Politics
After cancelling a public speech initially planned for Wednesday, Oakland mayor Ron Dellums presented his final State of the City address as a 68-page written document and a video posted on his official website.
In their first meeting since the November election, Oakland’s school board members reflected somberly on the near-passage of Measure L, the $195 property tax that would have raised $20 million per year for ten years, increasing salaries for school employees.
When Jean Quan chose to run for mayor this fall rather than for reelection to Oakland’s City Council, she left a vacuum in the city’s fourth municipal district, which she has represented on the council since 2003. Seven candidates vied for her seat, more than for any office on an Oaklander’s ballot other than the unprecedented ten-way race for mayor that Quan narrowly won. With Quan moving to City Hall and Libby Schaaf replacing her in January, the face of…
Members of the Oakland teachers’ union voted tonight on whether to reaffirm its rejection of the teaching contract imposed by the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) in the spring, and authorize actions up to and including a district-wide strike.
The last state of the city address by outgoing Oakland mayor Ron Dellums, scheduled for this Wednesday, was cancelled on Monday. Instead of a public speech, the mayor will deliver his closing remarks on his four year term in a speech posted online in text and video form.
As Oakland looks forward to a new mayor in the coming year, it faces giant-sized challenges in employment and business development that would be daunting for any city administration. Unemployment stands at 17.3 percent, compared to a national rate of 9.6 percent, and several large companies have deserted the city, taking hundreds of jobs with them. So business organizations and city officials are focused on strategies to make Oakland a business-friendly environment to attract new companies and new jobs.
Over the past 15 years Oakland has become the the epicenter of a national conversation about the legalization, taxation and regulation of marijuana. How did this happen? It started with the coalescing of an open-minded city council, an impoverished downtown, and a handful of determined activists.
A wave of applause and a flurry of camera flashes greeted Mayor-elect Jean Quan on Friday night at her celebratory dinner, marking the end of her campaign and the beginning of her transition to becoming Oakland’s first female and Asian American mayor. “Did we make history? We made history,” Quan said proudly to nearly 200 people who attended the dinner at King of King, a Chinese restaurant in East Oakland.
Oakland’s first experiment with ranked-choice voting, the system in which enough second and third-choice votes can propel a trailing candidate to victory, led to Jean Quan’s upset of former state Senator Don Perata. It also led to a robust argument about the system itself.