Money - the Big Problem with Oakland City Government and the Oakland Zoo

It comes as no surprise that the Oakland Zoo has announced that it will seek yet another source of public funding (up to $5 million a year), this time from Alameda County residents. The zoo has been soliciting support for the county-wide tax measure on its website page, “It’s Your Zoo.” The zoo already receives money from Alameda and Contra Costa residents through the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD) which taps residents for a portion of their parcel taxes through its special tax district (check your property tax bill and you’ll see it listed).

Each year the zoo receives between $500,000-$700,000 from EBRPD’s General Fund, a deal that was cut in the State legislature back in the 1980s without approval by the EBRPD’s Board of Directors. At the time, EBRPD did not have the political muscle to successfully fight off this naked grab of its own financial resources.

EBRPD has been successful even in these lean times at raising money from voters, and tapping into the EBRPD’s resources continues to be an alluring promise for the zoo. In 2008 the zoo presented a proposal to the LaFCO (Local Agency Formation Commission) to raise funds regionally that included an option of creating an “internal tax zone” under the umbrella of EBRPD’s special tax district. EBRPD rejected the idea.

But that same year EBRPD gave the zoo a huge boost through its capital bond measure (Measure WW) which netted the zoo $4 million off the top, a repeat of the $4 million that the zoo received in 1988, when a previous EBRPD capital measure was passed. The money to the zoo is in addition to other money allocated to Oakland parks through the local grants program established by the same bond measure.

It will be interesting to see whether EBRPD will be able to continue to attract funds for itself by using the issue of benefits to local parks now that the public has begun to understand that money will be spent in actually destroying a lovely city park if the zoo succeeds in its theme park expansion into Knowland Park.

Can the 2012 Oakland City Council lead, govern, and keep Oakland out of bankruptcy?

It’s hard to track down all of the various pots of public funding that the zoo caches, but the most difficult task of all is to pierce the financial veil of the City of Oakland’s own subsidies to the zoo. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our attempt to find out accurate information about how millions in City funding will be used for the zoo’s expansion project into Knowland Park. Oakland City Council members and Mayor Quan have blatantly refused to answer questions regarding zoo funding when asked in public budget hearings. Their oft-repeated response is “It’s a done deal.” Really.

Now it seems that the proposed ballot measure may be a way to open a new spigot of public funds to help pay for the $72 million expansion since, according to the Oakland Tribune (5/9/12), “the zoo could include other projects [to fund] as long as they are consistent with the general categories listed in the expenditure plan [of the tax measure].” Since the theme park expansion plan is billed as both a conservation and education exhibit, there appears to be nothing to stop the zoo from using those funds if the measure passed. So much for the notion of “a done deal.”

We have discussed various aspects of zoo funding in previous posts. (“Oakland debt will be raised with zoo’s new multi-million dollar aerial gondola” and “The public will be tapped to pay for zoo expansion“) Our city is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. We will continue to post information and questions about public funding to the zoo. As we do so, we encourage you, the public, to pose these and your own questions in writing to your elected officials with requests to receive responses in writing. Our questions this week are:

To contact individual Alameda County Supervisors, you may use snail mail (Name of Supervisor, 1221 Oak Street, Suite 536, Oakland, CA  94612) or you can go to the the website at www.acgov.org/board  and go to that supervisor’s page and e-mail her/him your comment.

• Scott Haggerty, District One
• District Two is vacant
• Wilma Chan, District 3
• Nate Miley, District 4
• Keith Carson, District 5

Jim Hanson grew up in the East Bay and originally heard about out the City’s development plans for Knowland Park from the East Bay Chapter of the Native Plant Society and the Sierra Club Yodeler. A landscape architect, Jim appreciates the subtle beauty of the native bunchgrass prairies and meadow lands of California. He has served on the Board of Directors of the California Native Grasslands Association for several years and was recently elected its President. He likes to take fellow Oaklanders and Bay Area visitors to the Knowland Park highlands to point with pride how a vibrant, busy city still keeps its natural wealth.

Laura Baker is an environmental activist and former Conservation Chair of the California Native Plant Society. Growing up in Missouri, she learned that the cure for most ills rests in spending time out in nature. She wishes for every child to have the experience of wholeness that nature provides. Laura holds an M.A. in Ecology and Systematic Biology.

Laura’s Knowlander blog is dedicated to building an online library of the natural history of Knowland Park so that the public may enjoy the park for the natural heritage treasure that it is. Knowing the land is a never ending process of inquiry open to all. We welcome your comments, contributions, and photos

Part of the list of Oakland's 128 Parks. Only four are linked to web pages containing further information.

Unfortunately, the address provided for Knowland Park is that of the Oakland Zoo, and no other information is provided about how to access the Park itself, much less its trails and information about its plants and wildlife. Since Zoo staff, as I described in the previous post, have falsely told potential Park visitors that the Park is not open for hiking, it is likely that even more people will wind up confused and disappointed at being unable to find Oakland’s “disappeared” park.

Some of the trails in the western highlands of Knowland Park.

Some of the other parks listed do not have precise street addresses, but directions for how to get to them. The same could easily be done for Knowland Park, rather than referring everyone to the Zoo, which only perpetuates the myth that Knowland Park is owned by the Zoo. Or the City could actually provide the public with real and useful information about its largest city park, by including a link to the Knowland Park Coalition’s website, www.saveknowland.org  Precedent does exist for this, since at least one other parks-supporting public group is listed on another park website link.

Since I checked again just before writing my last blog post, the Park listing appears to have finally happened in response to that article. That post described the efforts we have made to try to let the public know this lovely Park exists and the apparent collusion between City and Zoo officials to “disappear” it in order to minimize opposition to the Zoo’s expansion development plans. Perhaps with another four years of pressure and shaming, the City can be persuaded to do the right thing and provide real information for the public about its most spectacular Park.

Ruth Malone is a resident of Oakland since 1983, a founding member and co-chair of Friends of Knowland Park and a longtime Oakland neighborhood activist. Since 2007, she has been working to educate and organize environmentalists, park users, and community members to protect the park. In her day job, she is a professor of nursing and health policy at University of California, San Francisco, where she helps students study the links between health and political, social and natural environments, and conducts research on the tobacco industry and its efforts to thwart public health efforts worldwide.

Ruth Malone’s Reflections Blog offers a combination of reflective essays and updates from the Protect Knowland Park Campaign, linking the fight to protect Knowland Park to broader environmental and ethical issues.

Some of the crowd at the guided hike in Knowland park on April 15.

Some people, touring Knowland Park for the first time, express astonishment at the idea that the City of Oakland has purposely NOT listed this wonderful park on its Parks and Recreation website list of city parks. We felt the same way when we discovered that the largest remaining open space owned by the city wasn’t listed anywhere, and that there was no signage to help people find the Park and enjoy it. Thinking it surely must be an oversight, we asked our city councilman about it, and he said he would look into it. However, despite repeated queries, we never got an answer. This was about four years ago.

Portions of the document conveying Knowland Park from the State to the City of Oakland, dated March 4, 1975

We emailed the Parks and Recreation staff and asked about it. They responded that Knowland Park was privately owned, not a city park. We sent them the documentation clearly showing that Knowland Park had been transferred to the city from the state. They said they would look into it. Despite repeated queries, the Park is still not on the online list of all of Oakland’s parks.

Knowland Park, despite (or perhaps because of) being the largest, most scenic, and most biologically rich of all Oakland’s parks, has been “disappeared.” About 15 years ago, I remember seeing this big green space on a map of Oakland. My husband and I went to the Zoo entrance to inquire whether we could hike in upper Knowland Park. We were told no. It was only years later that we discovered the Park, after we moved to an area closer to it, and learned that we could have been hiking there all along.

Why would a city “disappear” such a place? Unfortunately, after almost five years of investigating, it has become clear that the City has colluded with Zoo executives to intentionally keep Knowland Park from being discovered by the public—so that the Zoo could develop the land without massive public opposition. A search on the Zoo’s web site, while covering the history of the Park’s transfer to Oakland, describes nothing about the Park itself, suggesting (contrary to the facts) that the intent was always for the Zoo to develop the entire property. But in fact, the transfer agreement specified that the property was always to remain a public park, and Oakland’s Open Space, Conservation and Recreation master plan specifies that the part outside the Zoo was to remain in its natural state.

That’s why we have worked so hard to let people know about this place, and to encourage everyone who values parks and open space to explore it before it is too late.

Some of the trails in the western highlands of Knowland Park.

The public owns Knowland Park. It is a travesty that the City and Zoo have kept the public from discovering it, by neglecting it, refusing to acknowledge its existence, and discouraging visitors. Knowland Park’s beauty should not just be reserved for those who can afford to pay. You can help—by bringing your friends to explore this magical place and sharing the word! Check out the trail route at http://www.saveknowland.org/getting-there/hikes-and-trails/ that helps you see where the Zoo proposes to build. It’s YOUR Park!

Ruth Malone is a resident of Oakland since 1983, a founding member and co-chair of Friends of Knowland Park and a longtime Oakland neighborhood activist. Since 2007, she has been working to educate and organize environmentalists, park users, and community members to protect the park. In her day job, she is a professor of nursing and health policy at University of California, San Francisco, where she helps students study the links between health and political, social and natural environments, and conducts research on the tobacco industry and its efforts to thwart public health efforts worldwide.

Ruth Malone’s Reflections Blog offers a combination of reflective essays and updates from the Protect Knowland Park Campaign, linking the fight to protect Knowland Park to broader environmental and ethical issues.

The Zoo's published depiction of the ridge-top building as seen from Golf Links Rd.

The Oakland Zoo’s development plans for Knowland Park include offices—yes, offices– in the 34,000 square foot, 3 story central gondola terminal building, which is planned to also include a restaurant and gift shop. The whole thing will be perched atop the most sensitive and pristine area of the park, a ridge where the threatened Alameda whipsnake was trapped in surveys, where a statewide rare plant community of chaparral provides cover and habitat for many kinds of animals, and where scat from large predators is regularly found. Why, you might ask yourself, would a “conservation”-minded organization decide to build a huge structure in that particular location, rather than looking for a site closer to the existing Zoo or on already-disturbed land?

The view of the western ridgetop area, as it is now.

Two words: The views. Undoubtedly, someone in the executive leadership would perhaps like to put his feet up on his desk and gaze out at the Bay, and bring big donors there to be impressed with the Zoo’s achievements while sipping wine and discussing future plans. Who wouldn’t like that? But not all of us would choose to do it at the expense of native plants and animals and have the nerve to call it “conservation.”

The Zoo's published concept of the western ridgetop as it will be if their planned development takes place.

There are other sites where a visitor center could be located, including other sites with expansive  views and gondola accessibility, that would have much less impact on the park’s existing native plants and animals.  In fact, the previous expansion plan sited the smaller and office-free visitor center on one such site, an area of already-disturbed land that overlooks the whole Bay. But hubris triumphed over authentic concern for natural resources in the Zoo’s ever-expanding “manifest destiny” vision, and the center building grew and grew like a bathroom remodel that became a grotesque MacMansion.

The Oakland Zoo, over the past two decades, has improved its care of captive animals and raised its profile.  The Zoo has rightfully received kudos for this work. But must the payoff for these efforts come at the expense of Knowland Park and its rich biodiversity?

Surely some other way can be found to offer Zoo visitors and executives a wonderful experience that does not require destroying precious habitat—the key to sustaining biodiversity in the Bay Area.

Ruth Malone is a resident of Oakland since 1983, a founding member and co-chair of Friends of Knowland Park and a longtime Oakland neighborhood activist. Since 2007, she has been working to educate and organize environmentalists, park users, and community members to protect the park. In her day job, she is a professor of nursing and health policy at University of California, San Francisco, where she helps students study the links between health and political, social and natural environments, and conducts research on the tobacco industry and its efforts to thwart public health efforts worldwide.

Ruth Malone’s Reflections Blog offers a combination of reflective essays and updates from the Protect Knowland Park Campaign, linking the fight to protect Knowland Park to broader environmental and ethical issues.

CCI recognizes the threat that the Oakland Zoo expansion project poses to our rare maritime chaparral stand. It has fought similar poorly planned development that results in the accompanying fuels management that decimates this resource.

Rick Halsey, Director and Founder of CCI, acknowledged the work of our coalition: “Your group is a model of citizen activism.” CCI joins a list of prestigious environmental organizations dedicated to protecting the native communities found in Knowland Park. We welcome their support. Visit their website at www.californiachaparral.com.

Laura Baker is an environmental activist and former Conservation Chair of the California Native Plant Society. Growing up in Missouri, she learned that the cure for most ills rests in spending time out in nature. She wishes for every child to have the experience of wholeness that nature provides. Laura holds an M.A. in Ecology and Systematic Biology.

Laura’s Knowlander blog is dedicated to building an online library of the natural history of Knowland Park so that the public may enjoy the park for the natural heritage treasure that it is. Knowing the land is a never ending process of inquiry open to all. We welcome your comments, contributions, and photos