The City of Oakley has a new mayor and vice mayor after both Randy Pope and Doug Hardcastle took the oath of office during the annual reorganization of the Oakley City Council.
In 2014, Randy Pope will now serve as mayor in 2014 with Hardcastle as now serving as vice mayor. Kevin Romick will now hold the title of councilman. The positions rotate each year so that each elected councilperson will have a turn as vice mayor and mayor.
Mayor Pope laid out an ambitious plan for the year beginning with attracting more civic participation and beginning to look at Oakley forming its own police department.
Here are Mayor Popes comments from Tuesday night.
Thank you all, I am very humbled. There are some very big boots to fill and I will do my duty to serve this city, the residents, the business owners and those who come here to do business in this great city. Some of the things I’d like to accomplish this year, one of the visions of the city is to be a benchmark or example of civic involvement. So I would like to do what I can to improve that. I don’t think civic involvement is limited to 3-mintues of public speaking at a city council meeting. So anywhere I can see opportunities to get more people involved to increase that civic involvement such as bringing back the planning commission this year.
A lot of people don’t know but our police services are provided by the Sheriff’s office under contract and they have provided exemplary services and this is by no means anything negative against them but I believe its time for the city of Oakley to take the next step and set in motion the steps needed to have our own police department.
Pope stated that he realizes some of his goals will be multi-year accomplishments, but explained he would like to get them started. He also would like to bring back a parade.
For a list of the 2014 committee assignments, you can view the staff report online.
Photo taken by City of Oakley
10 comments
In response to your Facebook question asking if his goals are good, I’d say its already an upgrade after the last two years have been a joke for Oakley and accomplished next to nothing.
More Civic engagement = good
Planning Commission = good
Oakley Police Department = good
Oakley Parades = good
Already an upgrade!!!!!!!!!!!
Why isn’t firing the City Manager included in his goals? That should be a top priority of anyone elected to Oakley.
Selfishly, I would like to see Oakley preserve the small town feel, more farm land protected, save the vines and commit to a community garden.
Liz, small town feel is what you want? Me to. That’s exactly what we had before city hood. Those says are gone ;(
Can’t be any worse, hopefully he will be a nice change Oakley needs
WOW already an improvement.
Fire the City Manager and be sure to hire a City Engineer that understands traffic road design. Pretty is not always practical.
Better really check out starting your own police department. That isn’t a path always strewn with rose petals. Montgomery has to go.
Start with Montgomery and clean house. There needs to be complete change in the city hall. Way too many people are stuck in a rut or “this is how we always do it”. New direction is needed so that we can get new businesses in town and support the existing businesses. As to a police dept that is ran by the city……..lets look at the numbers. Last number I saw was over $7 million to the county for the manpower. The cars, building and equipment already belong to the city. Can we do it for the same or less? Dispatch will cost. Interesting issue but something that should be looked at carefully. Maybe our own police chief instead of a police services manager (LT) from the Sheriff Dept. The chief would then answer to council/city manager instead of Martinez. You know, that local control thing that we were promised when Oakley came to be…………..
saying and donig are two different things. I will wait and see what he does before I pass judgement. Hopefully Pope can lead the city to be on time and under budget on projects and actually accomplish things. Change was needed from Romick.
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