Evergreen business welcome letter

CITY OF OAKLAND 1 FRANK H. OGAWA PLAZA ٠ 3RD FLOOR ٠ OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA 94612 Office of the Mayor Libby Schaaf

(510) 238-3141 FAX: (510) 238-4731 TDD: (510) 238-3254

Welcome to Oakland! We are so happy that you have chosen Oakland as your new home. You have picked a great time to become a part of this community.

Oakland is one of the most diverse, creative and progressive cities in the country. By choosing to bring your business to Oakland, you have already shown your commitment to supporting this community and the progressive values it holds – from diversity to social justice. Our authenticity, working-class roots and passion for the arts have always set Oakland apart. We’re thrilled to have businesses like yours discovering what Oakland has always been about and coming here to share in and help preserve that special character.

I have outlined below the contributions you can make that are most important to me as Mayor of Oakland, and some of the ways in which other Oakland businesses have chosen to partner with the City, our school district, local non-profits and our small businesses to improve health and economic outcomes and opportunities for Oaklanders, as well as preserving the essential qualities of Oakland that attracted you in the first place.

I look forward to working with you to identify ways that your unique contributions to Oakland’s economy can make this a more vibrant and equitable city where we all thrive.

You chose Oakland because of its magic. This is how you can help use preserve it: Support our local economy  Source locally from Oakland’s diverse population which offers a wealth of talent and local businesses that can provide a variety of goods and services  Use Oakland vendors, particularly small, companies owned by people of color  Collaborate with Oakland’s tech leaders to support learning, job and training opportunities for the next generation of diverse tech hires  Invest in Oakland’s crowd-sourced small business loan platform KivaZip (Ninety percent of Oakland’s businesses have 20 or less employees)  Eat and shop at local businesses (Over 300 new restaurants and bars opened in Oakland over the last 18 months) Strive for Equity  Tech-quity – providing equitable access to top-notch technology training and jobs for our residents and fostering our local technology sector’s growth so it leads to shared prosperity  Provide educational and real job opportunities for low-income, young people of color  Make a meaningful commitment to diversifying your workforce  Develop a strategy for attracting diverse hires at all levels

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Create a local pipeline to grow future employees from diverse backgrounds Make wage fairness a priority Ensure wage parity for similarly skilled workers across your company Adopt fair wage practices in keeping with Oakland’s Minimum Wage laws (82 percent of Oakland residents supported Measure FF in 2015 which raised the minimum wage to $12.15) Offer compensation that allows staff to live and work locally

Be a compassionate neighbor  Reduce your environmental impact  Support policies that encourage multi-modal transit and pedestrian safety and other carbon-friendly practices (as a transit hub, Oakland is at the center of Bay Area commerce and transit. We have more than 805 miles of streets, 1,500 miles of sidewalks, 150 blocks of path and stairways, and 671 traffic signals, plus 8 BART stations and the 5th busiest port in the nation)  Encourage employee volunteerism –Being of service to Oaklanders in need and sharing your expertise is a great way to build deeper ties in the community  Provide paid time off for employees to donate their time locally  Mentor an Oakland youth – provide mentorship and job shadow days through partnerships with the Oakland Unified School District (particularly schools in the inner city) and other youth mentorship programs  Sign up for Volunteer Match as a way to identify local volunteer opportunities  Promote diverse housing types in your neighborhood Fight displacement  Hire Oakland residents  Partner with the City to identify creative solutions to help address our regional affordability crisis (Oakland is the second-fastest rising residential rent market in the country. The City of Oakland is committed to ensuring that existing residents and businesses can continue to live and work in Oakland)  Support existing community-based arts and culture  Invest in or provide public art and small business incubator spaces  Offer affordable retail space for entrepreneurs and small businesses We look forward to exploring these ideas with you and securing tangible commitments from your company and its employees to become part of the fabric of this community. Jose Corona, the Director of Equity and Strategic Partnerships for my office will follow up, but feel free to reach out to him in the interim via email jcorona@oaklandnet.com or by phone (510) 238-7581.

Again, welcome to Oakland. We are thrilled you’re here and are excited to support your company’s growth.

Sincerely,

Libby Schaaf Mayor of Oakland