California. It was No. 5 nationally.

Four years ago, voters approved Measure Y, raising taxes to beef up the police force to 803 sworn officers. On the plus side, the city is on track to finally reach that level this year or the first time -- a major goal for Dellums.

The mayor also negotiated a new police contract that forced concessions from the law enforcement union and helped stretch the department’s thin ranks. And he pushed for a restructuring of the department’s patrol divisions. On Nov. 4, voters will decide on Measure NN, backed by Dellums, which will again raise taxes to put more police officers on the city’s streets.

But a rash of restaurant takeover robberies -- with assailants accosting diners at gunpoint -- set the city on edge. In an August statement, Dellums said the robberies “have struck at the very heart of our community.” Police arrested three suspects in September.

Even the Police Department is not immune from the budget cuts facing California’s eighth biggest city. At a hearing this month, several City Council members suggested that police overtime be cut to help balance the ailing budget.

Dellums had proposed eliminating scores of jobs, closing city offices several days a month, freezing vacancies and increasing parking rates and the cost of parking citations, among other measures.

City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and Councilwoman Jean Quan countered Thursday with a plan that would shut down city offices one day a month, along with the week between Christmas and New Year.

They also proposed eliminating certain AIDS prevention and education funding, certain arts program personnel -- and cutting the mayor’s office budget by $430,000, to bring it back to the staffing level of the Brown administration.

The City Council is expected to vote on the budget Nov. 4. The only certainty is that the pain will be widespread and lasting.

Critics note that Oakland’s problems predate the current global economic meltdown, but Dellums argues that his city is part of a painful continuum, that “every city in America’s got the problem. Every state in America’s got the problem.”

C. Diane Howell, publisher of the Black Business Listings and a fervent Dellums booster, scoffs at those who would pin Oakland’s concerns solely on the mayor. For that matter, she said, “I don’t know that it’s any rougher [here] than the rest of the world.”

Still, the hope that Dellums originally generated when he took office nearly two years ago has worn thin, even for some supporters.

Dellums insisted during his campaign that he was no Superman, and he emphasized that one man alone could not solve Oakland’s myriad problems.

He created citizen task forces with more than 800 volunteers proposing solutions for the city’s problems, some of which have been implemented.

Backers, however, had hoped to see him put together an effective team that could turn the city around. They also believed he would inspire others to organize and mobilize. That hasn’t happened, said one appointee who asked to remain anonymous.

The “magic spark” that Oakland residents so craved requires a mayor who is “on the ground everywhere, all the time,” the appointee said.

“The challenges are so great in the city that they really do require massive, massive effort. . . . I wish that people had realized that’s not what they were going to get.”

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maria.laganga@latimes.com

lee.romney@latimes.com