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Councilmenber Nancy Nadel (District 3, Oakland) is catching hell over this exchange with a property owner in her district. The basic news is that she does not see -- and I guess will not look to find out if -- any improprieties existed in the way the Landscape Lighting and Assessment Distict votes were counted. Check this out, which was on the Yahoo Message Board and the HarriOak blog: People may be interested in the following exchange between Nancy and one of our neighbors about the LLAD tax. For those who aren't following this issue, the measure would have been defeated by homeowners who are already struggling with taxes that typically range from $5000 to $12,000 a year. But the city wanted it to pass so it added extra weight to the votes cast by the Port of Oakland and by city-owned properties. Since this surely is illegal, the city is now preparing to be sued. (Which we will also pay for. Dishonest government is extremely expensive.) On top of the vote rigging, the State Supre

Charlie Pine of " Oakland Residents for Peaceful Neighborhoods ", who was recently interviewed at TagamiVision , and who unsucessfully ran for the at-large seat in the 2008 Oakland City Council race, posted this web article which features the actions of activist David Mix: City Tampered with LLAD Tax Vote The City of Oakland gave a privileged property owner – the Port of Oakland – extra votes in the recent mail ballot on a proposed increase of the Landscape and Lighting Assessment (LLAD) tax. ORPN previously reported how the City rigged the LLAD vote with outlandish determinations of how much "benefit" one property or another receives from park maintenance, tree trimming, and street lighting. Although a flagrant violation of any democratic standard, it is not automatically illegal. However, citizen activist David E. Mix has uncovered outright vote tampering. The votes of homeowners, apartments, and other properties were weighted by the proposed increase in their