Good morning and welcome to the Finance and Management Committee meeting of
Tuesday, January 27th, 2026. The time is now 9.30 a.m. and this meeting may come
to order. Before taking roll I will provide instructions on how to submit
speaker cards for items on this agenda. If you're here with us in chamber and
would like to submit a speaker card, please fill one out and turn one into
myself or a clerk representative no later than 10 minutes after the start of
this meeting or before the item is read into record. Registering to speak via
The zoom is now due 24 hours prior to the start
of this meeting time.
This meeting came to order at 930 a.m.
and speaker cards will no longer be accepted
10 minutes after making that time 940 a.m.
We'll now proceed with taking roll.
Council members Brown.
Present.
Council member Unger.
Here.
Council member Wong.
Present.
And chair Ramachandran.
Here.
Thank you we have four members present.
And before we begin, Chair,
do you have any announcements at this time?
No, welcome to the First Finance Committee of 2026,
looking forward to a productive and positive year.
Thank you.
Starting off with item number one,
approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting
held on December 9th, 2025,
and we do not have any speakers on this item.
To entertain a motion?
Move approval.
That was a motion made by councilmember brown second by councilmember Wong to accept the draft minutes from the committee meeting held on December
9th 2025 on rule council members brown
Hi under I Wong I and chair Ramachandran I thank you item number one passes with four eyes
Now reading in item number two determination of schedule of outstanding committee items
And we do have one speaker on this item
No changes at this time. Thank you
Calling in the public speaker that signed up for item number two, Mrs. Osada olavala
Asking that the city administrators annual report on spending
contracts up to
$250,000 which has not been done since 2023 be brought to this body a
a report on business closures and how that has impacted revenue for the city,
a report on democratic dollars.
The Ethics Commission is speaking as if in 2028 there will be revenue available,
but they've been informed by President Jenkins there will be no money available in 2028 for democracy dollars.
report on why Oakland was not included in the state grant for
419 million dollars for homelessness a
report on outstanding invoices in the city of Oakland and lastly a report on fiscal spending related to the NSA
Thank you for your comments. Sure that concludes all speakers on item number two
So moved
Thank you. That was a motion made by councilmember Unger seconded by councilmember Brown
To accept the determination of schedule outstanding committee items as is on roll council members Brown. I hunger
long I and chair Ramachandran I
Thank you item number two passes with four eyes to accept the determination of schedule outstanding committee items as is
Now reading in item number three
receives an informational report on the oaklands police and fire retirement systems peepers or systems investment portfolio as of September 30th
2025 and we do have one public speaker that signed up
Good morning committee chair members of the finance committee. My name is tayer Jenkins and I am the investment and operations manager
For the oakland police and fire retirement system more commonly known as peepers
The purpose of today's report is to give you a quarterly update on the status of the of the peepers fund
To assist me in presenting this information,
I have David Sandswich from Nikita Investments.
Just to give you a brief overview,
Peepers is a closed retirement system, closed in 1976.
All current active employees were then,
became members of CalPERS.
Currently, all the members are retired, and as of the date
of this report, we had 585 members
and approximately 498 million in investments.
And then based on the most recent actuarial evaluation dated July 1 2025 papers was a hundred percent funded
Next I'll hand it over to our consultant who will give you more detail on the investment portfolio
It is January and the reports dated 930. So I will just give a very brief summary without having you flip through the book
As highlighted by Tay year the portfolio was at four hundred and ninety eight million as of September 30th
Preliminarily through December, it's at $500 million
and had a 12.4% return.
That includes, the 500 million includes the benefits
that are being paid out of the portfolio.
The other good news is that we have fully transitioned
the portfolio to 60 plus percent fixed income,
so we've successfully done our first stage of de-risking.
We're gonna move forward with the board tomorrow
and the next couple of meetings and talk about
next steps for the portfolio and asset allocation,
but the portfolio is doing very well.
The only thing I'll highlight is that this portfolio
has a 5% return assumption, so it's not high.
So we will be dialing back the risk needle
even further moving into 2026.
Wanna see if there's any questions.
Colleagues, questions, comments?
Council Member Long.
Yeah, I just have one question.
In table five of the report,
there was a comparison of the performance
with some other investments,
And I notice that East Bay MUD has very high rates of return.
Do you know what they're doing that, what are the decisions they're making that enables
that?
Yeah.
I won't get into specifics other than to say, PIFRS is not even on the same ballpark as
East Bay MUD.
East Bay MUD is an open active pension system.
So they are continuing to take on more equity risk and more private market risk.
PIFRS is a closed system.
And to use the example we talk about in the board meeting, this is a portfolio that's
played 18 holes in golf and we're beginning our walk to the clubhouse.
There's only about 500 or 600 members left and the average age is somewhere in the 80s
for PIFRS.
That's different than East Bay CalPERS and CalSTRS that we use in that table.
As we continue to de-risk, I would expect the PIFRS performance numbers to look even
more different from their peers moving forward.
Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? Okay. We'll move to public speakers.
Calling in the name that's signed up for item number three, Ms. Asada Olavala.
The reason why I signed up for this item is because it got me a little bit more confused
about the ballot measure that's going to the voters related to membership of this board.
So in the report it says that the total membership is 585, 376 are retirees, and 209 are beneficiaries.
So I would assume that these beneficiary who are not elderly, necessarily, could be
potential members of the board, and you wouldn't have to go through this change of membership
requirement based on this age component that you are saying is the issue so I
contend that it's not about anything other than a large percentage of these
members don't live in Oakland and therefore it's an inconvenience to come
here to serve on these boards or unless they do it on zoom I might be wrong but
And I just think that ballot measure needs some more verification of the validity of
being put on the ballot because membership has 209 beneficiaries who are not necessarily
elder members of the community.
Thank you for your comments, Chair.
That concludes all speakers on item number three.
Okay.
I will entertain a motion.
Excuse me.
David Jones, Treasury Administrator and Plan
Administrator for the Police and Fire Retirement System.
I just wanted to let this body know
that Mr. John Speakman, a longstanding board member
of about 20 years, passed away during the holidays.
It was a very, very sad, unexpected situation.
He also served as a firefighter, as a council member
hunger knows for you know 25 years so he has put has put over 45 years of his
life before the city of Oakland and just wanted to let you know that tomorrow at
10 o'clock we're gonna have our monthly board meeting and we'll be presenting a
resolution to the family in honor of Mr. John Speakman I don't know remember
on group you want to adjourn you know if you would like to do that this this
This morning, but I would really appreciate that
Thank you, we will
Will do so
Councilman Brown excellent
Should the motion be just to receive and file the report? I believe so. Yeah, I'll make that motion
Yes accepted and filed. I'll second that
Thank you
That was a motion made by councilmember Brown and councilmember Wong to receive and file this informational report in committee
councilmember brown. I councilmember younger I councilmember one I and chair on the chandrum I thank you item number three passes with four eyes to receive and file this information report and committee. Reading in item number four. Receive an informational report on the ratings for the general obligation obligation bond series two thousand twenty five measure you from Moody's investors service and a standard and pours rating and we have two speakers that signed up.
Okay, to the staff.
Good morning.
Through the chair, members of the committee,
I would like to take a moment
to introduce Mr. Jaime Trejo with PFM Financial Advisors.
I also want to, once again, publicly acknowledge
the esteemed team in our finance department
that led us through a bonding process and also counsel.
Thank you for your leadership and support
throughout this process.
I also want to take a moment to acknowledge
Ms. Deborah Edgley and Ms. Jamma Zeke,
who have been key advisors through this process,
and also it would be, I'd be remiss
without acknowledging Mr. Bradley Johnson
and Monica Davis who supported this effort.
Certainly, it was quite a process.
I'm very excited to be here.
I think the information that will be shared today
is very pertinent for where we are
going into our budget process.
And certainly we're taking that under advisement,
so it's great that PFM is here to give this presentation.
And with that said, I will turn it over to Hami.
Thank you.
Good morning.
Hi, I'm A. Trejo here from Financial Advisors.
And I do have a presentation.
I'm not sure where it could show.
Here we go.
All right, so this presentation's broken up into three parts.
The first part, we'll talk about the background credit ratings.
Just the folks going to have a little bit of background
we're talking about.
Then we'll talk about Oakland's credit rating.
And then we'll see how Oakland compares
to other cities in California and national.
First, I've got to say a couple things.
One, I used to be a former rating analyst.
I used to work for S&P.
Don't hold that against me.
And the second thing, don't shoot the messenger.
I'm just presenting information that rating agencies have put
out there publicly.
I just summarized it and presented it, not in my opinion.
First slide here, what is a credit rating?
Credit rating, it's a symbol used to define the credit
worthiness of a municipality.
So what the credit agencies want to know and what they want to signal to investors is the likelihood you're going to repay and the willingness to repay, right?
Are you going to pay your bonds on time?
What determines the credit rating?
We'll talk a little bit about it on the next slide.
They're determined by pretty much three agencies, Moody's, S&P and Fitch.
There are a few others out there, but those are the three kind of nationally recognized credit rating agencies.
who uses them, institutional retail investors
to make a decision on whether or not to buy bonds,
commercial lenders, ready to be looking
for a line of credit or bank loan.
They use credit ratings.
And why is it important?
A higher credit rating signals to the market,
you know, your credit worthiness,
it increases your investment base
and lowers the cost of borrowing.
And here on the right-hand side,
we kind of see investment-grade ratings.
So anything from a triple B to a triple A
are kind of investment-grade ratings.
If you're below that, it makes it a little bit harder
to access the capital markets.
And if you do, you would have to pay more money
for what you borrow.
The next slide here, I won't read this in detail,
but these are the factors that determine the credit rating.
This is a summary of the criteria
for both S&P and Moody's.
They look at the same thing but slightly differently.
They look at the economy, the financial performance,
but financial performance are looking at how your general fund is operating if you have a
rating on
utilities and look at how the utility funds are operating
whether it's a surplus or deficit
reserves and liquidity
they use the audit
it's kind of a backward looking view and your budget for forward looking view
so for reserves and liquidity they'll look at you know
what they consider available unrestricted
on an audited basis
uh... management
This is not a score on personnel,
but a score on policies and practices.
So these policies and practices
are supposed to outlive whoever's there.
When there's turnover, kind of the culture of management
should live on debt and liabilities.
It should say notching factors, not nothing factors,
but notching factors would be,
one of them would be local resources,
so does the city have ballot measures,
parcel tax, geo bond capacity,
something to Oakland scores very well.
And the last one is other considerations.
When they determine a credit rating,
they'll spit out, their model spit out an indicative rating
and then they'll see how you compare
to other peers in similar categories.
Is this more like a double A, triple A?
I'm gonna make that determination.
In addition to credit rating, there's outlooks.
So an outlook is a signal to invest
investor community, the direction a rating might go.
So all rating agencies have outlooks in its opinion
on how the rating might go in the next 12 to 24 months.
Oakland, all three are negative outlook.
And what that means is that a meaningful chance of a rating
downgrade in the next 12 to 18 months, a stable outlook,
which the vast majority of ratings have,
means unlikely to change in a positive outlook,
means there's a chance for an upgrade.
All right, now let's talk about Oakland.
Here we have Oakland's three credit ratings.
So on the table chart to the right and the right top corner,
you see Oakland's Moody's credit rating, the AA2,
which is the third best way you can get.
So very high, very strong rating.
For S&P, you're still in the AA category,
but at a AA minus.
And Fitch has your rating at an A.
Fitch doesn't actually rate any of your general fund debt
that's tied to utility.
and they look at the general fund, but it's a A nonetheless.
And in these three boxes on bottom,
we have the rating history, and as you're aware,
all three ratings were lowered in late 2024.
But since that downgrade, the ratings for at least Moody's,
S&P, and actually Fitch have been affirmed,
so that's good, that means the ratings have stabilized.
Next slide here, Oakland's credit rating.
So here is a summary of the strengths of your credit rating.
Both agencies talked about the large and diverse
economic base, your central located in the Bay Area,
high assessed value per capita,
economy is major sectors like logistics,
tech, healthcare, transportation,
strong local support for supplemental revenue
from voters, taxpayers, liquidity.
City maintains high cash investment levels,
which is a credit strength, and management actions
You know, both each team said that C was proactive in enacting bullet but balancing budget actions in 25 to close the gap
So you receive credit for that
Now what are some of the challenges?
The main challenge is identified as structural budget and balance what that means that your expenditures
Particularly in the general fund are all pacing your revenues in the general fund
They notice you projecting deficits in the out year
So, in 27, 28, 29, they looked at your declining financial flexibility reserves.
Again, they looked back at the audit, but they saw that your general fund reserves,
which they can see, they look at the, those are unrestricted, available, and committed,
and declined 23 through 24.
They placed a high emphasis on financial flexibility.
Now, last one here is high fixed cost.
I mean, this is pretty common in California, but high pension and op-ed liabilities.
In the credit rating reports, they do state, you know, kind of upside and downside scenarios.
So they'll tell you what you need to do to get an upgrade or downgrade.
So the negative outlooks here are kind of, this is taken exactly from the reports, you
know, they reflect near term financial headwinds and anticipated structural deficits driven
by expenditure growth.
In addition to what I mentioned
in the future budget reductions
we needed to restore long-term
sustainability.
So that's why the city's credit
rating is in a negative outlook
for both S&P and Moody's.
Now let's look at the upside.
You know, to get a higher credit
rating for Moody's, what they
wanted, we did have a higher
credit rate, but what they wanted
to see to get back there is
meaningful increase in financial
flexibility, meaning they want to
see your general fund reserves
increase both on an audited and
they're also going to look at it because of the
eligibility ratio decline below 200.
That's specific to them and their criteria.
The downside scenario, sustained decline in reserves,
future budget deficits could lead to a downgrade.
S&P, again, we can return to a stable outlook
if we eliminate the deficit spending.
I mean, we stop using general fund reserves to fill the gap
and PS looking they want to see your general fund revenues outpaced your general fund
expenditures on both an audited and budget basis. All right. So now we're going to take
a look see how Oakland compares to cities rated nationally by by Moody's Oakland credit
ratings here double a two which is about the average for for Moody's. So you're about the
median credit rating nationally for for Moody's and this is from a this is from April twenty
25. Radiance don't change all that much year-over-year. Then on the next slide,
you look at how you compare it to cities in California that are rated by S&P. Here
the credit rating at double A minus is slightly below the median. The median for
all California municipalities is a double A. The last slide here, again, why are we
talking about credit ratings? Because it all leads to impacts to sale of
general obligation bonds. As you know we sold bonds, it was a good sell. In December
of last year there was a strong investor demand. You know we had about 640
million dollars of orders for about 335 million dollars offered. 26
institutional investors, individual institutional investors participated. Tax
rates you know we're happy to report for the tax exempt bonds. We received a TIC of
less than 4%, 5.5% for taxables obviously it's a higher interest rate and we did
include a refunding that refunding saved taxpayers 4.7 million dollars. So that
concludes the presentation. I'm available for questions. Thank you.
Jaime, would you do me a favor real quick before we finish the presentation? Could
you go back to slide 8 on your presentation? Council would be remiss if I
I did not highlight for you the importance of this slide.
This is your roadmap for improving our credit score with both S&P and Moody's.
It's very clear criteria that we need to meet in order to stabilize our outlook and look for better outlooks in the future.
They have notable metrics here regarding our reserve numbers, operating for performance.
Again, that just means we actually need to run surpluses and improve our general fund balances.
about, again, addressing our long-term liabilities.
You take a slide away from this in terms of what our work looks
like going forward to improve our outlook.
This is a key one for them because these are their criteria.
Thanks, I may appreciate it.
No problem.
Yeah, exactly what you have to do.
Thank you.
I will start on that question on that point on this slide.
So under the Moody section of that slide,
said or the outlook could improve if reserves exceed exceed 30 percent what
is our current guidelines as a city that we follow on best practices related to
reserves because I know there's a legal requirement and then this was this is
what would be optimal your current city reserve policy requires seven and a half
percent of your general purpose fund to be appropriate into your emergency
Reserve and we have reserves that also exist for capital improvements and for a rainy day fund
There's nothing in that rainy day fund right now
But that's the totality of those and other reserves that would be looked at for this particular metric
thank you and
7.5% is pretty far off from 30% that's recommended
Do we have any analysis of what other cities with slightly higher ratings go from within that range?
I don't have a detailed analysis, I'll let you know that the GFOA standard is closer
to about 17 percent, roughly two months worth of operating performance is the best practice
in GFOA.
When we in the fall go back and reexamine your fiscal policies, I think that this meeting
this target and what it looks like would be a really clear, key conversation for us to
have.
Thank you.
And sorry, what standard did you say?
The Government Finance Office Association, I'm sorry, I should not talk in acronyms.
And I'm not sure I can answer
that question.
But the CFOA or the government
finance offers association
recommends two months of
performance which is roughly
seventeen percent.
Thank you and has I know this
you don't have a number in front
of you has the city been at
that seventeen percent level
before have we always been
close to that seven point five
percent we have especially
coming in the pandemic we were
in much bigger numbers.
We have been closer to this
right now.
But we have done better key element that you did.
And I mentioned you got credit for, we did stabilize this.
And the evidence of that stabilization
will be coming at your next FMC committee meeting
when we talk about your Q4 and your audited actor
will be able to show that data to you.
But the action bouncing actually did stabilize this,
which has sort of helped again stabilize our rating.
But we have in the past, both immediately
going into the pandemic and then when we were sort of in mid-pandemic we were at higher
numbers in terms of our reserve numbers.
Thank you and another question before I turn to my colleagues is around, if we can go back
to slide five, if it's not pulled up that's fine I have it on the attachment but in slide
At five, it talks about why we're still in the negative,
we have a negative outlook from all three rating agencies,
and then there's the roadmap on the next page,
yet in our bond sale things looked pretty positive.
Is there something you could explain kind of of either why,
when it comes to bond sales,
a negative outlook doesn't matter as much,
or is this standard for most cities to be negative,
given our current state of economy right now?
I can't bring up the presentation, I'm not sure I do it here, but for slide 5 most cities
have a stable outlook, I would say maybe 90% of them have a stable outlook.
And the sale went fine because you're still in an investment grade rating, you still have
ratings in the double A category which is the very high ratings.
If you had a straight, for example, S&P straight and double A minus with no negative outlook,
a stable outlook even positive, the results would have been a little bit better.
Could you repeat that?
If you had a stable outlook or a positive outlook, the results could have been a little
bit better.
I guess my question is really what factors make us in the negative category despite having
a positive bond sale experience?
What's the discrepancy there?
S&P and Moody's did not look at the bond sale.
Those analysts have no sense or anything of how bonds are sold or even how they're structured.
They just look at the credit fundamentals, the financial, economic fundamentals of a
city.
So what they saw compared to other cities and state and in the country, your reserve
levels significantly declined between fiscal 22 and fiscal 24.
So they felt that your rating was no longer merited to be in the AA or AA plus category,
so they downgraded you to AA minus.
Thank you.
And if one was to summarize that outlook, it seems like the two most relevant factors
is the reserve levels and the rising expenditures proportional to revenue.
Correct.
Correct.
Okay.
Sorry, Chair.
Thank you very much chair if I if I could just interject when how many notes about we have a positive performance in the market we are always striving for a better performance a higher bond rating could result in lower interest rates which would mean savings for our taxpayers that's the sort of the train to fully full through as we improve our outlook we move from a negative to a stable outlook from a stable to a positive or up our ratings the interest rate charged in the market for a bond sale on a given transaction will be lower than what we have in a
fully full through.
As we improve our outlook,
we move from a negative to a stable outlook,
from a stable to a positive, up our ratings.
The interest rate charged in the market for a bond sale
on a given transaction will be lower,
which results again, savings to our taxpayers.
And so that's what we're after.
It also opens more opportunities for a financing
of even prior debt, which again, can result in savings.
Thank you.
And one last question.
One of the slides mentioned of $4.7 million, the last slide, $4.7 million in present value
savings from refunding bonds, could you explain what this means?
That's correct.
We refunded a series of bonds, it was 2015 bonds, bonds duration 2015, we refunded them
with this transaction.
So we essentially sold new bonds to pay off the old bond holders and we borrowed new bonds
that are lower interest rate, which resulted in savings
in that present value of $4.7 million.
So that means the interest payments you would make
on debt service was reduced by nearly $5 million.
Colleagues, Council Member Long and Brown.
Thank you, this is really informative.
When we say savings for taxpayers,
like what does that exactly mean?
Does that mean that their tax rate is gonna be lower?
Can you just walk us through that?
So our geo bonds are the debt service
for our general obligation bonds
are covered on the property tax role.
So when you get a property tax statement,
there's a line there below the 1% property tax
that says city of Oakland.
That tax rate, that ad valorem tax rate
is based on our outstanding debt.
If our debt payments are lower,
the assessment we put on the property tax is lower
and all of the owners of property
in the city of Oakland will pay less.
So every time we go out for a bond issuance,
putting new debt onto that role, and every time we refund it or are able to get a better
deal on it, we can lower that collective debt amount.
Sorry.
David, do you want to jump in there, please?
Yeah.
Just look at it like refinancing your home.
Basically, that's the analogy that you could use, where interest rates drop, you're in
a better position just to refund that.
So that's kind of the analogy.
So, when we go to levy in August for property tax rate, it's just lower, basically.
And also, I wanted to just comment on, you know, your discussion on the negative outlook.
That was done toward the end of 2024.
And typically, a rating agency, they want to see, it's going to take some time.
So when we went to them in 2025 last year, it was about almost a year or so.
So they were like, you're looking pretty good, but typically they like to have you in that
18 to 24 month window before they'll make a decision.
So I know our budget is coming up, we should be mindful of that, okay?
There is going to be some tough decisions to make.
we are planning to potentially go back to the market at the beginning of next year.
So that's a year away to stay on this proper trajectory.
But I just wanted to make it very clear that when you get into your budget deliberations,
just be mindful of what Jaime has presented and what Brad was saying, your roadmap.
want to stay on that roadmap.
And if you look in the agenda report,
I think it's on page four, there are four boxes.
Talks about reserves, as well as expenses.
Those are other items that they really want you to address.
And I also want to say that they're probably
looking at this meeting right now.
So be mindful of that as well, is that S&P, Moody's,
they're analysts, they live in Oakland,
They attend the meetings.
Some of your investment bankers attend your meetings.
So just keep that, you know, be in mind,
keep it in mind, basically.
That's all I kind of wanted to say.
But you know, just keep on the right track
that we're on right now.
But yeah, just look at the lower tax rate
is just refinancing your home.
Okay, so basically directly lowering the taxes
that would be collected.
That is correct.
How much of a difference does it make?
So let's say if we got an upgrade, like I know it's hard.
Yeah, it's, yeah, you can't quantify, you can't quantify.
I can't tell you, you know, it's gonna cost this much less
or that much less if we get, you know, a stable,
cause you can't get an upgrade until you get the stable.
Okay. Yeah.
But you know, you should see some movement
in the proper direction.
Let's just put it to you like that.
Okay. And it was also noted though, for example,
in slide 11 that it said here on the bond sale
that strong investor demand allowed the city
to secure lower than estimated interest rates.
What were we able to secure versus
what was the estimated interest rate?
Excuse me, can you repeat that?
This was, so slide 11 on the recent bond sale
we had this last December, it's noted
that we actually secured lower
than estimated interest rates.
Yes, yes, yes.
differential between what we secured
versus what was estimated.
The market is always moving.
I don't tell you where we got out at.
But the point that you want to look at
is $638 million in total orders.
So you can see that's almost doubly oversubscribed.
So you had almost double the amount
of bonds in the market versus the investors
that we're building to invest for it.
And as a result of that, as Jaime mentioned,
what happens is you reprice your bonds.
So basically you lower the rate.
Some of the investors will not care anymore.
They'll go away.
But you're still able to fill those orders
for that $334 million offer, which is a good thing,
as well as I'd like to point out the 26 institutional
investment firms who are interested in your bonds.
And I took a look, and there are some names
that are interested in the Oakland bonds
that I've never seen before.
I don't want to mention them here.
But there are definitely some asset managers
that haven't looked at our name in the past.
So let's continue with that.
I don't know if you want to add to that, Jaime, or not.
But that's a good thing as well.
But to your point, we were able to reprice it,
get the tax exempts to a little bit under 4%.
And then your taxable is at around 5 and 1.5%.
through the chair
into the council and so one thing also want to add you want to keep drivers with respect to the value of those bonds is
What's on your project list that we get from departments?
Department transportation public works, whatever the case may be as they've been mentioned you're looking to get back in the market here pretty soon
One of the things I think it's really critical and important to emphasize and over and over again
Is the fact that the investment in our public facilities is critical and it's important
Specifically the facilities that we own we're in a place where we have to take care of our own house and and by that
I mean our public works our
Parks facilities all across the cities have to be a priority in addition our public safety facilities
Our fire stations are at a point of in some respect beyond this repair
And so we have to as we go back into the market
That's one we there'll be competing interests across the entire city outside of this organization
but quite candidly, we have to reinvest in our own facility.
So that's something I'm going to ask that you all keep in mind.
I've had a conversation with many of our labor partners.
And this is at top of mind for them, especially
on the public works and on the fireside.
So I just want to put that on you all's radar.
But one of the key drivers is the value
of the items on your project list as well.
OK, great.
And just I have one last thing, which is on slide seven,
it was also noticed that we rely on optimistic assumptions
and budgets, is that something, Bradley, you can speak to,
or is that something we are correcting for?
Right, and this is speaking to what Jaime and I were discussing
in terms earlier about ensuring that we actually
have positive performance at the end.
When we go through the budget process,
and this body will not be unfamiliar with me saying this,
we have to have an accurate estimate, especially
on the expenditure side of what we actually plan to spend.
Our revenues, we're working on truing up
in terms of methodology.
Some of that is it's hard to catch a market that's changing.
But on the expense side, which is where I think
we really need to be focused, we cannot plan for service demands
or expect service demands that we do not budget for.
Because when we do that, we produce overspending.
And that is one of those things that, again, David
It was mentioning, if you go through their port on the expense side, that they're very, very interested in.
What we demand, what we expect in terms of service needs to be commensurate with the resources we put aside for those same services.
And so as we move forward through our budget process, we'll want to make sure that we have a good link between that service delivery on the expenditure side and the resources we're allocating for it.
Gotcha, thank you.
No, I was just going to add that with regards to the optimistic assumptions, you know, it's
primarily tied to that measure for the $40 million that is going to go before the voters.
So they're mindful of that as well.
Sorry about that, Brad.
I was going to answer one of your questions.
You had a question about on the last slide, Stronger Resident Man Allowed for Teachers
Career and Lower Estimated Interest Rates.
So that's comparing the good faith estimates we provided when the bond authorization resolution
was adopted.
So there we said our good faith estimate we thought interest rates would be at.
I don't have that number with me unfortunately, but the sale price is lower than what was
presented to city council that day.
Anything else from administration?
Oh, okay.
Thank you.
That was very comprehensive and helpful.
understand that rating agencies really want to see our noting significant
progress in 2025 and I think that's very important to point out compared to the
end of 2024 there's been massive progress made but the point is to keep
that going for another minimum year till we see changes in ratings and that is
very much noted and will be though that roadmap is certainly hopefully will be
taking into consideration an upcoming budget process.
Colleagues, Councilman Brown.
Excellent.
Well, I can't, you know, to Chair Ramachandran's point,
that's what I wanted to continue to emphasize.
I think that the report really clearly laid out.
And also prior reports, I know during the budget time
we had the roadmap to physical health,
and then we also have the item that's coming up next,
just kind of further aligning with just our strategic goals.
And I think that it's important
to just really emphasize, you know,
what the difference was in 2024, right?
Being able to actually, in comparison to 2025,
being able to actually be able to balance the budget
and that being like one of the most important,
one of many factors and really being able to go out
and sell the bonds.
And so, and then on page, which page is that?
Page eight, where it literally outlines
for each of these agencies how we can, you know,
hopefully continue to increase our rating.
So I really hope that, you know,
whoever ends up being on our budget team
as we move forward in the coming months
that we continue to really focus and prioritize
on these efforts.
And then I do wanna just give a amazing shout out
because in 2025, you know, myself, Councilmember Unger,
Councilmember Wong, all of us, you know,
ended up being on the budget team
and at least for myself, I was newer to the process.
And I think that there's just so many amazing leaders
within the city of Oakland,
whether our finance director, Bradley, Deborah,
Administrator Johnson, Monica, and Ben Rosenfield, right,
just so many folks that really came alongside us
to help guide us through the process.
And so I just wanna really recognize and honor
that it was 100% a team effort
and just really grateful for that guidance.
And I think maybe the last question that I wanted to ask
is on slide 10, where it outlines other municipalities
in like what their rating is.
I think in the future, I would love to,
maybe if we could enhance this slide a little bit more
where it actually outlines, you know,
who are, what are some of the cities
in the state of California that are currently have
more of a positive rating so that we can really dive
and dive into and look to see what they are doing
with, within their local governments
to see if there's any things that we can also align with.
And then on the flip side of that,
making sure we understand, you know,
what are some of these other cities that have lower ratings
and how we can avoid those pitfalls.
Thank you.
Sorry, go ahead.
I also would like to kind of reiterate for this board,
the work that goes into this.
I mean, this is like a nine month project.
So I'd like to, this is a long term thing.
This is not just a snapshot in time.
So we've had issues in the past.
We're on the right trajectory, but this
is really a long-term process.
And it's not going to happen overnight.
And I just wanted to let that be known.
And I also would like to introduce one of my, well,
my assistant, Don Granados, here from the Treasury
Department, who really spearheaded this financing,
along with Mr. Greg Danillion.
He's not here today, but I did want
to pass that along because anybody that has gone through this knows how much work really
goes into doing a financing.
I mean, we're already talking about next year right now, and we're just about to move into
February.
So it's in addition to our daily workload as well.
Dawn, I don't know if you want to add anything.
just want to say thank you David and I am honored to be part of the process and
moving things forward thank you okay we will move to public comment calling in
the names that signed up for item number four missus Sada Ola Bala and Kevin
Dalley I'm not sure but my memory says that when the grand jury report came out
and said some of the things about your negative rating, you kind of like was
dismissive of it because if you took it serious at the time the report came out
you would have had this kind of presentation given to you based on that
presentation then you would apply for bonds but you applied for the bonds and
then get a report did we do the right thing I mean the order of the way you
you did it doesn't make sense. The other thing is in order for you to move
forward with some credit sustainability of your budget you're going to have to
make future budget reductions. So at any time you can go back and address the
budget. You don't have to wait till the end of 2027. Are you going to do this
right away or you're just going to let it linger on? I suggest you do it right
away. The other thing is because you have now invested with MeasureU in
affordable housing, roadway safety,
infrastructure improvements, renovation of parks, libraries, senior centers, and
other public facilities. That means that investment has to stay stable. So when you
do budget reductions, you're not going to reduce in those areas, you're going to
continue because the administrator just says this is important that you invest
in these areas so what are you going to do budget reduction areas are what are
you going to be the homeless affordable housing no illegal dumping maybe so you
can get on this right away because you're saying you're not going to divest
from the support and investment in all the areas I just identified and if you
try to do it I'm gonna come back to you and say why did you go after bonds to
support something and took up thank you for your comments Miss Ola Bala okay
thank you chair that concludes all speakers that signed up for item number
four thank you and do we receive and file this to the parliamentarian or is
this going to full council okay okay thank you I will make the motion to
and file this report.
Thank you we have a motion made by chair Ramachandran seconded by councilmember Brown.
To receive and file this informational report in committee on roll council members Brown
I hunger I long I and chair Ramachandran I thank you item number four passes with the
four I's to receive and file this informational report in committee.
Now reading in item number five.
an informational report from the city administrator on the fiscal year 2025 to
2028 citywide strategic plan six-month update and we have four speakers that
signed up for this item good morning Monica Davis deputy city
administrator I'm here with a wonderful team of staff who've been really hard
working on bringing forth an update to the strategic planning effort to remind
you all. The strategic planning effort kicked off in March of 2024. We held a
retreat with the agency directors, the mayor's office at that time, and key
stakeholders to really just ideate on, you know, what are we seeing here in the
city and where are the opportunities for growth. We engaged a consulting firm
called Be President Consulting to help facilitate a number of interviews with
department heads, key stakeholders within the city to just also better understand
the landscape of what's going on here at the city. Also met with five focus
groups of staff across the city ranged from you know public safety team to you
know brand new hires just trying to digest what their experiences were so we
could incorporate that into this plan. Also convened 30 person staff team
the strategic planning design team to help pull all of that feedback together and create
the strategic planning document.
So you all heard this item in the summer of 2025.
And we are now an implementation phase six months in.
So I'm committed to providing a six-month update as we progress through the plan.
And so that's why I'm here.
Just to remind you, there are five strategic priorities, streamline operations, fostering
cross-departmental collaboration, enhancing communication and coordination, optimizing
our workforce management, and aligning our budget with city-wide priorities.
I've been able to hear from all of you that this is also in alignment with what you all
want to see more of, and the goal here with implementing these three years of strategic
priorities is to really develop and build our organizational health for the city.
And the plan is to then implement or develop then a more outward facing strategic plan
in the out years.
So this first year, we're really trying to implement this menu of actions that are in
the strategic plan.
In the second year, we'll be iterating more, trying to benchmark what we've accomplished
and sort of shift as needed,
and then year three is trying to figure out
how to continue our sustained growth through this work.
And then we have a lot of folks involved
in supporting the strategic planning effort.
Really grateful for the staff engagement
on this high-performing organization team
that we have with leadership.
From the steering committee, we have six folks
really helping provide guidance around the implementation,
and then I dedicated 27 staff members
helping to uplift each of these respective priorities.
And I just wanted to note that as we've been engaging
in this work, there's a lot of crossover in this effort.
So at times, moving forward, for example,
we'll be partnering a couple of the teams
to be able to help leverage
that brain trust movement forward.
I'm so grateful to this team.
This is my favorite part of my job,
to be able to uplift and have this really hardworking group
of folks help move these key items forward
to help make the city of Oakland better.
With that, I'm going to invite our team members
to provide updates on the progress they've been making.
And I'll start with Michelle and Tara.
Good morning, my name is Tara Dubal.
I'm the management assistant for planning and building.
Today I am representing the streamline operations team.
So the goal of our streamline operations team
is to work in areas identified in our strategic plan
that could make the city more efficient.
With the help of our coach, we were able to meet
with some key members of both the HR and contracts team,
during which we worked to understand their processes
and discover ways in which our team
could help meet their efficiency goals.
While we're just getting underway with HR,
we found out more about the external contracts audit
that happened and the recommended action items
that came from it.
Our team is currently working on ways
to help prioritize the recommendations
for a smoother contracting process.
And then I will hand it over to team team.
Good morning, my name is Karina Liu.
I'm here to present on strategic priority two.
The priority for this is around cross collaboration
amongst departments.
Sub priority one focuses on coordination
through working groups, including community engagement
and data collaboration.
This work aligns with an existing administrative
instruction to institutionalize community engagement standards
and procedures and is progressing as expected.
Sub priority two focuses on the development and coordination
of housing plans.
This work has been ongoing and is progressing as expected.
largely because Housing and Community Development's
Department has a comprehensive and strategic approach.
Several sub-priority objectives were already accomplished
in year one, and this area has transitioned
into ongoing tracking, monitoring, and refinement
to ensure alignment over time.
Sub-priority three is building a holistic approach
to public safety, including emergency preparedness,
and foundational progress has been made in this area.
including enabling
AC alert contact information to be updated using employee data
improving the city's ability to communicate with the staff during emergencies and
a
Disaster Council public information warning team meeting has been convened bringing together fire and police to improve coordination around emergency messaging
because of the focus of
subparties four and five
I'm sorry because of our focus on sub priorities 1 2 & 3
Sub priorities 4 & 5 will continue to advance through intentional sequencing in year 1 we identified
codependent tasks across departments and progress in these areas will continue to create
Conditions necessary to move the remaining sub priorities forward in a coordinated way
Overall progress has been made in each sub priorities
and the city continues to position itself to strengthen and foster cross-departmental
collaboration.
Good morning.
My name is Monica Palaioloc and I am the public information officer for the Office of Inspector
General and I am here as part of Team 3 to really look at enhancing communication and
coordination for the city.
So my job here is to really look at the gaps in communication internally and think through
how to build awareness of the work that Citi staff is doing, deepen connection and potentially
create collaboration.
A lot of the work that we're doing is also in relation to what Team 2 is doing.
I spoke with folks around the strategic plan team to really understand what that gap was,
and the response I got was more information from administration and agency directors about
what is happening in the city, a space to celebrate wins, communication that would be
more periodic in nature and available in a variety of formats.
So keeping that in mind, we have started working on our action items, which are progressing.
We're about the midway point.
If you notice for the needed improvements, there are nine sub-actions outlined.
Of those that have an asterisk, the citywide communications team has already started working
on that, which is what Corinna Liu was alluding to.
And so I took on, or our team has taken on, really working on that monthly interdepartmental
newsletter and really thinking about uplifting that.
And so we've gotten progress done and we're currently in the process of building out an
editorial template and looking at the processes so that digital leads who are people who will
be contributing to the newsletter can have a stream lined way of doing it so that we're
not adding to people's portfolio. And then year two and year three are really about including
city council and then looking at what we've done and see how we can improve on those.
So those are currently stable there but we're making progress along the way. So I'll give
it over to team four now.
Hi.
Good morning.
Andrea Mariano.
She, her AO pronouns.
And I'm the HR manager over organizational development and training.
And we also have Janara Burton just on the team to answer questions as well from our
workforce-optimized workforce management team.
So we wanted to come to you along with the handles you've already been given and talk
to you about how we're really approaching this work.
We want to approach workforce optimization
from a structural perspective, which
is going to really focus on improvements in the employee
lifecycle.
So we're going to define that as from talent acquisition,
recruitment, and hiring to onboarding,
career growth and development, performance management,
really keeping an eye on advancement and retention,
and then even offboarding and succession planning.
So we want to look at it as a whole.
From there, we want to look at the processes for employees
and some of the frameworks we can improve and utilize,
such as the SPOC model, which is the single point of contact
existing in every department, looking at that framework,
and then also just HR processes in general.
And then we want to enhance access to resources.
We think this is a pretty large gap.
Everybody using the same forms, everybody
utilizing the same process, and really starting
to focus in on improving just HR processes,
as well as optimizing them to be more efficient.
And from there, we do have some things
in the exploratory phase that we're looking at in year one.
So this is really enhancing communication.
We plan to use the intranet for that,
kind of revive it and improve it as a central hub
for information for employees,
as well as be able for departments
to be utilizing the same resources.
Another thing that we're going to look at
is really increasing how departments communicate
with each other when we are looking
at advancing racial equity.
So we will partner with our stakeholders,
Department of Race and Equity,
that is a little bit down the road.
They're now working, we're working on what type of tools
we'll utilize to get that information,
but our goal as this team is to provide access
to frameworks, tools, and analysis,
things that they can pull data from,
different departments, and the Department of Race
and Equity is gonna partner with us.
The last two things that we're going to look at
and we're in the exploratory phase is,
is we want to make sure that we're strengthening
our core leadership here in the city,
from our top tier of leadership
to our management frontline supervisors
is providing a roadmap of just structured
and development and skill enhancement.
So we can, and we're looking at that
in the employee lifecycle from who's currently here,
tapping talent of future leadership,
and then also succession,
making sure that our knowledge doesn't go out the door
when people do exit the city.
And then the last thing that we're looking at
is workload management.
And that's a really big topic that's come up
within the departments, is a couple of questions.
Are the jobs that currently exist modern and current?
Do they meet the needs of modern government?
And if not, should we be looking at those classifications?
And then the other is the workload
that is being presented to employees.
Is it as efficient as it can be,
or should we be looking at it differently?
And that is it for ours.
I will pass it on to our money team.
Good morning, Mei-Li Wong, Deputy Chief
for the Department of Violence Prevention.
I'll be presenting today with Megan Weir from DOT,
and then I also want to acknowledge our other team members
who are part of our team,
which is Tiffany Kirkpatrick
sitting over there from the Budget Office.
We have Damon Simmons from the Fire Department,
and then also Shayna Hirschfeld-Gold
from the Sustainability and Resilience Division
of the City Administrator's Office.
And together, we are called the Money Team.
We're excited to be working on strategic priority
number five as you see up there.
We have two main objectives over the next couple of years,
which is overall to align the budget
with citywide priorities.
In year one, we're gonna be focused on launching
the evaluation criteria tool citywide
in preparation for the budget process.
We realize there's a lot of need out in the community,
a lot of services that people would like to see funded,
and so we're providing a tool to departments
to help approach the budget planning process
in a way that is equitable
and also prioritizes essential services
through a consistent and transparent framework.
The second objective is to establish aligned priorities
for integration into departmental work plans,
and this is really to ensure that priorities
from city council and the mayor are integrated consistently
into departmental work plans.
Okay, so here's a timeline of where we've been
and where we're going.
As I mentioned, the first objective is year one.
That's where our team is focused on right now.
The last six months, our team presented
to the finance managers at the monthly meeting
to refresh people's memory on the evaluation criteria tool.
We then administered a survey to understand
how folks used the tool during
the last two-year budget cycle.
We met with the DOT Capital Improvements Project team
to understand how they sent our equity
and their budget planning process.
And we've also met with the race and equity team
to explore the synergy between the evaluation criteria tool
and the already existing service and equity impact statement
that departments have been using for several years now.
Over the next three months,
our team is gonna develop a single tool
that integrates both the evaluation criteria
and the service equity impact statement into one.
We're gonna be piloting that tool
with the Department of Transportation, DVP, IT,
and also the Fire Department
during this upcoming mid-cycle budget process.
And then we're gonna gather feedback from that process
to create a single tool that's rolled out
during fiscal year 27-29 biennial budget planning process.
So now my colleague Megan is gonna talk to you both,
talk to you all about the tool,
and I'll hand it over to her.
Thank you, Mele.
Megan Weir, Assistant Director, DOT,
And really just wanted to provide you a little bit more of a concrete example of what we're talking about with respect to the evaluation criteria scale.
This slide depicts the scale that was adopted by the citywide strategic plan and with criteria, including whether or not a budget item has a legal mandate implications for equity and assessment of the planning and viability alignment with whether or not there's existing resources.
the department's capacity to implement
the recommended action as well as support and communications.
And you can see a high level of alignment overall
with the strategic plan framework and these criteria.
On the next slide I wanted to talk a little bit more about
this is actually what departments have been implementing
in recent years.
So the evaluation criteria is really a leveling up
by the city of criteria and assessing addition
to the budget. So previously departments have assessed service impacts as well as equity.
Keeping equity as a north star for the city and our departments, we've been working closely
with the Department of Race and Equity with respect to lessons learned to date and how
this new evaluation criteria scale can help us really evolve the assessment to encompass
more of those categories. And as Maley mentioned, we're excited that DOT, the Department of
Violence Prevention, the Fire Department, and IT will be working with us in this mid-cycle
budget process to develop and pilot the tool. And that concludes our presentation. Monica,
I don't know if you had any. Thank you.
Thank you everyone, colleagues, any questions or comments?
Councilmember Unger, then Brown.
Thank you all for this.
I'm not sure if this is for the streamlining team or the workforce team.
Obviously there are a lot of priorities here, a lot of things we need to fix and we're probably
not going to be able to get to all of them.
We're going to have to prioritize and I want to put my thumb on the scale in favor of fixing
our hiring practices.
we have a real bottleneck with hiring
where people die on lists,
where people wait on lists so long
that they get hired elsewhere by other cities.
You know, I've been,
and I don't know why this problem is so intractable.
I've been fighting against this for 30 years
when I missed the first day
of the fire department training tower
because HR never told me that I was hired.
And you know, these sort of problems
have persisted for so long,
and I don't think we can solve any of our problems
in any of our departments
until we really fix the hiring piece.
So that's just sort of my statement about priorities.
Excellent.
Yeah, I just wanted to also just thank everyone
for their hard work.
I had the honor of interacting with Team Four
around some of the hiring and onboarding practices
and was able to give just some feedback,
whether it was when I was hired first
the city of Oakland and then again for a second round and I think I've even in a
short amount of time I've been able to see some of those practices like at
least hiring in the council offices begin to get better and so I just want
to shout that out because just really being able to see like the coming you
know everyone coming together to really try to solve some issues that have been
and just really long standing.
And so I guess to my council colleagues,
if you haven't had an opportunity
to meet with the team four around just hiring
to share your experience,
I think that the feedback that I was able to provide,
I really saw very quickly some of the updates be made.
So I just wanted to shout that out.
And then lastly, of course,
interested in all of the teams,
but I'm really having a look at just team five
around just some of the alignment around city-wide priorities,
very, you know, looking forward
to seeing the evaluation criteria utilized.
I know it will just be a pilot as we approach the mid-cycle,
but I guess I kind of have a question as we go into,
once we kind of get feedback from the pilot and how it goes,
I think the forum is great.
just I guess through the chair to the administration,
I guess Monica, wanted to ask,
do you plan on using like this tool?
You know how we had those budget,
it was the budget study sessions
where all of the departments came
and presented to the council.
I just wanted to ask like,
what would it look like to utilize this tool
as the departments are presenting to the city council?
through the chair to Councilmember Brown,
I don't have an answer yet because we have to do the pilot
to see how it turns out.
I will say that the current tool is not shared
during the deliberation time period.
It's created at the end during the publication.
And so if I'm hearing you correctly,
there could be a desirability to see that in advance
of the adoption of the budget.
Yes, indeed.
I think I guess my reflection would be
as we were approaching the budget
and during the budget session,
we were able to hear from the various departments
and maybe each department kind of articulating to us
in different ways, like what their priorities were,
what the impact would be.
And so when I look at an evaluation criteria here,
I know this is just a pilot,
but I imagine that you could probably create something
that all of the departments are kind of reporting out
in a more streamlined way.
So just wanted to put that on your radar.
Mm-hmm.
Excellent.
Council Member Wong.
Thanks.
I did want to echo my colleagues' comments.
Council Member Hunter, I'm just the emphasis on hiring.
Some people know that I applied to eight different jobs with the city, and
I know I was not qualified for maybe all of them, but I didn't hear back on a single one of them.
So my joke is I was so determined to work for the city of Oakland that I had to run for city council.
But I just, there is something wrong that it also befuddles me, and we need to fix that.
The other thing I just wanted to note
is the use of technology
that I think is gonna be really important,
especially around cross department collaboration
and opportunities to do that.
I've mostly worked for government
and I've still been struck, I think,
by some of the outdated both hardware and technology
that we have here in the city of Oakland.
And I think we live in, you know, Silicon Valley.
We should be able to use technology
to modernize our government.
And then I had just one really specific question
on the evaluation criteria on the support
and slash communications criteria,
which I can understand why it's also needed.
I also wonder if there's something about that
that would bias us towards things
that are the status quo just because, you know,
can that be spoken to more around that specific criteria?
So I'm from that team.
This is from the question.
Through the chair, could you just clarify the ask?
Yeah, just an explanation on this, sorry,
from team five on a line budget with citywide priorities.
Just in, I just like to understand this concept
around evaluating on support slash communications,
which is an evaluation around, you know, stakeholders
and communication strategies and whatnot,
and whether that is going to evaluate for,
like, I just wonder if, as we,
because this is gonna be used to evaluate
each of the services, right?
And that if this could inadvertently bias the service
simply because there's been more public communication
around it, and that could also then bias things
towards maintaining status quo versus maybe a new service
that there's not as much public awareness around.
So I just want to understand what is the intent
with that particular criteria.
Sure, I think that's a really good question,
and something that as we're conducting the pilot,
I'm excited about the different departments
we have represented in the pilots you know from the fire department to DOT to
DVP and IT so for each of these those categories it's going to be something
that we're going to be really learning by doing with subject matter experts as
we work work to figure out like how do how do we refine these categories and
how does it reflect the city's larger values with respect to the services that
we're hearing we have a need for so I think that's that will definitely be
something that we'll be addressing in more detail on the pilot.
Okay, yeah, that sounds good. And I understand why it's there. I just, again, when we think
through criteria, it's really important in case it biases us towards certain decision
making. And I just wanted to point out that that could potentially be used to bias towards
just maintaining status quo or even departments or divisions within the department that have
large communication capacity versus those that don't. So thanks. And if I'm
made through the chair to Councilmember Wong, that criteria isn't about existing
dedicated resources, right? It's about the thought process of the department to
identify and be strategic in the resources and the community stakeholders
they're planning to talk to, how thought through is their support identified and
and their communication plan identified.
Thank you, Council Member Brown.
And then I just have one more clarifying question,
I guess, and I don't think I saw it in the report,
so through the chair to the administration.
Will you all be reporting back to us
on updates every six months?
Okay.
Through the chair, yes.
We will be providing updates every six months,
unless it's in a regular course of business
on a dedicated item that would come before you.
Okay, excellent.
Yeah, I think I would really,
I would greatly appreciate the continued updates
because it really helps us understand
where we are in the process on some of these things.
And then I think maybe lastly I would share,
I know I've had the opportunity
to meet with some of the teams,
but I guess, you know, through the chair
to the administration,
is it your goal to also have more of the teams
kind of engage also at the council level with like some of the things that they're working on as well
Through the chair to council member Brown though the there are four coaches
myself and one of them Candace Parker Tragg this I er and Patricia Marino price and we each have a team or two and
We help facilitate engagement with subject matter experts or key stakeholders as they move through the priority
identification and action implementation
That sounds good, but I guess just putting on the radar that you know
Always great to engage with the council members as well
Whether it has to do with you know
What we're directly hearing from constituents in the community about their experience and then even just any feedback that we may have as well
Thank you. Let's move to public comment
Calling in the names that sign up to speak on item number five, Missus out of all of Allah
Kevin Dali, David Boatwright, and Blair Beekman.
I can't understand how you have a plan for racial equity
when you can't even identify where you've ever accomplished racial equity for African Americans.
So, I just don't see how you're going to be able to do it.
I'm concerned about with this new identification throughout the country
of financial fraud and programming services,
And if we're going to uplift the opportunity to take on identification, I'm also concerned
with nonprofits that would never evaluate in some kind of plan to have an evaluation.
I'm concerned about the lack of transparency and lack of monitoring of the housing authority,
Oakland Housing Authority, that provides your public housing,
but you have no accountability or reckoning on what's going on.
I'm concerned about grants that are awarded
and the credibility of those grants.
Let me give you an example.
There was a grant that was supposed
to be an opportunity to deal with communities
had been victims of redlining.
And we gave that grant to Chinatown
to be able to facilitate building a walkway to Jack London Square.
I'm also concerned about the lack of potential,
not dealing with the gentrification in this city,
the fact that you are a sanctuary city
and what is your strategic plan being a sanctuary city.
You don't have anything for the NSA sustainability plan,
which is crucial that you have to have as a strategic plan.
I don't have, you don't have anything that guides
the partnership with OUSD,
which is supposed to be a relationship that's valuable.
You don't have anything that's.
Thank you for your comments, Ms. Olibala.
David Boatwright, District 4.
For the current budget and beyond,
we need to focus on some things.
Authorizing only spending and the balanced budget keeping in mind over expenditures that inevitably occur and
Dedicate more and I am to say more emphasize more manpower
to project
to project and operations oversight
to limit over expenditures and some examples of that would be the city's lack of oversight on the tiny homes project and
passed and I emphasize past fire station for renewal missteps and
all
grants
Plans are nothing without good execution
Kevin Delhi
I'm a co-chair of the
Policy and legislative committee of the bicyclist and pedestrian Advisory Commission and speaking for myself
Concerned on how the change the plan changed the dismantling of the Department of Transportation removing
parking
Parts of parking over to finance will affect their strategic plan will no longer have the ability
in
transportation to fully control
transportation
Decisions finance does not have the expertise in parking
that that Oak Dot has
Last night I was leading a discussion with the committee on the topic
The city refused to show up
To this they refused to reply the refused to provide information
This seems to be a violation of MTC 4108 which requires the city to provide
administrative and technical support to be packed
If that's not provided
MTC
could pull funding from Oakland so like to find out what's going on with her strategic plan is
related to
parking
There will be a million dollar charge. Maybe more or less
City won't tell me for sure, but thanks
Thank you for your comments switching to zoom user Blair Beekman you can unmute yourself and begin your comments
Hi, thank you. Blair Beekman. Happy morning to everyone. Happy new day that we can work
as a country to work ourselves out of Minneapolis. The problems of Minneapolis, we can work together.
Good luck on those efforts, what we come up with. Thanks for this item. I listened to
the bond item previously. I forgot to sign up for it. I didn't realize to sign up for
So I listened intently, thank you for these two items today.
I was around when you were going through the budget deliberations in summer 2025, or was
it 24?
I'm sorry, yeah, I guess it was 24.
It was a hectic time.
It was a harrowing time.
And you guys are trying to come out of it the best you can.
I heard words of a three-year plan and how to be working on your budget deficit issues,
assuming is what the three-year plan was about. In being from San Diego I think
they're only second to you guys as having the the biggest budget deficit in
the state, the local cities. So definitely compare notes with San Diego. I think
they can learn a lot from you guys that I think you had a real sense that we
don't have to fix budget things immediately and that we need to
definitely be providing social services. I think you guys have done great in that
department for the community. Thank you immensely. San Diego is having a bit of
trouble in that area. They're cutting things and slashing things first and
asking questions later kind of thing. So we've been trying to work it out. Good
luck what you can be doing. I hope this sort of effort, you know, our continued
work on macro putting macro first with our issues we can ask we can build our
future for this country and asking for macro funding and macro issues we can
get a great examples good luck in those continued efforts to create good
examples thank you thank you for your comments chair that concludes all
speakers on item number five thank you and is this to receive and file in
committee as well the request is to board on consent for the February 3rd
And I know that we have a
very good meeting, please.
Okay.
Is there a motion?
Thank you.
We have a motion made by Councilmember
Unger, seconded by Councilmember
Brown, to approve the recommendations
of staff and to board this
informational report to the February
3rd City Council agenda on
Con- sorry.
February 3rd City Council agenda
on roll.
Councilmember Brown.
Aye.
Unger.
Aye.
Wong.
to board this informational report to the February 3rd City Council agenda on
consent. Moving on to item sorry moving on to open forum calling in the names
that signed up for open forum, Ms. Esada Olavala, Kevin Dalley and Blair Beekman
in no particular order you can come up to the podium. In 1994, President Clinton
appointed Barbara Jordan, a U.S. Representative to chair the U.S. Commission on Immigration
Reform. The goal was to look into immigration and determine whether it was having an impact
on the American worker. The result of the report that she laid out said that immigration
at its present state in 1994, if it continued
at the level it was, was going to hurt
the average African-American male engaged in low-skill work.
Her recommendation was to cut immigration
into this country by one third.
Her recommendation was ignored.
And in 1996, open borders became...
Thank you for your comments, Ms. Ollivala.
Kevin Dally, again, speaking for myself.
Yesterday, the city administrator announced, told employees that the effective date of
the move of parking from transportation to finance is February 7th.
three days before the report to Public Works and Transportation was scheduled.
The City Administrator requested a postponement from today for two weeks
apparently so that they could go ahead and make the move before they gave the
report to the City Council. I think it's time for the City Council to step
forward and take action. There are currently departments don't have a
description they just have a title. Lawyers say you can do anything you want
with the departments, some departments, it's time for the City Council to act and
decide. Thank you for your comments. Switching to zoom user Blair Beekman you
can unmute yourself and begin your comments. Hi Blair Beekman, I wish open forum was
two minutes to note. To again to again go over some continuing questions and
and concerns I have about a very interesting compromise choice
about the future of leaving Flock in Oakland.
Are we going to be truly committed
to find a new ALPR vendor?
To again describe, I feel it can be of help to have something
like six-month updates, a counselor committee,
and how the new ALPR vendor procurement process is moving
forward.
And I hope there can be follow-up Oakland committee meetings
and open public discussion that reduced placement
of surveillance tech in local neighborhoods can often do the
same amounts of public safety work as an oversaturation or plethora of
surveillance technology placed in the neighborhood. Good luck to just to be a
community effort of procurement and not just by the OPD. PAC and community needs
to be involved as well and we can really be keeping the federal government in
check at this time and with an open love life philosophy. So thank you for your
comments chair that concludes all speakers on open forum thank you this
meeting is adjourned yes