Good afternoon, and welcome to the life enrichment committee meeting of Tuesday, November eighteenth, two thousand twenty-five.

The time is now four twenty-one PM, and this meeting may come to order.

Before getting started, I will provide instructions on how to submit speaker cards for items on this agenda.

If you'd like to sign up to speak on an item, um, please fill one out and turn one in to 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 twenty-four hours prior to the start of this meeting time.

This meeting came to order at four twenty-one p.m.

and speaker cards will no longer be accepted ten minutes after this meeting has begun, making that time four thirty one p.m.

We'll now proceed with taking roll.

Councilmember Guile.

And before we begin, Chair, do you have any announcements at this time?

Thank you.

Um, I would like to begin today's item with uh agenda item four, the disparities and contracting study update.

And then we will proceed with the agenda as listed.

Yeah.

Okay.

Noting the changes made to the order of the agenda to hear item number four after number two.

Now, starting off with item number one, which are the minutes, there are no minutes to be approved.

Item two, determination of schedule by standing committee items and we have no speakers on this item are any changes from the administration.

No changes from the administration chair and none from my office I will entertain a motion second.

Thank you that was the motion made by Councilmember Guyos seconded by Councilmember Wong to accept the deter the determination of schedule about standing committee items as is on roll council member Guile Councilmember Wong aye and chair five.

Thank you item number two passes with three eyes one ex sorry one absent Houston to accept the determination of schedule outstanding committee items as is now reading in item number four receive an informational report from the city administrator on the status of disparities in contracting study conducted by Mason Tillman Associates MTA pursuant to resolution eight sorry eight nine zero five eight CMS including MTA's findings to date regarding disparities in the city's professional services uh procurement and construction contracting activities and the timeline on when the final report would be presented to the city council and we have four speakers that signed up for this item.

Thank you madam city clerk and thank you to everyone who is in attendance at today's meeting I've been looking at this item for much longer than I've been a council member and I just want to lay out a couple things of how I plan on structuring this item today.

We're getting started a little late so I will have to manage our agenda pretty tightly but I will give my opening remarks and then I will open it up to City Administrator Johnson to present uh the findings from the city side I will offer an opportunity for Dr.

Ramsey to provide comments and to answer questions and then we will hear from the public so I wanted to start by saying since the 2000s the city of Oakland has commissioned multiple disparity studies to be conducted by Mason Tillman and associates to identify potential disparities in contracting and purchasing that limit the participation of minority and women owned businesses.

The initial race and gender disparity study studied contracts awarded from 2002 to 2005 the city then commissioned a new analysis which was completed in 2017 and updated in 2019.

The updated 2019 disparity study reviewed contracts and some contracts that were awarded between 2011 and 2016 and found that African Americans experience statistically different disparities among prime contract awards and multiple sectors including construction and professional services.

On March 1st 2022 the city council approved a resolution authorizing the city administrator to award a professional services contract to Mason Tillman associates in an amount not to exceed $6000 to study the city's professional services procurement and construction contracting activities for the period of July 1st 2016 through June 30th 2021.

In May 2023 I requested an update regarding the latest study by Mason Tillman but staff reported that the study was not yet completed.

Now two years later I am again requesting an update on the study including findings and recommendations this is a critical issue for many in our community and I have concerns that the longer we wait there will be a need for another study that looks at data for more recent years.

So I look forward to a conversation about this update I don't think we can talk about public safety in the city of Oakland if the people that we need to be safe are not able to provide meals and food for their families and to provide jobs for the greater community.

So with that I will open the floor to is Councilmember Houston here.

So we'll need a motion I'll entertain a motion to accept I'm sorry to accept the the it's AB 2449.

To accept the emergency services uh circumstances so council member Houston we're hearing from the uh parliamentarian that you need to explain on the record your reason for utilizing um this the reason why I'm utilizing this is I'm gonna turn it right there to my eighty nine year old mother I had to come out here and take care of and that's why I'm utilizing this.

Understood thank you council member so I'll entertain uh the motion from the committee.

Second thank you we have a motion we have a motion made by council member guy seconded by council member wong to accept councilmember Houston's use of AB 2449 for emergency circumstances on roll council member guy council member wong aye and chair five aye thank you motion passes with three ayes I will turn it back over to the city administrator there we go all right sounds good Justin Johnson to the administrator so council member thank you uh just for the opportunity to speak so very briefly I did want to share that the city did receive the completed disparity study in 2024 uh subsequently um the city attorney's office did um seek outside legal counsel in short order to conduct a review of the methodology uh provide legal review and formulate recommendations uh based on the study's findings um there is an in-depth review of current case law and standards that the city must consider as well as tangible methods that we can and should uh implement there is a relationship between uh the research completed by uh Mason Tillman and our SLL SLB program and the goal is to take a holistic approach to really address the issues that you outlined um at the outset of this meeting uh we do plan to bring forward all of these recommendations in late January including any revisions to our SLBE program as well as the work being completed by the department of workplace and employment standards um all of these recommendations will be presented to council um in late january along with specific updates on the measures we have already implemented to address disparities in contracting and I do want to appreciate and acknowledge the esteemed Dr.

Ramsey who is here who can certainly speak to uh her work but that is where the administration stands today and I know you did ask for the timing of that which would be late January.

So to clarify the disparity study results were um analyzed by outside council.

Through the chair yes ma'am so what is coming in January the actual to through the chair the actual the recommendations themselves as well as um our outside uh legal review and the feedback that we've received but also there's a quite a heavy lift that's happening within the department of workplace standards that are recommendations that we can uh quite frankly implement sooner rather than later to address some of the disparities um that that we are seeing and so all of that work we want to present as a total package because we want to make sure that they dovetail very nicely we can move in one cadence as I suppose as opposed to being sort of offset and kind of despair um in some respects which would have been the case um had we done so sooner.

I I appreciate wanting to move forward um in a certain type of cadence versus a staccato way of moving um these these changes forward I will say I'm deeply uh disappointed that it's been several years since the 2000s it's 25 years since the initial um disparity study was conducted and I'm I need clarity on why we needed to have outside legal counsel but I don't know if that's something that we can discuss publicly or if that needs to be discussed in closed session but the I've been on council now for five years, but I've been working on trying to move this forward for much longer than that.

And I think minority folks in the city of Oakland deserve a lot more attention, respect, and appreciation.

This existed before you got here.

So I'm not, this is not about you.

Yes, sir.

It's about what are we doing to rectify the issues, and I just want to know what they are, because I don't necessarily have to take the recommendations, and there aren't necessarily legal rap ramifications if the council doesn't take action on those recommendations.

I just think that we are spending public dollars on these reports and we owe the public an explanation on what is you know coming from these reports.

Because if there was a reason that we needed outside council to review the work product, then it seems like it wouldn't make sense to continuously give a contractor an award to do this year after year after year if we are consistently having problems with that work product.

I don't understand the logic.

So I I guess that is all, and if there's no uh advice from the parliamentarian on what can be discussed, then I would and through the through the chair, if if if it's your pleasure, um city attorney Richardson is here and concerned.

I'm understanding.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you through the Chair Ryan Richards and City Attorney.

I just wanted to clarify that the um the fact that we the city sought outside expertise to help review the report is not in and of itself an indictment of the report whatsoever.

Um it's any disparity study is kind of the intersection of a statistical scientific study and application of the law, uh, right, whether it meets the standards uh of the law to institute certain types of recommendations.

City staff doesn't have that type of expertise in-house, our office doesn't have that type of expertise in-house, so this was really to help the city administrators' office manage this study and provide feedback.

Um the other thing I would note is that we're in particularly in 2025, but we have been for several years in a rapidly changing landscape when it comes to the standards for government agencies instituting DEI programs when it comes to the federal standards for their disadvantaged business enterprise program, uh, when it comes to Supreme Court case law around equal protection, so that's also added to the the time that it's taken for the analysis.

The the goal is to provide the council with options that will be meaningful, impactful, but also defensible.

It won't serve anybody's purpose if we the council if we bring recommendations to the council that are immediately enjoined or ultimately struck down, and that's so that's part of what we're trying to do is make sure that we have recommendations that will actually work.

Um, and so I just wanted to clarify that this is whoever had done the disparity study, whatever the disparity study had shown we would have needed outside expertise to help us interpolate it, analyze it, and bring it forward.

Thank you for that explanation.

Um if you could just stay here for a few moments and then um maybe explain to me, explain to the public why it's taken so long to get to this point.