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	Photo: Pat Mazzera

    On Jan. 8, Ron Dellums took his post as mayor of Oakland. Reporter John W. Ellis IV sat down with Dellums to talk about his vision for addressing the city’s challenges and plans to transform Oakland into what he calls a “Model City.”

Oakland Magazine: What are your top priorities for the city?
Ron Dellums: If you followed the campaign, I was assiduous in not saying to the Oakland people, “These are my priorities.” I thought that was very presumptuous in the sense that if there are people out there in the community who didn’t sense their priority on that list, then does that mean that they have to wait four years for the next mayor to put them on the list?
    So my view was twofold: One, let’s engage the community in a process of determining issues that they perceive as vital and important. Two, we established a series of task forces to look at the full range of issues that confront people in Oakland. Out of that will emerge a much clearer sense of what the community perceives as their priorities.

OM: What are some of the consistent problems that your task force groups have started to identify?
RD: I think I can say without fear of contradiction that the No. 1 issue on people’s minds in this community is the rising violent crime and rising crime rate. The interesting thing about putting that issue front and center—it forces you literally to address a range of issues.
    It speaks to a more coherent and effective and efficient deployment of the police department, so you engage in the discussion of community policing or some other approach to policing. Crime and violence also has an educational dimension, so it forces you to address issues of education. It has an economic dimension, so you are looking at the issue of economic development and job creation. It has a housing dimension, so it means you have to address these issues. A subtopic of that will be escalating youth crime and violence.
    Education—the return of the schools to local control in Oakland—will clearly be on the table. Affordable housing will be on the table. Community development will be on the table. Downtown development—how we’re going to attract commerce and other economic opportunities that create jobs and employment for people in this community.
    So if you add that up, you end up with these five [crime, education, development, jobs and affordable housing] issues. How we tie them together, and what will be the lead issue, in my opinion, is something that I’m going to look to the task force groups to inform my judgment.

OM: Is it fair to say getting the public more involved in government is a priority for your administration?
RD: Absolutely. I laid out three things during the campaign.
    One, a vision of Oakland as a “Model City.”
    Secondly, I talked about public jurisdictional collaboration, because Oakland’s $1 billion budget will not get us to the point where we can solve all the problems of Oakland—it’s not enough of a resource. We’ve got to begin to engage in a higher level of collaboration among public jurisdictions—the city, the county, the public schools, the state, etc. A counterpart of that is developing public-private partnerships so that you bring together nonprofits and the private sector. Many agencies are providing massive and significant services to the community, but the twain aren’t meeting. We want to bring public and private together, maximizing the resources directed at several different issues.
    The third element I talked about was revitalizing democracy. There is brilliance and genius in this community. There is talent, there is interest, there is dedication, there is desire. If we could capture that and engage people, we could come up with thoughtful, creative, exciting ways, I believe, and important ways, of dealing with the issues.

OM: If people work together in the collaborative way you have outlined, what will Oakland look like in 25 years?
RD: When I first got in, I asked developers, “What does Oakland look like 10 years, 15 years, 20 years out?” I could get no answers, because we haven’t thought that through. On our watch, I think it’s important for us to begin that process of embracing a plan of what Oakland looks like going forward.
    The out-migration from the urban environment into suburbia and beyond, in my opinion, has either ended or is rapidly coming to an end for a variety of reasons. Because of the economics of ever-expanding infrastructure, traffic efficiency, fuel efficiency and economics, people are going to turn around and want to live closer to where they work and [near] each other.
    I think urban life is the wave of the future of the United States. I think Oakland is going to go up. Downtown, you will see a higher concentration of multi-use buildings, whether it be office, residential, commercial or retail. When you look out at the major thoroughfares in Oakland, like Broadway and Telegraph, San Pablo, these are corridors from the communities into downtown. They are going to be transitional areas and high density, because that’s efficient because they are along transportation corridors.
    It’s important that in the concept of a Model City I would like to see Oakland take the lead in an era where the reality of global warming exists. I want Oakland to actually evolve a city based on the notions of environmental and ecological integrity and make Oakland a real leader in green technology. Thirty years out, I see Oakland as a green city that embraced alternative sources of energy and different ways of constructing and living with each other.

OM: What strengths does Oakland have that will help to transform it into a Model City?
RD: We live in a city that I perceive to be, perhaps, the most diverse and balanced city in the entire United States. There is no majority, which means, then, that people have to begin to dialogue, to communicate, to talk with each other to build a consensus. Eighty-nine languages are spoken in the schools of Oakland. This is a very diverse community. Engaging people in this process begins to allow us to hear each other, to feel each other, to bond with each other. Oakland needs to come together and needs to heal.
    Every city has the same problems. It’s simply a question of size, degree, gravity and magnitude. The beauty of Oakland lies not only in the diversity of its people, but the fact that we are 408,000 people—give or take a few. We are not some tiny island out here. We are not New York; we’re Oakland. So with 408,000 people, you can get your hands around the problem.
    If we can do it in Oakland, then the word is: “They did it in Oakland.” I want Oakland to be truly a Model City, not only for the residents of Oakland, but a model of what a city can be.