It will be interesting to see what Jean Quan does as Oakland's new mayor. Although she served two terms as a city council member, in many respects how she will handle Oakland's woeful budget and challenging public safety issues is a bit of a mystery.
During the mayoral campaign, Quan, like most of the candidates, offered mostly vague, feel-good answers on how she'll deal with these critical problems.
And Quan is coming to the office with a bit of baggage; not only was she sitting on city council when Oakland's budget went into free fall, she also was the focus of police ire during pension negotiations.
Quan's never (to my knowledge) publicly spoke about her role in managing the city's budget (as part of city council) when it fell into a $50 million deficit. Did she see it coming? Did she try and prevent it?
She's also never detailed how she will work with the police as mayor, given the bad feelings they have for her. During the summer negotiations to try and have OPD officers contribute to their pension, the police officers union directed much of its anger at Quan.
One thing I'm looking forward to during her term is seeing better communications come from mayor's office. No one can dispute that Dellums was just god-awful at reaching out to residents and the media.
In any case, Quan got a lot to handle. And the whole city is watching.
Jean Quan put out a very informative e-mail newsletter while she was on the City Council. I hope she continues it while she's mayor.
ReplyDeleteHi there, thanks for stopping by, nice to meet you. Yes, she's put out a great newsletter and seems to have made inroads into pensions etc.
ReplyDelete