SHARING OUR MAYOR
For the longest, it’s been my belief that
if Mayor Jerry Brown were more like Bill Clinton, Oakland would have a better record
of downtown development. But maybe not the way you’re thinking.
When Brown was running for Mayor in 1998, and during his re-election
campaign last year, he promised that downtown development was one of his three top
priorities (if you’ve got a good memory, you’ll recall that the other two were education
and crime, both of which are probably touchy subjects with the Mayor these days,
what with the state takeover of the Oakland Public Schools, problems with both his
charter schools, and two years of soaring murder rates…so that brings us back to
downtown development).
Anyways, while downtown development hasn’t been a total disaster
under Jerry Brown, the Mayor hasn’t racked up a bundle of successes, either, in five
years at the helm. The one new development that absolutely, positively would not
have come to downtown Oakland if Jerry Brown had not been Mayor, and that’s the Gap
store on Broadway. The reason we can say that the Gap probably wouldn’t have come
to downtown Oakland without Brown is that his girlfriend, Anne Gust, is a Gap executive.
Mind you, I absolutely do not see anything either illegal, unethical,
or improper about this type of arrangement, having the Mayor’s girlfriend help out
in development. In fact, I would like to encourage it, if I could. The problem is
that unlike Bill Clinton, Jerry Brown appears to be a one-girlfriend kind of guy.
Admirable quality, yes, but it sort of stunts Oakland’s progress, don’t you think?,
because more mayoral girlfriends might mean more businesses coming into town. For
a while I was thinking about getting local residents to sponsor a dating service
for the Mayor, just to get him started in the right direction, but a better idea
has recently intervened.
Last spring, the Mayor left his Jack London neighborhood-area loft
and moved in with Gust at her place in the converted Sears building at Telegraph
and 26th Street, in a community commonly known as Koreatown. If you know anything
about the neighborhood, it’s one of the rougher major street areas of the city after
dark, with open air drug dealing, and more than it’s share of auto break-ins, fighting,
and other assorted bad stuff. No surprise to anyone who drives through the area on
a late summer evening, but, then, maybe, north on Telegraph was not one of the directions
that the Mayor liked to drive on late summer evenings. We can make that assertion
because fighting crime and blight and generally improving the Koreatown community
was not known as one of Mayor Brown’s priorities…not, at least, until he moved into
the neighborhood.
Now, of course, it is.
"Since moving … into the … Sears Building," the Tribune
reported last month, the Mayor "has been prowling the neighborhood…. When he
doesn't like what he sees, he picks up the phone and gives bureaucrats an earful
until something gets done. So far, the mayor has helped get two buildings condemned,
talked the housing authority into canceling its Section 8 contracts with one building
owner, increased police patrols and helped the owner of a bar he frequents obtain
a permit for karaoke."
In explaining if the police and other city officials are giving
the Koreatown neighborhood special attention because it is, after all, the Mayor’s
new neighborhood, the Tribune quoted a police representative as saying, "I
can't say we are acting differently than we are in any other neighborhood, but when
the Mayor shows up, people tend to pay attention."
This has caused some grumbling from other neighborhoods about preferential
treatment, but it is my belief that rather than whining and complaining, Oaklanders
ought to recognize the potential in this situation and capitalize. If the Mayor is
more likely to be concerned about crime and blight and development in a neighborhood
in which he lives, and if police and other city officials are more likely to respond
to complaints and suggestions from the Mayor than they are to complaints and suggestions
from ordinary citizens, then the solution is obvious…concerned Oakland residents
must induce the Mayor to move into their neighborhoods, if only for a brief moment.
I propose, therefore, that the City of Oakland set up an Rent-The-Mayor
program, in which, for a nominal fee and the providing of a vacant room, apartment,
house, or even a spare church pew, neighborhoods can obtain the services of the Mayor
for periods of a week up to a month. During that period, it will be the Mayor’s responsibility
to roam the local streets on foot, reporting blight and crime whenever he sees it
and clearing red tape for frustrated citizens and business owners. Police and other
city officials will quickly respond, criminals will be rousted, trashed cleaned,
permits granted, the Mayor can move on to the next neighborhood, and within a period
of a couple of years, we can turn this city around.
If Tom Bates can sleep for a night on the Berkeley streets, surely
Jerry Brown can sleep in Dogtown and the Twomps.