There are three things central to your job if you are the Director of a nonprofit, educational institution, or government agency. If you can perform well in all three, you will keep your position; if you can do two of the three, you are likely to keep your post; but if you can perform only one, others might be hired to perform the other two, but you have to be able to perform the remaining, specific aspect of this work very well.
First, you must be able to articulate the vision of the organization. What is the 1 year plan? 5 year? 10 year? How does the organization work with all its parts? How does it work with people in the community? Business? Outside agencies? What is the organization trying to accomplish, and what does it need to make these goals a reality?
Second, you must be able to manage the organization. Operations move smoothly, turnover is kept to a minimum; morale is good, organizational divisions work with each other for a common purpose, internal systems are always seeking to improve; budgets are balanced, costs are contained. The organization is a business, and you need to manage the business aspects of the company.
Third, you have to bring in the money. If you are a nonprofit, you must generate significant resources with your development plan. If you are a school, you need to find donors from the business community, federal, state, foundation grants, and use of the parents and alumni. If you are a government agency, you reallocate money from the budget, lobby more money from the head agency (i.e. the state, the feds), you must bring in more tax revenue through enhancements, or you may bring in more money with the addition to the tax base—luring more business to the city.
If you cannot do #1 and #2 successfully, the organization can hire someone to do those things and let you bring in the money–it makes your standing a little questionable, but you could survive.
With that, I will not be voting to reelect Jean Quan.
As Mayor, she deserves the harshest/longest critique, because she has the job and wants to keep it.
In my Public Administration graduate school program, a professor once told us that that if you are up for a vote for City Manager, and the City Council doesn’t give you a unanimous vote, don’t take the position. The rationale is that you already have at least one person against you before you take the job, and it can only get worse from there. In 2010, Quan had 77% of the people vote for someone else as their first choice. When over ¾ of the voters don’t make you a first choice, you need to understand that it is in your best interest to listen and learn. In the last year, she has not polled higher than 22%, and is currently under 20%. Quan’s favorable ratings went from 66% positive to 66% negative within six months, and the sentiment hasn’t changed in well over 2 years. It has indeed, gotten worse for her. Why?
There are a variety of factors; she is everywhere—gala dinners, ballet fundraisers, ringside at boxing matches, cease fire walks…but the more you see her, the less you like her. Quan is abrupt, aloof, and rarely engages people eye to eye—or without a phone in hand, texting and playing with messages in the middle of conversations. The Daily Kos reported two years ago that after the Blueford’s son was killed by the police, Quan said to the family “you’re probably going to sue me right?” But if being rude was a job killer, the Department of Motor Vehicles would be a self sustaining unemployment office. Oakland politics, in such a friendly city, often produces the rudest people you’d ever meet. I for one am ready to oust all of the rude politicians just for turning on their constituents alone, but I do understand that people become jaded when being bullied behind those walls…so there has to be another reason why we don’t like what we’re seeing, when we see Quan.
Call it the Facebook Paradox: the more you are seen doing an activity, the less people think you’re working…at the same time, the more you stay away from that activity you are known to frequent, people start thinking you’re blowing them off. Get on FB a lot and people think you’re playing all the time..get off FB because you have things to do and don’t respond with any regularity and people think you don’t want to talk to them. There was a time before the Occupy events that Quan could be regularly seen at City Hall. Her online calendar has places where her schedule hasn’t been updated in 3 years. Based on my Director criteria, she looks as if she cannot sit down long enough to work a project.
Item #1: There is no well articulated vision from this Mayor; four years ago she started off by stating that she wanted to take the city back, block by block….I don’t know who she was taking it from, but I know who she’s not giving it to. What does Oakland look like in a decade? Who is here? What relationships are being fostered to manage this change?
Item #2: Strength—Quan gets smart people around her. Weakness—most of these people leave quickly. Her top administrators have turned over twice; not including 4 City Administrators and 4 Police Chiefs, she couldn’t work with the outgoing City Auditor, or the previous City Attorney. Sandre Swanson saved her administration. The long term budget is in shambles, and the shell game is over. We are going to be responsible for tens of millions in expenditures, and she has demonstrated no real plan to address this. The restaurant boom and climate change are saving us; more people are eating out because we’ve had 150 days with a trace or two of rainfall, and we can’t sit in our homes when it’s more than 75 degrees in Oakland. You cannot balance a budget on my sustainability at Pican.
Item #3: Money management. Job #1 Oakland School Board. Served for 12 years; longest tenured person present at the Board level when she left. 2 months after she won a City Council seat, we find out the Oakland Unified School District is one the verge of bankruptcy. Takes over as head of finance committee for Oakland; then we find we are in deep doo doo. Takes over as Mayor, blames Ron Dellums for the fiscal crisis. Same pattern for working with middle managers….at one point, says that she is trying to talk with Police Chief Batts, but that he won’t return her calls. Says City Attorney John Russo won’t talk with her. Says that she cannot get the Warriors to sit down with her, and the Oakland A’s won’t meet with her either; none of these issues are her fault. You cannot tell people that you are the only candidate that you know what to do andwill hit the ground running, yet you blame every fiscal and management problem on the previous administrations. Right now, we are not getting the real truth about the fiscal bombs that are awaiting us in the next 3 years, and it is more than unfortunate that Quan continues to spin the successes; it boarders on the unethical. There is either a crisis of will or skill in coming clean about our debt; the will comes in the form of doing the right thing and addressing the systemic problems (pensions, for example), and the skill—let’s face it—aptitude—of our impending meltdown. One shouldn’t have to wonder if the Mayor is smart enough or engaged enough or not beholden to special interests enough to tackle this, but that is what we’re left with.
There is a flying off the handle diplomacy from this Mayor that is unsettling and uncomfortable; Quan has a tendency to say whatever is on her mind, which is absolutely, positively fine for me, I love the honesty that comes from unfiltered speech—but what comes from her are barbershop-like truisms. The cops waited until she left town to strike at Occupy Wall Street folk and she was set up to look bad; the cops booted her car after the election not because she failed to pay over $1000 in parking fines but for some other reason; the 100 Block Theory, which she asserted that most of the crime in Oakland happened in these specific blocks was someone else’s fault; the budget gaffes, the we-will-get-everything-that-we-want-because-he(the Crown Prince of Dubai)-is-loaded-and-people-from-two-nations (Saudi Arabia and Dubai)-that-hate-each-other-will-come-together-for-doing-business-in-Oakland-with-me; she simply says things that no one prompted her to say that end up sounding like the rantings of the unbalanced.
But the race baiting has been the worst; on many occasions, Quan has spoken highly of the histories of Asians—no, Chinese specifically—in Oakland and in general, talking about how much they contribute to the mosaic and how much they are the real drivers of the Oakland economy. When asked by ‘someone’ about having 50% of the cops serving in Oakland come from the black community because Oakland is 50% black, she didn’t answer the cop question which was a real question that spoke to the issues of police brutality, insensitivity of the dominant culture to the multicultural community it serves, outreach efforts to make a police force look different that it currently does, representative enforcement, a police force that doesn’t engender credibility; job creation for Oaklanders, etc.; she went to the race card. Quan remarked that she felt she needed to tell everyone that Oakland was only about 28% black, suggesting that they needed to know so that they could feel comfortable in coming to Oakland. It was as if she was saying, ‘no, it’s not that bad,’ we are getting rid of the blacks as we speak. And speaking of blacks, the only reason why her administration is not in a complete shambles is because of the black leadership. There is no other way to say it than to state it: the black administrators of this city have saved it, and if we’re going to go racial, we should be singing the praises of the Sandre’s, Reggie’s and the Henry’s acting and performing like the adults in the room, instead of implying anything else.
There is a backhanded, disturbing message her supporters are sending when they defend Quan’s personality by itself; and disingenuousness when they spin her policies. There is absolutely no reason to get nasty because someone doesn’t like what is happening—listen and change it; if you cannot or will not, accept the criticism, or accept the consequences. But stop talking down to citizens as if they’re ignorant for not accepting the greatness that is the Quan. It is not racism or sexism to ask the tough questions and to be very critical. As an aside, I have been called a Chinese black since I was 2 years old. My City Council member has been a woman since I have been able to vote, my Congress representative has been female for 16 years, my Senators are female, my Alameda County Board representative has been female for the last couple of decades; most of the time my City Attorney, City Auditor, State Representatives and School Board members have been female. They have been lesbian and straight, white, black, and Asian women…Oakland has had only one white man on City Council in 2 of the last 12 years. Can we stop with the unfounded attacks of sexism or racism as they relate to Oakland’s governance? We have a lot of underlying bigotry and outright racism going on, particularly within the business community and the introduction of our new residents (a topic I will discuss another day) but stop trying to push that as a reason for failure in this case; it cheapens the argument for everyone.
A seasoned veteran of nearly 25 years of elected office holding School Board, City Council and Mayoral posts doesn’t need anyone to speak for her personality. In blogs, posts, letters to the editors, Democratic Club emails, you will hear people vehemently state that there is some underlying reason for Quan to react to people in the manner she does. What her supporters don’t get is that two things are in play here: when Quan speaks to people in a manner that is offensive, by saying that Quan doesn’t understand what she is doing, they are saying that a grown woman isn’t smart enough to speak for herself, and they are. When her administration does something wrong, it’s because Oakland is a big tent with lots of interests, and you really cannot please anyone in a liberal environment– that is someone else’s fault, and she doesn’t have the courage to tell the truth. What stereotypes are these supporters playing from? Meanwhile, when Quan participates in something that works, even if it is a tangential role, it is working in its entirety because of her.
I don’t understand her vision, nor do I understand her accomplishments. Moreover, like Dan Siegel, these core issues are sadly missing from her reelection platform: http://www.jeanquanforoakland.org/forward
No Plan for pension reform
No plan for budget reform
No Economic Development Plan
No Public Safety Plan
She says that she wants to focus on thriving business districts. I always thought that to improve Oakland, you focus on the districts that are not thriving.
It is time we move to a direction that is planned, with a person that can create a sense of pride and optimism that we need. It is more than difficult to follow a governor and a congressman in holding that post, and taking hold during the economic challenges that existed was brutal. But the little secret is that we knew we were giving up competence versus bringing in a real threat to our way of life; it was Quan or Perata, and just like on the TV game of Survivor, we’d rather get rid of the snake instead of the sloth. Now we have three others left in this race who are nicer and more competent than in 2010. Just like on Survivor, most of the people who win combine that balance of cunning and care for their fellow man…if this was that game show, Quan would have been bounced after her team lost its first challenge.
In the end, we are not judged by the fires we fight, but by the plans we put in place to deal with the next fire season. I’m tired of having leadership choose the wrong pick axe, I am tired of someone using a water faucet to put out a forest fire, and I am sick of seeing a smoldering pile in the foreground and being told by the chief that the fire is completely out. But more than anything, I am tired of seeing the shiny new trucks being purchased by the cities to the east and west of us, and realizing that my chief is saying that we can’t get a new truck too, while someone is stealing ours.
holowe 