Mayor Quan reflects on first two months in office
on March 11, 2011
When Jean Quan began campaigning to be the mayor of Oakland, she promised to clean up Oakland’s neighborhoods and improve the city’s schools. Quan’s win surprised those who expected front-runner Don Perata to sweep to victory. But when the new, ranked-choice voting system took second choices into account, Quan pulled ahead.
Since Quan took office in January, Governor Jerry Brown has proposed millions in funding cuts to the city’s redevelopment funds. Ten people have been murdered in Oakland, not counting the three killed in officer-involved shootings. And the schools are looking at more teacher lay-offs and deeper cuts than they have for years.
These are big roadblocks for the new mayor, but so far they haven’t slowed her down. Reporter Lillian Mongeau spent time with Quan during her first weeks on the job to see what it’s like to be Oakland’s new multi-tasker-in-chief.
Photo: Jean Quan poses with members of the Measure Y Outreach team on January 24.
3 Comments
Oakland North welcomes comments from our readers, but we ask users to keep all discussion civil and on-topic. Comments post automatically without review from our staff, but we reserve the right to delete material that is libelous, a personal attack, or spam. We request that commenters consistently use the same login name. Comments from the same user posted under multiple aliases may be deleted. Oakland North assumes no liability for comments posted to the site and no endorsement is implied; commenters are solely responsible for their own content.
Oakland North
Oakland North is an online news service produced by students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and covering Oakland, California. Our goals are to improve local coverage, innovate with digital media, and listen to you–about the issues that concern you and the reporting you’d like to see in your community. Please send news tips to: oaklandnorthstaff@gmail.com.
I wonder how she feel to be the first Mayor in over 60 years not to be elected with majority support. 119,607 voters came and voted in the Mayor’s Race, and she got 53,897 votes (45%).
I’m sorry, but this is a real fluff peace.
First, I agree with the Mayor about the continued questions (including in this interview) about her victory. I mean, time to move on already.
Second, while it’s great to walk in East Oakland and show you care, walking in one neighborhood is only part of the solution and arguably no different from the Don: he did clean-ups in East Oakland.
Third, re. Measure Y, Jean is it’s co-author. Not “author”. And that measure passed because it combined more Officers AND anti-violence programs. Then the City gutted the Officer-portion of it by laying off 80 Officers while continuing to collect M-Y taxes by changing the collection terms under M-OO.
Results? Murders up 80% so far this year. (Though it is early in the year).
The Mayor’s job is more than going to different events around Oakland. That is great, but tough decisions also need to be made around issues, policies and policy goals.
Where are your questions about issues and policies? Will you have another interview of substance? Or just follow Jean around admiring how well she runs?
[…] on March 7, 2011 and was published on OaklandNorth.net on March 11, 2011. The KALW link is here. The OaklandNorth.net link is here. (c) Lillian Mongeau 07 Mar This entry was written by Lillian Mongeau, posted on March 7, 2011 at […]