A Bay Area Journalist's First-Hand Account Of How Mayor Jerry Brown Screwed Over Oakland On His Way To Sacramento
THE GENERAL POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE RECORD OF OAKLAND MAYOR JERRY BROWN "We Discover More Mess From The Mad Hatter's Moving On" "Mr. Brown swept into the mayor’s office in 1998 in part on his dazzling 10k plan promise to revitalize Oakland’s downtown retail core. The plan was always thin on the end game details—Mr. Brown always said, for example, that retail would build in downtown once the 10,000 new residents moved in, but we were always expected to take that on faith rather than being shown a plan or solid commitments on paper. Meanwhile, 10k was such a catchy phrase, and poor Oakland, like the actress Sally Fields at the Academy Awards, was so starved for someone from the outside who actually acted like they liked us, that the skeptics and our doubts were swept away in the general euphoria and fits of expectation that Mr. Brown was going to “put Oakland on the map.” "Mr. Brown has come and gone, his 10,000 people are either already living in downtown Oakland or soon to be here, the retail has not yet followed, and the map of the Bay Area looks pretty much the way it did eight years ago. We are told that the Forest City uptown project will be the answer, and the commercial revenues will come flowing as soon as that project is completed. But we’ve been told a lot of things before, and while construction is booming in the uptown area, as far as we know few quarters have yet to be dropped into new retail store cash registers in Oakland as a result of that development. So we will wait and see. "But budget shortfalls come and go, and Oakland will get through this one, as we have gotten through all the others. The second revealed mess we recently learned Mr. Brown left behind will not be so easily cleaned up, however. That would be the discovery that on his way out the door at Frank Ogawa Plaza, Mr. Brown’s staff either took or destroyed some amount of office records from his two four year terms. Nobody outside of Brown’s staff knows which records, or how many, although only a handful have reportedly been discovered and recovered, so far." From the "We Discover More Mess From The Mad Hatter's Moving On"column |
GENERAL POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT PLAYING THE GAME POWER POLITICS THE PROMISE OF JERRY BROWN WORLD CLASS CITY THE GREAT INNOVATOR THE WRECK AT PARKS & REC OAKLAND ROCKS CLEVER CHILDREN RUN, JERRY, RUN THE RUSH TO RENEW STRONG-MAYOR THE UNREST AT ALICE ARTS NONE SO BLIND AS... MAKING AN ARGUMENT THE MYSTERIOUS MANEUVERS OF MAYOR BROWN ON WIN-WINNING AND MILKING SITUATIONS SHARING OUR MAYOR YOU'RE JOKING MR. BROWN'S FAREWELL TOUR BROWN'S BLOG MR. BROWN'S BENIGN NEGLECT OAKLAND'S ARTS RENAISSANCE MAYOR A VISIONARY WITHOUT WORK WORSE AND WORSER THE ARTFUL MR. BROWN DODGES AGAIN NO LONGER OAKLAND'S PROBLEM WE DISCOVER MORE MESS FROM THE MAD HATTER'S MOVING ON THE JERRY BROWN RECORD ON PUBLIC RECORDS
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