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On the eve of the final campaign weekend, the city of Oakland issued a press release misleadingly claiming dramatic improvement in the condition of its roads and hyping a city infrastructure tax on Tuesday’s ballot.

In the release, issued at 4 p.m. Friday, Mayor Libby Schaaf walks right up to the legal line for use of taxpayer funds for political purposes. And the numbers cited, designed to support her claim that voters should approve another costly infrastructure bond, are taken out of context and hide the city’s failure over the past six years to make significant progress repairing Oakland streets.

Oakland’s road improvement program is funded by Measure KK, a 2016 voter-approved infrastructure bond and tax plan. Schaaf and other city officials argue that they need more money from a second bond, the one on Tuesday’s ballot, to continue the program.

“Measure U’s passage will enable Oakland to continue this accelerated paving schedule,” Schaaf says in the release, stopping just short of explicitly saying that Oakland residents should vote for the measure. Use of public funds or resources for direct election advocacy is illegal.

The press release is pegged to a Metropolitan Transportation Commission report issued Monday that shows Oakland with the Bay Area’s second-best improvement from 2020 to 2021 in its road condition index.

What the press release fails to mention is that in the prior two years, despite funding from Measure KK, Oakland was tied with three other cities for the third-worst deterioration of its roads. And that the city’s road condition rating of 57 in 2021 was barely better than the 55 in 2016, when voters passed Measure KK, which had $350 million for road improvements.

The 100-point road condition index is a metric used by public works officials that evaluates the overall condition of city streets. Below 50 is considered poor. From 50-70 is considered fair. From 70-100 is considered good or very good.

From 2016-21, the yearly index scores for Oakland were 55, 52, 55, 52, 49 and 57, according to MTC data. The data collected by MTC is self-reported by the cities.

The MTC report was released on Monday. Schaaf and Oakland officials could have issued the press release anytime during the week and they could have provided honest context. They chose not to. Instead, they dropped the press release right before the final weekend of campaigning, apparently hoping that it would get picked up by media outlets but not scrutinized.

Scrutiny would show that, after promising six years ago to repair most city streets with Measure KK funds, they have made little progress. And now city officials are looking for another bond measure that would recklessly saddle future generations with debt.

Voters should not let a misleading press release divert their attention from the big picture. They should reject Measure U.

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The political hit pieces dominating the closing days of the San Jose mayor’s race are a sad commentary on the state of South Bay politics.

All told, more than $8 million has been spent primarily on attack ads that both camps call unfair. Voters should ignore the hit pieces and focus instead on what each candidate is likely to do if elected. And equally important, not do.

Voters should be looking for the best person to provide responsible fiscal leadership as the city faces serious budgetary challenges. As we’ve said before, that person is City Councilman Matt Mahan.

The most important role San Jose’s mayor plays is setting the city’s priorities through the budget process. That is especially challenging in San Jose. The city may be in the heart of Silicon Valley, but it also has the lowest jobs-to-housing ratio of any major city in the nation, severely limiting tax revenues.

Pension costs currently account for 18% of the city’s general fund budget — a problem likely to get worse because San Jose has only funded $5.9 billion of its $9.5 billion in accrued pension liabilities. That’s a stunningly poor 62% funded ratio, far worse than most California cities.

It’s a situation that calls for prudent management and smart use of taxpayers’ dollars — especially given the likelihood of a recession.

Mahan wants to revamp how San Jose does its budgeting. He has a firm grasp on the city’s finances. He would use a zero-based-budget approach to determine how the city could most efficiently spend its money.

Whoever wins the mayor election will likely be working with a labor-majority City Council. It will be doubly important that the city have a mayor who will serve as a check to pie-in-the-sky budget expenditures. That’s Mahan. It’s certainly not his opponent, Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez.

Chavez touts that when she served on the City Council from 1998-2006, San Jose was the safest big city in America. That is true. But what she doesn’t say is that, during those years, she was a driving force for the costly pension benefits that plague the city to this day, requiring a reduction of the size of the city’s police force and severe cuts to library hours and parks maintenance work.

Her penchant for big spending has been evident in the growth of Santa Clara County’s budget during her years as a supervisor. In the last decade, the county budget has grown from $4.5 billion to $11.5 billion a year.

As we have said before, Chavez isn’t just beholden to labor. She is labor and everything it stands for. That’s important, for example, because the police union that is backing her campaign is seeking a 14% pay hike soon after the Nov. 8 election. Police officers deserve fair compensation for their hard work. But if the City Council were to approve such a large increase, it would curtail things such as San Jose’s ability to add more cops to its police force. That’s especially true in the event of an economic downturn.

Mahan is best suited to provide the prudent leadership San Jose needs. Voters should elect him as the city’s next mayor.

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When the Oakland City Council placed Measure X on the Nov. 8 ballot, they threw in everything but the kitchen sink.

Term limits. Council salaries. Rules for tie votes. Hearings on proposed ballot measures. Rules governing the political activities of the city attorney and city auditor. Expanded duties and staffing for the city auditor.

Most of the proposed changes to the city charter would be good. One key change is not. They should have never been stirred together in one pot. Voters should have been able to evaluate these ideas separately, not as part of one take-it-or-leave-it package.

Nevertheless, voters should approve Measure X. The benefits outweigh the harm.

The most problematic and highly touted part of the package is term limits. It’s a feel-good idea that doesn’t necessarily lead to better governance and can often lead to key loss of knowledge in leadership positions.

However, the proposal in Measure X is term limits lite. It would only apply to council members. (Oakland’s mayor already has a two-term limit.) It would limit council members to three consecutive terms rather than the two used in many cities. It would allow someone who has served three terms to return after sitting out for one. And it would allow someone to serve three terms as a district council member directly followed by three as the citywide at-large member.

So, for those who want tough term limits, this isn’t it. Which we’re fine with. It makes it easier to support Measure X for its other, less-visible but more important parts.

The most significant and positive parts of the measure are the changes to the city auditor’s position. In a city of often-fiscally reckless council members, the auditor’s independent oversight is critical.

Measure X would expand the powers of the auditor to include more areas of inquiry in city government and increase the staffing of her office from 11 full-time employees to a minimum of 14. It would also add to the qualification requirements — which currently call for the officeholder to be a certified public accountant or a certified internal auditor — to also include a minimum of three years of relevant public sector or equivalent private sector experience.

And Measure X would protect the independence of the city auditor and city attorney by prohibiting them from financially supporting, campaigning for or endorsing candidates for public office in Oakland. The city auditor would also be prohibited from running for an office over which she has audit jurisdiction.

Measure X would require two, rather than one, public hearings before placing a bond or parcel tax measure on the ballot. In a city where politicians are obsessed with new tax measures, the more opportunities to reflect before acting, the better. We’d prefer to see this provision even tougher, applying to all taxes, indeed all measures, the council places on the ballot.

The measure would also count a council member’s abstention or absence as a no vote for determining whether there is a tie. This should end the gamesmanship on the eight-member council in which someone sits out on a vote to prevent a 4-4 tie under which the mayor can provide a tie-breaking fifth vote for passage.

Determination of the salaries of the city attorney and the city auditor would be moved from the City Council to the Public Ethics Commission and would be based on salaries of their highest paid subordinates, other city department heads and comparable positions elsewhere in the state. Again, more independence for the two positions and compensation commensurate with the job. All good.

And Measure X would make minor adjustments to the way the ethics commission determines the salaries of council members.

This measure should have been broken into its parts. But that’s not the option voters face. Given the up-or-down choice they have, voters should approve Measure X.

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Backers of Measure T in Oakland tout it as a progressive business tax. If only they had stopped there.

Progressive taxation, in which those firms with larger receipts pay a tax at a higher rate, makes sense, especially in a city such as Oakland that strives to balance inequities and support small businesses.

But Measure T is not a revenue-neutral redistribution of the business tax burden. It’s a 21% increase in business tax revenues, from about $103 million a year under the current flat-rate system to about $124 million under the new proposal.

Voters should reject Measure T.

Large businesses will uniformly see their tax burdens increase, as much as nearly five-fold. As the city struggles to attract businesses and fill the office space it has, making the city costlier to medium and large businesses is a risky strategy. Meanwhile, there’s no tax reduction for the smallest of businesses in 10 of 14 categories.

This isn’t just a progressive redistribution of the tax burden, it’s an increase for almost all businesses — with the extra money going into the general fund in a city with revenues that already far exceed similarly sized communities.

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Campaign spending in Oakland’s mayoral race highlights just how broken the city’s political system is.

More than $1.2 million, half of all spending for the four leading candidates, comes from independent expenditure committees controlled by three special interest groups. And it’s going to just two of the four candidates, as reporters Shomik Mukherjee and Harriet Blair Rowan highlighted Sunday.

More than $700,000 of $1.1 million spent in support of Sheng Thao has come from committees tied to labor unions. More than $527,000 of $708,000 spent backing Ignacio De La Fuente has come from an investment group seeking to export coal through Oakland and from Realtors.

There’s no way to stop it. The U.S. Supreme Court has protected independent spending from limitations.

But maybe that influence could be diluted. Maybe, rather than trying to tamp down the power of special interests, voters could bolster political strength of everyday people. That’s where Measure W on the Nov. 8 ballot comes in.

Dubbed the “Fair Elections Act,” it would provide public campaign financing for city and school board races. Every potential voter in the city could receive $100 worth of vouchers to use for political donations.

Seattle has tried this for three election cycles now. The results: More people make campaign contributions, and those who do are much more likely to vote. It’s not perfect, but it’s worth trying in Oakland to see if it can fix the city’s dysfunctional politics. Voters should approve Measure W.

To capture the vouchers, called “Democracy Dollars,” candidates would have to engage with regular folks. If they did, they would have a campaign-revenue source that would not require coddling up to heavy-hitter donors.

To be eligible to redeem vouchers, candidates would have to first demonstrate that they are serious contenders by collecting elsewhere a minimum number of $10-plus contributions. A mayoral candidate, for example, would need 400 contributions.

The city would allocate at least $4 million each election cycle for the program unless the city hits a budget crisis. Limits on how much each candidate could redeem would be based on the office sought. Vouchers could be redeemed until city funding runs out.

Candidates who accept vouchers could also raise money elsewhere. But they would have to abide by spending limits unless their opponents, or independent expenditure committees on their opponents’ behalf, exceeded the limits.

A drawback of Measure W is cost. In addition to the $4 million every two years for voucher redemptions, program staffing and administration would be about $1.6 million annually.

Measure W would replace Oakland’s minimal and ineffectual campaign finance program launched in 1999 that is currently budgeted at only $155,000 per election cycle.

Clearly, the current system is not working. It’s time to try something new.

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With the first open seat on the Pleasant Hill City Council in six years, voters should look for candidates who will continue prudent management of the city’s fragile finances and smartly address the state’s housing requirements.

Councilman Michael Harris is stepping down after serving for 20 years. Of six candidates running for two seats, the standouts with the needed experience and knowledge are incumbent Sue Noack, seeking her third term, and Zac Shess, a nine-year member of the elected board overseeing the independent Pleasant Hill Recreation and Park District.

The city faces ongoing financial challenges because of its small share of property tax revenues. Due to historical oddities of Proposition 13, the 1978 tax-cutting initiative, only 7% of property taxes collected in Pleasant Hill go back to city government, the fourth lowest percentage of Contra Costa’s 19 cities.

Consequently, Pleasant Hill depends heavily on sales-tax revenues, and its leaders must be careful about city employee compensation commitments. Unfortunately, the city’s pension plan, like most in California, is underfunded and will require steady payment increases to make up the shortfall. That is the primary cause of a projected general fund structural budget imbalance totaling more than $5 million over the next five years.

At the same time, California cities must submit plans to fulfill their required housing allocations for the next eight years. Pleasant Hill can meet its 1,800-home allotment if the council works cooperatively toward the goal.

Noack, who has an MBA, brings a keen command of the details of both the city’s finances and its housing plans. Shess, a national company marketing manager, brings his park board experience, which provides a solid foundation for both issues. Both candidates understand the need to remain fiscally cautious and to plan housing so that it’s distributed across the city as the state requires.

Of the other candidates, Bill Bankert, a manager for a health technology firm who previously served on the Planning Commission for eight years, wants the city to push back on the state mandates, a futile fight that could be costly, and lacks a strong grasp of the financial challenges.

Andrei Obolenskiy, an automotive industry entrepreneur, and Zhanna Thompson, a quality assurance director for a behavioral health care firm, have large knowledge gaps regarding the city’s financial challenges and retirement programs and no experience from serving on city committees. Daniel Rodriguez declined to participate in our interviews.

Residents who care about the city’s fiscal stability and responsibly providing housing have two, and only two, solid candidates, Noack and Shess.

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Berkeley’s proposed tax on empty homes is premised on the idea that landlords are holding their units off the market to try to force up rents. The problem is that there’s no data to support that.

Measure M on the Nov. 8 ballot would tax housing units that are vacant for 182 days in a year to pressure landlords to rent out the homes. In a city with a low vacancy rate, this measure is a solution in search of a problem. Voters should reject the measure.

The tax would be $3,000 the first year and $6,000 for subsequent years for units in duplexes, condominiums, single-family homes and townhouses. For all other units, the tax would be $6,000 the first year and $12,000 in subsequent years.

The measure contains a list of exemptions, such as homes under construction and owners who use the property as their primary residences. City officials estimate that, after those exemptions, there are 1,100 rental units that would be affected.

Using those numbers and assuming landlords, when faced with the prospect of fines, would place some of the units back on the market, Berkeley officials estimate the city would collect between $3.9 million and $5.9 million annually for the general fund.

But the purpose of this measure should not be generating new tax revenues, it should be increasing the housing supply. Given that, it’s disappointing that backers of the measure did not put more effort into understanding why those empty housing units are not being rented out. Rather than a stick, what might be called for here is a carrot in the form of assistance to landlords who cannot afford necessary repairs.

Only five of the nine council members voted to put Measure M on the ballot, which by itself says something about how shaky the concept is. Among the many arguments, backers suggested that property owners might be holding older units vacant to drive up rents in newly constructed buildings. That intuitively makes no sense.

The underlying implication of Measure M is that there are too many vacant units in the city. Actually, Berkeley and the rest of the Bay Area’s problem is not that the housing vacancy rate is too high, it’s that it’s too low.

As a newly released draft of Berkeley’s Housing Element update points out, “A certain number of vacancies in a community is necessary to moderate housing costs, provide some level of choice for households seeking housing, and provide incentive to keep units in decent condition.”

It turns out that the proportion of units for sale and units for rent are lower in Berkeley than in Alameda County and the Bay Area. That said, council backers of Measure M deserve credit for only targeting homes that have been sitting off the market for months.

But if they really wanted to help solve Berkeley’s and the region’s housing crisis, they would speed up the city’s slow approval of new construction. That’s the real culprit — and Measure M does nothing to address it.

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Hercules voters are being asked to permanently extend the city’s utility users’ tax. It’s the permanent part that prompts our recommendation to reject Measure N.

The current 8% tax is levied on landline and cell phone services; cable television; and water, electricity and gas services. The tax was first established at 6% in 2004. We supported the voter-approved increase to 8% in 2013 and the 2015 extension until Jan. 1, 2025.

The city is run on a lean budget in which the utility tax today constitutes about 20% of revenues. The tax needs to be extended beyond the end of 2024. But it should not be made permanent. Local government leaders should not be afraid to periodically explain to voters why they need additional taxes and demonstrate that the money is being wisely spent.

Had the City Council merely asked for another 10-year extension, we would be recommending approval. There’s still time to fix that. We urge voters to reject Measure N and for the council to come back with another extension in 2024 that has a reasonable sunset date.

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Albany voters should not be fooled by the City Council’s confusing measure that would more than double the supplemental taxes that are ostensibly for ambulance and fire protection services.

Measure K is not just a merger of two existing taxes into a single new one, as the ballot summary and City Attorney Malathy Subramanian’s “impartial” analysis of the measure deceptively suggest. This is a permanent tax increase for owners of detached single-family homes — and for most, it’s more than twice as much as they’re currently paying.

Voters should reject Measure K.

Albany residents already pay for a long list of supplemental property taxes. If city leaders want another tax hike, they should be transparent about the amount, who will bear the cost, and the use of the money. Instead, the city attorney and City Council proponents of Measure K hide key details, making the measure look more innocuous than it is.

The existing two taxes currently bring in a total of about $900,000 a year for emergency medical services and paramedic life support fire engines. The new one under Measure K would bring in $1.95 million the first year.

The additional revenue won’t all be spent as billed. While about half the new money would go for additional firefighters, the other half would go for EMS services currently generally covered by the general fund. Thus about half the new money would be an indirect subsidy to the general fund, which could be spent for any legal government purpose.

That’s not revealed in the official ballot information. Nor is the tax effect on owners of detached single-family houses.

The existing two taxes are flat amounts charged to each property and will, next year after adjustments for inflation, total about $123 a year. Under Measure K, instead of the two flat taxes, property owners would pay a single new tax based on the square footage of the land — not the size of the structure but the size of the parcel.

The rate of the new tax would start next year at 7.4 cents per square foot. Doing the math, any property owner with a parcel larger than about 1,660 square feet would pay more under Measure K. That’s essentially every owner of a detached single-family house in the city.

Some 98% of Albany single-family lots are at least 2,500 square feet. Under Measure K, that size property would be taxed $185 the first year. That’s $62, or 50%, more than under the two existing taxes.

Nearly two-thirds of Albany single-family lots are at least 3,750 square feet. Under Measure K, that size property would be taxed $278 the first year. That’s $154, or 2.3 times, more than under the two existing taxes.

When council members Preston Jordan, Peggy McQuaid and Ge’Nell Gary claim in ballot arguments that Measure K increases the average tax by just $52 per year per residence, they don’t mention that their average includes condominiums and apartments. And their implication that mainly commercial properties will bear the brunt of the tax increase is disingenuous, ignoring the effect on owners of detached single-family homes.

Making matters worse, Measure K, which increases each year for inflation, has no expiration date. Voters should have a chance to periodically review supplemental taxes to ensure that the money is being spent well and is still needed.

Albany property owners already pay about $600 a year for separate city parcel taxes for things such as libraries, sidewalks, road paving and street lighting. In addition, homeowners pay roughly that amount to help cover the cost of public employee pensions and bonds for fire and seismic safety and city recreational facilities. And when they go to sell, property owners and their buyers pay one of the state’s highest transfer taxes.

There are too many problems with Measure K: the lack of transparency about the doubling of the tax, the failure to reveal the big hit on owners of detached single-family homes, the lack of a sunset date, the indirect subsidy to the general fund, and the piling on to an already long list of Albany property taxes.

Voters should reject Measure K.

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Union City will have two or three new council members after the Nov. 8 election as the municipal government rebuilds after the pandemic economic downturn.

While no city employees were laid off or furloughed, vacant positions were left unfilled, resulting, in the spring of 2021, with over 30% of positions vacant. As the city works to restore its staffing, especially filling open police posts, it also needs long-term budget stability. A key part of that is the Measure Z extension of the city’s half-cent sales tax, also on the Nov 8 ballot.

The other major challenges for the council will be meeting the state’s mandate for nearly 3,000 new housing units over the next eight years — a goal the city can probably meet largely with plans for high-density housing near the BART station — and filling vacant police positions as the chief warns of increasing gun violence.

With Union City this year completing its transition from at-large to district elections, two council members, Emily Duncan and Pat Gacoscos, cannot seek reelection because of the city’s three-term limit.

This is a time when the new council needs to work cooperatively. They don’t have to agree. But they need to be respectful of each other. Unfortunately, there has been some troubling immature behavior by Jaime Patiño, the one council member seeking a new term.

The city needs better. For that, voters should elect Chuck Kennedy to replace Patiño in District 2, on the eastern end of the city: Lee Guio in District 3, in the northwestern portion; and Scott Sakakihara in District 4, in the southwest corner.

District 2 – Chuck Kennedy

Kennedy, a computer software developer who now teaches high school, is currently chairman of the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission and served on the General Plan Advisory Committee. He understands the city’s financial and housing demands reasonably well.

He’s running against Patiño, who is completing his first council term and has locked into a feud with Mayor Carol Dutra-Vernaci that he turned into personal attacks in an over-the-top video with racial overtones posted on Facebook.

Patiño apologized for his outburst. But, after, the video remained on his Facebook site until we asked him about it on Friday. And, in our interview, while saying he was at fault, he continued to try to place blame on the mayor. We supported Patiño in one of his council races, and we expected better from him.

District 3 – Lee Guio

Guio, a national sales manager for an electronics component company, is a member of the city Planning Commission and a former member of the Human Relations Commission.

With an MBA from the University of Southern California, it’s not surprising that he understands the city’s finances, including a solid grasp of the long-term budget forecasts, housing challenges and police staffing problem.

He is, by far, better informed on city issues than his two challengers, Kristy Boer, a consultant for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Jeff Wang, a former New Haven school district trustee.

District 4 – Scott Sakakihara

We wish we could clone the two candidates in this race because they’re both smart, respectful of each other and well-informed.

Sakakihara is a Harvard-trained lawyer who manages the financial expenses of a public software company and has served on the Planning Commission for the past five years. It’s that latter experience and his very knowledgeable answers that gives him an edge over his opponent, Vipan Bajwa.

Bajwa is an accountant who has had public and private-sector clients. We endorsed him when he ran for council four years ago and we remain impressed by him. But this time he has a very strong opponent with city experience.