Good morning and welcome to the finance and management committee meeting of
Tuesday March 10th, 2026. The time is now 9 30 a.m. and this meeting may come to
order. Before taking roll I will provide instructions on how to submit speaker
cards for items on this agenda. With us in chamber and would like to submit a
speaker card please fill one out and turn one into myself or a clerk
representative no later than 10 minutes after the start of this meeting or
before the item is read into record. Registering to speak via zoom is now due
it's only 24 hours prior to the start of this meeting time.
This meeting came to order at 9.30 a.m.
and speaker cards will no longer be accepted
10 minutes after making that time 9.40 a.m.
We'll now proceed with taking roll.
Council members Brown?
Present.
Council member Unger?
Here.
Council member Wong?
Present.
And chair Ramachandran?
Present.
Thank you, we have four members present.
Chair, before we begin,
do you have any announcements at this time?
No announcements.
Okay, thank you starting off with item one approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting held on February 24
2026 and there are no speakers on this item
Thank you that was a motion made by councilmember Brown seconded by councilmember Unger to approve the draft minutes from the
committee meeting on February 24th
2026 on roll council members Brown. I
Unger I long I and chair Ramachandran. I thank you item number one passes with four eyes to accept the draft minutes from February 4th
2026
Reading in item to determination of schedule about standing committee items and we have one speaker that signed up for this item
The staff you are ready to present at this time. We have no changes to the pending list that I'm aware of
Is there a motion? You have a give a speaker
Council under comments requests. Okay, then to the speaker. Okay, missus calling in the name that signed up for item number two, missus sada, ola
bala
Thank you. All names have been called chair. We just need a motion. Okay, is there a motion?
second
Thank you
That was a motion made by councilmember Unger seconded by councilmember Wong to accept the determination of schedule outstanding committee items as is
On roll council members Brown aye under aye Wong aye and chair Ramachandran aye
Thank you. Item number two passes with four ayes to accept the pending list as is
Item three receiving informational report on measure q 1 why was extreme fiscal?
Necessity declared without open discussion and what the time are sorry what the timeline is for making changes to this practice
Following the grand jury report when can the Biennial Audit report be expected three?
What will the process be defining extreme fiscal necessity with?
Measure Q and other stakeholders and we have a number of speakers on this item
Thank You counselor Unger anything you want to share before staff presents. Nope. I'm just eager to hear staff report great
Thank you to director
Good morning, everyone Brad Johnson director of finance
I will be providing an oral response to the questions asked by Councilmember Unger and I'll be flipping back and forth between them
As I as we move through so your first question was why is extreme fiscal necessity declared without open discussion?
What's the timeline for making changes? It's practice. This is related to grand jury finding number
2517 from the grand jury report
which the City Council added the extreme fiscal necessity clause to measure Q without open discussion public debate and
And we actually disagreed with this finding with the grand jury.
So we both at the, and our explanation was that as about measure was put on by the council,
we actually had an active and open discussion around the clause.
And as it relates to the enactment of this clause, we do have this at a council meeting
where we have a conversation about it.
And actually, I make a, I've made a presentation to you for the last probably four declarations
that we've done.
Where we have a conversation to talk about this.
This is always included in the packet in advance.
It is your prerogative as a council
for the measure to declare or not declare
the state of extreme fiscal necessity.
It's a recommendation that has come from staff
in the office of the mayor in the production
of your budget for the last four years.
But it is ultimately your decision whether or not
to declare it or not to declare it.
Should the council not declare it,
they have to adopt a budget that complies with the structures of those measures in full.
And traditionally, both neither the proposed budget nor the sets of amendments that come from council members
tend to do the work that would be required to adopt a budget without that necessity declaration.
So if there's a desire for measure Q or any of the measures to be fully,
We do not require a fiscal necessity declaration.
We should have that conversation sort of in anticipation.
My office, my department is happy to do that with all of you in the preparations of your amendments should the mayor's proposed budget not be in compliance with that at the front end.
I think we do have to present and adopt those findings.
There is always a staff report that explains our rationale.
Why?
Coming from us?
And again, the decision is ultimately yours.
Your second question on the report, and I apologize as I flip back and forth, following
the grand jury report, what can the biennial audit report be expected?
So we have commissioned, we do, I should say, audit, measure Q as a component of the city's
financial audit.
And we have gone through additional, we've looked for additional contract services to
do more detailed audits and presentations around from a fiscal perspective.
the city auditor's office,
I'm not sure if the auditor is here.
Oh, is responsible for the routine audit per measure queue.
They have completed one audit
and we have had some city auditor Houston,
if you wanna speak to it yourself,
staff will respond to that audit as per our AI regarding it
and we will work to ensure that we are in compliance
with the recommendations that are made by the city auditor
through that normal process
and we'll continue to follow up on that
as the city auditor does his duty to audit
that measure on a routine basis.
And so there are two, sort of, or three sets of audits.
There's your routine financial audit,
in which case we have had a clean audit
for the last many, many, many years,
which includes measure queue information.
There is a more detailed audit
that we're gonna be looking at doing
on the financial side to maybe provide
the additional scrutiny and a little more scope
around that as well, that's strictly a financial audit.
And there is the independent audit conducted by your city auditor, which goes through your normal audit process per the measure and
the administration responds to it per the AI that is jointly between the city administrator and
the city auditor as to how we address any findings that he may have.
And I'm sorry, I don't remember the specific timing of our last audit.
I know we have just gone through when I can remember doing it.
I don't remember the particular timing around it.
Your final question, what will be the process for defining extreme fiscal necessity with Measure Q and other stakeholders?
So we're in the process right now, as we received your report at your,
I think it was two committee meetings ago, which talked about compliance with the local measures.
We are in the process of trying to develop a plan to come into compliance with these local measures.
Measure Q and all the others, that is a key desire of ours.
The measure does not require you to come up with a definition.
However, as a component of the review of your consolidated fiscal policies and
then the adoption of your prior measures, we've had a working definition and
we're going to look to formalize something in conjunction with the measure advocates.
I will be clear as I was clear at your last committee meeting when we presented on what would be needed to come into compliance.
definition and it would be the standard perspective from finance should not lock
you out of being able to declare it. We cannot adopt a definition that would not
meet our current circumstances and I know there may be some disagreement to
come about how severe extreme physical necessity should be. I would note that
your current framework which is the framework that was developed by prior
councils. I know we spoke with Councilmember Kalb's office about as well. My
predecessor and Roseman had detailed discussion was to cascade sort of three
definitions of financial distress. An adverse financial condition, extreme
fiscal necessity followed by a fiscal emergency to understand that financial
distress is not all one thing. There are gradations and we had defined extreme
fiscal necessity as sort of that second tier. But I want to make sure whatever
definitions we come up we have clear and bright line distinctions between stream
fiscal necessity and fiscal emergency which is the one that we have not declared.
We have not been in a space to declare and has much more severe financial consequences and we're not at that stage.
Certainly now, and we were not at in prior budget cycles.
So we're looking to develop your consolidated fiscal policy and bring back large amounts of changes in the fall.
And so that would be our timeline for looking at definitions.
Should we not be able to agree with definitions
to the advocates, we will, as staff,
provide you our best advice.
I'm happy to take any questions you have around that.
Thank you.
My preference is to go to public comment first,
but Councilmember Unger, since you've brought this item.
Okay.
Can we call in the public speakers?
Calling in the names that signed up for item number three
in no particular order, you can come up to the podium,
and please state your name for the record.
If you're on Zoom, please raise your hand
to be easily identified.
David Boatwright, Asada Olliballa, Kevin Dalley,
Mark Barish, Naomi Schiff.
I see you're ceding time to Brooke Levin.
And Brooke Levin, you'll have a total of three minutes
since you have time ceded to you.
Good morning, Chair Omichandran,
members of the committee,
city administration, and finance director.
Brooke Levin, former public works director,
co-chair of Measure Q,
the group that brought this measure to the voters.
After the city council approved it,
we worked very closely on it.
First of all, I wanna go to Mr. Johnson's first point.
When the city council put this item,
this ballot measure on the ballot,
I was at the meeting with Mr. Bliss, my co-chair.
At that meeting, at the 11th hour,
after all speakers had spoken,
extreme fiscal necessity provision that's in the measure
was added by council member Lynette Gibson McElhaney.
There was absolutely zero time
for any public speaking at that point.
The council was going to vote on it.
It was the last possible day the council could vote
to put a measure on the ballot for that March 2020 election.
That is what we're referring to in the grant,
that's what the grand jury referred to in the report,
that there was no public discussion on it.
Secondly, there's never been a definition
of extreme fiscal necessity when it was adopted.
There was nothing in the consolidated fiscal policy
at that time, and there was no other document
We had to reduce the amount of
budget for the next five years
to be able to meet any other
ballot measure that also had
this reference of what the
definition of extreme fiscal
necessity was.
It wasn't until June of 2023
when the council got their
packet on a Friday for a Monday
morning budget meeting to adopt
their council resolution that
that definition showed up.
We had never seen it until that
Friday when the budget came out
in a supplemental report.
The committee asked us to work on this definition, the committee said yes and directed the city administrator Mr.
Johnson to work with us.
It took until April 15th, 2025 for us to have the first meeting and
now the meetings have been derailed into this road map for fiscal recovery, which is also a good thing.
But we still have not got a definition or criteria for extreme fiscal necessity.
On the other items, the biennial audit report is overdue.
We're into the sixth year of Measure Q and we've only had one two year report.
And I will just say in defense of the city auditor, his staff has been cut and he has not been fully funded.
He needs to be fully funded, even if some of the money comes out of Measure Q to do this two year audit every two years.
That is an accountability measure.
Every ballot measure should have an accountability measure.
They have an oversight commission, which is the PRAC and the PRAC chair is here today.
You need to have this accountability.
How can the voters trust a ballot measure?
We have a crazy ballot measure on this ballot coming up for public safety and lots of other
things with no accountability and oversight commission that has no jurisdiction over anything
except to review or report as given to them.
And I know that was a citizen initiative quote unquote.
But it's really important to know that we have worked really hard to get this half billion
dollars of money into the city.
Thank you.
Kevin Dowley, predominantly I just agree with Brooke Levine.
Let's get things moving forward.
The auditor definitely needs funding to wherever that money comes from.
Looking forward to resolving some of the problems.
Thanks.
Good morning.
Good morning, all.
Thank you to the chair for bringing this matter to the public and thank you for all the work
you do.
I want to echo, oh, by the way, my name is Mark Barish.
I serve as chair of PrAC.
And I want to echo the points that Brooke made.
She said them so eloquently that I don't think I can
repeat them quite as well.
But really, I just want to draw a couple points just
to emphasize them, which is, to date, there still
is no very clear definition of what
extreme fiscal necessity is, how long it lasts,
how it's removed, what are the criteria.
We don't know, and we've been trying
to get those answers for a long time and indeed work on that together with you.
So that's one.
The other one that's very important is in the grand jury report, indeed.
There never really was a public discussion about it, going all the way back to the inception
of the ballot as Brooke laid out the exact timeline.
And as it relates to the biennial audit, it's true, the auditor's office seems to be underfunded
for this purpose, but six years is way too long to have only one audit.
So we are really overdue.
In my remaining time, I want to bring up a related matter, which is as chair of PrAC,
I have to say that the commissioners and I are struggling to stay on top of what's happening
because of this dearth of reporting.
And it's not just the topics of reporting that we're talking about now.
Owing to the short staffing in Public Works, the number of Measure Q reports has gone from
two years ago monthly reports from 10 to seven to five expected this year.
So we, with that limited reporting, which is really half as much as it was just two
years ago, it's incredibly difficult to know precisely what's going on and I feel a little
bit hung out here because I have a personal obligation as well as a statutory one to provide
oversight on the spending of Measure Q. Thank you.
I'm gonna take a little time to talk about crack. They have too much authority. Y'all
jump all over the police commission because of their abuse overreach. Crack makes decisions
that never come to counsel about trees. Last meeting I went to sometime ago, I stopped
going to the meetings. They were discussing putting a fence around the perimeter of the
the garden for the staff to protect their cause.
I leave the meeting and the fence is already up.
So y'all need to look at, they're the ones
that made the decision and came up with a plan
for Lake Merritt's vendors how to deal with them.
That wasn't their authority to do.
That should have came from you.
So going back to this,
don't go jump all over one group of people
and you let some people do whatever they want
with these committees, especially the Privacy Commission.
Financial management around, and let me say this,
who is gonna speak for the part of Measure Q
that has to do with the homeless community?
There's no voice for them around this.
These people are talking about parks,
but Measure Q also encompasses homelessness
and there's nobody representing their best interests
as it relates to Measure Q.
The Alameda County Grand Jury identified
poor stewardship of Measure Q funds.
Although funds were designed for improvements,
audits revealed the city did not have
a baseline to measure effectiveness
resulting in funds being inconsistently used
for parks and homelessness services, okay?
And there's also some issues around
spending in action, lack of oversight, failed performance, equity concerns
related in the wrong use of of the funds. David Boatwright, District 4, I have one
simple question and that is any money ever taken out of measures to be used
for items in the general purpose fund? I've heard people make those comments,
I've seen things that indicate that might be happening and you say we've
We've not spent any of the money in these funds or done anything in the measures as
a result of this emergency that we have with the budget, but it sure sounds like there's
some money being moved around from these measures that's inappropriate.
Chair, that concludes all speakers on this item.
Thank you.
I really appreciate all the work that PRAC and those who helped organize Measure Q have
put into trying to not only get it on the ballot but maintain some level of oversight
and accountability.
And a couple of weeks ago in this committee we did hear a report on a potential roadmap
to compliance with these different measures.
Obviously there are more expedited steps that could be taken rather than a five-year gap,
And I think as we begin and embark on this year's mid-cycle budget process, hopefully
we will be able to make sure that more Measure Q funding and as well as the MOEs are directed
to that regard.
Last year our council budget team, which is actually all the members of this committee,
tried our best to reinstate some of that funding, for example, by reinstating about half of
the tree services division and some related services in the park.
We have a long way to go, very much admittedly.
But again, we are, I think, as council members,
I think we're very, very committed
to seeing what we can do to make sure that the money voters have
entrusted us with and the additional money
from our general fund that should be going into these measures
based on what voters passed is, in fact, allocated as so.
I had one question for Director Johnson.
So I was here on council when some of the earlier discussions
on the definitions came up and it was a little all over the place and I believe you met
with some members of PRAC and the coalition.
What is the status and do you have future meetings planned?
Absolutely and so I want to thank actually Deputy Secretary Monica Davis who's not, couldn't
be here today doing the heavy lifting on convening everyone around that.
So the desire to put in definitions was originally brought by a member of council.
There's a resolution in your budget resolution where we did provide sort of an interim definition of these things.
We haven't formalized them in your CFP, but the initial definitions came
from the finance department at the request of a council member.
We are still going to be actively meeting in advance of our fall fiscal policy update
with the measure advocates for measure Q
and all the other measures around
what the definitions should look like.
And again, that's an active conversation
that I look forward to continuing to have
with the measure advocate so that we can present something
to you in your fiscal policy update in the fall.
So that's an active segment of work.
People who are involved in that right now
are sort of knee deep in budget preparation,
if that makes sense right now.
So once we sort of come on the other side of that space,
we'll be looking to re-engage with all the metro advocates
on definitions, what they might look like,
along with other updates we may need to our CFP.
Thank you.
And of course, regardless of definitions,
I do strongly believe it's the will of this current council
to put as much money back in as allocated,
but in the meantime, very much look forward to,
well, sorry, I have a question.
If these definitions are coming in the fall,
what would we be considering in the mid-cycle budget?
So the measures themselves do not require you
to have a definition in order to declare one.
That is a element of how these are set up.
They did not contemplate in their inception
that you define the item, they require us to justify it,
which we do in the staff report that accompanies them,
but they do not require a definition.
You have working definitions that finance has adopted
that has provided for you and you have adopted in the past.
you could choose to use those,
but should you decide you do not wish
to use those definitions, you do not have to.
We do not have to include them in a resolution.
We could strike them from a resolution.
It would not actually impact your ability
to either pass or not pass
a declaration of extreme fiscal necessity.
Conceptually, you've already adopted one
for the biennial as well.
So conceptually, we may operate under the paradigm
of the one you adopted with your biennial budget.
However, it's been our practice for transparency and clarity
to bring back a resolution and report with every mid-cycle
so that it's seen again in the public
and it's really clear what's being done
by the body at its action.
Is it at all possible to expedite
the discussion of definitions in our CFP,
even if it's not the whole CFP that we adopt part of it
with these definitions before we vote
on the mid-cycle in June?
I'm happy to have those conversations on the front end with the advocates.
I would say, I have to be circumspect, a little circumspect about it.
We have a real capacity issue in terms of doing that work prior to getting the budget through, which is why we had a full timeline for the CFP in general.
I will say, I'm happy to meet with them and continue to have that discussion.
I do want to sort of, and this is just me setting expectations.
I'm not sure with the sort of breadth of advocates
and that same measure, that same language,
multiple measures, coming to consensus agreement
on what that definition should be may prove difficult.
If this body wishes, what I can commit to you
is getting a definition that is the best expertise
of my department as to what it should look like
and a commitment to meet with them in advance around that
and any feedback or conversation we may have,
I can't commit to that, I can't commit to necessarily us getting to consensus before then, and I'm hoping, but I hope that we can.
So as a capacity issue, I'm happy to have some initial meetings this spring to try to continue to talk through this in advance of the adoption of your mid-cycle budget.
But I do think fall is actually a more reasonable timeline for us to get to a really solid work product.
Thank you, yeah, I would greatly appreciate if the CFP could be bifurcated to discuss these definitions ahead of time.
consensus can be made all the better as far as transparency in our trust with
voters goes that we're complying with things. And I know there's different
perspectives on to the extent that measure Q requires a definition but I
think regardless of that debate it would be in my belief the best practice for
transparency to have those definitions written down and agreed upon and voted
I think it's a very good time for us to take a look at it.
And I think it would be a very good time for us to take a look
at what's going on with council before we pass a budget if at
all possible. Councilmember Onger. Councilmember Brown?
Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, councilmember Onger, for
bringing, you know, requesting this report. And just always
grateful to everyone who shows up to kind of speak on behalf
especially as you know new council members and so I'm I guess I'm really
interested in question number two around the bi-annual audit you know in
reviewing the audit that took place in 2024 there were a handful of I think
upwards of 13 to 15 recommendations that were asked of the administration I guess
I'm I am curious when the next audit will occur and then also what is the
status of some of the detailed recommendations especially around like
how the funds are actually being utilized. Good morning Michael Houston
the city auditor. As far as the status of the biannual audit of Measure Q, it's in
our current work plan for 2526. We plan to launch it before the end of the fiscal
It's taken quite some time to get the contract executed for that one, but we do plan to launch
that very soon.
As far as the status of the recommendations, we're going to have our RFOO report very soon,
which kind of summarizes the statuses of all the outstanding audit recommendations.
We're still confirming those statuses, but we'll have a complete report very soon.
Okay. So I guess first question, we're using an external vendor to move forward with the
audit. Was that the same? Did we do the same for the 2024 one?
No. The first one we did in house, but we've really just fallen behind on all of our recurring
audits. So measure M, measure N, measure Q, measure D, measure D, the other measure D,
measure C. We're going to have to rely on the outside contractor to help us catch up.
I see. Okay. And then for the follow-up on the recommendations, I know you said very soon,
could we expect that before we, I guess, pass our mid-cycle budget? What would be your submit?
absolutely, yeah, so that record the recommendation follow-up report that is
That we're gonna publish very soon probably next as soon as next week. That's as of the period through December
2025
And then yeah because we do it semi-annually right one for the period ended December and the other for the period ended June
And it will summarize the measure, all the outstanding audit recommendations but including the Measure Q
outstanding recommendations. I will say, I came in a little late, but I think that the last audit recommendation in
Measure Q was around the required financial reporting for the ballot measures which, yeah, the state requires that.
And I believe based on the preliminary status reports from the administration that that one might be
implemented because they've executed a contract
Excellent. Okay. Thank you
Thanks
Thank you for putting this on the agenda as well. I
have a couple of questions I'm reading the grand jury report and a
couple of the
questionable expenses that the advocates had had concerns with include included
that measure Q had been used to pay for three police officers salaries high
level human services employee including the director that was charged to measure
Q there were capital expenses associated with Union Point Park that were charged
to measure Q and then there were also it looks like six point four positions in
the city administrator's office at a cost of 3.9 million
that were also possibly billed to Measure Q.
I'm just wondering, since you all have to develop
a response to the grand jury report,
and I haven't had the chance to review it,
but what is the commentary on how Measure Q
was used to fund these types of positions?
Absolutely, so I'm not, and I'm not the person
speak to all the items in the grand jury report, so I apologize. I would note that we do we did
provide a response as per the grand jury's policy. There is a formalized response. I believe and I'll
defer to the city administrator that it was presented to council before we delivered it to
the grand jury. I can attempt to go through and restate what's in that. I will note just to the
that's sort of the breadth of your questions.
We, on a compliance basis, do, from a finance perspective,
do try to, at the budgetary stage,
make sure that, to the best of our knowledge,
everything that we're allocating resources for
is compliant with the measures.
The language of the measures is a little bit complicated,
and it's actually spent a fair amount of time actually going
through them to make sure that we're doing them properly.
They're not super simple.
I would note on, for instance, on the homelessness side,
the city administrator's office is actually the entity
that administers a fair amount of our programming
related to homelessness.
So it's not necessarily that that's wrong
would come out of the city administrator's office
as a department because they do,
that's who does the work on large components.
And just picking that as a particular example,
if you have more specific questions,
again, I'm trying to point to the specific audit findings
So I could read it back to you,
but I'm happy to have an offline conversation with you
on that and or make sure that whoever the subject matter
expert is to that particular finding is there
to get you the answers you need council member.
When we developed the response to the grand jury,
it was an interdepartmental process
and that didn't all come through finances again.
I may not be the best person to respond to all of them.
Okay, and my other question is just around
it looks like the commission of homelessness
or on homelessness, excuse me,
is supposed to publish an annual report on Measure Q.
Has that ever been done or I don't know
if you're the person to ask or who,
do we have somebody from the city administrator's office
that sits with that commission
or do they just meet independent
of any sort of administrative support?
Through the chair to Councilmember Wong,
when you say they, who is they, I'm sorry.
Commission on Homelessness. Yes, so that Commission is staffed by two of our
teams that are on the encampment management team. So yes, you have two
staff members that support that. Okay, and do we know if they've ever
published that annual report on Measure Q? I apologize, I don't have that answer
right now. We can certainly bring that back. Okay. Councilmember, I will note that as of the
We have to bring in the
grand jury space.
The finding 2526 which was that
Oakland's homeless commission
has not met at the measure q
oversight mandated including the
preparation of annual report as
required by ordinance number
13584 in order to update the
duties of the commission.
And I would note that we agreed
with that finding at that time.
So I'm not sure if anything has
happened between now and then
for the report. When we declare extreme fiscal necessity, obviously it affects a lot of different
ballot measures. Do we sort of treat them all equally? Do they all get implicated in
the same way or do we sort of pick and choose more from one than the other?
So your adoption resolutions do have separate resolve clauses for each one of the measures
to make it really clear, and your staff report typically outlines sort of by how much,
which is not strictly required in all of them, but we try to be transparent and say,
you know, it's this amount, it's, you know, we're waiving it vis-a-vis,
I will give you an example, the measure Q amount is this far below, which is what we try to say,
and then we may say that, you know, the charter requirements regarding the city auditor staffing
that is, I'm sure that we're
not going to have as much
opportunity to do something as
this much below or one position
or two positions.
So we try to articulate
specifically what the variance
is to that, and in every budget
document there is a page
actually explaining how the
compliance, how far off are we
into waiving the maintenance of
effort, what the scope is, but
I believe our practice on
legislation is to do them all
specifically, should you not be
we have a lot of people who
submit it from the particular
resolution that does them, but
we do try to do one resolution
so it's really clear because
it's often across multiple
measures that we are not just
doing this in one particular
service space that is happening
for the reasons indicated and
adopted by council across
multiple spaces.
And then more of a statement
just building on what chair
Ramachandran said at the outset,
obviously we pass the budget and
we make these decisions but we
created with with the mayor's office and so i just want to uh... put out there
that it is the
the hope of
myself and and i believe some of my colleagues that we
work back towards uh... fulfilling the the voter mandates and i understand that
we may not be able to do it all at once
but that is a sort of our
broad my my broad uh... direction is to try and uh...
get back towards fulfilling them as best we can
for the report that uh... the city ministry approved that went to you to
I think that is the intention of the organization great
Okay colleagues to the author. Would you like this to be filed or go to council or if you I
Think we can just receive and file it here in committee. Okay
Okay, sir through the chair was that a motion made by councilmember Unger
Okay, sorry. Thanks
Thank you
That was a motion made by councilmember Unger seconded by councilmember Brown to receive and file this informational report and committee on
councilmember. I have one role.
that would be the one we have
for the number one item.
I'm just embarrassed that the
chief has the city all this
time with the volume of work
that he has to do.
We're about to call that item
right now we can call the next
item thank you calling in item
number four receiving
information a report regarding
OPD overtime and we have four
speakers that signed up for this
item.
Good morning chair and members
of the committee the writer
marshal fiscal services division
through 20 states overtime report covering the data through the second quarter, December 31st, 2025.
At the start of the fiscal year, council approved an adopted budget of 33 points to its million,
reflecting a 11.1 million or
25% reduction compared to the previous fiscal year for 2024-2025.
As of today's date, the department is authorized for 678 sworn positions.
with 615 positions currently filled, leaving 63 vacancies.
Of the 615 sworn personnel, 85 are off due to medical, military or
administrative leave, 17 are on modified duty.
In total, 102 sworn personnel, approximately 17% are off work,
are not fully deployable, which directly impacts overtime usage.
To better align overtime spending with the budget expectations, in November 2024,
the department took proactive measures and drastically reduced internal overtime by 20%,
which carried over into the current fiscal year, which equals a target of 8.4 million per quarter.
At the end of the second quarter, actual overtime spending totals 6.2 million,
$2.2 million below the quarterly target, which includes reimbursable overtime and salary savings.
Year to date, overtime is projected at $50.4 million,
approximately $16.9 million over the budget allocation.
After factoring in $7.5 million in third party reimburseables,
which these funds are deposited into the general purpose fund and are not returning to the department's operating budget.
In the 17.3 million in salary savings, the department is currently projected
to end the fiscal year with overtime under spend of approximately 8 million.
However, it is important to note that the salary costs associated with acting sworn
positions do reduce the salary savings and are not reflected in these projections.
These costs are estimated at approximately 2 million, which would adjust the projected overtime spend to about 6 million.
Additionally, the report includes supporting tables that display key overtime drivers,
budget allocation versus actual expenditures, the tracking system improvements in timelines,
and details on the top divisions contributing to overspending.
This concludes my portion and I'm going to turn it over to Chief Beer.
Good morning, Chair.
Good morning, Council.
So just for a summary from July 1st, 2024 to June 30th, 2025.
Within just four months, the OPD's overtime budget was cut from $44.6 million to $22.8 million.
That's a 51% reduction, including a 20% cut implemented by me.
Which required careful adjustments to the department's operations and deployment of resources to maintain the reduction of crime that we've been seeing for the last three years.
So for the original breakdown, the budget of $44.6 million,
was actually reduced by nearly 2 million to a new budget of 42.8 million. As stated before in
November of 2024 as I was the acting chief of police, I proactively reduced it by 20 percent.
That was all discretionary overtime was shut down. After that our budget was cut again by 20 million
ending up at 22.8 million. So that went from 44.6 million to 22.8 million. The current overtime
budget is $33.6 million which is more than $11 million or 25% less than the
amount allocated at the beginning of the previous fiscal year. So with that I'm
open for any questions. Thank you colleagues. If you're open to it I'd
like to move to public comment first. Calling in the names that signed up to
speak on item number four. In no particular order you can come up to the
podium and state your name for the record. If you're on zoom please raise
your hand to be easily identified. David Boatwright, Asada Olavala, Millie
Cleveland and Kevin Daly. Hi, Kevin Daly. I appreciate the report and I'm
disappointed by the amount, the number of years, number of quarters over and over
again we have police overtime. One of the biggest single officers, I think the
biggest single officer who's collected overtime was Lieutenant Dolan who made
nearly half a million in overtime is reported by Oakland side. He's
responsible for crash data and accident accident reports. In 2021, one way of
solving the problem, at least some of the overtime, is moving this reporting
responsibility over to Oak Dot. This was suggested in 2021 by the reimagining
public safety task force. The council actually supported that specifically
recommendation 59 which implicitly includes that suggestion. If you move the
accident reporting over to Oak Dot, I know they don't have as much of a
problem with their overtime. You also can put more sworn officers on the beat
where they belong. Accident reporting, police tend to report what code
violations are done. So for example, last week there was a death on San
Leandro Street in front of the Oakland Coliseum. Speed limit is 35 miles an
hour there. It's a deadly speed. If the driver was traveling at the legal speed
that was an extreme risk of death for the pedestrian. If the person had been
traveling at 25 miles an hour, it'd be less of a risk of death.
Oak Dot's able to see this, understand what the real cause of the accident is, and not
limit themselves to violence.
David Boatwright, District 4.
Three questions.
And this has been talked about before.
Why is overtime reimbursement go to the general purpose fund versus the OPD's budget?
I think that would help reduce the overtime problem a little bit.
The OPD officers on leave are now 108, and they were only in the 80s not long ago.
It's a curiosity I would like to hear more comments on.
And there's nothing in the overtime report.
It's a very good overtime report.
It's more detailed than I remember in the past.
but it doesn't say how many of these special events
that the police are having to deal with
because that takes their time away from working
as city employees in their primary jobs.
Thank you.
Millie Cleveland with Coalition for Police Accountability.
I have to admit I'm a little disappointed
in the OPD informational report.
The report seems to lack any critical analysis
as to the root causes for the excess of overtime costs.
This is particularly alarming when Oakland side reports
that one officer received $490,000 in overtime
and the city can't find records detailing what he did.
The general employee unions authored
a detailed research paper entitled Smarter Public Safety.
Significant cost savings that could directly affect staffing
overtime costs are contained in the report. There are at least 38 sworn
officer positions that could be civilianized in internal affairs, IT,
public information, training, recruitment, background checks, and performance
auditing that were approved by City Council for transition to civilianized
staff. Why hasn't the City Administrator moved on this and why are there no
council members asking for status reports. The city auditor has recommended
creating a better system for monitoring and approving officer over time. Why
hasn't the city administrator moved on any of these recommendations? Negotiations
with OPOA are occurring right now and these recommendations should be
proposals on the table. Clearly this council could benefit from hearing from
other voices and not limit your information from the very department
that has created the problem. For the past decade, I'm sorry that's already
been said I'm not gonna repeat, the department lacks a full computerized
system relying on paper-based tracking which leads to inefficiency and
managing overtime and controlling overtime causing us to spend more on
overtime. Since 2019, 51% of added overtime hours have been attributed to
shifts, extensions that officers can initiate without prior management
approval. And this came up on Google chief so it could be wrong and so
correct me if that's that's not right uh so um oh I gotta go answer the phone oh that's my son
thank you uh chief and please take into consideration our whatever our police
officers are here for reports to powers that prioritize their time so they can get back to
the visit their business of protecting us thank you for your service oh these ladies too they're
busy working thank you for your comments share that concludes all speakers on this item
thank you I have I'll let my colleagues go first but I do have a number of
questions councilmember Brown excellent okay thank you so much so thank you for
the detailed report I have a handful of questions I guess my first one just for
clarity went in on the table on page 3 when it says special enforcement does
that also mean special events excellent sorry yeah that's a great question and
I was brought up probably one of the public comments so for the special
resource section or special operations division they're two separately the
special operations division includes anything from sideshow enforcement
parade celebrations that we do not reimburse for these all add up and then
not even to take in an account major events like the NBA all-star weekend
And where the police are called in to do traffic control, extra enforcement, high visibility,
security for other events related to that that are not special events.
You're talking about FIFA World Cup, just previously back in, we just had the Super Bowl.
And that was all out of OPD's budget, we were not reimbursed for that.
So you're looking at multiple different events where OPD's requested to actually staff and
be the primary role driver or organizer for a lot of these events.
Some parades are third party reimbursed, sometimes we're not fully reimbursed for that.
We have an event that's coming up pretty soon this week that there's a lot of city partnership and collaboration with.
We just had a meeting this morning.
That's going to be a lot of OPD overtime.
A big portion of that event's going to be repaid by third party.
However, there's other resources that will drain the OPD's budget, not just on straight time,
but also on overtime where we're actually contributing officers out of our budget to sustain that.
So those are just a few, and it was one of the things that was brought up here.
So the root cause, obviously, is lack of staffing.
But the actually continued burden on the police department where we're actually taking on more events.
Then if you actually look at, now you got the Oakland Unified School District, their police department has been since defunded.
We've taken all of their calls and all that are burdened for the Oakland Unified School District.
We haven't been reimbursed from them or staffing has increased there as well as the Oakland Park Rangers.
They have also been defunded in years past and we've taken over their responsibility.
So that's just a few of the additional burdens the police department takes on.
That's not actually part of the budget that does drain some of our resources.
Excellent, thank you.
And so that actually leads me to my next question.
And I guess it's more of a like being forward thinking.
But with the dollars that we were able to allocate for police academies and bringing
on new officers, what is your, maybe, how would you estimate potentially that overtime
would go down as we're bringing on new officers and, you know, I guess at what point do you
think that we would start to see a decline in overtime?
Well, unfortunately, now we're playing catch-up, right?
We've had academies canceled in 2025, or one academy at least canceled in 2025.
And as we're making the rush, it's obviously very competitive to bring new police officers online, and we're not going to lower our standards.
So it's very difficult recruiting nationwide.
It's something that not just OPDs actually experiencing.
But prior to today's meeting, I took a look at myself, right?
This is very concerning to me.
I live here.
I've raised my family here, these are my tax dollars as well.
So for that question, it's not just as a resident, but also as the police chief and a member of the police department.
It puts the community as well as the officers at risk, because the women and
men of this department are working hard every day, in many cases, on their days off and double shifts.
If we continue the path where we're going right now, which has improved,
we actually have officers that want to come back to OPD more than we do that are leaving.
The attrition rate slightly lowered.
However, we are in that sweet spot now where there's an opportunity for many members of the department to retire.
Thankfully, they're committed and they're remaining past their retirement age, but that is a concern.
So, if we factor in that piece and offsetting more recently,
the officers coming back to include the next academy that graduates in May and then additional academies to follow.
It's going to take us multiple years to get back up where we're at.
So if you look back at 2009, we had 800 police officers and our population was 390,000.
Now look at it this year, our population is 443,000, that's 53,000 more people.
Multiple different police agencies that were working here within this jurisdiction that we've taken on.
That's a 23% reduction in staff, because we have 185 less officers.
But yet, a 13.5 increase in the population.
So you're talking about a population increase and the reduction of other law enforcement agencies that we've now burdened, and we have to actually deploy resources.
So when you're looking at the population increasing four times the size of Emeryville,
almost the same size as the city of Alameda.
And we're not gaining their police departments.
In fact, we're losing our own officers.
Our staffing levels have been reduced by 23%.
You have to rely on overtime.
But that does concern me.
As soon as I took over in December of 2025, I immediately sat down with Director Suddle,
as well as other executive staff, and like I said, I even saw it as the assistant chief and
try to proactively, when I was the acting chief, reduce it by 20%.
We looked at it, and then we did see some irregularities, and we started to act on that as well.
But overall, the root cause is we're not properly staffed, and this is nothing new to the police department.
We see city departments across the city are experiencing the same thing.
They're doing more with less.
even the city auditor who did an audit for the Oakland Police Department in 2019 followed up in 21 and 22.
And we did not disagree with any of their recommendations and some of the points that were brought up in public comment.
We do need a tracking system and we are going to have the first
installation of the tracking system in June 30th of this year we're working on the contracts.
But it's going to come in phases and it won't actually be fully implemented until December 2027.
And that tracking system is a necessity so we could properly supervise who's doing overtime, where they're doing overtime, and how they're doing overtime.
Not just fiscally being responsible, but just for the officer wellness piece and to make sure that they're getting the adequate rest.
Thank you. And I think you answered my next question which has to do with the digital
over time
Being a new digital system for tracking and that that would
First be implemented June 30th of 2026
Yes, council member. That's the first phase
But however, we will not get to the full product for that platform till December of 2027
And can you explain that a little bit more?
So it's, as far as the technology piece, the first iteration of it comes online June 30th.
Did you want to, I'm sorry.
I'm going to turn it over to the expert right here.
Good morning, everyone.
Deputy Director Kiana Suttle.
So OPD is currently working with City ITD on a new scheduling system known as Telestaff.
The contract for that system is anticipated to be complete by June 30th of this year.
Once the contract is complete, then OPD IT will continue to work with City ITD
in order to implement the overtime tracking system piece.
But as Chief Beard said, it's going to be in phases.
So the initial phase has to do with scheduling, and then phase two,
That's when the department is going to work with ITD to implement the overtime tracking.
But again, the overtime tracking cannot be implemented initially,
because of other operational needs that have to occur.
And operational needs within OPD or?
Correct, because Telestat is a scheduling system or an assignment managing system.
And so we are working with the vendor to be able to add a module that can track over time,
but that module is going to have to interface with the city's Oracle system.
So it does take time.
I see.
And so I guess that brings me to the other point.
I think all of us probably read the article from the Oakland side,
where it was detailing just officers that have
really accrued quite a bit of overtime.
So I guess my question here to the chief
or even to the city administrator,
how will we, well first off,
is that information accurate?
And then also how, given that it's going to take
until December of 2027 to actually implement
this online scheduling tool for efficiency,
what is our plan to ensure that we are controlling over time?
No, that's a great question.
Do you mind city ministry if I can go first?
Great question, and again going back to December into January, that was one of my concerns.
Especially once I was briefed that the system wasn't going to be online for some time.
So immediately establish the high low list, which is published every other week,
which all the commanders can look at and identifies the people within the department professional and sworn staff.
They're getting paid the lease, but more importantly those that are getting paid the most.
So that way we can identify them right off the bat.
has been a previous special order that was put in place and then before the
Oakland side article actually was released we were discussing strategies
to address certain concerns which are my concerns again I'm a taxpayer here we'd
also actually had a scheduled meeting with the city auditor to kind of go
through the previous audit to get me up to line and up to speed and our concerns
that we'd already identified so there is a policy in place there was a previous
special order. We met with the City Auditor. I can't speak to the
details of the investigation, but I can tell you an investigation has been
initiated. In regards to the information that was in the Oakland side article, we
were already analyzing that prior to the article being released. It was a concern
of mine right off the bat. In addition to that, by mid-February, and we'd already
been working on an order directly from me to kind of seal everything up to make
make sure there's more accountability for the commanders to ensure that everybody is
being audited biweekly from the officer, Sergeant Lieutenant, all the way up to the chain and
there's more onus on it now by the command staff to follow up on that and be able to
back brief me.
Okay.
And then I guess maybe my last comment, I know a public speaker mentioned how we should
be inquiring around, you know, how I think previous councils, even my colleagues here,
all inquired about just some positions that you know necessarily doesn't
doesn't need to be done by sworn officers but I know that administrator
deputy administrator Davis is going to is working on our policy directives that
we passed during the budget cycle and so hopefully we'll be getting a report on
kind of the status of some of those key positions whether or not like what would
to be the timeline to transition some of those roles.
But I'm not sure if you have an awareness into, or an update on any of that.
So we've been in the process of transferring sworn duties over to professional staff within the police department or
members of other departments within the city itself.
I will say that we're going to have to keep analyzing those on a case by case basis.
Because what we're learning now is other departments want to give them back because they're more efficient while they're assigned to the police department.
Those conversations are going right now for say the vehicle abatement unit.
We are committed to making more positions as professional staff and
most currently thankfully through commitment with the community and some of our business partners.
We're bringing back to that program which is also a non-sworn program which I'll be presenting later on tonight.
Public Safety Council, which will be nine positions to free up sworn officers, whether that has to do with certain type of report taking
answering calls for service
case management assisting with criminal investigations follow up phone calls, so
I think when it comes to like a report out with regards to transitioning certain sworn staff over
We just have to be really specific about it because some of those actual positions that we had re-imagined
Are under discussion as to coming back under the umbrella of the police department. Excellent
Thank you so much. She really appreciate your leadership. Thank you councilmember
Okay, I will pass it along but just on that last point
That councilmember Brown made about the civilian staff, so I think one of the questions
I know she was referring to but I really have is not about
of the new rules which is an ongoing conversation and I know that your
department is working on it but there were five positions that in our budget
that were that are civilian rules the fleet compliance coordinator police
intake technicians and those are total of five positions it was four FTE intake
tax and one FTE fleet compliance coordinator that in the budget we were
restored funding for hiring, and those positions
were civilian, but hadn't yet been hired.
And our goal in this was being able to put
those five sworn officers who we were told at the time
were not on any kind of modified duty back to patrol
by being able to restore funding for this.
So my question, I'm not sure if it's for you
or for Ms. Marshall, but what is the status of those five?
because five is better than nothing as far,
five is something to be back out on the streets for patrol
rather than doing a desk job
that's coded as civilian work.
Okay, I'm gonna turn it over to Director Suttel
who's the director for Bureau of Services
that oversees our professional staff
and then I can follow up for any additional questions
in regards to this one.
So for the intake technician,
that's assigned to the Internal Affairs Bureau.
So interviews occurred and from those interviews,
Three people were selected and are currently in the background process.
And the department is going to work with HRM to host another recruitment for
that particular position because the eligible list has been exhausted.
So again, three of the five positions individuals are in the background process right now.
As far as the fleet coordinator, OPD is working with City HRM
the specific, the job specifications for that particular position. So that is
with City HR right now to revise the job specs. Thank you, that's great. And the
person that is occupying that position, right now it actually is someone on
modified duty. So it's not a full duty police officer that could work the
streets right now. But until the job specifications are revised and we're
able to begin that recruitment the position is being filled by a sworn
personnel on modified duty. Okay thank you. Also that position actually I don't
know why I don't think the microphone likes me, there we go, that position was
actually staffed by a professional staff non sworn member. Unfortunately we
recruited him to go into the academies from Oakland he was working for the city
of Oakland so when that position opened up the officer that's on light duty is
He is not deployable into the field, not to get into specifics.
But his injuries are severe enough that he cannot really be used anywhere else.
So one of the other rules I had when I came back was to just reduce the number on Advent leave,
which we reduced over 50%, and then bring people back that were off on medical with certain restrictions.
So the position he fills is tailor made.
He has the knowledge of how to deploy the vehicles and where they need to go, just city wide,
just downtown within the police department.
So it actually brought a police officer back to work
that would have been otherwise sitting at home.
But that position was filled until we recruited
the professional staff member to join the police academy.
Thank you for the update.
I will pass to my colleagues in a second.
But you had mentioned the point, which
was one of my questions about those reduced
on administrative leave by 50%.
So the number in the report of those on medical, military,
and admin leave as of writing the report is 83,
how many are currently on admin leave as of now
and how many were you able to get off
since you began the role?
So the numbers fluid, I gave a presentation last week.
Initially it was around 38 people on admin leave.
I was able to reduce that down to 16.
Currently it's at 18.
Thank you.
out of, I think 38 to 16 slash 18 is a great number,
what was done in such a short period of time?
Because it'd be great to keep that moving.
Well, investigations were continuing,
as well as I changed the method of how it was assessed.
The deputy chief of internal affairs and I sat down,
we went line by line, we looked at each case on its merit,
and if we were able to bring back people to work,
and it didn't pose a risk to the city
or the police department then we brought them back to work under in some cases under additional
supervision or they were assigned duties within the police department or they returned full duty
thank you you're welcome um councilmember Unger then Wong thank you um so i want to dig into the
tracking issue a little bit more i i don't have any problem with um spending money on overtime as
long as we can prove that it's being used to to make the city safer and 2027 is is a long ways
out. You are already using Telestaf correctly? We are. The Telestaf version
we're using is really antiquated and not, it's not up to speed for what we are.
It's not the industry standard. It's also a challenge when you talk about such a
large department where we're tracking different assignments and reporting
pieces. So we have to get to a point where we're able to track people real
time and understand where they're being deployed and the resources, so how it affects the department
as well as the individual officers as well.
And so these officers are getting paid, even though Telestaf and Oracle are not communicating.
So they are somehow putting in a report or a timecard or something for the overtime hours
they work.
Why is it not possible with that timecard or however they're doing it to also say what
they did during that period of time so that's the part so since I took over
that's why I created the special order to reinforce the original departmental
general order regards to overtime but also the reporting piece that when the
officer works whether the overtime slip itself gets lost they still have to
email their immediate supervisor which shift they worked and how many hours
they worked then the couple with that the additional overtime and a follow-up
peace is the new order that I sent out to reinforce that and to put the high
and low list so we can track it every other week and then it's now the
responsibility of the commanders up to the captains and deputy chiefs depending
on the rank to ensure that they're auditing those until we can get that
telestaff online this again is not just an issue for the police department I've
spoke to other directors within the city over time and over time tracking has
has been a problem for years and it's nothing new.
It seems to become highlighted more every couple years for certain different reasons.
But speaking with the fire chief and other directors, the reliance in overtime is across the board.
And it's specifically when you get into certain departments where your
expertise could be very limited as to who could work those events.
And then when you have a broad range of opportunities, whether it's to work patrol as a watch commander or
you're mandated to work for a side show, so there is mandatory assignments for other things as well.
So it's some of the over time's not even discretionary for the person working it.
We're trying to get to a point right now, I mean I think it's important to understand.
We should be, we had a staffing study that says we should have 877 officers just to maintain
basic services of what we're doing right now.
That's answering calls for service.
We have less than 500 operational.
If you want to do better and we provide the best possible police services to what this community deserves, you should have about 1,200 officers.
The fact that we continue to drive crime down for the last three years with the resources we do have is a testament to the women,
that work every day at the police department and also our other city departments that are
partnering with us but it's also leveraging technology so although technology will help us
reduce that over time it's not a replacement for the human being shown up through your door but
ultimately to go back to your question it's more supervision we have to until the technology gets
We have to hold our commanders responsible for ensuring the supervisors are monitoring and properly supervising the officers all the ways from the bottom to the top.
So again, I don't have a problem with the overtime. I just want to know how it's used.
So if we have what we can't have is an officer who we say, oh, we know he worked 100 hours overtime, but we don't know what he did during that time.
And so it sounds like you have a system now, which is cumbersome and email based and hard to track.
But are we at a place now where we would be able to know what every overtime hour was spent doing?
For each officer under the commander, yes. It's still difficult. It's very laborious.
There's going to be mistakes because there's the human element in there.
I'm looking forward to the time we actually have that platform in place because there's going to be mistakes.
Um, but previous to even when, before I took over as the interim chief, chief Mitchell
was able to identify what he thought was another concern.
And what they did is they went back and dissected it at all.
And there wasn't an issue with that one particular member, however, it's going to take that effort
on the command staff level.
It's going to take the chiefs and myself to make sure the captains are getting very into
weeds with it.
Am I comfortable with it?
No, like I said, I live here, I'm raising my kids here, I'm a tax payer so it affects me.
I want to have the best systems online for our department to be successful so we can properly track it.
Am I confident that there's going to be more oversight and more actual digging down into to know where the officers are working, where the overtime's coming from?
Yes.
Again, I mean, I understand that, you know, we're waiting on the on the new Telestaff module and and I but I am heartened to hear that at
Least now even though it's cumbersome even though it's difficult even though it's a pain in the butt
You would be able to tell us what each over time hour was spent doing because presumably
When an officer is assigned to overtime, we know why we're assigning that officer to that overtime. So we should be able to then
retrospectively say why we assign that officer
Absolutely, and then so for the portions that you're talking about are really more specific to
Special events, right? So you're talking about parades
sporting events
Other type of like the discretionary events the discretionary overtime is only allowed now when we're starting to see a spiking crime in a particular
area what we're doing for now did the overtime that's
Automatically approved is if patrol is not fully staffed right then those positions are going to be authorized right off
The bat because you need officers on the beach to answer the calls for servers. Those are easily
easily tracked
where
The where the confusion can come in is when you you have a lack just use an example
You have a lack of a supervisor
So you have to pull another sergeant from another squad that goes to another part of the city who's going to report to another
Lieutenant and he's going to work in that area and then the very next day
He ends up working sideshow or then he ends up working for the vice so you have different commanders
So that's makes it what's very difficult to track the new platform will help us track that but now it's
One at the order that I gave out in February is that they have to submit an email to their supervisor
So their supervisor can track what they're working on over time and in addition
The finance office is actually highlighting which officers are the highest paid and which are the lowest and then that
Triggers the captain to make sure that they can report to the deputy chief or ultimately to me as to what hours they're working
Well, I appreciate all you're doing to try and track this during this time while we're waiting for the new system to come in
So thank you for all of that headache. Thank You councilmember
Thank you through the chair
Thanks for this report and I absolutely hear what you're saying on the understaffing crisis, you know that I've been
Working as a partner with you on this issue because I just think it's absolutely a crisis
Nonetheless, you know things like that Oakland side report are concerning and one thing
I just want to understand because the way that this report is written I thought was a little bit confusing so
Just to clarify this statement
So this
Paragraph says despite this progress year-to-date overtime expenditures through QT Q to excuse me exceeded the fiscal year budget by sixteen point nine million
After accounting for $10.6 million in identified savings, the department's net overtime spending
is projected to result in an underspend of $8 million.
I just want to confirm that what we're talking about is that, because there was $33 million
budgeted for overtime that were projected by the end of the year to actually meet around
$25 million, if that's an $8 million underspend, but that's driven really less by not the
the fact that we're actually doing less overtime,
but the fact that there's salary savings
and the reimbursements, is that correct?
That's correct.
So I think one of the community members,
their public comment actually highlighted it.
So the third party overtime, we get reimbursed,
but not the police department.
That money goes to the general purpose fund,
which isn't accounted for for our budget.
And then in addition, what's also not accounted,
that we're accounting for is the salary savings,
the lack of officers that,
so you're actually saving money
by not having police officers and paying for them on overtime.
And unfortunately, this has been a formula that's been in place since I started back in 1997.
And the city saves money by being understaffed,
because you're not paying for a full, fully burdened police officer with benefits.
You're paying for overtime.
So what we're doing is we're reporting back out to you on the salary savings per the officers that are not filled,
but plus also the third party overtime that does not go back to our budget.
Okay, that's that's helpful. I will say that I was rating a 2021 city auditor
report and it was discussing just the progress on addressing the overtime
recommendation that were that they were made and it was even back in 2020 I
think was the original timeframe for this IT implementation that is now set
to be complete by 2027 and I know there's technical technological challenges
all over the city, not just OPD. This is our whole city could modernize. But I do want
assurances from both the city administrator and you yourself that that timeline is not
going to be further delayed, that this tele-staff implementation is going to be is going to
be here completed and implemented by 2027 per the report.
councilmember so the initial audit was in 2019 with follow-ups in 21 and 22
again it's going to be the first phase comes online June 30th of this year but
all the other phases we can't guarantee that because it's reliant on city ITD as
well to do their piece as well and to pay for the the the rest of the phases
to be to be upgraded so right perhaps city administrator can you comment on
that on the city IT part? Through the chairs to Council Member Wong. So yes we
are committed to try to make sure that we can achieve the deliverable of this
project have it implemented by the timeline. Again this is a technological
improvement. I think the one variable that we have is the fact that the
implementation of Oracle in it of itself is a significant challenge. So in your
budget process, no surprises, but there probably will be a request for some
improvements on the Oracle side, but I don't know what at all the vendor would
have to reconstruct to fit into this antiquated financial system that we have
here in the city of Oakland, unfortunately. So commitment to the fact
that yes, we're going to hard charge and just try to make sure we can get this
thing implemented in a timely manner, but that's one variable that I have to be
honest with you all that's something to keep in mind that may cause some delay or not.
Okay. Sounds good. We'll keep on checking in on this. And then, you know, as you know,
I was trying to get this scheduled to public safety and I acquiesce because I recognize,
you know, OPD's time is valuable. But one thing that I want to see built into these
reports and I want to actually see a supplemental is this is addressing it mostly from a finance
and management point of view.
I also have concerns around the amount of overtime that is done from a public safety
point of view, especially actually for officers.
We know that once a certain level of overtime is achieved, it actually increases the likelihood
of use of complaints.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police actually have these thresholds where
basically officers, you know this already, but just for the public's awareness, officers
They should not be doing more than 16 hours in a 24 hour period.
They shouldn't be doing more than 60 hours per week because it really, beyond that, enormous
risks accrue for the officers who are doing this level of extreme overtime.
So I do want to have a supplemental report that actually has the number of personnel
that are exceeding those thresholds due to overtime.
I think it's important that we have that on an ongoing basis and see if we're starting
to drive that number down in terms of personnel that are, again, exceeding these dangerous
thresholds.
So with that, I'll make a motion to accept the informational report with the supplemental
information.
Are you receiving and filing in committee, as is typically done for this?
Yes, that's right.
and filing it and then also for the supplemental report and then for that to be included on
ongoing basis since this is a regular report.
Councillor, are you referring to the next report to have the information?
I would like it actually for this report as it comes to, as it's filed and then sent to
full council.
If it's received and filed as it's done for this, it doesn't go to full council.
I see.
I see one of these reports come to finance and they received it well
But if you want extra information a which I have done in the past
I've asked for it in the next report that comes to this committee or in an email or in a public memo
Okay, why don't we because I don't want to have yet another discussion on this
We have it you said it via a public memo chair
Through the chair, can you be more specific about what the ask is?
Just so I'm tracking.
Yeah.
I would like to see a supplemental report going forward that also includes basically
the number of officers that are exceeding these thresholds that are set by the International
Association of Chiefs of Police, where essentially officers should not be working, the general
guideline being no more than 16 hours in a 24-hour period and no more than 60
hours per week. So I'd like to know when our due to overtime how many officers
are exceeding those thresholds. Would it be possible that we follow our own
departmental general order which could be more restrictive? And that is fine if
you actually have a more restrictive general order then let's go with that.
Because the general orders are already set in place whether it's more
And I don't know if you know
whether or not we're restricted
if not right now at the top
man I can't remember but it's
already agreed upon.
To the departmental general
order okay.
And through through the chair to
council for long is what I've
also heard is just an
informational memo that can be
shared about the implementation
here's what you know there is
pertinent information that will
be helpful for this body to just
stay informed about where we are
Thank you. I have a couple follow-up questions. So as far as the number goes, it seems like
14,000 has been spent in Q1 and Q2, which is a little less than half of the
33,000 allocated for this fiscal year. So does that mean we're projected to be under budget
on overtime this year?
No councilmember. I mean we're we're less, but I can't commit to that either. I mean
Just to give you an example if we have a civil unrest incident and there's a protest all of that over time is not budgeted
Either so I mean it really depends on the state of the city the state of the country
and
Although I've canceled all
Discretionary overtime we still have to maintain a negotiated settlement agreement
So there's going to be overtime that's going to come up with related to use of force investigations internal affairs investigations
meeting
Standards that are that are posed upon us by the courts, but are also the industry standard. We should be doing anyway, so
It's not just
understaffed on the professional side or the sworn side
but we're also understaffed on the professional side.
So whether that's public records requests,
everything else that comes into play,
those things are not budgeted.
So as far as a forecast, operationally,
it's going to be very difficult because I don't know what
the future has in store for us.
But I do know there are special events coming up just in that
alone, but I'll turn it over to Director Sutter.
So to answer your question, based
on current projected spending and then factoring in salary
savings and reimbursable overtime,
Yes, we are projected to underspin by eight million dollars.
But as Chief Bier said, you can't guarantee it.
That is based on current projections.
Thank you.
And Chief, you just mentioned that you've
canceled discretionary overtime.
OK, great.
So that means if it's not a mandatory situation,
like a call out for several officers because of a homicide
has been called or those type of situations,
if it's just someone that would like to extend their time,
that's not possible anymore?
That's not possible.
So one of the different, like, give you an example,
case reduction in CID.
So officers cannot just arbitrarily
start working overtime and close out cases on their own
without having approval through the chain of command.
We cannot run violent suppression operations
unless there's really a vetting all the ways up through the top.
And in some cases, I actually reached out to the city administrator before we deploy resources.
We look at the actual data and where the complaints from the community are coming from.
And thankfully, we have had some funding to address human trafficking.
For instance, there's $700,000 that's broken down to two years for $350,000 a year.
That is managed and analyzed by multiple different groups.
that's an additional, that doesn't need to be,
that's not, I would say discretionary,
that's actually driven by the area captain,
as well as the community, but when you're looking at,
say, robbery suppression, again,
unless the captain can't deploy units on overtime,
unless that's approved through the chief,
as well as the city administrator,
and they have to justify as to why.
What would not be again would be to your point if we end up arresting someone that's wanted for a series of robberies.
That will have to require a call out so investigators would come or a homicide.
Those would create over time for investigators to respond.
Also critical incidents, so if officers in the field respond to a homicide and it's like an hour from the end of their shift.
They're not just going to say, hey, it's midnight tonight, I'm clocking out, I'm gone.
they're expected to extend their shift
and finish the call for service,
but it's only for critical incidents.
Thank you.
Just two more questions.
I think you did explain this,
but are there any caps on overtime?
A certain number of hours,
or is this something that will be implemented
in a new system?
So at the end of the year,
or at the end of each pay period,
And you can't work above a certain number of hours over time.
So the departmental general order does state that you have to have a rest period.
So as long as you're adhering to the rest period and the departmental general order, you can work the overtime.
That's going to cap it naturally, you cannot just work 20 hours straight three days in a row.
Now, I know that's one of the scenarios that was brought up and I can't talk about the investigation.
But there are nuances there that are not discussed where when you look deeper into certain things,
you can see why that could happen, whether someone's on vacation and they come back in to do backfill.
And that's, again, not just something that's unique to OPD, that's for a lot of other departments within the city.
So that is why sometimes it could appear that there's no cap.
But, you know, for certain things, again, I can't speak for specific cases, but that's
where the vetting piece comes out and the oversight and if there is an issue or an allegation,
then that's what the investigations will actually dissect.
Thank you.
And the very last question, I have raised this in previous overtime reports that have
come to finance, but the answers just haven't been clear.
It's pretty clear when it comes to overtime spending
on ceasefire or in certain OPD districts, all of that.
But there's some that still confuse me,
like the overtime for training.
Is that not something that's already budgeted in
to the cost of academies or other related things?
It's consistent, and it's not the biggest amount
of overtime spent, but it seems like one
that could be controlled.
So for training, it's not just the police academies.
Training could also be your four-hour qualifications,
your patrol procedures, or any other type of required event.
I have canceled and has been previously canceled
by the city administrator's office
that would not attend any training,
unless it's mandatory and absolutely required.
But in the past you would have to, if you, say you work dog watch,
and you have to do your four hour call, then you're going to have to either back fill for
your four hour call and be paid the overtime piece, sorry, qualifications.
I'm just using it as an example.
Or if you need to, training sometimes has to utilize because we're not fully staffed in the academy staff itself.
So you have to bring other instructors in for vehicle operations, DT,
defensive tactics, even I was a prior instructor myself for
missing persons and some sex crime stuff.
So although my overtime sometimes, when I was a lieutenant and
sergeant doing that, it was typically done on straight time.
Other instructors have to come in and it's paid for on overtime because the academy just like the rest of the police department's not fully staffed to include the in-service training staff.
So sometimes they have to bring other, because there's only two people that are in the in-service training for the entire department.
Okay, thank you.
You're welcome.
Great, so there's a motion on the floor to receive a file and is there a second?
you through the chair to councilmember Wong just for clarification this is a
motion to receive and file this informational report with the request
to staff to provide additional information on the number of personnel
that are exceeding the specific thresholds due to overtime in the next
quarterly report okay thank you with that motion made by councilmember Wong
second by councilmember Brown to receive and file this informational report with
the request of staff to bring forth additional information and for the next
to make a motion to the board
to approve the next quarterly
report on role council members
Brown.
I hunger I long I can share on
the ground and I thank you item
number four passes with four I
supersieve in file this
informational report and
committee moving on to open
forum calling in the names that
signed up to speak in no
particular order you can come
up to the podium state your
name for the record or raise
your hand on zoom it to be
easily identified missus out of
this overtime. I am tired of repeatedly having the police department come and do
a report. You have some work to do. Your work is how do I budget for
unforeseen circumstances related to not only the police department but any
department for unplanned spending reserve budgeting because there are
going to be occasions where you're going to have overtime not budgeted by the
police department and that was brought up. How do you create the system? You
can't keep coming here with the police department giving you a report. It is
your responsibility. How do we create and we have to have a system that says
once you have a budget, no matter what it's called, you can't go over that
budget without following certain procedures. That has to be put in place.
So how are you able to spend $490,000 over time for one officer with somebody not interceding to say this has to stop?
Thank you for your comments Miss Olibala.
David Boatwright, District 4, I'll say initially that I'm not against spending on the homeless.
but it would be very helpful for the city to provide a report detailing where the hundreds of millions of dollars on the homeless
has been spent by year and by spending category, i.e. services to the homeless, housing, cleanup, movement, and whatever else there is,
to determine what the city can do to more effectively fund the homeless and make progress toward its housing objectives and not go backward.
The other item is if this new parcel tax passes in June,
it would also be helpful to understand
how the finance department allocates funds
to the objectives listed in the tax petition
without any meaningful guidance in the petition
other than 5% on administrative costs.
That's important because the city's taking 100%
of the authority for filling out what goes where,
and I think the citizenry needs to know.
Thank you for your comments, Mr. Boatwright.
At this time, Chair, all names have been called.
Thank you, this meeting's adjourned.