Good afternoon.

Are we good?

Yes.

Okay.

Good afternoon.

Welcome to the Life and Recording Committee meeting for today, Tuesday, February 24th.

The time is now 4 02 p.m.

And this meeting has come to order.

Before taking roll, I will provide instructions on how to submit a speaker's card for items on this agenda.

If you're here with the chambers, you would like to submit a speaker's card, please feel one hour turn to a clerk representative before the item is read into record.

Online speaker requests were due 24 hours prior to this meeting.

This meeting came to order at 4 or 2 p.m.

Speaker requests were will no longer be accepted 10 minutes after the meeting has begun, making that time 4 12 p.m.

With that, we would now proceed to take roll.

Councilmember Guyo.

Present.

Thank you.

Councilmember Houston.

It's not me.

Councilmember Houston.

Present.

Thank you.

Councilmember Wong.

Present.

Thank you.

And Chair Fife?

Present.

Alright, we have four members present.

And before you begin, Chair Fife, do we have any announcements?

We have no announcements at this time.

Thank you.

Moving to our first item, which is approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting on February 10th, 2026.

And you do not have any speakers for this item.

I'll entertain a motion.

A second.

Aye.

Councilmember Houston.

Aye.

Councilmember Wong.

Aye.

And Chair Five?

Aye.

The motion passes with four ayes to accept the draft minutes of the committee meeting on February 10th, 2026 as is moving to item two.

And this is determination of schedule and outstanding committee items, and you do have one speaker for this item.

Okay.

And the district three office, I as chair, I have no uh changes for this item uh to the administration.

Are there any changes?

To the agenda.

Yes, we're actually asking to pull item three and putting on the pending list.

Hopefully, for March.

No date specific.

Um, for March 10th, but that'll be dependent on indication from the state.

Okay.

So we are going to pull item three from today's agenda.

Item three is the HAP 6 winter relief and Oprah item.

Yes.

Through the chair, you may still take public comment, but no um discussion or questions from the council.

We'll hear from the public speakers.

Speaker.

Thank you.

Want to call your name, please approach your podium.

Ms.

Asada.

This is item two pending list.

We'll entertain a motion.

We're we're just pulling the item in the under schedule.

Yeah.

We're on item two.

Yes.

Uh I repeat myself and I'll continue to repeat myself.

You cannot have sanctuary city status, and not have at some point a discussion on what that means.

In terms of what are your commitments to uh illegal immigrants in this city and how your sanctuary city status impacts economically uh the rest of the community, particularly African Americans, and how housing you cannot have people coming into the city and having the need for housing, and then 70% of the housing homeless of a lack of housing of uh homelessness is on backs of African Americans.

And what's the percentage of people who are here illegally homeless?

You don't know because you don't have any method of determining who is here illegally.

Then we have the situation of a housing facility apartment of 101 low-income homeless.

Uh that was completed in ribbon cutting in November, and it hasn't opened up because the Asian local development cooperation has failed to pay the contractors.

Okay, we need to find out what's going on with that.

We have housing available for 101 people, low-income homeless, and the Asian local development cooperation has failed to pay the contractor.

That's why it hasn't opened up.

Then we have uh the head start director is leaving in March.

Now I'm confused.

She was relieved of her duties, she was brought back, and now she's leaving.

Something's going on, and I don't know what it is, but what I hear is she didn't screw up some financial reporting to the federal head start people.

So whatever that's just my I'm hearing it at my ear.

And y'all protecting her.

Thank you for your comment.

That concludes your public speakers for item two.

I'll entertain a motion.

I'll second.

Councilmember Houston.

Yes, through the chair, I wanted to find out when were we notified that we were awarded or would be awarded this money.

What date was that referring to the item that we pulled from the agenda?

We have staff here that can possibly answer that question.

Can we?

That's not the item.

Through the chair, this is item two, and and item three has been pulled, and so there should not be substantive discussion on it.

So so through the chair, I can't ask a question about when we received the money on the half that was pulled, and it's on the agenda.

So I don't I don't think stuff.

So what what we're being told by our parliamentarian is if since we pulled it from the agenda, then we can't discuss it right.

We can have we can't have substantive conversation on the item because it is not agendized, it's no longer agendized.

We can hear from the public because it was noticed, but because um we took it off the agenda, we can't have those detailed conversations about it in in committee.

Okay, through the chair, but let my office know what that date is.

Okay, thank you.

We will follow up.

Thank you.

We have a motion made by Councilmember Gaio, seconded by Chair Five, to accept the termination and schedule our standing committee items as amended with the amendments of withdrawing item three regarding the HHAP winter relief and Oprah, excuse me, operate resolution from the agenda placing it on a pending list with no date specific.

On roll, Councilmember Guyo.

Aye.

Councilmember Houston.

Aye, Councilmember Wong.

I and Chair Five.

Aye.

We there's a the motion passes with four ayes to accept the termination of schedule outstanding committee items as amended with the amendments again, return item three from this agenda.

Moving to item three.

Once again, this item was withdrawn, but we will take public comment.

Ms.

Asada.

What I found in this report that it is stated that 781 persons and 2425 received services related to homelessness.

Now you had an estimate 5,071 homeless people, so that means that 4,290 individuals who are homeless had no services from the city.

It also says that you are you are verifying the count based on the point and time count.

The point in time count is not an accurate count of our homeless population, it is an estimated count.

So you have no method that actually gives you the accurate number of people in this city who are homeless.

You also have an identification of who is homeless people by categories.

I'm sorry, 40% identified as having behavior health disorders.

Have either developmental disabilities, chronic health issues, or physical disability.

At least 25% have a history of experience with domestic violence, and 70% identify as black Americ African Americans.

And somewhere in your report, you say it's 50% African Americans.

So what this is telling you when you provide this data, you need to have more than providing housing for people.

So don't just talk about housing.

You have a you have a meeting tomorrow of your homeless commission.

I'll be at the school board meeting.

But they need to get on top of some of these issues and some solutions need to happen related to our homeless community.

They are valuable part of the community.

We need to and a lot of them don't want to come off the street.

That concludes your public comment for item three.

Look at everybody ahead of me.

Yeah.

We do need to adjourn into a special meeting.

Thank you, Madam City Clerk.

Um recognizing the attendance of Councilmember Brown, uh, we will uh need a motion to adjourn into a special LEC committee.

I'll second or Councilmember Wong will second.

Thank you.

We have a motion made by Councilmember Gaio, seconded by Councilmember Wong.

Due to the presence of Councilmember Brown and Quorum of the Four Council has been noted at 4 13 p.m.

to adjourn into the meeting of life enrichment committee meeting to convene into a special meeting of the full council on roll, Councilmember Gaio.

Councilmember Houston.

Thank you.

Councilmember Wong.

I thank you and Chair Fife.

Aye.

We are now adjourned.

We are now into full council moving to item four.

Receiver informational report on the activities of the Department of Race and Equity, including recent major accomplishments, interdepartmental collaborations and current and upcoming initiatives, and you do have two speakers for this item.

Thank you for that.

We have our director of race and equity here with us.

It's 10 minutes.

Is 10 minutes good for the presentation?

I'm gonna do my best.

Okay, to fit it into 10 minutes.

I know we have limited time today, and I'm very grateful to be here.

Thank you so much for giving us this time.

I do want to give an opportunity for council member Brown to give opening introductory comments to this item, and then we'll hear the presentation.

Excellent.

Thank you thank you so much, Chair Fife, for you know uh the opportunity to join the life enrichment committee.

Um I wanted to just uh give some framing um because in um just talking with community stakeholders.

Um I think a lot of community members know that we have this amazing department of race and equity, and then as um my team was kind of diving into just some of the incredible work that you've been able to do, it kind of came to our awareness that there hasn't really been space that has been made um since the um creation of the department to really be able to outline um just the amazing work that you all are doing.

And so I um I thought it would be important that we um kind of make space to ensure that you can just share out just the amazing impact that you are having.

Um impacting the work of our city staff, our city departments, and just you know, Oakland and the gr in greater, right?

With your work, and so um, that's just kind of my framing, and I look forward to receiving this informational item.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Chair, Committee members, CEO's office.

Thank you all so much.

I'm going to run through a slide deck.

Thank you so much.

It'll keep me on track, it'll help me go faster.

You'll be able to track along.

I'm not going to read the very some of the slides are very wordy, but the presentation begins with the origin story of the department.

I think this is important because it brings with it a certain history that we stand on every day.

I mean, even though it may not be obvious, the work that we do is grounded in the original platform of the ordinance, and how we do it was actually quite well prescribed in some ways.

Not every detail, but what it was to accomplish.

So it was in 2015 that the ordinance was passed.

I was hired to come down and stand the office up in 2016.

There's a legislative code and OMC that goes with it.

And the OMC basically repeats what the ordinance said, and that is that the charter of the department is to embed fairness and justice into everything that the city does, which is a really large expansive idea about why the Department of Race and Equity exists.

It is sometimes about individual transactions, projects, programs, analysis of development and design and that sort of thing.

That's what it looks like on a day-to-day basis in the departments, but it also has an overarching purpose to actually change the culture and the way the city approaches everything that it does.

So it has both a it has a macro and a micro and a macro element built into it.

The way we approach it is by identifying opportunities in city activities as they are ongoing.

So it's not it wasn't to come in and create a bunch of new equity activities, like let's have an equity thing, let's do an equity thing here and an equity thing there.

It was to embed equity procedures and thinking and framework into the work that the city already does, because that's where we're gonna spend the majority of our time.

That's just how it's gonna work.

We don't have a lot of resources to keep building on and building on and building on.

Plus, if we don't change the institutional direction with regard to justice and outcomes of our work, we won't be able to do it around the edges either.

It's not gonna work that way.

So it relies on collaboration with city departments and guidance and technical assistance from the Department of Race and Equity.

And I was hired to bring that technical assistance down from my previous work.

I'd had 10 years standing up a similar program in Seattle, Washington.

And so I came in with 10 years of experience, and I think Oakland has benefited from that.

Oakland is also a very different environment than Seattle is, and because of that, I feel like we've gotten more concrete things done in the almost 10 years I've been here than the 10 years I spent in Seattle.

Of course, we did spend a lot of that those early years experimenting a lot of trial and error because we were the first program in Seattle of this kind across the country where there was an intentional attempt to embed uh strategies that advance equity and close disparities into city government.

There wasn't a program like that before Seattle launched theirs about 20 years ago now.

Um very short analysis in this report, but it was one of the one of the buckets.

So I said that that it's what is important to note here is that prior to the establishment of the office, there was no structure for doing this work in the city.

But like I said, Oakland has a long history of doing justice work and having justice work coming from the community.

And in many ways, the work in Seattle and here in Oakland is built on the work that has been done in community for many, many decades.

We didn't start from scratch, we built on a lot of good experience and practice.

Just to uh further go a little deeper into how we do our work.

One of our main strategies is cultivating a network of staff who advocate to implement equity strategies in their line of business because we're actually, you know, as a city, you all know this, we're an accumulation of many lines of business, many departmental arrangements that are quite different, have their own cultures and their own their own charters.

So we need people embedded in the departments to help us do this work.

We cannot do it from um the 11th floor.

Um we cannot do it because there's only three of us without these this network that we've been cultivating in the departments.

Different departments are developed to different levels.

Every department is going to start where it is and go forward from there.

But basically, these equity teams that's our, that's what the network is made of.

They are volunteers who agree to take this work on their work groups basically that focus on how to do equity and how to organize the equity work at the departmental level.

So it's a process to establish the teams, it's a process to support those teams with technical support, and then we stay with them as they work to move that work out through the department and into actual action or applications in various activities.

That last box there that we're not able to read on the screen is about the idea that we are changing the way people think about problems.

And it's very important for us to change the way people think if we want to get different outcomes.

If we continue to think, and by the way, in Seattle, I was a bureaucrat for 20 years before I went to do this equity work.

So I've been in various departments.

I'd been, I'd worked for a council member for eight years.

That's how I came into city government, and then I went out into department land, as we call it, and worked in a couple of different departments, and then the equity project came along, and I got to be part of being uh building that out for the city of Seattle.

So this idea that in order to get different outcomes, we have to think differently about problems goes back to that work.

And this is not a fast process, needless to say.

It is organizational change work, and we have built a lot of organizational change theory into how we approach it.

So there are a lot of levers of change that are built into how we do this work, including this idea of having a network of advocates who help us spread the word.

DRE also, those of us, the three of us also participate in work groups sometimes.

We embed ourselves in work groups on larger topics like the Equitable Climate Action Plan and Capital Improvement Plan and the Equity.

You know, we worked on the administrative instruction collectively with departments, inclusive engagement work group.

These are examples of things where we have been embedded in projects as well.

We offer training on an ongoing basis, capacity building to help people understand how we do what we do, what the vocabulary is we use, what the technology is, what the framework is.

These are not things that you learn in your regular environments usually.

So we train those on an ongoing basis, and thousands of staff have attended our trainings, most of them voluntarily.

This training was only mandatory for those equity teams that network.

It was mandatory for them for a long time.

Now we are asking all supervisors and managers to go to this training.

So it's been a gradual process, but we continue to build out the number of people in the city who've been exposed to what we do.

We also do look aheads with the departments in order to establish the ability to see what's coming down the pipeline.

This is a newer piece of infrastructure.

We're going to be repeating it shortly, refreshing our first look ahead, where we ask them to predict what things might be coming along that we could be preparing to work on.

That's again trying to become more proactive and more structured in how we get to this work.

So now I'm to the accomplishment part.

I just thought I'd never get there.

So I selected just a few examples.

These are bigger things.

There are many, many small accomplishments that have happened along the way over the last nine years.

But these are larger projects, and I and they're different.

Every one of them is different.

What DRE's role in them was different.

Also, the departments are different departments.

Not every single department is represented, but that doesn't mean that there isn't something going on in most every department.

This is a one that started during COVID.

It was our digital equity program, and the interesting thing that happened during COVID was, of course, the children started doing school at home, and there was a lot of work being done through OUSD and nonprofits to get devices into homes that hadn't previously been on the internet or hadn't previously had digital devices accessible to them, weren't familiar with them.

And what we realized right away was that there was a huge digital divide.

They were receiving devices, but they couldn't use them.

And so I our IT department, IT director at that time, Pete, he asked if we would partner with him to do two things to run a contract with a community-based organization to do digital literacy work with underserved communities who needed to get up to speed quickly to support their children and themselves online during the COVID pandemic.

And so we partnered with Greenlining to do a to do a project where we were able to cobble together some funding from philanthropy that they could distribute to community-based organizations to do education programs with families in underserved communities.

And it worked out really well.

$15 million and 12 million dollars have come in.

It's all built on the model that was proven as a concept with green lining.

And we also had Greenlining write a digital plan that highlighted what the depth and breadth of the digital gap was as far as access in the city of Oakland.

That also helped, I think, focus on going after additional money.

So this is ongoing.

It's not over, we're still doing the work and it's still expanding.

Safe Oakland Streets was Councilmember Guilla remembers this years ago.

He was quite passionate about getting some work done on decreasing serious accidents and injuries in our high impact networks across the city.

And so we were able to work with the transportation department to do a deep dive into what the best practices were to improve conditions and save lives.

Also, what the potential downsides were to certain to certain strategies and how we could avoid overburdening communities that were already overpoliced as we were leaning into enforcement, which was necessary in some cases.

How could we do that in an equitable way?

And we were able to come back with a very complete package to the council to be passed.

And this has successfully attracted more resources and has caused improvements to be made and is definitely beginning to show up in better data and outcomes.

We're not finished, I'm sure.

I'm sure there's more work to do, and that Oakdot, though, is now very focused on this, and they have a very structured and intentional way of going about approaching the needs of the community to make sure that our most marginalized communities are well served.

This has already been going on for years.

It was um it was really kicking off when I got here about nine years ago, and it has continued.

We've completed the planning and building department.

This is a partnership, you know, we supported the planning and building department on this one.

Several elements have already been completed.

There are other elements that are in the pipeline.

It is a heavy lift to update a general plan.

And so we expect to continue to be involved on this, but equity is so central to urban planning and how we think about the future of the city and how it will function, how it will be laid out, and who it will be functional for.

And the planning and building department has done an amazing job to go out of their way to embed equity outreach, particularly with communities to make sure that the planning for the city of Oakland is not being done in a vacuum.

Equital-led paint hazard program, the LHAP program.

We are in the process now of briefing all of all of the council members on this program, but this has been several years in the making as well.

And it started with an equity basis and an in-depth equity analysis that enabled us to negotiate for double the amount of the settlement, double the amount of dollars that we were being offered from the county.

And since then we've been working on building a building a model program that is unlike any in the country that will be multifaceted.

It has taken multiple departments to work together.

It started with the CAO's office and DRE and planning and building, and now we have workforce development looped in because there's a workforce development element to this.

There's a PRIP proactive rental inspection program element to it, and that is going to generate more work that needs to be done and specialized work around hazard mitigation that is uncovered through the program that we're designing.

And we want to make sure that small local businesses benefit from that additional work that's coming online.

So we're thinking about how to pool our resources and train people up so that they benefit from the work.

We're also focusing on the most at-risk parts of the city, the most at-risk populations who find it practically impossible to get their children away from lead-based paint because where would they go?

You know, where would alternate housing be available for them at 40% of AMI or 30% of AMI, and we have very high number of people that live in in those strata in Oakland.

So we're focusing very specifically there.

We're treating this as a pilot project and a proof of concept project that will attract more resources because we know that even though we got more money than we anticipated than we originally were going to get, it is only going to serve about 450 households.

And we know that we have as many as 80,000 units that could have lead paint in them.

Now every unit doesn't necessarily have a hazard just because it has lead paint, but it there's potential for hazard and blood lead poisoning.

So it's a big problem.

It's a big problem nationally in any city that has a lot of old housing like Oakland does, and it disproportionately impacts poor children, and that means it disproportionately impacts children of color.

We got to work with the auditor's office.

They came to us with some advice when they were launching their equity gender equity audit that they completed, I don't know, it's been over a year ago now.

And they got some technical assistance from DRE about what to look for, what questions to ask.

We did that on the front end, and then on the other end, they generously assigned follow-up on some of the findings to DRE.

So we have now done a little bit more work on that.

We've done some data work.

We've taken our employee data and we've put it into a dashboard so that we can easily see what it looks like, and that tees up additional work with the human resources department to address the root causes of the disparities that do exist.

So that's where that's coming to.

And so this work is also ongoing.

But this has been a this has been a really important conversation because what we do on workforce equity signals to our employees whether or not we're serious about equity.

If we're not addressing the workforce issues, then why can we why would we expect employees to support equity work?

They don't, they can't believe it's real.

So this is really exciting for us to be getting into some of this human resources equity work.

Workforce equity has also been a big topic in Oak Dot.

This was driven by the equity team.

There's a there's some really good data nerds in the equity team in Oak Dot, and they got really interested in how the hiring pipeline was working and why the at the end of the pipeline we they weren't seeing the diversity that they thought should be present in their hires, particularly in their professional staff, planners, and so on.

So they've done a five-year study now of the pipeline and have identified some of the pinch points in the pipeline that might be keeping qualified candidates of color out of employment in the city.

So this is another thing that's teed up for the human resources department for us to work on the root causes of those pinch points to make our system more equitable, and that we're always focusing on system fixes because if we try to fix these problems one case at a time, we'll never get there.

But when we can identify problems in the system, we can fix the system, and then we have to remember it's good systems theory or systems theory says that every decent system produces exactly the outcomes that it was designed to produce.

So when we can get into the systems and change the systems, we can fix the outcomes in a direction that is more equitable.

Our fiscal impact is that we have a tiny mighty team of three.

Someone gave us that nickname.

It was reduced from four in 2025 during the budget crisis RIF, and the city council did restore one administrative position beginning in fiscal year 25-26.

We are now just putting our requisition in and getting ready to start a hiring process.

And so we are very grateful for that.

It's been a tough year without any administrative support, and it's beginning to show if anybody's tracking how we're doing with our administrative work.

None of us are really qualified to keep up with it, but we're doing the best we can.

So this is gonna make a difference because it's gonna free us back up to do more technical assistance.

Our fiscal contributions include favorably impacting two previous bond rating processes.

I got that directly from the people who were in front of the bond boards, that they were impressed by the work that we're doing around equity.

They believe it's a it was a good signal.

They believed it was a good signal for Oakland's well-being and future prospects.

And it helped us with them in the past, and I'm sure it will continue to help as we go into the future.

We also have been able to successfully support grant applications, and we obviously increase the lead-based paint settlement share that we got by using an equity approach.

I'm sure there's more of this going on than we're actually tracking, but we know that it is helping on the fiscal side too.

That's it.

I did it.

Yes, you did.

And there's, you know, I hope that you all will follow up with this.

If you want to know about if I didn't hit your areas of interest and you want to know more about what's happening here or there, please reach out to us.

Thank you for your presentation.

I do want to just say since you mentioned uh council member Brooks, I I helped to do the grassroots organizing behind the legislation that she brought to ensure that you were here and that you can do this work for Oakland.

And I'm a bit of a curmudgeon and I don't celebrate things because the entire system hasn't changed yet.

But I will say that I've noticed your presence and the impact that it's had, even with the things that you listed today.

So I'm grateful you're here, and I'm grateful for the impact that that council member Brooks continues to have through the things that she's pushed for the city of Oakland.

I will open it up to the floor to my colleagues, and then we will go to our public speakers if there are any initial questions or concerns.

Councilmember Wong, then Councilmember Brown.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Um this is fantastic.

I I think it's actually really interesting how you've delved into topics like you know, working with the department of I or IT department that are not naturally the ones I come to top of mind when it comes to uh equity needs.

I I do want to ask some questions around HR because I do believe that the workforce, we're not the only policymakers.

Our city departments are filled with thousands of you know policymakers on their own, and I think ensuring that we have a racially diverse that those from underserved communities have opportunities to rise up in the city bureaucracy, that's really important.

And uh I I noticed since it says that the audit found that differences amongst pay around city employees were largely due to compensation uh the differences were largely due to job classifications.

You and I both know that, you know, that alone is not you know, people are put into different job classifications based off of their race and their gender.

And I'm wondering if you had noticed any patterns without that adjustment.

Yeah, the patterns are pretty obvious when you when you chart it out.

That you what you see is what you would expect to see, and that is a lot of the pay differential goes to uh traditional employment that's been traditionally male and women being way underrepresented there, and those areas being some of the best paid jobs in the city, not the very best, but but when you have, and they also are areas that have high numbers of employees, so they really skew our gender numbers.

The tricky part is getting to the root cause and undoing the root cause of that.

You can imagine what the problem, you know, the problem is deep.

Just I think about the trades, which is not really where it's showing up in the city, but back in the 80s, we had a big push for women in the trades, and uh a lot of women went into the trades, and then a lot of women left the trades because it wasn't a very it no longer is a place that women seek very frequently.

Some do, but not very commonly because it's it's not a very welcoming space, and it's not really set up for women to be successful.

And the same thing happens in other male-dominated, male, since we're talking about gender, male-dominated fields, and undoing that that's culture change.

That is some deep work.

Um I think the first thing we go to is that we need to do better recruitment, but it's like women actually know these jobs are there.

They know that these opportunities are there.

They know we hire police officers and firefighters on the regular, and that we even have a hard time recruiting enough people to fill our classes sometimes, right?

People know this.

It's not that we're hiding that information, it's that the culture change that's required to make these fields attractive to women and supportive to women as they come in, are heavy lifts, cultures don't change quickly.

So there's that piece of it.

And then the other piece of it is even then sometimes we weed people out, not intending to it, but the way the system is set up.

So it's been pointed out to me recently that to become a firefighter, you actually do have to do a lot of preparation before you get to the firefighter academy.

It takes a lot to get yourself there because there are a lot of requirements, technical requirements, and so on, for becoming a firefighter.

If you are low income, you have a heart or have to support yourself while you're going through that preparation and that sort of thing.

It's very difficult to get there.

So there's those kinds of things, and because women typically don't make as much money or have as much wealth perhaps as men or have as much access, that's a barrier for them.

So that's what we do is we start looking at the barriers and working on what can the city remove, what barriers could the city remove, or what supports could we provide to enable women in this case, any any group that is underserved or underrepresented.

What barriers could we remove in order to change that mix over time?

But there probably is not a quick fix.

And my question does apply to both race and gender, and I am wondering if you have you noticed any patterns of just who gets promoted, who, how do we, how's that?

We have not looked yet at uh we have not looked at promotion patterns.

There are two there are numerous HR areas that one could drill down into to understand better what people's prospects are in the city of Oakland.

One is promotional, what's the promotional, what are the promotional patterns, and the other is um discipline is a real problem, especially according to race.

And it is, I mean, it starts in school, starts in preschool, you know.

Discipline and race, uh, hmm, not equitable, right?

So these are all things that we could drill down to into but have not done so yet.

Uh, we started with the gender.

I'm not sure why the auditors started with gender, that's an auditor decision.

You know, they they get to decide what they audit for.

Um, they started with gender, and I think gender is a pretty good place to start.

And by the way, when we look at gender, we take an intersectional approach.

So we will look at race and gender, and we will find disparities by race within gender, it's always there.

So we'll still be looking at race, but right now this is teed up because of the audit finding, which we are required to respond to.

So it's teed up.

It doesn't mean we have to stop there.

Gotcha.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Councilmember Brown.

Excellent.

Um, thank you so much.

Um, thank you so much for just the time that you put into this report.

Um, I'm super grateful.

Um, I had the opportunity when I was a student at Laney College, the um, you know, uh the establishment of this department, it was something that I got to um also participate in and and watch.

And so now that um, you know, it's over a decade, right?

Um, so I think one of the questions I have I have four questions in all, um, but maybe I'll piggyback off of what council member Wong was getting at, and I think it has to do with just like the future of the department and when you're, you know, um just kind of being forward thinking.

Are there some projects that come to mind that you are looking to dive into?

I know that for uh this particular body, uh, there's been a lot of conversations around like the city's contracting and just procurement and how we are actually um, you know, what is our process, right?

And so I I'm curious if there are some things that kind of come to mind not outlined in the slides that you know are on your radar that the department is working on.

Yeah.

Well, when I was in, when you're thinking about systems, there are certain things that tend to come to mind.

And and these actually, these carried over from the work in Seattle as well.

We we have, we don't talk about all the time, but we have this three-legged stool of three things that it's important to make progress on in order to build the momentum that will get us to the tipping point of cultural change and system change.

Um, and one of them is contracting.

It's very, very important because just like workforce equity signals to the workforce, contract equity signals to the community.

And it's very those signals are very important to to um change momentum you need to have those signals that you're you're attempting at least at least to make progress in difficult areas so it's contracting workforce equity and the third one is how we engage the community and we've we've made the most progress systemically on how we engage the community we're doing a much better job we now have a we have an AI about it it's it's based on commun on inclusive practices people are doing them I just on Saturday was at a meeting about lead-based paint and housing had it down I mean it they really did they held it down and there and that's because they've been practicing for a while I mean they've been working on it for a while and we've been working together on it for a while.

So we're making a process contracting and workforce equity are heavier lifts they're much heavier lifts and we have not so they are very much on my mind because I feel like after nearly a decade we probably need to commit and really say what can we do to signal some meaningful steps toward progress and of course I'm talking to people about that and we know that we have um there are reasons why we haven't made progress in various areas there are always reasons but then the the equity approach is to of course there's reasons there's reasons why we're here there's a reason why we need to exist the question is how do we problem solve around that and so I think we're we're getting into that realm now because I think a lot of us are recognizing that we can't just we can't just keep drifting in these key areas because they have big impact they're important.

They have big impact yeah thank you Councilmember Brown if you could uh so I can manage this agenda could you list out all of your questions so that uh director the director can answer them thank you you got it um yeah so the next question was um there you know we saw the slides that were going over the impact and so I was just curious around like you know how you know what are your thoughts about like building capacity of the department right because you mentioned like you know there's a whole prong around community engagement but there's only three of you right and and hopefully you'll get your administrative staff so I would love for you to just speak about like how you think you could you know what what is the vision to like actually build up the department I also had this other question also from the slide around the workforce equity study and I was just curious if that was a study that is being will be presented to the council um because um I wasn't in the loop about that but I'm very interested to to learn more the gender the gender one or the or the pipeline one I think it was the one that's with DOT DOT pipeline yeah that one so I was curious about that um and then I think I heard you loosely say um not every department is represented or like not at the same level okay okay it's just like working with individuals this is you know it takes a change in mindset it takes a um a paradigm shift in some cases from the way it's always been done it's it's much less about good people bad people than it is about bureaucracies and how they function and how long you've been in them and how you understand the world and trying to shift that paradigm is it doesn't happen as quickly in certain cultures as it does in others uh oak dot was a really rich location when I got here because it was a brand new department with a lot of brand new people that were young and fresh and just got out of graduate school and grabbed it by the horns and started running down the road that wasn't the situation in every department not at all and so we work with people we work with people and departments from where they are and not everybody is in has arrived at the same place at this moment we don't quit though we're we're not backing off we're gonna keep pushing but I think we can also the more departments that have these kinds of successes that builds momentum and there is a little bit of a competitive edge out there you know it's like oh wait a minute how come we didn't get in your report was like well because right and so it might be because there's not as much going on so we so we will build on that we use all the all the levers we can find to bring people along and bring people in.

And people who know me know that I push pretty hard I I'm not, you know, as a matter of fact, you know, some people say too hard.

So I'm, you know I I'll go right up into the line and up to the line and sometimes might step a little bit over it because I'm pretty passionate about this because I actually do believe this is life-saving work.

I believe this is serious work, and I'm bring the seriousness, you know.

I I bring that every chance I can get.

So we won't stop.

As far as building the department up, we had also been allocated a data analyst position and didn't get a chance to fill it before the crisis.

So of course it's it got cut, and now I don't think it's there's it's gone.

I think it's been cut-cut.

So the the pro the thing about that is that our work is data-driven, it's data-driven, it's outcome-focused, and it's community centered.

And data is a hard thing to manage in the city of Oakland, because we don't have a lot of good data systems.

And us not having a data person to help us, help the departments with data and data collection and using data, does actually um present a barrier.

You know, we have a lot of workarounds, we're doing the work anyway.

We sometimes borrow grad students from Berkeley, whatever we need to do, but that's not the same as having embedded capacity.

So I would say, as far as if somebody said what's the next thing we need to do, we need to address that.

But we also know that finances are tight and that every department needs something.

And so we understand that, but that's that is a limitation, and this and the council recognized that and gave us the position, we just never got to fill it.

So I know you all know that we need that, and it's about where we're gonna get the where we're gonna get the financing for.

So yeah, that's our that's our next that's the next thing we would do.

Thank you.

You got all your questions, you got the responses?

Outstanding.

Councilmember Guyo.

Thank you, uh Director Dr.

Flynn for the information.

Look, Oakland has changed dramatically since we started with this program.

And certainly what I think what we need to know at the uh here at the city council is to know what is the population makeup makeup of Oakland today, and certainly what is it, what is the population makeup by district.

Certainly, if you look at district five, it's changed from the last five years when we start, it's changed dramatically.

So if you can provide that information for every council member, what is the population in Oakland?

What is the racial makeup by council district by by council district uh throughout the throughout the city?

Then secondly, have you been included?

I mean, we have many studies to deal with racial.

We had a uh four-year study that never came back or did the final analysis.

Were you part of that presentation development?

Which is we hired a the disparity study?

Yeah, I mean there's all what it's because we are we hire consultants.

The city hires consultant after consultant, pays them 400,000 to give me a study, but I want to make sure that you're here daily.

Are you included in those studies to make sure that when when it comes to race and equity that you know the information that you have is being presented?

Yeah.

Well, that study though is is equity centered.

So it doesn't require a lot of my technical expertise because it is focused on racial disparities and documenting them.

It's a very technical study.

Um the reason disparity studies are done have a very you know legalistic and and technical reason for even existing that has mostly to do with Prop 209.

And so that's why we use an outside, that's why the city engages an outside consultant is because of the level technical level that we're trying to get to in those studies.

Um I think that what where I will be involved, I hope.

I mean, I I assume I will be involved, is so now what do we do with the study?

What do we do with the recommendations?

What are options that the city might explore?

That's where I think I'll be able to be helpful.

So yes, that's what we're here for.

Yeah, you know, and it's an example.

There's another study being presented today, uh, an informational report on the Black New Deal racial impact study.

Were you part of that?

We well, it we were.

We did partner with with um at the council's request.

We managed the contract on the council's behalf.

Okay.

Uh and we so that meant that we cut we helped with the scope, we provided some technical advice, as we would to any department.

We provided some technical advice to the approach, but um there uh it again was a study that was contracted out, and so we didn't take over.

We, you know, when when I I really feel like sometimes it's good to get technical assistance from the outside, and it's important for us to try and get as much out of that as we can.

So we took the position of trying to squeeze as much out of the contract as we possibly could and and manage the contract legally and appropriately, and I think we've accomplished all those goals.

Um, but but we didn't we didn't um it wasn't we didn't take it over because yeah, it came from the council.

So the other the the only other information I would request from you besides you know what is Oakland today, population wise, all right.

But secondly, what is the employment workforce of Oakland today look like, right?

Besides, you know, the gender issue within departments.

What is the population makeup of different departments and so it's just the city council having to make decisions?

We clearly know what is what about the city attorney's office?

How many we have what how many 30 some individuals there?

What is the racial makeup of that department?

We actually know we did create.

It's just an example.

We did pull the data and we can share that with you.

We can we can show it to you.

And um, it's by department.

You can also it's got layers.

Amy Ferguson Yep, I think is in the room.

Yeah, so even though I don't have a data analyst, Amy joined our was is a la is the newest staff member and the newest graduate student and has some skills at working with with data.

Some that's not her primary, again, that's not her job, but she helped us look at the um data, the workforce data.

So we can we can definitely share that.

And I'm pretty sure we can also sort.

We have the census data.

We grabbed and cleaned the census data with a grad student from 2020.

So we could I think we can organize that or get it organized by council district.

We have the we have the shape files, we have the data, and it's just about figuring out how to how to yes sort it into district uh configuration.

It's doable.

But see, this is what a day data analyst would do for me.

I would just give that assignment to them, and I don't have so I'll have to find that person.

Thank you, and I'll reach out to you.

Thanks.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Yeah, we gotta work on that data analyst.

With that, uh Madam City Clerk, uh, we will call in the public speakers.

Thank you, Chair Five.

Before we do that, I apologize.

I see Councilmember Houston in the queue.

Yes, do the chair, hello.

Um, just got a one question really is how do how will 209 um hinder the movement of this race?

When we say race, how's 209 affecting this?

Well, we've been working under 209 since I got here, and by the way, we have I 200 in Washington State, and so I'd been working under I 200 for 10 years before I got here.

What I-200 and Prop 209 did was say that we can't do affirmative action.

It didn't say we can't do race work, it didn't say we can't do justice work, it didn't say we can't strive to close racial disparities in our outcomes.

It just said we couldn't use the strategy of affirmative action.

So we don't do affirmative action, we never do affirmative action.

We don't do set-asides, we don't do quotas, even though affirmative action actually didn't involve quotas, it never did, but we don't do any of that.

What we do is we work on removing barriers to access for communities from whom those opportunities have been withheld, and when we remove those barriers for marginalized communities, we're removing those barriers for everyone, aren't we?

So it works like a curb cut, yeah.

It's the curb cut effect.

Curb cuts were designed for people living with disabilities so that they could navigate in their wheelchairs.

I'm I bet I can safely assume there's nobody in this room that hasn't used a curb cut.

So we use the same approach to um creating access, fairness, and justice by removing barriers, and we have a lot of city systems that present barriers to low-income folks, to people of color, to immigrants and refugees.

You know, we we are looking for those barriers and we are looking to remove them, but when we remove them, those barriers are removed for everybody.

So it's not race specific.

We use the racial identifiers in our data to see who's being left behind, then we drill down for the root cause of that, like what's keeping women out of the higher paying fields in the city of Oakland, right?

We look for what's the root cause of that, and we we go after the root cause, but that's gonna help some men along the way too.

There was a time when uh being a firefighter or a police officer required that you be a certain height.

That really kept women out, right?

When you had to be six foot tall or something.

Not that many women made the grade.

But when when that was lifted, that's no longer the case.

When that went away, that meant some short dudes got in there too.

See how it works?

You remove the barrier that's definitely keeping women out, and it opens up opportunity for other less tall people to also walk through the door.

So that's our approach.

And that means that we don't do race-specific, we don't do race-specific programs because of Prop 209.

We used to be able to before that, yeah.

No, that's that was good explanation.

Good.

I love the the ADA one because I use that walk.

I walk up there all the time.

We've all we use think about it.

No, that was a good one.

That was a good one.

Yeah, yeah.

But they happened because of um activism from the disability community.

Thank you.

Thank you all for your questions, and we will hear from our public speakers.

Thank you.

Want to call your name, please reproach the podium, Miss Asada and Derek Barnes.

So if you can ignore the federal governments saying that illegal people can't come in this country, you can ignore Proposition 209.

Why do you have to obey it?

You don't obey the federal law.

You didn't obey the Constitution of California when it said you had to be 18 to vote.

You said no, we're gonna change it to 16.

So don't give me that mess about we gotta uh we gotta follow proposition 209.

You follow whatever you want to follow.

Now, as it relates to marginalized communities, I want to see a breakdown of every group racially or gender and how they are being marginalized in this city, how Latinos marginalize, how Asians marginalized, how Asian Pacifics are marginalized, okay?

And I already know how African Americans are, but I don't never see nobody coming in here say they marginalized.

And I'm talking about with workforce and I'm talking about with housing education.

Uh so we talked about ITs, safe streets, general plan, lead paint, gender equity, oak dot, and this is supposed to be the Office of Race and Equity, and we didn't get a report on race.

We didn't get a report on what's happening with race issues.

Now we have in the OUSD the Office of Equity.

So what you do with your race in equity is you bring awareness and strategies and changes of thinking and advocate uh and policy changes, but with OUSD, they are the Office of Equity is given funds, and for every group, the Asian community, the Latino community, they identify ways where they have impacting issues, and they support them in some programs.

Like we have the male black male achievement, the Latino male achievement, we have support file black girls.

I mean, they have things that are going on.

You work with your departments, you don't actually come out with equity.

Yes, ma'am.

That conclusion, public speaker's right on four.

Thank you.

So we can do a couple things.

We can um I can entertain a motion to receive and file this report in committee, or we can also send it to the full city council, and so um to the to the committee, or I I will ask council member brown what would be what would you like?

Um thank you for the consideration.

I would like for the entire body to have the opportunity just to weigh in.

Um so you want to hear this as a full item, but we'll just put it on uh consent, yeah.

Okay, and then just just so that there's an awareness, even to the public too.

Okay, I will make a motion to move this to the full city council.

What is it, March 3rd?

On consent.

Thank you.

We have a mo.

Council presentation.

I mean, we're talking about race and equity.

It's an issue every minute here in the city of Oakland.

And we all need to be aware what the numbers are, what we're doing for our future actions if we want to make a change.

And that's why, I mean, I would recommend that let the whole council be engaged in here.

I I'm indifferent.

Okay.

So it's up to the body what the preference would be.

I'm just trying to be considerate of an impacted council schedule.

And I would also urge my colleagues that are not on this committee to watch the presentation because there's no action, only because there's no action being requested.

But again, I am open to the preference of the body.

Councilmember Houston.

If council member Noelle wants the council to see the presentation, which was a great presentation, it changed some things about what I was thinking, right?

So I think it'd be a beneficial for him to see it.

I don't see why he can't give what he that should go to full council just to see the presentation.

It was a great presentation.

Councilmember Wong.

Let's put it on non-consent.

Um council, I mean, I'm sorry, Director Flynn.

I understand that you are a mighty team of three.

Do you have the capacity to come and present at the full council in the way that you presented today?

Yeah.

It was a 20-minute presentation.

I want to be clear.

That's we can cut it too.

We can try and make it shorter.

Any change?

I mean director Flynn, you said you can shorten the presentation.

Yes, I can.

I mean, I could actually literally well, can we?

We can't change it exactly, but I could skip slides or something.

I could figure it out.

I think that if um if you'd work with me to figure out what's important to keep and what I can let go of now that you've seen it, I'm happy to work to goal, you know.

I mean, it I understand that at City Council members' time is very precious, so okay.

We will work with your office, the council member will work with your office, yeah, to ensure that this is doable at the full time.

And we did not cover the disparity data in this report.

You all know that we have it, we use it, we use it for everything.

I didn't mention the oak dot um equity tool toolkit map that maps the inequities in the city of Oakland.

We could also overlay council districts on that.

That would be fairly simple to do.

That's just an overlay layer.

Um we have a lot, we actually do have quite a bit of data, and we use that data in our racial equity impact analysis.

It just it was a 10-minute report, and I felt like it was important because I had never presented before like this, to get out there how we do what we do and what we focus on and how we prioritize and even how we flow, because you all having that situational awareness about our department is very helpful to us, but but I can come back and do data, and I mean if there's things we can do to go deeper.

I just made choices here, and so we we can stick to this for now, and you just let me know what you want to make sure that I repeat um for the full council.

Okay, thank you.

Oh, and thank you for bringing up council member Brooks.

I know I included her name in the report, and somehow in my hurry to put together the PowerPoint, which you know is always the last thing that you do.

I didn't I didn't say councilmember Brooks's name, and I think it is important to know that this is a major project for count for the council member and the community, and I I said that in the report.

I am very in the part about the community that I know that we are a product of a lot of community work and and um councilmember Brooks' leadership and support from the rest of the council that was here at that time.

So thank you for saying that.

Yeah, thank you for bringing it up.

Wanted to say if it was important enough for Councilmember Brown to bring it up here, and you know, we're gonna rank it, we're gonna file what you call it accept and file it.

I think that what uh council member guy said it you you spent all that time to do it, and it was really good.

I like the whole council to see it.

That's it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have a motion by Chair Five, seconded by Councilmember Wong to receive and forward this item to the March 3rd City Council agenda on non-consent on roll.

Councilmember Gaio.

Councilmember Houston.

I council member Wong.

Aye, and Chair Five.

Aye.

Motion passes with four ayes to receive and forward this item to the March 3rd City Council, and that is on non-consent.

Moving to item five.

Receive an informational report on the Black New Deal racial impact study developed by Dr.

Brandy Summers.

And Mrs.

Summers is online.

Okay, I'll just give brief remarks because we spent significant amount of time on that last item.

But I'll just state for the record uh some of the impetus behind this report.

In May 2022, the district three office requested an informational report on the impact of racialized discriminatory municipal policies, including an analysis of displacement through eminent domain, lost wealth due to segregation, depreciated property values, redlining and gentrification.

This report, done in conjunction with the Department of Race and Equity, was presented on June 28, 2022, and a detailed extraordinary extraordinary level of extraction extraction and dispossession from black communities in our city led to the recommendation that the city contract outside services for a more expansive study.

In response to city council set aside funds in the fiscal year 2022-2023 mid-cycle budget, and on May 16, 2023, awarded a professional services contract to Dr.

Brandy Summers to build on the city's racial impact analysis work done by Amy Ferguson, which was extraordinary, and chart a path forward by providing a framework for reparative policies.

I will now invite Dr.

Summers to present via Zoom, the Black New Deal study, and we can put 10 minutes on the clock for this, and we will hear from Dr.

Summers.

Mrs.

Summers, you may unmute yourself and begin your presentation.

Okay, great.

Can you hear me?

We can.

Okay, wonderful.

Um thank you so much.

I I don't know if you can see me.

I'm not sure how to do that, but it's fine.

Um I want to thank you.

I'm sorry I couldn't be here today.

It's due to the blizzard um on the East Coast, but good evening, Council members.

Thank you, Chairperson, Chairperson Fife, for this opportunity to present the findings of the Black New Deal racial impact analysis.

Um, my name is Dr.

Brandy Summers.

I'm the principal and owner of Blue Summers, and I've conducted this comprehensive study to examine the ongoing effects of public policy decisions on Oakland's Black community.

This analysis was commissioned by, like Chairperson Fife said, District 3 and represents months of research, community engagement, and data collection.

What I'm going to share with you today are the findings that demand our attention and more importantly, our action.

If you could go to the next slide, I'm not sure if you can see the slides or the other.

Dr.

Summers, we can see your slides.

You may continue.

Okay, wonderful.

Um, so I want to start with the stark reality that we're facing.

In 2020, the national community reinvestment coalition named Oakland and San Francisco, the most gentrified cities in the US.

And this isn't really just a statistic, it's represents the lived experience of thousands of Oakland residents.

So on the left, you see since 2010, Oakland has lost nearly 25% of its black population.

That's one in four black residents who've been displaced from their homes in their communities.

And then even more alarming, more than 70% of Oakland's homeless population is black, despite black residents making up less than 20% of the overall population.

And this disparity is among the worst in the nation.

The forces driving this crisis include rising rents, prohibitive property values, new construction that doesn't serve existing residents, and the devastating impact of the Great Recession.

But these aren't natural phenomena, they're the direct result of policy decisions.

So Black and Indigenous populations are the only demographic groups whose numbers are declining in Oakland.

This is the legacy, as Councilmember Fife said, of redlining urban renewal projects like the Cypress Freeway, like West Oakland Bark Station, and ongoing gentrification pressures.

You can go to the next slide, please.

So to understand the crisis, we asked three fundamental research questions.

The first is what are the ongoing effects of federal, state, and locally subsidized policies that would include again redlining, eminent domain, urban renewal, and gentrification, and specifically their toll on black the black community in Oakland.

Second, how do residents themselves perceive the impact of these public policy decisions?

And finally, what policy changes could help mitigate these negative effects.

To answer the questions, we looked at six interconnected focus areas: housing, education, the economy, environment and health, arts and culture, and then policing and public safety.

Our methodology combined quantitative survey data, qualitative focus groups and interviews, as well as a literature review and analysis of government reports.

So we didn't just study the community, we wanted to listen to the community as well.

Next slide, please.

So in particular, our housing findings.

So if you have access to the report, they begin on page 11, but they reveal several critical insights.

First, that homeownership doesn't guarantee wealth and stability in Oakland.

Unlike other communities, black homeowners in Oakland face declining property values in certain neighborhoods, high maintenance costs, and limited access to home equity.

We found that there were clear disparities in economic and technological resources where many black residents don't have access to the digital tools and financial services that other people take for granted.

There's a prevailing belief among residents that housing is a human right, not simply a commodity.

So this perspective challenges the market-driven approach that's dominated so much of Oakland's housing policy in the past.

We also discovered that there are tensions between black landlords and black tenants.

It's a complex dynamic where black property owners face some of the same economic pressures as corporate landlords, and it creates difficult choices for the community overall.

And then finally, there's an overwhelming support for rent control as a mechanism to preserve housing affordability and prevent displacement.

Next slide, please.

So in terms of the key findings and other areas on the left, you'll see in education and the economy.

We found that Oakland's teachers need better infrastructure support, not just salaries, but resources, professional development, and better working conditions.

There's a clear need to invest in education and training programs that lead to actual job creation, not just credentials.

So black businesses need more financial support.

And we found evidence of ongoing financial discrimination in lending and banking.

On the right, you'll see regarding safety and environment, the federal crime bill of the 1990s continues to have negative effects on Oakland's black community through overpolicing and mass incarceration.

Police accountability emerged as a major concern alongside a fundamental lack of trust towards law enforcement.

This isn't abstract, nor is it probably surprising.

It affects public safety outcomes overall.

They receive far less investment than neighborhoods in the hills.

And these these findings aren't isolated issues.

They're interconnected manifestations of systemic inequality that really require comprehensive, not piecemeal solutions.

So next slide, please.

So based on our findings, I'm proposing eight recommendations, but I want to just walk you through the first four given time constraints.

So the first is to invest in distressed segregated neighborhoods.

So one of the biggest challenges to buying and keeping a home is the cost of maintenance.

So we recommend that the city provide tax incentives to rehabilitate homes and neighborhoods with lower property values, as well as property tax relief for low-income homeowners and renters, rent control provisions that accompany five and 10-year tax abatements for landlords with those savings that would be passed on to tenants.

Training programs that are modeled on a program in Baltimore, the Black Women Build, where prospective home buyers learn to maintain their homes instead of relying on expensive contractors.

So this approach stabilizes distressed neighborhoods without accelerating gentrification and it reduces housing cost burdens, aligns tax incentives with tenant protections, and builds long-term affordability through skill development.

So we're proposing a two-year pilot program at the cost of $3.2 million.

The summary budget is outlined on page 24 of the report.

So this program would include home rehabilitation grants, property tax relief administration, training programs, personnel and evaluation, and this investment would serve 60 to 75 homes while building a model that can scale citywide.

Next slide, please.

The second recommendation is a long-term residence bill.

So similar to the GI Bill, which I should note was not afforded to Black veterans at the same rate as white veterans.

We're proposing legislation providing benefits for long-term Black residents, especially those experiencing poverty and homelessness.

And so this is a structure, this is structured as a benefits program, not a grant program with direct payments to institutions to ensure accountability.

And the program would provide education and training benefits, so direct payments to community colleges, trade schools, and training providers on behalf of eligible residents, home ownership benefits, so down payment assistance, closing costs, and interest rate buy downs with payments going directly to escrow or lenders, small business and co-op development, so low interest loans and forgivable financing for businesses that serve the community.

And so this creates a durable pathway to economic stability.

It's not charity, it's an investment in Oakland's future and acknowledging the debt owed to long-term residents who have been systematically excluded from wealth building opportunities.

So for this one, we're proposing a three-year pilot program at 25 million dollars.

The budget again is on page 27, which would serve approximately 700 to 1,000 participants in education or training, and then 150 to 200 households for ownership, as well as 130 to 180 businesses or cooperatives.

Is to demonstrate the impact while at the same time maintaining fiscal responsibility.

And then just a few other recommendations.

So next slide, please.

I'm getting to the end.

So recommendation three is participating participatory budgeting.

That's on page 29.

So by providing Oakland residents with transparency and accountability and budget development, the city can earn trust and collective engagement from traditionally excluded communities.

This means enabling residents to directly propose, deliberate and vote on a defined portion of public spending, but critically the process must be designed to reflect Oakland's full diversity, not just those with the time and resources to participate in evening meetings.

We need targeted outreach, accessible meeting formats, language access and supports like child care and transportation stipends to remove barriers to participation.

And the goal is to avoid elevating middle class perspective or really upper class perspectives over those experiencing poverty or housing and security.

If you look on the right column, recommendation four is a civilian conservation corps.

So this is modeled after Roosevelt's New Deal program, but it's reimagined for today.

So this would create living wage public sector public sector jobs for previously incarcerated individuals, the long-term unemployed and residents on fixed incomes.

These aren't make work positions.

Workers would actually improve public lands, parks, and health infrastructure while receiving apprenticeships and training for higher paying jobs in Oakland.

So we recommend partnering with contracted firms and city agencies to provide this pre-apprenticeship program, creating a pipeline for public service to skilled employment, and so this addresses multiple crises simultaneously: unemployment, lack of job training, deteriorating public infrastructure, and the need for pathways out of poverty.

Two more slides.

So just one slide after this, the next slide.

So these recommendations emerge from four core priorities that define what we heard from the community.

First, affordable housing.

We have to make homeownership less expensive and renting more secure.

This really isn't optional, it's it's essential for uh Oakland as a diverse city.

Um, secondly, enhanced tax space that we need to enhance Oakland's tax space to provide marginalized residents, and I'm really talking about black residents with adequate public resources.

Equity doesn't mean equal treatment, it means proportional investment where there's a greater need.

Um, third, civic culture change.

Uh Oakland needs a civic culture change that includes civic memory of anti-black discrimination.

We can't address present inequities while ignoring their historical roots.

And finally, material support.

Um, Oakland must identify and materially support current and outgoing or ongoing uh work that prioritizes social justice, equity, and repair, as Director Flynn just mentioned.

Um, many organizations and community members are already doing this work, and so they need resources, not just recognition.

I I don't believe these priorities are aspirational, they're they're achievable with strategic investment and political will.

And now the last slide.

Um, so in closing, I wanted to emphasize that this isn't just a research report, I'm seeing it as a roadmap for action.

Um, the challenges we've documented displacement, homelessness, economic inequality, educational disparities didn't happen overnight, but they can be solved.

So what we're proposing is building capacity, um, and that's by investing in community-led solutions, not top-down mandates, creating accountability mechanisms that ensure public dollars and serve public good, um, centering the voices and experiences of those most impact, um, impacted, and acknowledging historical harms while focusing on future opportunities.

These are eight comprehensive um approaches to racial equity in the report, and they're interconnected as well as evidence-based and community-informed.

And I I'm happy to answer questions, but I do think that you know, this there's a choice here to continue on the current trajectory of displacement and equality or invest in a more equitable future.

The data here is clear.

Um, the community spoken, and now I believe it's up for um council to have the opportunity to act.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your presentation.

Um, Madam City Clerk, if we can go to our city or uh public speakers, and then we'll hear from the council.

Thank you so much, Chair Five.

Calling your name, Derek and Miss Asada.

You can't have change when you continue to ignore the requests for you to deal with things like gent uh gentrification and your sanctuary city status impacting on economic jobs and housing.

And it is a tremendous impact being a sanctuary city.

Now, what you didn't, which you haven't wasn't in that report, particularly when it relates to our children in OUSD.

African Americans have the highest expulsion rate, the highest suspension rate.

They are graduating, reading at the eighth grade level.

There's uh intervention dealing with anti-blackness in schools where they uh the Latino children are you calling them the N-word at Fremont.

You have overrepresentation of African American boys in special special education.

You have mandated dual language for African Americans, particularly at FRIC, where they have to learn Spanish in other in order to learn the academic subjects.

You have a the ending of African American studies to be replaced by ethnic studies where black children could no longer learn about their history and culture.

You have the closing of over 16 predominantly African American schools uh related to school closures in that district.

Now, as it relates to uh what's going on with safety, you have African American offices decreasing in numbers.

You have the African American uh offices with the black uh grievance saying that they and the NSA is saying black offices are disapproporately disciplined at higher rates, that they are disproportionately not given uh promotion.

You have a tremendous decrease in the hiring of offices, you still have excessive force and racial profiling at a disproportionate level impacting African Americans.

Okay, so you can't change when you even haven't identified some of your dynamics.

How many times have I come to UNXU to be?

Thank you for your comment.

That concludes your public speakers for it, five.

Thank you.

I will uh because I I requested this report come to the committee.

I will make a motion to uh accept the report that was made and send to the full city council on consent, but I'm um opening the floor to any comments by my colleagues.

Councilmember Houston.

I'd just like to make one comment.

Um, some of those those percentages were disturbing.

Um it said decline by 25 percent and 70 percent of the homeless um were black.

That's that's real disturbing.

Just real disturbing.

And the services that um are our black um unhoused residents need are being taken up by people who just coming from out of town and coming from other cities for sure.

Um so I don't know how we're gonna address that, but I know one thing we got to pass that EAP so we can um address these issues, council member Wong.

Um thank you uh and uh thank you, Chair Fife, for agendizing this item.

Uh I had a quick question.

I noticed um to the doctor that uh for the study participants that 37 out of 66 respondents had an income over 100,000 annually.

That strikes me as not mean representative of um the black population in Oakland.

Can you just comment on that?

And I'm I'm just basically wondering if the disparities that are noted in the study given the intersection of class and race are likely even deeper than what we have in this report.

Thank you for that question.

Um you're right, and there was an over-sampling of those with higher income.

It was that data was incorporated, at least that qualitative data was incorporated with census data and also historical data from um through the literature review.

So it's kind of a uh combination of information that was used to determine what the issues are.

What I will point out though is that um the survey enabled people to answer not only for themselves but also members of their family and um their social circles, and so for several of them, at least if they were anonymous, um, it seemed to be that they might have been individuals who made more money than their peers or their family members, so they were able to identify individuals who didn't necessarily make that much money, or several of whom um spoke about their uh relatives being unemployed.

So it covered, even though the individuals themselves may have had an overrepresentation of those with higher income.

They were certainly speaking about family members and others who are close to them that weren't didn't have that same experience.

Okay, gotcha.

That's that's helpful.

And and this isn't intended as a critique.

I know it's hard to get um with any sort of survey, it's usually people of of higher classes who have the time to do this.

Um, but I just want to ensure that ensure that we ground your results in that uh in that background, and then I just have a quick question around one of your recommendations to provide, I think it was tax relief to do the rehabilitation of homes uh in areas of lower value.

Can you just explain that?

That was just one of the recommendations that I couldn't quite connect or understand.

Sure, that's no problem.

So there it was really based on the uh program in Baltimore called Black Woman Build.

Um I ended up speaking with uh the their board of directors or at least the chair of their board um to understand the process and how they were able to essentially um work through an opportunity to rehab these homes while having the individuals who are purchasing them also be the people who are working um on the houses themselves, so they were actually hired as the contractors.

Um essentially there was an opportunity to um though Maryland the state of Maryland doesn't have a Prop 209 or something similar, they were able they do have a program for women and um black owned and also minority owned businesses where they're able to give them contract um opportunities or again if they've had distressed businesses, etc.

And so the idea behind um providing an incentive uh for the women or men or families who are going to participate in the rehabilitation is to provide them with a tax incentive, especially if they're establishing themselves as a small business, doing the work, um the contractual work on the homes.

Ah, gotcha.

Thank you.

Super helpful.

No problem.

Thank you.

I'll just I'll just wrap by saying that there was nothing for me that was revelatory uh in some of the findings that came from from this report.

As one of our public speakers said, we've had report after report after report about disparities in the city of Oakland, and it really is our opportunity with this council to do something different, and I'm looking forward to doing that.

I've been in conversation with the city administrator's office about um what can be done around contracting.

And as uh Director Flynn said, contracting uh equity signals come to community that we are intending to do something different.

I'm paraphrasing Director Flynn, so I apologize, but we do have to we have to move differently.

Uh I I did want to speak to one of the uh public speakers' mentions about several challenges that we're seeing grow in our public school system, and even though we are not the school board, uh I believe that the equity work that we're doing around proactive rental inspections and our lead policy can have some impact because we know the impacts that lead has on the developing brain of our children, it's literally poison.

They call it lead poisoning for a reason, and so that um you know builds into what teachers perceive as aggression and and acting out behavior and students that gets labeled as um problematic, which ends in additional expulsions or disproportionate expulsions of our it tends to be boys, but now we're seeing it with girls as well.

So I I just wanted to say that all of these things are connected, and it really is important that uh we work with our city administrator and the different directors of different well that he works with them because we don't want to get caught directing anybody, that we can actually make some change towards eliminating these disparities because they are real, they exist, and it's important that we are working inside of what we can do, but we're also pushing the boundaries.

So thank you, council, um, for my colleagues for your questions and and your concerns around this issue, and Madam City Clerk, if you could call the the role, I would appreciate that.

Thank you, Chair Five.

We have a motion made by Chair Five, seconded by Councilmember Gallo.

To receive and forward this item to the March 3rd City Council agenda as a request from the chair on consent on roll, Councilmember Gallo.

Aye.

Councilmember Houston.

Aye.

Council Member Rawan.

Aye.

And Chair Five.

Aye.

This motion does pass with four eyes to receive and forward this to the March 3rd City Council agenda, and that is on consent.

Moving to open forum.

And we do have one speaker, Mr.

Sada.

So sometimes you may think a position I might take is a position of hopelessness.

And that will never be the case.

This is easy.

Every immigrant fam group that comes here, they come here and they maintain their history, their language, their culture, and they they keep that a vival.

When we came here, we lost our language, our history, our culture.

But guess what we did?

We reinvented ourselves.

We have our own language, we have our history of what we've been able to do with our uh the way we cook, the way we dress, the way we wear hair.

Don't talk about the music that we have.

We've been major contributors to the inventions and science and everything.

So we have been challenged tremendously.

I said we um we ended a little early.

We do have public safety at 6 p.m.

But I wanted to give you another 10 seconds to finish your statement.

I've had enough.

Uh I've been here all day, but I'll be back, and I just want to acknowledge the Ohlone people, and I'm wearing them because they look like me, just the original people.

I saw that brother with that afro.

I said, Lord, I'm gonna wear this.

The Allone people.

Thank you for that little bit of history.

There are images of the Olonee that look very much like African people.

Folks should do their research because there's some um some kinky hair and some very melanated people that were a part of the Olone tribe.

With that, I want to thank my colleagues and uh adjourn this meeting.

It is 523, 534.

Well, this is