Ken Houston's Top 3 Priorities for Oakland

By Ken Houston

Below is a detailed summary of Ken Houston's top priorities, --Local Jobs, Changing the Face & Image of the City, and Public Safety

Unemployment in Oakland is the result of lack of policies to include local participation. Policy is how you create jobs, not promises. Policy + skillsets + opportunity + access = success. As a community advocate, I worked diligently to spearhead the policy change from 30% "due diligence" local participation to 50% mandatory local participation. As Mayor, I will raise this to 75% mandatory local participation and make it successful through policy changes.

Oakland has the most construction projects of all of Alameda County. How can it be that Oakland has all these billion-dollar projects and yet the unemployment rate is at 9%, and even higher for African Americans and Hispanics? How can that be? As a contractor, I am engaged in the process and I know how these contractors get around the rules. There is a billion dollars right now in the construction industry in Oakland and in the near future. There is a window opportunity for all, but it is a short window. We need to use that window to put Oaklanders to work so that when the window closes they will have the skillsets and the experience to get other jobs! We have to take advantage of this now, because these projects won't be here in the future. Across the country the construction industry has systematically excluded African Americans and Latinos, women, and other minorities. They have used their tricks in Oakland for years to exclude them. They will not get away with this when I am the mayor!

Construction runs the whole country. It is the most profitable industry in America. It is more lucrative than green jobs and high tech -- in fact, it includes high tech and green jobs. When people hear the word "construction" they think dirty. They think hammers and nails. But construction is much more than what's on the ground + it's engineers, construction lawyers, human resource departments, accounting, administrative staff, superintendents, project managers, drafting, detailing + a whole host of jobs come out of the construction industry and these jobs here in Oakland right now should be benefiting Oaklanders As Mayor I will ensure that all future major construction projects will benefit Oaklanders first. That is the best way that Oakland can end disparity in unemployment.

Priority number 2: Changing the face and image of the city.

Basic safety begins with changing the face and image of the city. I am already doing this. As Chair of the East Oakland Beautification Council, I understand the minds of the blighters. I am down on the street with them, and we are successfully eradicating graffiti and illegal dumping in adopted areas ("footprints") across the city because the image is one of Oakland's primary problems.

Blight cannot be fixed by the present system. I know how attack it from the ground level by what I have already been doing. Let's face the facts: Blight affects public safety, crime, health, business revenue, tourism, and image. The only way to change the image is to stop the graffiti and illegal dumping by attacking what the vandals and bringing them to justice. By invoking Penal Code section 594 and the Graffiti Vandal Ordinance, mandatory clean up sentences can be imposed in lieu of jail time. Restorative justice of this kind is just the first step in readjusting the paths of people caught up in this criminal mindset of destroying personal property and displaying their "art." There also needs to be outreach programs, reentry programs, programs that serve people, not corporations. These programs are all needed, but for gross blighters + the real villains of the city + there need to be stricter penalties.

In summary, the city cannot grow until it changes its image, it cannot change its face until we stop the graffiti and dumping. Residents, prospective home buyers, businesses, and other cities will not respect Oakland until they see that we have control over gross blighters who are destroying our image. Oakland is a joke in the eyes of other cities and people alike because of its bad image! I am the only mayoral candidate that knows how to stop illegal graffiti and dumping -- not with just throwing money at it, and not because I am a politician, but because I have already been doing it without just throwing money at it as a community advocate. I have been on the ground getting my hands dirty and getting the job done!

Priority number 3: Public Safety

As I said before, lack of public safety is not a problem + it is the result of the first two problems which is the high unemployment rate and the image of the city. Public safety is not attained through hiring more police, but by better policing. Despite what the city leaders are saying about how they've implemented community policing, as a resident of East Oakland I can tell you that community policing has not happened where it needs to be happening the most. Just as change needs to be from the bottom up, community policing needs to start from the outer edges and come in, not start in the good neighborhoods and branch out. When you do it this way, it always falls short because the people who don't need it as much always demand more from the police! The communities on the outer edges of Oakland that are most affected by crime need to be addressed first -- not the areas where the community is already in dialogue with police officers. It needs to begin where the worst crime is happening. Further, when these terrible crimes occur, as the Chief Elective Officer, the mayor should be there out at the scene because the only way the Mayor can touch the people whose lives have been severely impacted by crime is to be an advocate for the people. I am not afraid to be out there where the most violent crimes are happening. I am from there. No other candidate has this courage. It's not their fault, and yet it is because they have not made the necessary steps to engage with the communities that need them the most.

Public safety is also about rebuilding the city. If the city is on a fractured foundation, it will fail and all of the elements of public safety will be affected: crime, housing, illegal dumping, graffiti, loss of business revenue + all these things that have happened in Oakland is a direct result of the failure of the leaders to rebuild and reclaim our city. Most of the leaders, they don't understand what it really takes to rebuild a city. Oakland is like a construction site + you need all elements of the building to be up-to-date and working: electric, plumbing, low voltage, HVAC, structure. Each of these is a department, like the city has departments, like Public Works, City Administrator, Code Enforcement etc. -- they all need to work functionally. Many of them need to be remodeled and brought current. Oakland is like a project that was built in the 1940s and is in need of an upgrade. It needs to be run by today's codes in order to run properly. It is no different retrofitting an old building. Just as I am running a campaign of a different kind, the changes I will make in Oakland will be different.