Since I just finished examining the neglect that Oakland suffers at the hands of Caltrans, I figured I might as well turn the spotlight on the city's own shoddy way of maintaining things. A walk around the lake is certainly more beautiful than it's ever been, but look closer and you start to see the fraying edges. Entire swaths of lawn with alternating mowed and unmowed spots, edges left overgrown, and the bases of trees surrounded by overgrown grass. The city continues to see the succession of beautification projects initiated by Jerry Brown be poorly maintained, if at all, by the current administration.
Oakland loves to talk about how underfunded the city government is, most notably when they started putting up signs around town asking residents to come out and do the gardening for them. While there hasn't been much talk about this pitiful initiative in quite a while, its legacy remains in the form of unkempt landscaping around the city. What irks me as I look at weed-riddled and graffitied parks and city property around Oakland is how little is expected of the gardeners and city workers who remain employed.
I can appreciate that a limited staff will yield limited results, but that rationale only speaks to scope, not quality. Being a small staff, no matter how burdened, doesn't forgive doing mediocre work. They're still getting paid, after all, so there's absolutely no reason why they should barely run the mower and call it a day. Not only that, but it is blatantly obvious around Oakland when city workers haven't even bothered to show their faces in months, if not years. When there's plant life growing in front of the graffiti, you can rest assured no one's been around recently.
I'd like to take solace in knowing that at least some of the more important parts of town get special attention from city workers, but sadly that's not always the case. A trip to Lakeside Park will yield spots caked in goose droppings and feathers, dead grass, and overturned waste bins (as shown in the picture attached to this blog). If Oakland can't even keep the jewel that is Lake Merritt pristine, there's not much hope that the rest of the city will ever look any better.
The damnable shame of it all is that so many restaurants and shop owners continue to make the effort to beautify their private property while the city rewards them with filth and blight. It's no wonder that, beyond fears of crime, retailers are hesitant to set up shop around Oakland when the city does little to make itself presentable to residents and consumers. It's wearying seeing a couple of medians cleaned up and sparkling only to go a block and see the exact opposite. It's not hard, Oakland, you just have to care more about your citizens than lining the pockets of administrators.