It angers me to see how the City of Oakland parks aren't maintained. I go into neighboring East Bay cities (Emeryville, Alameda, San Leandro, Berkeley) and see how the parks are maintained. I go to the Oakland Hills and even Washington Square, and see how the parks are maintained, but I go into West and East Oakland and the parks look like crap, grass hasn't been cut in years, play structures are filthy (some with broken equipment). Raimondi Park on West Oakland has that one good football/soccer field and the other field is left unmaintained, homeless are sleeping on the children's playground. Our children deserve better and needs to have safe, sane, and decent parks to go and play. Funding for the parks so that the job of maintaining these parks is a start.

To address illegal dumping, for starters there needs to be a task force of dedicated community leaders and city representatives to create viable solutions. Secondly, there needs to be funding for public works so they can continue to do the work of cleaning the streets, as well as hire more. The illegal dumping only happens in the underserved communities, so if there was a system in place to either put up cameras or station a few officers in the areas 24/7 to catch the illegal d umpers. Levy fines on individuals and businesses who dump illegally. Create more dump sites around the city to where residents can get rid of their things. Tackle the homeless situation by providing temporary housing will also keep the areas clean where the illegal dumping is happening. Businesses and individuals often dump near homeless encampments and folks are using the homeless as a scapegoat instead of addressing the real issue. Finally, once the levies of fines are in place, make sure that repeat offenders (when caught) must pay a steep fine or serve some time in jail for illegally dumping.

I see new commercial, residential and mixed use developments going up all over downtown, but I don't see very many new public trash enclosures being installed in the downtown area. I don't know what the City currently requires developers to do, but it seems like additional trash cans should be required, just like street trees, new sidewalks and bike racks. The existing trash cans are getting overwhelmed, and worse yet, littering increases and pollutes our waterways. New developments bring new workers and residents, so more trash capacity just makes sense.