Cities In Northern California

When Heroes Become Bureaucrats

N Memorial Day, a suicidal man waded into San Francisco Bay outside the city of Alameda and stood there for about an hour, neck-deep in chilly water, as about 75 bystanders watched. Local police and firefighters were called to the scene, but they refused to help. After the man drowned, the assembled “first responders” also refused to wade into the water to retrieve his body; they left that job for a bystander.

The incident sparked widespread outrage in northern California, and the response by the fire department and police only intensified the anger. The firefighters blamed local budget cuts for denying them the training and equipment necessary for cold-water rescues. The police said that they didn’t know if the man was dangerous and therefore couldn’t risk the safety of their officers. After a local TV news crew asked him whether he would save a drowning child in the bay, Alameda fire chief Ricci Zombeck gave an answer that made him the butt of local talk-show mockery: “Well, if I was off duty, I would know what I would do, but I think you’re asking me my on-duty response, and I would have to stay within our policies and procedures, because that’s what’s required by our department to do.”

If you stand a better chance of being rescued by the official rescuers when they are off duty, it naturally leads people to question the purpose of these departments, which consume the lion’s share of city budgets and whose employees—in California, anyway—receive exceedingly handsome salaries. In Orange County, where I worked for a newspaper for 11 years, the average pay and benefits package for a firefighter is $175,000 a year. Virtually every Orange County deputy sheriff earns, in pay and overtime, over $100,000 a year, with a significant percentage earning more than $150,000. In many cities, police and fire budgets eat up more than three-quarters of the city budget, and that doesn’t count the unfunded liabilities for generous pension packages, which can top 90 percent of a worker’s final year’s pay. It’s hard to argue that these departments are so starved for funds that they’re entitled to stop saving lives.

After I wrote a newspaper column deploring the Alameda incident, I received many e-mails from self-identified police officers and firefighters. Though a few were appalled by the new public-safety culture they saw on display, most defended it; some even defended Zombeck’s words. Many made reference to a fire in San Francisco that week that had claimed the life of at least one firefighter. The message was clear: Don’t criticize firefighters, because they put their lives on the line protecting you. There’s no doubt that firefighters and police have tough and sometimes dangerous jobs, but that doesn’t mean that the public has no business criticizing them—especially as they become infected with the bureaucratic mind-set spread by public-sector union activism. The unions defend their members’ every action; to the extent that they admit a problem, they always blame tight budgets.

Marcus' World: Cities, Suburbs, Northern California and New York

This past week my brother Jeremy was in town from Phoenix, affording an opportunity to explore parts of the region that we otherwise would not be likely to visit.  And so on Saturday we found ourselves up in Sonoma County, for a visit to the little town of Healdsburg, where Pi Wen and I enjoyed wine, cheese, and crackers as Jeremy observed our upscale stylings with bemusement.

Healdsburg is in Sonoma County, Northern California's slice of wine country that has not (yet) been overly commercialized like the Napa Valley.  Lunch was also in Sonoma, just over the line from Marin, at Blu in Petaluma.  Sonoma is definitely part of the nine county Bay Area region , but it feels a world away from San Francisco or Alameda counties.

SF and Alameda are the "inner core" of the region.  San Francisco is the region's anchor, culturally if not economically.  Oakland and Berkeley (both in Alameda) are major cities in their own right, within easy proximity to SF.  Unsurprisingly, as you get further into Alameda or the other counties things feel more suburban.

Is that such a bad thing?  Nicholas Lemann says no, using the New York metropolitan region as his example.  In the most recent issue of the New Yorker , Lemann describes his family's move from Manhattan to Pelham (a Westchester County suburb) and then back to Manhattan.  Despite everyone in Pelham claiming they'd only left the city because of the kids, the truth was that most people liked it.  The pace was slower, kids could play in the street, and it was easier to know your neighbors.  And the responsibiliity of raising kids in the city would have made many of the joys of city life--the late nights, the dining at obscure and fabulous restaurants--impossible anyway.

And so...there is a place for the suburbs.  They are not just the land of white flight and mindless conformity. As Lemann also points out, the sharp categories we tend to draw between cities and suburbs--high rise living in the cities, single family homes in the burbs--fail to withstand scrutiny.  Tbis is true for Pi Wen and myself, in our current home of Oakland.  On one hand, Oakland is a city of 400,000 people.  On the other hand, it's a suburb of San Francisco (sort of, as the two cities don't touch.) Our neighborhood contains a mixture of apartment buildings and single family homes.  You can easily walk to restaurants and shops on Piedmont Avenue, which is a quintessentially urban experience.  And yet, it is far easier to drive to do errands like grocery shopping, which places us in the burbs. Lemann argues that there is a continuum between urban and suburban rather than a sharp dichotomy, and I agree.