I support Jean Quan’s candidacy for Mayor of Oakland because she has shown the down-in-the-trenches resolve to deal with Oakland’s problems over the time she has been on the City Council, and continues to show that resolve and leadership today. She knows the facts, and the way forward.

Last year, when the city’s financials became very troubling, she was the one who led the effort to cut city expenditures to balance the budget. All of the other City Council Members deferred to her mastery of the issue and the details as it unfolded in City Council Meetings. The job got done, with her leading.

This year, again, she is leading the effort to meet the new needs to cut city expenditures in response to State raids on local funds to balance the State budget. She is the one who provides leadership on the Council in these very difficult matters.

Jean has a record of dealing with the hard-ball issues that do not accommodate soft-ball answers, and delivering results at the end. Measure DD is one. It has improved the Lake and many Oakland neighborhoods. Jean wrote and led the city-wide effort to pass Measure Y, which I worked to see approved, which paid both for beat cops and for more youth services.

It has provided Community Policing Officers to the 57 community policing beats as promised, and seen the re-staffing of OPD to higher levels than it has ever seen. Jean fought to defend the positions of the neighborhood services coordinators from being cut; they are key to community policing.

Don Link
North Oakland Neighborhood Leader

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