NIMBYs
against sunshine

Oakland creates obstacles for drug-treatment centers

By Tali Woodward

Early this month the Oakland City Council passed an emergency ordinance making it harder for drug-treatment centers to set up shop. Treatment advocates say it was a political ploy that violated the laws meant to ensure public input, and they're threatening to sue the city.

The battle revolves around Casa Segura, which provides health care, counseling, and treatment referrals to intravenous drug users in hopes of preventing the spread of disease. Forced out of its office in Fruitvale last year after an arson fire, the organization purchased a new building in east Oakland and was planning to reopen by April.

But neighborhood opposition prompted Councilmember Moses Mayne, who is in a tough fight for reelection, to push through an ordinance to derail Casa Segura's plan.

The ordinance requires treatment centers to obtain a major conditional-use permit from the Planning Commission – a process that requires at least one hearing and several thousands of dollars in fees.

"We had hoped to start renovation by now and to be in there by April. Now, being optimistic, we hope it will be July or August," Casa Segura director Joy Rucker told the Bay Guardian.

It's not just the substance of the ordinance that advocates are criticizing.

Mayne placed the ordinance on the agenda for immediate action under the emergency provision in the city's sunshine law that waives the typical notice requirements for legislation that requires urgent action. But critics of Mayne's law say this was hardly an "emergency."

In fact, it wasn't until the day the council approved the ordinance, Feb. 5, that Mayne inserted language specifying the nature of the supposed emergency: "to avoid a direct threat to the health or safety of the community in proximity to such services, including children who may be seriously harmed by contact with discarded needles."

But Casa Segura staff have said all along that the group has no plans to operate a needle exchange at this site, although it does run such programs at three other city sites.

"I felt that it was a manufactured emergency," said Nancy Nadel, the only council member who voted against the ordinance. Nadel, who is also the chair of the Planning Commission, said that she thinks the neighbors' concerns about the oversaturation of service providers in the neighborhood would be better addressed through another planning guideline, one that "wouldn't waste precious service dollars."

First Amendment attorney Thomas Burke (who also represents the Bay Guardian) sent a letter to the city council and to Mayor Jerry Brown Feb. 20 asking the city to immediately cure and correct the process. "The two narrow exceptions to the public's fundamental right to notice and to participate in government exist for those rare situations where failing to act immediately will result in dire consequences to the public health and well being," the letter says. "Neither of these exemptions justified the City Council's actions in this situation."

The letter further states that the council's behavior "appears to be solely based on a desire to make this substantial change in its permit process with limited public scrutiny or input."

The city now has 30 days to respond – and Judy Appel, a lawyer who is working on the case for the Drug Policy Alliance, said, "If they don't cure the procedural defect, we are going to sue."

Mayne did not return phone calls for comment. Desley Brooks, who is running against Mayne for the District Six seat, told us that she opposes the ordinance. "The city has failed that neighborhood, but this won't do anything to help," she said, adding that research indicates that treatment centers do not increase crime or drug use.

On the sunshine issue, Brooks was succinct: "The very thing that they claimed was the basis for emergency action wasn't even in [the law] until the council meeting. If that was the emergency, wouldn't it have been in there?"

E-mail Tali Woodward at tali@sfbg.com.