We're publishing answers to the questions our audience submitted at January's Ceasefire Summit. (Read part one, with responses from OPD's Sean Whent and members of Oakland Ceasefire, here.) Today, we provide answers from Sara…
Make Oakland Better Now's analysis of the Oakland Police Department’s new “Strategic Plan” including its goal of reducing homicide, robbery, aggravated assault rates by 30% in three years.
Oakland's Public Safety Committee will consider new gun control measures that will ban the possession of large capacity magazines and require the safe storage of firearms.
In our last post we analyzed Mayor Libby Schaaf’s strategy for “holistic community safety” outlined in her State of the City address. Today, we’ll continue our discussion, looking at her other three stated top priorities: responsive, trustworthy government, sustainable infrastructure, and equitable jobs and housing.
Responsive, trustworthy government
The Mayor’s total policy discussion on accountability was as follows:
“I could tell you about our transparency and ‘gov 2.0’ projects—like our Digital Front Door website redesign, our employee civic lab or plans for a 3-1-1 call center, but it really starts with the people.”
She then praised top staff members, the City Administrator, and other recent additions to her team.
Our take:
We don’t criticize the Mayor for publicly and openly supporting her people—that’s an important part of leadership. But we call for more emphasis on policy. A starting point might be these initiatives from her campaign white paper on how to “bring Oakland government into the 21st Century”:
What I Will Do
Implement 311 System for better service delivery:
Do you know what number to call to report illegal dumping or a pothole? Most big cities use a 3-1-1 system to make it easy for residents to request help from their government. As Mayor I will implement a world-class 311 customer service center that transitions the City to a new generation of technology that centralizes citizen requests and makes the process and resolution of each request accessible to the public 24/7 on our website.CityStat and the Office of Strategic Performance:
I will link the 311 service request system with a CityStat performance accountability system led by a newly established Office of Strategic Performance (see Louisville, Kentucky for a good model). I will work with department heads to establish clear performance measures and nurture a culture of continuous improvement within City Hall. In pursuit of this goal, OSP will help City departments and agencies deliver high quality services to citizens in a cost-efficient and transparent manner. Three core efforts include strategic planning, performance management, continuous improvement consulting and training. We can save on technology procurement dollars by conducting internal and external user research to scope projects more efficiently, determine what the needs are and design a scope of work to fulfill those needs. Too often contracts are signed without a clear understanding of the pain points, and key opportunities to solve actual problems are missed.
Sometime soon, Oaklanders should hear about where we stand on these efforts.
More after the break. (more…)
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf gave her first State of the City address and outlined her plan for "holistic community safety." Make Oakland Better Now! weighs in on strengthening OPD, the city's Comprehensive Public Safety Plan, and more.
City Council holds a special meeting tonight at 5:00 p.m., and it's going to be very long one. Council will be deliberating over the Mayor's Budget Proposal and the additional…
We strongly support the efforts by Mayor Schaaf to accommodate and facilitate the exercise of free speech while at the same time protecting persons and property from attack by vandals…
Mayor Libby Schaaf says she supports freedom of expression and the right of Oaklanders and Oakland businesses to be free of violence caused by individuals who embed themselves in otherwise peaceful demonstrations. While we support her efforts to change strategies to eliminate violence at demonstrations, Make Oakland Better Now! encourages her to approach this somewhat differently.
Both #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName are important local and national movements. Our communitymleaders play a critical role in affirming to the nation that we will not tolerate the injustices we have seen in Ferguson, in Cleveland, in New York and throughout the country, including, much too recently, in Oakland.
Having said that, we are proud of what OPD has done in the past two years to improve its relationship with the community, and most especially with people of color. Far too little of this change has been acknowledged in our public dialogue. It is no accident that OPD has experienced only one officer-involved shooting (resulting in no injury) in the past two years, and that no OPD gunfire has resulted in death for more than three years. Indeed, OPD, working with the faith-based community and outside consultants, leads the country in police legitimacy and procedural justice training. While there is much more to do, no fair-minded person can ignore these recent improvements.
It is now time for Oakland to lead the country in developing a model that balances protection of First Amendment rights for demonstrators with protecting the rights of adjacent business owners. (more…)
In May, 2013, Oakland’s City Council passed a resolution, sponsored by then-city council member, now Mayor Libby Schaaf, to substantially revise Oakland’s budget process. The idea was to add transparency,…
MOBN! SUPPORTS THE PROPOSED PUBLIC SAFETY MEASURE – IF THE CITY GUARANTEES A THRESHOLD NUMBER OF OFFICERS
Tuesday night, Oakland’s City Council has a very big agenda (and will be holding a very long meeting). But the most critical item on that agenda is a resolution to place a public safety and services ballot on this November’s election, to take effect in January when Measure Y expires.
As most readers of Oaktalk know, Measure Y was passed ten years ago, and provides for a parcel tax and parking tax that provide $22 million for “problem solving officers,” violence prevention programs and fire funding. We could provide a litany of issues and problems with Measure Y, but will save this for another day. Our questions have been (1) what would happen without the $22 million?, (2) what would the voters be willing to do?, and (3) what politically acceptable solutions were there to solve the biggest problems with Measure Y.
