Budget issues may force Oakland to delay pothole repairs

CBS News

01-05-2025

The streets in Oakland have gone from bad to worse… at least that's what some residents tell CBS Bay Area.
According to the city's transportation director, due to money issues, the city might not have the cash needed to move ahead with schedule repaving projects.
"I'm rushing to get to school and BOOM! I'm like oh my gosh!" says Leslie Alfred. She says she knew exactly what happened a few weeks ago. It was the "car-eating pot hole," as she calls it. It's not far form her son's school, and that day, she hit it.
"I had to get two new tires and an alignment. It cost me like $300 or $350," she said. Alfred says the surface streets in Oakland just keep getting worse, and she doesn't understand why the city doesn't do more to fix it.
"It's very frustrating. So now I've got to do the roads like a video game. Especially in East Oakland too. It's really bad," she says.
"The administration is hired specifically, specifically to administer what the voters approved and it didn't happen," says Oakland City Councilmember, Noel Gallo, who represents East Oakland and the Fruitvale.
He's talking about Measure U bonds that were approved by voters in 2022 for housing and roads, but according to the Oakland director of transportation, the finance department didn't sell the bonds last fall. That means there's a massive gap in funding, possibly as much as $55 million.
"When the voter passes an initiative, to raise money, there is no excuse from the governmental body that we can't do the work or we cannot generate the money," says Gallo. Without it, Gallo says the projects that are supposed to start around Lake Merritt and High Street are now in jeopardy - and the only work that will get done are the projects that are already under contract.
And for drivers like Leslie, that's not what she wants to hear.
"It's a terrible thing. I wish somebody could do something about it,' she says.
The city could try to issue bonds near the end of the year to raise needed money for the roads, but the problem is the city's credit rating is dropping because of all the budget issues.