By Ken Epstein

Councilmember Carroll Fife is considering a proposal to let Oakland voters decide in November whether to approve the Oakland A’s $12-billion real estate development on public land at the Port of Oakland, which would take the final decision on the project out of the hands of City Council members, who are under intense, behind-the-scenes pressure from the project’s powerful backers.

“I’m working on spelling out the details this week. The voters should decide,” Fife said in an interview with the Oakland Post. Fife, who first announced the proposal at a town hall meeting last weekend, represents District 3 where the new A’s stadium and real estate complex would be built.

According to observers, the City Council is under pressure from A’s owner, billionaire John Fisher, as well as powerful state Democratic politicians and the building trades unions to settle the deal in the next few months, even before all the evaluations of the site, potential costs and community benefits are discussed and approved.

The amount of public funds the A’s is seeking is estimated at more than $1 billion, including onsite infrastructure, offsite infrastructure, community benefits and other expenses.

Fife said that putting the project on the ballot would ensure that the public has a voice in the project and to discuss whether public funds should be used to pay for it. “What I find to be lacking in some of the decisions that are made by people who have a position of power is the lack of input from the community,” she said. At present, she said, “Nobody is talking to District 3 residents or businesses about what they want to see in the area.”

“This is about responding to what I’m hearing from my constituents. I have to do what I think is right,” she said. “It’s interesting to hear some people speaking in opposition to a democratic process.”

A measure could be placed on the November ballot either by a vote of the City Council or community members if they collect sufficient signatures.

Opposing the proposed ballot measure, Mayor Libby Schaaf quickly published a video statement Tuesday on Twitter, based on an interview she gave to ABC7.

An outspoken backer of the real estate deal, Schaaf said the ballot proposal came as a surprise to her.

“It is not a good idea,” she said. “It is the responsibility of the council members, who are paid to work full time, who have full-time expert staff, who have access to expert consultants, to make these very complicated, technical and long lasting decisions.”

Besides implying that the decision was too complicated for local voters to understand, she emphasized that a ballot measure would be too costly, though she is already putting together almost $500 million in public funds to build infrastructure to support the Port real estate project.

“To put this on the ballot would be a waste of taxpayer dollars. It costs more than $1 million to place any item on the ballot…to ask a question, (though) polling has already shown there is wide support for keeping the A’s in Oakland (and) for a waterfront ballpark…I don’t need to put that on a ballot measure.”

Though she says a vote is not necessary, the City of Oakland has a history of taking large, long-term funding measures to voters. Since 2010, Oakland voters have voted on more than a dozen ballot measures that direct hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds for a variety of projects.

In her statements, Schaaf also tends to minimize results of polls that show deep community concerns about the costs to the public and negative impacts of the development on the Port and the city. In addition, the mayor ignores the voices of the ILWU, the longshore union that fears the project would eliminate waterfront workers’ jobs, as well as Port of Oakland businesses that say the project would jeopardize global transportation.

Oakland A’s President Dave Kaval, who still holds a possible team move to Las Vegas over Oakland’s head, is against the November ballot measure.

“We were very surprised and, quite frankly, concerned,” to learn about the proposal, he said. “This is a project we want to do but we need decisions now,” Kaval said in an interview with KPIX5.

Ken Epstein

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