Good afternoon.

And welcome to the special city council meeting of Tuesday, April 14th.

Before I call roll, I will go over speaker card instructions.

If you would like to submit a speaker's card on any item, please fill out a speaker's card before the item is called or two hours after the start of the meeting.

This meeting was called to order at three thirty three thirty-five.

Whichever comes first.

Excuse me.

On roll for this meeting are Councilmember Brown.

Present.

Councilmember Five, present.

Councilmember Gayo is excused.

Councilmember Houston.

Here.

Councilmember Ramachandran.

Present.

Councilmember Unger.

Here.

Councilmember Wong, remember you do not have to put yourself in the queue.

Let me unmute you.

Present.

Council President Jenkins.

Present.

Showing seven members present at this time.

Going to item three modifications to the agenda.

No modifications.

There are no modifications to this.

Oh, one second.

Councilmember Unger.

I've got two.

Um on item six point nine.

I'd like to add council member Houston as a co-sponsor, co-author.

And then on item four point two in um one of the drafts, there was still some language around the parking administrator position that I think had been added in error, and I just want to make sure that we're um it's in it's in one of the places, but not the other one.

I think there may have been a cut and paste error.

I don't know if if someone can speak to that or whether we're gonna need to amend that.

I I had heard from the city administrator that that had been added in error and would be removed, but I don't think it has been yet.

So when we get to the item, okay, to the parliamentary, and we could deal with this.

Thank you.

Councilmember Brown.

Aye.

Councilmember Five.

Aye.

Councilmember Gaio is excused, Councilmember Houston.

Aye.

Councilmember Ramachandran.

Aye.

Councilmember Unger.

Councilmember Wong.

Aye.

And Chair Jenkins.

Aye.

Public hearing is open at 338 with a vote of seven ayes.

One excuse Gaio.

I will now read the item into record.

Conduct a public hearing and upon conclusion adopt a resolution finding Matthew Bernard and Lynn Warner.

Owners of record of assessor parcel number four eighth.

In violation of Oaken municipal code.

Chapter 12.36.

Protected trees by illegally removing 38 protected trees at said parcel and opposing a penalty per chapter 12.36.150 of the Oakland municipal code of a total sum of 915, 135.

This time we have t 21 speakers on this item.

Because of the amount of speakers, we will be doing a minute and 30 seconds for each speaker.

Um to the staff, to the um staff will be given five minutes for presentation.

Five dollars and forty cents to place on hold any building permits and place a lien for say a property until the penalty is paid in full this time we have 21 speakers on this item because of the amount of speakers we will be doing a minute and 30 seconds for each speaker to the staff to the um staff will be given five minutes for presentation council member chandra thank you I believe that staff ready okay good afternoon uh members of the council Kristen Hathaway Assistant Director for Public Works Bureau of Environment Uh Oakland Municipal Code Chapter 12.6 the Protected Trees Ordinance regulates the removal of trees on public and private property in Oakland to prevent unnecessary tree loss, minimize environmental damage from improper tree removal, and effectively enforce tree preservation regulations to maximize public health, safety and welfare benefits of trees, and to promote the appreciation and understanding of trees.

The ordinance specifies what trees are protected, the removal permit process and enforcement and penalties for violating this ordinance.

On no less than seven separate occasions, Matthew Bernard, the co-owner of a parcel on Claremont Avenue, acted in violation of this ordinance by repeatedly removing trees for a total of 38 protected trees on his and neighboring parcels without a tree removal permit.

Mr.

Bernard was notified multiple times in person and in writing of the ordinance and its requirements, including the necessity of applying for and obtaining a tree removal permit before removing any protected trees.

Mr.

Bernard continued to remove trees from his property in violation of direct city staff instruction to cease doing so.

Notice of violation letters, the Oakland Police Department being called to the site, and police reports being filed and complaints from his neighbors whose trees he also removed until he had removed all the trees from his property.

City of Oakland adopted a protected trees ordinance in part to recognize the value of such trees and the critical services they provide.

Now that Mr.

Bernard has removed all 38 trees from his property, the property is much more highly prone to erosion, land movement, and increased fire risk, and eliminates the multiple services that trees provide, including air and water quality improvement, downstream flood risk reduction, and habitat to name a few.

Hundreds of applicants successfully navigate the city's process and comply with the city's adopted ordinance annually without issue or conflict.

For planning and building related tree removal permits, staff regularly and routinely approve permits for tree removal if existing trees are growing within the planning department approved footprint for new buildings and structures.

As part of the investigation, staff calculated the dollar value of each illegally removed tree according to the International Society of Our Borough Culturals tree valuation protocols as stated in the ordinance.

Staff used all available evidence, their direct, multiple on-site investigations, their significant professional experience and extensive licensed technical expertise in evaluating this case and making recommendation.

In light of these facts, staff recommends that you adopt the resolution finding Matthew Bernard and Lynn Warner in violation of the protected tree ordinance, impose a penalty of a total sum of 915,135 and 40 cents.

Place a hold on the issuance of any approval or permits for said parcel and place a lien on the property until the penalty is paid per OMC chapter 12.36.190.

And I have a quick uh slide show of the pictures of the site if if council members wish to see that.

Please proceed.

Okay.

Okay.

So this is the this is a aerial image of the parcel map before the tree removals in uh June of 2020.

And this is what uh the parcel looked like after the illegal tree removals.

Um this is a Google street view of what the parcel looked like in advance of the removals.

And this is a street view from 2024.

This shows the location of the 38 illegally removed trees, the cut they're color coded by inspection date.

So that means the date that our staff discovered that they were removed upon inspection.

So that's what the different colors mean in this slide.

You have about one minute removed.

And this is uh image of the property owner in the process of illegally removing a tree.

Um and this is another image of the parcel.

Um that concludes my presentation.

Staff uh myself and tree staff are available to answer any questions.

Thank thank you so much.

Is the property owner available?

Please come.

You have five minutes.

We'll save our questions until the property owners.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for allowing me to speak.

My name is Lynn Warner.

Um, I am the partner of Matthew Bernard for over 20 years.

Matthew and I purchased this land in September of 2019 to build our home for our family.

We had visions in November of 2019, three months after we bought the property.

It's on a steep incline.

We crawled on all four on all fours going up the hill and everything.

And immediately, Miss Boxer, the next door neighbor, opened up the window and warned us to get off the property.

I explained that we are the owners, we bought the property.

Within 30 seconds, Matthew was behind me crawling up the hill.

She saw him and said, Are you bringing your whole tribe?

Immediately, that put some reservation in my mind.

Like, what am I getting into here with a neighbor like that?

I've been a registered nurse for almost 40 years.

And care for others, and I want health care to be available for all, and I want fairness to be available to everyone.

Matt and I have multiple accounts of discrimination here in California, here in many states and countries, but from our own family, from strangers in the world, but we continue to fight together to make it better.

We filed for applications for removal of the trees after we got we first, excuse me, we first got notice from the fire department to remove the trees, they were dead and dying.

So we did that.

We did an Arborist report that said the trees could come down.

We also made multiple applications to the tree division to get a permit to put the trees down, and it was never returned.

We came in person to do this also.

Nothing was ever returned.

Every time Matthew would go to the land, the police were called, and he'd have to show that he owned the land with his ID.

I feared for his safety.

Yes, stereotypical is what we see on the news every day, locally, nationwide.

Why is a black man could he be shot at as a black man?

Possibly so.

The police suggested that we get restraining orders against the neighbor, so this would stop happening.

We did that and everything.

Then all of a sudden, the whole neighborhood starts to attack us when we're working on the land.

We hired tree trimmers to help trim the taller trees.

What did Mr.

Lee do?

And another neighbor, they came, shook the tree where the hired professionals were removing the trees, and Mr.

Lee shouting, I'm calling ice on you.

I'm calling ice on you.

And isn't it awful to think that too?

We asked for Mr.

Todd Lawson, who's in charge of the tree division to come out and make appointments with us to look at the trees, look at the land, and he always canceled.

The day that the tree trimmers were there, and Mr.

Lee and neighbors are shaking the tree.

Wouldn't you know Mr.

Todd Lawson is standing in the driveway and on the property of Mr.

Lee?

What is going on?

We cannot compromise the safety of others.

All the records are in your possession to review.

This will not stop.

Just tonight today, we received an AI-generated story about us and the tree removal.

What is going on?

I'm fighting for the racial justice of the situation.

And I'm fighting for our future.

All people should be allowed to fulfill their dreams.

Thank you.

Well, thank you.

Councilmember Ramatra.

Thank you.

I want to start with a disclaimer on issues like this that I have given, I've spent many, many, many hours reviewing this case and the hundreds and hundreds of pages of documents and evidence and people involved, and I've given both parties equal time when I've communicated with them directly.

So let me start off by stating how I feel about this, as this is a property currently in district four.

There are clear, undeniable issues of improper tree removal.

I believe the property owners should be held liable for their actions, and I will move to approve staff's recommendation to impose the full fine.

Our laws are not always clear.

And I get that Oakland's not always the easiest place to do business or build a house or do development of any kind, especially for immigrants who might be new to this country and our city, and things are often complicated, and it's not emotional.

We don't have user-friendly systems, to say the least.

However, even if initially the first round of 23 trees being cut down in a three-month period were unclear, it is inexcusable that the property owners decided to cut down trees on six more occasions after that to be able to get us to this number of 38 trees eventually being cut down.

And while there is some debate on the actual property lines and borders, it is very likely that at least six of these 38 trees weren't even within the property lines.

So I do find it offensive that wildfire prevention is being used as an excuse to cut down trees.

I am currently chair of the East Bay Wildfire Coalition of Governments.

Wildfire prevention has been one of my number one of my many priorities, and an issue that I've learned a lot about in my time in this role so far, and it is not okay to use it as an excuse to cut down trees, especially native trees like our oaks that serve as staff said numerous purposes for biodiversity and well-being and the promotion and supporting of native plants, but more than that is the science of it.

Oaks don't really burn.

They are fire resistant, healthy oaks are fire resistant.

And when it comes to wildfire prevention, there is a number of requirements on property owners to keep their areas free of debris and den and dying branches and things that are fuel for fire, but that usually almost certainly does not include healthy oak trees, which are the majority of trees that were cut down, unfortunately.

There's nothing in the fire department's communication that suggests that trees needed to be cut down in the name of fire prevention.

So all of that to say, while I do support staff's recommendation to move forward with the full fine, I want to point out a couple of things very clearly for the record.

First and foremost, this is untimely.

Staff's decision to bring about a notice of violation in 2025 when these cut trees were cut down in early 2021, is not okay.

We have a tree protection ordinance and laws on the book for a reason.

And if we don't enforce them as immediately as possible after the violations occur, we are allowing community members to be able to disconnect to not consider our laws and disrespect our laws and the many reasons that we put them forward.

I think that there is often excuses about we've we're understaffed, we don't have park rangers since the financial crisis of 2008, and all of that may be true, but mind you, council did fund six additional tree services workers in the past year, and none of them have been hired yet.

So there is there is an effort from this body to make sure we're staffing up our tree division as much as possible, and that's not happening yet.

But at the end of the day, bringing a notice of violation forward is as simple of the process of bringing a resolution to council.

We don't need park rangers for that.

So for me, I would love to see any violations of trees being cut down, being taken incredibly seriously and imposing five and bringing a fine proposal to council as soon as it happens, not four years later.

Um I also believe that staff does should have to, should have had to do more engagement in this process with the applicant.

Should have had to do more engagement in this process with the applicant.

It's not staff's job to handhold people who have committed violations.

But there were already, if you look at the timeline of all of this, in just two months between February and March, 23 trees were already cut down.

By June of 2021, that was another eight trees.

That gets us to 30 trees.

And then over the course of a year, from then to 2022, there were another eight trees being cut down.

And a lot of the applicants' arguments are focused on the process of those final eight trees.

If staff had been able to enforce this early on with those first round of 23 trees, we would still have 11 more oak trees available in this lot, serving our biodiversity in our communities.

So there is nothing more important for me than enforcement of our laws on the books for this and moving forward.

Now I also know that our tree protection ordinance needs revision.

Staff has enforcement capability, but frankly, not enough.

So I will I pledge to bring forward a future resolution, a f future set of amendments to our tree protection ordinance to think about more thoughtfully when egregious violations occur that they're handled in a way that are actually swift so that we can give people a sense of notice that there will be consequences, not four or five years later, but immediately if you cut down trees without the proper process too.

And finally, I do want to note there are equity issues when it comes to this.

We understand that the Oakland Hills have historically not been available to property owners such as Mr.

Bernard and others who are people of color and immigrants.

And I acknowledge that, and there have been people throughout the years, and that's why we have barely 4,500 oak trees left in Oakland.

That people it is historically the folks who have occupied the hills that have cut down trees to develop.

And just because you could do that in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, even 90s, without punishment and without consequence, does not mean we can do that today.

And we can we can't allow that today to continue to be the default just because people did it in the past before.

So I know that there has been harm done to the applicant, there's been allegations of racism and xenophobia, and I believe I believe a lot of that.

I understand that this is a challenging environment and place to be a newcomer to this city and this country and be able to develop property on your own, but that is no excuse for cutting down 38 trees in a blatant violation and disrespect for our laws.

So I will pause with that and make a motion to uphold staff's recommendation and enforce the full $915,000 fine.

You guys both once go first.

I just want to second it.

Okay.

And then we'll go to public comment after we hear from council member Brown, then Councilmember Houston.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Um, first off, I just want to mention um that um when this item first came before us, um, Councilmember Ramachandran reached out to me and asked uh for myself and my team to um engage with all of the stakeholders uh to kind of help support um kind of the decision making.

And so um I guess really at this time I'm just gonna provide um you know my own analysis of the situation.

And so um myself and my team, we met individually with all of the key stakeholders uh to discuss the facts.

Mr.

Bernard, the neighbors and city staff, and there were several points uh that stood out, and um I just want to impress these upon my colleagues.

Um first off, um, I believe that in reviewing all of the information, I believe that uh the intent was relatively clear uh that as a property owner, um Mr.

Bernard wanting to develop on his property, and yes, as Councilmember Ramachandran stated, this process took place.

Um we reviewed documents from 2020 all the way um to present day.

Um, one interesting thing uh of note is that the the property adjacent to this particular parcel um is owned by Mr.

Lee, and what we were able to find out was that in I guess 1990, uh that property owner, um, in order to build on his property, he uh of course going through all of the city proper uh processes um had to uh receive authorization to cut down 19 trees on his property in order to build.

Um so just stating that for the record.

Um, Mr.

All of those attachments uh are in your agenda reports, but those um efforts were unsuccessful.

Um in fact, uh during uh my call with um Mr.

Bernard, it was the first time that he was able to see uh the denial of his permit applications.

Um and so that kind of called into question whether or not he received all of the proper documents notifying him of the information.

We also know um the city has in other cases.

Uh what was articulated to us from city staff was that um the city works with residents uh to issue tree removal permits.

Um, of course, when they um submit a developmental permit.

Um personally, I feel like the writing was on the wall that if on this private property uh he's cutting down these trees, he's wanting to develop on the property.

Um and so as council member Ramachandran stated, I think that uh an area of opportunity would have been uh of course we can't handhold um property owners, but over the course of five to six years, um I as I stated, I think the writing was on the wall that he wanted to develop on this property.

Um in the attachment, um let me give you the attachment.

There's a table that lists various options in the agenda report.

Uh let's see, what did I want to say here?

Um so the fines before us are based largely on the tree size and health, yet the city did not conduct direct measurements or on-site evaluations, relying um instead on estimates um from what remains on the property, i.e.

the tree stump.

Um so keep that in mind and considerate and considering um what exact fine we want to issue in this case.

Um in addition, we are being asked to consider these p these penalties roughly five years after the violations have occurred occurred over the amount of time evidence um of course will deteriorate and both the city's abilities um and cle um to and and the claims to to really um enforce these um would be weakened.

And as council member Raman Chandra Ramachandra mentioned, uh the the city's tree ordinance is um a handful of decades old, and so I hope uh from this conversation uh there is renewed effort to um make uh changes to our tree ordinance so that it is indeed more up to date.

Uh and so the issue is is not only about protecting native trees on private land, it's also about the city's responsibility to be responsive and to enforce rules fairly and do so in a timely manner.

Um and lastly, um we also you know, as council member Ramachandra mentioned, I just want to make an emphasis on just overall communication and general customer service that would be required.

Um that is required when we're moving forward with um you know uh issuing issuing removal of a um tree permit.

Um so those are just some things that I want my colleagues to consider.

Um there's a a table that outlines um all of the available options for us to consider um in making uh this decision.

Thank you for that.

Councilmember Houston.

Through the chair, I wanted to ask the city administrator, is is the process the same, like say for instance you're working on a house without permit, do they put stop work older notices on things like this?

Uh through the chair to council member Houston, I believe so, but I'll certainly defer to the uh public work staff to give the specificity on what that actually looks like.

Okay, through the chair, can Miss Holloway come up, please.

Just while we're waiting through the chair, there is no standing on the back wall.

There are a few seats.

There is also overflow room in here in room one if you cannot find a seat.

Hi, Miss Hathaway, can you pull up the plan view or the site view of the trees the before picture, please?

Sure.

And just to answer your other question through the chair, um, we don't have stop work through our tree ordinance, but the department of planning and building if there's a development related application.

So I said that for a reason um through the chair again.

My my council member Brown had mentioned this is not updated.

That might be something we might want to put in there to do a stop work notice similar to what they do with construction.

So can you pull up that plan view for me?

Yeah, thank you.

I just got one simple question.

Uh I heard um said that it was dead and dying.

Can you identify dead and dying there?

Um we uh yeah, when we inspected the trees that were still there, the the trees that were still there when we conducted our inspection.

Um, let me ask our inspector if there were any dead and dying trees that remained because I don't see any data.

So the remaining trees that we were able to see, so all of the trees that had been cut upon first removal, the evidence had been removed, so we didn't have anything to inspect, but the tree stumps indicated that they were not likely dead or dying.

The ones that remained were not dead or dying.

Answer my question.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you, council members.

Let's go to the public speakers.

We have a motion and a second on the floor.

As a car, your name, please approach the podium in any order.

Please raise your hand if you are participating via Zoom.

You have a minute in 30 seconds to give your public comment.

Tanner Mar, Kent Louadowski, Sonitra Keller, Aries Gagnes, Gimmelie Wheeler, Kevin Mulvey, Lynn Warner, Matthew Bernard, Oliver Chain, Mrs.

Adolabala, Peter Lee, Maria Luivas, Alejandro Quintero, Madeline Kadera Redmond, Kent Wagner, John Boer, Rachel O'Leary, Wanda Stewart, Mr.

Hazard, Anima Murph Murphy, David Delafront.

In any order.com.

That photo staff just showed up there.

I saw houses and all those trees.

So here's a remedy, Ramachandra.

Pay Mr.

Reed what he paid for the land.

Don't be finding him any money.

Why are you shaking your head?

We want to do a solution to the problem.

But watch this.

So we're going to talk about because he didn't get he was denied permit.

It's not that he didn't get it.

He wasn't given even accurate information.

His intended purpose was to build a house.

How are you gonna build a house with all those trees around?

How did those other houses get built?

They had to clear the land.

Y'all got something to say.

But when it comes to folks who don't look like me, you just slide it on through.

Thank you, Mr.

Hazard.

Your time is up.

Where's my time?

Good afternoon.

Where's my time?

I'm sorry.

How much time do I have?

Can I start?

Yes.

Thank you.

Hi there.

Um, my name is Mandelin Kadera Redmond.

I am the executive director with the Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation.

We are have been around since 1981 in partnership with several different uh often neighbors who support our parks, and we are also the fiscal sponsor for uh groups that do things within parks, including Trees for Oakland.

Trees for Oakland has been uh um advocate in tree planting and supporter of volunteer activities both in our parks and um on private land.

We are I am here in support of the staff's recommendation.

I really appreciate um all the council members' time on understanding this.

I really appreciate some thought around where we might be able to find um amendments to the tree ordinance.

Um I agree it's complicated, but it is a good one that supports our tree canopy.

Our work is in collaboration with tree services to bring quality tree plantings as well as taking care of those trees.

We want to continue to partner with any of you around how we can build that tree care and be in partnership about educating the community about the tree ordinance and the process of these things.

I'll just say last that I was a commissioner with Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission, and that's the body that reviews tree removal permit appeals.

And so I've a lot of knowledge about this.

Thank you.

I want to uh second what Mandelin said thank you to the council for your time on this.

It does appear to have been complicated, especially with the elapsed time that went past.

Um the uh yeah, the the laws seem to be pretty clear in terms of you know what needs to be done to remove trees, and the homeowner in this case didn't follow the laws, so this is the consequence, and unfortunately, you know, uh that's just how it goes.

I mean we're we're trying to uh build an urban forest and uh have better uh tree canopy, and if homeowners feel they can just remove trees um when they when they need or when they want to um without consequence, then the ecology will suffer.

So unfortunately, uh yes, we we also support the motion uh for the penalty.

Thank you.

Anyhow, hello, my name is Eris Gagnier.

I am the lead arborist of Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation.

Um, and I would like for you all to vote yes to impose this fine.

Um unfortunately, the removal of trees without a permit is not an uncommon situation in Oakland.

And as an arborist, I see these sites frequently.

There are additional pieces to this particular case that are not often seen, as many of these trees are protected and native species, excuse me, were protected and native species, which require extra survey to ensure removal is absolutely necessary.

And between six to eight of the 38 trees removed were not on Mr.

Bernard's property, but the property of the city and his neighbors.

The severity of this case makes it a perfect example of the importance of enforcing tree mandates and laws, and I believe this would not have happened if other cases were similarly publicized and had had serious fines paid as well.

It is your duty as council to ensure that the regulations set forth by the city of Oakland are being upheld.

We have to set the precedent that people and corporations who illegally remove trees in Oakland will face fines for contributing to the destruction of the environment.

Thank you.

Hello.

Is that the black people put out of the uh Alejandro Quintero, uh Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation.

Um I'm saying yes to the fine.

Um first off, I want to say that it uh really hurts me that uh to hear about the um harassment uh that uh the property owners suffered from their neighbors.

That's terrible, and I don't think there's anything that justifies that.

Um but I will say that um I think that the removal of these trees, the the scope and the way that it was done is not excusable.

Um I also will also say that um uh council member Brown, you said that this will be complicated because of the time that has lapsed, but the photos in um what is it, the photos in supplemental attachment one, those aren't going to you know, JPEGs uh last forever.

So you can see all 38 trees that were uh removed.

Excuse me.

Um I'll also say that I work with um uh tree services staff often, and I've always known them to be professional and thoughtful and diligent people.

Um so it kind of saddens me that I feel the need to defend their character.

Um I will say that um in their documentation, it uh it's clear to me that they tried to communicate the permit process and the requirements, and they made every attempt to work with the property owners, even as they continue to legally remove trees.

Um I will say that uh some of those trees that were removed uh would take hundreds of years to grow.

So I think that's really tragic and unacceptable.

Thank you.

Um, my name is Emma Murfrey.

Uh, I also work with the tree services team with the Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation.

I'm speaking to urge the council to impose a fine and also to contextualize what this tree loss means within Oakland's conservation history.

Our nonprofit, in collaboration with other organizations and community volunteers, works incredibly hard to plant trees in neighborhoods where, unlike Claremont Avenue in the hills, trees are not as abundant, especially mature coast live oaks.

The Bay Area has uh as a whole has a long been a hotbed for the modern conservation movement.

John Mirseen, uh, as many of the foundational members of conservation lived in San Francisco, as well as Jock London and Joaquin Miller.

Um of uh these individuals and thousands of others have contributed and continue to contribute to our shared ecology.

The names of these giants of forestry, Donar Parks and neighborhoods, but what have we done to uphold their legacy?

Oakland's tree canopy shrinks every year despite the efforts of many nonprofit organizations to replant and maintain currently planted trees.

There are simply more trees being removed than planted, and many of those removed are done so illegally, despite being healthy and posing no risk to surrounding infrastructure.

To truly continue the work of the conservation movement and honor the routes that began here, we must enforce this fine.

Hi, my name is Soma Thur Kilkar.

I'm a longtime Oakland resident.

The site in question was home to some of the largest wild trees in Oakland and hundreds of wild animals, including at least four species of native salamanders, all of which have now been killed or displaced.

The site is now covered in flammable invasive vegetation.

The fine is necessary, but doesn't account for the loss of irreplaceable wildlife and the increased risk of wildfire and landslides that this forest was actively preventing before it was destroyed by the property owners.

The vast majority of our irreplaceable natural habitats in Oakland have already been lost to reckless development, and the mistakes of the past and the inexcusable injustices against the property owners still don't justify the continued destruction of the last natural habitats we have left.

If the only penalty for violating city ordinance is a fine, then it's effectively legal for a price.

Nobody should be allowed to simply pay money to avoid consequences for such an irreversible act of destruction.

City council should pass this resolution and additionally prohibit the property owners from developing on the deforested site or acquiring any more property in Oakland.

If possible, the city should also confiscate the property so the land can be placed in public trust or returned to local indigenous groups who respect and care for this ancient ecosystem.

If the only penalty is a fine, it'll set a precedent that our protected trees and habitats can be destroyed for the right price.

I'll end by saying that so many of the benefits of our urban forest canopy specifically benefit the most vulnerable members of our community, and setting the precedent that these things can be destroyed for a price will leave the most vulnerable members of our community at increased risk of the effects of climate change, pollution, and other issues.

Thank you.

And I have to say, wow, I'm ashamed of all of us.

Um that we have inserted race into trying to just plant trees and set up our children for survival and being able to breathe in this world that's coming.

And that we're ignoring rules and laws for our own individual gain.

But the law and the systems are also really challenging.

I just spent three months trying to get the city of Oakland to pay me so I could pay my people to do that work, and had to really call upon our council member to try to help and support that.

Um I was told by a developer, oh, we just plant the trees because the city of Oakland told us that they're not gonna issue permits because they can't issue permits, so we can go ahead and just plant, but we'll get in trouble if not.

We have a really crazy system that is horrible from the center out.

And it is important that all of us come together to figure out a system.

Good afternoon, and thank you, Council Members.

My name is Rachel O'Leary.

I'm here representing the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Calfire, Urban and Community Forestry Program, as the program's partnership and equity supervisor.

I'm here to emphasize the necessity of consistent and transparent enforcement of the City of Oakland's Protected Tree Ordnance.

Over the past decade, Calfire's urban and community forestry program has made substantial long-term investments in Oakland's urban forest to benefit all Oakland residents.

To date, Calfire has funded the planting of 3,350 trees within the city through multiple grants, including over 9.8 million in direct awards for projects in Oakland, among them the city's first urban forest management plan.

All of these state funded projects were undertaken to expand urban tree canopy cover and shade, support biodiversity, enhance climate resilience, improve public health, and strengthen long-term investment and urban forest management.

Over 80% of California's urban shade canopy grows on private land.

The cumulative impact of these types of incidents extends beyond immediate tree canopy loss.

For these reasons, Calfire respectfully urges the City of Oakland to maintain and consistently enforce its tree protected ordinance.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council members.

I'm John Bauer, resident of District One and volunteer with Trees for Oakland for over 15 years since the days when Jane Bruner was the sole council member visibly supporting urban forestry.

Trees for Oakland has been providing volunteer work since 2010 to enhance the natural vibrancy of Oakland for the benefit of our community.

We've planted many thousands of street trees, mostly in Oakland's flatlands.

I'll also point out that the Claremont Canyon Conservancy has been voluntarily improving the environment of the canyon for 25 years.

Jump to December 2024 when City Council, including five of the current council members, unanimously voted to implement Oakland's first urban forest plan to grow, not new not merely stop the losses, but grow our urban forest equitably.

We actively worked with city staff, Oaken Parks and Rec Foundation, Calfire, and the Urban Oakland Urban Forestry Forum to bring that plan to you.

The item before you, with your full support, supports the very goals of the urban forest plan.

Are you willing now to negate all this past work of all these volunteers?

Why would volunteers keep doing what we're doing if we don't have the backing of council to enforce our laws?

In summary, vote in favor of all staff's very competent and credible recommendations, including the full dollar amount, and I'd request that we go even further by directing this in all future enforcement actions under the Protected Tree Ordinance to the as yet unfunded implementation action.

My name is uh Kent Wagner.

I'm a district seven, Oakland resident, uh volunteer uh for planting trees.

I've planted trees with the uh Oakland tree services during the pandemic with common vision with trees for Oakland and Oakland, keep Oakland beautiful, and who knows others.

And I just can tell you that it's important we do a better job.

We gotta really, as I like to say at the University of Arizona, we gotta buckle down.

We really have to buckle down, and part of the buckling down was to point was to approve the urban tree forest plan.

The second part of that is today.

We got to buckle down, and we've got to set our precedent and keep it going.

Thank you.

If your name was Colin, you wish to address the council for this item, you are in chambers, please step to the podium, or we will be moving to the Zoom speakers.

You can line up in the middle aisle to get to the mic quickly.

I know.

Excuse me, I had one question.

Um, could I I'm one of the neighbors, uh Peter Lee, and I was wondering if I get my 30 seconds back for get two minutes to speak.

The allotted time is a minute in 30 seconds.

So if you wish to give your comment, please do so now.

Thank you very much.

Um I am Peter Lee.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

Um, my wife Barbara Baker and I live adjacent to the undeveloped property on Claremont Avenue owned by Matthew Bernard and Lynn Warner.

We, along with our neighbors, Elizabeth Schultz and Olivier Shane have witnessed the reckless and unnecessary destruction of protected trees on both their and our properties.

I am here in support of the city's position and their carefully prepared assessment and violation notice with attachments and supplements.

Detailing the willful destruction of trees by Mr.

Bernard and addressing this unfortunate matter.

We thank council members, Rama Chandrin and Brown with their staff for meeting with us in January and February to allow us to share a summary of detailed information that we collected, including chronological timelines, report summaries, surveys, photos, and videos documenting the illegal tree cutting and removal by Mr.

Bernard, which began in October of 2020 through May of 2022.

Having witnessed firsthand the illegal tree cutting by Mr.

Bernard, our evidence corroborates the city's findings.

We are just neighbors.

We witnessed it.

We reported it.

It is up to the works.

Thank you, Mr.

Lee.

Your time is up.

So the people who live up there were allowed to cut down the trees to build their houses.

Is that correct?

Yes.

So when we had this first meeting, why wasn't something done at that time?

Ramashandan, you could have took up the position of saying have the fines.

When this property was sold, they should have a title report.

In the title report, the opportunity to have a conservative Tory easement could have been in place so the owner could have clearly understood that the property would not allow you to cut down trees.

So he didn't buy that property to look at trees.

And some way along the line, the process didn't work correctly.

And it could have, because when it was asked at the first time we had the public meeting, why you didn't do it in a timely manner, you asked that question.

The other one was we didn't have the policy.

Okay.

So something is going on.

Plus, this homeowner has been paying the vacancy property fee, over $3,000 over the years because he can't do nothing with the property.

Are y'all gonna refund him his money?

For paying the vacancy property tax.

Thank you, Ms.

Olabala.

Your time is up.

Again, if your name was Colin, you're in chambers, please approach the podium.

At this time, we are moving to the Zoom speakers.

Oakland Tennage Union, please say the name of the card you submitted.

Hi, uh my name is Emily.

I'm not representing Oakland Tenants Union.

That's just the Zoom that I'm signed in on.

I'm so sorry.

Okay, go ahead, Ms.

Wheeler.

Thank you.

Um my name is Emily Wheeler.

I'm a lifelong Oakland resident.

Um I am here to ask that you protect our native trees, not necessarily by finding this man, but by requiring him to restore the woodland ecosystem that you destroyed, and not allowing him to develop the deforested area.

Um I just wanted to say not all trees are necessarily created equal.

So the old growth trees that were cut down are going to be more fire resistant and better for our ecosystem and our climate emergency that we're currently in than any trees that could be replaced with, especially non native trees.

So native trees are better than non native trees.

Old growth trees are better than young trees.

Um and so chopping down these trees is a huge issue.

Um right now, most of our native trees are on uh private land.

Um and since the city of Oakland has cut funding to tree care and isn't planting native trees in our parks, which we absolutely should, and since the majority of Oakland residents like myself can't afford to own land at all, nonetheless enough to grow and maintain many trees.

It is on the people who own the parcels of this land to keep that native ecosystem.

I don't think the people in the hills should be allowed to own property or have cut down their trees, but that doesn't mean this man should be allowed to too.

I think we should embrace restorative justice in this scenario and um require that the property owner reforest his property instead of developing it.

Um thank you so much.

Uh have a wonderful day.

I would like to speak Did you fill out a speaker card?

Yeah.

Please proceed.

My name is Matthew Bernard.

I'm the co-owner of the property along with uh with Lynn Warner, who has been a very strong uh display my backbone.

Thank you very much, Council members, besides uh especially Councilmember Ramachandra and Councilmember Brown for the Zoom meeting to give us the opportunity to present uh our side of the story.

Um, I don't have much time, but we did uh everything in our willpower and to follow the law right from day one.

All the evidence have been uploaded into the supplement on the uh case site for everyone to view from day one.

We've been it wasn't like they I mean they portrayed me like I'm just some random guy who just walk up there and pick up some chainstone just chopping down trees.

This is not true.

Um we had some trees away falling when we acquired this property and we received notification from the city to take care of those things.

We had uh that was about at least nine trees that fall in uh upon purchase property.

Um two trees fell in 2020, four trees fell in this early 2020, and uh four trees fell in early 2021.

We did everything in our power to pro to protect not just uh property but also the neighbor who is really hungry at us to protect Israel property.

We hope that someday in the future it will say thank you.

Thank you.

At this time, all names have been called okay.

If you submitted a car, this is your last opportunity.

Hi, my name is Olivier.

I'm one of the neighbors.

I was born here.

I grew up in Oakland.

I went to Claremont Middle School.

Oakland's my home.

I met with Mr.

Bur Bernard.

First time I met him, he had a chainsaw in his hand.

He was wielding it, he was cutting down a tree.

He was starting to cut down a tree that was over 30 inches in diameter.

I asked him what he was doing.

I asked him if he had the permit.

He got really mad at me.

He then went off to brag about the fact that he had very deep pocketed friends, his connections to Moscow, his frequent trips to Rush Russia, that I should watch out for myself.

He then bragged about how much how much money he would make and how valuable this house would be that he was gonna build.

No shame.

He knew what he was doing.

He had plenty of warnings.

We have videos of him talking to uh code enforcement to police officers for over 20 minutes.

He knew what he was doing.

This isn't an oversight, this is willful destruction.

Mrs.

Auto, you're out of order.

It's all good.

I'm always my name is David Lagran.

Listen, um rich people can get away with a lot of stuff because they get they they got people that know people and they can get uh their permits passed.

All they gotta do is call somebody.

We know that we know that there's gonna be a lot of development coming up in the near future because the Oakland General Plan is underway, and we know that there's gonna be buildings and there's gonna be uh construction up in the hills a little bit.

Most of the flatlands are gonna take the brunt of it.

If we really care about trees, if we really care about the environment, then we should have a retroactive uh punishment for the people that have built their properties and up there in the hills.

You say that in the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s that they were able to build, make them pay the same fine that this gentleman is being paid is being asked for right now.

All those trees, the same way that we have those rape laws that you can go back in time and still convict the same thing we need to be having for all those trees.

We need we need I know that sometimes we think that that we can just you know, like you know, just bum rush our way into like uh into getting what we need to, and I understand that this gentleman, I I don't know his story, but what I what I want, what I want to know is the equity when it comes to the people with money, the people with resources, how can they get away with the stuff?

And this time is uh one more time.

Well, where do you say that would work?

Just like I am.

Thank you for your comments.

Does it does you're out of order?

Yeah, that's your first warning.

Does that conclude the public comment?

Is that being called?

We have a motion and a second, Council Member Houston.

Do you have a comment?

All right, madam.

Oh, okay.

Um, yeah, I just have um well first actually a question to the staff.

Um, in terms of the revenue from this fine, this is actually going to planting trees, correct?

Or is this going to the general fund?

Um through the chair, um, I believe it would go to the general fund.

Oh, it goes to the general fund, even though it it's because there's a couple of things in this report.

One thing says that a portion of these funds will be deposited into a project number for tree services.

Is that for the just the 5,000 cost recovery component?

Or is that I believe it that would be for the the staff time, but I would have to check with our um with our fiscal services to confirm that okay.

Uh I'll just provide a comment then.

If any portion of this is going to planting new trees, because that is what I see in this report.

That I think the the fair and just thing is for these trees to be then planted in areas where you know, based off of objective measures of air quality as well as urban heat island island effect that that is where uh these new trees are planted.

Um, and then I would say too, just to add common absolutely we have to enforce our laws.

Um I do think that this specific um case brings up some it to interesting questions for us as a body around or I think the pathway to affordable home ownership is often going to be buying an empty parcel of land and then putting a house on it.

So I think this particular case we absolutely need to enforce the laws, but um, I think as we look at reevaluating the the ordinance and uh how we want to think about affordable homeownership, that's something for us to just think about as a body.

That's it.

Thank you.

Councilmember Fife.

I forgive me if I'm if I'm overlooking what happens to the property.

Um what happens now through the chair to maybe our staff?

Is it now that you know the lean stuff you're out of order?

Good afternoon, Brian Mulrie from the city attorney's office.

We would issue uh the city would issue a notice of violation uh a fine um to the property owner, and then we would explore ways of having the property owner pay that fine.

But there is under um Oakland Municipal Code section 12.36.180, and uh 12.36190, there is the opportunity to lien the property, and so there would be a lien in that fine amount if we didn't come to uh some other payment uh arrangement with the property owner.

And then so while you're there, so then if the lien wasn't paid, it could be sold by the city.

The city has the option to foreclose on that lien.

Um that would be an option that we would probably come back to council to determine whether that's something we wanted to do.

But there would there would be a lien on the property for that fine amount, obviously reduced if he paid a certain amount under the 915,000.

There would there would be a lien for that amount.

So is it developable for residential use?

We we would have to analyze it, but yes, it is single family residential.

Was it so it's single family residential development?

Yes, and it was single family residential before the trees were cut down.

That's correct.

So it's it's it's residential hillside.

Um so it's it's an RH zoning, which uh which permits uh single family home, of course, with ADU as well.

So um there can be ADUs as well, multiple units, but in a single family zone.

So I'm I'm trying to understand how other properties were able to be developed here, but not but this one wasn't.

Um I'm trying to understand, and then what will happen if if this property owner pays the lien, pays the fine, because if he pays a fine, it won't be liened.

That's correct.

They pay the fine and then they can continue to develop.

That's correct.

And um, and there is a part of the tree protection ordinance where if someone comes in to develop their property in this area, they would apply for a development-related tree removal permit, but they would go through that process.

So that's what this property owner should have done in this case when he wanted to develop the property, he would apply for a development-related tree removal permit.

And how is that communicated to property owners that they need to apply for this particular permit?

It's it's in our Oakland municipal code.

So it's it's it's codified in our law.

So would they have to research the municipal code to know that?

Or is it is that is there someone in city staff that tells them both.

It's in our municipal code, so they can research the law, and then someone from city staff would also tell them what in the as part of their development.

But in this case, he was informed uh prior um that he needed tree removal permits.

In fact, he actually applied and then withdrew it.

Yeah, thank you.

Okay.

Thank you, council member, whoever it comes on first.

Through the chair, if he had a architect or an engineer, they would have notified him that if he was planning to build a house.

But I wanted to respond to that sequoia tree, I negotiated that issue of those railroad trees with the community and the developer and the property owner, and they went through the process of appeal and everything like that.

So it's it's definitely a process.

And if you have a uh a contractor or engineer, they're gonna tell you that process about that tree permit.

Thank you, Councilmember Houston, Councilmember Brown.

Excellent, thank you so much.

Um, and so I think that some of the questions that my colleagues asked, I think that from the conversations that I had, I think that was kind of that was the missing link that we this property owner would not be in the situation, would he have applied for a developmental permit?

Because in um submitting that application, um then he would have had the opportunity to work with city staff to work out um multiple plans of action, right?

Whatever uh, you know, whatever the footprint was for the development, the trees that would need to be removed within that footprint, the ones that would be able to stay, and then also a restoration plan as well.

And that's that's basically what happens when property owners submit for a developmental permit.

And so we are like in this moment because that wasn't done, and when you check all of the attachments, you'll see that the permit that the property owner continued to submit for was just the tree permit waiver, and so and so when the developmental permits are submitted, that kind of works in I guess like partnership to ensure that all of these trees aren't cut, basically, because no matter what, uh I I think the the writing on the wall for me was that no matter what, like if he submitted that developmental permit, some of the city would have um approved the cutting of some of these trees.

Yeah, uh around the developmental footprint.

Thank you, Councilmember Brown.

Seeing no more comments, we have a motion and a second.

On the motion by Council Member Ramachandra and second by council member unger to adopt the staff recommendation.

Was that motion to also close the public hearing?

Yes, thank you.

Councilmember Brown.

Uh no, council member five.

I I'm sorry, could we repeat the motion?

The motion is the staff recommendation in the packet.

No.

Councilmember Guyo is excuse.

Councilmember Houston.

Wait a minute, you gotta pull this back for a second.

Cause I didn't understand what what was to say it again.

So the vote is to accept staff's recommendation to find the property owner an amount of $900,000 plus for the cutting entries.

But I still had a few more questions.

I did.

And the questions was okay.

If it's already a million dollars, and how much does the properties go for up in that area?

I got questions.

Okay.

Let's there somebody that from real estate or someone can talk about it.

Then we just have a vacant piece of property that we take back.

Then what are we gonna do?

Sell it under market.

So we gotta negotiate this.

Well so the the question is is there somebody that can answer what happens if he's not able to develop the property?

Someone would do the properties go for in that area.

Yes.

Okay.

Um through the chair.

So there are as um city attorney Brian Mullery explained, there are options for how this could this could proceed.

If we impose this fine, uh we could uh potentially work out a payment plan with the owner, and uh if he followed the payment plan, he could still proceed.

He's still the owner of the property, he could proceed to submit uh development permit applications for the property.

So so through the chair, let me be clear, he shouldn't have cut those trees down.

I I know the process.

I was a developer and in construction, he shouldn't have cut those trees down, and he knew better too.

How much will be straight?

But then we got a property, vacant property that he gotta develop, and he's got a million dollar loan lien on it.

I'm kind of confused.

So go ahead.

Did Council Member Brown say so?

Council Member, does that conclude your uh comments and questions?

Councilmember Brown.

And I think it's just important to know that the reason why we're actually here in this moment is because he eventually submitted a developmental permit, and so that is what triggered all of this to get us to this point, because all the city continued to do was deny his tree permits, and so then once he submitted the developmental permit after cutting all of the trees, so it's backwards, right?

Um, but I think that um I think that there is a more just way to move forward where um now that there's uh uh uh a developmental permit that's been submitted.

What is that footprint?

What does it look like to replant some of those trees and move forward in a more equitable and just manner?

And I just don't think that it should have taken to 2026 to get to this point.

He shouldn't have cut those trees.

Um the chair.

So what's your what's gotta make sense?

Okay, a couple of things.

So we're gonna rescind the slight vote that we took.

All right, let's start there.

Um council member Ramachandra thank you.

So this is this is this property is in district four.

I have council oh, and I have constituents that are gonna be mad at me for the decision that we make if we do go with the motion I made, which is to accept stops and recommendations.

I'm gonna be constituents that are happy, but when I evaluated over the course of several months, every piece of paper, every photo, every email, every bit of our pre tree protection ordinance.

It this was not a snap judgment.

This was a lot of work of weighing consequences of which of my constituents do I want to piss off?

And at the end of the day, it's not a judgment based on how I feel about the problems of the process because I think there are many, namely that staff took uh way too long to do this, and that cannot be how we move address things moving forward.

But to me, those process issues aside, which I will bring up in an amendment to our tree protection ordinance.

I think at the end of the day, when it comes to the facts of this case, there is everything leads to the property owner knowingly violating the law.

And we have to amend our ordinance.

But the fact we are here to decide how the facts correlate with the laws that this council has passed.

And to me, it all points to the property owner violated this law and needs to be filed from there.

On the motion by Councilmember Ramachandra, second by Council Member Unger.

Closing the public hearing and adopting the staff recommendation, Councilmember Brown.

No.

Council Member Five.

No.

Council Member Gaio is excused.

Council Member Houston.

No.

Councilmember Ramachandron.

I Councilmember Unger.

I Councilmember Wong.

I Chair Jenkins.

And with that, we'll go to the next item.

As we get ready for item four point two, just a reminder that there is no standing on the back wall, you must find a seat.

As it is a fire hazard, there is overflow seating in here in room one.

If you sign up to speak, you will have plenty of time to come back up to the chambers to address the council for item four point two.

If we can have the council leaders come back to the day, please.

So that motion is where it is, if there is an alternative or substitute motion.

Order in the chambers, order in the chambers.

The mayor's office is coming.

So please proceed with you so much.

So I want to do an alternative motion, but I would like Ms.

Hathaway to come up real quick and tell us that fourth option, that third and fourth option.

The fourth option I would like to go with after look reviewing it, but I want my my colleagues to hear it because let me share this with you.

He cut the trees, he was wrong.

We know that.

But you can't a million dollars on a property, we want him to develop it.

He still has to be penalized for doing what was wrong.

So what about the trees that was on the perimeter of it?

So he we knew he had to cut the ones where the house was going to be developed.

We know that, right?

But the ones on the perimeter, a architect in the city would have worked around that to the design of the property.

So tell me that share with my colleagues that fourth option.

The third and fourth option, please.

Yes, um, through the chair.

So um staff prepared um, and it's in the supplemental packet, multiple uh valuations for the fine based on different um uh different options.

So the trees were measured for their size at the stump, and that was um that's not you know that we had to do that because there was no tree to measure.

Typical industry standard is that you measure the diameter of the tree at breast height, and so um in the other options, we um did an estimate of the diameter of the tree being two inches less, which brought down the the valuation of the tree because trees are wider at the base and they go like this.

So it's a it's a smaller diameter, so we estimated that the tree in its uh natural state would have been when we typically measure it would have been smaller at breast height.

Um we took out the trees that we very likely would have approved for removal, should the applicant have gone through the process of applying for a tree removal permit because it's very standard process that if the Department of Planning and Building approves a structure for development that we will approve the trees within the footprint of that structure for removal.

Um so that those would have likely have been uh removed, uh approved for removal.

So we dropped those out of the valuation.

Um, and then Isaac, what's the 80 percent?

Uh the valued at 80 percent quality.

Oh, right, and so then um our initial valuation had all of the trees at the highest level of health, 100% health.

Um, and so for options three and four, we evaluated them at approximately 80 percent of health.

So that means that they would be a slightly lower valuation.

So in those two options, um, the total fine amount would drop to in um option number three, um, which had I believe uh can you explain the difference between three and four?

Yeah, and introduce yourself.

Hi, I'm Isaac Harvey, uh senior supervisor for the tree division.

Uh option three is the 28 trees that were outside the footprint of the proposed structure um at 80 percent of valuation and measured at the stump height.

Option four is the 28 trees outside the footprint of construction, um 80 percent value minus two inches in diameter to account for the taper of the tree going up to breast height.

So uh option number one.

Option number three comes in at um five hundred and six thousand eight hundred and one dollars and fifty-five cents.

And option number four comes in at four hundred and seventeen thousand one hundred and eleven dollars and fifty-five cents.

And I want to add, um, and I do want to add that what is not included in this valuation is staff time.

So um we also have a hundred and fifty over 150 hours of staff time that generally we do um charge that cost.

Um so I like to make a substitute motion to um move number four.

So it's so we have a substitute motion on the floor, Councilmember Houston.

I just want to say we set up a dangerous precedent.

We talk about we talk about this land, right?

It's not gonna be developable, all right.

But maybe I want to go to skyline Lovard by a parcel.

That's maybe $50,000 because it can't be developed, and then maybe I should just cut down all the trees up there and then ask for it to be developed.

We're setting that precedent.

It can't be developed.

The land was cheap for a reason.

Wasn't going to be able to be developed.

And so are we going to set up a precedent where the rules do not matter?

So through the president, and I really appreciate what you're saying, President.

What we're saying is if you do that anybody else, you're gonna get a million dollars.

What I feel that we said is I still want it to be developed, and I don't want to bury them where he can't develop it, then we end up having a you know how much it costs him to develop it.

He got a million dollar lien against a piece of land.

President, hold on.

I'm not being disrespectful, I'm just saying the president.

That that we we still want the land to be developed at the same time, we still want to set a standard that you are not gonna come here just do whatever you want to do.

And if somebody put a 400,000 against my property, I I'm setting uh I'm gonna be like, oh, I'm not doing that.

So I don't want to bury them and drown them, but I still want to know because he knew what he was doing, because I know he knew what he was doing.

So a couple of things I'm gonna go to council member Fife in two meetings.

I haven't heard, hey, yes, I knew what I was doing, right?

There isn't that mission, yes, I did this, and I knew exactly what I was doing.

I hear you'll net.

Secondarily, I think we set up a precedent and we're all duly elected, but the council member of the district is advocating for this.

The council member who was the council no prior to redistricting, Zach would have been the council member.

This is what their district is, and we're setting up a precedent.

But again, we're all duly elected, right?

But I would expect if something's in my district that I would have the respect of my colleagues to um not necessarily go with where I'm going, but weigh that heavily in favor.

So let me say this through the president will be.

And then we'll call on council member five.

Do it through one more time.

Do one more time.

I understand what you're saying, President, and I respect what you say.

I I really do.

You know, do I follow your lead?

But what I'm saying is this.

How many people run businesses?

People you gotta know is it's a business deal, it's not personal, it's business, right?

And the business is a cleaner, safer uh development of a city.

He made, you know, you did say one thing really good.

He didn't stand up and say I knew what I was doing because he knew he did.

I know he did.

From the last time he was here, I heard it.

I could see it in the bushes when it ain't moving, right?

So what I'm saying, he didn't stand up and say that.

He knew what he was doing, but we don't want to bury him at the same time and it won't want to develop it.

So I'm saying that I want I want to move number four.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Fife.

I I appreciate the dialogue that's happening right now.

I honestly did not think this item would take this long.

Um, but I will say I also agree that I I definitely want to see consequences for um cutting down these trees.

I have uh volunteers here today that are planting trees in West Oakland because we don't have the tree canopy, we don't have the oxygen, we don't have um lower temperatures because we lack this tree canopy.

So to see something done so recklessly, I do take deep issue with it.

I also am concerned about citywide resources that would be expended if this lot sits vacant with now no tree cover that is a fire hazard because of of what's been done.

I don't know what the plans are in terms of this this property owner being able to pay for a lien or I don't know what is his circumstances.

I heard he had a Russian plug.

I don't know if that's true.

Um but I will say that I I definitely respect uh the council member for the district and our at-large council member for doing a lot of work with our neighbors.

Um I want to see consequences, and I also don't want to uh uh a lot that's going to pull on fire department resources in the future because now there's this vacant lot that's that nothing is happening with, and there's no oak trees now to prevent against uh fire hazard.

So that is the impetus behind um the position that I'm taking, and I I support um moving the item that council member Houston.

So that's that's a second all right.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Um, to my colleagues.

Um also uh want to hear from council member Ramachandran.

Um, but I think the one question that I have for city staff is around um I guess it's like the risk restoration plan.

Um I know some I think there was a public commenter that talked about the restorative justice of it.

Um so how can we ensure with with whatever option that we go with that there's also a plan that's in place to also kind of restore the area as well?

Is that something that we can also make a part of the motion?

Uh through the chair, yes.

Um so whenever there's a tree removal permit, um, tree planting is a requirement of that permit.

Um, and it's you know, arguable whether or not the value of the trees that are replanted necessarily, you know, is a full substitute um for the trees that were removed, but that is a standard part of our process.

We replant trees when um we require applicants to replant trees when we authorize a tree removal permit.

Excellent.

Um, so um through the chair to Councilmember Ramachandrin, um, I'm hopeful that um in reconsidering kind of this table that city staff work so diligently on uh to kind of give us the various options.

Um, I think it would also be most appropriate that we also make a part of the motion uh that there is a restoration of um the area as well as a part of the plan.

Councilmember Ramachandra.

Thank you.

I'm a hard no on anything but the maximum penalty.

I think that if we are going to put laws on the book to protect our earth, to provide better forest can urban forest canopy to continue to nurture our land, we need those laws respected.

Each and every one of us knows stories in our districts of people doing things that they should get permits for and getting away with it.

Well, I think it's time that we start actually enforcing the laws that we have on paper.

Because otherwise we continue to be a laughing stock of a city if we impose things and don't put the resources behind it.

The next item we're about to hear is staffing.

If we had a fully staffed tree services division, which there is money for, by the way, we would not be in the situation that we're in right now.

If we didn't get rid of park rangers in the last financial crisis because people didn't prioritize parks and greenery, that contributes to public safety, giving our young people something to do, giving people the benefits of nature, not just in district four.

And that's fine if I have colleagues here who don't like my district or don't like me, that's okay.

But think about the benefits that this that our tree canopy provides.

We are named Oakland for a reason.

We have less than 4500 oak trees in this city right now because of the destruction and development over the decades.

And yes, white people got away with it over the decades, but that doesn't mean someone should get away with it now.

It is 2026.

We can do better.

We pride ourselves for doing this big land back movement to seduce Segorate Trust, and I'm so excited that we all unanimously supported that.

Why can't we support what Segorte did ask us to in this decision impose the full penalty of this action in front of us?

We need to respect those land.

This is actually in ha been and has always been.

So again, if people want to.

Miss Asada, you're out of order.

You can have gripes against me, you can have my gripes against my district, but I beg you.

Think about the consequences and precedent this will set for people who will continue to treat our land like trash.

Talk about illegal dumping, talk about cutting trees.

It is one in the same that people do not respect this land and they do not respect the law.

And it is time we get over that and make a firm decision today to impose what staff has recommended and make very clear to anyone moving forward who wants to cut a tree down without a permit, who wants to cut an oak tree down.

How dare you in the name of this city that is named Oak Land?

NC NAL, which is the original word, land of oak trees.

To cut down oak trees without consequences is absurd.

And I hope that we can all unanimously send a message today that this kind of behavior can and will stop.

We have a choice we can make today.

Let the bullshit continue or take a stand on something we believe in when our city is named Oakland.

Thank you, Councilmember Ramachandra.

Councilmember Anger.

Security, can you go give Mrs.

Sada a hard warning, please?

Go ahead, Councilmember Andre.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I'm all for rewriting laws that we disagree with.

That's literally our job.

And if we want to rewrite this law to have lower penalties or no penalties or not require permits for cutting trees, that's fine.

We can have that debate.

But I think it's important that we enforce the laws that we have on our books, whether that is dumping sideshow, whatever.

We need to send the message that if we're gonna have laws, we're gonna we're gonna enforce them.

And I and that is that is the impetus behind my anti-dumping bill, that is the impetus behind a lot of the the other work we're doing is to start putting some some teeth behind our laws because I am worried that if we tell people that you can go ahead and break our laws, we will we will do a minimum of enforcement afterwards, that that's gonna set us up for bad consequences.

And I do want to point out that over the past decade, Calfire has invested about 10 million dollars in Oakland in planting trees in Oakland, and they sent us a letter today saying that for these reasons.

Um Calfire's urban and community forestry program greatly values its long-standing partnership with the city of Oakland and remains committed to supporting the city's continued effort to expand.

For these reasons, Calfire respectfully urges the city of Oakland to maintain and consistently enforce its well-crafted protected tree ordinance.

A consistent and clearly communicated tree ordinance is one of the best practices a jurisdiction can utilize to protect urban forest benefits for residents.

It also protects local and state investments, upholds public confidence, and ensures that the goals articulated in the jurisdiction's urban forest management plan can be fully realized.

So, yeah, I'm worried about the fire risk on this newly deforested lot, but I also trust Calfire's judgment in giving us this money to plant tons of trees over the last 10 years, and I certainly hope that they will continue to do so, and I am worried that we will by worrying about the sort of fire risk on this one one small plot, increase the fire risk citywide by thumbing our nose at Calfire's gifts over the years.

Thank you.

Councilmember Brown.

Excellent, thank you so much.

Um, I I just want to first off start by saying like I 100% agree with you, Councilmember Ramashandran and Councilmember Unger.

Um, just the you know, around the precedent that we are setting.

Um I know that in our meetings with city staff, um, just the formulation of this table for our consideration is something that um we were able to engage on, and staff did on, I guess, like on our behalf to kind of create a table of options, and I guess like prior to this meeting, it was like my understanding that we were moving in a direction to um really try to uh work on this issue um together, and um I guess like in this moment, um I'm a little bit confused around um why we are I I guess like I feel like I feel like there's just confusion because prior to the meeting uh we were we were working together to come up with a solution that's kind of listed on this table, and and now it's it's it's different.

Thank you, Councilmember Brown.

Um Councilmember Fife Since we're being indignant and all, I have to express my extreme confusion about why how a black man should be the first to receive consequences for things that white people have been doing for centuries, but now a black man should experience a hundred percent of the consequences when if we go back in history, we can talk about how the Roosevelt New Deal created the hills to give to white people from the dust bowl to to have affordable free housing in Oakland when the same when black people could not access housing through the new deal.

The fact that the hills was built up for white Oaklanders that nobody else had access to, not Asians, not Mexicans, not black people, and now we're trying and lit, and I don't agree with this, brother, because all skin folk ain't kin folk, but we have to uh acknowledge the fact that this is a false narrative that we are somehow uh at this side of the dais saying there should be zero consequences.

That is not what is being stated.

And what I'm hearing from my colleagues is that there was agreement on other options until walking into this meeting today.

So if we're talking about hypocrisy, let's talk about the bias that allows certain people to have access and others to not.

I am not advocating for no resources.

I want more trees.

I want a green uh uh a green um environment for all Oakland residents.

I want a green uh uh a green um environment for all Oakland residents, and I did not want to bring up race, but god damn it, it is a part of what we're discussing, and it is a problem for for several reasons that we have to address the dysfunction in the city so that we can more timely uh make sure that our our residents know what the rules are, and then he probably should have hired uh uh contractor.

What what my colleague is probably gonna explain what and I'm hearing that he did.

The point is we are suggesting consequences, we are suggesting uh a path forward.

We are not saying nothing, but I just want to call out the hypoc the hypocrisy of what we're discussing right now.

So it in a minute I want to call the question.

Yeah, in a minute, I want to call the question, but council member Houston, then council member chandrin, and then I'll call the question.

So we do want consequences.

They gave us three options, they laid them out for us so we can make a choice, and we made a choice to penalize because he knew what he was doing, but let's make sense of this.

We want to develop, we do.

He would have had to um um clear those trees where his house is going to be developed.

It's clear, right?

He would have had to do that, then they would have had to develop around the trees, he would have worked with the city, the city would have said, Oh, keep this tree, keep that tree, get rid of this tree just like we did at Sequoia, the Sequoia Golf Club.

I went through this already, I did it.

And I did it.

So he needs to be penalized.

That's a fact.

However, we still want the property to be developed.

We want it to move forward and set a president, like you said.

So if you put five hundred thousand dollars on my property that's vacant that I gotta build, you better believe you said a president, and I'm gonna be like, and anybody else that's looking, we'll not do it.

So there go my motion, President.

Can you state your motion again?

A motion was number three.

Was it four?

Four.

No, no, I wanted number three, but then I said I'm gonna negotiate with my colleagues and we'd do number four.

So let's do four okay.

So we have I'm gonna get to you, Councilmember.

Oh, mic's off.

Our mic's back on.

So we have a motion.

Councilmember Houston.

You said something really powerful, really powerful.

I want him to come back up and admit that he was wrong about cutting those trees down.

No, yes, he does, because we making it if he knew what he knew what he was doing, right?

So come up and say it, stand up and say, you know what?

I mean, if that's what you feel, if if it's the truth, he needs to come up and admit it.

Then it you feel better about doing what you're doing.

That's how I get down, right?

Say that again.

Yeah, the truth shields it.

It seems like he's declining to come up here and let the truth set him free.

Councilmember Ramadan, and then we will call the boat.

I said pretty much everything I have to say, but my name means Geniny, which means Mother Earth in my language, and I will do, I will fight tooth and nail to make sure that our earth is restored and respected, and that violators pay the price to the full extent that they have to.

And I don't know if I'll win today, but whoever's listening to this, I don't know if anyone is outside of these chambers.

I for sure will live up to my name so they can continue to fight.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you, Councilmember Ramachandra.

All right, let's go to this vote.

And this is to close the public hearing, correct?

Option number four to close and to close the public hearing.

And to the makers of the motion, does this include the restoration plan?

Yes, thank you.

Councilmember Houston made a motion to adopt option four, including the restoration plan.

Madam City Clerk for the record.

Can we just clarify that option four is um to so to amend the resolution in front of you today?

It would be to impose a penalty of 417,000 um and 11 dollars and 55 cents.

Okay, um, on the motion made by councilmember Houston, second by council member five to adopt to amend the item adopting option four as clarified by the city attorney, including the restoration plan.

Aye, council member five.

Um I'm reclaiming my time and stating for this to have been discussed more than the encampment abatement policy is bananas, but I have to say yes.

Councilmember Gu is absent, Councilmember Houston, aye, Councilmember Ramachandran, emphatic no council member Unger, no council member, um council president Jenkins.

Regular no motion fails with a vote of four no's well actually it's a tie again it's not designed but Guile is a no he's absent one okay I'm sorry the motion fails with a vote of three eyes guile's absence counts as a no, so that makes it five no's so I'll entertain a motion to close the public hearing and continue this to the next council meeting.

Well, I'm just gonna continue okay.

So I'll make a motion to continue this item to the next city council meeting motion and a second, madam clerk got a motion and second to continue to the next city council meeting Jenkins Ramachandra the next city council meeting is at May 2nd, May 5th, single day mile the motion to continue the item to the next city council meeting moved by council member Jenkins, second by council member Ramachandran, Councilmember Brown, aye, council member Fife, aye council member guillo is absent, council member Houston, aye council member Ramachandran aye, council member Unger, aye council member Wong aye, Chair Jenkins aye motion passes with a vote of seven ayes item four point two.

I need a motion to open the public hearing.

On the motion by Councilmember 5, second by Councilmember Brown to open the public hearing.

Councilmember Brown.

Aye.

Councilmember 5.

Aye.

Councilmember Guy was absent.

Councilmember Houston.

Aye.

Councilmember Ramachandran.

Aye.

Councilmember Unger.

Aye.

Councilmember Wong.

Aye.

Chair Jenkins.

Aye.

Motion passes with a vote of seven eyes reading the item into record.

Conduct a public hearing and upon conclusion.

Receive an information report on citywide staffing from the city administrator regarding citywide vacancy rates and status as of February 1, 2026.

Budgeted vacancy rate for fiscal year 25-26, the vacancy rate of regional local public entities, recruitment outreach and community engagement, and the analysis of the city workforce and recruitment conditions.

There are 21 speakers on this item.

Please proceed.

Good afternoon.

My name is Aaron Zadlow.

I'm a principal HR analyst in the recruitment classification and operations division of the Human Resources Management Department.

I'm here today to present an overview of the citywide staffing report as of February 1st, 2026.

Over the past several years, HRM has prepared a report assessing vacancy data for city positions, analyzing several key staffing factors, including recruitment improvements, retention trends, and employee tenure.

Today's presentation will highlight key data points and observations from the report, and will also include information as set forth by Assembly Bill 2561, which is a California state law requiring agencies to publicly report on job vacancies, recruitment and retention efforts annually.

Before reviewing the data, I want to clarify how vacancies were defined for the purposes of this report.

For this report, vacancies are defined as non-encumbered and on-frozen positions.

Non-encumbered positions are available to be filled and are not being held vacant for any other purpose.

Encumbered positions, on the other hand, are tied to funding for overtime temporary staffing, under filled positions, or acting assignments.

And frozen positions are roles that exist in the budget but are not currently available to be filled.

HRM reviewed the vacancy status of all vacant positions as of February 1st, 2026.

This slide shows a summary of the vacancy status.

Of the total vacancies, 1% or 5 positions are on hold.

However, the department has not yet submitted a requisition to begin their hiring process.

This includes full-time and permanent part-time positions with some positions funded as less than one FTE.

With 839.75 position vacant, this calculates to a 19.69% vacancy rate.

Something to note about the positions that were included.

There were also a couple of encumbered positions that are authorized but frozen.

And when you include those exceptions, it provides a more accurate snapshot of the city's current staffing levels.

With that context, let's take a look at how this compares to historical data.

This chart shows the city's historical vacancy rate since 2020.

Overall, the data shows that vacancy rates increased significantly after 2021 and have remained consistently high since then, generally hovering between 18 and 20 percent.

This suggests the city has been operating with a structurally higher vacancy level for the last several years.

For your reference, last year HRM reported a vacancy rate of 17.94%.

Although vacancy levels have increased, the city's authorized positions have also gone up.

The vacancy information was analyzed in several ways, one of which was by department.

The chart highlights the top five departments with the highest vacancy percentages.

When you look at percentages, it helps to show the relative staffing impact within each department.

As shown here, Dwest has the highest vacancy rate at 55%, followed by HRM at 45%.

HRM's current 35 vacancies are primarily due to the addition of positions that were added in January 2026.

You can see the police commission has 45% vacancy.

The police commission is at 39% and DVP is at 37%.

Public ethics is also on there.

However, they only have 12 total positions, so considering there are four vacant, that gives a percentage of 33% vacant.

For that reason, we should also look at the total number of vacant positions by department.

When we look the data this way, the total number of vacancies show where the largest staffing gaps exist across the city.

The departments with the largest number of vacancies are fire with 121.5 vacancies, DOT with 119 vacancies, police with 114 vacancies, public works with 14.71, and HSD with 77.

Next, we looked at the data by union.

This shows the vacancy rate broken down by each of the six unions the city has a memorable memoranda of understanding with.

Local 21 has the highest percentage at 24.62%, and local 21 also has the highest number at about 350 vacancies.

Within each MOU for each union, there may be multiple bargaining units, which are shown here, the top nine bargaining units with the highest vacancy percentages.

These were identified as being subject to additional reporting as required by AB 2561 because 20 or more percent 20% or more of the positions in these bargaining units are underfilled.

The assembly bill requires agencies to provide more detailed information such as the number of vacancies within the bargaining unit, the number of applicants for those vacancies, the average number of days it takes to complete the hiring process from when it is posted, and opportunities for improvements in the recruitment process.

We looked at data collected from February 1st, 2021 to February 1st, 2026 for the bargaining units identified that had at least one active vacancy.

This chart shows the number of applications received and time to hire hire data, which considers the total average number of days the hiring process took, breaking it down into two stages.

HRM is responsible for activities during stage one from when an announcement is open to when an eligible list is established, whereas the hiring departments are responsible for activities during stage two from when a candidate is referred up until a hire is made.

Only recruitments with complete data for both stages were included to ensure accurate time to hire reporting.

However, if you look at the reasons for separation, there is a 55.8% increase in retirements.

Retirements are more predictable than resignations, and HRM is working with departments on transition plans when retirements are announced to reduce the loss of institutional knowledge, technical expertise, and supervisory capacity, while also supporting internal advancement and enhancing workplace engagement with the hope that it will result in long-term retention and more internal promotions.

Average tenure has been increasing since fiscal year 22 to 23.

The following year showed an increase of 0.29%, and then currently in this fiscal year, we have an increase in 14.2% compared to last year.

When looking at separations by department, police recorded the highest number of separations representing 30% or 114 resignations of the city's total separations.

Fire followed at 13%, which is 50 separations, and public works was close behind with 12% or 46 separations.

When looking at the data, police employees are leaving well before retirement eligibility, suggesting retention and engagement challenges.

Therefore, police may benefit from targeted retention efforts.

In contrast, fire and public works separations were largely retirement-based and more predictable.

Fire and public works would benefit from succession planning and knowledge transfer initiatives.

When looking at data from regional comparator jurisdictions through since May 2022 through December 2025, the city is most in line with Hayward and Richmond in terms of our vacancy rate.

In summary, HRM is committed to not only strengthening hiring but also retention.

We are working to accomplish this through conducting monthly meetings with every department to discuss recruitment priorities and hiring needs.

In partnership with Department of Race Equity, advance equity by embedding equitable practices in recruitment and employment.

And our recruitment and classification division works very closely with HRM's organizational development and training division and shares a commitment to strengthen retention through employee development, career growth, and support for supervisors and managers, as well as equipping leaders with the tools and skills to foster engagement and a high performing workplace.

Take any questions.

Thank you.

Any questions from the council members?

Councilmember Moore.

Hi, yeah.

Um I am just really concerned about this vacancy rate.

We've talked about this in finance and management, and I'll give it an example.

We have flickering street lights in my district.

I'll follow up with Oak Free Loom 1 and the department, and I get told there's not enough people.

It's like, you know, when I think about Detroit and like a failed city, that is sometimes the impression that really that we have here.

And one thing that concerns me in particular is the HR vacancy rate.

It's one that we have the second highest vacancy rate for the HR department.

I know that some of what the report has talked about is uh the lack of requisitions that are being submitted by department heads.

Well, I would imagine for filling the positions for HR that this is incumbent on the HR's own department to submit those requisitions, correct?

And so I really want to hear what is the plan for filling these HR roles, because that to me is the bottleneck that is going to prevent us from filling all these other positions that we so desperately need across the city.

So the majority of those positions were new in the budget.

Um they were introduced in January, and we are working on filling right now.

We have a list that will be established this week that should fill five of those positions.

There is another probably about 25, 25 to 25 positions that are placeholders.

Um, we are working to find the appropriate classification, and the overall goal of that is to improve time to hire citywide.

Um we are working on once we have find the appropriate classification to use, we will then submit requisitions and hire for those positions.

Um there are also some positions in employee relations that were newly added that they are working through how best to hire into those.

Um, and we did hold interviews this week for another senior analyst position, so we hope to fill that one soon as well.

Can you explain you said that these positions were only allowed in January 2020 in of this year?

They were just added in January.

Um, it's part of the new hiring plan to um streamline the overall hiring processes as we talked about with all of the positions that have requisitions.

A lot of times the department contacts uh aren't as familiar with the processes because they don't have the training, so HR is working to take on some of those tasks to make it easier for departments.

Okay, perhaps you know, I'm just confused because I thought we we approve a budget, you know, back last spring.

Why is it that these positions were only added in January of this year?

Perhaps this is a question to the okay.

Thank you.

Hi, good evening.

Uh, through the chair, Amber Lightless Human Resources Manager over recruitment and classification.

Um, these positions were added mid-cycle to help oversee the departmental support.

So they were newly added positions in January.

Um, the paperwork was submitted in the end of the year and it got funded in January.

So when we ran the report in February, February 1st, they were newly added.

So we haven't had time to fill them.

Okay.

I just I don't understand why it takes so long to even just start the process.

I mean, I think this is a continual frustration for us on council is we fund things, and then it takes forever to fill those positions.

Um, I think it was alluded to around the tree services department.

We funded those positions.

We're we still don't see them filled.

So I I feel like I still don't have a straight answer in terms of why those were added only as of January of this year when this was added back in last spring.

So I can't speak to the budget process of when it was added, but when they were added in January, we immediately started the process of identifying the classification.

So we assembled a team, we were able to hire um a departmental personnel support team uh with a equivalent of a principal analyst, a senior technician, a supervising technician, um, as well as a senior analyst to do the work to identify the classification.

So we added 25 positions, and those are basically placeholders while we determine the appropriate classification.

Okay.

Um, what do you need from us with the upcoming budget cycle to ensure that for this upcoming cycle we can fill these positions?

So I think it's a combination of assistance with technology.

Um there's different systems that we can utilize to make the hiring process a little bit faster.

NeoGov, our applicant tracking system has different modules.

We use several of them, that but there's others that we don't utilize right now.

Um so vetted attract, there are ways to attract more people once we get them in to screen their applications a little bit faster, not using AI, I know that's a concern.

Um it's basically to be able to track and let the candidates have the transparency through the process, um, and that will help dedicate time to actually running the recruitments and not necessarily worried about the processing because the system will help us utilize that.

Um then always more positions are great to help fill positions.

Right.

Okay, that's all my questions for now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Ungar.

Thanks.

So um, just very briefly, you know, I've I've talked to a bunch of department heads and deputy department heads who say that they have ideas that would help with the hiring, and I'm sure you've talked to them, but I would just like to ask you again to convene, you know, five of our department heads of our biggest departments and and get some ideas from them because they've all told me that they feel like they have solutions that have not been heard or received by you also.

So please, I'm sure you've done it, but um, if I could ask you to do it again.

Absolutely, we're definitely open to working with all of our department heads.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Councilmember Unger, Councilmember Brown.

Okay, excellent.

Thank you so much.

Um, I my questions are um I guess similar to Councilmember Wong's, and so maybe I'll direct the question to the city administration.

Um and I guess maybe it's more of a technical question.

Can you explain the gap in if we pass the budget in in June?

Um, and um, you know, to fill um to fund uh additional positions in HR.

Um why would it take six months for those of those positions to actually then be, I guess, added or like what what is the why why is there a delay?

Okay.

I can speak to part of that.

Um so we didn't request these positions initially, we requested them after the budget was adopted, and this was because of an analysis that we did on the support that's needed citywide.

So when we initially adopt our budget or look at our department needs, we were very much looking at how do we help to recruit, and then through analysis, we identified that we need to help the departments on a different level, and so that's why we added these additional positions.

Okay, I got that.

But was the fund funding set aside during the budget process?

No, it was added afterwards.

Okay, interesting.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Ramachanja.

Thank you, staff.

Is there another presentation from city library partners?

Please come up with just give everybody a couple seconds.

All right, and there should be a slide deck as well that's coming up.

Perfect.

All right.

I have the clicker, I have the power.

So thank you so much.

Good evening, everybody, and thank you for giving us this opportunity and time to kind of present is labor.

Um sort of like a comprehensive approach in terms of how we're viewing the vacancy crisis that we're currency currently experiencing.

Uh who you're gonna hear from today is local 21 SEIU are firefighters, IAFF and IBEW.

Sorry.

I thought I had the power.

Maybe I don't have the power.

Somebody help me with oh, there it is.

Okay.

A little bit of a delay.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna walk through a little bit of what the issue is.

And you know, thanks to our HR staff for kind of presenting ahead of us.

I think we're working with the same objective data.

The issue is there's 839 total vacancies citywide, right?

The vast majority of these vacancies, nearly 80% are for non-sworn staff.

So this is some something that we kind of want to level set that you know, the biggest impact that we're having is on our civilian kind of workforce in the city of Oakland.

And, you know, to what HR said earlier, the vacancy rate in human resources 45% is a and this is part of the reason that we're having a worsening issue, right?

Uh the HR staff is primarily local 21, it's a big deal for us.

Uh we definitely look at it and kind of go, they do incredible work.

The staff there's absolutely amazing.

I've worked with them recently on some recruitments.

We just need more of them.

Um vacancies are also extremely high in many departments of all kinds, from planning and building to human services to the Department of Transportation, right?

So these are all places that you're hearing kind of recurrent things uh from the public, right?

This is about direct service delivery, is what we're talking about here.

So what's the issue that we're talking about?

Um where we kind of have a little uh a point of contention is that a key issue with the report is that it assigns blame everywhere except we really have to look at HR leadership and city administration in terms of making sure that you know staffing up these departments is occurring in a in a timely manner and that all the resources are there to be effective.

Um and for us, our primary concern is that Oakland residents are not getting the high quality services that they deserve because fully funded critical positions are being left vacant.

And that's one of the things that we really have to pay attention to, and we can correct that by making sure that our HR department is adequately staffed up.

So what does that mean?

How does this impact our residents?

This means that we're gonna have people that are tied up on phone lines and police dispatch.

We're gonna have fewer firefighters out there with the ever lengthening fire season, as well as not let's not forget about the medical services that they provide as well.

Kind of a lot of times first-tier medical services.

It also means darker streets with down street lights, traffic signals as well, and we're also talking about you know increasing piles of illegal dumping and everything else if we aren't adequately staffed.

So this slide is familiar, but the key takeaway from this is that number that's in yellow.

We're talking about an almost 20% vacancy rate, which according to the assembly bill, is approaching that critical status, right?

So we're just, you know, percentages, not even percentages, subpercentages away from hitting that critical staff.

So if you look at local 21, we're talking about a 25% vacancy rate.

SEIU 20%.

IAFF, 17.

You know, the numbers go on.

You look at IBEW, you're talking about 11.7%, small group.

Um but you know, this is what we're really talking about is how do we pick these numbers up so we can actually make a difference so we can actually get the services to our residents that they deserve.

So when we go back and we kind of look at these historical vacancy rates, what do we see?

We see that the number has been increasing, right?

The vacancy rate has been growing.

There's been a couple of dips here and there, but they haven't been really large, and that's what's kind of gotten us here.

So we're talking about from 2020 to the current.

So, you know, this is something where, you know, despite all of our best intentions, maybe, we haven't really kind of seen something that has led to any critical difference in what these levels look like.

So this is why we're really paying attention to this.

When we go on to the next slide, let's pay attention to the big three here, right?

Well, I'm talking about the big three, I'm talking about San Francisco, we're talking about San Jose, we're talking about Oakland, right?

Let's look at these percentages of vacancy rates.

Uh this this uh this table's a little bit different.

You kind of read it from right to left if you're looking for the chronological progression from 2022 to 2025.

But when you look at San Jose, they went from 15% to nine nine and a half percent in that period.

You look at San Francisco, they went from 13% to let's call it 4.5% during that same timeline.

Um you look at Oakland, it's a little bit tough because the subtitles are up there.

But we went from, you know, 19.2%, and we're roughly right around that same number.

Um, so you know, these are sort of those things that we want to look at.

And the one thing that uh we definitely kind of want to draw some attention to is December 2025 uh for Hayward.

Uh Hayward did their AB 2561 presentation uh in June.

They actually reported a 9.4 there, so there's a little bit of a difference there.

So we just kind of wanted to draw that out and get everybody looking at it.

But you know, we Oakland, we're considering ourselves one of those big three in the bay.

And it's like we can do a little bit better than what we've been doing.

We've been stagnant.

So Oakland's vacancy crisis is a service delivery crisis.

Every every vacancy leads to a real gap in city services.

Planners not hired means slower permits, right?

For homeowners of small businesses.

Understaffed head starts means fewer resources for childhood education.

Crumbling fire department means greater risk for every Oakland resident.

Understaffed electricians mean less manpower to address the uh street and traffic lights leading to darker, more dangerous streets.

These are real things.

These are things that are residents deserve.

And with that, we're gonna turn it over.

We're gonna jump forward a little bit.

We have one of our labor partners that actually has to go to the Oakland Airport and support us.

Oh, there you go.

Shh.

Michael, here we go.

Good evening.

Michael Patterson, IBW 1245.

It's good to see you all.

In the city of Oakland, over 750 signalized intersections, over 40,000 street lights.

Nine electricians in electrical services.

I've been here a long time before some of these young ladies in HR were here, and I've been hearing the same thing for 25 years.

We don't have enough people in HR.

You would think if they're hiring you would hire more people in HR just like you said, Councilmember.

Um it's hard for us to do our job if we don't have the people to do it.

We have to tell residents, and I think I told some of you last year, we have to tell the residents when they call and say a street light is out, we have to tell them it's gonna be six to eight months before we can get to that.

When I started, we had 14 electricians in the electrical services department.

If you called me, Councilmember Brown and said the streetlight was out in front of your house, within one to three days, that light would be repaired.

We can't do that anymore.

We had a lady called last night.

She lives on Arkansas and Maple talking about the tunnel lights that were out.

She said they're doing illegal dumping.

It's dangerous when her niece walks home from work.

Sadly, we had to tell her the same thing.

It takes six to eight months.

And that's and that's a light, that's a light uh skill, it's longer than that, really, to get to a streetlight circuit.

In June of last year, we did an accrup a recruitment for four electricians in our department.

In June of last year, January the 26th, one person, one electrician came over, and he already worked for the city of Oakland.

We still have three vacancies, and if it hadn't been, and I'm gonna speak the truth.

If it hadn't been for council member, uh city it's uh city administrator Johnson stepping in and making a phone call, we'd still be waiting for those other we just interviewed three other positions last year.

They still haven't walked through the door, but we're talking about over a year.

They're not supposed to start until May.

That's a year to get people in here.

That's why it takes so long.

I don't know what the answers are, but I know there's a real serious problem.

There's a real serious problem in the city of Oakland, and we need to address it.

It makes no sense that we should have all these vacancies.

Something needs to be done.

I know the money has to come from somewhere, and I'm not the one to tell you where it comes from.

But the residents, all these residents sitting behind me, all these citizens sitting are gonna be making phone calls.

How come the lights have been out so long?

At Fifth and Broadway, there's a home, there was an unhoused person that caused a fire on the 31st of last month.

We can't get there.

The signals are still in flash at fifth and Broadway.

We can't get there to fix it because that person hasn't moved.

We went to put them in flash, and the smell was so bad that the person that went there had to go home and change clothes.

That's the pain and we do.

I'm sorry, I'm very sorry.

But that's what we're dealing with.

Thank you for your time.

I didn't know what you would draw.

I'm ready to know Order in the Chambers.

Mrs.

Sado ordered.

Hey there, I'm Seth Olier, President of Oakland Firefighters, Local 55, and I'll just get on with this presentation, make it real quick because we've all talked about this in the past.

The one difference here with IFF Local 55 is we do have a staffing agreement that says there shall be 25 fire engines, seven fire trucks with fully staffed personnel on each rig every single day.

It doesn't say that there has to be different people every day.

And so that's the real problem here for my membership is that every single day the same members are called on and forced to work days and days in a row.

I'm gonna just kind of skip through this so that way everybody has some time.

If you can just advance the slide, but you know, I've used this example, and I'm just gonna use it because it's personal.

I worked the last 14 days of December straight, not by choice.

I was forced to stay at work for 14 days straight because there was nobody behind me to take my place.

And this is not an uncommon situation.

And that's the real tragedy here is that we are budgeted for 500 people.

We're down to 418, and with the amount of injuries that we have, we're well under 300.

We have to fill the same number of seats every day.

It's just we're using the same people repeatedly.

And I the the one last thing that I'll say here is just you know, I've only been here for 28 years, and I've been a professional firefighter for 29 years, but so far the Oakland Fire Department has never closed, right?

We have never turned off the light and gone home.

We have had brownouts, we've had service reductions, but we find a way to answer the service calls every single time.

The problem here is we are burning our people out, and we are running out of capital, human capital.

My members are at the brink.

We're about to spend more money on mental health claims than actual physical claims because people are spending so much time in a blue t-shirt riding around on a fire engine, they're no longer able to be with their families.

And it's tragic, and we need to stop this now.

Like I've mentioned numerous times in this chamber, we need immediate hiring.

We need to hire lateral firefighter paramedics, we need to later hire lateral firefighters, we need to increase the amount of uh hiring that we have.

There's not a shortage of candidates for the Oakland Fire Department.

What there is is there's a shortage of people that are willing to make minimum wage for six months while they wait for our recruitment to start, excuse me, while they are in our drill tower after waiting for years on an eligibility list.

HR is the problem here.

It's not the labor groups that I'm standing in front of.

Good evening.

Uh my name's Jason Tubbs, and I'm a gardener crew leader in the city of Oakland and the parks department where I've worked for 12 years, and I'm also a union officer in SEIU 10 to 1.

I'm here today to speak about the chronic understaffing in the parks department and affecting our ability to do our jobs and properly care for Oakland's parks.

The issue is especially troubling given that Oakland voters approved measure queue in 2020 to fund park maintenance.

Yet we have not seen a corresponding increase in permanent parks maintenance staffing.

Gardener crew leaders and gardener twos are frequently assigned to work together just to avoid working alone, which creates safety concerns.

Many routine maintenance tasks can only be completed through overtime and work blitzes.

Um keep up.

When we rely on overtime or working together in blitzes, employees are pulled away from their normal park assess assignments even only for a day.

This creates a domino effect.

Maintenance in one area may be completed, but other parks fall even further behind.

Overtime and overtime.

We struggle to keep up on even basic general maintenance, let alone the kind of beautification Oakland Oakland residents expect and deserve in their neighborhood parks.

Rather than filling permanent positions, management has increasingly relied on limited duration hires, despite the fact that there is a long list of qualified internal candidates ready for promotion within the parks department.

Many dedicated employees want to advance their careers, but because permanent opportunities are not being filled, people are leaving the department altogether.

Morale has dropped significantly as workers lose hope that relief is coming.

My co-workers regularly express how frustrated, exhausted, and overwhelmed they feel feel.

The daily workload is simply not sustainable with current staffing levels without decisive action to hire and retain permanent park staff, both workers in Oakland parks will continue to suffer.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

All right, thank you.

Um time check clerk.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, it's all good.

Yeah, no, stay with me.

I feel safer with a firefighter with me.

So once again, we're gonna talk about local 21 now.

We're gonna get back to it.

Um we're basically at a 25% vacancy rate.

And if you look at those red check marks that are on that table, that's basically showing you that you know, six of our nine bargaining units are essentially out of compliance with AB what 2561.

Yes, thank you.

Um of this was presented by HR where we're talking about you know the applicant volume and the hiring timeline.

I'll give you some time to kind of digest through this.

It's all going to be present there because I kind of want to make sure that we have time to have some discussions about next steps forward.

But what all these vacancies mean are kind of what we talked about earlier.

Slower permits and development approvals, delayed infrastructure projects, reduced oversight and accountability, residents wait longer for needed resources.

This is very much what it's about.

Um, these are not positions the city lacks the budget to fill, these are open funded positions that the city has already committed to.

So we just need to make this a priority for getting these people in.

So, like, let's go back like in history a little bit.

2023, 2025.

Uh, this same coalition proposed a vacancy strike force budget proposal, and essentially what council did was allocated 250,000 to fund actual uh HR uh resource technicians to do this type of work, right?

We also committed to having a citywide salary survey to make sure that our wages were going to be competitive, and we also wanted to add positions to the recruitment classification and benefits division, right?

So this never really got implemented.

The money got absorbed, this initiative never went forward.

This is the type of thing that we need to kind of revitalize and re-implement to make sure that we do move forward with this because this is something that could really make a difference in these uh departments that are having these critical vacancy crisis crises.

So this is kind of the call to action for council, right?

So, first off is make sure that we demand accountability from HR leadership and city administration.

We can't put the blame on department heads with no plan to staff up HR.

That's just not acceptable.

Um, the city administration needs to take accountability for these numbers and act now.

I mean, this is something that we're clearly talking about.

Um the HR staff, like I said, these are a lot of local 21 members, need system-wide support in a fully staffed team to make real change.

This is what we're talking about.

Um, and to kind of like move the needle on these vacancies, we're actually kind of proposing that council should receive citywide quarterly vacancy reports from HR leadership until we hit a 10% vacancy rate.

Um, another crucial thing is like let's make sure we stop letting eligible lists expire.

Those eligible lists just aren't lists, their time and their money that the city has spent to qualify these people.

We need to strike while the iron's hot on those things.

Um we also need to make sure that we're renewing these vacancy strike force dollars and do a citywide salary survey.

And that citywide salary survey is gonna be really important to make sure that we're gonna be competitive with all of our other local regions, all of our you know, other jurisdictions that are around to make sure that we aren't losing people to other places.

And with that, we are done.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you so much.

Okay, so we've heard from staff, we've heard from labor.

Let's hear from the public commenters, and then we'll bring it back to the council members if that's okay with everyone.

Guess so.

As I call your name, please approach the podium in any order.

Please state your name before you begin.

If you are on Zoom, please raise your hand so I can easily identify you as you will be taken after the in-person speakers.

Kevin Daly, David Boatwright, Miss Asada Olabala, Keith Brown, Seth Oyer, Michelle Stevens, maybe, Shala Azimi, Patrick Hayes, Brash Chabrell, Ben Granberry, Sean Jones, Kirby Olsen, Pierre Gerard, Noelle Pondsheek, Corinne Todd, Amber Kennedy, Jennifer Stern, Jennifer Foster, Chase Fowler, Jean Tran, Elliot Goodrich, Jules Roulet, Charnell Smith, Todd Corian.

Two people.

Go ahead and begin your comments.

Thank you.

So my name's Korean Tide, and you said my name twice, so I'm Korean Todd and Todd Korean.

So you have a minute in 30 seconds too.

Okay.

Well, um, just real quick, my name's Korean Todd.

I'm in housing and community development, and I am a union member, and I'm going to uh concede my time because I have to go, but I'm gonna let the rest of my union members take it over.

Thank you.

Uh my name's Chase Fowler.

Um, Jennifer Foster is on Zoom and is conceding her time for me, as well as being Todd.

Um my name is Chase Ballard.

One second.

So it's C time.

Jennifer Foster, please uh confirm you're giving.

I'm sorry, what was your name?

Chase Fowler.

Chase, uh, your time.

I am giving Chase my time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So you have time from Jennifer and Corinne.

Please begin your comments.

Thank you.

Hello, council.

My name is Chase Fowler.

I'm here today as a proud member of IFPT Oakal 21.

I'm speaking today to underline the damage that leadership at HR and city administration are doing to Oakland by continuing to ignore the vacancy crisis.

As a civil engineer at Oak Dot, I work on a team of what should be seven engineers delivering largely grant funded street safety projects to major corridors around Oakland.

Currently, three out of seven positions on our team sit vacant.

We do everything we can to keep our projects moving, but less people inevitably means less projects.

It means slower projects.

And ultimately, it means lower quality and more dangerous streets for Oaklanders.

The city's sky high vacancy rate means that when we get a resident complaint that street lights at one of our projects are out, we have to wait weeks before a city electrician can be dispatched to get them back online.

It means our department has to pick and choose which positions to prioritize hiring because of how understaffed HR is.

To the city administration to council, fully funded budgeted positions sitting vacant is not a budget balancing tool.

Every time we leave fully funded positions open, leadership at the city administration is depriving Oaklanders of much needed services and degrading the quality of services they already do receive.

Whether it's engineers, planners, or HR analysts, these positions are crucial to delivering the high quality services that Oaklanders deserve.

To me, this is simple.

Oakland has the highest vacancy rate in the region and has not gotten better over the last six years.

We don't need incremental process reforms.

We need leadership who are committed to making this issue an actual priority.

I challenge council to hold HR and the city administration to that by bringing this report back to council on a quarterly basis until we achieve a 10% vacancy rate.

By continuing to ignore this worsening issue, city administration HR leadership are sending a clear message to our residents.

We don't believe you deserve high quality services.

We think that you're okay with getting 80% of what you should be getting.

We're gonna continue the status quo and hope that you and the council forget about this issue by the time the vacancy report comes around next year.

Enough.

The time for excuses and figure pointing from those in charge is over.

We demand real accountability and action from the city administration HR leadership.

Uh one last point to go to the um all the time that we spent in this room listening to the issue about the trees that were cut down.

Our tree services division has a 55% vacancy rate.

Six of those vacancies that you heard that have the budget were not filled due to the hiring freeze.

Um I recommend looking into the actual process where those get held up with an unnecessary finance approvals that slow down hiring of much needed positions at the city.

Um we have one inspector to deal with this type of complaint across the entire city of Oakland.

Think about all the trees, all the geographic area.

We have one inspector to do that work.

Um I've been here as a strong union member since 2000, working in public works.

My colleagues and I keep this city running.

Um I'm really concerned about the proximity to the threshold of crisis that we're seeing with the hiring levels in regards to AB 2561.

Lots of open decisions in public works.

I personally have spent a considerable amount of time this year doing work that is not in my work plan, taking care of fires because of absences above and below me while other people are filling in, or I've filled in as acting supervisor other places.

It's been especially challenging this last year.

We're asking that you work to fund everything.

Let's do whatever we can to help HR fix their problem so that they've got enough staff to hire the people we need to help us do the rest of our work.

Um so what did I have?

Let's see.

Whole bunch of those periodic things.

I'm gonna cede the last of my time.

Thank you.

Seth Oyer, President Oakland Firefighters.

I want to thank my brother there for putting out fires because we need all the help we can get, apparently.

Um I just want to drill down on the IFF issue with the membership and and the recruitment part of this whole problem is that we currently have a just a little over 30 people in our drill tower.

They took the written test to get hired in Oakland.

I believe it was 20, maybe the chief can correct me here, but I believe it was 2022 that they took their written test, and we're in 2026.

And this is how long this HR process takes.

I've spoken with candidates.

I've been raised in the fire department to help mentor incoming firefighters so they can learn how to get hired in the fire department.

I've talked to people that have literally sat on lists for years just to get an interview.

This last recruitment was a disaster with all of the machinations with Zoom, and we just can't seem to get people on board with the city of Oakland.

And there's a number of reasons, a lot of which have been spoken to today.

But I think one of the greatest tragedies is that we have people still, after all this stepping forward saying they want to be Oakland firefighters, fighting uphill to work in a place that has a crumbling infrastructure for less money with more work, less sleep, more cancer, more harm, less time with their family, and they're still showing up, and we can't even do them the honor of hiring them in a timely fashion.

All these other cities are gobbling up these fantastic candidates.

It's a tragedy.

If your name was Connie, you wish to speak, please approach the podium.

All right.

Hello, council.

My name's Amber.

I work in public works.

I'm here today as a city employee, a member of Local 21, and an Oakland resident, right?

They're on the border of District 1 and District 3.

I want to start off by focusing on the reason we're here, and that's because we truly care about this city.

We believe in this city and we want it to be the best it can possibly be.

We are simply frustrated because we don't feel supported by city management in these endeavors.

Local 21 is at 25% vacancy, and my own bargaining unit is at 29%.

I recently moved from one classification to another, and because there was nobody to backfill my old classification, I am doing two fully different roles.

I if I decided to dig in my heels and say I don't work out of class, there would be no downtown Oakland Senior Center ribbon cutting, there would be no main library ribbon cutting, there will be no Mosswood Community Center ribbon cutting that I know some of you are planning to attend.

What we feel right now is that our devotion to our neighbors and our respect for our colleagues and our pride in our work is being exploited.

What is most frustrating is that we are doing all this while being told that y'all can't fill positions that are fully budgeted, that we can't have cost of living adjustments, that you think we should pay more for health care, and that you want to reduce telework.

We need to staff up HR so that they can staff up us.

I want these points to come across clearly because I want you guys to know that I love my job and I want this to be a place that I can stay for the foreseeable future.

Thank you.

Hi, good evening, counsel.

Can you hear me?

Great.

Um, first off, I just want to thank you guys for agendizing this is a really important item.

Um, personally, I'm here, I care about interstoffing both as an Oakland resident and as an employee in the Department of Transportation for the past nine years.

Um I think that this vacancy report shows a really dire and worsen worsening vacancy crisis.

Um as of this February, we've had nearly 350 positions, a quarter of our workforce unfilled.

My department set a 29% vacancy rate.

These vacancies undermine street safety.

They delay infrastructure project projects that residents depend on.

Empty positions is stalled projects, postponed safety improvements.

It's Oaklanders waiting for their streets to be paved for safety issues to be addressed.

And there's a number of critical, I mean, critical positions in our department and across the city.

I've seen them take three, four years to fill.

Maybe we're still waiting.

If you look at the average days to hire on the chart, it regularly takes six, nine months a year to hire, and we are losing good candidates because how many people are still interested in the position that they applied for a year ago.

Um the holdup is not the same for every position, and I get that it's complicated issue, um, but at a higher level, it's not just a staffing problem.

It's an issue of not being able to succeed as a city.

Um I'll just stop there.

Thank you for your time.

Can you give me your name before you go?

My name is Noel Pondanchek.

Good evening, Councilman Kirby Olsen, and I have one person ceding their time to me, Shalla Azimi.

Thank you, Shahla.

Um for the record, Kirby Olson.

I'm a speaking as today as a proud local 21 union member in the Department of Transportation and a 10-year city employee.

The DOT is currently at a 29% vacancy rate.

These vacancies directly impact street safety and infrastructure projects that residents rely on.

We're calling on the council to, among other things, stop letting eligibility lists expire.

I'll give you one example of this from my work.

I'm trying to hire two transportation planners, two staff on my team to help improve our parking and mobility systems.

These are two vacancies that we've had for two or three years.

A list was created for this position, and it had about 60 names on it.

By the time we got through last year's hiring freeze and exhausted internal candidates and were ready to hire external candidates off this list.

The list had expired by a total of three days.

Oak Dot staff reached out to HR to see if it could be extended, and the answer from HR was no.

As a result, we never even got to use that list.

That's 60 people who went through a year-long process of applying, scoring and ranking, and then HR just dropped their applications in the trash, never to be used again, despite a 28% vacancy rate in the Department of Transportation.

Now we have to redo the entire process of creating a new list, which will likely take another one to two years.

So I ask why the rigidity.

Stop letting eligibility lists expired as mentioned earlier.

Thank you.

And I do not believe it is a department problem because once I was placed on an eligibility list, which by the way, I was placed on the eligibility list in June of 2025.

After then, a position opened, and it took about three months to go through the hiring process of interviewing with the various panels and various people.

So on the department side, it took three months to get from eligibility list to hired.

And I'm not sure why it took a year and a half to go from application to eligibility list.

And I come from 15 years in the private sector, and I'm just confused because in the private sector, usually it takes about three to six months to hire.

Thank you for your time.

I'd like to cede the rest of my time to my fellow union members.

If you have time left, you don't get to seed it.

Good afternoon.

Um, Elliot Goodrich, I'm a transportation planner with Oak Dot.

Um, I'd like to thank my colleagues for all of their comments on uh why this issue matters and how to address it.

And I'm going to share a what was going through my head this weekend about this.

Um I was struck during the weekend storm by the flooding all over the city on our streets.

And uh this isn't anything new, it happens all the time.

But in particular, I want to highlight that one of the things the city um does to address this is by asking our residents to adopt a drain.

We want um, we want our residents to take on the truly dirty work of maintaining storm drains themselves instead of doing providing that service as a city.

I'm of two minds about this.

I think it's it's good that we all come together to uh do the work for the town that we love, but on the other hand, it is classic Oakland for us to abdicate our responsibilities to our residents.

It shouldn't be this way.

The city should be able to maintain its streets and its sewers, uh with and that starts with having the staff to do so.

Also, remember we're going to ask voters to uh approve a parcel tax this summer.

We're gonna uh ask voters to approve a future bond measure to uh fix the infrastructure that we barely maintain, and if we're asking those things, we need to show that we can take care of the basics and that we as a city can be trusted.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Pierre Gerard.

Um I'm transportation planner with OakTa and a member of Local21.

Uh, you've heard a lot of great points tonight.

Um just gonna kind of reiterate some of them.

Um as of February 2026, Oakta had 119 vacancies out of 415 budgeted positions, so that's about nearly 29%.

Um as a result, people like me end up taking on more and more of the roles of other city teams in need of help, especially when it comes to contracting and procurement.

Uh vacancies are uh a severe bottleneck to safer streets and uh basic services.

So reiterating the call to action for city council that you saw during the labor presentation, here they are again.

Uh, but uh with some specific suggestions for me.

Uh prioritize the hiring of uh five to ten more recruitment and classification positions in HRM, renew the vacancy strike force funding focused on the worst hit departments like Oak Dot, uh direct HRM to cut average hiring times for the highest vacancy units to under 120 days as a suggestion within the next fiscal year.

Keep eligibility lists active for longer so the lists don't expire unused.

Um, conduct a citywide salary and classification study so Oakland can reasonably compete for skilled workers and require quarterly citywide staffing reports until the overall vacancy rate drops below 10%.

Every unfilled position means slower project delivery and delayed safety improvements.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Chanel Smith.

I'm here to speak on behalf of the parking control technicians.

First of all, I like to thank you all.

Everybody's complaining about staffing, but in parking enforcement, you guys have been staffing us.

We've been short since the pandemic, and this year long, I believe we got 20 new people.

So thank you for that.

But our work isn't done in parking enforcement.

I'm here today to let you guys see my face.

I stayed tonight because I want you guys to know how important it is that you let P DOT remain whole as one unit.

It's important that you have restaffed us and you're continuing to restaff us, but the reorg is will devastate us.

The reorg will separate all the good work that we're doing together.

So I'm asking you please to let DOT stay hold.

Let the parking control two be the parking control one unit be the feeder unit for parking control too.

We in parking enforcement has been looking for a place where we can feel that we can grow.

There are that's a promotional opportunity for us, and we're asking that you don't take that away.

The people in PMAC have been working so hard to service the city of Oakland when people come to pay their citation.

Going down from four to from 14 to 4 people is hard on a unit, but we're here to serve the city.

Park and um meter collections, meter repair.

Miss Asada, Keith Brown, Michelle Stevens, Braz Shabret, Sean Jones, Jules Brule, Jennifer Star.

And I know Kevin Daly is on Zoom.

So uh I have no respect for anything the union has to say.

The union participated in a false scenario of representing themselves as a citizen group, putting forth a citizens initiative that we understand to be measure E and gave financial contributions, the fire union, the union of electricians, SIEU 200,000, and for some reason P G and E 50,000.

Your integrity is lacking.

Your ability to participate in the false representation of putting on the ballot on June 2nd, measure EE.

I don't care what happens to your behinds.

Now something's going on with the hiring process.

When you hire a human services director, and you're firing in five months, you hire somebody to be overhead start, and you fire them and you take them back and they retire.

Something's going on with the process of how we hire.

Thank you, Miss Olabala.

Your time is okay.

Hi, I'm Jules Bruyer.

I'm a resident of District Three and a coordinator for South Prescott Lower Bottoms Neighborhood Association.

And with our council member Fife on the shortages across all these city departments, uh streets, public works, uh homelessness services.

Um we're not able to get the services that we need.

Uh we're we're told about this six to eighth eight months waiting period for all kinds of services.

And um so we're in agreement with recommendations by these city unions to take action.

We need to take action to staff the city so that we can receive the services that we need.

And that's this is a frustrating conversation between our council member and ourselves because we all want this to happen.

We're just asking you to take specific action to uh expend the funds to get the staffing we need and and get through uh make the bureaucracy work for us.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Moving to our Zoom speaker, Mr.

Daly.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hi, this is Kevin Gally from Transport Oakland.

I'm concerned with what the staffing shortage is doing to street safety.

Like you take a look at the finance department role in slowing down hiring.

The grand jury reported that the finance department was responsible for slow hiring.

And I have heard that the finance department needs to approve a single position three times before the person actually gets hired.

So I'm hopeful we have a new finance director, Bradley Johnson.

Like to hear if he's able to do anything to speed along the finance department role.

I'd like to determine whether it is still finance department slowness.

It's still a problem with hiring, and what can our do to reduce the problems with finance department slowdowns.

Thank you.

So seeing that that concludes the rest of the speakers.

Thank you to everybody that came out to speak about this pressing issue that we have here in the city of Oakland and the ability to deliver service to the residents of Oakland.

I know we've been here since 9:30 a.m.

All right.

So if we can have brevity with our comments, if we're gonna have comments, uh city administrator, I think you've heard from labor and um I think I can speak for some of some or most of council where we want to see something done.

Um want to see reports come back, maybe in a biannual basis, uh, so that we can get a hold of this.

Through the chair, council members.

So thank you.

We certainly acknowledge uh the feedback that um we heard today, and also prior to today.

Um, one of the things that's been extremely helpful, and I appreciate the human resources department really trying to think about this holistically and take steps moving forward.

There's one point of clarity um that I want to make sure that that I make is also around the top.

I think Councilmember Boy, you asked a question around the um uh timing around hiring in January or something along those lines.

Uh keep in mind in part as a part of the budget process, it is not uncommon that um departments or you all as a body will choose to fund a position for half of the year.

And so you for cost-saving purposes, and so if that position is funded as from it's split year funded is what we'll call it, you might not start that hiring process until January, which is why you I think um Miss Lido made the comments with respect to starting that process in January.

So split funding over the course of a fiscal year is not uncommon.

Um, the other thing I also want to make sure that um you all hear me say um this is an item that we'll certainly take up with our uh directors to make sure that we can actually come together, really talk through what the challenges that they may be seeing, but also from an HR perspective, here's what we need from you from a departmental standpoint, and you know you all are not excluded in that conversation with respect to as you all try to look to hire staff in a reasonable uh amount of time.

So we certainly hear um you all loud and clear.

We've heard our labor partners loud and clear in our community uh loud and clear.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Uh council member.

Marvin Tendra.

Thank you.

Um I will not talk everyone's ears off as I did at finance committee.

I think I've made my points c uh very clear, and I'm grateful to our labor partners for you know expressing some real crucial stories about the inner workings of what's going on and laying out a roadmap.

I just want to say I talked about this before about our public perception.

Two years in a row, I posted on my social media and on two different platforms about our hiring crisis and the outcomes of the staffing report that both years were close to having a 20% vacancy of funded position.

This blows people's mind to know to think that Oakland's always in the news for having budget deficits and not having money, yet we can have the funding for 800 people that aren't hired.

There is a real problem with the way we're perceived.

And forgive me, there were 120,000 people across my two platforms who viewed my message, and I have to read a couple of these comments.

As an East Oakland born and raised resident, I've been working in San Francisco all my life, but applying to Oakland City jobs since I was 18, I've just never been chosen, and they pick they pick transplants over natives.

Oakland's HR department is actively discriminating against qualified individuals.

As someone who works for HR in a neighboring neighboring city, I find their practices deeply troubling.

I applied to a posting on the website.

I interviewed qualified was the top candidate after the interview, only to be told after that there's no more job opening.

Then why post the job?

Oak when I apply to get jobs in San Francisco, I get interviews, but I can't get one in my own hometown.

Why do I have to fight outsiders for employment?

It just again and again and again.

I mean, it this is all public.

You can read what that what hundreds and hundreds of people are talking about who applied to city jobs.

This is how we're perceived.

And what one of our union partners said, the statistic is just so striking.

We have the highest vacancy rate in a region and has not gotten better in the past six years.

But I do want to say I do believe on the bright side, there's there's two silver linings that I really hope we can take out of this.

One, this council might not agree on a lot of things, but we I think this is an issue that really unifies how we feel about the importance of needing to provide basic city services to our residents and our constituents who complain that they can't get services, and the fact is that we have to keep pointing to, well, there's no staff in these jobs that are fully funded.

And I think I do appreciate our city administrator for a couple of examples where you have chosen to prioritize this issue.

And one was my first year on council, 911 dispatchers, vacancy of 24 people.

The message was consistently, well, no one wants to apply for these jobs.

I know that's not true because I personally have friends, three people, qualified Oakland residents, women of color, who wanted these jobs, and the stories of how many people that apply to jobs and don't hear back is countless.

When I filed my public record request, and we unveiled that a thousand applications were missing and lost and not considered over the course of a year, our city administrator took action.

And our HR department took action.

So much so that after a little media buzz and a little bit of publicity, in three weeks, this department hired went from I think 24 vacancies to four.

That's remarkable.

And to me, I think that we can apply this kind of vigor and consciousness to every city department, starting with HR itself.

If we go from a 20 35% vacancy in HR to 5% vacancy, our problems across the city, I think can really be resolved.

And I think that we should consider this points in this framework, like not letting eligibility lists expire and take them very seriously.

Our neighbors, San Francisco, they have they were like other cities and have hiring crises as well and other issues, but they did move their average hiring timeline from 11 months to three in recent years.

And I think we can do the same.

Thank you, Councilmember Chandra and Councilmember Brown and um make a motion to receive and file this report.

Excellent.

I'll second it.

And I um I know we had the opportunity to to dialogue around this in finance um prior.

Um, but the public speakers um brought up some a question that I have around the eligibility list.

Um, and so I guess um through the chair to um I guess HR or the administration um I guess my I have two questions really.

Can you explain the process?

I think someone mentioned how like you know, three days and then it was like it expired and and they couldn't be extended.

So I'm just curious.

Um, what is the process to ensure that these eligibility lists um can actually be extended?

And is that something that we are actively considering?

Um, because it seems um like that could be a best practice.

Through the chair.

So um the way it works is when an eligible is established, we established two lists, generally speaking, a restricted and an open list.

So restricted is for city employees, open is for non-city employees.

The open lists are good for one year by default, and the restricted are good for two years.

We do have the ability to extend up to four years on both list types, and so what we do is monthly we send out a report to every department to say these are the active eligible lists.

It indicates when it's going to expire, and we ask the departments to analyze do you need this list?

Do you have a vacancy in this classification?

Do we need to extend it?

Any kind of action that you need.

So we send that out every single month.

Month after month, we usually get one or two people responding to that.

So we do ask the departments, do you have a need?

Uh, but we can't forecast exactly what positions they're trying to fill.

I see.

And then so is there actually a situation where a department would be told no they cannot extend the list?

Is it at the four-year mark?

Or I guess I'm just trying to understand like the feedback that we receive.

Yes, if the eligible is already expired, it can't be reactivated.

So that's the case.

If they let it expire and then ask for it, it's already been expired.

At the one year, it depends.

It could have already been extended for six months or or something, but at the expiration date, if it has expired, we cannot reactivate it.

I see, and is that just like an old process that we have as a city?

Probably.

Okay.

And so ideally, we could change that process so that these lists don't expire.

Probably, yeah.

Excellent.

So hopefully, um, I mean, I think we just received so much feedback.

Um, and so hopefully we can um I I guess I'm curious what is it, what is our process moving forward to um make some of these improvements around the eligibility list.

Um that was my question to through the chair to the administration.

Sure, uh, through the chair to Councilmember Brown.

I apologize, I don't know all the the ins and outs of that process, but happy to um collaborate with human resources department to get specificity around that.

And quite frankly, if it's just a practice, um, that's one thing, but also making sure that we're following our civil service rules if that even if it is a civil service rule and it it may not be.

Um, that I just don't know, but we'll certainly work with our human resources department and clarify that for you.

Excellent, thank you so much, Ms.

Mayor.

Thank you.

We have a council.

Thank you.

Um sorry, I just wanted to drill down a little bit again on this issue of staffing the HR department itself.

Um I'm on the government jobs website right now, and I see that there I think are only two positions right now that are on government jobs that are listed for the human resour resources department.

One is the supervising HR systems analyst.

It's a closing date of April 17th, and we have a principal employee and labor relations analysts with the closing date of February 27th.

I think in the report it was noted that there were 44 vacancies right for the HR department.

So I know that what we're seeing here is not reflective of all of those vacancies.

And I don't I guess I'm just frustrated because I know to me it does not strike the as rocket science to think that we just need some you know HR analysts and we need more of them.

And so why don't we see more of that posted?

Why don't we see more of that on the jobs listing?

And then all of us as council can put that out on our social media and our listservs and and blast that out because clearly we need to fill up these HR positions.

Um why don't we see more of that like now today?

Uh so great news.

The assistant HR analyst eligible is should be established this Friday.

We're expecting it to have over 200 candidates on it.

They have already they're participating in the test right now.

Um so that will be established for the assistant HR analyst.

Uh for the senior HR analyst, that list was established.

I want to say about three weeks ago.

Um, we actually did interviews yesterday to fill those positions, um, and we identified two great candidates that were advancing to the next round.

So you don't see them on there because we've already started the recruitment process for it, and we're at the final stages.

Okay, so within a couple of months, that 44 uh vacancy is gonna come down to what number now do you anticipate?

A big portion of it um are those positions that we created to help departmental support, and part of the process will be to create a new classification.

So once we identify what the classification should need, what union it would be represented by all of those stages, we still have to come back here and have two readings before we can even establish that classification.

So the process of creating a class to fill most of those positions is gonna take two to three months, and then once we establish the class, then we have to recruit for it.

Okay, interesting.

I wonder if there's some legislative changes that could be helpful here.

I would love to see that.

Okay, let's talk.

Okay.

Thank Council Member Ramatandra.

Apologize.

Was a motion already made?

May I offer a friendly amendment to uh accept, but also um require the HR department to bring a quarterly report with the same information.

Do you guys have the capacity to do a quarterly report?

Uh through the chair to Council Ramashandran um and President Jenkins.

So I will share that in order to put these together.

It it the level of effort is pretty significant.

So the staff that's that we're looking and seeking to do the hiring are the same ones that are having to put together the reports, coalescing uh the data, calling that through, that sort of thing.

So um I I will tell you that that will be a challenge uh for us.

Of course, it's a pleasure of this body, but just in all candor, um, that frustration factor will go up quite quite candidly, um, having to do these quarterly reports.

Um if there is a a median uh or or if that's uh you know biannual or something along those lines.

We can I'd love to start there at bi annual okay because now it's only one, so adding one more in the fall.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

All right, so biannual, let's go to the vote.

Do the chairs that biannual report coming to council, or is it going to finance and management?

It would be an informational report going to finance.

Um, not the public hearing that we currently had today, just an informational report.

Thank you.

One item 4.2 move by council member Jenkins, second by council member Brown to receive and file the report with a biannual report going to the finance and management committee.

Council member Brown.

Hi.

Councilmember five.

All right.

Councilmember Gaia was absent.

Councilmember Houston.

Aye.

Councilmember Ramachandran.

Aye.

Councilmember Ungar.

Aye.

Council Member Wong.

Aye.

Chair Jenkins.

All right.

Motion passes with a vote of seven ayes, one absent guy.

Oh.

Sorry, for a point of uh clarification.

Uh, we mean twice a year, not every other year.

Okay.

And just so I can clarify for the record, that would be a separate this site.

The item is being received today, and there will be a separate item that comes back and will get scheduled through rules.

And I'm sorry, that motion was also to close the public hearing.

That concludes your public hearing.

Going to your first non-consent item.

Item 5.1, adopt a resolution wave and request for a proposal.

Qualification requirements and awarding a professional services contract to Bayview Industrial Services to continue providing on call emergency non-emergency collection, removal and disposal of hazardous materials for a one-year term in an amount not to exceed $500,000 with an option to renew the agreement for an additional one year term in an amount not to exceed $500,000 for a total contract amount not to exceed $1 million.

You have one speaker on the move to waive the balance of the presentation and move approval.

There is a motion by council member Jenkins, second by Houston.

To what?

Waive the balance of the presentation and move approval.

Okay.

To accept the staff recommendation.

Let's go to the public speakers.

This is for item 5.2.

They're approving the staff recommendation.

5.1 professional services agreement with Bayview.

Materials.

Okay.

Hey, how are you doing?

Just briefly, which is rare that it things can be done briefly with me.

Um the method for how staff identifies hazardous materials.

They first that's the first thing that has to happen.

And then you you contact people to deal with it.

So what is the method that anybody that would be in a position to come across hazardous materials to know it?

Because I came across picking up trash, and I broke out all over because I didn't know that that was hazardous that you were doing uh to do deal with the weeds and the medium.

So and that's not just staff, that's people who voluntarily are in the community, particularly people with Oakland keep Oakland beautiful.

And uh I that's the only concern.

I'm sorry I didn't do that fast enough, but I thought I could do it then.

You're fine, Mrs.

Hata.

On the motion moved by council member, Council President Jenkins, second by Houston to approve the staff recommendation.

Councilmember Brown.

Aye, council member Fife, all right, Councilmember Gaia was absent, Councilmember Houston.

Aye, Councilmember Ramachandran, excuse Councilmember Unger.

Aye.

Councilmember Wong.

Aye.

Council President Jenkins.

I motion passes with a vote of six ayes.

Two excused or guy and Ramachandran.

Going to item 5.2.

Receive an information report from the city auditor on the audit recommendation follow-up report as of December 31st, 2025.

Thank you, Mr.

Good evening, everyone.

How much time do you need?

12 minutes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Probably less.

But Michael C.

Houston, the city auditor, here to present our semi-annual audit recommendation follow-up for the period through December 30th, 2025.

Although today is April 16th, 2026.

So the mission of the Office of the City Auditor is to advocate good city government for all Oaklanders by independently and objectively assessing city programs and services, making recommendations to improve them, and publicly reporting the results.

And we conduct audits and uh of services and programs that have the greatest impact on the community.

Within those audits, we make evidence-based recommendations that are constructive and feasible, intended to improve city services.

Uh, to retain our independence, we rely on the city administration to implement the recommendations.

The city charter requires my office to follow up twice per year on audit recommendations.

This is our fifth semi-annual audit recommendation follow-up report, which covers open recommendations from the previous audit recommendation follow-up report cycle as of June 30th, 2025, plus newly added audit recommendations since then.

The report summarizes the statuses of 300 unique audit recommendations across dozens of different audits issued between 2014 and December 31st, 2025.

The audit recommendation follow-up cycle allows the city administrator, the city council, and the public to see progress made in implementing audit recommendations.

Since the previous semi-annual audit recommendation follow-up process, we added 12 new recommendations from new from two newly issued audits.

25 older recommendations have changed status from not implemented to partially implemented or implemented, or from partially implemented to implement it.

We are grateful to the city administrator who jointly signed an administrative instruction, AI 701, implementing audit recommendations.

It outlines the semi-annual audit recommendation follow-up process and provides prescriptive guidance for department staff in providing status updates for audit recommendations.

So some recommendations take time to implement, especially if they rely on significant city investment or are subject to labor negotiations.

This exhibit shows the status of audit recommendations by the year they were made.

While the number of recommendations issued in a year relates to the number and scope of audits issued, we have found that generally older recommendations are further along than newer ones.

Of the 300 audit recommendations made since 2014, 213 or 71% have been implemented or closed.

87 recommendations are considered partially implemented or not implemented.

And we have some examples of implemented recommendations from the cycle.

The police commission voted unanimously in December 2025 to accept its draft strategic plan with minor edits.

The comprehensive strategic plan has formal goals and objectives, has deliverables, outcomes that identify what the commission needs to do to achieve its goals and objectives, including annual work plans and a plan for outreach.

The fire department's fire prevention bureau, along with the city attorney's office, has moved to employ more aggressive administrative and judicial actions to compel property owners to correct fire safety violations and to assess payment for past and current inspection fees.

The finance department implemented several recommendations pertaining to special taxes.

Finance made an adjustment to the fiscal year 2526 adopted budget to true up a general fund appropriation shortfall identified in our audit of library parcel taxes for fiscal year 1920 through 2324.

Additionally, the finance department has included calculations for the maintenance of effort for measure Q, the 2020 parks and recreation prevention, litter recreation, litter prevention, recreation preservation, litter reduction, and homelessness support act in an adopted budget.

But there are on the other hand, there are 87 recommendations that remain open as of December 31st.

13 of them from the 2019 audit of the Oakland Police Department's overtime audit intended to improve overtime planning management tracking.

And those await some investment and citywide investment from IT and the city administrator's office.

But there are also some important recommendations that require labor negotiations from that audit.

For instance, recommendation number 12 calls for the city to consider setting limits on the number of overtime hours an employee can earn in a fiscal year, excluding mandatory overtime.

Number 16 in that audit calls for the administration to negotiate with the OPOA to reduce the comp time accrual limits, which were higher than other cities in California at that time.

The city administration number number 17 calls for the city administration to negotiate with the OPOA and OPMA to eliminate the provision that allows sworn staff to defer overtime payments.

And the last one, number 18, calls for the city administration to discontinue the informal practice of buying back competitive, which adds to liability.

And we had 10 open recommendations that rely on the adoption of the consolidated fiscal plan.

So most of the open audit recommendations are addressed to multiple departments or the city administrator's office, which requires coordination and can also lead to slower implementation timelines.

Again, audit recommendations seek to improve government services.

While a single recommendation may have multiple benefits, each recommendation is assigned to primary intended benefit.

So most of our audit recommendations, as you can see, are seeking to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

They identify opportunities to improve service outcomes or save staff time or streamline processes.

Other recommendations seek to improve compliance to ensure that city operations meet requirements of laws, regulations, ordinances, and resolutions, policies, or contractual language.

Some recommendations intend to improve transparency and accountability to enable greater public oversight of city programs and resources.

Some promote equitable access to or distribution of city resources.

And recommendations also safeguard public resources by protecting them against fraud waste and abuse or mismanagement through improvements to internal controls.

Some recommendations identify potential economic benefits to the city through opportunities to increase revenues or reduce costs.

So the details of the audit recommendations may be found in the appendices of the report, which are in the packet.

The report is attached to the packet.

And the reports also on our website, Oakland Auditor.com.

So I would like to thank the city departments who spent their time helping us update our report.

Every department, I believe, provided updates this cycle.

And I also want to thank members of the public, many of whom have embraced the title of our food champion or audit recommendation follow-up champions, who have read and engaged in our audit reports and continually apprise us on their understanding of the statuses of city services and have advocated for the implementation of recommendations and have shown dogged commitment to improving the performance of their government.

Thank you so much, Mr.

Auditor.

Let's go to the public speakers.

For those who may be participating here on Zoom, please raise your hand so I can easily identify you.

I have Kevin Daly, Rajni Mandal, Mrs Sada Olabala, Noelle Pond Dachek, Chance Fowler, and Elliot Goodrich for item 5.2.

I do see, so I do not see anyone in chambers.

I will go to Zoom.

Oh, my apologies.

Yes.

Mainly 87 audits recommendations have not been done, I think, of a nine 192.

Are still open.

That's what I meant.

Not doing that.

87 are still open.

Now there's some things that need to be audited, but you don't just do audit, you do investigations as well.

So any follow-up on investigations, are they just done and that's it?

Uh I got something in the mail about the um notifying the property owner that you have to uh declare that you are uh registered and pay your annual business tax.

We need something done with this.

This means they don't know who's renting property.

So it is there an audit on the business tax uh process because it's not working.

Uh we definitely need an audit of nonprofits that we do business with because there's just across the country, fraud is being identified by individuals and groups who are nonprofits, and I think we need to look at that.

I need to see an audit of the housing consortium of the East Bay because a lot of the failures that we have with homelessness has to do with the failure of proper management with that group.

Uh and lastly, they've got to employ three process.

You can tell maybe thank you.

And if there are no more speakers here, the names that I've called in chambers, I will now call those who are participating via Zoom.

I have Kevin Daly and then after Kellen Kevin Daly, it will be Rajani Mandal.

Kevin, you're unmuted.

You may unmute yourself and begin.

Kevin Daly.

You have been unmuted.

We just need you to unmute yourself so you can begin your time.

I will give him a second and go to Ms.

Rajni Mandal.

Rajni Mandal District 4.

The auditors follow-up report answers a simple question.

After problems are identified, do they actually get fixed?

And the answer is not always, not fully, and not on time.

Recommendations remain in progress, and some are only partially implemented.

And some stall without resolution.

So we're already tracking.

That's what this report is.

It tells us where things stand, but it doesn't ensure they actually get finished.

And there's no clear enforced timelines.

So there's no escalation when items stall.

And there's no requirement to bring specific recommendations back until they're completed.

And so it leaves a gap.

Right now, there's a broader conversation about accountability and charter reform and transparency and making government work better.

But we don't have to wait for charter reform to make progress on that goal.

Right now we have a clear immediate opportunity.

Because when the system doesn't close the loop, accountability doesn't disappear, it just shifts to the public.

So my answer is simple.

When recommendations stall, bring them back to council with timelines until they're done.

Because accountability shouldn't depend on whether the public keeps showing up.

It should be built into the system.

Thank you.

Thank you.

For that, we are now going to Kevin Dally.

You are unmuted.

Okay.

Can you hear me this time?

I hope.

Um, this is Kevin Dowley.

Um for uh the patience and thank you, Audible Houston.

I'm interested in issue 2020 underscore zero two number 27, which states that the OFE has recorded uh reports non-compliant property owners to the planning and building code enforcement.

My experience is that that has not yet been done.

Um I have two issues with CDS pharmacies, both of which have blocked emergency exits, and they have blocked the exit since 2019.

One is in district for my district in the Diamond District Pharmacy.

The other one is in D1 Piedmont Avenue 41st.

Um prior department has done inspections.

They have been declared non-compliant, they have been tagged, they have been fined, and follow-up inspections are not happening.

They're scheduled for 2025 and 2026, but they have not happened.

Hoping that this gets resolved soon.

Thanks.

Thank you.

All speakers have been called.

Thank you.

Move to receive the report.

Councilmember Brown.

Second.

We have a motion and a second.

Thank you for that.

And that was a motion by council member, Council President Jenkins, seconded by Councilmember Brown to receive and file item 5.2 on roll.

Councilmember Brown.

Aye.

Five.

Aye.

Councilmember Guyles excuse.

Council Member Houston.

Aye.

Ramachandran is excused.

Council Member Hunger.

Sorry.

Wong.

And Council President Jinky.

Item 5.2 is approved with six ayes to excuse.

Uh Ramachandran and Councilmember Gaio.

Moving.

Moving to the consent calendar, which is all of item six.

Signed with item 6.1, a declaration of a local emergency due to the AIDS epidemic.

Item 6.2, a declaration of medical cannabis emergency.

Item 6.3, a declaration of a local emergency on homelessness.

Item 6.4 an information report for the city auditors professional services contract authorized during fiscal year 24 through 25.6.5 a resolution reappointing to the mosquito abatement board.

Item 6.6 includes multiple pieces of legislation regarding amendments to ordinance number 12187 for the salary ordinance.

Item 6.7 an ordinance to strengthen illegal dumping enforcement.

Item 6.8 an ordinance for lease agreements with Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation for maintenance of Tyrone Kearney Park.

Item 6.9 resolution in support of Senate Bill 1218.

Item 6.10, a resolution for commend commemorative street renaming in collaboration with BB Memorial.

Item 6.11, a resolution to authorize Urbit's pilot program to strengthen illegal dumping remediation.

Item 6.13 an ordinance for purchase of real property at 3105.

San Pablo Avenue for a Hoover Library.

Item 6.14, a resolution for let's throw phone contract.

Item 6.15, a resolution for OPD GPS tracker policy.

Item 6.16, a resolution for appointment of Razu Injun to the bicycle pedestrian pedestrian advisory commission.

Your final consent item is a resolution confirming the mayor's appointments to the reappointments of the community police and advisory board.

Thank you to all the seniors that have waited.

Oh go ahead, you go for it.

No, no, no, no.

No, no, no.

That you guys avoided it going on four hours, including two hours about trees, and I'm pretty sure you guys know more about trees than when you came here.

So I just appreciate you guys waiting and staying with us.

Councilmember Five.

Yeah, I I alerted the council president to the fact that so many people that I have so much respect for have sat through hours and hours of testimony, public comment, and the fact that you all are still here and waiting to give your uh testimony about the Hoover uh Durant Library means everything to me.

And I know some people had to leave, but thank you all for for sticking it out, and I want to hear from them first if possible.

Let's go.

I'm just gonna call all the names to make it easier for everyone.

Kevin Daly, Jennifer Finlay, Colleen Hakes, Fatima Youssef, Rafael Henriquez, Katherine Stirbert, Sternberg, Mary Forte, David Boat Wright, Miss Asada O'Labala have you with multiple items, Karen Kagan, Razu Injun, Mandelin Kader Redman, Ayano K, Jeffrey's Favreau, Marquita Price, Henry Simons, Mr.

Hazard.

I have you with multiple items, John Lee Williams, Altier.

I know I said your name incorrectly.

I'm so sorry.

Sharon Jones, Ernest Johnson, Leah Freeman, Sharon Cornew, Lionel B.

Wilson, Alvaria Owens, Amy Worth, Janna Corey.

Good evening, uh, City Council members.

My name is Al Tanier Baker Cook, and I am the chair of the Friends of Hoover Durant Public Library.

First, I'd like to introduce the board members of the Friends of Hoover Durant, Ernest Johnson, Vice Chair, Ogva Stein, Treasurer, Raphael Henriquez, Board Secretary, Sharon Jones, Honorary, Historian, Norman Hooks, Feasibility Study, Karen Zucker, Capital Campaign Fund.

Um, anyway.

I want to encourage you to purchase this property.

It's uh a matter of the taxpayers voted for now we want it, and we want a library.

That's okay.

Go on, come on, go on, go on.

Hello, I'm Sharon Jones.

Besides housing books, the libraries today have various functions.

Due to the health disparities in the black American community, there are 80,000 per year excess deaths as of 2021 that could be prevented if individuals had access to health care and preventable measures.

One of our goals as a library is to go throughout the community via mobile health care van to educate, disseminating information, conducting health screens, such as early diabetic screenings, blood pressure testings, doors that would provide early infant information which would come back the aid, which would come which would aid in combating the high infertility more rate, mortality rate.

I'm sorry.

Today please release this money.

We need it.

Hi again, Mandelin Klair Redman, Executive Director with the Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation here to support 6.8, the Lisa at Tyron Kearney Park.

Some of you we've talked about, we did some additional engagement.

I just wanted to bring that support.

We did have community here.

They had to leave for family obligations, but um we've been in engagement uh with district seven specifically, so I just wanted to make myself available to give that um additional comment.

Thank you.

I'm Ernest Johnson, the vice chair of the Hoover Durant Public Library.

I'm here today because I need you all to understand that if you think education is expensive, you try ignorance.

I'm here because our neighborhood needs a library.

And when you read the letter, it should bring tears to your eyes.

And especially if you are a person of color.

It is a pity and a shame that someone would put that in writing, but when you're doing wrong, you have to continue to do wrong.

There's no right in it.

And I'm asking each and every one of you all to search your heart and do it right because this may be your last opportunity to do it.

And this is very important.

Good evening.

I'm Sharon Cornwall with St.

Mary's Center.

I want to tell you three things about this project.

There are more than a thousand seniors within a mile of 3105 San Pablo Avenue, the former community foods market.

There's McClyman's High School, Hoover Elementary, St.

Mary's Preschool, and a host of other child care providers ready and waiting to take advantage of this community resource.

And finally, let us salute the hardest working all-volunteer organization in Oakland.

A number of us thought this could not be done, and they proved everybody wrong.

The Hoover Foster Fence the Public Library.

Thank you, Sharon.

Thank you to the council for uh taking the time to hear us.

My name is Albertia Owens, and I am one of the lead people with the friends of Hoover Durant.

And um I want to say a couple things.

And um, and I'm urging you to support the overwhelmingly um what am I trying to say?

Everybody voted at the life enrichment committee.

I thank you.

We all thank you, and we're urging the council to follow the recommendation to support and fund the Oakland Public Library under the Measure K and release the funds from the general funds for Oakland Public Library for Retention and Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Wow.

Hello, my name is Lionel B.

Wilson.

I say that to you because my father was Lionel J.

Wilson.

And I stand here representing four generations of Oaklanders.

My grandfather was born here in 1899.

And those four generations of Oaklanders have used the library, the North Oakland Library primary, what I call the North Oakland Library that was torn down in 1981.

And I want to say to you that as somebody who has been here for a long time, my memory goes back 71 years to a student at Longfellow Elementary School walking with his class down to the North Oakland Library, where we were inspired by the librarians there at the Oakland Public Library to read, to learn about Oakland, to learn about our other community.

And I just all I'm here to say is I'm a promoter of this job, this effort.

So my name is John Williams.

I'm with the Hoover Durant Library.

And just like he was talking about, I have the picture here, and a picture is worth a thousand words.

And this show you how the children are relaxed there.

They've taken out a library book and they're looking for more books.

And this shows you the type in this environment produces produced uh first black mayor of Oakland, California.

And it also produced the first black captain of the fire department in Oakland, California.

But now if you take out the library, we're gonna have what happened before.

When they took this library out, the liquor store moved on the next corner, and then we started having a lot of violence.

And this is the letter that was written to have the library taken out.

That's what the Von L was talking about.

So it wouldn't be a good idea to take the library, not put a library back in the neighborhood because we could cut down on a lot of the violence.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Uh my name is Rezu Engan.

I'm a resident of D5 and have been East Oakland uh just over eight years.

Um the mayor's office has recommended my employment to a vacancy on the bicycle and pedestrian advisory commission, which is item uh six sixteen on consent.

I just wanted to introduce myself to you all, uh to those of you who haven't met already, and thank you for considering my appointment to the BPAC.

Um, I'm looking forward to advocating for better safety and access for walking and biking throughout Oakland.

Um, this is important to me as someone who regularly commutes by bike.

Uh I want and I also want to make it easier for other folks to also get around and drive less.

Um, we see what the car dependency has done to uh through the efforts of uh climate change, decades of disastrous interventions in foreign countries, and this latest war that has really driven up inflation and the cost of gas and would love to be a part of uh making that better for all of Oakland.

Hi, I'm Amy Wirth, and I'm a member of the Friends of Hoover Demant Hoover Durant Public Library.

I'd like you to vote tonight on four things.

First is approving the purchase of the property at 3105 San Pablo Avenue.

Second is that you support the capital appropriations needed to build this library.

Um third is that you fully fund the library services retention and enhancement act, including the 2.7 million general purpose fund, and last that you restore the 14.5 million general fund appropriation appropriation to Oakland Public Libraries budget for the FY2627 year.

And last that you restore the 14.5 million general fund appropriation to Oakland Public Libraries budget for the FY2627 year.

Thank you very much.

It's just as transparent as the other items that might be there.

I'm making reference specifically now to the omission with regards to Measure E the parcel tax.

No, please.

90% live outside of Oakland.

Stanislaw, Solano, Contra Casa, and beyond.

50%, Mr.

Unger, of firefighters live outside of Oakland.

Vote no on the partial tax.

It's not benefiting Oakland residents, but you're going to impose a tax on folks who do not reside here.

Secondly, you should be as passionate Ramachanda as you about trees, and the rest of the council to support the crisis with fentanyl.

Why are you neglecting that?

The AC Transit has a bus rap.

Excelon.

Take it with you.

It could save a life.

Look at the AC transit bus.

So there is a crisis in this city regarding fentanyl, and you refuse to make it a public health crisis.

Shame on you.

Back to that parcel tax.

You mislead the public by the omission, just like you misled the public by the measure A, the transaction and use tax.

For the first appellate district in San Francisco, because you will fail.

Mr.

City administration.

Thank you, Mr.

Hazard.

Your time is up.

I want to start by thanking the Hoover Durant community.

It's so inspiring to see people that look like me because they say we don't know how to stick together.

We don't know how to do the work, we lazy.

But this has worked for a long time for them to stay on this track.

And I'm just very, very happy to see that something is happening to start the process, because we still have somewhat of a long way to go in terms of actually funding the building itself.

As it relates to the item on the homelessness emergency issue, I want to take time to thank Ken Houston.

He came to a meeting and he was almost dehydrated.

He was mentally broken down.

And I told Ken, go home.

So nobody can say anything about Ken's commitment to deal with homelessness.

He does it because he believes in helping.

He's not trying to hurt.

Ms.

Fife, I know we got issues, but today, girl, you wrote a crown.

When you stood, I said I was wrong when I say you don't stand up for black people.

You stood and as a queen representing black people, you did it today.

Miss Brown, you were very, very fair, and the way you came to an analysis of that issue about the trees.

Mr.

Jenkins, you always give me a chance to do right.

And I appreciate that.

So the only thing I ask, give some time to look at the issues that are impacting the African Americans in this city, and give the opportunity to respect people like Mr.

And give the opportunity to respect people like Mr.

Houston.

Somebody needs to speak up and say that he is doing he's not the most eloquent, and neither and I, but he has the heart to really believe in doing what's good for the people in the city and help him get there.

Is my time up?

No, not yet.

So there are some items on here with the street renaming.

I'm gonna ask you all again, please do something about the art shanks situation.

Uh I'm gonna ask you to continue to look at the items of illegal dumping.

I see two items, and do what we can to deal with illegal dumping to the maximum.

And I know you're gonna deal with that.

Okay.

Uh and lastly, I just want to say uh we can do better.

I can do better.

You helping me, Mr.

Jenkins, and you can come to me anytime that I need to be addressed.

Okay, but I'm gonna come here very, very elevated because it means a lot to me to have the issues of our black.

If your name was called and you are in the chambers and you wish to speak, please approach the podium at this time.

This time we are moving to the Zoom speakers.

Catherine Sternbeck, you were first.

I have you with one card.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Thank you.

My name is Catherine Sturbanz, and I'm advocacy chair of the Friends of the Open Public Library and former chair of the city's library commission.

And I'm here to speak in favor of item 613.

First, please support the capital appropriation for the Hoover Durant Library.

The purchase of 3105 San Pablo will restore library services to West Oakland that are long overdue.

Second, please support the full allocation of the Library Services Retention and Enhancement Act, also known as Measure C, including the additional 2.7 million from the general uh fund for OPL.

As a supporter of Friends of Hoover Durant and OPL in general, I have seen how OPL provides essential services for children, youth, families, adults across Oakland, including residents who are not easily reached by other city programs.

As I mentioned, this neighborhood has been without a branch since 1981 when the highway sliced the neighborhood off from the rest of the city.

In 2006, OPL's Master Plan recommended restoring this branch.

And those valiant people who are sitting there looking at you now with the friends of Hoover Durant have been working at this since 2013.

So I thank you in advance for spending the funds that you have available to you to take the next step toward restoring this branch to the Hoover Durant neighborhood.

Thank you so much.

Rafael Enrique, you are next after Raphael.

It is Fatima.

Raphael, please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Great.

Thank you.

Uh good.

Good evening, Oakland City Council.

Thank you for this opportunity to share public comment.

My name is Rafael Henriquez, and I volunteer with the friends of the Hoover Durant Public Library.

I would like to encourage you to support item 6.13 and purchase this property at 3105 San Pablo Avenue for the Hoover Branch Library.

The library serving these communities were closed in 1950 and 1981.

That was at least two to three generations of Oakland residents impacted by that closure through today.

When they closed the library space, what opportunities did they erase today?

We have heard from residents through the Hoover Branch feasibility study.

We have heard from the people of Oakland through our pop-up street corner libraries.

What do they need to say to restore what was taken away?

Thank you for all that you do for the city.

I yield the rest of my time.

Fatima, you are next.

I have you with one item.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Good evening.

Um my name is Fashem Youssef.

I'm a 24-year-old registered voter, resident of District One, and a member for OPL Advocates, which is the informal coalition of community groups that supports Oakland Public Library Services and funding.

I support the purchase of the San Pablo property for the Huber Durant Library.

Libraries, as you know, are a safe space for youth in the community.

And Oakland Public Libraries are important resources for many in the city.

As a reminder, this neighborhood hasn't had a library for 45 years.

And the last library to exist in this neighborhood was closed in the 1980s due to redlining policies that specifically targeted black residents.

Arguably many decades in the making.

There is support for it amongst voters and community groups, and it would enrich the lives of so many people.

So I definitely support this purchase.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your comments at this time.

All names have been called.

Thank you.

Thank you to everybody that came out.

Councilmember Fife, I'm gonna hold you responsible for getting me one of those cool t-shirts that they got there.

So you got one?

Is it underneath $50?

So noting adding to 6.7, we're going to add Councilmember Houston as a code sponsor.

Is that correct?

6.9.

6.9, adding a council member Houston as a co-spons.

Adding six yeah, council member Houston as a co-sponsor to 6.9.

Anything else?

Yeah, uh, so two quick things.

One uh hot off the presses, uh, Senate Bill 1218 passed today with unanimous bipartisan support, which I'm sure is because we're all supporting it here.

So thank you for that.

Uh and then the second issue is I believe there was um one point of clarification we need on 6.6 sub three from the parliamentarian about the inclusion of the parking administrator position.

Yes, through the chair to council member hunger.

Um there's no clarification or amendment needed, but to the question.

Um, the the finance committee that originally heard this item um forwarded a recommendation to move the item to council, but um part of that motion was to remove the um classification of parking administrator from the ordinance.

Um while that uh classification still shows in on the face of your agenda, it has been removed from the ordinance in your packet.

You'll see supplemental legislation that and that is the current practice because um the face of the agenda will not change.

That's how the item was scheduled, and the committee's recommendations to this body are are just recommendations, and technically this body has both of the options in front of them.

But it it was removed from the supplemental legislation that you'll see in your packet.

So just just to be clear, we are not creating the position of parking administrator tonight.

If that's the um, yes, so your council rules provide that um unless specified otherwise, it's presumed that when this council takes action on an item forwarded from committee, they're um adopting the committee's recommendations.

So the committee's recommendations were to not create the position of parking administrator.

I just want to be very clear that we are there's nothing there's nothing I need to do here to ensure that we are not creating the position of parking administrator.

Correct.

Those um amendments that the committee recommended are reflected in the ordinance, and if the body votes aye on on that um ordinance, yes, that the parking minister has been removed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So is that a motion as amended?

Sounds like a yes.

There's no amendment for that item 6.6.

I uh did you have other amendments?

6.

6.9.

Councilmember Houston as a co-sponsor.

So through the chair, if I could just clarify this iteration at the agenda, the portion to add for at least for the clerk's office would be at rules.

If you want to amend the legislation in the packet, that is up to you to add the name.

But at this time, I believe it's final legislation already in the packet, and the sponsorship at this point would be the council's I vote or unanimous passing.

We we had tried to add it earlier, but we were told we couldn't because it would be a violation of the quorum for the transportation committee to the parliamentary.

Uh now that it's all been discussed here open in open session.

I mean, if you'd like to, we could amend the legislation to report.

Amend the legislation 6.9 to add council member Houston as a co-sponsor.

If that's the motion, then our office would work with you to get revised legislation to the clerk's office.

Okay.

So we add a motion.

Is there a second?

Houston, Madam Clerk.

On the consent calendar moved by Councilmember Unger, second by council member Houston.

Councilmember Brown.

Aye.

Councilmember Five.

Aye.

Councilmember Gayo is absent.

Council Member Houston.

Aye.

Councilmember Ramachandran.

Aye.

Councilmember Unger.

Aye.

Councilmember Wong.

Aye.

And Chair Jenkins.

Aye.

No then.

Councilmember Cayo's excuse.

Showing the consent calendar approved with a vote of seven ayes, one excused.

Gaio.

Councilmember announcements and then open forum.

No announcements.

That's crazy.

All right.

Let's go to open forum.

Open.

As a carry name, please approach the podium or raise your hand if you're participating in Zoom.

Kevin Daly, Mrs.

Sado Labala, and Mr.

Hazard.

Please approach the podium.

Nobody's coming.

Okay.

No problem.

Anyone on Zoom?

No.

Oh, there we go.

Just like you found money to do things in Chinatown for Measure U.

Do it for the Hoover Library.

You can find discretionary monies to build.

This is only the first step.

Why is it that the black community always have to be lacking?

We come behind everybody else.

1981.

That's shameful.

A library has been closed that long that benefits the whole community, but particularly black folks.

You need to do a fundraising activity to get the building fund going, Mr.

Unger.

I'm tired of black folks being at the bottom.

And everybody else would come here and get at the top.

Find the money.

I've agreed with Mr.

Hazard twice today.

Come on.

Is that your phone, Mr.

Jones?

That's his phone.

That is crazy.

Um I think this is a wonderful opportunity to say thank you to the city council members.

And doing the work that I need to hear.

I mean, you've satisfied the tree people today to some extent.

I remember I remember when the elephant people were here, and it it really shocked me, but I have a right to tell people what they should love and have a passion for.

But I just need a little bit more love for black people.

That's all I'm asking.

Thank you, uh, council members.

Thank you.

Is that all the speakers?

All right.

Do you hear that color for open forum?

I have no idea what you said.

My hearing aided at home.

Did you fill out a card for open forum?

Yes.

Okay.

All I wanted to say is I forgot.

I have my assistant with me, Mr.

Charles Jordan.

But I'm here also because I'm representing Mr.

Kenneth Mitchell.

Yeah, your uncle.

Okay.

Tell him I said hey.

I sure will.

All right.

Thank you for your support.

Thank you.

All right, seeing no more open form.

Anything online?

Nope.

All right.

This meeting is adjourned.