Oakland

Opinion: Fund Job Training for Oakland’s Underserved Communities

Published

8 years ago

May 1, 2018

By Greg McConnell | The McConnell Group

On Tuesday, April 24, I attended a City Council committee meeting where a major fight broke out over the issue of Job training for Oakland’s underserved communities.
What seemed to be clear to me was that everyone agreed on the need to provide Oakland’s Black and Brown communities training, so people of color can have hope for better futures for themselves and their families.

While Oakland brags that it is going through an economic boom and is experiencing a 4 percent or less unemployment rate, census tracks in east and west Oakland have unemployment rates as high as 10 percent.
By some estimates, African- American and Latino unemployment can run as high as 17 percent.

Everyone at the meeting also agreed that training programs like Cypress Mandela, Men of Valor, and Laborer’s Local 304 are doing great work providing life skills and job skills training to young people and formerly incarcerated people who are unprepared to join the workforce.

No, the fight was not about whether there is need or whether there is ability to provide help. The fight was about whether money from recent bond measures approved by the voters could source the revenues to pay for the training.

As I sat there, watching people shout at one another, I thought to myself, why are people fighting? There must be a way to get money for training. We find money for public art, bike lanes, pre-school to college, and many other things that we want to fund.

Why can we not fund something as fundamentally and desperately needed as life skills and job training for Blacks and Browns, too many of whom aimlessly walk our streets with nothing to do but smoke blunts and get in trouble?

This past November we created the Oakland Jobs Foundation to aggregate donations from Oakland’s major businesses and developers to support job training. We recently awarded $150,000 to two jobs training programs.

While this is a good step forward, it is not nearly enough to address the need.

There is a solution. Let’s share Oakland’s economic boom. I propose a ballot measure that directs the City to earmark a percentage of the revenue from new taxes collected from construction of new residential and commercial development.

The cranes that line our streets bring hundreds of millions of dollars to the City. By earmarking $5 million a year, we could train and reclaim the lives of more than a thousand men and women a year.
This would not be welfare or a handout.

We would insist on attendance and participation requirements for program participants. Nor, would this be a fund for “poverty pimps”. Programs would be vetted for past performance and success rates, and there would be strict accountability and tracking of whether program participants enter the workforce.

Who would oppose this? Not taxpayers, because this would not be another tax on them. Not residential and commercial developers, because they have to pay taxes anyway, and this just allocates a portion of the new taxes to training.

Not the City, because this is not taking money away from existing programs, it is earmarking a percentage of new revenues.

If I am right in my assessment that everyone agrees on need and the existence of programs that can help, then this approach should be doable. If not, why not?

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Activism

From Disparity Study to Solutions: Oakland Coalition and Mayor Barbara Lee Renew Commitment to Reform City Contracting

She committed to ensuring the coalition has direct access to City leadership by designating Assistant Deputy City Administrator Chuck Baker the primary liaison. Working alongside Deputy City Administrator Sofia Navarro, DWES Director Emylene Aspilla, Race and Equity Director Darlene Flynn, and other City departments, the coalition will continue advancing these priorities while maintaining regular communication with City leadership.

Published

1 day ago

July 15, 2026

Oakland Post

Present at the recent meeting on implementing recommendations on Oakland’s Disparity Study on city work contracts were (first row, l. to r.): Chuck Baker, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and Darlene Flynn. Second row, l. to r.) Samuel Adams, Erica Astrella, Chadwick Spell, Cathy Adams, Stanley Cooper, Maria Wagner, Len Turner, Derek Barnes, Paul Cobb. Photo courtesy of Oakland Mayor’s Office.

Special to The Post

On June 30, a coalition of minority business leaders, contractors and others met with Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee to discuss the City’s commitment to implement recommendations outlined in Oakland’s Disparity Study and eliminate barriers that have historically prevented Black and minority-owned businesses from fully participating in public contracting opportunities.

Representatives of the Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce (OAACC), National Association of Minority Contractors Northern California (NAMC NorCal), Construction Resource Center (CRC), and the East Bay Rental Housing Association (EBRHA) said the meeting represented an important milestone in a process that has been underway for several months.

On April 21, the Oakland City Council’s Life Enrichment Committee received a progress report from the Department of Workplace and Employment Standards (DWES), where Director Emylene Aspilla presented the coalition’s working document and outlined a collaborative implementation plan between the coalition and the City. That report established 30-, 60-, and 90-day objectives focused on five key priorities:

Reforming Local and Small Local Business Enterprise (L/SLBE) waiver practices
Strengthening prompt payment compliance
Improving procurement forecasting and transparency
Expanding contractor capacity building and business development
Increasing oversight, accountability, and public reporting

A series of working sessions was scheduled between coalition representatives, DWES, and the City Administrator’s Office to begin implementing those priorities but were temporarily delayed by the resignation of former City Administrator Jestin Johnson.

Rather than allowing that momentum to stall, OAACC President and CEO Cathy Adams requested a meeting with Lee to gain clarity on the City’s direction and reaffirm its commitment to implementing the recommendations contained within the Disparity Study.

Coalition leaders described the meeting as productive, candid, collaborative, and encouraging.

During the meeting, Lee spoke not only from her role as mayor but also from her experience as an 8(a) contractor and business owner, sharing that she understands firsthand what it takes to build and grow a successful company, employ a substantial workforce, compete for public work, and navigate the complexities of municipal contracting.

Mayor Lee also expressed her commitment to personally participate in future working meetings with the coalition.

“This meeting represents a renewed commitment to partnership,” said Adams. “Mayor Lee listened, engaged, and demonstrated that she wants to move beyond conversation and into implementation.”

CRC’s Len Turner said the roadmap is already in place. ““The City already has the evidence. What’s been missing is execution. …Now it’s time to deliver results.”

Mario Wagner, president of NAMC NorCal agreed that the next phase must focus on implementation, funding, and accountability.

“The coalition is ready to get to work. …The next step is ensuring these initiatives receive meaningful funding in the upcoming fiscal budget cycle. Just as important, the City must establish transparent reporting mechanisms that keep the public informed through regular progress reports, measurable benchmarks, and accountability.”

Coalition leaders also acknowledged that while City leadership has indicated it is reviewing Local and Small Local Business Enterprise waiver practices, the community continues to seek a formal response regarding existing long-term waivers, including waivers extending 10 and 25 years. The coalition believes those waivers should be comprehensively reviewed and, where appropriate, rolled back as part of the City’s broader contracting reforms.

The coalition is also calling on the City to include meaningful funding in the upcoming fiscal budget cycle to support implementation of the Disparity Study recommendations and establish better methods and mechanisms to keep the public informed through regular progress reports, measurable benchmarks, and transparent accountability.

The coalition’s immediate next step is to schedule a working meeting with Baker, Aspilla, Lee, and the appropriate City staff to review what has already been accomplished under the implementation framework.