OAKLAND — Looking back at a calendar year that so far has presented a new challenge at every turn, Mayor Sheng Thao on Tuesday focused on the issue that seems to define the city’s struggles in the public eye: crime.
“I can honestly tell you that it is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, and it’s the only thing on my mind when I fall asleep at night — the safety of the constituency here in the city of Oakland,” the mayor said.
It was Thao’s first “State of the City” address, with the annual event arriving on the heels of a powder-keg level of tension around public safety.
The city has seen a slew of other hot-button issues, including a crippling ransomware attack and a historically large budget deficit, plus the mayor’s firing of the ex-police chief over an internal scandal and her increasingly rancorous falling out with the likely departing Oakland A’s.
However, Thao praised the strength and resilience of Oakland residents, pointing to what she has been able to accomplish this year and introducing new initiatives.
One of them, a pilot program named “5 after 5,” will launch later this month, allowing restaurant patrons and workers to park in a secure garage on downtown’s 19th Street from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m. for $5 flat rates.
It’s part of Thao’s efforts to boost Oakland’s local food and nightlight scene, bringing out-of-towners back to a downtown that even some residents have begun to avoid out of safety concerns.
Thao also announced plans to target revenue from the entertainment industry, noting that new incentives for film and television productions to shoot locally could yield millions of dollars for Oakland.
But time and again, the mayor circled back to crime and public safety, the issues that have polarized residents and led to frequent demonstrations, including by members of Oakland’s business community.
As of Sunday, robberies in Oakland had increased by 34% and burglaries by 35% in 2023 from the same period last year.
There were 102 deaths investigated by the city’s police as homicides by the end of last week, nearly identical to year-to-date totals of the past two years.
Thao’s budget, approved earlier this year by the City Council, did not allow for any additional police hires — currently there are 711 sworn officers out of 712 budgeted full-time positions — in light of what she characterized as the city’s largest-ever deficit.
But the mayor did note her efforts to bolster the city’s faulty 911 dispatch system — which is so slow and glitchy that the state threatened to pull funding over it — by tapping extra revenues at the Coliseum.
She also touted working with the governor’s office to secure six new California Highway Patrol officers who have since made over 50 arrests, some of them for suspected DUI, and recovered 7 stolen vehicles.
And she addressed the controversy that perhaps has led to the most personal scrutiny of Thao’s performance: Oakland’s failure to apply for a California grant that likely would’ve yielded millions of dollars for crimefighting.
“We missed an opportunity with the retail-theft grant, and as mayor I own that — the buck stops with me,” Thao said, before promising the hiring of a new grants coordinator so the mistake isn’t repeated.
It’s been an unusual string of challenges for Thao, the Stockton-born daughter of Laotian refugees who often reflects on escaping an abusive relationship with her son and working her way through community college, UC Berkeley and the city’s political ranks.
In closing, she asked of residents: “Don’t bet against Oakland. Never count us out.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com