District 2 candidates lay out their priorities

Charlene Wang, Kara Murray-Badal, Paula Thomas share their ideas for Oakland

Oakland Report invited all of the candidates running for City Council in District 2 to respond to the following prompt:

If you are elected to the city council, what are your 3 biggest priorities? Please include specific policy ideas, as well as an explanation why you believe each of those are the most important issues facing Oakland.

Candidates were asked adhere to Oakland Report’s editorial standard for reasoned, evidence-based, verifiable information.

The responses and views that candidates share below are their own. Oakland Report did not edit their proposals and does not endorse candidates.

Links to Responses:

• Charlene Wang

• Kara Murray-Badal

• Paula Thomas

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Charlene Wang

Oakland faces serious challenges—crime, a budget crisis, and homelessness. I’m running for office because Oakland was my safety net, giving me the stability and opportunity to succeed. My grandparents’ affordable housing in West Oakland kept my family afloat during a childhood marked by domestic violence and poverty. That support allowed me to go to college and dedicate my career to reforming government so others don’t face the same hardships. I’ve led a $4.2 billion federal initiative to rebuild communities, accelerated Massachusetts’ rapid rehousing efforts, and helped cut waste while improving services in Boston. Now, I’m bringing that experience home to Oakland.

District 2 could be the tie-breaking vote on police funding, the city budget, and policies that will define Oakland’s future. Special elections have low turnout, so every vote truly matters. Reform-minded voters must use ranked choice voting strategically or risk splitting the vote and losing this seat.

In the last mayoral race, Loren Taylor lost to Sheng Thao by just 677 votes. The third-place candidate, Ignacio de la Fuente, was ideologically closer to Taylor but told his supporters not to rank other candidates—helping Thao win.

Your rankings only transfer once your top choice is eliminated—they don’t harm your preferred candidate. I encourage my supporters to rank me #1 and then rank Harold, Kanitha, or Paula in any order. If you support any of them, I ask you to rank me too. Tell your friends to do the same—Oakland’s safety and financial stability depend on it.

My Priorities

1. Public Safety

Crime is Oakland’s biggest crisis. Businesses in Jack London, Chinatown, and Little Saigon face repeated break-ins, forcing closures. Violent crime, including assaults and gun violence, is devastating communities, and hate-based attacks on elders remain rampant. This isn’t just a public safety issue—it’s a financial one. Crime has eroded our tax base, slashing sales, hotel, and property tax revenues that fund city services.

Oakland’s police department is dangerously understaffed. Our police handle more cases per officer than nearly any comparable city. Understaffing forces reliance on overtime which costs taxpayers $30 million annually while response times fall well behind state standards. Meanwhile, 98% of police academy applicants are rejected—we need high standards, but we also need common sense reforms. Outdated disqualifiers like polygraph testing and past marijuana use need to go, and we should actively recruit from Oakland schools and colleges to build a department that reflects our community.

Short term, I’ll fight to rehire retired officers for investigative roles and declare a public safety emergency so Oakland can tap into regional law enforcement resources and Alameda County’s emergency dispatch system. We should also push officers to maximize their time on the streets instead of behind desks by reducing paperwork inefficiencies with voice-to-text dictation software.

To restore trust and accountability, I’ll push to add trained civilian investigators to Internal Affairs. This will meet federal oversight requirements, put us on track to finally leave our costly and constraining federal police monitor, and free up officers for active policing.

Oakland can fund more officers—but we cannot keep missing grant opportunities. My experience launching and administering a multibillion-dollar grant program positions me to revitalize our grant application system and win badly needed resources. I’ve already identified multiple funding sources, including:

• DOJ Community Policing Grants ($156M/year, covering 75% of hiring costs)

• California Citizens Options for Public Safety ($214M in 2024-25)

• California Law Enforcement Specialized Units Program, which funds specialized officer units including sex trafficking enforcement—these are critical for District 2, a major hub of sex trafficking.

Public safety isn’t about politics—it’s about action. We do not have to accept crime as a fact of life.

2. Sustainable Budgeting

Oakland faces a $130M budget shortfall that threatens basic services. We need performance-based budgeting. Last year, the Budget Advisory Commission warned that the City Council is “flying blind” because many programs don’t track results. I’ll push for clear performance metrics to ensure taxpayer money is being spent wisely. I already have experience in my public administration roles working on budget and performance evaluation, as well as inspector general staff to root out fraudulent and wasteful spending.

I will take a personal pay cut and push city executives to forego raises, saving millions. But that’s not enough—we must cut excessive administrative overhead that could save $5M annually.

We also need to stop duplicating county services and be clear-eyed about which services city government can realistically provide. For example, the expensive MACRO program should have been administered jointly with Alameda County’s Mobile Crisis Team, which has the medical certification to provide involuntary holds. Instead, we now have two separate mental health response teams with overlapping functions and wasted resources that confuse the public.

Oakland must expand revenue without raising taxes by:

• Enforcing illegal dumping fines (only 10% are collected)

• Leasing city land for market-rate housing

• Attracting clean energy manufacturing, bringing jobs and investment

Oakland has everything it needs to be an economic powerhouse: a port, warehouses, and proximity to capital. But businesses say we don’t proactively recruit them like other cities do. I’ll change that, offering tax incentives and streamlining permitting to bring in renewable energy manufacturing and industrial jobs.

3. Homelessness

Oakland’s homelessness crisis is unacceptable. Leaving people on the streets isn’t compassion—it’s failure. I’ve successfully reformed homeless response systems before, and I’ll do the same here.

Encampments near Lake Merritt, Clinton Park, and Garfield School are dangerous for both residents and the housed community. I will push to close encampments while rapidly expanding shelter access on city land, following successful models from San Diego.

Right now, federal rules trap people in homelessness by prioritizing only the most vulnerable, forcing others to wait until their conditions worsen. But cities have flexibility—Oakland can bypass these rules and provide temporary housing linked to employment programs like:

• Trash cleanup, blight removal, and tree planting—providing wages, job training, and stability

• Faster CARE Court implementation—ensuring people in crisis receive mandatory treatment before their conditions worsen

We must also fix housing costs. Oakland delays affordable housing with needless design standards like requirements for multiple façade materials, which add costs and complexity. We blocked Elaine Brown’s Black Panther housing for six months over an art dispute—that’s unacceptable.

I’ll cut red tape, staff our permitting office, and fast-track projects like EBALDC’s senior housing at Lake Merritt BART. More housing reduces rents, prevents homelessness, and grows city revenue—a win for everyone.

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Kara Murray-Badal

I am a proud third-generation Oaklander born and raised in District 2, with a career spent balancing business leadership, community organizing, and local policy making. As the Director of the Housing Venture Lab at Terner Labs, I spearhead innovative housing solutions, blending expertise from both private and non-profit sectors to address some of the most pressing housing affordability challenges in the country and here in the Bay Area. My commitment to equitable development and sustainable communities stems from a lifetime of firsthand experiences growing up in Oakland and witnessing the stark inequities that shaped my diverse neighborhoods.

I am the only candidate in this race with direct experience with municipal police reform policy and public safety budget issues, including working on the reimagining Public Safety task force in Oakland. I also work everyday supporting housing affordability in cities across the country and in the Bay Area. I am by far the most experienced candidate with regards to municipal policy and administration, and the only candidate with experience in multiple different municipal settings, giving me a valuable perspective as a Councilmember.

I’ve led public safety reform initiatives in multiple cities. I worked with the Baltimore’s transition team to shape Mayor Brandon Scott’s public safety strategy and from that was selected to lead the public safety strategy for the transition of mayor Kim Janey in Boston. I also led the City Budget subgroup of the Reimagining Public Safety taskforce for the City of Oakland. I have partnered with HUD to do a series of events on housing technology for affordable housing to support housing advocates, developers, philanthropists, and government officials implementing technology in rental affordability, construction innovation, equitable homeownership, and planning for new supply all across the country.

Priority 1

Oakland is in a budget crisis, and without a stable and responsible budget we cannot address the other critical issues facing our city. My top priority in office will be ensuring our budget decisions preserve critical programs that support working class Oaklanders and avoid layoffs and the closure of vital infrastructure like fire stations. I am committed to exploring cost saving measures like executive and high level administrative pay, freezing vacant positions, overtime reform, and examining consultant contracts for reductions before considering layoffs and destructive cuts to critical programs. We must also find new progressive revenue to fund City services, including increasing adherence to the business tax and other bills already due to the City.

Priority 2

Real public safety is comprehensive safety. Oaklanders don't feel safe in our city, and that impacts our businesses and the vibrancy of our community. I support a balanced approach of prevention and intervention that equitably addresses the root causes of crime. Right now, police are being asked to do things that they are not trained or suited to do. This doesn’t serve anyone, be it the victims of crime, our homeless neighbors, our community at large or the police themselves. I want to support communities and officers by focusing them on work for which they are most trained, directly addressing violent and dangerous crimes. For other work, including addressing homelessness, drug addiction, and minor traffic and parking violations, we need to bring in trained specialists for these specific fields. This provides better outcomes and saves money.

Priority 3

The rising cost of housing and resulting displacement threatens the fabric of our communities and drives the crisis of homelessness. As a Housing Affordability Director, I spend every day working to make housing more affordable; there is no other candidate in this race with more experience in housing. I believe in tackling the housing crisis from three angles: supply, stabilization, and subsidy. I believe the City should continue to find sources of revenue to directly invest in affordable and social housing throughout Oakland, in partnership with land trusts and non-profits. We also have to increase density near transit and job centers, with strong inclusionary policies to ensure market rate developments drive affordability. We can prevent homelessness before it happens by investing in emergency rental assistance funds, reduce homelessness through the creation of permanent supportive housing, and reduce the impact of existing encampments by providing sanitation services, trash removal, and social services.

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Paula Thomas

Priority 1

Oakland is on the brink of Bankruptcy – that’s why Measure A is on the Ballot. The City of Stockton (google) had to file for Bankruptcy in June of 2012. The city was struggling with a combination of rising pension obligations, falling property values, and the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. Unfortunately, Oakland is facing similar problems, the city is struggling with a combination of rising pension obligations, a $130 million (Oaklandside) dollar shortfall (some experts have said it is closer to $230 million), and the aftermath of the Covid crisis.

I would ask the City Council to order an Audit of the Department of Finance by the City Auditor, to see where the waste fraud and abuse is. This will allow the City to restructure its finances and reduce its debt. The City should also renegotiate pension payments. This would be one of many audits. The City has 26 Departments (go to the City’s Website and see list of Departments – there are 26) and No Department of Commerce, that is why we are running out of money. Commerce, attracting large and small businesses to the City of Oakland, should be a priority. The city has too many departments, many should be combined to create only Essential Departments.

I think it is important to do all the things we can do that will help us get through the next year 3 to 5 years and rebound.

Priority 2

Boosting Economic Growth: The city should Sell all of their vacant Commercial lots, that will bring in millions of dollars immediately within the first year. My experience as a Commercial Realtor has given me the knowledge, skills and expertise to manage a Real Estate Sub-Committee to Sell all vacant lots and set up a Commercial Leasing Program.

The Commercial Leasing Program (CLP), will Lease all vacant Commercial Property, in District 2, to qualified applicants. The city will provide the following: 1) The City will set-up a website with beautiful pictures of all vacant commercial buildings along with instructions on how to apply. 2) The CLP will offer incentives to qualified business owners (with 3 to 5 years of business experience and good credit) to move into vacant commercial properties, rehab and build out the properties, at no cost to the city. Owners will be allowed to Lease the vacant property for 7 years, first year no payments. Payments will start at the beginning of the 2nd year of a 7-year Lease. Businesses will be given favorable lease terms with graduated monthly payments. This will increase revenue and tax dollars for the City by millions over the next 7+ years.

Over the weekend, I heard a Candidate for Mayor, Renia Webb, describe how the City of Oakland should develop our Port just like San Francisco has developed their port and invite Cruise lines to leave from the Port of Oakland, this can generate millions. We should create a Department of Tourism, it will generate millions, possibly hundreds of millions of dollars with an active Port.

The City of Oakland needs to make Commerce a priority, these are just a few of great programs that will generate income with ease. When we have programs that are generating income we will be able to build more Housing Units, hire more Police and build more Police Sub-Stations to keep our communities safe.

Priority 3

Strengthen Public Safety and Eliminate Sex Trafficking: The City should hire a Police Officer Reserve program, like the City of Berkley utilizes. They are part-time paid positions with hourly rates. Starting at $20.00 to $33.00 an hour. Many are retired police officers, dispatchers or just people who are interested in law enforcement and have the extra time. They are recruited and trained. The Reserve officers work with full-time regular officers to provide law enforcement services. Approximately 600 law enforcement agencies currently employ nearly 6200 reserve officers across the country (google). We can use them for crowd control, to direct traffic and everything we use our Police force for. This will help the Department staff up quickly, we should also continue to use Ceasefire.

After the City hires a Reserve Police force the city can hire more Police. We should market our Police Academies to Junior and State colleges and recruit young talent. If we hire our new recruits locally from our Institutions of Higher Learning, we can make sure we bring them in and teach them how to be good Guardians of the people. Our academies can teach them Conflict Resolution skills that will help them de-escalate violent situations, this will create an environment of trust and safety.

A great Police Force will be able to conquer the Sex Trafficking problem, that is plaguing District 2. It starts with good Law Enforcement, that includes the State Attorney General, Social Workers, Child Protective Services and more. I want to Stop Sex Trafficking and I am willing to Donate half of my first year’s salary to accomplish this.

The Budget Advisory Commission just completed their Bi-Annual Survey, they concluded that Oaklanders want: A Clean, Safe and Affordable City. I believe the solutions I have listed above, will give us all an opportunity to experience a better quality of life.

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