Chamber Survey of Business Demands Public Safety

The Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and McKinsey & Co. consultants produced a report on attracting business to Oakland. As part of the study, the researchers took a survey of 148 Oakland businesses. The single most prominent result:

This study's survey of local businesses ranked crime as the most serious obstacle to doing business in Oakland, to growing existing businesses, and to attracting new businesses.
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The two most significant challenges identified during the course of preparing this report are the real and perceived lack of public safety and, more importantly, political will. (p. 56, emphasis added)

The Chamber's report identifies four foundation tasks in order to revitalize business and jobs in Oakland.

The City must begin investing now in four key enablers that are necessary to successful economic development in Oakland:

1. Improve public safety and actively manage the perception of crime in the community. Safety is particularly important to encouraging new investment, new business development, business expansion, and retail in the downtown corridor.
   
2. Enhance the quality of education and workforce training. ...
   
3. Improve the City's business climate with a focus on supporting the growth of small- and medium-size businesses.
   
4. Create and execute a strategic land use policy. All our recommendations – for biotechnology, healthcare, the Port, retail, and Oakland's niche sectors – require rational land use policies. (p. 77)
   

Underscoring the first of these points, the report adds:

Little that this report has recommended can become a reality until public safety is improved, and until that improvement makes a strong impression in the mind of potential investors and those who would bring new business to Oakland. This means mainly that crime is reduced... (p. 77; emphasis added)

To its credit, the Chamber recognizes that the top priority must be to improve public safety. Unfortunately, the group goes on to suggest that the City can get by if it simply convinces people that their perception of crime is exaggerated. The report is really saying, let's make the important business areas safe, but the neighborhoods do not need the same attention:

While Oakland's crime problem is real and must be addressed, research demonstrates that Oakland's challenge in this regard, particularly in developing its downtown, is as much about improving the perception of crime as it is reducing the incidence of crime. (p. 56)

Maybe such a strategy would work to draw in unknowing tourist customers, but it will not pass with Oakland residents. The first job of any municipal government is to maintain an effective police force – what other level of government, what other institution, would you make responsible?

Although the Chamber's report includes statistics on Oakland's crime rates, it does not compare the understaffed police department with other cities. Consequently, the report cannot even mention the number one priority that Oakland really faces: commit to a solid plan to get to at least 1,100 police. Using a liberal figure for the salary, benefits, and overhead cost of each officer, the 400 needed additional officers would cost about $72 million a year out of the billion-dollar plus annual City budget.

The other interesting task in the Chamber's overall list of four is the need for a "strategic land use policy." At a time when the city council is under the thumb of residential developers, ready to shovel subsidies at almost any ill-advised housing proposal, the Chamber says that we must have reliable zoning for industrial and business sites.

For a comparison of programs to make Oakland liveable and prosperous, see ORPN's six-point platform, What We Are For.

The full Chamber report is available here (Note: It is a large 3MB Acrobat .PDF file).