Mayor-elect Ronald Dellums said he is looking for “the best” to help him lead Oakland to a brighter future.
   “Oakland deserves the best,” he said. “We can be a great city. You are going to wake up more mornings and see brilliant ideas.”
    Dellums avoided a November runoff late last week against City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente by 153 votes. Out of 83,675 votes cast, Dellums garnered 50.18 percent.
   “Who said it was close?” Dellums told reporters and hundreds of cheering supporters who packed a ballroom at the Marriott Hotel on Monday. “I never thought about a recount, even if it came down to one vote. And I was never challenged. For me, the election was over at 8 p.m. on Election Day (June 6). We only had to wait for the results.”
    Dellums, who takes office in January, said he will ask for a full audit of city revenues to see where Oakland stands. He also vowed to go after private funds from donors such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has said he wants to run his own foundation fulltime now. Oakland has a $1 billion budget over two years.
    Dellums also said, “I want to appoint people to boards and commissions that reflect all of Oakland’s diversity. We will assemble the best possible teams.” That means some city department heads will remain, but others may be replaced, he said.
    He also will form task forces to focus on key areas such as crime, education, poverty, health and transparency in government. He said he supports economic development that calls for community benefits such as affordable housing, which can be done through “inclusionary zoning.”
    He said he would raise the stakes on current Mayor Jerry Brown’s call for 10,000 new residents downtown. “Look at the census data. Oakland will have 100,000 new residents [in the coming years]. Urban life is the life of the future,” Dellums said.
    He also said he wants to see more community policing, where officers get out of their patrol cars and interface directly with residents to remove walls of distrust.
    He said he wants to see Oakland become a “green city” that embraces a clean environment and emerge as a “global trade center.”
    He also challenged the media to be less sensationalized and not focus on personalities but the process of openness.
   “I want to say to young people that history records that old people don’t change the world, it’s young people,” he said. “I want to be your vehicle for change.”
    For Oakland, Dellums said, “the question is not are we going to grow but are we going to be in control of that growth. People should not be driven out of Oakland because of economics.”