Polk's Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda city directory, 1926, Part 3

Author: R.L. Polk & Co
Publication date: 1925
Publisher: Oakland, Cal. : R.L. Polk & Co.
Number of Pages: 1924

USA > California > Alameda County > Alameda > Polk's Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda city directory, 1926 > Part 3
USA > California > Alameda County > Berkeley > Polk's Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda city directory, 1926 > Part 3
USA > California > Alameda County > Oakland > Polk's Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda city directory, 1926 > Part 3

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I have previously recommended construction of a 5000-foot solid fill mole on our western waterfront and have presented the plans for that improve- ment to this Couneil. I have also recommended construction of proper dock- ing facilities west of Albers Mill to accommodate the Saeramento River steam- ers. There is a tremendous volume of river traffic, most of which now crosses to San Francisco. Were proper accommodations provided on our own water- front for this traffie it could be landed here and save our local commission merchants the time and expense of having it brought back across the Bay after having been brought down from the river ports.

In 1910 the Key Route was granted a franchise which included for a period of fifty years the grant of a 1000-foot fairway and exelusive use of certain property adjoining the Key Route pier on which they were to ereet piers, warehouses, ete., for a general freight and traffie business, and on which they would pay no taxes or tolls into the eity treasury. Never has this fran- chise, which ties up 157 aeres of land, been complied with. The Key Route long ago for- feited any right which they might have to eon- tinue use of this proper- tv, and in connection with the gen- eral develop- ment of our western har- bor frontage it is my ree- ommendation that this PYT franchise be eaneeled and - the use of this land be returned to the eity.

New Residence

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

PARK PURCHASES

A decision has just been rendered by the Appellate Court which may result very seriously on certain land purchase projects. Over my opposition, this Couneil voted the purchase of the MaeDermott property in West Oakland on the installment plan at a price of $90,000; the Sanborn property on Fruit- vale Avenue, 2 aeres, $36.000 ; the Mandana Boulevard property, $70.000; Leona Heights property, $27.000, totaling in all $223,000 for purchases alone on in- stallment basis. These items do not inelude the amount of money which the eity will be obligated to pay for maintenance of these properties and for trans- forming them from real estate traets into parks. I estimate that it will eost another $225,000 to carry out this work or a total of $450,000, approximately. for backyard and hillside parks.

I had previously recommended that the Couneil purchase the five hun- dred aere Durant property in East Oakland at a price of $350,000. This rec- ommendation was rejected. The property has since been sold at a price of $500,000 and the opportunity to purchase it for a city park has been lost forever.

The decision of the Appellate Court, to which I referred above, invali- dates all procedure of installment park purchases. It is my intention to investi- gate the agreement under which these properties have been purchased and see whether or not the expenditure of the $225.000, above referred to, is legal. I have been strongly opposed to the backyard parks for the purpose of help- ing out any real estate deals or speeulations, and I consider the items above referred to to be entirely of that class.

During the past year the Park Department has completed the moving of the Zoo from its former location on the edge of the lake to its new and perma- nent loeation in Sequoia Park. New eages and aeeommodations have been provided and it makes an ideal place and permanent location for this feature of our parks.

RECREATION DEPARTMENT

Our Recreation Department during the past year has continued to carry out its progressive program. The Christmas Pageant in December. 1925, was

Apartment House

MAYOR'S MESSAGE, 1926

unusually successful. Participated in by children from nearly every school in Oakland, it indicated the interest which their families have in the work and planning of our Recreation De- partment. Commeneing in the sun- mer of 1925 and continuing again this year, vacation-time directors have been provided for all of the publie playgrounds in the city. They provide our children with plenty of places in which to carry on healthy and properly direeted play during the vacation months when there is no school; and by keeping the play- grounds properly directed, encour- ages the children to keep ont of the streets and to come to the play- grounds where they are able to play and have their recreation in safety.

VARN'S

The municipal golf links has defi- nitely become a profitable enterprise. Kahn's Department Store The report for the fiscal year just elosed shows that the golf links' ineome has now reached the point where it is turning funds baek into the city treasury and it will eventually pay off its cost, as well as furnishing us with a much- needed facility.

Onr summer eamps in Tuolumne and Plumas Counties are filled to capa- eity. Last year was an unusually successful one for the camps and the present summer's business indicates that more people will make use of them than ever before. Oakland is one of the few cities in the country which has estab- lished this plan for municipal mountain eamps, providing our people with mountain vacations at a price which all ean afford to pay. Estimates indi- eate that at the close of the present summer 6000 people will have taken their vacations at the Oakland municipal camps.

In past years I have recommended the filling and reelamation of 100 aeres of land lying behind our municipal auditorium. That work has been completed and the land has been taken over and is being used by the Play-

Municipal Auditorium

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

ground Department, which is developing it as a central recreation center. In the budget of the Playground Department a request is being made for an additional appropriation to develop this more completely. Ultimately I believe that all this land lying to the south of our municipal auditorium will be devel- oped as a tremendous central recreation field, with football and baseball fields, running and race tracks, and every facility for a complete athletic and recrea- tion development, ample to provide accommodations for the Olympic games of the world.

At the same time I wish to repeat my recommendation to the Council con- eerning the hasty completion of the extension of First Street. The filling be- tween Fallon Street and 5th Avenue, which I recommended five years ago, has been nearly completed and I again repeat my recommendation that this area be paved and properly surfaced to provide a traffic artery for the heavy water- front traffie. This is especially essential now that the opening of Fallon Street between 7th and Ist has been ordered by the Conneil and is now before the courts.

The former Superintendent of Recreation resigned, effective July 1, and the Playground Department has apointed Mr. R. W. Robertson, for several years assistant superintendent, as a successor. Mr. Robertson will carry on the progressive policies of the Playground Department and is directing his efforts to keeping Oakland in the proper position it oecupies in recreational activity. The Superintendent of Reereation is being assisted in his work by a progres- sive and aetive Board of Directors, headed by Dr. J. E. Zales, who has recently been elected President.

I wish again to call the attention of this Council to the necessity of doing something to improving the condition of the water in Lake Merritt. I have repeatedly recommended the development of a plan to bring water in from the western waterfront via high pressure pipe line to the Lake and delivering it through ornamental fountains. By the setting up of an artificial flow of water in this manner the present "settling basin" condition of the Lake could be eliminated and the water made healthy and safe so that our people could use it as a place in which to swim.

Recently a company of motion picture actors from Southern California

lakeside Park

MAYOR'S MESSAGE, 1926

was engaged in making a film with Oakland and the University of California as its setting. A portion of this film included scenes on Lake Merritt and when some of these actors emerged from the water after having taken part in their seenes, they were covered with a coating of oil and filfth, difficult to describe.

We have in Lake Merritt an opportunity to develop a magnificent eentral water recreation park. I have had estimates made as to the cost of providing clean salt water from the Bay for Lake Merritt and believe that this matter should receive the immediate and urgent consideration of the Council. With the rapid growth of our city greater demand is being made upon our recrea- tion facilities at the Lake. More call is being made for the use of canoes and the boats, and our people are entitled to have this beautiful spot developed in such a way that they can enjoy swimming there along with the other recrea- tion features.

CITY PLANNING

The Couneil last year made an appropriation of $10,000, which has been inereased to some extent, to provide for a complete re-survey of the eity by employees of the City Planning Commission for the purpose of establishing a comprehensive and well constructed zoning plan throughout the entire city. The work of those employees is nearly finished. The city has been surveyed, mapped and plotted and hearings are now being called for the purpose of re- eeiving protests and suggestions before the new zone ordinance is acted upon by the Council.

DOWNTOWN COMFORT STATIONS

I have previously recommended the construction of downtown eomfort station facilities. For several years I have included in the budgets submitted to the Council recommendations for appropriations to provide these much needed facilities. Each year has seen my recommendation disregarded and the money diverted and used for some other purpose. With our inereased

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Oakland's Changing Downtown Skyline

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

growth and with the development of our downtown business and retail center the need for these facilities has increased tremendously and I again recom- mend that this Council consider during the coming fiscal year an appropria- tion of money sufficient to provide downtown comfort stations in a conven- ient and central location.

TRACTION COMPANY PAVING

In the early part of this year I sent a peremptory letter to the officials of the Key System Transit Company demanding action on improving the con- dition of the paving between their tracks on various streets in Oakland. Among the streets which I mentioned were Broadway from 14th to 22nd Streets; 13th Street from Webster to Washington Streets; East 14th Street from 50th Avenue to San Leandro, and from Ist to 13th Avenues: Grove Street from San Pablo Avenue to 40th Streets; Grand Avenue from Harrison Street to the Piedmont line, and others. I now am pleased to advise the Council that the Traction Company has completed the rebuilding and repaving of several of those streets and that work is under way on many of the others. The Broadway traekage and that on 13th Street has been rebuilt. On Grand Ave- nuc and East 14th Street a large amount of the work has been completed and the balanee is now under way. I am informed by officers of the Traction Company that work on other streets which I mentioned in my communication will be undertaken as soon as some of the present work has been completed.

The Charter charges me with the duty of seeing that the public utility companies comply with the terms of their franchises and I shall continue to keep in close touch with this important work of traek rebuilding and street repair until it has been brought up to the proper condition and in a satis- factory manner.

WEST 7TH STREET CROSSING

There is at present before the city the matter of a proper solution of the grade crossing problem on West 7th Street. The State Railroad Commission has ordered a separation of grades at that point to eliminate the traffie hazard now eaused by the crossing of automobiles over the electric and steam lines of the Southern Pacific Company. A most interesting situation exists in this connection. Practically all of the traffic movement east and west on West 7th Street and crossing the tracks of the Southern Pacific Company is Sonthern Pacific auto ferry business. Our city is now faced with a situation where our people are forced to pay from twenty-five to fifty per cent of the cost of this separation for traffic which moves entirely over the ferry lines of the Southern Pacific Company.

A proposal has been made to this Council that a subway be constructed at Goss Street, one block north of 7th Street, under the lines of the Southern Pacific. I have previously expressed by strenuous opposition to such a recom- mendation. It violates every principle of traffic engineering and eity plan- ning. The trend of modern traffic engineering is to eliminate, so far as pos- sible, curves and right angle turns, and yet we have here the spectacle of the railroad engineers, those of the automobile association, and of the city, recom- mending an improvement which would add a number of dangerous turns and eurves rather than eliminate them. Another disadvantage of the proposed Goss Street subway lies in the faet that it will divert traffic off 7th Street and will ultimately result in a demand for the widening of 8th Street at the expense of the city and of the property owners. As an alternative plan, I recomemnd an overhead erossing be built on 7th Street which will permit the flow of traffie on a straight line and the continued use of the one hundred foot width of 7th Street as against the 40-foot width of Goss Street and the compres- sion of the traffic into a narrow eighteen-foot subway bore.

MAYOR'S MESSAGE, 1926

Competent engineers have confirmed my opinion in this matter and the only reason they can give for the recommendation of the subway is that it will abandon a large portion of West 7th Street to be taken over and used as a freight yard by the railroad company.

UNION TERMINAL STATION

Five years ago in my annual message to the Council I recommended con- sideration of construction of a Municipal Union Passenger Terminal to be used by all the railroads entering our city. In that same message I recom- mended that this terminal be eonstrueted at a location in the area bounded by Wood or Willow Streets on the East, 18th Street on the South, 32nd Street on the North, and extending down past the present traeks of the Souhern Pacific along the Western harbor front. The Western Pacific Railroad holds an old franchise for lines along Wood Street, the Santa Fe has its lines along Wood Street, which now terminates at 20th and Adeline ; the Southern Pacific traeks parallel the Western harbor front. Such a terminal would be eon- venient of aceess by all railroads entering Oakland, and there is room in this loeation for the eonstruetion of a Union Terminal that will satisfy traffie prob- lems for all railroads entering Oakland for many years to come.

In my former message I said as follows:

"This terminal should be eonstrneted by the City of Oakland and operated entirely as a municipal utility. This would eliminate any possibility of dis- erimination against any earrier entering Oakland, and the railroad compan- ies would be charged rental for their use of the terminal equipment in pro- portion to the traffie each railway has. The revenues derived from this rental wonld amply repay the eost of building the terminal and provide the eity with a profitable source of future revenue.

"It is but a short distance from this location to the municipal property on our western harbor front and I recommend that sufficient space be reserved by the eity at the foot of West 14th Street to provide for a municipal ferry slip to be eonstrneted in connection with the terminal station. The ferry slip

A Street Scene

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

and improvemens, like the terminal should be a municipal utility, giving equal accommodations to all lines making use of it."

I again submit this matter for the serious consideration of the Council. Removal of the 14th and Franklin Street Depot of the Southern Pacific should provide additional reason for hastening the construction of a Union Termi- mal in this location.

STREET LIGHTS

I wish to call the attention of the Council to the unsatisfactory condition of our city in the matter of adequate downtown street lighting. It seems to me that for the past five years we have been dilly-dallying with the question of downtown street lights. Delay based upon one reason or another has dragged out the matter until today Oakland, for its size, has, I believe, the most miser- able downtown street lighting of any city in California. Residents of Oakland who have driven back and forth between here and Southern California have commented to me upon the excellence of street lights in smaller cities through which they have passed and which are but a small fraction of the size of Oak- land. We recently had an application from a local theatrical house for per- mission to maintain a string of lights on Franklin Street, and I then made the interesting discovery that with the exception of the antiquated are lights maintained by the Southern Pacific as a part of their street railway fran- chise, there is not a street light on Franklin Street in the downtown business portion of that street.

Several organizations and others have been repeatedly before this Council on the matter of proper street lighting. Exenses and delays are many but we have made no material progress and onr downtown streets are no better lighted today than they were ten years ago. I earnestly recommend that this mat- ter receive the immediate attention of the Council and that before another year has passed Oakland takes its rightful place among cities having well lighted streets and not be a second to Santa Rosa, San Jose, Santa Maria, and many other smaller towns far too numerous to mention.

MUNICIPAL BUS SYSTEM

I have formerly recommended to the Council the establishment of a muni- cipal motor bus transportation system. Some months ago petitions were re- eeived by this Council, signed by a large number of people, requesting that this matter be placed upon the ballot at the next municipal election. The Council refused to aet upon these petitions and the proponents of the bus plan are now engaged in securing signatures to initiative petitions for calling a special election and giving our people an opportunity to vote on this very important matter. I am a firm believer in the advantages of municipal motor bus transportation system and I believe that the people of our city should be given an opportunity to express themselves as to whether or not they desire bonds issued for the establishing of such a system.

CHARTER AMENDMENTS

On past occasions I have recommended to the Council certain amendments to our City Charter : one of these applied to the assessment and collection of eity taxes by the County Assessor and Tax Collector as permitted by State law. My recommendation was not favorably considered by the Couneil. The matter was recently revived by local newspapers and I again presented this recommendation to your honorable body for the third time, with the result that it was "tabled." It is my recommendation at this time that this resolution be taken off the table and given favorable consideration.

I do not consider it fair that the people of Oakland be refused the priv- ilege of expressing themselves through the ballot as to whether or not they desire this important change in our governmental system which will result in

MAYOR'S MESSAGE, 1926

the elimination of duplicate functions and in a greater governmental economy. I have previously presented figures to your honorable body showing the sav- ings which included up to June 30th, 1925, had this system been in force. The following statisties brought up to June 30, 1926, show the additional saving which could have been made in the past year :

Taxes Collected

Highest Amount County Could Charge

Cost of City Assessing and Collecting

Year

1919-20

$ 3,735,583

$ 18,677

$ 56,298

1920-21

3,959,767

19,798

61,244

1921-22

3,788,772

18.943

64,887

1922-23

4,045,466

20,227

67,793

1923-24

4,279,086

21,395

77,807

1924-25

4,719,275

23,596

90.775

1925-26

5.667,727

28,338

100,512

$29,195,676

$150.974

$519,316

Another eharter amendment which I wish to recommend to your hon- orable body at this time is one dealing with those of our municipal employees who are members of the National Guard or of the Organized Reserves of the U. S. Army. An old elause in the City Charter adopted in 1911 provides that no person holding any office, position, or employment under the city govern- ment carrying with it a salary of more than $50 per month, paid out of any money of the eity, shall hold such position under the city government while holding any office or position of profit under the government of this state, any other state or the United States Government.

The National Defense Act of 1920 provides that members of the National Guard and of the Organized Reserves may be ealled into active duty for a period of two weeks each year for the purpose of receiving training. During this two weeks' period they are to receive the pay of their rank from the United States Government. In a majority of cases the pay and allowance received from the Government are much less than the salary which is paid the employee by the eity.

Due to the seetion of the Charter just quoted above, it is impossible for a city employee even to devote his two weeks' annual vacation time to this service without being deprived of his vacation pay. It is my recommenda- tion that the Charter be amended at the next municipal election to permit city employees part or all of their city compensation, at the discretion of the Couneil, when such employees are absent from their municipal position in attendance at a military training camp. I believe that the adoption of such an amendment would remove a penalty against the patriotic attitude of those of our employees who are in the National Guard or in the Organized Reserves.

PUBLIC UTILITIES

I have recently had an interesting question concerning municipal jurisdie- tion over public utilities presented to my office. In aeeordance with the public utility act of 1915, the people of Oakland voted to surrender muniei- pal jurisdiction over rates, charges and service, rendered locally by the publie

View of 3-Mile San Francisco Bay Frontage of Stone Property

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

15th and San Pablo Avenue

utility companies, to the State Railroad Commission, and thus took that control ont of the hands of duly elected municipal officers. 1 do not believe this to have been a prudent decision on the part of the city in the light of recent developments.

I have previously expressed myself as favoring the repeal of that action on the part of our people. I believe that if the matter were to be placed upon the ballot at this time the people of Oakland are so thoroughly disgusted with the decisions of the Railroad Commission so far as our local affairs are con- cerned that they would rescind the action taken some years ago and vote to reestablish control over local utilities in the hands of their own locally elected public officials.

We have relinquished control of our local utilities to an organization which has its headquarters in another eity. The members and employees of the Railroad Commission do not have the same familiarity with local conditions as do the elected officials of the city and yet they have full control over these important matters.

I feel so strongly upon this subject and am so thoroughly convinced that the Railroad Commission has failed entirely in the purpose for which the Commission was established that I believe the entire Commission should be abolished and that legislation looking to its abolishment should be introduced at the coming session of the Legislature. In this I am positive from corre- spondence which I have had with other eities in California that it would have the unanimous support of other eities which have also suffered at the hands of the Railroad Commission in favor of the corporations.

One important fallaey of the Railroad Commission rulings lies, in my opinion, in their policy of permitting the utilities to receive rates from the publie which will permit them to pay the expenses of their constant applica- tions before the Commission for an increase in those same rates. The utilities are permitted by the Railroad Commission to pay salaries to their officials far in advance of those received by any publie official elected by the people. The rate payers in turn are called upon through the Railroad Commission to pro- vide the money with which to pay those salaries and in addition to pay rates which will, after all operating expenses have been paid, return 7% on the capital stock of the various utilities. Were the control over loeal rates of utilities to be vested in the Mayor and members of the City Council elected by the people of Oakland, we would not have, for example, the present 7 cent fare on the street cars, and we would demand and receive a much better service from the Traction Company because we would have the control of these loeal utilities direet in the hands of officials elected by the people of this city.

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Polk's Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda city directory, 1926, Part 3

Author: R.L. Polk & Co Publication date: 1925 Publisher: Oakland, Cal. : R.L. Polk & Co. Number of Pages: 1924

Author: R.L. Polk & Co
Publication date: 1925
Publisher: Oakland, Cal. : R.L. Polk & Co.
Number of Pages: 1924