Community Well Being and Environment

By Mario Juarez

Every resident in District 5 deserves direct accessibility and constituent responsiveness, a beautiful and nurturing environment and clean, healthy surroundings.

Constituent Responsiveness

District 5 deserves a Council Representative who is directly available and responsive to constituent issues and concerns. My business is successful because customer service is my hallmark. I will apply my proven expertise and experience with customer service and satisfaction to my District operations.

Office Accountability

I will institute a computerized system to intake, document and follow up on 100% of citizen contacts. This system will have 3 levels of escalation; first to the appropriate staff member to respond within 7 days. If an issue cannot be resolved within that time, the matter escalates to my Chief of Staff. If my Chief can't settle this in 3 days, the matter then comes to me to handle. From this system I will generate and publicly provide an annual report of contacts and resolutions.

Personal Accessibility and Transparency

I will hold bi-weekly open house hours in a Fruitvale area office.

I will be available bi-weekly at a publicly accessible location in the Glenview.

I will maintain an informative, up to date and interactive web site. This site will include my public calendar so you know what I'm doing and the names of those with whom I am meeting - I will have nothing to hide.

I will frequently convene town hall meetings

Beautification

A clean and well maintained community improves the quality of life and serves as a deterrent to crime. For that reason, I helped to organize and fund the Fruitvale Business Improvement District that is responsible for daily cleaning on both International and Foothill Boulevards, hires people who might not be able to get jobs elsewhere, and facilitates communications and alerts among merchants.

I will push to enforce Oakland's existing blight ordinance throughout District 5. I will also sponsor and support community clean-ups.

Parks

District 5 has one of the highest under 18 years of age population in City and the least number of parks. Unfortunately, we are not blessed with abundant, available land to create new parks, so creative solutions must be sought.

I will work with the Oakland Unified School District to explore partnerships that develop and make publicly available school sites after the school day is over. Such partnerships could increase safe and inviting venues for children and families as well as help OUSD with maintenance expenditures.

With our few existing parks we must consider their actual use when deciding their structure and components. Practicality and functional design, not short-term aesthetic is critical. For example, the $100,000.00 worth of real grass that was installed at Josie de la Cruz Park was beautiful + for the photo opportunity and a short period of time afterwards. That real grass turned into dirt + mud when it rains + and remained so for a very long time because there was no consideration given to the fact that the park would be used by the community to play soccer. It was just repaired a couple of weeks ago,once I pointed the problem out during this campaign.

Our parks must also be maintained to discourage crime, blight and vermin. For example, Fruitvale Park adjacent to Sheffield Village has a significant, untended weed problem and ineffective lighting to discourage illegal activities.

ENVIRONMENT

Oakland has many opportunities to positively address today's environmental challenges. In the face of global warming it would be irresponsible to bypass these opportunities.

Green building standards should be included for all City and specifically Redevelopment Agency supported construction. LEED standards and resulting certification should be our goal for new, rehabilitation and retrofit projects.

Oakland should promote its remaining industrial lands to attract green industries. I will promote City/private partnerships involving city-owned land that deliver a profit exchange from the City's contribution. For example, City contributions might include land or tax incentives that the City invests and ultimately receives a portion of the profit. This helps the environment, encourages and supports green industry and enriches the city.