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The Alameda Sun's December poll asked, "What is the one thing you would change about how Alameda city government operates?" As usual, the Sun received a stunning set of responses from its readers.

For one thing, some respondents came up with things that the Sun could do to help the public formulate its response to the poll. One reader suggested the paper publish the top-50 paid city employees, including salary, bonuses, overtime, etc. Another respondent suggested the Sun do a brief synopsis of the role and function of Alameda city government. That being said, this poll was supposed to be about what the city could do better.

Poll Reponses

• Shorten city council meetings, and have more of them! When the mayor and city manager know there will be many speakers on a particular agenda item, they should plan to have a special meeting devoted to that one item.

At some recent meetings, a popular item on the agenda did not even begin until after 9 p.m., after people had been sitting and waiting for two hours. Some people have had to wait until after 10:30 p.m. to speak. By that time everyone is a zombie. Another improvement would be to have all the award presentations and dedications at 6:30 p.m.

— Mary Theresa Anderson

• The primary aspect about how the Alameda city government operates that I would change is the Building Department. Ask any contractor who has worked on projects in Alameda, which is the worst city in the Bay Area for obtaining permits? They'll all say Alameda.

Ask any resident who has attempted to obtain a permit for some home improvement project and they'll all tell you stories about the illogical, frustrating, time-consuming process including the hoop-jumping they were put through. The department should take a lesson from the 2010-2011 Alameda County Grand Jury report on the Oakland Building Department!

— Richard M. Hausman

• I believe that there should be some qualifications for heads of departments, police, fire, public works (even city manager), but I also don't naively think that a city council or city manager would allow their hands to be tied by some binding law or rule in choosing their favorites for these positions.

It appears that except for police and public works, the recent choices have been made without consideration of qualifications. There are many ways for citizens to at least devise minimum qualifications for these top jobs. All the city personnel have minimum qualifications for their positions, why not the top of the heap?

— Mike Kelly

• Further to your request for the most important issue in Alameda let me suggest two irritants: Street lights, not bright enough. Second issue if I may, the use of sirens on fire ambulances. Studies show that they do not help increase the response time nor the medical safety of the patient. And two or three big fire trucks to a routine medical emergency should be reviewed. We should consider returning to private ambulances instead of our highly paid firefighters.

— Martin Lee

• There seems to be a very real disconnect between the city staff and citizens of Alameda. We were heartsick about the trees being cut down on Park Street as some of us remember when they were planted! Did the city council engineer this step of cutting mature trees down? I don't think so. I don't know who is disconnected, but we need to find out. The tree-cutting fiasco is not the first time this has happened. How can we improve communication? Does any of the city staff live in Alameda?

— Tina Chapot

Keep parks and open space from development.

— John Lee

• Conduct an independent risk analysis before entering into deals with developers. Getting sued for millions of dollars should not happen to a small city like Alameda.

• Make public the calendars of the city manager as well as department heads, including the fire and police chiefs.

• The city council should listen to the people who voted for them. Give them what they want instead of giving away the city to people who paid for their campaigns.

• Do nothing underhandedly. Notify residents of any action it takes that would affect the community.

• Just one thing? Darn! Well, I keep thinking back to the last election and how almost all the same people got re-elected to council, albeit some with different titles [so what a waste of money]. I believe this would require a charter amendment, but I would change the present separate elections for mayor and councilmembers to just one pool of candidates for all five positions.

Whoever gets the most votes would become mayor. They already give the vice-mayor title to the council candidate with the most votes, so the sentiment seems to be there. Since each of the five gets one vote on the issues, the title of mayor seems to be only for ceremonial purposes.

Thank you for running this poll; keep up the good work.

— Carol Gottstein

• Alameda has had a lot of trouble with its city managers: one former city manager is now suing the city; not sure about the qualifications of the new one with no experience as a city manager. Maybe it's time to elect a city manager.

• One thing that I think would be a positive improvement would be for the city to open an email hotline to report graffiti (public and private), cars parked on front lawns, inoperable cars in driveways, blighted properties, and so on. The system could then acknowledge receipt of the email and then with a follow-up email from the city once the problem has been addressed or steps being taken to address the problem.

• The drafting of legislation and how its wording relates to needs and intents. My recent experience with the non-smoking ordinance has left me feeling that the will of the council and the people is not truly reflected in the ordinances that were approved.

The initial drafts have wording that supports nuisance complaints — in the final drafts it's gone. This was explained away by the city attorney at the final reading by some need to reference existing nuisance provisions, however I don't see it.

Publishing proposed ordinances on the web site is a good idea, and there is some explanation in introductory notes, but what's needed is an idiot's guide written in plain English that translates what's in and not in the legislation. For example in the smoking ordinances it's very unclear as to whether or not smoking on a patio is banned on Jan. 2, 2012, or Jan. 1, 2013.

The city should run something like a Wiki or an interactive web site that allows public comment on sections of the ordinance in a more controlled and scientific way that forces the city attorney to provide a reasoned response to comments. It might be a huge improvement and a way to makes us a more involved community. There must be a few thousand lawyer residents in the community whose skills could be co-opted in this way to write far-better laws that are understandable and represent our civil values.

— Adrian Blakey

• Put limits on election spending by candidates, making the amounts small enough to alleviate special interest donations.

• I would offer two things, one political and one procedural. Political: That all our elected officials recuse themselves from casting a vote on any matter that they have a material interest in, or stand to gain from. For example, if they have taken large campaign donations from a developer (like Ron Cowan) or from a union (like the firefighters), and then have something come before their governing body pertaining to that group, then they should recuse themselves or at the very least, acknowledge that they have received (insert amount of $$) from said group or organization.

Procedural: Before the city government makes any substantial changes in methods, procedures, operations, systems, etc, the city manager should ask the workers that are actually doing the work "will this new equipment/system/ procedure work for you? Will it do the work we need it to do? What problems/challenges do you see in getting it to work as needed?"

Too many times in the past, some new thingy has been bought by a higher-up, only to find that there are problems in implementing it. Case in point, years ago the city upgraded its computer software in the finance department. But the new software didn't work for business licenses and parking violations. The city had to pay a computer consultant mucho bucks to rewrite code to make it work, and to trouble-shoot problems as they arose.

More recently, the city farmed out its parking violations collections to an outside vendor, without thinking through all the possible problems and challenges it would mean. Years ago, the city replaced one of its sedans with an early model electric vehicle, like a glorified golf cart.

The sedan that was replaced was one used by the city's mail messenger, who was then supposed to use the new little golf cart. Only the glorified golf cart had no windows so during the rainy season, the driver would get all wet and cold, and the mail would get all wet, and the small seat next to the driver was too small to hold the mail trays, so they kept sliding off the seat and dumping the mail on the floor. Oh well.

— Al Wright