To Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao,
Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas,
Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan,
Councilmember Dan Kalb,
Councilmember Carroll Fife,
Councilmember Janani Ramachandran,
Councilmember Noel Gallo,
Councilmember Kevin Jenkins,
Councilmember Treva Reid:
As Oakland community members, we are deeply invested in the safety and well-being of all residents. Preventable traffic violence in Oakland has killed over 300 people and injured over 30,000 in the past decade. disproportionately affecting Black, Asian, older Oaklanders, and Oaklanders with disabilities. We believe the City Government has the responsibility to ensure residents can travel safely throughout our city.
As you develop the Fiscal Year 2023-2025 Budget, we urge you to invest in permanent public safety by reallocating $20 million from the Oakland Police Department (OPD) to the Oakland Department of Transportation’s (OakDOT) budget for reshaping our streets and sidewalks to be safer, calmer, and more accessible. By redirecting a portion of existing public safety funds to OakDOT, we can make our communities safer places to live, travel, and work, while being fiscally responsible with the city’s limited resources.
OakDOT has saved countless lives through Safe Oakland Streets initiative, local measure funded road diets, and grant-funded capital improvements. Their work has made our communities safer, improved public health, better connected Oaklanders and fought climate change. Almost doubling the department’s funding from the general fund would help OakDOT expand their impact by increasing their capacity to install more extensive traffic calming, in more places, and at a faster pace.
Our community streets can be safe, accessible, and enjoyable public spaces that strengthen our social fabric, attract residents to their front porches, and reduce opportunities for crime. By implementing traffic-calming measures, we can reduce collisions, injuries, and deaths, which will subsequently reduce the burden on OPD to respond to them. Instead of relying on sporadic police traffic stops and regressive fines, we need to quickly build long-term physical infrastructure that makes Oakland streets permanently safer for all people, of all ages and abilities, at all hours of the day.
Our budget reflects our city's priorities, values, and morals. We believe that Oakland can make its streets safer for all without raising taxes or taking funds from other important budget areas, such as libraries, public health, or social services. We urge reallocating some of the existing public safety funds to a department dedicated to improving our streets and preventing traffic violence before it happens.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Traffic Violence Rapid Response,
Sierra Club of San Francisco Bay,
Walk Oakland Bike Oakland,
Alameda County Democratic Party,
Senior & Disability Action,
The Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club,
St. Benedict Catholic Church,
LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired,
Roll Out Crew,
Restore Oakland,
Spokeland,
East Bay Center For The Blind,
Panther Skate Plaza,
Bike East Bay,
Center for Empowering Refugees & Immigrants,
Anti Police-Terror Project,
The Original Scraper Bike Team,
Oakland Education Association,
Community Democracy Project,
Latine Young Democrats of the East Bay,
Clausen House,
California Nurses Association,
East Bay Young Democrats