Jobs, Retail, & Economic Development

For many years, I have been one of a few consistent champions for businesses in Oakland City government. I acknowledge the need for business and development to thrive in Oakland in order to provide jobs and a strong tax base. I have been the most balanced and unafraid to articulate the needs of businesses in order for them to survive and operate. Because of the efforts of both myself and others to improve the business climate in Oakland, we have seen a dramatic influx of investment in the Downtown areas as well in District 5. Projects such as Oak to 9th, Uptown, Fruitvale Transit Village, Fruitvale Station, and Fruitvale Gateway are testament to the type of improvements I support that advance infrastructure, revitalize neighborhoods and increase safety.

I have also been a strong proponent of small businesses and local employers and the benefits they offer local employees, which is demonstrated by my success in bringing the commercial vacancy rate in the Fruitvale down from 50% to 1% in the last ten years.

Oakland has many economic development advantages including location, transit, a hardworking workforce, educated residents, scenic beauty, and cultural diversity. However, our city also has many disadvantages such as violence and crime, high taxes, inadequate infrastructure, a small trained workforce, and difficult attitudes towards business and investment. As a city, we need to work to get the most out of our economic advantages while simultaneously working to remedy our disadvantages.

I will continue advocate policy changes with my fellow Council Members and the Mayor to improve Oakland’s situation by passing public policies that respect the needs of businesses and those who provide jobs, promote public-private partnerships, and improve the “enabling” environment for businesses. I believe there are three main economic issues the city must tackle:

Creating Industrial Jobs: Preservation of industrial jobs is the issue that motivated me to run for City Council in 1992. As an industrial worker organizer, I saw that industrial plants were being closed and no one was doing anything to keep those jobs in Oakland. Today, housing developments in older industrial areas are driving out existing businesses when there is not adequate buffering between the two. To deal with this conflict and to create more certainty for the industrial and non-industrial land markets, I advocate designating specific areas of the City for industrial uses and others for buffering (which may be mixed-use). I also think the City must actively work to develop new industrial jobs in our community in existing industrial areas as well as the Army Base.

I continue to champion the creation of new industrial middle class jobs in our community. My ideas to grow quality jobs include development of light industrial and other middle class jobs on the hundreds of acres at the Army Base and along the waterfront as well as aggressive local recruiting and training for the 1,400 City of Oakland jobs expected to be in vacant in the next 5 years (many of which do not require advanced education). As a Council Member, I also sponsored legislation prohibiting “super” Wal-Mart from invading Oakland and would take other similar actions in the future.

Ensuring Community Benefits from Development: I will continue to ensure open and transparent development approval processes by asking developers to work closely with the communities in which they are building to assess the social and economic impacts of their projects and how the community’s needs should be met in their project design. When the City Council is giving discretionary approvals to a development project (especially when the project requires rezoning from industrial to mixed-use/commercial/housing) it is incumbent on the City Council to ensure that private projects create public benefits such as quality jobs for Oaklanders as well as infrastructure and neighborhood improvements.

I also support Community Impact Reports and Community Benefits Agreements for projects as well as Project Stabilizations Agreements (PLA’s) at the Port of Oakland, the Airport, and Oak to 9th (among others). In addition, I support Labor Harmony and Labor Peace agreements because these agreements protect union jobs and wages.

In District 5, I have seen development that has brought visible social and economic benefits to working families through the creation of services, housing, jobs, improved infrastructure, pedestrian and transit amenities, landscaping, lighting, and blight removal. I truly believe that we need to provide a livable City for workers with ample and safe housing, safe and clean neighborhoods and public spaces, and quality transportation options. Many of these areas are core responsibilities of the City government and other public agencies.

Workforce: Three things should be done to help business attract and retain a qualified workforce. The first is cultivating the workforce that businesses need by fostering high performance from our K-12 school system and well as 2-year and 4-year colleges. This is complex and involves a quality school board, quality District leadership and quality teachers in every classroom at every grade level. One approach to workforce development is to tie workforces to particular sectors, but I believe the best foundation for any worker is a quality K-12 education, one that gives workers the basic skills to be versatile and adapt as the economy changes during their lifetime.

I also believe we need to connect workers with Oakland businesses though outreach, partnership and collaboration. Many such efforts are underway with the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, the Port of Oakland, the City Government, Community Colleges and non-profits. As part of this effort, we must ensure that businesses are offering safe, accessible, quality jobs that pay a living wage. I will also continue to fight for accountability of the millions of dollars the City spends annually on job training and placement programs.