The Life Enrichment Committee of the Oakland City Council met on January 13, 2026 at 4:02 p.m. to consider a consent agenda, the summer food service program grant, and open forum items. The meeting was chaired by Councilmember Fife, with Councilmembers Gallo, Wang, and Houston (excused for part of the meeting) present.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. good afternoon and welcome to the life enrichment committee meeting of today January 13 2026 the time is now 4.02 p.m. and this meeting has come to order before taking roll I will provide instructions on how to submit a speaker's card for items on this agenda if you're here with this and chambers and would like to submit a speaker card please fill one out and turn it into myself before the item is read into record online speaker requests were due 24 hours prior to this meeting this meeting came to order at 4 00 2 p.m speaker cards will no longer be accepted 10 minutes after the meeting has began making that time for 12 p.m with that we will now proceed to take roll council member gallo present thank you council member wang present council member houston is excuse and chair fife present we have three minute members present one excuse houston moving to council excuse me chair fife do you have any announcements for us today i do not have any announcements announcements we can get right into the agenda please thank you moving to item one approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting being held on december 9th 2025 and you have no speakers for this item i'll entertain a motion i'll second we have a motion made by councilmember gallo seconded by chair five to accept approval of the draft minutes of the committee meeting on held on december 9 2025 as is on roll council member gallo aye council member houston is excused council member wong aye and chair five I motion passes with three eyes when excused Houston to accept the draft minutes of the committee meeting held on December 9 2025 as is moving to item four determination schedule outstanding committee items which is also known as the pending list and you do have one speaker for this item okay before we hear from our public speaker I'll ask the administration if there's anything any proposed changes on the agenda no proposed changes okay what I have madam city clerk is that item three on a life enrichment pending list no date specific the fiscal year 2024 25 cultural funding grants we will withdraw that item the council already approved a resolution on April 14th 2025 regarding these grants so that is my only change and through the chair would that be would that be withdrawal with no due date yes thank you okay moving to our public speakers mr sada I continue to request that at some point the quality of life that's being impacted by our sanctuary city status and have a discussion on that. You just can't create an ordinance that's saying you're a sanctuary city and you have a lot of things coming up. You do talk about how you want your police not to be involved with ICE as a sanctuary city, but you don't talk about some of the economic and housing challenges as a result of being a sanctuary city. You don't talk about the fact that many of the people who are involved in being non-citizens have expired visas. You have 20,000 commercial licenses that were revoked by the California Department of Education because these people's visas had expired. You have over 250,000 to 300,000 licenses administered by the Department of Vehicles that have to be reissued because they were issued with visas expired. So have that conversation. I'm also concerned about the governor's budget. You have to have a conversation that the proposed budget last week by the governor is reducing housing and homelessness contributions by 56%. You have to have a conversation that the application for any child assistance from the government of this country is saying that you can't use certain words.