Thank you.

Good morning and welcome to the Finance and Management Committee Meeting of Tuesday,

February 10th, 2026. The time is now 930 AM 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. If you're here with us in chamber and would like

to submit a speaker card, please fill one out and turn one into myself or a

clerk representative no later than 10 minutes after the start of this meeting.

Registering to speak via Zoom is now due 24 hours prior to the start of this

meeting time. This meeting came to order at 930 AM and speaker cards will no

longer be accepted 10 minutes after this meeting has begun making that time 9 40 a.m we'll now

proceed with taking role council members brown present council member ungar here long here and

chair ramachandran present thank you we have four members present before we begin chair do you have

any announcements at this time not at the moment thank you thank you starting off with item number

one. Approval of the committee meeting sorry approval of the draft minutes from

the committee meeting held on January 27th 2026 and we have no speakers on this

item. Move approval. Thank you we have a motion made by Councilmember Brown

seconded by Councilmember Unger to accept the draft minutes from the

committee meeting held on January 27th 2026 on roll Councilmembers Brown

aye Unger aye Wong aye and chair Ramachandran aye thank you item number

one passes with four eyes reading in item number two determination of

scheduled outstanding committee items also known as your pending list and we

do have one speaker that signed up

anything from no not this time thank you

members Mrs. Sada Olabala.

She's currently not in chamber so all names have been called.

All right I want to entertain a motion.

So moved.

Second.

Thank you we have a motion made by Council Member Unger seconded by Council Member Wong

to accept the determination of scheduled outstanding committee items.

On roll, Councilmembers Brown.

Aye.

Unger.

Aye.

Wong.

Aye.

And Chair Ramachandran.

Aye.

Thank you.

Item number two passes with four ayes.

Reading in item three, receive the Oakland Redevelopment Successor

Agency audit report for the year ended June 30th, 2025,

and we have one speaker that signed up for this item.

Good morning, council members and members of the public.

Pooja Shrestha, controller.

And I'm here to present the annual audit report for Oakland Redevelopment Successor Agency, or ORSA.

And this report is for fiscal year ended June 30, 2025.

We bring this report to Finance Management Committee each year to provide a brief update on ORSA's financial position

and also to provide you with an update on the auditor's opinion.

Just as a reminder, ORSA was established back in 2012 as the successor agency

to wind down the activities of the former Oakland Redevelopment Agency.

And as a result, ORSA's assets are highly restricted

and may only be used to complete remaining projects and to pay the outstanding debt.

ORSA's final debt payment is scheduled for 2041,

So the agency will remain in existence until then, and we will continue presenting the audited annual financials until then as well.

So similar to prior years, ORSA was audited by our independent external auditors, MGO, to verify the accuracy of the financial statements,

compliance with accounting standards, and internal controls.

and for the fiscal year 2025, the auditors issued an unmodified or clean opinion on the financials.

As of June 30, 2025, ORSA's liabilities exceeded its assets, resulting in a net deficit of $137.8 million.

This is primarily due to the outstanding long-term debt obligation that we still need to pay.

However, compared to prior year, ORSA's net position improved by approximately $11.8 million,

and this figure is expected to continue improving as the debt is paid down over time.

That concludes my update on the ORSA's financials, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, colleagues. Any questions, comments? Okay, we can move to public speakers.

calling on the one speaker that signed up for item number three missus

sada olabala all names have been called chair all right I will entertain a

motion to receive and file this so moved second thank you that was a motion made

by councilmember Unger seconded by councilmember Wong to receive and file

this informational report and committee on rule council members Brown I hunger

Aye.

Wong.

Aye.

And Chair Ramachandran.

Aye.

Thank you.

Item number three passes with four ayes to receive and file this informational report

and committee.

Reading in item number four, receive an informational report on fiscal year 2024-25,

quarter four audited results for the general purpose fund and selected funds,

and we have two speakers that signed up.

Thank you, Chair.

Chair members of the committee, Brad Johnson, Director of Finance.

Before you is our fourth quarter revenue and expenditure report.

You just heard your audit report for your Auckland rate development successor agency and

you'll subsequent to this item hear your information on your audited financial statements.

I want to note before we started on the Q4 that the data presented in all three of these presentations is consistent and identical.

There are different treatments of data when you look at our ACFER, these are your fourth quarter.

Typically this fourth quarter is a little bit more accessible in terms of how the general public consumes that.

But I wanted to know at our outset that the data you're seeing across all three reports is consistent with our audited year end numbers.

Today over in the course of our fourth quarter report, we're going to talk about the actions we took over the course of last fiscal year.

How our revenues and expenditures ended and again key takeaways as we move into mid cycle.

KTOP, WE HAVE A POWERPOINT AND WOULD BE HAPPY FOR YOU TO PUT THAT UP, PLEASE.

THANK YOU.

SO WE'LL NOTE THAT A LITTLE MORE THAN A YEAR AGO, WE WERE DEALING WITH A FAIRLY LARGE

AND SUBSTANTIAL FINANCIAL SITUATION AS IT RELATED TO FISCAL YEAR 2024-2025.

We had a low fund balance that was accumulated from the prior fiscal year.

We had implemented a contingency budget.

We had implemented a suite of balancing actions.

And as you will note here, we noted better than projected revenue performance.

And those four things combined to landing us in a fiscally healthy position in our general

purpose fund.

Let's talk about that fund.

Slide's not advancing, apologies.

There we go.

Your general purpose fund revenues ended at just over $815 million, which was 68.28 over

your adjusted budget.

The primary reasons why we ended above that was $24 million in a large one time transaction from real estate transfer sale.

If we aren't aware of that, that is the sale of the former Kaiser building to PG&E.

Our balancing measures included roughly $23 million of transfers into the general purpose fund from balances and other funds,

our internal service funds and our self insurance fund.

We increased past efforts to recover delinquent business taxes,

resulting in about $7.5 million.

There was a $5 million one time payment for the sale of the Coliseum.

And we received about $7.5 million in legal settlements, some of which are restricted in their proceeds and use.

Our expenditures ended the year at $742 million, which was $47 million under budget.

The key reasons for that are the city wise hiring freeze that we were in last year,

management of our vacancies, reductions in expenditures in public safety,

prioritizing using our non-GPF resources over our GPF resources,

limiting discretionary spending and delaying certain contract and grant agreements.

This ended with a year in operating surplus of $73 million and

And after all things considered, resulting fund balance of $16.87 million.

So that is the key number here.

That is how much in the black your general purpose fund was at the end of last fiscal year.

Again, I'll note again that our GPF revenues exceeded expenditures by again about $73 million.

The vast majority of that is due to one time balancing actions that were taken in the last year.

Revenues again ended $26 million over the adjusted budget and expenditures $47 million over.

And what this walks you through are those changes.

I'm going to turn this over to Jose Segura, a principal budget management analyst in our revenue bureau to talk through the details of our revenue.

Good morning. Through the chair, my name is Jose Segura. I am a principal budget and

management analyst in the finance department. The summary table shown on this slide displays

the revenue categories that make up the general purpose fund or GPF. GPF revenues in fiscal

year 2024-25 came in about $68 million above budget. The largest positive budget variances

seen in categories such as business tax, real estate transfer tax,

interfund transfers, and miscellaneous revenues are influenced by key drivers

that were highlighted earlier on slide three.

This one time where unusual revenues contributed to higher year end totals

and are not expected to recur at this level.

The categories with the largest budget to actual variances reflect these as follows.

Business tax revenues ended the year 9.6 million over budget

with enhanced recovery efforts on past due delinquencies contributing to more than seven million

real estate transfer tax revenues ended the year 19 and a half million over budget influenced by a

single transaction that generated over 24 and a half million interfund transfers ended the year

19.6 million over budget attributed to actions taken under the city council's declaration of a

severe financial event and a state of extreme fiscal necessity which temporarily suspended

certain fund restrictions and enabled one-time transfers into the gpf miscellaneous revenues

ended the year 14.7 million over budget these revenues included over 7 million in legal

settlements and a one-time 5 million initial payment related to the coliseum potential sale

on the negative side sales tax under performed for a second consecutive year and we will go over it

in more detail when we get to the dedicated sales tax page.

Transiate occupancy tax shown on the next slide.

Also continues to underperform due to recent hotel closures

and persistently low occupancy rates.

In the following slides, we will highlight some of the largest tax contributors to the GPF that show significant variances.

Real estate transfer tax, or RATT, ended the year at 93.2 million, which is 19.5 million, or 26.5% above the adjusted budget.

This also represents a 35.6 million year-over-year increase compared to fiscal year 23-24, which ended at 57.6 million.

While the number of transactions increased by 10.3% compared to fiscal year 2023-24,

most of the revenue increase is attributable to a one-time large property sale involving a building

and an adjacent lot valued at approximately $985.5 million, which generated $24.6 million in RETT.

business tax ended the year at 129.7 million which is 9.6 million or 8 percent above the

adjusted budget gross receipts reported by businesses increased by 2 percent compared to

fiscal year 2023-24 among the major categories residential rental properties recorded the largest

year-over-year growth however the primary driver of annual revenue growth in fiscal year 2024-25

was the city's enhanced recovery efforts targeting past due business tax

delinquencies which yielded over 7 million from past due amounts sales tax

ended the year at 60 million which is 3.7 million or 5.9 percent below the

adjusted budget Oakland sales tax receipts in fiscal year 2425 by category

were on average 3.4 percent below fiscal year 2023-24 each sales tax category

with the exception to business and industry, underperformed compared to fiscal year 2023-24.

The largest year-over-year decline occurred in the fuel and service stations category,

which fell by approximately 16%.

And with this, I now yield to Acting Budget Administrator Rena Stabler,

who will present the expenditure year-end results.

Good morning, members of the Finance Committee and the public.

Rena Stabler, Acting Budget Administrator.

This table shows a general purpose fund year-end expenditures by department and the over and

under spending and the relative variance to the adjusted budget.

Overall, GPF expenditures came in at $47 million, or roughly 6% below the adjusted budget.

As noted earlier, departments that implemented hiring freezes and managed vacancies contributed

to the overall expenditure savings.

The following table compares the year in spending to the quarter one projections.

At the top, you'll notice the Oakland Police Department shows the largest reduction with

expenditures 40 million dollars below its quarter one project projection in total year and gpf spending

across all departments was 136 million dollars lower than projected at quarter one

with that i'll hand it back to our finance director brad johnson

thank you rena as i alluded to earlier at the end of the day our total resources available in the

on the general purpose fund are $16.87 million.

That number is arrived by looking at our year end result, net of the encumbrances,

restricted legal settlements, one time resources required for the bonus that was paid to city workers,

and final carry forward numbers for the end of the fiscal year.

So again, this is a major turnaround.

I don't want to bury that lead from where we were projected to be this time last year and where we actually ended 23-24.

It's a major correction to bring us back into the black.

We're reviewing the status of your reserves.

The city is compliant with our general purpose fund mandated emergency reserve.

We are at $73 million, which meets the 7.5% of the general purpose

fund resources line as required by your consolidated fiscal policy.

We are not required to put money aside too, but

I will note that the balance of your vital services stabilization fund is at zero.

This is the fund we would normally tap on during a economic slow down.

We're not required to put money aside given the current circumstances, but I will note that that is at zero.

One we have a required reserve that we have to retain due to our amortized OMERS reserve, and that is at its policy required of 2.36.

Your total reserves are at $66.17 million.

I want to note the results for a number of other key funds that you should be aware of.

Your Measure HH fund, which is our sugar sweetened beverage tax fund,

ended just barely positive with about $100,000 in balance.

Your self insurance liability fund ended at a positive number at $23 million,

largely due to reduced expenditures out due to settlement activity over the course of last year.

Your affordable housing trust fund ended in a negative position.

This is due in part to transfers out from the general purpose fund, but also to a reallocation of resources

related to your development impact fees,

which previously had been only in the affordable housing trust fund,

being separated into their own key funds, which are 1871 and 1872.

Both of those funds have positive balances, but

the reallocation of that cash did result in a negative balance in this particular fund.

Your measure BB and F funds, these are the local option funds that relate to transportation purposes,

ended in a negative position of about $15 million, along with your state transportation and

gas fund ending about negative 2.5 million.

These negatives are primarily not cash negatives, they're mostly due to the fact that we have capital projects budget against them.

Some of these funds haven't been spent yet, but at the current train, if we obligate all those funds and

count them as spended, they would be in negative positions.

Your measure Q, parks, maintenance, and homelessness fund ended at a positive $6.5 million.

Your LAD ended at a positive $2.5 million.

We ended up with a positive value of $8 million in your equipment fund and a near zero value in your facilities fund.

Key takeaways from where we ended,

23, 24, sorry, 2024, 25.

While we ended with a $73 million operating surplus,

The net effect of your fund balance was to increase it by about $3.5 million after accounting for obligations.

Several, if not everything, that drove this operating surplus were these one time reductions that were made given the city's fiscal circumstances.

And while those were necessary and responsible for us to take, they are not actions we can continue to do into the future.

We need to continue to work to correct our imbalances between revenues and

expenditures on an ongoing basis.

That ensures that we have ongoing resources to support our ongoing expenses.

And we should continue to be fiscally prudent to ensure our long term fiscal health and sustainability.

As we go into the mid-cycle budget process, we will note you have a number of key continuing

pressures relating to the rising cost of PERS contributions, healthcare and insurance.

uncertainty around actions taken at the federal level, our June 2026 revenue measure.

How we get back to restoration of our ballot measure MOEs, and that's the subject of a later presentation that you'll hear this morning.

Our equipment and facility needs, and I know the city administrator would want to hide the key,

specifically that second component that we have deferred maintenance across our facilities that we do need to address.

And we have another number of funds that are historically negative who need their balances resolved.

We do have opportunities though.

We should build on our revenue collection practices.

We have achieved a lot of the progress we made over the last year with discipline spending.

We need to continue that practice.

We are starting in a positive position, which is always better than starting behind the eight ball.

And we had a successful bond sale, which does allow us to use capital funds to make key investments that hopefully will lower costs and

provide key infrastructure and services.

that I will turn it back to you chair to see if there are any questions you have.

Thank you I think this is a fantastic symbol of where we are headed as a city

when it comes to our city finances and really turning things around from the

previous few years you know just as a reminder we're discussing up until June

end of June of last year and I know from June 30th onward to today we've made

significantly more progress as well so look forward to seeing those audited

numbers in the near future I completely agree that we need to stay the course

there's a lot of work to do I am particularly invested in addressing what

voters have asked of us and making sure we restore MOEs for all ballot measures

all the city agreements as soon as possible I know we have an item later

today discussing that. I'm thrilled that we're still able to keep a certain number of reserves

per our policy. There's clearly more that we can continue to do on this regard to make sure we're

saving up for rainy days, respecting the intentions of voters while maintaining core city services.

I did have a couple of questions. And again, you know, some of the positives on the revenue front

are we understand one-time transactions but I remember reading in the report that even taking

that massive one-time real estate transfer out of the question we still have a net positive when it

comes to those expenditures which I think is noteworthy as well a couple of quick questions

when it comes to the, on slide 14,

there was a chart that talked about

how much, what our fund balance is.

And it's 16.87, starting from the 86.91,

taking out various things, legal settlements,

one-time bonuses, carry forwards,

which left us with $16.87 million of a positive balance

to move into the next fiscal year with.

However, on slide 17, it says it's only $3.56 million net effect on the fund bonds.

Could you explain the two numbers and which one we really, when we think about the upcoming mid-cycle budget,

which number is the one that we have to explain what's a positive balance left over that's usable in the general fund?

So the positive balance left over that's usable is that $16.87 million number.

That is the actual balance.

If you remember the 3.5, the 3,005,6 number is sort of the change in the flow after we accounted for reserves last year.

So we're noting sort of the delta of where we went last year to this year.

Net of reserves, a little bit of a more complicated number.

The key number I would focus on in terms of, if you're understanding where do we sit at the end of the fiscal year, is that 16.87.

So again, net effect of fund balance is a combination effect of both the actions that took,

the prior year number, and the restrictions and unrestrictions and changes in those other items like your encumbrances.

The number that you really care about as to where your ending position was is that $16.87 million number.

Great, I'm glad it's the higher number we have to work with rather than the lower one.

I have a couple of other questions and I'll go to my colleagues.

Wanted to understand the positive balances in the non-general purpose funds.

There was a slide that showed a positive balance for measure Q and LAD.

And I wanted to get a sense of where those are coming from.

Were they previously unexpected or did we know we'd have those balances?

Absolutely.

So the positive balances in Q and LAD are primarily due to underspending,

primarily in the parks, in the space of parks maintenance.

That's what the largest component of both those funds is used for.

That should be addressed, and it's being I know addressed by OPW through hiring actions.

So a lot of that is actually as we hire staff, those will be drawn,

will be one drawing down those balances and having a more balanced number on the ongoing basis.

I know that's a process that we're engaged in right now and we'll be looking at it in terms of your budget for the coming year.

So it's primarily underspending due to personnel.

That's the key driver there.

Got it. Thank you.

Two more questions.

So there was a slight, and again, I know we're only talking up until June 30th of last year.

There was lower than predicted revenues in parking enforcement.

And I know there's been a lot done since then.

Do we have a sense of where we are today in comparison to last year?

I would say I don't have numbers on us right now.

I'll be happy to report this in the Q2, and I don't want to speak hypothetically as to where we would sit.

I do know that's a key thing that we're continuing to focus on, ensuring that, whether it be from taxes or from parking,

Every dollar collected that is collectible by the city of Oakland that is due to us legally, we are bringing in.

So parking is a key focus area for us along with what we've done with business tax.

Thank you, and when is that Q2 report coming?

We would expect the Q2 likely in March.

That's great, before the budget process.

Correct.

One more question. So we have this positive balance and just in the interest of comparison, what was that number the end of the fiscal year prior?

That 16.87 million ending, what was that the year before if you have that with you?

Yeah, that number, I don't have it on me right now, that number was negative.

I can very clearly tell you that was not a positive number at the end of the space.

We were in a negative position and the actions that were taken by this body

through it's and by, I should say, also by our city administrator and leadership of our departmental teams.

I don't want to understate the key effort that departments played in getting us to this space.

The $41 million change in directory in OPD was critical.

That's a key element.

Without that, this would not have been a possible number to balance.

So those actions by this body, by our staff, by our leadership administratively were key in turning what was a negative ending result into a positive ending result.

I will note 16 is not a lot of money.

You heard last, at your last committee meeting, that we have some standards that we're trying to hit vis a vis our rating agencies in terms of where we'd like to get this in the future.

But we would much rather be ending in a positive position than a negative one.

Thank you.

Apologies, one more question.

on the expenditure side, it's noticeable that OPD and fire have overspent less than in previous

years of their budget, but there's also overspending with the HR department. Is there any explanation

HR, so the amount of money, human resources, sorry, that's likely to be a very small.

So your spending number is only $110,000.

There's very little of HR that remains in the current fiscal year in the general purpose fund.

Most of it's in our personal action fund.

That's primarily tied to risk mitigation and some other activities that have to be general purpose fund funded.

Training and some other items.

So I don't know the specific drivers of that, but I will note for any of your departments where you have a very, very small budgetary number,

the ability to overspend or underspend by a really large percentage is kind of high.

Got it, thank you and apologies.

One more thing.

Legal settlements was one of the positive factors,

one of the one time sources that contributed to that positive balance.

Do we know what the trends are from then to now if we can expect positive legal settlement funds coming through or we don't have that information?

We don't have that on us.

I will note that we budget legal settlements based on a model that takes into account the accrued liability that we have an actuary run for us in terms of what we budget for that.

Our legal settlement history in any one year can vary from that.

It can go up and go down in a particular year related to settlements.

I will note the key driver that I am worried about in that fund is not the actual legal settlement line, but the insurance line, which continues to increase year to year to year.

The city faces the same pressure that many homeowners in the city of Oakland do regarding property insurance.

So we have a key element around that.

Liability insurance is really important in that space too.

And so that's a key element that we're trying to project and buffer against.

Okay, thank you, colleagues.

Councilmember Wong Unger-Brown. Thank you to the chair. Yes, I was also pretty happy to see this report. I did want to ask just about the timing of this report. I think last year the report was delivered in the October time frame. Were there delays in just generating this report? Can you explain why?

So one of the key things we want to do is we're focused on ensuring that the public have a clear and consistent message.

And it's really, we articulate and dispel confusion around what our numbers mean.

Normally when we deliver an October report, what we're delivering is an unaudited Q4 because we won't have completed the audit in Q4.

This year, given the great deal of focus that we've had around our finances coming out of that year, we wanted to deliver for you a fully baked, audited financial number that's consistent with your ACFER.

Your ACFER, when you get it, is always in January.

It's always audited.

But it's a little bit harder to read.

The fund groupings are different.

It's not quite as accessible.

The investment community tends to use that.

We wanted the Q4 to really represent that final year in result.

And so what I can say today is the report you're going to hear later is going to be the same information,

which is sort of a different data presentation.

And we wanted to keep that consistent for the Q4 this year.

Okay.

That's great.

Another question I just have is around, you know, the projection methodology that we've been using in one of the reports that we recently got.

one of the recommendations that came out of that was like that we tend to have over optimistic projections.

What I see from this is that that hasn't been the case.

And in fact, for like the real estate transfer tax that we had, the actuals was more even setting aside the PG&E, you know, transfer.

So I'm just wondering if that's been adjusted for, and then for some of the taxes, like sales tax that are down, are we going to be changing our methodologies moving forward?

So we take into account, I would distinguish methodology from data.

I look for, you know, Jose, who came and spoke to you, is our key revenue forecaster now.

I'll say I'm sympathetic to him.

It was my first permit job with the city.

He was actually doing a revenue forecast.

It is a little bit of a black box.

You're projecting things that are yet to occur based on things that have already occurred,

not even in the present.

So it is a little bit difficult to do.

I'd say we actually have pretty tight methodologies.

We want to make sure that, and our sort of direction to you is that total revenue line

ends up correct.

Our methodology is we're going to pick our best bet for each category and ensure that

we're able to make that bottom line number for you.

What that will mean is any particular category may go over or under based on

the available data, but we want to make sure that we achieve your bottom line

total revenue number.

It's effectively impossible to get everyone at a right within percentage,

but I would look at our total at the end of the day projections on revenue.

I think we've been pretty good and pretty consistent.

Obviously, there are things that have happened in our economy over the past year

that are not predictable, not forecastable,

and some dissent due to policy happening

at the national level.

We will adjust for those as soon as they become available

and knowledge with the hope that we don't overreact

to what might be happening,

because there's a danger of that too.

Sort of we jump at every new data point

or new thing happening and miss,

and over exaggerate those trend spaces.

But Jose is very good at ensuring

that we are keeping all of that in mind.

Right, okay.

My last question is just around this,

around $23 million of the balancing measures, the Interfund transfers.

Were those essentially the ballot measures where we

waived some of the spending requirements and put them into the general fund?

So they are not your ballot measures.

Okay. We are not allowed to,

our ballot measures allow us to waive maintenance of effort requirements.

means that the taxes collected by those measures they never come into the general fund that's not

how they work what it allows you to do is suspend the general purpose funds obligations in order to

collect the tax but the measure that comes in from measure d and c for libraries is only spent on

libraries doesn't transfer to the general fund what these transfers are in are two sources that

were restricted by council ordinances which are related to sugar sweetened beverage taxes

And the boomerang funds from your development, which typically go into your affordable housing trust fund.

They're not ballot measure restrictions, they were restrictions by this body by ordinance.

You did waive those and then the other transfers in came from funds that feed on the general purpose fund.

Your facilities fund, your equipment fund, your radio fund, your self insurance fund, feed on the general fund and other funds.

as we were able to we reduced the balances in those funds transferred it back to the general

fund and all the other funds that they accumulated from and in so doing we're able to generate more

cash in the general purpose fund i'll note that a number of other funds actually benefited from

those transfers too because they didn't just come from the general purpose fund that's another reason

why you see some balances in lad and measure q parks is because those were also beneficiaries

of some of the other transfers back in from the funds that are collected

centrally to feed them.

Okay. Got you. Thank you.

I just want to start by thanking our revenue division for their incredible

work in increasing revenue, increasing collections.

I know that was a huge project that is ongoing and it makes a real difference.

I know some people said there wasn't that much money out there to collect,

but you proved them wrong and I appreciate that.

know that that being said we have a lot more control over the expenditure side than over the

the revenue side and i'm curious maybe to the city administrator um that large reduction in opd

expenditures was that uh our overtime project i know we've been pushing to reduce overtime quite

a bit over the years so is that where that savings came from uh through the chair to council through

the chair council member uh unger yes sir that was a big um hit with respect to um the reductions in

in OPD spending, I issued a memo in December,

November, December of last year,

directing the department to reduce an overtime

by a certain percentage and they did hit that particular metric.

So yes sir.

And is that through a systematic process or do we have new processes in place that can continue that?

At this point in time, candidly,

we do not through the chair, Council Member Ungern,

at this point in time, candidly,

we do not have a systematic approach.

I know one of the things that this body had approved several years ago is to move forward with the technology improvement with respect to overtime.

We are now in a place where we're trying to figure out how do we scope that particular project so that we can move that forward.

But at this point in time, it is not a systematic approach that's in place.

It is very much a manual directive type of process.

I think we need to really keep pushing hard on that because as Director Johnson said, you know, we have 15 pages of data here, but really the entire ballgame is that one number of the police overtime.

And so we need to make sure that we are ensuring that the police are able to do their jobs while also keeping that overtime number down.

So the more we can do to systematize it, to computerize it, to track it, to make sure that the overtime we are using is efficacious, we need to really continue pushing hard on that project.

Yes, sir. Thank you.

Before moving to Council, sorry brief.

And then I will had some questions as well.

Yeah, just a quick follow up on Councilman Unger's point.

We typically hear the overtime report and finance.

Do we have a date when that's coming?

Yeah, I we discussed this,

I think in the rules,

but it's been scheduled for March 10th.

Yeah, so that should be coming for this committee.

Thank you.

Yeah, I believe it's March 10th.

Okay, so just a couple questions.

I think first off, I can't help but I wanna reemphasize

just the amazing work of the finance department

and the administration and really guiding

and directing us as a body to make it to this point, right?

Because we know that we weren't in this position

not too long ago, right?

So just wanna emphasize and thank you all

for all of your hard work.

And then also just a report that's just genuinely readable

to not only myself and my colleagues,

but also to the public as well.

So just really want to uplift and say that.

And then I really appreciated slide 18,

because as you're reading through the report,

you can't help but ask as we're approaching the mid-cycle,

what are some of the things that we should be

being mindful of, right?

And making sure that we're continuing

on this positive trajectory and what we should be looking out for.

So thank you for also putting those notes in there as well

that we should keep in mind.

And so I think that most of my questions that I have

are maybe more mid-cycle related and just making sure

that we're being mindful as we're preparing.

So the first thing that I notice is that in the self-insurance

liability fund, it was about $7 million in underspending.

and Director Johnson, I believe that during when we were working on the budget,

we made some changes to the self-insurance liability fund

and just wanted to kind of get your guidance and understanding

that with that $7 million of underspending,

what usually happens there as we approach the mid-cycle?

Correct.

So one thing we'll look at as we go into the mid-cycle

is the balance in all those funds

whether or not that balance is a reasonable number to carry forward given what we're foreseeing.

I will note that self insurance liability, the two risks are insurance.

And so that's a little bit of us forecasting the insurance market and where that's going and hedging its insurance risk.

The other one is litigation, and I think that is properly discussed in your closed session.

Sometimes we know about large items that are pending or may settle in conjunction with the city attorney.

Sometimes we know that they're further off and then sometimes we're surprised.

So I would love to have that conversation with you in close session about what's actually maybe pending on the litigation side.

But I will note for a public discussion, the insurance risk is the key thing we're looking at for this year.

Excellent, and then I recall that maybe we were discussing if there was a certain percentage that is a standard that we are aiming for.

Correct, and I think the key space that we want to have that conversation with you is in the fall of next year,

we plan to come back with financial policies.

And that is a great place for sort of setting a standard

for a discussion as to what is our normal practice?

What is our practice in hard circumstances?

And how do we want to accomplish that on the ongoing basis?

Okay, excellent, thank you.

And then the other item that also caught my attention,

and I'm just curious how we begin to move forward

on that one and how it's,

and refresh my memory on how it's funded.

So fund 1870 and how it's in a negative position.

And so I guess my question was, what action do we need to take on that?

And were there any impacts on staffing levels?

Because I thought perhaps maybe there were some employees that were being paid out of that fund.

There are employees paid out of that fund.

There are no impacts to staffing.

It's a year in number.

I will note that the key reason for that, aside from the one time transfer out,

is 1870 used to be the host fund for both your affordable housing boomerang funding from the

development agency and both your jobs housing and affordable housing impact fees. We have separated

those latter two categories out into their own funds, which both have actually very large positive

balances. And so part of what we need to do is look at some of the projects that are 1870 projects,

see if they're eligible for the other two impact fee lines

because together they're all positive.

So there's a little bit of maneuvering that we have to do in analysis.

This is an ongoing revenue source.

As we get more boomerang money in due to property taxes going up,

due to the redevelopment, successor agencies' obligations winding down,

as you heard from your ORSA report,

this fund will grow in its revenues,

and we can gradually recover this balance.

I don't think that this should impact staffing in our housing department.

Okay, excellent. Thank you so much. And then just one last question. I know we touched on OPD overtime, and then I was just curious if the report was factoring in reimbursable overtime?

It does factor in the reimbursements we received on the revenue side.

So they come into that services charge line and then that overtime line.

Mind you, we don't change OPT's budget when they get a reimbursement.

So even if they bring in $20 million in reimbursable overtime, you'll see that on the revenue side,

but you actually will see them still overspend by $20 million due to that line item.

So we don't adjust their budget based on the reimbursable, but we will account for it on the revenue side.

And it's one of the reasons, one of the things that we've done better on the service charge side on that revenue category.

Excellent. Thank you so much.

Okay, we will move to public speakers.

Calling in the names that signed up for item number four, Ms. Asada Olabala and Kevin Daly.

I would ask if there are any areas for which we are not looking at revenue coming in, but

we're not getting that revenue.

And I can tell you one example.

street vendors have to get a permit and that is not happening. The street food vendors

are all over Oakland with no permits and we're not getting that revenue. We also have, I'm

sorry city administrator, but we haven't had your annual report on your spending that you

allowed over $250,000. And the reason why I'm mentioning that is you not only have to

bring in the revenue, you have to have accountability for the revenue to balance, to have the balance,

checks and balances. So at some point you have to combine the two to make sure we are

getting the revenue, but we also accounting for the spending of the revenue. There is no way that

one police officer can get 490, over $490,000 in overtime with his job being is to review collision

reports. On top of that, the documentation to verify that that overtime was correct doesn't

exist. We can't have that. We have to have the documentation to support any spending,

no matter what you called it. Okay, so we have an opportunity to intervene on the lack

of business taxes when people are closing their businesses.

Example, today, the athletic club is closing.

They mentioned in a report this morning

that there's an opportunity to reopen the business, to reopen it.

Every business that is on the verge of closing,

you need to have some outreach component where they know they can exercise the opportunity

for us to try to help you as a chamber of commerce.

I don't know what you call it.

So we can save these businesses and in turn save out business taxes.

So somebody needs to get in touch with the business athletic group club and see what

we can do to help them bring the business back.

My time's up?

Oh, God, I had two pages of stuff.

But anyway, I talk too much.

Thank you.

Kevin Daly from Transport Oakland.

First a teaser, I'll bring up police overtime a little bit more in item six and some ideas

I have that could reduce police overtime, but I'll mention something Councilmember Brown

brought up, I think, with the litigation.

Of course, I can't attend the closed session meetings, but in general, there's a whole

lot of litigation related to traffic crashes, severe injuries and fatalities.

And those are often multimillion dollar settlements.

The delay in the bond sales put Oakland at risk because we're not paving at the speed

that we missed a year of paving.

will increase the risk of future fatalities and injuries and future litigation.

Good that we're moving forward now.

I'm a little bit concerned about Skyline Boulevard being years out.

That's a street that has had many severe injuries with multi-million dollar settlements

and at least one fatality.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's items that will be coming up in your closed session.

So think about this when you come up to closed session, that there are things that we could

do to reduce that risk in the future, even though we can't, you can't bring people back

to life.

ODOT in general can look at areas where injuries are reduced.

WE'LL TALK ABOUT THE PARKING REORG LATER.

HOPE THAT YOU LOOK AT WAYS THAT WE CAN REDUCE LITIGATION THROUGH

OAT DOT FUNDING. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMMENTS.

CHAIR, THAT CONCLUDES ALL SPEAKERS ON THIS ITEM.

OKAY. ANY FURTHER COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS?

GREAT.

COUNCILMAN BROWN?

I was going to say I'll make a motion to receive and file.

I will second that.

Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Brown, seconded by council member Wong to receive and file this information report in committee on roll.

Council members Brown.

Aye.

Unger.

Aye.

Wong.

Aye.

And chair Ramachandran.

Aye.

Thank you. Item number four passes with four ayes to receive and file this informational report in committee.

Reading in item number five, receive the annual comprehensive financial report and

the auditor's required communications to city council for the year ended June 30th, 2025.

And we have two speakers that signed up.

Before Pooja gets to the podium, again, I will note that the data you're seeing in this report is a different presentation,

but it's the identical data you just received in the prior one.

Good morning, Council members and members of the public.

Pujas Resta, controller.

And I have a brief report here today on the city's annual comprehensive financial report for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025.

And as finance director Brad mentioned, what you just heard was the Q4 activity from a budget perspective.

My presentation today focuses on the final audited results for the entire fiscal year of 2025 in accordance with accounting standards.

This report that we have here in front of you is also abbreviated as ACFR or also referred to as ACFR.

Sometimes you may have also heard it referred to as just the financial statements or the city's audit.

they all refer to the same document.

So the primary purpose of preparing the audited financial statements

is to ensure that the city's financial system is functioning as intended

and that we're accurately reporting the city's assets, liabilities, revenues, and expenditures.

While we all want to understand how the city is doing financially,

that understanding depends on being able to rely on the numbers.

That's why we engage our independent external auditor each year to audit the city's financial statements.

And I'm happy to report that our external auditors have provided a favorable or clean opinion on the city's financial statements for 2025.

Their opinion letter, which is included in this report,

affirms that the city's financial statements are fairly presented and consistent with the accounting standards.

So essentially it's saying that you can rely on them to assess the city's financial position

Before moving on to the numbers I want to mention that we have Benjamin Lau

Partner at our external audit firm MGO present here today in case you have any specific questions for him

So with that I'm gonna move on to the financial highlights

This first chart here illustrates the city's net position as of June 30, 2025, and how it compared to the net position in the previous five years.

As noted at the bottom of the chart, net position is defined as the difference between the city's total assets and its total liabilities.

Assets are everything we own, and liabilities are everything we owe.

So when things we own are worth more than what we owe, we see a positive net position, and the reverse is true as well.

So net position is a long-term measure that includes capital assets such as land and buildings,

as well as long-term obligations, including pensions, retiree health care benefits, and outstanding debt.

As of fiscal year 2025, the city's unfunded pension and retiree health care liabilities totaled approximately $2 billion.

So while these obligations will be paid over many years,

accounting standards still requires that they be reflected in the city's long-term financial position or the net position.

so due largely to these long-term liabilities the city reported city had been reporting

negative net position for many years through fiscal year 2020 which you see on this chart

as red in the first bar however beginning in fiscal year 2021 the net position has turned

positive and has improved each year and so all of the rest of the bars you see on the chart are green

This is a positive trend and it just reflects the city's continued focus on addressing the long-term liabilities.

So there are many factors that contribute to the net position results that we just looked at in the prior chart, in the prior slide.

slide but the biggest factors are the city's pension and retiree health care

liabilities which is why in the second chart we'll be focusing on that piece

unfunded pension liabilities are shown here in the green on this chart and

unfunded liabilities for retiree health benefits are shown in yellow as you can

see the pension and opeb liabilities um here are all in the negatives meaning these are things that

the city owes um to the employees as i've noted before these two liabilities total nearly two

billion at the end of the year 2025 so what this means is the city city's promises to employees

and retirees exceed what it has saved to fund those promises by almost two billion dollars

I do want to point out that over the past five years unfunded retiree health care liabilities

or the OPEB have declined as reflected by the shrinking yellow portion of the chart.

This improvement stems from policy actions approved by council with the support of labor

partners including the implementation of a retiree health pre-funding mechanism and also

benefit modifications for safety employees hired after 2018. These changes were implemented at the

beginning of the six-year period represented in this chart and as you can see their impact as

the yellow portions of the bars are shrinking over time. Pension liabilities which is the green part

of the chart however have proven to be more challenging to reduce and although the city

makes annual payments intended to lower these obligations investment returns below expectations

and a more conservative actuarial assumptions adopted by calpers have offset some of that progress

the third chart here

is the the annual financial statements it also provides a view of the city's finances that are

focused more on the current resources and don't consider the long-term liabilities or debt service

beyond one year into the future so this third chart here takes a near-term view to examine

changes in general fund balances over the past six years and as you may recall or as director

Johnson kind of talked about it in the earlier item. In fiscal year 2024, the city had experienced

a reversal in the fund balance growth due to the ongoing imbalance between general fund revenues

and expenditures. However, in fiscal year 2025, the fund balance growth has rebounded.

And as you can see in the chart, the fund balance for general fund has increased in 2025.

However, I do want to clarify that off this increase, a significant percentage-wise, the

fund balance for general fund increased significantly in 2025 by about 44%.

But I want to clarify that off that 44%, only 13% reflects actual improvements from increased

revenues and reduced expenditures.

The remaining portion is attributable to an accounting presentation change.

Under governmental accounting standards, certain employee benefit amounts are required to be

reported as committed fund balance rather than as liabilities.

In the prior years, some of these obligations were being reported as liabilities, but in

fiscal year 2025, they were reclassified as committed fund balance to align with the current

accounting guidance.

So if you look at the chart, the large increase in yellow portion represents this reclassification

and it does not represent newly available or spendable resources.

So in this chart, the more meaningful change is reflected in the increase in the purple

bar, which represents the unassigned fund balance.

This improvement was driven by higher general fund revenues, including real estate transfer

tax, business license tax, and other charges for services, as well as an overall decline

in expenditures. And then my final chart here focuses on the city's financial

reserves, again from a near-term perspective. So these reserves are

maintained in the general purpose fund and the vital services stabilization fund.

You may recall again that reserves had continued to fall in the last two years

years with 2024 reserves falling drastically as revenues continue to fall short of expenditures.

However, in 2025 reserves have recovered to 2023 levels again, largely due to the council

actions taken to address the budget shortfalls.

And just to summarize, there are three different categories of reserves in this chart.

The vital services stabilization reserve is the smallest one of these three categories

and it's almost invisible to see it's represented by the red bar um the city's consolidated fiscal

policy assigns a target of 15 of general purpose revenue fund but as you can see we're quite below

that level at this time the general purpose fund emergency reserve shown in green and the general

purpose fund unassigned fund balance shown in blue together make up the city's emergency fund reserve

The city's consolidated fiscal policy sets a minimum target of 7.5% of general purpose fund appropriations.

And as of June 30, 2025, the combined balance of these reserves was $98.4 million, which meets the city's minimum policy requirement.

The purpose of these reserves is to support fiscal stability during unexpected economic downturns or emergencies,

and maintaining adequate reserves strengthens the city's ability to deal with such challenges.

So in closing, the city's financial position has stabilized in 2025 compared to 2024.

actions that are taken by the council to restore the reserve balances above minimum

and also improve general fund balances in 2025.

Overall, the financial statements reflect progress and improved stability,

but also underscore the importance of continued attention to structural balance

and long-term obligations as expenditure pressures continue

and the city's long-term pension and OPEB obligation

remain significant.

That concludes my presentation,

and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much.

Chair, if I could, I do want to take the opportunity.

I want to thank Pooja and our Controllers Bureau,

along with our auditors at Macias Gini.

The work they do behind the scenes is absolutely critical to us being able to access the bond market.

Provide you any of the data that you use to make decisions.

They're a very, very quiet group, but on a day to day basis, they're critical to keeping us running and

ensuring that we end the year and present our data correctly.

And I want to say, as a new finance writer, I've been incredibly impressed by their hard work and professionalism.

Again, quietly behind the scenes, ensuring that we can do what we do.

I'd be remiss if I didn't say that.

Absolutely, wholeheartedly agree.

Thank you for your very important critical work.

I have a question about the second to last slide with the reserves on it.

You said we're right under $100 million, and we're in accordance with all of our policies.

Could you clarify what our reserve policies are for these three categories?

Sure.

So let me go back to that slide here.

As I mentioned, the reserve is maintained and

can be categorized in three different categories.

The first one is the vital services stabilization reserve.

And the city's consolidated fiscal policy assigns a target for

the vital services reserve at 15% of the general purpose fund revenues.

If we do the math, it would come out to be a little over $100 million.

But at this point, that number is zero.

So the consolidated fiscal policy, when it was adopted in 2018,

the vital service reserve had a balance of about $15 million before COVID hit.

And consistent with the policy, which allows the council to use these reserves for emergency situations,

these funds were used during the COVID time.

And right now the balance in this vital services stabilization fund is zero.

So the other two parts of the reserve are the general purpose fund emergency reserve balance

and also the city's general purpose fund unassigned fund balance.

Together, these two factors comprise of the city's general purpose fund emergency reserve.

So as I mentioned, the general purpose fund emergency reserve fund alone has a balance of over $63 million,

or had a balance of over $63 million as of June 30, 2025.

and then adding the unassigned general fund balance,

the total reserves adds up to be 98.4 million.

And per the city's fiscal policy,

the total balance to be maintained here

needs to be 7.5% of the general fund appropriation.

And currently the 98.4 million balance is above that level.

Thank you. The Vital Services Stabilization Fund, our consolidated fiscal policy says we should have a target of 15%. Have we ever met that?

No, we have not.

I don't think so.

No, we have not.

Is this typical of other cities or is 15% for this amount?

So I can tell you back when we developed the policy, we had done it based on the policy of the city of LA.

That 15% is the number that you would need based on our immediate prior recessions to weather a recession.

So if you sort of think about what you'd need to be at based on prior experience in the boom before a bust,

if you really just wanted to bridge the whole thing via revenue,

you wanted to have a cushion so that you could ride out the equivalent of a great recession or a dot-com boom,

because this was done prior to COVID, so we haven't redone that analysis with COVID,

you would need about 15% in order to sort of smooth through it and see no interruption to services.

And so when we set that target, that was the context of that target.

We've never come close to meeting that in terms of how we've looked at it,

but that is the nature of that principle.

And we could look at that when we're looking at our financial policies as to what the right number is.

And again, we would at least want to update that percentage based on the COVID recession,

which we have one more data point to put in there.

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, if we're not able to put in a whole $100 million

anytime in the next decade, it would be my interest in exploring that policy.

And then one more question.

The general purpose fund emergency reserve plus unassigned fund balance is obviously the general fund.

But the vital services stabilization fund, can that be used to address deficits in any of our fund balances?

That's correct.

In fact, your policy requires you to use any balance in that fund to specifically you're supposed to look at it to avoid changes in services or impacts the staff.

So we are actually supposed to look at it first if there's a balance there.

Thank you.

And my last question is, I recall in past budget processes, the general purpose on funds, unassigned fund balance is not usually treated as a reserve, but an opportunity to fund programs that have not been funded.

Is there, but in this chart, it's considered reserves.

Is it in fact reserves and should it be in a place where council doesn't touch until a rainy day rather than here's the pot of money we can fund city services that don't have enough funds in?

Moving it to a different pot requires you to take action.

It's not something that the administration can do on its own.

Obviously for fiscal prudence we would prudently remind you to remember that it can be considered a reserve for

the purposes that we mentioned at last committee's meeting in terms of calculating total reserves.

And so this is one of those like treatment differences between when we talk about budgeting versus your actual reporting.

We had a whole conversation at last committee meeting about two of our rating agencies want to see our reserve numbers come up.

This presentation, which is consistent with how financials are presented, does actually help you get toward that number.

And so that's part of our strategy in getting there.

If we want to dedicate it and hold it aside specifically in a way we're not looking to budget for it, that actually can be an action that we take.

And as we look at your fiscal policy, if you want to empower the administration to do that in certain circumstances, you could do that.

But currently, you would have to take the action to restrict that.

Thank you.

Thank you for this. Just focusing in on the slide about OPEB and pension benefits, I think it's important to put this in plain English.

Essentially, this has been the big driver of our increase in net position, and that's a factor of two things.

One, in 2013 with PEPPER reform, we essentially raised the retirement age for police and fire by seven years and reduced the benefit multiplier.

And then in 2019, we all but eliminated retirement medical care for police and fire, which also

was a big savings but may have contributed to our difficulty in retaining police officers

when they can have retirement benefits in other jurisdictions.

So I think we just need to be clear-eyed about both the benefits and the costs of that.

And then my question to you is, this is a 2013 change and a 2019 change, and so we have

sort of the mouse working its way through the snake and folks under the old systems

are leaving and pretty soon we will have police and fire departments that are made up of almost

entirely folks under the new system.

And so how do we project for that?

Do we see an increasing rate of savings because of this change?

So the term of art you're using in this space is something called your unfunded accrued

liability.

which is sort of the past debt we owe that was not funded by prior actions.

And so as you look at, and we'll take our OPEB as an example,

we did cap the OPEB benefits for police and fire,

and we put them at the same level that civilians had enjoyed.

And there's an additional contribution that we put in to an OPEB trust fund,

which is funding then also that to reduce that liability amount.

We still owe for everyone that already is retired.

We will be paying out those benefits for a long while as it relates to pension.

The vast majority of what we actually pay is already that unfunded amount, not what we refer to, again, terms of art.

And I'm happy to bring back this in a future report.

You saw my red and blue graphic during the budget process, which is called your normal cost.

That actually is the lower component cost.

Most of what we are dealing with is the prior unfunded amount.

As we move through that over the next 30 years, yes, you will absolutely see that trail off.

you'll see the effects of PEPRA and our reforms come in.

For OPEB, you're already seeing that bite,

and that's why you have that sort of nicer downward curve

that we're seeing right now,

and we have to continue to stay on top of our contributions

to make that happen.

For PERS, because of how they structure the system

of a double front-loaded cost structure,

it actually will continue to increase in the short term

before then decreasing.

And that's just a factor of how PERS does their calculations

FOR COMING UP WITH WHAT WE HAVE TO PAY IN WHICH WE'RE NOT DIRECTLY IN CONTROL OF OPEB IS A

MORE STRAIGHT ACTUARIAL ANALYSIS AND THAT'S WHERE WE'VE SEEN THE MAJORITY OF THOSE BENEFITS

COUNCIL MEMBER WONG I'LL MOVE THIS MOVE THIS ITEM

okay second public speakers calling in the names that signed up for item number five

missus and kevin dolly thank you all names have been called we have a motion made by council

member wong seconded by council member brown to receive and file this informational report

in committee on roll council members brown aye hunger aye Wong and chair

Ramachandran aye thank you item number five passes with four eyes to receive

and file this informational report in committee now reading in item number six

receive an informational report addressing the Oakland roadmap to fiscal

health's objective of presenting a phased multi multi-year plan to move the

city towards compliance with voter mandated staffing service levels and

and other agreements and we do have a number of speakers on this item.

Hey everyone, changing position for this report.

Happy to present this report on our roadmap to fiscal health, specifically as it relates to compliance with our locally adopted ballot measures.

My name again is Brad Johnson, I'm your director of finance.

Our deputy administrator Monica Davis was also instrumental in this particular element of the report.

cannot be here today and so I am speaking on behalf of us both.

KTOP we do have a presentation on this item and I'd love for you to pull it up.

A quick reminder our roadmap is a commitment we made during last year's budget process

for a multi-year plan to improve the city's financial position and ensure we provide quality services to residents.

It is a combination of both strategic projects and priorities with timelines that are aggressive but hopefully are achievable.

We want to work transparently through regular public updates, and this is one key element of the roadmap that we'll be updating you on today.

Brief context.

As we all know, our finances have been strained in recent years.

I'm not going to go into this too much.

But as you saw from our prior three reports, we've made real progress in closing our gaps.

We made quick action in terms of the immediate circumstances,

and we have to continue to engage in longer strategic action to improve our financial position.

This is roadmap item number four that we'll be discussing today,

which is a multi-year plan to meet our voted adopted service mandates.

And again, this is a phase plan that should begin in January of this year and should inform our biennial budget update, which is our mid-cycle budget and our budgets going forward.

Let's talk about this.

So, and I do think that it's important that I provide a little bit of context about what voter mandates are.

When our voters pass ballot measures, they often contain a requirement that resources not from that ballot measure be maintained at a certain level in order to collect the resources from that measure.

I will give you a very simple example.

We have two measures that support Oakland's library system, measures C and D.

Measures C and D require minimal spending from your general purpose fund in order to collect supplementary resources for libraries.

Those measures also often contain mechanisms by which the general purpose fund contribution can be suspended or waived.

none of our measures ever allow for the actual resources coming in for the voter adopted measure

to be diverted to the general purpose fund that's a really important distinction to be made we do not

use measure c and d money in the general purpose fund the question we're talking about in these

mandates is whether or not other resources are at the level required by those measures where the

council has the ability in certain circumstances to waive those

requirements. If we look at our general purpose fund, and that's what you're

seeing a pie charter here, more than two-thirds of your general purpose fund

is in some way obligated by a ballot measure. So the vast majority of your

general purpose fund expenditures are captured by one or another of our ballot

measures or potentially also by an MOE attached to our MOU or found in your

city charter. And so I note these MOEs and this sort of restricted discussion

encompasses ballot measures, your negotiated MOEs, and requirements that

are located in your city charter. Again, two-thirds of what you're doing is

restricted in terms of its requirements. And so this is sort of a note in terms

of our fiscal flexibility as we're moving forward.

The specific requirements for each of those measures is noted here.

And we've lumped into this some things that are ballot measure-like

that are not explicitly your ballot measures.

So we wanted to note sort of the whole list of items.

We are currently about $38.8 million for meeting the requirements

of every single one of these ballot measures.

And what you've noted on this chart

are the gaps measure by measure.

As it relates to Measure HH,

while this is technically unrestricted money,

we have a commission that has made recommendations

for using it in ways other than we're using it right now,

which is primarily to support youth programs.

Again, it's an eligible use,

but in terms of the broader context,

we know that there's a desire to use it in other ways

to support other sort of nutritional programs.

As it relates to your Affordable Housing Trust Fund,

we talked about that before.

We are off in the current year for budgeting that.

We've used some of that to support general fund operations.

Again, this is a locally adopted ordinance by you as the body,

not a ballot measure.

But again, we want to note that in this context as well.

And again, we're trying to be inclusive.

Your measures C and D, Library Parcels Acts,

which were my example earlier,

are just under $3 million off, meeting their requirements.

Your Fund 2224, which is your Measure Q fund for parks, homelessness, and stormwater,

is about $2 million off, and I would note that $2 million off is in the parks component specifically.

And then you are about $18 million off in your Measure In-In requirement,

which is your most recently adopted voter-approved parcel tax,

which is related to spending on police services primarily.

In addition, you have charter requirements related to democracy dollars,

which require roughly another $5 million of annual spending,

and we're missing a position in the auditor's office related to measure X minimum staffing.

And that composes this total of this $38.8 million.

So should we have had above and beyond the resources we need

to maintain your mid-cycle budget, which I should note does include the assumption of

an additional ballot measure, you'd need roughly another additional $40 million of ongoing

resources to, in one fell swoop, ensure we maintained all of these measures.

I'm going to walk you through what our conceptual plans will look like over the course of the

next several years as we talk through how do we come into compliance.

we're going to need to take a phased approach.

We do not have $38 million in ongoing resources above and beyond, again,

the $40 million in potential ballot measure resources that we're going to have in a short order.

So we're going to need to take a phased approach to come into compliance.

I'm going to talk to you first about Measure NN in specific because this is the largest of these items

and it's primarily tied to your police staffing number.

The approach we're looking at taking on this one, and again, it relates to bringing up the number of sworn police officers.

This would be the cumulative increase in each year that we would want to see potentially as an option for coming into compliance with Measure In-In.

So the way you read this chart is in order to meet the total Measure In-In target, again, using current dollars, these numbers will increase as we get to these years.

This is a procedure where if we were to do something like seven police academies over the course of every biennial

Budget for the number of officers we thought could come out of that

What your spending plan might look like to come into compliance over the course of five years with measure NN

And so you note this one we

Wanted to really tie in this case to that academy

Expected outcome does not make sense for us to budget for officers before we can actually expect to get those officers

So this one we specifically wanted to provide you a scenario that would look at that

Your other ballot measures are a little bit more stable

And so we want to put them all on one chart because it would be we wouldn't want to overwhelm you and again

This is not a specific plan. This is a scenario that you could have what we've done in this particular chart is showing you your various options

One option as you're noting on your measure X line is simply to attack something on the front end to prioritize it and do it first

And so in this case, again, these are all cumulative increases over each year of what additional funding would look like.

You could choose to fund an item on the front end through your budget process.

You could choose to backload an item.

And in this case, no particular reason we've chosen to select Measure W, which is your democracy dollar programs.

You could choose to backload an item and do it all toward the end of your cycle.

You could choose then to take a balanced approach.

and what we've shown you on these measures is then equally distributing how much we move toward on each of the services over each year.

And so we're showing you this as options for presentation.

The real place you'll make these decisions is through your budget process.

This is not prescriptive.

We're not telling you you should do this.

These are not a recommended model.

This is giving you your sort of models for getting over a five-year approach,

which we'll want to be adopting and considering as we go forward.

So again, you consider, as I mentioned, in N, you can consider the realities of real services as to how fast they could come online in terms of which services you employ first.

Again, as it relates to officers, that's really driven by your academy number.

You could choose to do a front-loaded approach, which we've represented in this case for your Measure X requirement in the auditor's office.

You could choose to backload certain services based on your policy priorities, or you could choose to take a balanced approach and do a little bit of each as you go.

Again, I wanted to note out just for this particular model what this would look like

in terms of cumulative add and what any kind of phased approach might look like.

Here is just this sort of one modeled approach over the course of the next five years

in terms of getting on board with all of our local measures.

I'll note there are risks and other uncertainties we have around this.

We know we're gonna have increase to employee costs which are key drivers to these elements. I mentioned this is all sort of in current dollars

We're going to have cost inflation like that's undeniable

The 38 million dollars in this year's dollars will be substantially more in year five dollars when we get there

It will be a larger dollar amount. Hopefully the revenue sources that help us bridge this will also have grown

So even moderate salary and benefit increases we know are rising faster than revenues

Federal state funding is another key element of this.

We've done certain waivers in the current year based on a current landscape of federal funding.

If we see impacts to federal funding beyond what we've already seen, it may delay any sort of timeline.

So I don't want to take a particular federal funding source to note it out for fear of calling out anything specifically,

but one could imagine a time space where you have a federal grant that's denied

and you may delay coming into compliance with the breadth of these locally adopted measures

in order to backfill the resources from a federal grant if it's considered to be a key service.

You may have other policy shifts, and then again we have the general uncertainty related to the market.

I wanted to thank, again, Deputy State Administrator Monica Davis for helping us work through this report.

I also want to note that we did have a chance to connect with many of the advocates for

our locally adopted measures, and we had some chance to talk through this particular approach

with them.

I know they are all chomping at the bit for us to, as soon as possible, come in compliance

with this measure, but we were, and I'm sure we still have some concerns from them about

our ability to get there, but we wanted to make sure that we at least had an open dialogue

and conversation with them.

And so the bulk of this presentation has been presented to them before we came to you with it.

So this is a framework.

It's really a framework for discussion for you all as a body starting now

and into our mid-cycle budget process for how we begin to achieve the very important goal

of compliance with all these measures, which needs to be a priority

that we maintain in the back of our mind.

I would say in closing, whenever we're looking at something new over the course of a mid-cycle budget, we need to keep in mind that maintaining faith with these previously adopted mandates needs to be prioritized in that context.

There are lots of new ideas out there, but compliance with those promises we've already made needs to be prioritized as well.

With that, I'm happy to take any questions or at your desire, Chair.

Thank you so much.

I think this is an interesting way to address the question of this $38 million gap that we really do need to address with some urgency.

And these measures are incredibly different.

So I do have a couple of questions.

I want to start with Measure Q.

That I think is a relatively strong amount.

And personally, I will just say this publicly, I would like to see this front load.

just given kind of underinvestment over the years and how long and how much in need our parks and

related services are to be funded but at the same time we had a leftover balance from one of the

funds last year is the issue actually just hiring and not having speed in hiring here because if we

we could put in that the amount of money that they have left just for argument's sake by

within two years is it just going to be an unassigned balance that continues because

we've not hired for the people those staff members that we're budgeting for in your opinion

that's a that's exactly the kind of analysis we want to do that's kind of analogous to

what we talked about with your when I when I was presenting measure in and up there with

PD, right? We want to make sure that whatever resources we budget, we're actually able to

spend and deliver within that resource constraint. And so I know there's aggressive effort to hire

up park staff. These MOEs are all budgetary basis. They're not actual basis. They're how you

allocate your resources. But we can be in a position where we allocate a resource that we

can't spend due to hiring timelines. And so one of the key things we need to keep in mind as we're

developing a phased approach to any of these items is will we realistically be able to deliver that

service? I would note even within our existing measure Q budget allocation, where we get better

hiring and better staffed up, we could deliver better service quality within the currently

adopted budget even below that threshold. And so those are the exact kind of questions and

concerns in specific. We'll want to consider when we get to the mid-cycle, what does our vacancy

rate look like in the various elements funded by these measures?

What is our realistic likelihood to be able to staff up in that particular

moment? Because it's not, you know, we're projecting five years out in the future.

I don't have a crystal ball, so what they're all going to be looking like.

So those are the questions that I encourage you all to ask in detail

as we get through this mid-cycle and every

year's budget process to ensure that we are maximizing

not just compliance on paper, but delivery of service with that additional compliance.

Thank you. I look forward to exploring that.

The staffing challenges under NN are very clear.

Personally, I think seven academies is a stretch,

and we've not been able to ever do more than five in a cycle,

but it'd be great if we can get there.

But the spending issues are very obvious for that one,

But under NN, other aspects not related to hiring of sworn personnel that we need to be spending mound up,

whether that's the portion that has to go to CBOs or fire department, O&M,

what else is there that could be spent immediately apart from sworn officers?

That's correct. Measure NN has, and so this is distinguishing your spending requirements,

settlement. Every single one of these measures also has within it formulas that could be

very simple like the library measures are very simple. Use them on libraries and there's

some things excluded. Some of them are more complicated like NN and Q as to how we use

our money. And so while there are other uses for NN, the MOE barrier is really around police

staffing. We have some requirements around fire staffing as well which we need to stay

on top of in terms of budgeting for academies. But we don't have a long term sort of compliance

ARC problem on those in terms of being out of compliance. It is really this police staffing

number from a budgetary basis that is your issue. And so maybe to make the point, you could accomplish

the measure in in budget number simply by budgeting a larger number of officers and making

equivalent cuts. There's also a requirement that we actually have a plan to get there,

and that's where building in this academy process is really important. It is a little bit more

detailed in that space. I would say on NN, it is really police as your driver for compliance.

We need to make sure at the same time we're complying with all the other structures of the

measures. The $3 million for fire, the required spending on violent services and ensuring that

we're actually getting those contracts out and delivering on those as well, along with the

additional technology investments required in PD. Thank you. My last question is measure HH,

the sugar, sweet, and beverage tax.

What are our spending requirements there?

You do not have, and so this is one like your affordable housing trust fund,

we are treating kind of like a local mandate

because that's been the perception of how this is being done.

We didn't want to bury that lead in terms of how people understand this funding.

It is a general fund resource.

It is a general tax.

It is not dedicated by its measure itself.

The dedication on resources has been by your budgetary actions through resolution.

But you do have an advisory board that makes recommendations for the uses of that money,

and our budgeting has not been consistent with that advisory board's recommendations.

That's not illegal, but we understand that is one of those requirements that feels disparate

with how people may perceive the resource to be used.

And so for transparency, we wanted to put it on here.

We do use it accordingly, and I would say our usage of this is aligned with the general thing.

We use this for parks, recs programs, use summer jobs.

We're using this supporting nutrition programs in senior centers.

We're using this sort of in an analogous way, but the recommendation has been to use a lot of this on grants for nonprofit organizations or for OUSD.

and that is something that we're not necessarily doing.

Thank you. So the issue there is less the dollar amount, more of not

spending based on the recommendation of the commission. Correct.

Okay. Thank you. Colleagues.

I can't tap on anyone. Councilmember Brown, then Wong.

Okay. Excellent. So through the chair to Director

Johnson, thank you for this really timely report

And I also want to highlight how, you know, just easy it was to read and understand the information and just really fully outlining, you know, what it would take for us to meet these requirements.

And so I feel like that's very clear.

And then also helping us to begin to think through how we can, you know, meet some of these requirements.

At first when I was reading slide seven, I was thinking, oh, how come there's no requirement in 28-29?

But I get it that it's just an example of what we could do.

So that definitely makes sense.

The only question that I had, and I know you touched on it just very briefly,

where you were saying that you've, I guess,

finance department has had the opportunity to engage with advocacy groups. I think I was just

curious like who in particular and have you been working with members of the BAC?

This I do not actually believe we brought this to the BAC. We did meet with a number of the

sponsors for these measures. So the sponsors for the measure Q, sponsors for library, members of our

Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission, members who helped pass measure NN.

And again, I don't want to take credit for that.

It wasn't my department.

It was really set up by our deputy city administrator.

She's the one who's really facilitated that process for us.

Okay.

And then just for more clarity, so after we kind of receive and file this report, what

What are the specific next steps when engaging with advocacy groups?

So I think we need to ensure that our mid-cycle begins to make progress and clear ways on this.

And I would say we need to reference back to this sort of analysis to be really, really clear,

and I appreciate you commenting that this report was easy to read,

to be equally clear and transparent in every budget action we take

as to where we've made progress or where we haven't made progress

and those reasons.

So I think the real space is initially for the administration,

the mayor, as we do a proposed budget,

and then for this body as we move through your adoption process

to be really, really clear and transparent

about what progress we're making, where we're making it,

why we're making it that way,

what considerations we're building into it.

We've kind of given you options here.

to again build that trust and faith.

We're going to continue to engage with our advocates

around both proposed decisions and decisions you make

both before and after the fact.

We want to keep that dialogue open so that while not everyone

is always happy with budgetary decisions,

I know that with great experience,

we need to be transparent with what those decisions are

so that there's understanding as to what they are.

Okay, sounds good.

Thank you.

Thanks. Through the chair, first of all, just want to echo my colleague comments. Thank

you so much for creating this report. This is incredibly helpful. I am trying to also

just reconcile given the positive report that we just received. Is that in some ways going

to make it even more important or it will lessen our ability to suspend our MOEs given

that we actually have a positive fund balance in our GPF?

I don't think those necessarily correlate.

And the reason I would say that they're not necessarily correlated,

our rebound to a positive fund balance in GPF was sort

of a very immediate space.

A lot of the drivers of these MOEs I mentioned earlier are budgetary basis.

A lot of the reason why we ended up in a positive space

in your general purpose fund for your prior items was spending control we took

on sort of an actual basis different from your budgetary action.

And that was sort of the dialogue I was having with Chair Ramachandran.

We have to make sure that we are delivering these services first and foremost.

There is an operational element that we cannot lose track of in this space.

But your MOEs are this sort of formulaic at budget basis time span.

And so you can make progress with providing better services and actually slip on an MOE.

Those can actually happen at the same time.

Some of the formulas are particularly complicated, and so the dynamics that drive them can cause sort of weird outcomes on a budgetary basis.

I wouldn't say you having a positive status in your general purpose fund necessarily means you have flexibility on these measures in the subsequent year.

I guess my question is, does it actually reduce our flexibility to suspend?

No.

Okay.

Because your flexibility is driven by your projected deficit, which is when you're making your budgetary decisions, not your last year's actuals.

I'll be more concise.

Okay.

That's helpful.

And then I just, I found the same chart to be a little bizarre on the Measure NN, where in 2008-29 we have zero recommend spend.

Can you just walk us through that chart?

Why that?

Those are the additional spend in each year that we would do.

And so what we were charting there is if we do a timeline on academies and we're more likely to have actual officer increases, if you are budgeting to when you would get officers, there's a year in that space where your net officer number is actually not going to go up based on your academy timing.

It's actually going to stay flat.

And so from that prior year to the next year, even if you do seven academies for the year, you don't actually need to budget more because you're not realistically based on the academy timeline and delay rates you're not going to have more.

And so that's an example of us sort of marrying real-world data on the likely trajectory of police officers under one scenario with the number of officers you budget.

And so you wouldn't make progress to budget for more officers in the year where you don't expect to actually have more officers.

That would not be a year you would make that space.

And so that's, again, that dynamic of, like, marrying that really immediate real-world data and how we might do that.

Okay.

And I noticed in the report that you made an assumption that we would have 38 trainees enrolled in every academy.

I will say that's not matching up with what we're seeing right now.

did you have an assumption around the graduation rate in terms of how many people would graduate from the academies that was built into this?

I don't know the number off the top of my head.

We recognize that we, on the police number, those were aggressive assumptions, both seven academies and the 38N.

Those are both really aggressive numbers.

You have a different policy concern around police hiring and how to drive that and how to get our number up.

That's a bigger policy discussion.

this was illustrative for the purpose of showing you how you could achieve it in a measure

i fully acknowledge that those specific circumstances are one probably a different

reality and as i said earlier will be a different reality in literally each year you try to achieve

this there will be specific individual dynamics you'll need to consider okay so that makes sense

and the final question is just i'm trying to reconcile the affordable trust so fund 1870 the

affordable housing trust fund it's so given that in the last in the item that

we discussed earlier today we have a negative fund balance of 8 million and

you're also recommending that we need to spend 6 million more can you just

explain that dynamic I can absolutely explain that you know we have the number

noted in this report is the amount that's being diverted in the general

purpose fund in the current budget to support general fund operations.

What would happen if you were to restore that number by going back to not diverting it is

first we would likely budget to replenish that fund balance and then you would see additional

affordable housing projects or staff delivered.

So we would likely either increase the staff number, unlikely to be true because we didn't

see a lot of staffing cuts in this number, that's not where we took it.

This would be additional money that we would invest in affordable housing projects above

and beyond what you see from your impact fee numbers and your bond allocations.

So this number would be additional money going to additional affordable housing pipeline

projects in delivery.

That's what the result would be.

Okay.

Gotcha.

Thank you.

on Measure MM, that's Mike Mike, not November November,

that is the vegetation management

ballot measure that our voters just passed.

In the past, some of that money for the goat grazing had come from the general fund.

So is all of the money for vegetation

management now coming from Measure MM, or is there still general fund money?

I believe direct vegetation management is in MM.

What we are continuing to do from the general fund is all the resources related to inspections,

which are done by the engine companies, and related to secondary and tertiary inspections,

which are done by our engineers.

So there's a lot of work around that.

And there's also some additional work continuing from the general fund that relates to education

in the fire severity zone.

But most of the vegetation management work is now coming out of MM.

So has the budget for vegetation management increased as a result of MM, or has the general fund divested itself enough from that responsibility that it stayed flat?

It's still a very large net increase.

It's, I want to say, more than a doubling.

It might be even a tripling of the resource.

For vegetation management?

For vegetation management, yeah.

It's a significant increase in the total investment in this space.

Okay, thank you.

And just to follow up with that, I know there's probably a report coming on progress.

I know there's the newly formed commission.

Do we know approximately when finance will hear that item?

Through the chair, I apologize.

I don't have that date, but we'll be sure to get that to you as soon as possible.

Measure MM funding.

Thank you.

Okay.

We can move to public speakers.

Calling in the names that signed up for item number six. In no particular order, you can come up to the podium or if you're on Zoom, please raise your hand to be easily identified.

Asada Olabala, John Bliss, Brooke Levin, Catherine Sterbank, Fatima Yousaf, and Kevin Daly.

Hi, Kevin Daly from Transport Oakland. I have a suggestion that might help with police overtime a bit.

The single biggest overtime expense is for processing crash investigations.

In 2021, there was a task force on reimagining public safety.

What they recommended at that time was moving traffic investigation, crash investigation from OPD to OakDot.

OCDOT has much more ability to handle epidemiology than OPD does.

OCDOT also has less of a problem with overtime expenses.

The police aren't necessarily experts on investigating the crashes.

They absolutely can handle which violations have been done by cars, say, making illegal left turns.

But part of our interest also is reducing crashes in the future.

We don't want people injured, but we also it'll probably reduce our legal settlements.

Oak Dot already has a program.

Megan Weir is leading an effort using her epidemiology expertise to improve the relationship between some of these traffic reports and the Alameda County of Public Health.

And moving this onward to include the crash date itself, I think could be great.

Don't know if she has enough time to handle that and how much hiring would need to be done.

Problem with this move, of course, it doesn't increase the number of sworn officers overall,

but it does increase the number of sworn officers doing police work rather than epidemiology.

I think it's worth considering. Thanks.

Good morning. My name is John Bliss.

Thank you, Chair Raman Chandran, members of the city council, staff, and members of the public.

I'm here as an Oakland citizen, a member of the Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation Board,

and a co-chair of Measure Q back in 2020.

I'm here to support the roadmap to fiscal health, and we appreciate you guys considering it.

This is tough stuff.

There's not enough money to go around, but in the big picture in the long run, we need to follow this roadmap.

I'd like to thank Finance Director Brad Johnson and Monica Davis for their excellent work on this.

I'm going to focus on Measure Q, which was passed in 2020.

As you all know, it was half a billion dollars.

Measure Q is not small.

It's big.

and it has the ability, it hasn't reached its potential, but it has the ability to start maintaining our parks to a very nice level.

We all know our parks are essential.

They provide not only they activate our citizens, but they're extremely important for public safety.

We need to have them. We need to have them good.

You all know that.

And to reiterate this, when we ran the Measure Q campaign, we essentially made a deal with the voters here in Oakland,

and we said, we're going to ask you to invest at a certain level in parks here,

but the city will maintain the current level in 2020 of investment in parks.

The city has not met that obligation.

That's why we're here, and that's why we plan.

We want to get that back, and we appreciate all the efforts made to restore that.

It's good for parks. It's good for Oaklanders.

Also, in the long term, because of the laws we have in California,

you will have to continue to go out to voters to ask for additional revenue and we need their

confidence to be able to do that so we know that's another reason we really need to get back on track

i thank you all for your time um tough stuff please stay um please stay fiscally responsible

think long term thank you very much good morning brooke levin um thank you very much chair ramachandra

members of the committee and staff for the this report. A number of advocacy groups who were

proponents of ballot measures have been meeting since last April. We've had several meetings with

Mr. Johnson and the team of city administration, including the city administrator to talk about

how we're going to get these ballot measures back on track. It's been challenging. One of the things

that the Finance Committee had directed back in September of 2024 is that we meet to discuss

the definition of extreme fiscal necessity. That came at a very 11th hour during a meeting

in June of 2023. And it's been expanded since. And it's eventually going to be part of a

consolidated fiscal policy, which I don't think is coming back until 2027. So that is a very

essential thing from our perspective. And many of the other advocates perspective is how do you

define when you have an extreme fiscal necessity. And so we would like to get back on track with

that this report for the roadmap doesn't discuss that at all. It's sort of dropping off the radar

and we'd like to bring that back onto the radar. As john mentioned, the the whole negotiation about

measure q and the ballot measure, which we led the campaign on was centered around having new

services for park maintenance and tree maintenance and park facility maintenance.

That has decreased greatly with the declaration of extreme fiscal necessity. We'd like to see

that come back into alignment and we would like to see the plan moving forward to make that happen.

All these other things that have been added now to this roadmap for coming back, um,

we're not part of any discussions that we had. We didn't discuss the affordable housing act. We

We didn't discuss having all these police academies.

We didn't discuss a lot of this stuff at our meetings.

We didn't discuss the MOUs.

So we hope we can get back on track with these ballot measures

that voters have approved.

Thank you.

Let me start with Measure Q. I was really upset

that homeless support was thrown in to Measure Q

because the uplifting of Measure Q had to do with support for our parks.

And I don't know who is the lead person to make sure the funds are allocated

and how it's worked out.

Who does that?

Because we don't have any name, individual, or group that's really supporting homelessness.

Now, Democracy Dogg.

Oh, let me go with this.

The advisory board.

for NN and HH. You know, y'all jumped all over the police commission for

certain qualifications and done right.

These people are having the ability

to look at fund spending and y'all have no qualifications for

to do that. So,

it's just you pick a person and they do it and that anybody that handles money

should have some level

of qualification to deal with money spending.

Democracy dollars. Democracy dollars

was not we really went crazy with this one.

That was supposed to be for voters some kind of way you change it to residents.

So we out here having to spend on unknown amounts of money

because residents we don't have any idea who

our illegal immigrants are because they're gonna get the money too.

I don't know. Measure NN requires that you have to have a minimum of 700

officers. We are nowhere near that. And all the stuff, even if you get the 700, all study

says adequately, you need 877 officers. So it's not only writing a measure, but write

it so that you get what you really need from it, not just put a number in there. What is

the actual number we need to have a true public safety at its maximum potential?

Thank you for your comments.

Switching to Zoom users.

Catherine, you can unmute yourself and begin your two-minute comment.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Catherine Sturbance and I am advocacy chair of the Friends of the Oakland Public

Library and former chair of the city's library commission.

It is critically important to fund libraries as they are a safe space for kids to learn.

connect Oaklanders of all ages with knowledge, job opportunities, and other services. This is

especially important in light of federal attempts to cut grants to libraries. Oakland's public

library advocates are glad that the council is engaging with the maintenance of effort

provisions. However, this proposal would refund only 2.4 million of the 2.7 million maintenance

of effort for libraries, which would still fall short of the requirements of the ballot measure.

The plan lacks meaningful specifics to guarantee that the return to maintenance of effort will occur

as promised. The city has often struggled with long-term budget planning and this plan seems

primarily aspirational. The council should proceed with urgency to make a more concrete plan.

To quote a current member of your library commission, this plan kicks the can down the road.

Again, that's from Gabrielle Sloan Law's comment on in your agenda packet today.

Library advocates remain concerned that failing to adequately fund the maintenance of effort

over an extended period of time may eventually make the entire parcel tax collection vulnerable

to a legal challenge.

And just in closing, again, more than 80% of Oakland voters voted yes for Measure C to

collect these funds.

Please don't betray their trust and demand a more concrete plan to return to maintenance of effort.

Thanks very much for your time.

Thank you for your comments.

Fatima, you can unmute yourself and begin your two-minute comment.

Hi.

Thank you.

I'd just like to echo everything that Catherine said and urge the council to fully fund maintenance of effort for libraries.

They're so important for our communities.

and yeah thank you thank you for your comments share that concludes all

speakers on this item thank you I will entertain him just one quick question I

couldn't find in the materials what is the compliance requirement for the

affordable housing trust fund test test there we go the requirement would be

that and again it's not a ballot match requirement it's a local ordinance of

your own that we would use 100% of the funding for affordable housing staffing

and projects that's it's that simple as opposed to that element is coming the

Yes, gotcha. Okay. And with that, I moved the item to full council.

Second. Consent. I think we should do it. I think non-consent, but I think it's an important item.

Thank you. We can discuss in rules, but I think for now the consent calendar.

Second.

Thank you. That was a motion made by Council Member Wong, seconded by Council Member Brown.

to receive and forward this informational report to the February 17th City Council agenda on roll

council members Brown I also member Unger council member Wong I and chair Rama Chandran I thank

you item number six passes with four eyes to receive and forward this item to the February

17th City Council agenda on consent now moving on to open forum calling in the names that signed up

speak miss assada olabala and kevin dally

thanks kevin dally with transport oakland i encourage all of you to stay

around for the public works and transportation since it does involve

some movement of parking positions from from

transportation department to finance department and that is

has already been approved in the budget for transportation.

Also runs a risk if we destroy the demand based parking.

Will how will that affect our sales tax revenue by having a good implementation

of the demand based parking?

There's a grant coming out this year.

There is a chance San Francisco's done a study.

It looks like it may increase sales tax revenue.

Thanks.

I think financially you don't have any discussion on any financial obligations related to being

a sanctuary city.

And you won't have a discussion about your sanctuary city status in any form or fashion.

You just say, we support the illegal immigrants.

In 1994, black woman Barbara Jordan was a part of chairing a study on the effects of

immigration as it related to low class workers.

When the study came out, she said you had to cut immigration coming into this country

in 1994 by one-third because it was having a substantial impact, if it continued, on

low-class African-American workers or low-skilled African-American workers. President Trump

chose to ignore the recommendation and Barbara Jordan said, any form of immigration should

have the American citizens first in the workforce. That was ignored. And because it was ignored,

we now have, for example, in Oakland, 9% unemployment of African American workers in the hospitality

field, in the construction field, any field that you would call low worker class. You

You ignore how it's impacting housing when you have most of your immigrant community

moving into what was the predominantly African American community.

You ignore that.

But we are being impacted because you choose to be sanctuary, but in doing it, it's impacting

us economically.

Thank you for your comments, Ms. Assata.

Chair, that concludes all speakers.

All right.

It's 11.31.

Meetings adjourned.