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In what Oakland Residents For Peaceful Neighborhoods (ORPN) calls a "victory for the people" the Oakland City Council voted last night not to collect the increase in the tax for the Landscape Lighting and Assessment District (LLAD) after the Alameda County Superior Court upheld the tax. ORPN reports on this : City Backs Off LLAD Tax Hike At a special July 22, 2008 meeting, the Oakland city council voted not to collect the Landscape and Lighting Assessment (LLAD) tax increase that it previously declared voters had approved. The decision is a $12 million victory for Oakland residents, who expressed broad outrage at the blatant ballot-box stuffing in a mail-in vote that City Hall conducted in April and May. However, no councilmember admitted that she condoned and participated in the vote rigging. Instead, the council took cover under a state supreme court ruling on assessment districts in general issued last week. Before the vote, one resident told the council, "If the pr...

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...