Publication Date: Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Our Town: A step backward
Our Town: A step backward
(November 23, 2005) by Don Kazak
When an election fails, people want to know why.
The defeat of Measure K by East Palo Alto voters Nov. 8 may have been pre-ordained by a lack of political leadership by the City Council, which asked the city's voters to just trust its judgment.
Measure K would have generated $1.5 million to $1.7 million a year in parcel taxes, half for the police department to add officers and increase its efforts and half for youth-related prevention programs to keep young people from getting into trouble in the first place.
Efforts to quell street violence are popular in a city where 65 percent of those polled indicated they were afraid to walk through their own neighborhoods at night.
It's the other part of the money, for youth programs, that may have caused the measure to fail. The measure didn't spell out precisely where the money would go.
"Actually, it was unclear how it would be used," Stewart Hyland of the nonprofit agency One East Palo Alto said. "It would be up to the city and its oversight committee."
"We didn't have a plan," City Manager Alvin James said. "That was part of the problem." But the council has asked staff to put such a plan together, indicating the council is aiming for another go at the tax next year.
Residents may be skeptical about promises after seeing failures and disappointments over the years, and asking homeowners to pitch in even $100 a year for something undefined may have been the wrong thing to do.
Hyland is uncertain if the $750,000 or more a year Measure K would have generated for youth and prevention programs would have created anything new or just have supplemented funding for existing efforts. One East Palo helps coordinate the efforts of 10 youth nonprofit agencies.
Hyland is also a member of the East Palo Alto Crime Prevention Task Force, an effort quietly started two years ago by San Mateo County Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson, a former East Palo Alto mayor. She pulled in various county and community agencies for what is the most ambitious and wide-ranging anti-crime effort in the city's history.
The law enforcement side of the equation didn't get knocked sideways by the defeat of Measure K, but may slow the efforts down.
Police Chief Ron Davis, a veteran of the Oakland Police Department, has been on the job in East Palo Alto a little less than six months. He said Measure K funds would have enabled his department to fund its own anti-gang unit, which now must be delayed.
Since Davis came to East Palo Alto, a federal Drug Enforcement Agency-aided collaboration netted 44 federal indictments of suspected drug dealers two months ago, an effort he credits to former interim Police Chief Steve Belcher, who called for federal help.
Davis hasn't been shy in asking for help, either. He called in the California Highway Patrol to help make the city's streets safer, and the FBI to help on "cold case" investigations.
Since June, 180 felony arrests have been made by Davis' officers. So the heat is on the drug dealers. In a symbolic move, the city is also painting over the graffiti gangs use to mark their territories.
Davis also persuaded the council to re-institute a late-night youth curfew. In the first 15 days of the curfew, just one warning was given to a kid. There were some questions about the youth curfew, but "It's also stimulated a debate about parental accountability," he said.
"Everything is quiet," Davis said, openly wondering why.
He noted that there has been just one homicide in the last 10 weeks, compared to eight in the previous 10 weeks.
But everyone working on the city's anti-crime task force "agrees that the long-term solution is in prevention programs," Hyland of One East Palo Alto said.
Measure K funds could have boosted those efforts, so the Nov. 8 defeat of the ballot measure is a step backward for the city. That's the part of the effort needed in the long run, and the part not spelled out in enough detail for the voters.
Senior staff writer Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.
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