Oakland voters' overwhelming support for an anti-crime measure may be as close to a consensus that the city's residents will get on how to fight crime.
    In Measure Y, which passed on Tuesday with nearly 70 percent of the vote, Oakland achieved a successful formula to persuade voters to hire 63 more police officers and pay for firefighters as well as fund anti-violence social programs.
Two attempts in the past two years to raise taxes to hire more officers fell short of the required two-thirds of voters, and Measure Y faced stiff opposition from the left and the right.
     "I really thought it would be closer," Mayor Jerry Brown said Wednesday. "But we finally found a measure that everyone in Oakland could agree on. It was a well-run campaign; it's a credit to all the people who worked very hard to pass this. This is something Oakland really needed."
    Several people involved in the effort, which included phone banks, yard signs and door-to-door campaigning, said they were surprised by the margin of victory.
"We believed that we would make it, but I thought it might be a lot tighter than that,'' said Don Link, a North Oakland neighborhood activist who led a team of volunteer campaign workers. "We needed both the right, who wanted more police, and the left, who wanted more social programs -- and we got enough of both."
    The measure will provide $9.5 million a year for police, $6.4 million for violence prevention -- including after-school programs and counseling, and training for people on parole or probation for nonviolent crimes -- and $4 million to restore cuts to the Fire Department.
    Owners of single-family homes will pay $88 a year, apartment owners $60 per unit and commercial property owners $45 for each space equivalent to a family residence. The measure will raise the city parking tax from 10 percent to 18.5 percent.
The city won't collect the money until January 2006. But Brown said Oakland might borrow money from itself to hire a new police academy class in the late spring or summer.
    Some residents worked against Measure Y because they considered it a weak compromise that would not result in hiring enough new officers. They said the city should come back with a measure to hire at least 100 more police, if not more.
    Meanwhile, a group of opponents led by former Councilman Wilson Riles Jr. argued that hiring more police would not reduce crime. They argued that the city should focus on social programs that deter teens and ex-convicts from the criminal lifestyle.
    "At first I was worried that we were under attack from both sides,'' said Councilwoman Jean Quan, who argued for Measure Y at several community meetings. "But it actually benefited us with some voters. ... After you listen to both the left and right, you realize that neither of those approaches will work."
   Brown first proposed taxing residents to hire 100 more officers in 2002, when the city's homicide rate began to sharply rise. But that November, three tax increases to hire police failed to get 50 percent of the vote.
    In March, parcel tax Measure R, which would have raised about half as much money for social programs and police as Measure Y, fell a couple hundred votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed.
    Supporters said Measure Y passed because it had such a wide array of backers, from Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, to the local Chamber of Commerce to Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and Councilwoman Nancy Nadel, rivals in the race to replace Brown in 2006.
    "We just knew this was our last chance to do this,'' Quan said.
Meanwhile, supporters of a measure that sets the stage for legalizing cannabis for personal use and making marijuana enforcement the Police Department's lowest priority hailed its victory.
   Supporters said Measure Z, which won 64.3 percent of the vote, is largely symbolic but that symbolism is powerful. "It is a watershed in public opinion," said Oakland resident Dale Gieringer, the California coordinator for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "This is the first time that voters anywhere have declared themselves in favor of legalizing marijuana just like alcohol and tobacco."
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