Good morning and welcome to the Finance and Management Committee meeting of Tuesday, February 10th, 2026.
The time is now 9.30 AM and this meeting may come in order.
Before taking role, 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.
registering to speak via zoom is now due 24 hours prior to the start of this
meeting time this meeting came to order at 9 30 a.m. and speaker cards went no
longer they accepted 10 minutes after this meeting has begun making that time
9 40 a.m. we'll now proceed with taking roll council members Brown present
councilmember under here Wong here and chair Ramachandran thank you we have
four members present before we begin chair do you have any announcements at
at this time.
Not at the moment, thank you.
Thank you.
Starting off with item number one.
Sorry, approval of the committee meeting, sorry.
Approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting
held on January 27th, 2026,
and we have no speakers on this item.
Move approval.
Thank you, we have a motion made by Councilmember Brown,
seconded by Councilmember Unger,
to accept the draft minutes from the committee meeting
I'll make a motion to be held on January 27th, 2026.
On roll, Council Members Brown.
Aye.
Unger.
Aye.
Wong.
Aye.
And Chair Ramachandran.
Aye.
Thank you.
Item number one passes with four ayes.
Reading in item number two, determination of scheduled outstanding committee items, also
known as your pending list, and we do have one speaker that's signed up.
Anything from the administration?
No, not this time.
Thank you.
Okay.
motion to be carried.
Ms. Sada Olavala.
She's currently not in chamber, so all names have been called.
I want to entertain a motion.
So moved.
Second.
Thank you.
We have a motion made by Councilmember Unger,
seconded by Councilmember Wong, to accept the determination
of schedule of outstanding committee items.
On roll, Councilmembers Brown.
Aye.
Unger.
Aye.
Wong.
Reading in item three,
receive the Oakland Redevelopment
Successor Agency audit report
for the year ended June 30th, 2025,
and we have one speaker that signed up for this item.
Good morning, council members
and members of the public.
Pooja Shrestha, controller.
And I'm here to present the annual audit report
for Oakland Redevelopment Successor Agency, or ORSA.
And this report is for fiscal year ended June 30, 2025.
We bring this report to finance management committee each year
to provide a brief update on ORSA's financial position
and also to provide you with an update
on the auditor's opinion.
Just as a reminder, ORSA was established back in 2012
as a successor agency to wind down
the activities of the former Oakland redevelopment agency.
And as a result, ORSA's assets are highly restricted
and may only be used to complete remaining projects
and to pay the outstanding debt.
ORSA's final debt payment is scheduled for 2041,
so the agency will remain in existence until then,
and we will continue presenting
the audited annual financials until then as well.
So similar to prior years,
ORSA was audited by our independent external auditors,
MGO to verify the accuracy of the financial statements, compliance with accounting standards
and internal controls, and for the fiscal year 2025, the auditors issued an unmodified
or clean opinion on the financials.
As of June 30, 2025, ORSA's liabilities exceeded its assets, resulting in a net deficit of
$137.8 million.
primarily due to the outstanding long-term debt obligation that we still
need to pay. However compared to prior year ORSA's net obligation, net position
improved by approximately eleven point eight million and this figure is
expected to continue improving as the debt is paid down over time. That
concludes my update on the ORSA's financials and I'm happy to answer any
any questions.
Thank you colleagues any questions comments okay we can move to public speakers calling
on the one speaker that sign up for item number three missus sada olobala all names have been
called chair all right I will entertain a motion to receive and file this so moved second
thank you that was a motion made by councilmember Unger seconded by councilmember Wong to receive
I'm going to ask for a motion to receive an information report on fiscal year twenty twenty four twenty five quarter four audited results. For the general purpose fun and selected funds and we have two speakers that signed up.
Thank you, Chair, members of the committee.
Brad Johnson, Director of Finance.
Before you is our fourth quarter
revenue and expenditure report.
You just heard your audit report
for your Orkland Ray Development successor agency
and you'll subsequent to this item
hear your information on your audited financial statements.
I wanna note before we start it on the Q4
that the data presented in all three of these presentations
is consistent and identical.
There are different treatments of data
when you look at our ACFUR, Visa VR fourth quarter.
So typically this fourth quarter is a little bit more accessible in terms of how the general public consumes that.
But I wanted to note at our outset that the data you're seeing across all three reports is consistent with our audited year end numbers.
Today over in the course of our fourth quarter report, we're going to talk about the actions we took over the course of last fiscal year.
How our revenues and expenditures ended, and again, key takeaways as we move into mid cycle.
Okay, Top, we have a PowerPoint and would be happy for you to put that up please.
Thank you.
So we'll note that little more than a year ago we were dealing with a fairly large and
substantial financial situation as it related to fiscal year 2024-2025.
We had a low fund balance that was accumulated from the prior fiscal year.
We had implemented a contingency budget.
We'd implemented a suite of balancing actions and, as you'll note here, we were noted better
than fiscal than projected revenue performance.
And those four things combined to landing us in a fiscally healthy position in our general
purpose fund.
Let's talk about that fund.
Slide's not advancing.
Apologies.
Here we go.
Oh, there we go.
Your general purpose fund revenues ended at just over $815 million,
which was 68.28 over your adjusted budget.
Now the primary reasons why we ended above that was $24 million
in a large one time transaction from real estate transfer sale.
We aren't aware of that, that is the sale of the former Kaiser building to PG&E.
Our balancing measures included roughly $23 million of transfers into the general purpose fund from balances and other funds.
Our internal service funds and our self-insurance fund.
We increased past efforts to recover delinquent business taxes, resulting in about $7.5 million.
There was a $5 million one-time payment for the sale of the Coliseum.
And we received about $7.5 million in legal settlements, some of which are restricted in their proceeds and use.
Expenditures ended the year at 742 million dollars,
which was 47 million dollars under budget.
The key reasons for that are the city-wise hiring fees
that we were in last year, management of our vacancies,
reductions in expenditures in public safety,
prioritizing using our non-GPF resources
over our GPF resources, limiting discretionary spending
and delaying certain contracting grant agreements.
This ended with a year in operating surplus
of $73 million and after all things considered,
chain resulting fund balance of $16.87 million.
So that is the key number here.
That is how much in the black your general purpose fund
was at the end of last fiscal year.
Again, we're gonna, I'll note again
that our GPF revenues exceeded expenditures
by again about $73 million.
The vast majority of that is due
one-time balancing actions that were taken in the last year. Revenues again
ended 26 million dollars over the adjusted budget and expenditures 47
million dollars over. And what this walks you through is are those changes. I'm
going to turn this over to Jose Segura, a principal budget management analyst in
our revenue bureau, to talk through the details of our revenue. Good morning
through the chair. My name is Jose Segura. I am a principal budget and
management analyst in the finance department.
The summary table shown on this slide
displays the revenue categories that make up
the general purpose fund, or GPF.
GPF revenues in fiscal year 2024-25
came in about $68 million above budget.
The largest positive budget variances,
seen in categories such as business tax,
real estate transfer tax,
inter-fund transfers, and miscellaneous revenues,
are influenced by key drivers
that were highlighted earlier on slide three.
This one time where unusual revenues contributed
to higher year end totals and are not expected
to recur at this level.
The categories with the largest budget to actual variances
reflect these as follows.
Business tax revenues ended the year 9.6 million
over budget with enhanced recovery efforts
on past due delinquencies contributing
to more than seven million.
Real estate transfer tax revenues ended the year
at 19.5 million over budget,
influenced by a single transaction that generated over 24.5 million.
Interfront transfers ended the year 19.6 million over budget attributed to actions taken under
the city council's declaration of a severe financial event and a state of extreme fiscal
necessity which temporarily suspended certain fund restrictions and enabled one-time transfers
into the GPF.
Miscellaneous revenues ended the year 14.7 million over budget.
This revenues included over 7 million in legal settlements and a one-time 5 million initial
payment related to the Coliseum potential sale.
On the negative side, sales tax underperformed for a second consecutive year, and we will
go over it in more detail when we get to the dedicated sales tax page.
Transient occupancy tax, shown on the next slide, also continues to underperform due
to recent hotel closures and persistently low occupancy rates.
In the following slides, we will highlight some of the largest tax contributors to the
GPF that show significant variances.
Real estate transfer tax, or RATT, ended the year at 93.2 million, which is 19.5 million
or 26.5 percent above the adjusted budget.
This also represents a 35.6 million year-over-year increase compared to fiscal year 2324, which
ended at 57.6 million.
While the number of transactions increased by 10.3% compared to fiscal year 2023-24, most
of the revenue increase is attributable to a one-time large property sale involving a
building and an adjacent lot valued at approximately $985.5 million, which generated $24.6 million
in RATT.
Business tax ended the year at $129.7 million, which is $9.6 million or 8% above the adjusted
budget.
the year 2023-2323-2324 and
there will be two receipts
reported by businesses increase
by 2% compared to fiscal year
2023-2324 among the major
categories residential rental
properties recorded the largest
year over year growth. However
the primary driver of annual
revenue growth in fiscal year
2024-25 was the city's enhanced
recovery efforts targeting
past due business tax
delinquencies which yielded over
7 million from past due
amounts. Sales tax into the year
at 60 million which is 3.7
in the year twenty twenty three
twenty four thousand for the
business tax receipts in fiscal
year twenty four twenty five by
category were on average three
point 4% below fiscal year
twenty twenty three twenty
four.
Each sales tax category with the
exception to business and
industry under performed
compared to fiscal year twenty
twenty three twenty four.
The largest year over year
decline occurred in the field
and service stations category
which fell by approximately
sixteen percent.
And with this I now yield to
Good morning members of the finance committee and the public Rena Stable or acting budget administrator
This table shows a general purpose fund year-end expenditures by department and the over and under spending and the relative variance
to the adjusted budget
overall GPF expenditures came in at 47 million or roughly 6% below the adjusted budget as
noted earlier departments that implemented
Hiring freezes and managed vacancies contributed to the overall expenditure savings
The following table compares a year in spending to the quarter one projections
At the top you'll notice the Oakland Police Department shows a largest reduction with expenditures
40 million dollars below its quarter one project projection in total year in GPF spending across all departments was
136 million dollars lower than projected at quarter one
With that I'll hand it back to our finance director Brad Johnson
Thank you, Rina as I alluded to earlier at the end of the day our total
Resources available in the journal Purpose Fund are sixteen point eight seven million dollars
That number is arrived by looking at our year-end result
Net of the encumbrances leak restricted legal settlements
One time resources required for the bonus that was paid to city workers and final carry forward numbers
for the end of the fiscal year.
So again, this is a major turnaround.
I don't want to bury that lead from where we were
projected to be this time last year,
and where we actually ended 23-24.
So it's a major correction to bring us back into the black.
We're reviewing the status of your reserves.
The city is compliant with
our general purpose fund mandated emergency reserve.
We are at $73 million,
which meets the 7.5% of the general purpose fund resources line as required by your consolidated fiscal policy.
We have met the required, we are not, we are not required to put money aside too.
But I will note that the balance of your emergency, sorry, your vital services stabilization fund is at zero.
This is the fund we would normally tap on during a economic slowdown.
We're not required to put money aside given the current circumstances, but I will note that that is at zero.
And we have a required reserve that we have to retain due to our amortized Omer's reserve and that is at its policy required of 2.36.
Your total reserves are at 66.17 million dollars.
I want to note the results for a number of other key funds that you should be aware of.
Your measure HH fund, which is your sugar, sweetened beverage tax fund,
ended just barely positive with about $100,000 in balance.
Your self-insurance liability fund ended at a positive number at $23 million,
largely due to reduced expenditures out due to settlement activity over the course of last year.
Your affordable housing trust fund ended in a negative position.
This is due in part to transfers out from the general purpose fund, but also to a reallocation of resources
related to your development impact fees,
which previously had been only in the Affordable Housing Trust Fund being separated into their own key funds, which are 1871 and 1872.
Both of those funds have positive balances, but the reallocation of that cash did result in a negative balance in this particular fund.
Under measure BB and F funds, these are the local option funds that relate to transportation purposes.
Ended in a negative position of about $15 million, along with your state transportation gas fund, ending about negative two and a half million.
These negatives are primarily not cash negatives, they are mostly due to the fact that we have capital projects budget against them.
Some of these funds haven't been spent yet, but at the current train, if we obligate all those funds and count them as spend, they would be in negative positions.
Your measure queue, parks, maintenance, and homelessness fund ended at a positive $6.5 million.
Your LAD ended at a positive $2.5 million.
We ended up with a positive value of $8 million in your equipment fund and a near zero value in your facilities fund.
Key takeaways from where we ended, 23, 24, 24, 25.
While we ended with a $73 million operating surplus, the net effect of your fund balance
was to increase it by about $3.5 million after accounting for obligations.
Several, if not everything, that drove this operating surplus were these one-time reductions that were made given the city's fiscal circumstances.
And while those were necessary and responsible for us to take, they're not actions we can continue to do into the future.
We need to continue to work to correct our imbalances between revenues and expenditures on an ongoing basis.
That ensures that we have ongoing resources to support our ongoing expenses.
And we should continue to be fiscally prudent to ensure our long term fiscal health and sustainability.
As we go into the mid-cycle budget process, we will note you have a number of key continuing pressures relating to the rising costs of PERS contributions, healthcare and insurance.
uncertainty around actions taken at the federal level, our June 2026 revenue measure.
How we get back to restoration of our ballot measure MOEs, and
that's the subject of a later presentation that you'll hear at this morning.
Our equipment and facility needs, and I know the city ministry would want to height the key,
specifically that second component that we have deferred maintenance across our facilities that we do need to address.
And we have another number of funds that are historically negative who need their balances resolved.
We do have opportunities, though, we should build on our revenue collection practices.
We have achieved a lot of the progress we made over the last year with discipline spending.
We need to continue that practice.
We are starting in a positive position, which is always better than starting behind the eight ball.
And we had a successful bond sale, which does allow us to use capital funds to make key investments that hopefully will lower costs and provide key infrastructure and services.
that I will turn it back to you chair to see if there are any questions you have.
Thank you. I think this is a fantastic symbol of where we are headed as a city when it comes
to our city finances and really turning things around from the previous few years. You know,
just as a reminder, we're discussing up until June end of June of last year and I know from
June 30th onward to today, we've made significantly more progress as well. So look forward to
to seeing those audited numbers in the near future.
I completely agree that we need to stay the course.
There is a lot of work to do.
I am particularly invested in addressing
what voters have asked of us
and making sure we restore MOEs for all ballot measures,
all city agreements as soon as possible.
I know we have an item later today discussing that.
I'm thrilled that we're still able to keep
a certain number of reserves per our policy.
There's clearly more that we can continue to do
on this regard to make sure we're saving up for rainy days,
respecting the intentions of voters
while maintaining core city services.
I did have a couple of questions,
and again, some of the positives on the revenue front
are we understand one-time transactions,
but I remember reading in the report
that even taking that massive one time real estate transfer
out of the question, we still have a net positive
when it comes to those expenditures,
which I think is noteworthy as well.
A couple of quick questions when it comes to the,
on slide 14, there was a chart that talked about
What are fund balances?
When it's 16.87, starting from the 86.91,
taking out various things, legal settlements, one-time bonuses,
carry-forwards, which left us with $16.87 million
of a positive balance to move into the next fiscal year
with.
However, on slide 17, it says it's only $3.56 million.
Net effect on the fund balance.
Could you explain the two numbers in which one we really,
when we think about the upcoming mid-cycle budget,
which number is the one that we have to explain
what's a positive balance left over
that's usable in the general fund?
So the positive balance left over that's usable
is at $16.87 million number.
That is the actual balance.
If you remember, the $3.56 million number
is sort of the change in the flow
after we accounted for reserves last year.
So we're noting sort of the delta
of where we went last year to this year.
Net of reserves, a little bit of a more complicated number.
The key number I would focus on in terms of,
if you're understanding where did we sit
at the end of the fiscal year, is that 16.87.
So again, net effective fund balance
is a combination effect of both the actions that took,
the prior year number, and the restrictions
and on restrictions and changes in those other items
like your encumbrances, the number
that you really care about as to where your ending position was,
is that $16.87 million number?
Great, I'm glad it's the higher number we have to work with,
rather than the lower one.
A couple of other questions, and I will go to my colleagues.
Wanted to understand the positive balances
in the non-general purpose funds.
There was a slide that showed a positive balance for Measure Q and LAD,
and I wanted to get a sense of where those are coming from.
Were they previously unexpected or did we know we'd have those balances?
Absolutely. So the positive balances in Q and LAD are primarily due to underspending,
primarily in the space of parks maintenance.
That's what the largest component of both those funds is used for.
That is should be addressed and it's being,
I know addressed by OPW through hiring actions.
So a lot of that is actually, as we hire staff,
those will be drawn, will be one drawing down those balances
and having a more balanced number on the ongoing basis.
And I know that's a process that we're engaged in right now
and we'll be looking at it in terms of your budget
for the coming year.
So it's primarily under spending due to personnel.
That's the key driver there.
Got it, thank you.
Two more questions.
So there was a slight, and again,
I know we're only talking up until June 30th of last year.
There was lower than predicted revenues in parking enforcement, and
I know there's been a lot done since then.
Do we have a sense of where we are today in comparison to last year?
I would say I don't have numbers on us right now.
I'll be happy to report those in the Q2 and I don't wanna speak hypothetically as to where we would sit.
I do know that's a key thing that we're going to continue, that we're continuing to focus on ensuring that whether it be from taxes or from parking.
Every dollar collected, that is collectible by the city of Oakland, that is due to us legally.
We are bringing in, so parking is a key focus area for us, along with what we've done with business tax.
Thank you, and when is that Q2 report coming?
We would expect the Q2 likely in March.
That's great, before the budget process.
It really begins.
One more question.
So we have this positive balance.
And just in the interest of comparison,
what was that number at the end of the fiscal year prior,
that 16.87 million ending?
What was that the year before, if you have that with you?
Yeah, that number, I don't have it on me right now.
That number was negative.
I can very clearly tell you that was not a positive number
at the end of the space.
We were in a negative position and the actions that were taken by this body through its,
and by, I should say, but also by our city administrator and leadership of our departmental teams.
I don't want to understate the key effort that departments played in getting us to this space.
The $41 million change in trajectory in OPD was critical.
That's a key element.
Without that, this would not have been a possible number to balance.
So those actions, by this body, by our staff,
by our leadership administratively,
were key in turning what was a negative ending result
into a positive ending result.
I will note 16 is not a lot of money.
You heard at your last committee meeting
that we have some standards that we're trying to hit vis-a-vis
our rating agencies, in terms of where we'd like
to get this in the future.
But we would much rather be ending in a positive position
than a negative one.
Thank you.
Apologies, one more question.
Back on the expenditures side, it's noticeable that OPD and FIRE have less, have overspent less than in previous years of their budget,
but there's also overspending with the HR department. Is there any explanation for that as well?
So the amount of money, human resources, sorry, that's likely to be a very small.
So your overspending number is only $110,000.
There's very little of HR that remains in the current fiscal year in the general purpose fund, most of it's in our personal action fund.
That's primarily tied to risk mitigation and some other activities that have to be general purpose fund funded, training, and some other items.
So I don't know the specific drivers of that,
but I will note, for any of your departments
where you have a very, very small budgetary number,
the ability to overspend or underspend
by a really large percentage is kind of high.
God, I thank you, and apologies.
One more thing.
Legal settlements was one of the positive factors,
one of the one time sources that contributed
to that positive balance.
Do we know what the trends are from then to now,
if we can expect positive legal settlement funds coming
through or we don't have that information?
We don't have that on us.
I will note that we budget legal settlements
based on a model that takes into account the accrued liability
that we have an actuary run for us in terms
of what we budget for that.
Our legal settlement history in any one year
can vary from that.
It can go up, it can go down in a particular year related
to settlements.
I will note the key driver that I am worried about in that fund
is not the actual legal settlement line,
but the insurance line,
which continues to increase year to year to year.
The city faces the same pressure
that many homeowners in the city of Oakland
do regarding property insurance,
so we have a key element around that.
Liability insurance is really important in that space too,
and so that's a key element
that we're trying to project and buffer against.
Thank you, colleagues.
Council member Wong Unger Brown.
Thank you through the chair.
Yes, I was also pretty happy to see this report.
I did want to ask just about the timing of this report.
I think last year the report was delivered
in the October timeframe.
Were there delays in just generating this report,
and can you explain why?
So one of the key things we want to do
is we're focused on ensuring that the public have
a clear and consistent message.
And it's really, we articulate and dispel confusion
around what our numbers mean.
Normally when we deliver an October report,
what we're delivering is an unaudited Q4,
because we won't have completed the audit in Q4.
This year, given the great deal of focus
that we've had around our finances coming out of that year,
we wanted to deliver for you a fully baked,
audited financial number that's consistent with your ACFR.
You're at for when you get it is always in January.
It's always audited, but it's a little bit harder to read.
The fund groupings are different.
It's not quite as accessible.
The investment community tends to use that.
We wanted the Q4 to really represent
that final year in result, and so what I can say today
is the report you're gonna hear later
is gonna be the same information,
which is sort of a different data presentation,
and we wanted to keep that consistent
for the Q4 this year.
Okay, that's great.
Another question I just have is around,
the projection methodology that we've been using in one of the reports that we've recently got.
One of the recommendations that came out of that was like that we tend to have over optimistic
projections. What I see from this is that that hasn't been the case, and in fact, for like the
real estate transfer tax that we had the actuals was more even setting aside the PG&E, you know,
So I'm just wondering if that's been adjusted for, or, and
then for some of the taxes, like sales tax that are down,
are we going to be changing our methodologies moving forward?
So we take into account, I would distinguish methodology from data.
I look for, Jose, who came and spoke to you as our key revenue forecaster now.
I'll say, I'm sympathetic to him.
It was my first permanent job with
the city was actually doing a revenue forecast.
It is a little bit of a black box.
You're projecting things that are yet to occur
based on things that have already occurred,
not even in the present.
So it is a little bit difficult to do.
I'd say we actually have pretty tight methodologies.
We want to make sure that,
and our direction to you is that
total revenue line ends up correct.
Our methodology is we're going to pick
our best bet for each category and ensure
that we're able to make that bottom line number for you.
What that will mean is any particular category
may go over or under based on the available data.
But we want to make sure that we achieve
your bottom line total revenue number.
It's effectively impossible to get
everyone at a right within percentage.
But I would look at our total at the end of the day projections on revenue.
I think we've been pretty good and pretty consistent.
Obviously, there are things that have happened in our economy over
the past year that are not predictable, not forecastable, and some dissent due to policy
happening at the national level.
We will adjust for those as soon as they become available and knowledge with the hope that
we don't overreact to what might be happening because there's a danger of that too, that
sort of we jump at every new data point or new thing happening and miss and over exaggerate
those trend spaces.
But Jose is very good at ensuring that we are keeping all of that in mind.
Okay, my last question is just around this
around $23 million of the balancing measures, the inter-fund transfers.
Were those essentially the ballot measures where we
waived some of the spending requirements and put them into the general fund?
So they are not your ballot measures.
We are not allowed to, our ballot measures allow us to waive maintenance of effort requirements.
It means that the taxes collected by those measures they never come into the general fund that's not how they work what allows you to do is suspend the general purpose funds obligations in order to collect the tax but the measure that comes in for measure D and C for libraries is only spent on libraries doesn't transfer the general
fund. What these transfers are in are two sources that were restricted by
council ordinances which are related to sugar-sweetened beverage taxes and the
boomerang funds from your development which typically go into your affordable
housing trust fund. They're not ballot measure restrictions they were
restrictions by this body by ordinance. You did waive those and then the other
transfers in came from funds that feed on the general purpose fund, your
facilities fund, your equipment fund, your radio fund, your self-insurance fund, feed
on the general fund and other funds as we were able to, we reduced the balances in those
funds, transferred it back to the general fund and all the other funds that they accumulated
from and in so doing we were able to generate more cash than the general purpose fund.
I'll note that a number of other funds actually benefited from those transfers too because
they didn't just come from the general purpose fund.
That's another reason why you see some balances in LAAD and Measure Q parks is because those
were also beneficiaries of some of the other transfers back in from the funds that are
collected centrally to feed them.
Okay.
Gotcha.
Thank you.
I just want to start by thanking our revenue division for their incredible work in increasing
revenue, increasing collections.
I know that was a huge project that is ongoing, and it makes a real difference.
I know some people said there wasn't that much money out there to collect, but you proved
them wrong, and I appreciate that.
you know that that being said we have a lot more control over the expenditure side than
over the the revenue side and I'm curious maybe to the city administrator that large
reduction in opd expenditures was that our overtime project I know we've been pushing
to reduce overtime quite a bit over the years so is that where that savings came from through
the chair to council to the chair councilmember younger yes sir that was a big hit with respect
to the reductions in OPD spending.
I had issued a memo in November December of last year,
directing the departments to reduce
an oversight by a certain percentage,
and they did hit that particular metric. Yes, sir.
Is that through a systematic process?
Do we have new processes in place that can continue that?
At this point in time,
candidly, through the Chair, Council Member Unger,
at this point in time, candidly,
we do not have a systematic approach.
I know one of the things that this body has had approved
several years ago is to move forward with the technology
improvement with respect to overtime.
We are now in a place where we're
trying to figure out how do we scope that particular project
so that we can move that forward.
But at this point in time, it is not a systematic approach
that's in place.
It is very much a manual directive type of process.
I think we need to really keep pushing hard on that.
Because as Director Johnson said,
we have 15 pages of data here, but really
the entire ball game is that one number of the police over time and so we need
to make sure that we are ensuring that the police are able to do their jobs
while also keeping that overtime number down so the more we can do to
systematize it, to computerize it, to track it, to make sure that the overtime
we are using is efficacious we need to really continue pushing hard on that
project. Yes sir, thank you. Before moving to council upside brief and then I
had some questions as well. Yeah just a quick follow-up on Councilmember Unger's
point we typically hear the overtime report and finance do we have a date
when that's coming? Yeah I we discussed this I think in the rules but it's been
scheduled for March 10th yeah so that should be coming for this committee. Thank
you. Yeah I believe yeah I believe it's March 10th. Okay so just a couple
questions I think first off I had you know I can't help but I want to re
emphasize just the just the amazing work of like the finance department and
every in the administration and really like guiding and directing us as a body
to you know make it to this point right because we know that we weren't in this
position not too long ago right so just want to emphasize and thank you all for
all of your hard work and then also just a report that's just genuinely readable
to not only our myself and my colleagues but also to the public as well so just
really want to uplift and say that and then I really appreciated slide 18
because as you're reading through the report you know you can't help but kind
of ask as we're approaching the mid-cycle what are some of the things
that we should be being mindful of right and continue making sure that we're
continuing on this positive trajectory and what we should be looking out for
So thank you for also putting those notes in there as well that we should keep in mind.
And so I think that most of my questions that I have are maybe more mid cycle related and
just making sure that we're being mindful as we're preparing.
So the first thing that I notice is that in the self insurance liability fund it was about
7 million in underspending and Director Johnson, I believe that during when we were working
on the budget we made some changes to the self-insurance liability fund and just wanted
to kind of get your guidance and understanding that with that 7 million of underspending,
you know, what usually happens there as we approach the mid-cycle.
Correct.
Correct. So one thing we'll look at as we go into the mid-cycle is the balance in all those funds and
whether or not that balance is a reasonable number to carry forward given what we're foreseeing.
I will note that self-insurance liability, the two risks are insurance.
And so that's a little bit of us forecasting the insurance market and where that's going and hedging insurance risk.
The other one is litigation and I think that is properly discussed in your closed session.
Sometimes we know about large items that are pending or may settle in conjunction with the city attorney
Sometimes we know that they're further further off and then sometimes we're surprised
So that's I would love to have that conversation with you in closed session about what's actually maybe pending on the litigation side
But I will note for the for a public discussion. The insurance risk is the key thing we're looking at for this year
excellent, and then I recall that maybe we were discussing if there was a
certain percentage that is a
Standard that we are like aiming for correct, and I think the key space that we won't have that conversation with you is
In the fall of next year we plan to come back with financial policies
And that is a great place for sort of setting a standard for a discussion as to what is our normal practice?
What is our practice and hard circumstances and how do we want to we want to accomplish that on the ongoing basis? Okay, excellent
Thank you. Um, and then the other item that also caught my attention, and I'm just curious how
we begin to move forward on that one and how it's and refresh my memory on how
it's funded so fund 1870 and how it's in a negative position and so I guess my
question was you know what action do we need to take on that and were there any
impacts on staffing levels because I thought perhaps maybe there were some
employees that were being paid out of that fund there are employees paid out
of that fund there are no impacts to staffing it's a year in number I will
We'll note that the key reason for that, aside from the one time transfer out,
is 1870 used to be the host fund for both your affordable housing boomerang funding from the development agency.
And both your jobs housing and affordable housing impact fees.
We have separated those latter two categories out into their own funds, which both have actually very large positive balances.
So part of what we need to do is look at some of the projects that are 1870 projects,
see if they're eligible for the other two impact fee lines, because together they're all positive.
So there's a little bit of maneuvering that we have to do in analysis.
This is an ongoing revenue source.
As we get more boomerang money in due to property taxes going up,
due to the redevelopment, successor agencies obligations winding down, as you heard from your Orsa report.
fund will grow in its revenues and we can gradually recover this balance. I
don't think that this should impact staffing in our housing department. Okay
excellent thank you so much. And then just one last question I know we touched
on OPD over time and then I was just curious if the report was factoring in
reimbursable over time? It does factor in the reimbursements we received on the
revenue side. So they come into that services charge line and then that
overtime line, I'll mind you, we don't change OPT's budget when they get a
reimbursement. So even if they bring in $20 million in reimbursable overtime,
you'll see that on the revenue side but you actually will see them still
overspend by $20 million due to that line item. So we don't adjust their
budget based on the reimbursable but we will account for it on the revenue side
and it's one of the reasons, one of the things that we've done better on the
service charge side on that revenue category.
Excellent. Thank you so much.
Thanks.
Okay. We will move to public speakers.
Calling in the names that signed up for item number four,
Mrs. Sada Ola Bala and Kevin Dalley.
I would ask if there are any areas for which we are not looking at revenue coming in,
but we're not getting that revenue.
And I can tell you one example, your street vendors have to get a permit, and that is
not happening.
The street food vendors are all over Oakland with no permits, and we're not getting that
revenue.
We also have, I'm sorry city administrator, but we haven't had your annual report on your
spending that you allowed over $250,000.
And the reason why I'm mentioning that is you not only have to bring in the revenue,
you have to have accountability for the revenue to balance, to have the balance, checks and
balances.
So at some point, you have to combine the two to make sure we are getting the revenue,
but we also accounting for the spending of the revenue.
There is no way that one police officer can get over $490,000 in overtime, with his job
being to review collision reports.
On top of that, the documentation to verify that that overtime was correct doesn't exist.
We can't have that.
We have to have the documentation to support any spending, no matter what you call it.
Okay, so we have an opportunity to intervene on the lack of business taxes when people
are closing their businesses.
Example, today, the athletic club is closing.
They mentioned in a report this morning that there's an opportunity to reopen the business,
to reopen it.
business that is on the verge of closing, you need to have some outreach component where
they know they can exercise the opportunity for us to try to help you as a Chamber of
Commerce, I don't want you to call, so we can save these businesses and in turn save
out business taxes.
So somebody needs to get in touch with the business athletic group club and see what
we can do to help them bring the business back.
times up. Oh God, I had two pages of stuff. But anyway, I talked too much. Thank you.
Hi. Kevin Dalley from Transport Oakland. First, a teaser. I'll bring up police over time a little
bit more in item six and some ideas I have that could reduce police over time. But I'll mention
something Councilmember Brown brought up, I think, with the litigation. Of course, I can't attend
in the closed session meetings but in general there's a whole lot of litigation related
to traffic crashes, severe injuries, and fatalities and those are often multi-million dollar settlements.
The delay in the bond sales put Oakland at risk because we're not paving at the speed
that we missed a year of paving. That will increase the risk of future fatalities and
injuries and future litigation. Good that we're moving forward now. I'm a little bit
concerned about Skyline Boulevard being years out. That's a street that has had many severe
injuries with multi-million dollar settlements and at least one fatality, I wouldn't be surprised
if there's items that will be coming up in your closed session.
So think about this when you come up to closed session that there are things that we could
do to reduce that risk in the future even though we can't, you can't bring people back
to life.
OAT. in general can look at areas where injuries are reduced.
We'll talk about the parking reorg later.
Hope that you look at ways that we can reduce litigation through OAT. funding.
Thanks.
Thank you for your comments, Chair.
That concludes all speakers on this item.
Okay, any further comments or questions? Great, now, Councilmember Brown?
Oh, I was gonna say I'll make a motion to receive a file. Oh, I will second that.
Thank you, that was a motion made by Councilmember Brown, seconded by
Councilmember Wong, to receive and file this informational report in committee
on roll. Councilmembers Brown? Aye. Hunger? Aye. Wong? Aye. And Chair Ramachandran? Aye.
I thank you item number four passes with four eyes to receive and file this informational report and committee reading in item number five
Receive the annual comprehensive financial report and the auditors required communications
to City Council for the year ended June 30th
2025 and we have
two speakers that signed up
Before push it gets the podium again
I will note that the data you're seeing in this report is a different presentation buzz the identical data you just received in the prior
one
Good morning council members and members of the public
push a stress controller and
I have a brief report here today
On the city's annual comprehensive financial report for the fiscal year ended June 30 2025
and as
Finance director Brad mentioned
what you just heard was the Q4 activity
from a budget perspective.
My presentation today focuses on the final audited results
for the entire fiscal year of 2025
in accordance with accounting standards.
This report that we have here in front of you
is also abbreviated as ACFR or also referred to as ACFR.
Sometimes you may have also heard it referred to
as just the financial statements or the city's audit,
they all refer to the same document.
So the primary purpose of preparing
the audited financial statements is to ensure that
the city's financial system is functioning as intended,
and that we're accurately reporting the city's assets,
liabilities, revenues, and expenditures.
While we all want to understand how the city is doing financially,
understanding depends on being able to rely on the numbers. That's why we engage
our independent external auditor each year to audit the city's financial
statements. And I'm happy to report that our external auditors have provided a
favorable or clean opinion on the city's financial statements for 2025. Their
opinion letter, which is included in this report, affirms that the city's
financial statements are fairly presented and consistent with the
accounting standards. So essentially it's saying that you can rely on them to
assess the city's financial position. Before moving on to the numbers I want
to mention that we have Benjamin Lau, partner at our external audit firm, MGO,
present here today, in case you have any specific questions for him. So with that
I'm gonna move on to the financial highlights.
This first chart here illustrates the city's net position as of June 30, 2025, and how
it compares, how it compared to the net position in the previous five years.
As noted at the bottom of the chart, net position is defined as the difference between the city's
total assets and its total liabilities.
are everything we own and liabilities are everything we owe. So when things we own are
worth more than what we owe, we see a positive net position and the reverse is true as well.
So net position is a long-term measure that includes capital assets such as land and buildings
as well as long-term obligations including pensions, retiree health care benefits and
outstanding debt. As of fiscal year 2025 the city's unfunded pension and
retiree health care liabilities totaled approximately 2 billion. So while these
obligations will be paid over many years accounting standards still requires that
they be reflected in the city's long-term financial position or the net
position. So due largely to these long-term liabilities the city reported
City had been reporting negative net position for many years through fiscal
year 2020, which you see on this chart as red in the first bar. However, beginning
in fiscal year 2021, the net position has turned positive and has improved each
year, and so all of the rest of the bars you see on the chart are green. This is a
positive trend and it just reflects the city's continued focus on addressing
the long-term liabilities. So there are many factors that contribute to the net
position results that we just looked at in the prior chart, in the prior slide,
but the biggest factors are the city's pension and retiree health care
liabilities, which is why in the second chart we'll be focusing on that piece.
Um, unfunded pension liabilities are shown here in the green on this chart and unfunded
liabilities for retiree health benefits are shown in yellow.
As you can see, the pension and OPEB liabilities, um, here are all in the negatives, meaning
these are things that the city owes, um, to the employees.
As I've noted before, these two liabilities total nearly $2 billion at the end of the
year 2025, so what this means is the city's promises to employees and retirees exceed
what it has saved to fund those promises by almost $2 billion.
I do want to point out that over the past five years, unfunded retiree healthcare liabilities
or the OPEB have declined, as reflected by the shrinking yellow portion of the chart.
This improvement stems from policy actions approved by council with the support of labor
partners including the implementation of a retiree health pre-funding mechanism and also
benefit modifications for safety employees hired after 2018.
These changes were implemented at the beginning of the six-year period represented in this
chart and as you can see, their impact as the yellow portions of the bars are shrinking
over time.
Even liabilities, which is the green part of the chart, however, have proven to be
more challenging to reduce, and although the city makes annual payments intended to lower
these obligations, investment returns below expectations and more conservative actuarial
assumptions adopted by CalPERS have offset some of that progress.
The third chart here is the annual financial statements.
It also provides a view of the city's finances that are focused more on the current resources
and don't consider the long-term liabilities or debt service beyond one year into the future.
So this third chart here takes a near-term view to examine changes in general fund balances
over the past six years.
And as you may recall, or as director Johnson kind of talked about it in the earlier item,
in fiscal year 2024, the city had experienced a reversal in the fund balance growth due
to the ongoing imbalance between general fund revenues and expenditures.
However, in fiscal year 2025, the fund balance growth has rebounded.
And as you can see in the chart, the fund balance for general fund has increased in
2025.
However, I do want to clarify that off this increase, a significant percentage wise, the
fund balance for general fund increased significantly in 2025 by about 44%.
But I want to clarify that off that 44%, only 13% reflects actual improvements from increased
revenues and reduced expenditures.
The remaining portion is attributable to an accounting presentation change.
Under governmental accounting standards, certain employee benefit amounts are required to be
reported as committed fund balance rather than as liabilities.
In the prior years, some of these obligations were being reported as liabilities, but in
fiscal year 2025, they were reclassified as committed fund balance to align with the current
accounting guidance.
So if you look at the chart the large increase in yellow portion represents this reclassification
and it does not represent newly available or spendable resources.
So in this chart the more meaningful change is reflected in the increase in the purple
bar which represents the unassigned fund balance.
This improvement was driven by higher general fund revenues including real estate transfer
tax business license tax and other charges for services as well as an
overall decline in expenditure expenditures and then my final chart
here focuses on the city's financial reserves again from a near-term
perspective so these reserves are maintained in the general purpose fund
and the vital services stabilization fund you may recall again that reserves
had continued to fall in the last two years, with 2024 reserves falling drastically as revenues
continued to fall short of expenditures. However, in 2025 reserves have recovered to 2023 levels
again, largely due to the council actions taken to address the budget shortfalls.
And just to summarize, there are three different categories of reserves in this chart.
The vital services stabilization reserve is the smallest one of these three categories and it's almost invisible to see it's represented by the red bar.
The city's consolidated fiscal policy assigns a target of 15% of general purpose revenue fund.
But as you can see, we're quite below that level at this time.
The general purpose fund emergency reserve shown in
green and the general purpose fund
unassigned fund balance shown in blue
together make up the city's emergency fund reserve.
The city's consolidated fiscal policy sets a minimum target of
7.5 percent of general purpose fund appropriations.
As of June 30, 2025,
the combined balance of these reserves was 98.4 million,
which meets the city's minimum policy requirement.
The purpose of these reserves
is to support fiscal stability
during unexpected economic downturns or emergencies
and maintaining adequate reserves
strengthens the city's ability to deal with such challenges.
So in closing, the city's financial position
has stabilized in 2025 compared to 2024,
actions that are taken by the council
to restore the reserve balances above minimum
and also improve general fund balances in 2025.
Overall, the financial statements reflect progress
and improve stability, but also underscore the importance
of continued attention to structural balance
and long-term obligations as expenditure pressures continue
and the city's long-term pension
OPEB obligation remains significant. That concludes my presentation and I'm
happy to answer any questions. Thank you so much. Chair if I could I do want to
take the opportunity I want to thank Pooja and our controllers bureau along
with our auditors at Missy Isgeny. The work they do behind the scenes is
absolutely critical to us being able to access the bond market, provide you any
of the data that you use to make decisions.
They're a very, very quiet group, but on a day-to-day basis,
they're critical to keeping us running,
ensuring that we end the year and present our data correctly.
And I want to say, as a new finance editor,
I've been incredibly impressed by their hard work
and professionalism, again, quietly behind the scenes,
ensuring that we can do what we do.
So I'd be remiss if I didn't say that.
Absolutely, wholeheartedly agree.
Thank you for your very important critical work.
I have a question about the second-to-last slide with the reserves on it.
We said we're right under 100 million and we're in accordance with all of our policies.
Could you clarify what our reserve policies are for these three categories?
Sure.
So let me go back to that slide here.
As I mentioned, there is the Reserve is maintained in is can be categorized in three different categories. The first one is the vital services stabilization reserve and the city's consolidated fiscal policy assigns a target for the vital services reserve at 15% of the general purpose fund revenues.
If we do the math it would come out to be a little over a hundred million, but at this point, that number is zero.
So, the Consolidated and Fiscal Policy, when it was adopted in 2018, the vital service reserve had a balance of about 15 million before COVID hit,
and consistent with the policy which allows the council to use these reserves for emergency situations,
these funds were used during the COVID time.
And right now, the balance in this,
in this vital services stabilization fund is zero.
So the other two parts of the reserve
are the general purpose fund emergency reserve balance,
and also the city's general purpose fund
unassigned fund balance.
Together, these two factors
comprise of the city's general purpose fund emergency reserve.
Um, so as I mentioned, the general purpose fund emergency reserve fund, um,
alone has a balance of over 63 million, um,
or had a balance of over 63 million as of June 30, 20, 25.
And then adding the unassigned general fund fund balance,
the total reserves adds up to be 98.4 million.
And per the city's fiscal policy,
the total balance to be maintained here
needs to be 7.5% of the general fund appropriation.
And currently the 98.4 million balance is above that level.
Thank you.
The Vatal Services Stabilization Fund,
our consolidated fiscal policy says
we should have a target of 15%.
Have we ever met that?
No, we have not.
I don't think so, yes.
No, we have not.
Is this typical of other cities, or is 15% for this amount?
So I can tell you back when we developed the policy,
we had done it based on the policy of the city of LA.
That 15% is the number that you would need based
on our immediate prior recessions
to weather a recession.
So if you sort of think about what you'd need to be
at based on prior experience in the boom before a bust,
if you really just wanted to bridge the whole thing
via revenue, you wanted to have a cushion
so that you could ride out the equivalent
of a great recession or a dot-com boom,
because this was done prior to COVID.
So we haven't redone that analysis with COVID.
You would need about 15% in order to just sort of smooth
through it and see no interruption to services.
And so when we set that target, that
was the context of that target.
We've never come close to meeting that in terms
of how we've looked at it, but that
is the nature of that principle.
And we could look at that when we're
looking at our financial policies as to what
the right number is.
And again, we would at least want
to update that percentage based on the COVID recession, which
we have one more data point to put in there.
Thank you.
Yeah, I mean if we're not able to put in a whole hundred million dollars any time in
the next decade, it would be my interest in exploring that policy.
And then one more question.
The general purpose fund emergency reserve plus unassigned fund balances, obviously the
general fund, but the vital services stabilization fund, can that be used to address deficits
in any of our fund balances?
That's correct.
Your policy requires you to use any balance in that fund to specifically you're supposed to look at it
To avoid changes in services or impacts the staff. So you are we are actually supposed to look at it first if there's a balance there
Thank you. And my last question is
Go away. I recall in past budget processes the general purpose on funds
Unassigned fund balance is not usually treated as a reserve but an opportunity to fund programs that have not been funded
Is there?
But in this chart, it's considered reserves
is
Do you?
Is it in fact reserves and it should it be in a place where council doesn't touch until a rainy day rather than?
Here's the pot of money we can fund city services that don't have enough funds in moving it to a different pot requires you
To take action. It's not something that the administration can do on its own
obviously for fiscal prudence we would
we would
Prudently remind you to remember that it can be considered a reserve
For the purposes that we mentioned at last committees meeting in terms of calculating total reserves
And so this is one of those like treatment differences between when we talk about budgeting
Versus your actual actuals reporting we had a whole conversation at last committee meeting about
Two of our rating agencies wanted to see our reserve numbers come up this presentation, which is consistent with how
Financials are presented does actually help you get toward that number
And so that's part of the part of our strategy and getting there
If we want to dedicate it and hold it aside specifically in which in this way
We're not looking to budget for it that actually can be an action that we take and as we look at your fiscal policy
If you want to empower the administration to do that
in certain circumstances, you could do that.
But currently, you would have to take the action
to restrict that.
Thank you.
Councilmember Unger.
Yeah, so thank you for this.
Just focusing in on the slide about OPEB and pension benefits,
I think it's important to put this in plain English.
Essentially, this has been the big driver of our increase
in net position.
And that's a factor of two things.
one in 2013 with Pepper Reform,
we essentially raised the retirement age
for police and fire by seven years
and reduced the benefit multiplier.
And then in 2019,
we all but eliminated retirement medical care
for police and fire, which also was a big savings
but may have contributed to our difficulty
in retaining police officers
when they can have retirement benefits
in other jurisdictions.
So I think we just need to be clear-eyed
about both the benefits and the cost of that.
And then my question to you is,
this is a 2013 change and a 2019 change.
And so we have sort of the mouse
working its way through the snake
and folks under the old systems are leaving
and pretty soon we will have police and fire departments
that are made up of almost entirely
folks under the new system.
And so how do we project for that?
Do we see an increasing rate of savings
because of this change?
So, the term of art you're using in this space
is something called your unfunded accrued liability,
which is sort of the past debt we owe
that was not funded by prior actions.
And so, as you look in, we'll take our OPEB as an example.
We did cap the OPEB benefits for police and fire,
and we put them at the same level
that civilians had enjoyed.
And there's an additional contribution
that we put in to an OPEB trust fund,
which is funding than also that
to reduce that liability amount.
We still owe for everyone that already is retired.
We will be paying out those benefits for a long while
as it relates to pension.
The vast majority of what we actually pay
is already that unfunded amount,
not what we referred to again, terms of art,
and I'm happy to bring back this in a future report.
You saw my red and blue graphic during the budget process,
which is called your normal cost.
That actually is the lower component cost.
Most of what we were dealing with
is the prior unfunded amount.
As we move through that over the next 30 years,
yes, you will absolutely see that trail off.
You'll see the effects of PEPRA and our reforms come in.
For OPEB, you're already seeing that bite
and that's why you have the nice,
that sort of nicer downward curve
that we're seeing right now.
And we have to continue to stay on top of our contributions
to make that happen.
For PERS, because of how they structure the system
of a double front loaded cost structure,
It actually will continue to increase in the short term
before then decreasing.
And that's just a factor of how PERS does their calculations
for coming up with what we have to pay in,
which we're not directly in control of.
OPEB is a more straight actuarial analysis
and that's where we've seen the majority of those benefits.
Council Member Wong.
I'll move this item.
Okay.
Second.
public speakers.
Calling in the names that signed up for item number five,
Mrs. Asada Ola Bala and Kevin Dally.
Thank you, all names have been called.
We have a motion made by Council Member Wong,
seconded by Council Member Brown,
to receive and file this informational report
and committee on roll.
Council Members Brown?
Aye.
Unger?
Aye.
Wong?
Aye.
And Chair Ramachandran?
Aye.
Thank you, item number five passes with four ayes
to receive and file this informational report and committee.
Now reading in item number six, receive an informational report addressing the Oakland Roadmap to fiscal health's
objective of presenting a phased multi-year plan to move the city towards
compliance with voter mandated staffing, service levels, and other agreements.
And we do have a number of speakers on this item.
Hey everyone, changing position for this report.
Happy to present this report on our road map to fiscal health specifically as it relates to compliance with our locally adopted ballot measures.
My name again is Brad Johnson.
I'm your director of finance.
Our deputy state administrator Monica Davis was also instrumental in this particular element
of the report.
She cannot be here today.
And so I am speaking on behalf of us both.
K-Top, we do have a presentation on this item, and I'd love for you to pull it up.
Quick reminder, our roadmap is a commitment we made during last year's budget process
for a multi-year plan to improve the city's financial position and ensure we provide quality services to residents.
It is a combination of both strategic projects and priorities with timelines that are aggressive, but hopefully are achievable.
We want to work transparently through regular public updates, and this is one key element of the roadmap that we'll be updating you on today.
With context, as we all know, our finances have been strained in recent years.
I'm not going to go into this too much, but as you saw from our prior three reports,
we've made real progress in closing our gaps.
We made quick action in terms of the immediate circumstances, and
we have to continue to engage in longer strategic action to improve our financial position.
This is Roadmap item number four that we'll be discussing today, which is a multi-year
plan to meet our voted adopted service mandates.
And again, this is a phase plan that should begin in January of this year and should inform
our biennial budget update, which is our mid-cycle budget and our budgets going forward.
Let's talk about this.
So and I do think that it's important that I provide a little bit of context about what
voter mandates are.
When our voters pass ballot measures, they often maintain a requirement that resources
not from that ballot measure be maintained at a certain level in order to collect the
resources from that measure.
I will give you a very simple example.
We have two measures that support Oakland's library system, measures C and D. Measures
C and D require minimal spending from your general purpose fund in order to collect supplementary
resources for libraries.
Those measures also often contain mechanisms by which the general purpose fund contribution
can be suspended or waived.
None of our measures ever allow for the actual resources coming in for
the voter adopted measure to be diverted to the general purpose fund.
That's a really important distinction to be made.
We do not use measure C and D money in the general purpose fund.
The question we're talking about in these mandates is whether or
not other resources are at the level required by those measures.
Where the council has the ability in certain circumstances to waive those requirements.
If we look at our general purpose fund, and that's what you're seeing a pie charter here.
More than two-thirds of your general purpose fund is in some way obligated by a ballot measure.
To the vast majority of your general purpose fund expenditures are captured by one or
another of our ballot measures, or potentially also by an MOE attached to our MOU, or found in your city charter.
So I note these MOEs and this sort of restricted discussion encompasses those ballot measures,
your negotiated MOEs, and requirements that are located in your city charter.
Again, two-thirds of what you're doing is restricted in terms of its requirements.
And so this is sort of a note in terms of our fixed school flexibility as we're moving forward.
The specific requirements for each of those measures is noted here.
And we've lumped into this some things that are ballot measure like that are not explicitly your ballot measures.
So we wanted to note sort of the whole list of items.
We are currently about $38.8 million for
meeting the requirements of every single one of these ballot measures.
And what you've noted on this chart are the gaps measure by measure.
It relates to Measure HH, while this is technically unrestricted money,
we have a commission that has made recommendations for using it in ways other than we're using it right now, which is primarily to support youth programs.
Again, it's an eligible use, but in terms of the broader context,
we know that there's a desire to use it in other ways to support other sort of nutritional programs.
As it relates to your affordable housing trust fund, we talked about that before.
We are off in the current year for budgeting that.
We've used some of that to support general fund operations.
Again, this is a locally adopted ordinance by you as the body, not a ballot measure.
But again, we want to note that in this context as well.
And again, we're trying to be inclusive.
Your measure C and D library parcel tax, which were my example earlier,
are just under $3 million off, meaning their requirements.
Your fund 2224, which is your measure cue fund for parks, homelessness, and storm water
is about $2 million off.
And I would note that $2 million off is in the parks component specifically.
And then you are about $18 million off in your measure in-in requirement, which is your
most recently adopted voter-approved parcel tax, which is related to spending on police
services primarily.
In addition, you have charter requirements related to democracy dollars, which require roughly another $5 million of annual spending.
And we're missing a position in the auditor's office related to measure X minimum staffing.
And that composes this total of this $38.8 million.
So should we have had above and beyond the resources we need to maintain your mid-cycle budget,
which I should note does include the assumption of an additional ballot measure.
needed roughly another additional $40 million of ongoing resources to, in one
failed scoop, ensure we maintained all of these measures. I'm going to walk you
through what our conceptual plans will look like over the course of the next
several years as we talk through how do we come into compliance. We're going to
need to take a phased approach. We do not have $38 million in ongoing
resources above and beyond again the 40 million dollars in potential ballot
measure resources that we're gonna have in a short order. So we're gonna need to
take a phased approach to come into compliance. I'm gonna talk to you first
about measure in specific because this is the largest of these items and
it's primarily tied to your police staffing number. The approach we're
looking at taking on this one and again it relates to bringing up the number of
of sworn police officers, this would be the cumulative increase in each year that we would
want to see potentially as an option for coming into compliance with measure in-ins.
The way you read this chart is, in order to meet the total measure in-in target, again
using current dollars, these numbers will increase as we get to these years.
This is a procedure where if we were to do something like seven police academies over
the course of every biennial budget for the number of officers we thought could come out
of that, what your spending plan might look like to come into compliance over
the course of five years with Measure NN. And so you note this one we wanted to
really tie in this case to that Academy expected outcome. It does not make sense
for us to budget for officers before we can actually expect to get those
officers. So this one we specifically wanted to provide you a scenario that
would look at that. Your other ballot measures are a little bit more stable
and so we wanted to put them all on one chart because it would be we wouldn't
want to overwhelm you. And again, this is not a specific plan. This is a scenario
that you could have. What we've done in this particular chart is showing you your
various options. One option, as you're noting on your Measure X line, is simply
to attack something on the front end to prioritize it and do it first. And so in
this case, again these are all cumulative increases over each year of what
additional funding would look like. You could choose to fund an item on the
front end through your budget process. You could choose to back load an item,
And in this case, no particular reason we've chosen to select Measure W,
which is your Democracy Dollar programs, you could choose to backload an item and
do it all toward the end of your cycle.
You could choose then to take a balanced approach, and
what we've shown you on these measures is then equally distributing
how much we move toward on each of the services over each year.
And so we're showing you this as options for presentation.
The real place you'll make these decisions
is through your budget process.
This is not prescriptive.
We're not telling you you should do this.
These are not a recommended model.
This is giving you your sort of models
for getting over a five-year approach,
which we'll want to be adopting
and considering as we go forward.
So again, you consider, as I mentioned,
and you can consider the realities
of real services as to how fast they could come online
in terms of which services you employ first.
Again, as it relates to officers,
that's really driven by your academy number.
You could choose to do a front-loaded approach,
which we've represented in this case,
for your measure X requirement in the Otter's office.
You could choose to backload certain services
based on your policy priorities,
or you could choose to take a balanced approach
and do a little bit of each as you go.
Again, I wanted to note out,
just for this particular model,
what this would look like in terms of cumulative add
and what any kind of phased approach might look like,
here is just this sort of one modeled approach
over the course of the next five years
in terms of getting on board with all of our local measures.
I'll note there are risks and other uncertainties
we have around this.
We know we're gonna have increase to employee costs
which are key drivers to these elements.
I mentioned this is all sort of in current dollars.
We're going to have cost inflation.
Like that's undeniable.
The $38 million in this year's dollars will be substantially more in year $5 when we get there.
It will be a larger dollar amount.
Hopefully the revenue sources that help us bridge this will also have grown.
So even moderate salary and benefit increases, we know are rising faster than revenues.
Federal state funding is another key element of this.
We've done certain waivers in the current year based on a current landscape of federal funding.
If we see impacts to federal funding beyond what we've already seen, it may delay any
sort of timeline.
So I don't want to take a particular federal funding source to note it out for fear of
calling out anything specifically, but one could imagine a time-space where you have
a federal grant that's denied and you may delay coming into compliance with the breadth
of these locally adopted measures in order to backfill the resources from a federal grant
if it's considered to be a key service.
You may have other policy shifts and then again we have the general uncertainty related
to the market.
I wanted to thank again Deputy State Administrator Monica Davis for helping us work through this
report.
I also want to note that we did have a chance to connect with many of the advocates for
our locally adopted measures and we had some chance to talk through this particular approach
with them. I know they are all chomping at the bed for us to, as soon as possible, come
in compliance with this measure, but we were, and we, I'm sure we still have some concerns
from them about our ability to get there, but we wanted to make sure that we at least
had an open dialogue and conversation with them, and so the bulk of this presentation
has presented, been presented to them before we came to you with it. So this is a framework.
It's really a framework for discussion for you all as a body starting now and into our
mid-cycle budget process for how we begin to achieve the very important goal of compliance
with all these measures, which needs to be a priority that we maintain in the back of
our mind.
I would say in sort of in closing, whenever we're looking at something new over the course
of a mid-cycle budget, we need to keep in mind that maintaining faith with these previously
adopted mandates needs to be prioritized in that context.
So there are lots of new ideas out there, but compliance with those promises we've already
made needs to be prioritized as well.
With that, I'm happy to take any questions at your desire, Chair.
Thank you so much.
I think this is an interesting way to address the question of this $38 million gap that
we really do need to address with some urgency.
These measures are incredibly different.
So I do have a couple of questions.
I want to start with Measure Q that I think is a relatively strong amount and personally
I will just say this publicly, I would like to see this front load is just given kind
of underinvestment over the years of how long and how much in need our parks and related
services are to be funded, but at the same time we had a leftover balance from one of
the funds last year.
Is the issue actually just hiring and not having speed
and hiring here?
Because if we could put in that, the amount of money
that they have, just for argument's sake, within two
years, is it just going to be an unassigned balance that
continues because we've not hired for those staff members
that we're budgeting for, in your opinion?
That's exactly the kind of analysis we want to do.
that's kind of analogous to what we talked about
with your, when I was presenting Measure
in and up there with PD, right?
We wanna make sure that whatever resources we budget,
we're actually able to spend and deliver
within that resource constraint.
And so I know there's aggressive effort
to hire up park staff.
These MOEs are all budgetary basis.
They're not actual basis.
They're how you allocate your resources.
We can be in a position where we allocate a resource
that we can't spend due to hiring timelines.
And so one of the key things we need to keep in mind
as we're developing a phased approach to any of these items
is, will we realistically be able to deliver that service?
I would note even within our existing Measure Q budget
allocation, where we would get better hiring and better
staffed up, we could deliver better service quality
within the currently adopted budget
even below that threshold.
And so those are the exact kind of questions and concerns
in specific, we'll want to consider
when we get to the mid-cycle,
what does our vacancy rate look like
in the various elements funded by these measures?
What is our realistic likelihood to be able to staff up
in that particular moment?
Because it's not, we're projecting five years out
in the future, I don't have a crystal ball
so what they're all gonna be looking like.
So those are the questions that I encourage you all
to ask in detail as we get through this mid-cycle
and every year's budget process to ensure
that we are maximizing not just compliance on paper,
but delivery of service with that additional compliance.
Thank you, I look forward to exploring that.
The staffing challenges under NN are very clear.
Personally, I think seven academies is a stretch
and we've not been able to ever do more than five
in a cycle, but it'd be great if we can get there.
But I under like the spending issues are very obvious for that one, but under and then other other aspects not related to hiring of sworn personnel that we need to be spending down that, whether that's the money, the portion that has to go to CBO's or, you know, fire department of O&M, like what what else is there that could be spent immediately apart from sworn officers.
That's correct, measure NN has,
and so this is distinguishing
your spending requirements element.
Every single one of these measures also has,
within it, formulas that could be very simple.
Like, the library measures are very simple.
Use them on libraries, and there are some things excluded.
Some of them are more complicated like NN and Q,
as to how we use our money.
And so while there are other uses for NN,
the MOE barrier is really around police staffing.
We have some requirements around fire staffing as well,
which we need to stay on top of
in terms of budgeting for academies.
But we don't have a long term sort of compliance arc problem
on those in terms of being out of compliance.
It is really this police staffing number
from a budgetary basis that is your issue.
And so maybe to make the point, you
could accomplish the measure in budget number
simply by budgeting a larger number of officers
and making equivalent cuts.
There's also a requirement that we actually
have a plan to get there.
And that's where building in this academy process
is really important.
It is a little bit more detailed in that space.
I would say on NN, it is really police
is your driver for compliance.
We need to make sure at the same time we're complying
with all the other structures of the measures,
the $3 million for fire, the required spending
on violence services, and ensuring
that we're actually getting those contracts out
and delivering on those as well, along
with the additional technology investments required in PD.
Thank you.
The last question is measure HH, the Sugar, Sweet, and Biffage tax.
What are our spending requirements there?
You do not have – and so this is one like your Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
We are treating kind of like a local mandate because that's been the perception of how
this has been done.
We didn't want to bury that lead in terms of how people understand this funding.
It is a general fund resource.
resource. It is a general tax. It is not dedicated by its measure itself. The
dedication on resources has been by your budgetary actions through
resolution, but you do have an advisory board that makes recommendations for the
uses of that money, and our budgeting has not been consistent with that advisory
board's recommendations. That's not illegal, but we understand that is one of
requirements that feels disparate with how people may perceive the resource to
be used. And so for transparency we want to put it on here. We do use it
accordingly and I would say our usage of this is aligned with the general thing.
We use this for parks, recs, programs, use summer jobs. We're using this supporting
nutrition programs and senior centers. We're using this sort of in an analogous
way but the recommendation has been to use a lot of this on grants for
nonprofit organizations or for OUSD and that is that is something that we're not
necessarily doing. Thank you so the issue there is less the dollar amount
more of not spending based on the recommendation of the Commission.
Correct. Okay thank you. Colleagues I can't tap on anyone. Councillor Brown then
along. Okay excellent. So through the chair to Director Johnson thank you for
this really timely report and I also want to highlight how you know just
easy it was to read and understand the information and just really fully
outlining you know what it would take for us to meet these requirements and so
I feel like that's very clear.
And then also helping us to begin to think through
how we can meet some of these requirements.
At first, when I was reading slide seven,
I was thinking, oh, how come there's no requirement
in 28, 29?
But I get it that it's just an example of what we could do.
So that definitely makes sense.
The only question that I had,
and I know you touched on it just very briefly
where you were saying that you've,
I guess finance department has had the opportunity
to engage with advocacy groups.
I think I was just curious, like who in particular
and have you been working with members of the BAC?
I do not actually believe we brought this to the BAC.
We did meet with a number of the sponsors
for these measures, so the sponsors for the measure queue,
sponsors for library, members of our Parks and Recreation
Advisory Commission, members who helped pass Measure NN.
And again, I don't want to take credit for that.
My department was really set up by our deputy city
administrator.
She's the one who's really facilitated that process for us.
OK.
And then just for more clarity, so after we kind of receive
and file this report, what are the specific next steps
with when engaging with advocacy groups?
So I think we need to ensure that our mid-cycle begins
to make progress and clear ways on this.
And I would say we need to reference back
to this sort of analysis, to be really, really clear,
and I appreciate you commenting that this report was easy
to read, to be equally clear and transparent in every budget
action we take as to where we've made progress
or where we haven't made progress,
and those reasons.
So I think the real space is initially
for the administration, the mayor, as we do a proposed
budget, and then for this body as we move through your adoption
process, to be really, really clear and transparent
about what progress we're making,
why we're making it that way, what considerations we're
building into it.
We've given you options here to build that trust and faith.
We're going to continue to engage with our advocates
around both proposed decisions and decisions you make,
both before and after the fact.
We want to keep that dialogue open
so that while not everyone is always happy
with budgetary decisions,
know that with great experience,
we need to be transparent with what those decisions are
so that there's understanding as to what they are.
Okay, sounds good, thank you.
Thanks.
Through the chair, first of all,
just want to echo my colleague's comments.
Thank you so much for creating this report.
This is incredibly helpful.
I am trying to also just reconcile,
given the positive report that we just received,
is that in some ways going to make it even more important?
Or it will lessen our ability to suspend our MOEs,
given that we actually have a positive fund
balance in our GPF?
I don't think those necessarily correlate.
And the reason I would say that they're not necessarily
correlated are rebound to a positive fund balance
and GPF was sort of a very immediate space.
A lot of the drivers of these EMOAs I mentioned earlier
are budgetary basis.
A lot of the reason why we ended up
in a positive space in your general purpose fund
for your prior items was spending control
we took on sort of an actual basis different
from your budgetary action.
And that was sort of the dialogue
I was having with Chair Ramachandran.
we have to make sure that we are delivering these services
first and foremost.
There is an operational element that we cannot lose track of
in this space, but your MOEs are this sort of formulaic
at budget basis time span.
And so you can make progress with providing better services
and actually slip it on an MOE.
Those can actually happen at the same time.
Some of the formulas are particularly complicated.
And so the dynamics that drive them can cause sort of weird
sort of outcomes on a budgetary basis.
I wouldn't say you having a positive status
in your general purpose fund
necessarily means you have flexibility on these measures
in the subsequent year.
I guess my question is,
does it actually reduce our flexibility to suspend?
No. Okay.
Because your flexibility is driven
by your projected deficit,
which is when you're making your budgetary decisions,
not your last year's actuals.
I'll be more concise.
Sorry. Okay.
That's helpful.
I just I found the same chart to be a little bizarre on the measure and then
Where in 2008 29 we have zero?
Recommend spend can you just walk us through yeah, why that those are the additional spend in each year that we would do
And so what we were charting there is if we do a timeline on academies
And we're more likely to have actual officer increases if you are budgeting to when you would get officers
There's a year in that space where your net officer number is actually not going to go up based on your Academy timing
It's actually going to stay flat
And so from that prior year to the next year even if you do seven academies for the year
You don't actually need to budget more because you're not realistically based on the Academy timeline and your delay rates
You're not going to have more and so that's an example of us sort of marrying real-world data on the likely trajectory of
Police officers under one scenario with the number of officers you budget
And so you wouldn't make progress to budget for more officers in the year where you don't expect to actually have more officers
That would not be a year you would make that space and so that's again that dynamic of like marrying that really
Immediate real-world data and how we might do that
Okay, and I noticed in the report that you made an assumption that we would have 38 trainees enrolled in every Academy
I will say that's not matching up with what we're seeing right now.
Did you have an assumption around the graduation rate in terms of how many people
we'd, yeah, would graduate from the academies that was built into this?
You know, I don't know the number off the top of my head.
We recognize that we, on the police number, those were aggressive assumptions,
both seven academies and the 38 and, like, those are both really aggressive numbers.
You have a different policy concern around police hiring
and how to drive that and how to get our number up.
like I'm not, that's a bigger policy discussion.
This was illustrative for the purpose of showing you
how you could achieve it in a measure.
I fully acknowledge that those specific circumstances
are one probably a different reality,
and as I said earlier, will be a different reality
in literally each year you try to achieve this.
There will be specific individual dynamics
you'll need to consider.
Okay, makes sense.
And the final question is just,
I'm trying to reconcile the affordable trust,
so fund 1870, the affordable housing trust fund.
So given that in the last,
in the item that we discussed earlier today,
we have a negative fund balance of 8 million,
and you're also recommending that
we need to spend 6 million more.
Can you just explain that dynamic?
I can absolutely explain that.
We have the number noted in this report is the amount that's being diverted in the general purpose fund in the current budget to support general fund operations.
What would happen if you were to restore that number by going back to not diverting it,
is first we would likely budget to replenish that fund balance.
And then you would see additional affordable housing projects or staff delivered.
we would likely either increase the staff number, unlikely to be true because we didn't
see a lot of staffing cuts in this number. That's not where we took it. This would be
additional money that we would invest in affordable housing projects above and beyond what you
see from your impact fee numbers and your bond allocations. So this number would be
additional money going to additional affordable housing pipeline projects in delivery. Okay.
That's what the result would be.
Okay, gotcha.
Thank you.
Question on Measure MM.
That's mic, mic, not November, November.
That is the vegetation management ballot measure that our voters just passed.
In the past, some of that money for the goat grazing had come from the general fund.
So is all of the money for vegetation management now coming from Measure MM, or is there still
general fund money?
I believe direct vegetation management is in MM.
What we are continuing to do from the General Fund
is all the resources related to inspections,
which are done by the engine companies
and related to secondary and tertiary inspections,
which are done by our engineers.
So there's a lot of work around that.
And there's also some additional work
continuing from the General Fund
that relates to education in the fire severity zone.
But most of the vegetation management work
is now coming out of MM.
So has the budget for vegetation management
increased as a result of MM, or has the general fund
divested itself enough from that responsibility
that it stayed flat?
It's still a very large net increase.
I want to say more than a doubling,
it might be even a tripling of the resource.
For vegetation management.
For vegetation management, yeah.
It's a significant increase in the total investment
in this space.
OK, thank you.
And just to follow up with that, I
know there's probably a report coming on progress.
I know there's the newly formed commission.
Do we know approximately when finance will hear that item?
Through the chair, I apologize.
I don't have that date, but we'll
be sure to get that to you as soon as possible.
Measure MM funding.
Thank you.
OK, so we can move to public speakers.
Calling in the names that signed up for item number six
in no particular order, you can come up to the podium.
Or if you're on Zoom, please raise your hand
to be easily identified.
Asada Olibala, John Bliss, Brooke Levin,
Catherine Sturbank, Fatima Yusef, and Kevin Dalley.
Hi, Kevin Dalley from Transport Oakland.
I have a suggestion that might help with police overtime
a bit.
The single biggest overtime expense
is for processing crash investigations.
In 2021, there was a task force
on re-imagining public safety.
What they recommended at that time
was moving traffic investigation,
crash investigation from OPD to Oak Dot.
Oak Dot has much more ability to handle epidemiology
than OPD does.
Oak Todd also has less of a problem with overtime expenses.
The police aren't necessarily experts
on investigating the crashes.
They absolutely can handle which violations
have been done by cars, say, making illegal left turns.
But part of our interest also is reducing
crashes in the future.
We don't want people injured, but we also,
it'll probably reduce our legal settlements.
Oak Dot already has a program.
Megan Weir is leading an effort using her epidemiology
expertise to improve the relationship between some
of these traffic reports and the Alameda
County of Public Health.
And moving this onward to include the crash date itself,
I think could be great.
don't know if she has enough time to handle that
and how much hiring would need to be done.
Problem with this move of course,
it doesn't increase the number of sworn officers overall
but it does increase the number of sworn officers
doing police work rather than epidemiology.
I think it's worth considering, thanks.
Good morning, my name is John Balas.
Thank you Chair Ramachandran,
I'm here as a as an Oakland
citizen a member of the Oakland
parks and recreation
foundation board and a co chair
of measure Q. back in 2020- I'm
here to support the road map to
fiscal health and we appreciate
you guys considering it this is
tough stuff there's not enough
money to go around but in the
big picture in the long run we
need to follow this road map
I'd like to thank- finance
director Brad Johnson and
monster I can't wait to answer
finance director Brad Johnson Monica Davis for their excellent work on this
I'm going to focus on Measure Q which was passed in in 2020 as you all know it
was half a billion dollars it's Measure Q is not small it's big and it has the
ability it hasn't reached its potential but as the ability to start maintaining
our parks to a very nice level we all know our parks are essential they
provide not only they activate our citizens but they're extremely
important for public safety we need to have them we need to have them good you
all know that and to reiterate this when we ran the Measure Q campaign we
essentially made a deal with the voters here in Oakland and we said we're gonna
ask you to invest at a certain level in parks here but the city will maintain
maintain the current level in 2020 of investment in parks the city has not met
that obligation. That's why we're here and that's why we plan. We want to get that back
and we appreciate all the efforts made to restore that. It's good for parks, it's good
for Oaklanders. Also in the long term, because of the laws we have in California, we'll have
to continue to go out to voters to ask for additional revenue. And we need their confidence
to be able to do that. So that's another reason we really need to get back on track. I thank
you all for your time tough stuff please stay please stay fiscally
responsible think long term thank you very much good morning Brooke Levin
thank you very much chair Ramachandran members of the committee and staff for
the this report a number of advocacy groups who were proponents of ballot
measures have been meeting since last April we've had several meetings with
with Mr. Johnson and the team of city administration,
including the city administrator,
to talk about how we're gonna get
these ballot measures back on track.
It's been challenging.
One of the things that the finance committee
had directed back in September of 2024
is that we meet to discuss the definition
of extreme fiscal necessity.
That came at a very 11th hour during a meeting
in June of 2023, and it's been expanded since,
And it's eventually going to be part of a consolidated fiscal policy, which I don't
think is coming back until 2027.
So that is a very essential thing from our perspective and many of the other advocates'
perspective is how do you define when you have an extreme fiscal necessity?
And so we would like to get back on track with that.
This report for the roadmap doesn't discuss that at all.
It's sort of dropping off the radar, and we'd like to bring that back onto the radar.
As John mentioned, the whole negotiation about Measure Q and the ballot measure, which we
led the campaign on, was centered around having new services for park maintenance and tree
maintenance and park facility maintenance.
That has decreased greatly with the Declaration of Extreme Fiscal Necessity.
We'd like to see that come back into alignment, and we would like to see the plan moving forward
to make that happen.
All these other things that have been added now to this roadmap for coming back were not
part of any discussions that we had.
We didn't discuss the Affordable Housing Act.
We didn't discuss having all these police academies.
We didn't discuss a lot of this stuff at our meetings.
We didn't discuss the MOUs.
So we hope we can get back on track with these ballot measures that voters have approved.
Thank you.
Let me start with Measure Q.
I was really upset that homeless support was thrown in to Measure Q because the uplifting
of Measure Q had to do with support for our parks.
And I don't know who is the lead person to make sure the funds are allocated and how
it's worked out, who does that? Because we don't have any name, individual, or group
that's really supporting homelessness. Now democracy, let me go with this, the Advisory
Board for NN and HH. Y'all jumped all over the police commission for certain qualifications
and done right. These people are having the ability to look at fund spending, and y'all
have no qualifications for them to do that.
So it's just you pick a person and they do it.
And that anybody that handles money
should have some level of qualification
to deal with money spending.
Democracy dollars.
Democracy dollars was an,
we really went crazy with this one.
That was supposed to be for voters,
some kind of way you change it to residents.
So we out here having to spend unknown amounts of money
because residents, we don't have any idea
who our illegal immigrants are
because they're gonna get the money too.
I don't know.
Measure in-in, it requires that you have to have
a minimum of 700 officers.
We are nowhere near that.
And all the, even if you get to 700,
all study says adequately you need 877 officers.
So it's not only writing a measure,
but write it so that you get what you really need from it,
not just put a number in there.
What is the actual number we need
to have a true public safety at its maximum potential?
Thank you for your comments, switching to Zoom users.
Catherine, you can unmute yourself
and begin your two minute comment.
Thank you.
Good morning.
My name is Catherine Sturbens
and I am advocacy chair
the Friends of the Oakland Public Library and former Chair of the City's Library Commission.
It is critically important to fund libraries as they are a safe space for kids to learn. They
connect Oaklanders of all ages with knowledge, job opportunities, and other services. This is
especially important in light of federal attempts to cut grants to libraries. Oakland's public library
advocates are glad that the Council is engaging with the maintenance of effort provisions. However,
This proposal would refund only $2.4 million of the $2.7 million maintenance of effort
for libraries which would still fall short of the requirements of the ballot measure.
The plan lacks meaningful specifics to guarantee that the return to maintenance of effort will
occur as promised. The city has often struggled with long-term budget planning and this plan seems
primarily aspirational. The council should proceed with urgency to make a more concrete plan.
To quote a current member of your library commission, this plan kicks the can down the road. Again, that's from Gabriel Sloane Law's comment on in your agenda packet today.
Library advocates remain concerned that failing to adequately fund the maintenance of effort over an extended period of time may eventually make the entire parcel tax collection vulnerable to a legal challenge.
and just in closing again more than 80% of Oakland voters voted yes for measure C to collect these
funds. Please don't betray their trust and demand a more concrete plan to return to maintenance of
effort. Thanks very much for your time. Thank you for your comments Fatima you can unmute yourself
and begin your two-minute comment. Hi um thank you I'd just like to echo everything that Catherine
said and urge the Council to fully fund maintenance of effort for libraries.
They're so important for our communities and thank you. Thank you for your
comments. That concludes all speakers on this item. Thank you. I will entertain a
moment. Just one quick question. I couldn't find in the materials what is
the compliance requirement for the affordable housing trust fund.
Test, test. There we go. The requirement would be that, and again it's not a
ballotment requirement, it's a local ordinance of your own, that we would use
100% of the funding for affordable housing staffing and projects. That's,
it's that simple as opposed to that element is coming the general fund. Yes.
Gotcha. Okay, and with that I move the item. To, to full council. Second.
On consent, I think we should do with, I think, non-consent, but I think it's an important item.
Thank you.
We can discuss in rules, but I think for now the consent calendar.
Second.
Thank you. That was a motion made by Councilmember Wong, seconded by Councilmember Brown.
To receive and forward this informational report to the February 17th City Council agenda on role, Councilmembers Brown.
Councilmember Unger aye. Councilmember Wong aye and chair Ramachandran aye. Thank you item number six
passes with four ayes to receive and forward this item to the February 17th
City Council agenda on consent now moving on to open forum calling in the
names that signed up to speak miss Asada Ola Bala and Kevin Dalley. Thanks Kevin
Dalley with Transport Oakland encourage all of you to stay around for the public
works in transportation since it does involve some movement of parking positions from transportation
department to finance department and that is has already been approved in the budget
for transportation also runs the risk if we destroy the demand based parking will how
How will that affect our sales tax revenue by having a good implementation of the demand-based
parking?
There's a grant coming out this year.
There is a chance San Francisco's done a study.
It looks like it may increase sales tax revenue.
Thanks.
I think financially you don't have any discussion on any financial obligations related to being
in a sanctuary city and you won't have a discussion
about your sanctuary city status in any form of fashion.
You just say we support the illegal immigrants.
In 1994, black woman, Barbara Jordan was a part
of chairing a study on the effects of immigration
and as it related to low class workers.
When the study came out, she said you had to cut
immigration coming into this country in 1994,
by one third, because it was having a substantial impact,
if it continued, on low class African American workers,
or low skilled African American workers.
President Trump chose to ignore the recommendation.
And Barbara Jordan said,
any form of immigration should have
the American citizens first in the workforce.
That was ignored.
And because it was ignored,
we now have, for example in Oakland,
9% unemployment of African American workers.
in the hospitality field, in the construction field,
any field that you would call low worker class.
You ignore how it's impacting housing
when you have most of your immigrant community
moving into what was
the predominantly African American community.
You ignore that, but we are being impacted
because you choose to be sanctuary,
but in doing it, it's impacting us economically.
Thank you for your comments, Mrs. Sada.
Chair, that concludes all speakers.
All right, it's 11.31, the meeting's adjourned.