The Oakland City Council Life Enrichment Committee convened on Tuesday, June 24, 2025, at 4:10 PM in City Council Chamber. Chairperson Carroll Fife presided, with Councilmembers Noel Gallo, Ken Houston, and Charlene Wang present. The committee addressed seven agenda items, including evaluations, contracts, cultural affairs, Head Start, and a hotel acquisition for unhoused relocation. All votes were unanimous (4-0). The meeting adjourned at 6:16 PM.
Calling all council members to their seats. We're running a little behind, and I want to go ahead and get the life enrichment committee meeting started. So if there are council members in the chambers, please take your seats so that we may begin. Before taking roll, I will provide instructions on how to submit speaker cards for items on this agenda. If you're here with us in chamber and would like to submit a speaker card, please fill one out and turn one into myself or a clerk representative. No later than ten minutes after the start of this meeting or before the item is read into record. Registering to speak via Zoom is now due 24 hours prior to the start of this meeting time. Councilmember Guile. Sorry. Is that a present? Present. Thank you. And Chair Five. Present. Thank you. We have four members present. Before we begin, Chair, do you have any announcements at this time? No, I do not. Okay. Reading in item one, approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting of May 27th, 2025. And we have no public speakers on this item. Entertain a motion. Approval. Move approval. Second. That was a motion made by Councilmember Guyo, seconded by Councilmember Houston to approve the approve the draft minutes from the committee meeting of May 27, 2025. On roll, Councilmember Gaio. Aye. Councilmember Houston. Aye. Councilmember Wong. Aye. And Chair Five. Aye. Thank you. Item number one passes with four ayes to accept the sorry to approve the draft minutes from the committee meeting of May 27, 2025. Reading in item two, determination of schedule of outstanding committee items, also known as your pending list. And we do have one public speaker on this item. We'll hear from the public speaker. Mrs. Olabala. Real quick, uh, according to the budget of last year, you were supposed to have mergers of certain departments. You need to get an update on that because I don't think anything is really happened. Also, I'm concerned with the homeless situation. I see you moving more in a direction of homeless prevention, and you have no funding in this current uh proposed budget that deals with homeless uh and homelessness in terms of housing and necessary services and resources. You can't allude to the fact that you're gonna reach out to Alameda County. I don't think Alameda County is going to take that responsibility on totally. You have a responsibility to do something related to the housing services and resources of many of our veterans, our seniors, our disabled community, our foster youth, and many other categories of homeless, and particularly the majority being African American. Richmond just identified that 18% of their population is African American and over 57% are African American homeless. It tends to be a targeted group, and they're not getting attention from this budget.