Oakland, CA Economic Report For 2007 - Oakland Chamber of Commerce

This is the executive summary of the economic report published by the Oakland Chamber of Commerce. A copy of the entire study can be seen with a click > here.

The text that follows is directly from the summary. I disagree with the overall recommendations, but welcome feedback from others to start a debate. I feel that the recommendations are too weighted toward the development of large industries, ignores the impact of the sports indusry in Oakland, and has no mention of the need to develop small businesses.

It's also too focused on biotech, and that's been talked about for 20 years, and we've still got nothing to show for it. I think we should make our strengths stronger, and that's small business, restaurants, shops, and information, and sports.

Here's the study....


ONE:
OAKLAND’S ECONOMY TODAY

Historically, Oakland’s economic foundation rested on strong manufacturing, transportation, and
healthcare industries. Today, these continue to be important pillars of Oakland’s economy; however,
given the pressures of the global economy and market trends in the US, these three sectors are
transitioning and facing difficult challenges. In addition, industries such as biotechnology, clean
energy, and arts, design, and digital media present new opportunities for the City.

CHALLENGES

To date, Oakland’s traditional core industries have declined considerably and the City has not
successfully nurtured new ones. This has led to some unfavorable dynamics among the sectors that
make up Oakland’s economy today.

Over the past 6 years, a period that includes the dot-com bust and the real estate boom, Oakland
grew jobs in the aggregate more quickly than both the US as a whole and the Bay Area.2 From 2001-
2006, Oakland’s employment grew at an annual rate of close to 1 percent (CAGR)3; by contrast,
US employment grew at about 0.6 percent annually, and the Bay Area lost jobs at an annual rate of
1.4 percent. Despite what sounds like encouraging news, the erosion of Oakland’s traditional sectors
continues.

The City’s employment concentration in manufacturing is lower than the nation and the Bay Area
(6 percent vs. 11 percent for the US and 10 percent for the Bay Area). Oakland’s transportation sector,
despite growth in some areas, shows an overall decline at a rate of 2 percent as companies shift
employment elsewhere and capacity at the Port suffers constraints. Finally, healthcare, on the rise
nationally as Baby Boomers age and new technologies spawn new treatments, is not keeping pace in
Oakland, with growth nearly flat (0.1 percent) compared with the US growth rate of 2.5 percent.

OPPORTUNITIES

The good news is that Oakland possesses a number of cultural, historic, and regional strengths upon
which it can build to seize a number of very promising opportunities:

• A creative and entrepreneurial local culture. Always a magnet for environmentalists,
scientists, artists, and civic-minded people, Oakland and the East Bay, including the
University of California at Berkeley, are productive incubators for many of the industries in
ascendancy today.

• Transportation hub. Oakland’s historic position as a transportation hub offers a tremendous
opportunity for the East Bay to capture some of the growth in the logistics industry. Oakland
could leverage its infrastructure and connectivity to capture more activities involved in
synchronizing the movement of goods in today’s global economy.

• Partner in the Bay Area region. Oakland enjoys significant opportunities due to the
vibrancy and global competitiveness of the Bay Area region. The Bay Area leads the nation
in information technology, biotechnology, venture capital, and many other sectors, and is the
benchmark against which most regions compare themselves. Oakland, with its talented labor
pool, available real estate, and central location, stands to attract much of this business.
To identify opportunities with the greatest promise of strengthening Oakland’s economy and
sustaining its cultural values, industry sectors were prioritized along four dimensions: employment
concentration and growth (to identify drivers of the economy); attractiveness to potential new
companies and employees (a series of qualitative measures including Oakland’s cultural and valuebased
strengths), and productivity.

TWO:
OVERALL RECOMMENDATIONS

Oakland’s historical strengths, current economic profile, potential untapped opportunities, and
the fundamentals underpinning its economic health were all examined and considered in the
development of this report. In the final analysis, four overarching recommendations for the City
emerged.

• Build strategically on Oakland’s historic, regional, and emerging strengths:
– Strengthen existing sectors such as healthcare, trade and logistics, and retail
– Leverage the assets of the Bay Area and UC Berkeley to develop Oakland’s role in the
region’s biotechnology industry
– Leverage the City’s central location, talented workforce, cultural values, and proximity to
UC Berkeley and other schools to grow new economic activities in green industry; arts,
design, and digital media; and specialty food manufacturing
• Improve the balance of key sectors in the economy, placing priority on high-growth, highwage
industries such as biotechnology, healthcare, logistics, and others.
• Address the City’s economic fundamentals that enable the rest of the economy to flourish
by improving:
– Public safety
– Education and workforce training
– Business climate (with particular emphasis on supporting small businesses)
– Land use policy (framed to be consistent with the City's economic development goals and
objectives).
• Understand the economic opportunities and constraints the City faces and work
collaboratively to seize those opportunities and address the constraints. Little progress can
be made unless government, business, education, and labor leaders work together to achieve
shared goals and objectives.

Oakland / Emeryville Schools Are "Dropout Factories" - Tribune and AP

Well, first, I'm happy Skyline High, where I went, is not on this list. Second, my question -- not answered here -- is "why do these schools have that problem?"


Oakland, Emeryville schools make dropout list
Fewer than 60 percent of freshmen make it to senior year

By Katy Murphy, STAFF WRITER - OAKLAND TRIBUNE
Article Last Updated: 10/31/2007 02:47:25 AM PDT

OAKLAND — Oakland High School and Oakland Technical High School made the Associated Press's recent "dropout factory" list, as did Emery Secondary School in Emeryville.

According to a data analysis conducted by Johns Hopkins University researchers for the Associated Press, only about 44 percent of ninth-graders from Oakland Tech, 52 percent from Oakland High and 55 percent from Emery Secondary made it to their senior year.

The high schools were among 1,700 nationwide in which no more than 60 percent of ninth-graders enrolled as seniors three years later.

By looking at the size of a particular grade level over time, the method provides only a rough estimate of the dropout rate. It doesn't measure how many students transferred out of a school and graduated somewhere else, or how many were new arrivals.

Information about individual students is not yet widely available in California and in many other states, which makes it difficult to arrive at a more precise figure.

"There are a lot of assumptions that are being made there, without understanding the intricacies of enrollment and demographic changes," said Sheilagh Andujar, principal of Oakland Tech, who said she took exception to the "dropout factory" label.

Oakland educators might find flaws with a particular method of assessing the dropout crisis, but they don't deny the seriousness of the problem. Other studies, such as the one published in 2005 by Harvard University's Civil Rights
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Project, have also called attention to Oakland's dropouts.

"It's something we're definitely working on," Andujar said.

To create a more intimate learning environment for students and teachers, this year Oakland Tech established "small learning communities" for all ninth-graders. Students in each group go through the day with many of the same classmates and teachers.

Andujar said Oakland Tech's upper grades have more students this fall than they did in previous years, which might indicate that more students are staying in school.

The study did show a positive trend for the three Oakland and Emeryville schools. As low as the retention rates were, they improved between 2004 and 2006. Oakland High's retention rate grew by 30 percent during that time; Oakland Tech boosted its retention by 19 percent and Emery Secondary did by 14 percent, according to the study.

Troy Flint, a spokesman for the Oakland school district, said high schools across the district have taken various steps to address the problem. The district has trained principals in strategies to spot struggling students early on, before they leave the system, he said.

Oakland Tech also hosts a summer school program for students from across the district who failed ninth grade, and a new influx of after-school funding this year has allowed high schools to establish tutoring in the evenings.

5.6 Richter Scale Earthquake in San Jose Tonight

I thought I felt something but wasn't sure as I was walking in San Francisco. But this news confirms that it wasn't Godzilla. It was an Earthquake and centered in San Jose.

Pastino's Pasta & Pizza Gets Panned - "Worst Pasta I've Had in My Entire Life."

Wow. I've never personally been to Pastino's Pasta & Pizza, but I ran accross a blog where the writer said the restaurant on 4207 Park Blvd in Oakland, had "the worst pasta I've had in my entire life" in his words.

He goes on...

Bad pasta
The pasta that I had tonight at Pastino's in Oakland
was the worst pasta I've had in my entire life.

I am an old man. I have lived 300 years.
In all my 300 years, I've never even heard of pasta this bad.
And make no mistake -- I've heard of pasta that was bad.

For about 60 of those years I lived in Bangladesh where I was a reporter
at a local paper and -- I kid you not -- my "beat" was bad pasta places
and the pasta they made. Most of which wasn't
very good.

That was a difficult period in my life.

So here I am, all these years later thinking, "I'm a guy who's eaten a lot of bad pasta."

But as it turns out, those thin, flappy, granular strands of my discontent
were just appetizers. The first course in an extended meal
at the heart of which, I now discover, sits
tonight's fettucini bolognese.

Not good.

I'm about to go to sleep, and all I can think about
is the fact that some small part of this pasta will probably go on to become
my toe skin, or a ligament. A crumbly eyelash.

I have been cheapened by this pasta. I do not recommend you go to
Pastino's.

But as funny as it is to read, it's not funny when one sees all of the bad reviews it's gotten all over the web! Yikes! They'd better fix this and fast.

Henry Chang - Councilmember Henry Chang - At Large - Oakland

Of all the current Oakland Councilmembers, Henry Chang stands out not just as an elder statesman, but as an honest, principled elected official who I've long admired, regardless of his position. Here's more about him.

Henry was born in 1934, the second child of Frances and Henry Sr. He was separated from his parents two years later, when the Japanese attacked his hometown, Shantou. Henry fled to Hong Kong with his Aunt Barbara while his parents escaped to Northern China. Three years later, when the Japanese attacked Hong Kong, Henry returned by freighter back to Japanese-occupied Shantou and was later reunited with his mother and father.

Henry's most vivid childhood memories are of the concentration camp his family called home during the occupation of China. There, they witnessed unspeakable torture and brutality. He escaped in 1941 with his brother Thomas by crawling over a wall at night and hiding in a farmhouse. Henry reconnected with his family a year later, when his mother, father and other siblings were released from the camp.

For the next four years, during the height of World War II, Henry and his family lived under constant air attacks from the Allied Forces. Whenever the moon was bright, bombers would come. Anytime sirens sounded, bombs would drop. Henry's family made a deal with their neighbors: if they were hit by a bomb, the neighbors would dig them out of the rubble. Henry's family would do the same if the neighbor's home were to be bombed. Everyday, friends and family members perished. At the end of World War II, China no longer had adequate schools and Henry moved again to Hong Kong to continue his education.

In Hong Kong, Henry took up flying and became the youngest pilot ever to obtain an international flying license. He also helped start Hong Kong's first air scout. In 1950, he went to Sydney, Australia to continue his high school education and receive flight training. In 1952, he came to Florida for advanced flight training. When his group landed in San Francisco on the way to report to Washington D.C., a friend took him to visit the University of California campus at Berkeley. Henry was so impressed that he walked into the admissions office and told a white-haired woman that he wanted to attend the school. Without a high school diploma, she said, he could not be admitted. Henry pleaded and said his plane would be leaving for the East Coast in one hour. The woman reconsidered and said yes. Henry was admitted to UC Berkeley and the course of his life changed again.

At Berkeley, Henry studied Art and Physics. In his spare time, he performed magic tricks for children at hospitals in Oakland. While he was still interested in art, it was clear that architecture and design were his strengths. Henry received his bachelor's degree in architecture from Cal in 1961. One of his first jobs was designing the Oak Center II affordable housing project in West Oakland for the Minority Specialties and Contractors Association. He also designed the first turnkey Department of Defense military housing at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital.

In 1960, Henry married his wife, Connie, who currently teaches at the University of California's child development program. They have four children: Maria, who graduated from the UC Architectural School; Evelyn, who is a manager of marketing and communication at a biotech company; Betsy, a choreographer/producer; and Harrison, a Baptist minister in San Jose. Henry's family moved from Berkeley to Oakland in 1962. A decade later Henry founded Henry Chang Jr., & Associates, the architectural firm which he still heads.

In 1974, he accepted his first community position to the Oakland Planning Commission, embarking on what has become 26 uninterrupted years of public service. Henry went on to serve on the Oakland Community Development Commission, the Oakland Port Commission, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, as an Oakland Chamber of Commerce board member, and as one of three state appointees to the Oakland State Building Authority.

In 1994, Henry was appointed to the Oakland City Council's at-large seat, filling a vacancy created by the death of Councilman Frank Ogawa. Voters returned him to the post in 1997 and again in 2001.

Henry chairs the City Council's Life Enrichment Committee, and serves as a member on the Public Works Committee, the Education Partnership Committee and the Community and Economic Development Committee.