Good afternoon.

I don't even have the mics open.

Good afternoon and welcome to the city council meeting of Tuesday, May 5th.

Happy Cinco de Mayo.

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

If you like to speak on any agenda item, you must fill out a speaker's card.

You must fill out a speaker's card before the item is called for discussion or two hours after the start of the meeting.

This meeting was called to order at three thirty-five, so your last opportunity to turn in the speaker's card will be five thirty-five PM today or before the item is called for discussion.

Whichever one comes first.

If you'd like to fill out a card, you can do so by getting a card on the front table and turning it in to one of the ladies at the other table before the item is called, or if you were looking to turn in an online speaker card, that time has passed as they were due 24 hours before the start of this meeting.

Councilmember Fife.

Present.

Councilmember Gaio.

Present.

Councilmember Houston.

Present.

Councilmember Ramachandran.

Present.

Councilmember Unger.

Present.

Councilmember Wong.

Present.

And Chair Jenkins.

Present.

Showing eight members present at this time.

Okay.

Do you have any announcements?

Yes, because of the the uh amount of speakers and uh our need to conduct the business of the city, the speaker time will be cut to one minute.

Thank you.

Going to item three, which is modifications to the agenda and procedural items.

Do we have any modifications?

Councilmember Houston.

Modifications to the agenda.

You are out of order.

That's your first warning.

You're out of order.

Yes, sir.

I want to that's your first warning.

The second warning you will be asked to leave.

Councilmember Houston, please.

Yes, I'd like to pull S six point two five off the consent to non-consent, please.

So according to our rules of procedure, you need a second.

Is there anyone else that will pull us six point two five off of non consent to non-consent?

Okay.

So six point two five will be on non-consent.

For the clerk, we will hear six point two five after four point one.

After five point one, after five point two.

We'll put it after five point two.

No noting item six point two five will be after item five point two.

Any is that the only council member Unger.

That we couldn't change the title, but we're not actually doing anything with a parking administrator position.

Yes, correct through the chair to Councilmember Unger.

Um the the title that appears on the agenda does not change, but that change is reflected in the legislation.

So it was removed.

Great.

Thank you.

So as an update, there will be ninety seconds as opposed to one minute speaking time, ninety seconds as opposed to one minute.

Your warning is removed.

And through the chair just a second.

Um Teresa and Crystal.

I'm sorry, Teresa and Candice is 90 seconds instead of the minute.

Instead of two minutes.

A minute and thirty seconds.

Going to item four point one.

Conduct a public hearing and upon conclusion adopt a resolution.

Finding Matthew Bernard and Lynn Warner, owners of record of assessor parcel number four eighty eight seven six seven two dash eighteen in violation of Oak Municipal Code.

Chapter one two point three six via legally removing thirty-eight protected trees.

Is there a presentation from staff?

Good afternoon, Chair Jenkins and members of the council.

I'm Kristen Hathaway, Assistant Director for Public Works with Bureau of Environment.

Um I did not prepare a new presentation.

Um I can recap some of the information that staff presented last time.

Um we're here for a violation of chapter twelve point three six of the protected trees ordinance.

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

Um we're here because 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 um and removed a total of thirty-eight protected trees on his and neighboring properties without a tree permit.

Uh Mr.

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

Um adopted uh protected trees ordinance uh recognizes the value of such trees and the critical services that they provide.

Um and now that all thirty-eight trees have been removed from the property, uh there's increased fire risk um and risk of landslide and other hazards.

Uh we process approximately over three hundred tree removal permits annually.

Um, and we calculated the value of the trees that were moved um per the formula in our ordinance, and as a result, staff recommended that uh the city impose a penalty in a total sum of nine hundred and fifteen thousand one hundred and thirty five dollars and forty cents, and to place a hold on the issuance of any approvals or permits for said parcel and to place a lien on the property until the penalty is paid per OMC chapter twelve point three six.

I'm available for any questions.

Thank you.

Uh is property owner available.

Can we to the clerks?

Can we put five minutes on the clock, please?

Come on up, Mr.

Bernard.

Oh, I have this around the so um I'm just gonna quickly recap um how we got here.

In August 2020, we received the city fire prevention bureau notice requiring removal of Azotas vegetation within 45 days.

We immediately contacted the city and followed instructions to obtain boundary application.

We paid the required four hundred and thirty-four dollar and twenty cent fee, which is city cash, but we never received a receipt, no a tree tax, nor any follow up, despite being told that uh receipts would confirm compliance.

In June 2021, the condition worsened.

We submitted uh a second application through Julian trees and reported uh an emergency through Oak 311.

Uh now this particular point is quite uh almost like the critical part.

Um after the Oak 311 call in June 2021, Mr.

Todd Larson of the city scheduled an on-site inspection on June 7, 2021.

But he later cancelled it and advised that a waiver was not necessary based on a phone assessment.

Effectively, uh we drawing the inspection and um my needed waiver.

Here's how it actually happened.

On the morning of June 7, 2021, we all know that we can't reach the tree division by any uh phone number, office phone number, not their cell phone.

So he had my phone number and he called me and he asked, were the trees still standing?

I said, yes, Mr.

Larson.

If they were not standing, I won't be calling and requesting for a tree waiver.

And he said, Do they look green?

Said some parts look green and some look brown, but they uh at risk of falling.

Then it's okay.

Based on what I I told him on the phone, um, a tree waiver is not necessary, and so uh we need to withdraw the tree waiver, and we also we also need to cancel the site visit.

So basically it's like uh trying to do the right thing at the beginning.

City is telling me you you this is not what you do.

Um then um and um on June 6, 2021, um, we obtained a license arborist uh inspect.

We had a licensed arborist inspective property and recommended the removal of the eight streets due to being dead, dying, leaning, hazardous condition, including fire and fall risk.

Now, based on the city's action, including direction from Mr.

Todd Larson, lack of response and the cities, uh the arboreist report.

We reasonably believed that we're in compliance and proceeded to remove only those eight azaros trees.

We dispute the claim that there are 38 trees removed.

The property is only about 11,787 square foot hillside lot, where several trees had fallen prior to our purchase, and other trees fell during storms uh through 2020 from 2020 through uh 2022.

We know in January it rains a lot here, and those streets falls around fall around that time.

Also, the area canopy canopy analysis and counting the stops on the ground can't be reliable.

In particular, the sums were not counted right after the trees were removed.

And counting the storms four years later doesn't distinguish uh pre-existing conditions, natural uh tree laws and overlapping canopies uh structures.

Uh the only verifiable trees that were removed are the ones that identify by a licensed arborist, which is documented.

At this point, I believe we acted in good faith, followed city instructions, rely on city communications while addressing documented safety hazards.

I would like to propose a resolution where uh hereby request the opportunity to replant trees after construction when the site is stable and suitable, with a plan developed in coordination with the city's planning and building department under the oversight of this city council.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr.

Bernard.

Let's go to the public speakers if there's no questions from my colleagues.

You have a question?

Please proceed.

I needed a question.

Can you call them back up?

From Mr.

Bernard, Mr.

Bernard.

Through the chair, do you have pictures of the fallen trees and the dead trees?

Oh, I presented those on December in December on the December hearing.

I printed it and I circulated it.

So to the chair, how many dead trees were there and how many fallen trees were there?

Um you got that documented.

I want to know through the chair.

When we acquired the property, we had we inherited nine fallen trees on the property.

And how many and through the chair?

How many dead?

I'm sorry.

How many dead trees?

Oh, um you said fall.

You said through the chair.

You said nine falling trees on the property.

Okay, we got it.

And there were there were lots of other, there were a lot of storms on the ground.

We got that.

Um, how many dead trees?

Dead trees.

Uh, at least, I mean, the least through the chair, not at least how many dead trees.

If we factor the eight um harborist eight from the harborist report, and um in 2020, um January 2028 about two trees uh fell, 2021, another two trees for and then fell and in 2022, four trees fell.

I know that two trees fall and then fell, and in 2022 fall trees fell.

So two, two, four, that's eight plus uh uh those eighteen.

Those eight, that's about sixteen already.

So let's be clear through the chair.

Let's break it up.

You said there were nine fallen trees.

Yes, okay, got it.

Okay, I got it.

Doesn't matter if it's before, after total trees falling, it would be nine plus.

Let me ask you a question.

Stop for stop for a second, please.

I know it's nine fallen trees.

Got it.

Clear.

Done with that one.

But that's not the total falling trees.

The total falling interest will be 17.

Let me just ask you a direct question, please.

Do the chair.

You have nine fallen trees.

We're done with that.

How many dead trees?

Just give me the number, please.

Um the dead trees that I can categorically say they're they're dead, with the um at least those eights from the Haberist reports were included.

Um the eight dead standing trees.

That's okay.

Eight.

Got it.

Got it.

So that's 16 and 17.

Okay.

Eights plus 17.

That's uh 25.

Because there's eight.

17 fallen trees, and that's eight dead trees.

That's 25.

I got it.

I got it.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

No.

Thank you, Mr.

Bernard.

We'll go to the public speakers.

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

Uh, please raise your hand if you are on Zoom so I can easily identify you.

Please state your name before beginning.

And if you have time seated to you, please say that at the beginning so I can give you your appropriate time.

And please note if someone is seating time, they must be present in the meeting.

So whether in the room or on Zoom, Peter Lee, Pat Williams, Brooke Levin, Emily Wheeler, Samitra Kelkar.

Sorry if I said it incorrectly.

Blair Beekman, Becca Way, Christina Najaro, Peter Alexander, Mr.

Hazard, Miss Asada Olabala, Matthew Bernard, Lynn Warner, Ron Lawrence, Jesse Rosemore, Ralph Cannes, John D.

Bauer, Kent Wigner, Ares, Yvonne, Gagnes, Emma Murphy, Murphy, Buffalo Sojourn, Dr.

Arrash, Danish Zade, Mandalin Kadera Redmond, Rachel O'Leary, Kevin, I think McWay from TFO.

Any need orders, excuse me.

In any order, please approach the podium.

The time is on this uh screen behind me.

Go ahead and begin.

Approach the podium.

Good afternoon, Peter Alexander.

So I think this is a wonderful opportunity for uh the city council to get together with the federal police here locally because it seems to me, and you can I think a lot of people can verify this, that um similarly, a fellow named Newsom knew ahead of time that the dew directed energy weapons were going to destroy tens of thousands of acres of forest full of trees, and advised his friends in the insurance industry, his cronies in the insurance industry to withdraw their insurance about a month before all these fires came down, which they knew was going to happen.

So all these people lost their homes, let alone tens of thousands of trees, if not hundreds of thousands of trees, and um they were all burned with millions of acres, so the people could not collect their um insurance and rebuild.

So here are trees that were intentionally destroyed, and Newsom and his friends knew this in advance.

There is plenty of information verifying this all over the place.

So everything is seen, including all intentions and deceptions, all abuse is seen by the seer, the living lord who wields the sword.

And there's also an opportunity for this man here to do something very interesting.

One of my nicknames is Cactus Pete.

Thank you, Mr.

Alexander.

Your time is up.

Good afternoon.

Honorable council members, people of the public, and uh community members at large.

I am here.

Um my name is Mandelin Kadera Redman.

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

We support several different projects throughout the city of Oakland that support our tree canopy, greening spaces, and parks in collaboration with the city, several grants and state-funded tree planting activities.

You will hear from several of our partners uh today from Trees for Oakland, who we fiscally sponsor, uh, as well as some of our other community members that help us support a healthy tree canopy.

We are here um to support the staff's recommendation to find the full amount and enforce the protective tree ordinance.

Um our board wrote a letter, it was submitted for public record.

Uh that should be available to you, and our community and uh some colleagues of mine will read from that today.

Again, we support the staff's recommendation to enforce the tree ordinance for this and all uh any time when that is not uh followed by the law.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, honorable members of the Oakland City Council.

My name is Dr.

Arosh Danesade.

I'm the director of programs at the Oakland Parks and Rec Foundation, longtime educator in Oakland, 25-year teacher in OUSD.

On behalf of the Oakland Parks and Rec Foundation, we write to urge the city to fully enforce existing tree protection ordinances and associated fines in cases of unauthorized tree removal.

This is not simply an environmental issue, it is civic, public safety, and an equity issue.

First, ordinances only carry meaning when they are consistently enforced.

When violations, particularly egregious ones like this, are allowed to go under penalized.

It sends a clear message to the city of Oakland that compliance is optional.

In this case, the property owners repeated disregard for tree services, documented misrepresentations, and removal of trees beyond their own property reflects behavior that is not only unneighborly, but fundamentally anti-civic.

The city has both the authority and responsibility to uphold its own standards.

Second, the removal of mature trees creates real and immediate risk beyond any single parcel in Oakland's hills.

Tree canopy plays a critical role in wildfire mitigation.

These protections do not stop at property lines.

When trees are removed without oversight, the burden of that risk is shifted onto neighbors.

Research has shown that the vegetation loss in Oakland has significantly increased erosion and landslide risk over the last several years, according to a U.S.

geological study that was done in 2020.

My colleagues after me will be reading the Hello, my name is Eris Ganyer.

I am an arborist with Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation.

I'll be picking up where my colleague left off.

These losses are not easily remedied.

The trees removed were not sta saplings, they were mature established canopy.

Trees of that size are not commercially available for replacement, and even with replanting, it will take decades, even centuries to restore the ecological and protective functions that were lost.

The scale of the fine reflects this reality.

These trees are in practice irreplaceable within a human lifetime.

Studies in urban forestry confirm that mature trees provide exponentially greater ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration, air filtration, and cooling.

Fourth, failure to enforce this case sets a death dangerous precedent.

If other property owners or developers were to act similarly, Oakland's already vulnerable urban forest, particularly in the hills would rapidly decline at a time when cities across California are investing heavily in canopy expansion to combat combat heat, pollution, and climate impacts.

We cannot afford to allow unregulated removal to undermine that work.

Urban tree canopy has been directly linked to reductions in extreme heat exposure and improve public health outcomes, particularly in frontline communities.

Finally, this is a social justice issue.

Enforcement disparities, particularly when well-resourced property owners or developers are able to skirt regulations, raise serious concerns about equity.

Communities across Oakland, especially in historically disinvested neighborhoods, are working to build and protect tree canopy as a hello, my name's Emma Murfrey.

I'm also at the Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation.

I'll continue to read the letter.

Tree Canada or actually, I'm gonna read from the previous sentence.

Communities across Oakland, especially in historically disinvested neighborhoods, are working to build and protect tree canopy as a matter of public health and environmental justice.

Tree canopy disparities are strongly correlated with income, race, and health outcomes, including asthma and heat related illness.

That work is undermined when rules are not applied consistently across all actors.

The city should enforce the rules in this case and all others, including recent large scale removals in West Oakland tied to corporate property management.

Trees are not amenities, they are infrastructure.

They mitigate carbon, reduce extreme heat, filter air pollution, manage stormwater, and support physical and mental health outcomes across our communities.

Protecting them requires not only policy but also accountability.

We respectfully urge the city council to uphold the staff recommendation to the full extent of the law.

Also, we encourage the city council to reaffirm the city's commitment to tree protection ordinances by ensuring consistent enforcement across all property.

Oakland's urban forest is always already under strain.

Strong enforcement today is essential to ensuring it remains for future generations.

Thank you for your leadership and consideration.

Hi there, my name is Soma Kilker.

I'm a longtime Oakland resident and former OUSD science teacher.

I taught in Oakland public schools for four years because I want kids in Oakland to have a brighter and better future to live in.

Having taught at both Skyline and Oakland Tech, I've seen how pro how profound of a difference it makes in kids' lives to be surrounded by trees and bird song rather than roads, buildings, and astroturf.

I've also seen how access to a healthy living environment has been so inequitable for so long that it's seen by some as a trivial luxury for the wealthy and privileged rather than a basic necessity that everyone should have.

City council should uphold their responsibility to Oakland's children and future inhabitants and enforce the policies that we already have to protect the public.

Allowing landowners from outside Oakland to permanently destroy an irreplaceable part of our shared living environment to build a single luxury house will not solve the housing crisis.

It will set a precedent that will make Oakland a hotter, louder, and more polluted place, especially for so many of Oakland's most marginalized communities who are already overburdened by the life-altering effects of the worsening extreme heat and pollution that trees protect us from.

Failing to enforce the protective tree ordinance would call into question the city's willingness to enforce any of the city policies that exist to protect our communities.

If leaders create policies that are meant to benefit the public, but then choose not to enforce them, then what is the point?

I would like to use the rest of my time to point out that these meetings are often scheduled during working hours on weekdays, which is when working class people and young people who are the most directly affected by the decisions made here cannot be here.

So please take that into consideration.

Good afternoon, and thank you, Council members.

My name is Rachel O'Leary, and I'm a senior environmental scientist and supervisor with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Calfire, with the Urban and Community Forestry Program.

I'm here for a second time to emphasize the necessity of consistent and thorough enforcement of the city of Oakland's protected tree ordinance.

As stated in a letter that we submitted to the council, Calfire's urban and community forestry program has made substantial long-term investments in Oakland's urban forest to benefit all Oakland residents.

Planting over 3,000 trees within the city through multiple grants, totaling over 9.8 million dollars in direct grant awards for projects in the city.

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 environmental equity, all while strengthening the long-term benefits of the urban forest.

Over 80% of California's urban tree canopy grows on private property.

The cumulative impact of illegal tree removals extends beyond immediate canopy loss.

The repeated loss of publicly funded trees creates a disincentive for future and future state investment.

When state agencies invest in projects, we must ensure that funds are directed toward projects that provide meaningful and lasting public benefit.

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

Thank you for your comments.

Hi, how are you?

My name is Jesse Rosemore.

Um I want to bring up how this item is a bit indicative of the priorities of city council.

This is the third time that this has been brought up, and it's in prime time, which is now 3:30 instead of five o'clock.

This contrasts quite a bit to how the EAP was heard, how this bypass committee, how it was heard at 9:30 on uh on a working day, just as the last speaker said during a work day when most people couldn't come.

This seems like it was intentional, and that the time that's been spent admonishing an immigrant, having that in contrast to uh the abbreviated for a quorum issues, apparently, time that was spent uh using the Trump administration's grant pass ruling to uh demean the human rights and um everything for our our most impacted and poor residents here in the city is um it's really shameful, and I just want you all to think about how that reflects on all of you in this time of fascism in the United States of America.

Um, you know, I also saw in some of the prior uh discussions uh some uh indignant speeches by someone running for re-election, and um I don't think it reflected very well on them.

Um and you know, I'm here for it this time.

I brought I brought something like for the for the case.

Um I uh I think if you really care about trees, your sunrise endorsement uh would uh be renewed.

I don't think that's gonna be the case, but that must be kind of tough.

So thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Ron Lawrence.

I'm here to talk about the optics of proportional justice in the city of Oakland.

Currently, this body is deliberating deliberating whether to soften the blow of a $900,000 fine for a property owner who willingly clear cut protected trees direct in direct violation of city ordinance.

You are deciding the intent or hardship justifies reducing the massive penalty for environmental destruction.

Meanwhile, I have a friend who recently had his car car stolen while it was out of his possession.

The city issued him a 75 dollar parking ticket.

He didn't cut down any trees, he was the victim of a crime.

Yet he's appealed the ticket twice to the city and it's been declined.

The irony here is that the system is a efficient enough to squeeze $75 out of a crime victim, but suddenly finds its hands tied when it comes to holding wealthy property owners accountable for nearly a million dollars in damages.

The message this sends to Oakland residents is clear.

You are if you're a regular person caught in a bureaucrat bureaucratic gear, the city has no grace for you.

But if you commit a high dollar violation that permanently scars our landscape, the city is happy to negotiate.

I urge the city commission to stop looking for ways to reduce this fine.

If a stolen car victim can't get a $75 break, a developer or an individual who knowingly violates tree protection laws certainly shouldn't get a discount.

Show us that the law applies to everyone, not just those who can afford to fight it.

Thank you.

Hello, uh Council members, thank you for the very substantial deliberation last month.

Um it was really important to hear that for me and a resident of Oakland, District 7.

I particularly uh particularly love trees.

I volunteer with a number of tree planting organizations here in Oakland.

And I think it's really important to apply the law to me, cutting down the trees as this uh unfortunate uh gentleman did the same thing as a business picking up uh toxic chemicals and dumping them in the uh center of uh Royal Vale Park.

So I think we have to hold up the law.

We have to do better, and doing better in this city is is really getting hard.

So I really encourage you to find this gentleman.

I just wish he was a white rich person.

There was a number of things brought up the last time which indicated there was a concern about racism.

I see no racism in this, but I wish he was a white rich person.

Thank you, sir.

Can you state your name?

Kent Wagner.

Thank you, Mr.

Wagner.

Um Thank you, Council members.

My name is John Bauer.

I've been a volunteer with Trees for Oakland since 2010.

Uh, and I emphasize volunteer.

We've planted most of our trees in Oakland's flatlands and frontline communities since that time.

I believe we've planted more trees in any other organization in Oakland.

We're happy to continue working with our partners like Oakland Parks and Rec Foundation and Columb Common Vision to continue to do that work.

I know you are all extremely sincere about this item and the deliberations you had about it last month.

I appreciate that.

Um I just want to point out uh when you or your predecessor voted unanimously unanimously for the urban forestry plan in December 2024.

To me, what you voted for was equal and full enforcement of the protracted tree ordinance, as it says in here should be done, not reduce fines for the wealthy landowners.

Furthermore, the urban forest plan and policy goal number one preserve and protect Oakland's forest.

Twice calls for directing fees and fines towards expanding the tree canopy in Oakland's frontline and disadvantaged communities.

Trees for Oakland and our other partner organizations will be happy to continue continue to doing that work with your support.

Please take uh staff's recommendation on this item.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Kevin Mulvey.

I'm a member of Trees for Oakland and also serve as co-chair of the Oakland Urban Forestry Forum.

Not long ago, this city council voted unanimously to adopt Oakland's urban forest plan.

Councilmember Guyo, I recall you sat in the chair when we voted on that.

If I park my car illegally, I'm required to pay a fine.

If I pay my taxes late, I will obviously have to pay a fine.

I don't get to come before the city council three times to make an appeal directly to our political leaders.

When someone deliberately clear cuts their property, which includes statutorily protected trees, they were required by our city law to pay a fine.

This is not complicated.

What has made this complicated is deliberate obfuscation and the invoking of red herrings.

Others are watching these proceedings.

The private equity owners of Pacific Pi on Mandela Parkway have destroyed dozens of trees planted by TFO volunteers and funded by Calfire.

Where there were healthy trees, there is sadly now a parking lot.

These wealthy investors have since adopted the attitude of ignoring Calfire and have obviously concluded they can act with impunity.

When citizens break the law, they must pay the price.

The full price, not a slap on the wrist that further jeopardizes our constantly shrinking urban forest and sends the wrong.

Hello, my name is Christina Naharo, and I would like to voice my strong support to impose this fine.

I wasn't able to come last meeting when I was slightly less pregnant, but because it's still unresolved, I am here even more pregnant.

These trees were not cut down in my neighborhood.

I probably could not afford to live in that neighborhood.

And I also know that that neighborhood has far more trees than mine does.

But I am here because I recognize that everything is connected.

All ecosystems in the city, in the Bay Area, in the state are connected, and loss of ecosystem anywhere is like a loss of ecosystem everywhere.

What we have lost is immeasurable.

Old growth trees are irreplaceable, so this is not a plant more trees and move on situation.

We must apply the laws that we have to keep this from happening.

And a fine is the best deterrent to stop this in the future.

I'd like to thank the council members who voted in favor of this resolution last time and urge those who voted against it to reconsider.

I am not blind to who has spoken in favor of this resolution.

There are so many people who this affects who could not be here.

Black and Latino communities, children, people working jobs that do not allow them to be here.

We have a chance to do better for the people who couldn't be here and for future generations.

Please vote to impose the fine.

Thank you.

Come on, Mr.

Soldier.

Uh point of information.

I see you guys are finally getting uh something because he wasn't doing Robert's rule's order.

How long do I have to talk?

You have a minute and 30 seconds.

I got a minute and 30 seconds.

It's it begins now.

Hey, it's all about cosmic slop.

Win between May Day and Earth Day.

Earth Day, April 21, 1971.

Political expediency and games make it other days.

So here in Cosmic Slop, I'm gonna talk to you about some trees.

I visit Redwoods, my little sister planted on April 21st.

That's what I know about it.

And the man was talking about Mandela Parkway, the last gift of the Honorable David Brower.

Now we're gonna talk about trees.

For the record, Los Alcatives died during the tenure of Gene Kwan, saved y'all the two pine trees by West Oakland Bart.

You know the contractors that play with BART, they get sloppy, and they were gonna cut down the trees just because they could.

So Los Alcadiver died, organized the business people, and then Mayor Gene Kwan, they put a cork in it.

When Grove Street changed to MLK, I was part of that motley crew that planted.

Y'all need to plan ahead.

Nice to see all these people who are defending trees, but it was a struggle earlier on.

Nice to see you all getting grant money to talk about it.

I'm one of the founders of the great tree tenders.

We tend to the trees you plant, we trim suckers, we wonder why you put it on the power lines, etc.

etc.

etc.

And uh thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr.

Soldier.

Thank you so much.

Good afternoon, Ralph Cannes.

Um what's really disturbing here is the unequal application of the law across Oakland.

House flippers in the city are doing the same exact thing on a daily basis, disturbing lead paint, doing remodeling without permits, cutting protected trees down without permits, and the city does almost nothing.

Mr.

Jenkins, I sent you lists of them.

Nothing happens.

There's millions of dollars being lost by the city because of this uneven application of the law.

As an example, 5339 Trask Street was bought by a flipper three years ago who started remodeling without contracts and cutting down protected trees without a permit.

The city did nothing about it.

Nothing.

The house ended up getting foreclosed.

The flipper got foreclosed, yes, it happens.

And yet the city still has not given a fine to that house flipper who violated the law.

And now because the house flipper no longer owns it and there was never a lien put on the property, there was no constructive or actual notice to the subsequent owner, which means the city can no longer collect the fines for the violations of the law, and that happens all the time with house flippers in Oakland.

When are you gonna apply the lie equally all across the city, especially in East Oakland?

I find it interesting that you are willing to take accountability for the trees, but you won't take accountability for many things.

I'm just gonna mention one.

I have come to you several times to say you have no evacuation plan for those students, 1500 students at Skyline.

You can't evacuate them, and your fire department is telling the school for that they will shelter in place on the football field in case of a major fire.

No accountability.

So you have here dead trees.

You tried to get the number, and you also have trees that supposedly have been identified that needed to be cut down.

Trees that were fallen.

You have property that has eroded over time because of lack of action.

Your public works department should have taken action in 2021-2022.

They didn't.

You have also allowed the city to place vacancy tax on the owner.

The property is thank you, Ms.

Olabala.

Your time is up.

The legal issue is whether or not the property order is in compliance with the protected tree ordinance.

Those are for healthy trees.

But you are holding them accountable for the disease trees.

Nobody has looked at the issue around the arborist.

All those trees, I can't believe the property owner was going to just go out and randomly cut down trees.

Mr.

Houston was correct to answer the question, wanted to answer to the questions.

How many trees were already down?

And how many trees were healthy?

You have not talked to that.

And for you, Mr.

President, to do this Instagram to get people out here to talk against the property owner.

That's unethical.

So you got two legal issues.

Compliance with the tree ordinance, and how many trees were diseased.

You cannot come to any conclusion tonight and determine the value of those down trees and those diseased trees.

Thank you, Mr.

Hazard.

If your name was called and you're in the room, please oppose the podium.

Otherwise, at this time we'll be moving to the Zoom speakers.

Brooke Levin, you were next.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Thank you very much.

Council President Jenkins, members of the council and administration and public work staff.

You've done an amazing job here at Public Works.

These are very hard cases to deal with.

But it was usually one tree.

In this case, 38 trees were cut, and this property owner was warned over and over and over and had many chances in writing and verbally, had the police out there, and he kept cutting trees.

If you choose to not have a tree ordinance like this, then that's a whole nother story.

But right now, this is what's on the books, and this is a very important ordinance.

I am also a member of the Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation board.

We are out there in East Oakland and West Oakland planting trees to help with climate change, to help with air quality in some of the areas of the city that have the highest asthma rates.

This was an egregious violation of city law, and it needs to be shut down.

They need to be fined the full amount, and they are not poor, you know, poor people who are not doing something, they're not doing something for the good of the thank you, Miss Levin.

Your time was up.

I think are you Peter Lee?

Yes.

Okay, go ahead.

Speaking, speak speaking, thank you.

Um, I had sent an email this morning, and I was told I would get time for three speaker time.

My name is Peter Lee.

I represent the neighbors, Lee Baker, Schultz, and Chained.

Excuse me.

So you what you're saying is three people seed at their time to you?

Yeah.

Are they present?

No.

No.

But I but I sent an email this morning.

I was told that yes, I could go ahead with that.

Can you tell me who told you that?

And um I I sent it to the deputy clerk, and the somebody different than the deputy clerk sent it back to me, and I'm prepared to speak for six minutes according to that.

Well, can you tell me who told you that?

I I have the email in my pocket.

We'll take our time.

Please do the chair.

He had seated through the chair to Mr.

Lee.

You were told that the time is assigned by the chair, and that we could not allow you to share your PowerPoint.

Our office has taken note of your request to sign up for item 4.1 for any documents to be shared to the public and council.

Please bring nine copies, which I brought and you should have.

Do you have those?

Do each council member should have a copy of what I brought, which was my intention was to present nine uh 13 slides, which I have reduced in this format.

Do you have those?

Can you continue with the email?

Everyone has it.

Can you continue with their email where she told you that you would be allowed?

You will not be able to share any PDF via Zoom.

Thank you.

She did not say I couldn't have the time, but I asked for the time in the email above.

So according to order order in the chamber.

According to the according to the Brown Act, everybody has to be given equal time.

So please please proceed with your comments.

You have a minute or just proceed.

How much time do I have?

A minute and 30 seconds, 90 seconds.

Please start.

Okay.

Okay.

So I'm I'm here to speak to an issue on the fire hazard risk and mitigation measures on the site as it sits today.

It's been four years.

We're coming out of our first winter into our spring summer, and we've seen a cycle.

This is a very extreme fire hazard, and I have your mitigation measures that we are proposing as neighbors.

But before I speak to that, I like to speak to Mr.

Bernard's presentation earlier.

And I would like to say truthfully that 95% of what he said is a it's excuse me, order in the chamber.

It's a little distracting.

Please pause this time.

We have to be able to hear Mr.

Lee.

Thank you.

Please.

No, I'm not sure.

Order in the chamber.

Mr.

Sad.

Hey, hey, just continue.

Okay, according to my email.

Continue.

Please continue.

Okay.

Thank you very much, sir.

Okay.

Um, so 95% of what Mr.

Bernard said is a lie and false.

And let me just simply say that those trees were very green, as the last speaker said.

And um, we have thousand thousands of photographs and videos in an album that we've shared as three neighbors.

I've presented those information to council um member Raman Chandran in her group.

We have uh 30 slides.

We've gone through it painstakingly.

We presented the same information to council member Brown.

Very clear.

Those trees were all very alive, maybe 95% of them.

Okay.

So secondly order in the chamber, you're out of order.

Mr.

Lee, your time is up.

Ms.

Mr.

Lee, your time is up.

Councilmember Brown.

Councilmember Miss Council Mr.

Wee.

You are out of order.

Just wait.

You have anything to say?

Okay.

Thank you.

Hold on.

Uh we have one more Zoom speaker.

Oakland tennising.

Can you please tell me the card?

I mean the name of the card you submitted for item 4.1.

Yeah, hi.

Can you hear me?

I can yeah.

I am unable to change my name for this webinar.

My name is Emily Wheeler.

Thank you, Ms.

Wheeler.

Go ahead.

Uh just for myself as a private citizen.

Um, and I was just commenting, uh, because I don't really care uh what sort of punishment or fine you give to this person.

I think punishments are bad.

Um, but I just want to sort of speak up for our native oak trees.

I think my concern here is that as we know, there are a lot of greedy developers in Oakland.

And I just want to make sure that whatever happens in this particular case, um, that you know, very wealthy people, very greedy developers don't feel like they have carte blanche to sort of cut down the rest of our native oaks.

Um I really feel passionate about environmental justice and including um in areas in the flatlands.

I think it's really a shame that Oakland doesn't have the money to have a robust native tree program.

Um, and I just really want to keep our native uh tree canopy, old growth forests, and biodiversity as much as possible.

So again, you know, it really sucks that this guy cut down all these trees.

I wish it hadn't happened.

But what I really want to make sure is that it doesn't happen in the future, like regardless of of what punishment happens now.

I hope that we can find a way to prevent more old growth trees from being cut down.

Um, thank you so much.

Have a great day.

At this time all names have been called.

Thank you so much.

Uh clerks we're gonna run the clocks on the council members.

And we gotta we have to get to a consensus on this item at some point in time.

This is our third time hearing this.

I'm gonna start with council member Ramachandran, then I'm gonna go to Councilmember Brown after that.

Um then council member Unger, then Councilmember Fife.

Through the chair or you all begin.

It would be easier if you gave us a total time for that you want for this item and let the clock run down because it's hard for us to time each one of you with the system today.

According to our council rules of procedure, the total amount of speaker time on any item is seven minutes.

Uh, according to your Rule 11 of your council rules of procedure, no member of the council shall speak for more than eight minutes on any non-consent item without the consent of the presiding officer or majority of the members of the council.

So, council member Houston knows the rules better than me.

Uh Councilmember Ramachandra, please proceed.

Can you turn the mic on?

Thank you.

Um, I will keep it brief today.

My position has not changed in the slightest.

And I have been honored to see an outpour of support for my motion last week and for what four of us were excited to do last week.

Now, there's a lot of issues that are important in the city of Oakland.

There's no doubt, and we get lots of comments about lots of things, but to see people wanting us to stand up for our name, Oak Trees in Oakland, really warms my heart.

And I want to share my commitment to environmental justice and upholding the full penalty.

So at the end of this, I will make a motion to uphold staff's um recommendation to implement the full fine.

Now, I just want to briefly mention that what the law and our responsibility as elected officials to uphold the law is today.

OMC 12.36.170 states, and I'm gonna read the whole thing, use my time for this.

If the alleged violator andor property owner, pursuant to section 12.36.160 requests a hearing before city council, the date of the hearing shall be set within five working days.

So first off, the violator here, Mr.

Bernard, chose to have a hearing with this body rather than negotiate with city staff.

A lot of people ask, well, why is this issue coming to council when it comes to a fine and not a whole lot of others?

Firstly, it's written in our tree protection ordinance explicitly, and a lot of cases you get to negotiation with staff here, um, typically code enforcement, not public works.

And here the requester asked for a hearing, and that's why we're we're doing this.

Continuing on with the with the code.

At the hearing, the alleged violator and or property owner shall have the burden of disproving the preliminary findings of the tree reviewer, which is public works here.

In any event, any party requesting a hearing failing fails to appear, blah, blah, blah, the code goes on.

So that means that our job here today as council members is not just to talk about is the decision of staff fair.

As presented today, and for the last two times we've had this hearing, staff made their determination of this find based on the tree protection ordinance.

So it is our job to decide whether the violator slash property owner has disproved staff findings, and there is zero evidence out there.

And trust me, I have spent hours and hours and hours reviewing every single communication between the property owner and the city, reviewing every tree footage, reviewing every video footage that neighbors have submitted, interviewing over a dozen people involved in this case, and there is literally no evidence that suggests that the property owner can to find that he just that he can disprove the findings of staff that you cut down 38 trees.

We may not like this law.

We might find it unfair, but we have a duty to uphold them, or we can rewrite them.

This body has the power to do that, rewrite what the ordinance is.

But let me remind this council that this wasn't a law invented out of thin air.

A past city council and several, including about half the members on this one, just deciding to reaffirm it through the adoption of our urban forestry plan.

Said that we are making a statement here to protect our trees, native species, and uphold that they have immense value in protecting our biodiversity, being in defense of climate change, supporting NACO east ecosystems, wildfire prevention, soil erosion, so much more that commentators here have more eloquently stated than me, but this is abundantly clear that this is the law today, and we have to implement it.

So I urge my colleagues to make a statement here about this issue, and also to be crystal clear to anyone who wants to come into our city and trash our city and violate our laws and think that you can get away with it.

Today I think we can send a bold statement that the answer is no.

You violate your laws, you trash our cities, you cut our trees, you are going to be fined.

To me, that's fair.

So I will make a motion to uphold staff's recommendation and to uphold our values of environmental justice in this city today and every day moving forward.

Mr.

Sada, you're out of order.

You're out of order, Mrs.

Sada.

You're out of order.

Miss Councilmember Brown.

All right.

Well, first off, I just want to say thank you to all of the community members that uh reached out to us, of course, in person, but then also uh via email, um, especially all of the young people that sent us notes from Skyline and various elementary schools.

Um, and I think that this type of civic engagement is very important.

Um, and so I just want to state clearly and just for the record, um, I a hundred percent believe in protecting our tree ecosystem.

Um, as someone who actually studied environmental law, uh, this is an issue of great personal and professional importance to me.

Um, I also want to thank Councilmember Ramashandran for actually asking me to engage on this item.

And so myself and her team, as was mentioned by a few of the members of the po and of the public, um, we sat down with them to to go over all of the details.

We met with city staff, we met with the neighbors, we met with Mr.

B Bernard.

Um, and so while I agree that Mr.

B Bernard's behavior is a hundred percent egregious, um, I was uh mentioning to a friend that um he in fact was whiling out and neighbors certainly have the right to hold him accountable for the trees that he cut on their property.

Uh the matter before us today concerns the trees that are on his private land and not city property.

And so here are the facts.

We're operating first off, as Councilmember Ramachantra mentioned.

Um I actually think it is an outdated tree ordinance that fails, is four decades, four decades old.

It fails to account for the realities of modern development, and also in fact it lacks city accountability to care for the trees that we have actually planted.

So I'm gonna say that for the record, and you can ask an East Oakland resident.

Um while the drastic change to the landscape is jarring to the community, we must ask ourselves a fundamental question of justice.

Why are we finding a property owner the full replacement value for the trees the city would have likely authorized him to remove during the standard building permit process?

Um I passed out a document which was in your um agenda packet attachment three, where you see an example of the um developmental footprint, and so I think uh uh we should be giving that a matter of consideration instead of the full fine.

Um, as I stated in my last comment when this item was before us as an example, these parcels were were actually previously owned by Mr.

Peter Lee, who was speaking, and during when he was uh trying to develop on his property to build his home, the city authorized him to cut down 19 trees to do so.

So I just want everyone to take that in.

And so if Mr.

Bernard had waited for a site plan approval, many of these trees have a look at the buildable footprint.

Um the the those within the buildable footprint print footprint of the home and driveway would have been removed legally to accommodate housing.

And I believe that a truly equitable approach, one that is actually supported by our 2024 urban forest plan, requires us to distinguish between preventable loss and inevitable removal.

We should calculate the penalty based on the trees removed outside of the buildable area, the one that could and should the ones that could and should have been saved to do otherwise risk actually setting a precedent of selective hyper enforcement.

And so we cannot in good conscience impose an almost a million dollar penalty that far exceeds the value of the land itself.

Um and I believe Mr.

Bernard, I believe you paid about 150,000 for this land.

Um especially given the inconsistent history of how these fines have been applied across Oakland's diverse neighborhoods.

And so we have to remember that this is not city land, this is a private citizen's property, and while we have a shared interest in our urban canopy, we must balance that against the fundamental rights of an owner to develop on their land, and we need to distinguish between allowable removal for a home and unlawful destruction.

The fine must be proportionate to the unauthorized uh destruction coupled with a legally binding plan to restore the canopy of the property.

And so one thing that city staff did add to our um agenda packet is a chart where it says 28 trees outside the building footprint, and there's options one through four, and so um I would make an option, I I would make a motion to adopt uh stat the recommendation of option one in this case.

So that's a motion to uh for option one, thank you.

And to Council Member Ramanchandran, you cannot make a motion for that because that motion failed.

There would have to be a motion to reconsider from somebody from the prevailing side, either council member Brown, Fife, Guile or Houston.

I also need a second.

Um we're gonna go Fife.

Okay, uh it can't be from somebody who voted who voted from the fail measure.

So the measure failed, it died.

There has to be a motion to reconsider for staff's recommendation.

What if it's a slightly different motion to approve stock recommendation and require a report on compliance or something like that?

Would that be a new motion?

I we would have to hear the details of the motion to evaluate that.

I think and make sure it's within the scope of how the item is noticed.

Okay, so maybe you could talk with the parliamentarian about your alternative uh motion.

I'm going to go to council member Wong and then Council Member Fife after that.

Okay.

Um I I have a question for um our city staff in the first interaction that was had with um the respondents.

I suppose I should call Mr.

Bernard on February 2nd, 2021.

Uh, you all um it says here that staff spoke with him asking him to stop that you actually explained the violation to him and that he uh that he needed the tree removal permit, but that he refused to cooperate and continued cutting down the tree.

Can you just elaborate more on that?

Because I I think this is important because this is the first time that this individual has been notified about you know his violation of the law.

Um, sure, yeah, through the chair.

Um so our staff was on site and uh observed the him cutting trees and informed him that he needed to stop and obtain a tree removal permit, and staff was ignored, and Mr.

Bernard continued to to continue his activity, right?

And so um there were multiple uh occasions in which staff was on site and informed him that what he was doing required a tree removal permit, and that there was you know essentially a path forward for him to remove trees related to a development permit, but that it there's a process that had to be followed.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Fife.

I just wanted to second um council member Brown's motion.

I think it was flawlessly explained, and she was deeply involved in this process the entire time, and I couldn't have stated what was stated better than she just did.

So second.

Thank you.

We have a motion and second, and council member Unger Gio or Houston before I go.

Oh, through the chair, I have a question for staff.

Options.

Why would we have options if we couldn't use them?

So staff.

It's almost like this.

When you go to court, if you go to court, you got a ticket, right?

You can either pay it in full, or you can go to court to fight and maybe get it reduced, cut in half.

So what what made you come up with these options and through the chair?

Option one, option two, option three, because I wish it would have been up on the screen so the public could see it, because this picture is really put together well, Councilmember Brown, um, showing how the the layout of the the floor plan of the property is.

So staff, through the chair, how did you actually come up with this so you can explain that to the public?

Um sure, through the chair, um the staff created several options for council to consider understanding that the recommended fine um following the ordinance uh to the letter of the ordinance was a very high fine.

So we understood that this was going to be a difficult case for council to consider and that there would need to be some options.

So we created uh alternate uh ways of valuing the trees.

So as I explained last time I was here, um we had to measure the trees at the the diameter that they were where they were cut down.

Um there's a possibility that the trees would have been slightly narrower at the diameter at breast height, which is an arboris standard for measuring the diameter of trees, but we didn't have that information because all of the evidence had been removed from the site.

Um, but we could make some assumptions.

Um the trees were valued at 100% of their of their full value of trees.

That is an assumption we had to make because again, the trees were removed from the site and we didn't have any better information.

So we created options for the council to consider.

Um, but staff made the recommendation for the fine that we did because it was um a very egregious case that we had not seen something like this in in three decades, but we understood that it was a lot for the council to consider, hence there were options.

Okay, through the chair, this the uh developmental footprint here shows you have a grading piece in yellow, then you actually have the proclamate square foot of the new home, and that's I count 12 trees within that footprint.

Is am I correct with that?

Uh 10.

We we counted 10.

And is that how you decided to um on your option one too to say that these trees would have actually been um removed from the if this land was going to be developed?

If the applicant if if if Mr.

Bernard had gone through a planning approval process and the planning department had had approved his his application and the suggested footprint of the house, then if the planning department had approved that application, then the tree division would have approved his tree removal permit for the removal of these trees, had the process proceeded in the legal normal process, and we counted 10 in that proposed footprint.

So thank you through the chair.

I appreciate um council member Giannati and Brown's um their proposed uh amendments or to this, right?

And and and the the gentleman that came out that's my constituent Kent.

You you saw the passion that he had.

Did you really see the passion?

Because this is horrendous of what happened.

Um and and I called the gentleman up before and I said just admit that you was wrong on some of this because you're not a hundred percent right.

Um, and he wouldn't do it.

So I think this option number four seventeen is way too low.

And I think option three is 506 is still too low.

And this 513, I think um I'm gonna follow Councilmember Brown's opinion for the 6247155 to find them that amount.

I think that especially with knowing about the layout and what would have been removed and things like that.

I'm gonna go with that.

Thank you, Councilmember Houston.

So uh for me, this is a really challenging issue, right?

Um as Mr.

Hazard stated, I didn't know you followed me on social media, but uh I posted this on my Instagram just to kind of get a just see where Oaklanders were at with this, and I've never had so much engagement when it comes to something, which is like crazy.

Oaklanders might be divided on a lot of things, but they absolutely love their trees.

And I I kind of think that the the issue is not about trees for a lot of Oaklanders, right?

So we've allowed too many violations of our laws and rules to go unenforced.

For too long, we've looked the other way while public trust, public safety and our economy, and now even our ecosystem have suffered because of it.

Although this is privately on land, the trees belong to the people of Oakland.

We're here on stolen land, which makes it our responsibility to protect the natural environment.

So we have to decide as a council if the laws mean something, or they're just ink on a piece of paper.

We have to decide whether Oakland will continue to have the reputation that people can do whatever they want without consequences here.

And most importantly, we have to restore trust with the our residents that Oakland will uphold its laws.

Councilmember Guilla, you always say we have enough laws.

We just got to enforce them.

Are we gonna enforce our laws?

Councilmember Houston, the Hagenburger corridor is an absolute mess.

It's an absolute mess.

And that's because the perception that you could come to Oakland and do whatever you want in the city of Oakland.

We're working on restoring and rebuilding the Hagenburger corridor, but it's because people thought they can come into Oakland and do what they want without consequence.

You look at you look in my district.

In my district, we had a people came from Stockton, Stockton, to rob a jewelry store in my district because the perception you can do whatever you want without consequence in Oakland.

And so I think we just as a council, we have to decide are we going to enforce the laws and do they mean anything?

If they don't mean anything, don't enforce them.

Why 417?

Why 617?

Just say zero.

Let's get out of here.

It's either we're gonna enforce the laws or we're not uh yeah, I um I didn't really comment last time.

I was honestly just absorbing the amount of time that this was consuming.

I to be honest, I have an issue just with the premise that people can make a direct appeal to city council.

Uh this is a unique aspect of this specific ordinance.

Most administrative penalties go to hearing officers, where an outside professional can ensure a neutral due process hearing.

Um I I do worry that you know, just like this appeals process is essentially creating perverse incentives so people can come to us before as a body in especially egregious cases to have reductions in fines.

Um, and I I just I don't want to set that precedent, and I think it's wildly inappropriate to be honest, in terms of the amount of time that the specific case has consumed for each of us sitting here is city council members, but also all the city staff who are who have heard around the specific case.

And um, you know, again, the respondent or Mr.

Bernard and Lynn Warner, there's two individuals.

Uh they they made the choice to make this appeal, and and we have then also had three hearings about this.

So I just um I'm ready to to put this to bed.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Councilmember Fife, and then I'll go to Councilmember uh Raman Chandran after that.

There are a few facts that need to be addressed because there's been so much misinformation tonight that is really disturbing.

Um, and one that really bothers me was the fact that we had a public speaker come up here and say that the clerk said something that they never said, which to me undermines the credibility of everything that was said by this individual, because he claimed that the clerk said that they he would have an amount of time to speak that they never they never admitted, they they never did.

So that puts into you know it it calls into question the credibility of all of the things that have been happening up there that have been stated by certain individuals.

Um it's been made clear that uh there's this issue it does have racial implications because the reality is we're talking about the insanity of finding someone for building on private property, which honestly I don't believe should exist, but we're talking about this person owning property being able to cut down trees had he gotten the right piece of paper.

So we're we're we're saying that had he gone through a process, he would have been able to cut down the trees legally with the authority of the city, which is asinine.

If they are protected, they should be protected.

Excuse me, you are out of order.

Please let the council member cons council member.

I think your words are important.

You should not be disrupted.

Please continue.

Oh, I can handle it.

I got the microphone.

Can't nobody hear them.

So on top of that, we're talking about land that has been colonized.

We're always talking about giving honor to the Olonee people, and the land was stolen from the Olone people by colonizers, and now we're talking about finding someone the first time in an area where I and I I said this on my social media, um, in an area that black people, Japanese people, Mexican people weren't even allowed to be.

And there's a there's uh a misalignment of somehow now this black man who egregiously, I want to state egregiously cut down trees without permission.

Who is the authority that gives permission on stolen land?

So this is my philosophy.

This is that I'm I'm getting too much in my into my personal philosophy.

The point is today, as uh a decision, this body has to decide whether or not there should be any type of penalty.

So the fact that some people are saying that $600,000 is not a penalty, it's just fallacious.

That is accountability.

It might not be to the degree in which everyone is uh the and some people are saying that it should be, but I take issue with some of some of our council members being directed on how to oppose this uh motion that was made by councilmember Brown.

She spent as much time on this topic as anyone else, and is suggesting that uh due to the city's lack of of um accountability, the our own internal processes failing, in addition to other issues that we have to look at the totality of what's happening here.

So when I put aside the fact that just like there are differences in how laws are processed and how accountability is meted out by legislative bodies like crack, powder crack and uh crystallize crack.

I mean, it's all the same, it's all cocaine.

But we saw how differences in prosecution led to the incarceration, mass incarceration of black people.

I'm not saying that's what's happening here, but I find it interesting that we can have an entire area of the city of Oakland colonized where probably hundreds of thousands of trees have been failed.

But the first level of accountability is to a black man who is cutting trees on his own property, property, and again, I say egregiously, because they shouldn't have been cut in the way that they were.

None of the trees in the hills should have ever been cut, but they have.

So I am moving to support Councilmember Brown's uh recommendation because it takes into accountability the fact that we don't know how many trees were fallen.

We don't know how many trees were dead or diseased.

We do know that there should be a consequence.

So the consequence that I'm suggesting should happen is not accountability for an individual, not the harsh punitive accountability like some of these speakers and emailers were saying that this man needs to do jail time, jail time.

We are receiving those saying that we support this individual serving jail time when there are people that look like me living on the streets, and I've never seen this kind of uh accountability from the public like I've seen for trees as the way that I see people allowing people to just live and die in the streets.

And I want to see the same level of discourse and accountability when we talk about uh flock or surveillance or all of the other ways that we will talk about this evening.

I want this same energy for the technology that is being used to surveil individuals, the uh in in on the left and all around the all around the world.

Again, I digress, but I'm saying if we're going to engage and we're going to call in justice and equity, let's look at the ways that communities that are impacted have been not equally addressed by the law, because that is what we are doing here today.

We are holding this person accountable and sending a message that this will not happen again, but that means that the city needs to do our job and impose fines in a timely manner and uphold the laws that we have in a way that is actually equitable because that's not what we're suggesting today.

Thank you, Councilmember Fife.

Councilmember Guile.

Thank you.

And certainly appreciate the debate, the discussion.

And having grown up here in the city of Oakland, having served on this council, I was part of the urban development that dealt with our trees in our neighborhood throughout the city.

Yeah, and um and but I will I do want to get to the point, make a motion to reconsider staff's recommendation as a substitute to the motion on the floor.

All right, so I want to make a motion to reconsider staff's recommendation as a substitute to the motion of the on the floor.

Second.

So as Brown acts, substitute motions will go first.

So we'll hear the substitute motion to reconsider first.

Okay.

Okay, so madam clerk, can we hear the motion to reconsider?

Motion on the motion to reconcile be calling the motion on the motion to reconsider first before we call the motion to reconsider the item on the motion to reconsider move by council member guy, second by council member Ramachandran, Councilmember Brown, uh nouncil member council member five, no council member guy, aye council member Houston, no councilmember Ramachandran, aye, councilmember Unger, aye council member Wong, aye council president Jenkins, aye motion passes with a vote of five ayes through the through the through the chair to the parliament's hearing.

So now they would need to actually make the motion or correct that was the motion to reconsider the the action that was taken at the preceding council meeting to um adopt staff's recommendations.

So now the body needs to vote on that motion now.

Calling the motion for the staff recommendation, which was the $900,000 and some change.

Council member one second, council member five.

You have a question.

For the I have a question for staff because they gave us a list list of options to choose from.

So I'm wondering to my council colleagues' point, if are the options all valid fines to approve today.

Because why would we have options that we can't choose from?

Council present say something.

Um so through the chair to council member Fife.

Um as we were meeting with city staff on this item.

Basically, in the chart, it lists it lists out that based on the health of the trees, which we don't know.

There those are the various tiers, and then on one side of the chart, it lists like if we are going to find him for the full 38 trees versus just the trees outside of the development developmental footprint, and also what was the health of the tree.

And so those options were presented to us because at that time um there was a consensus of not finding finding him the full fine.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Continue with the motion for the staff recommendation for the full fine.

Councilmember Brown.

For the 900.

Oh, no.

Councilmember Fife.

This is for the full fine.

No.

Clarify.

Yes.

Just for the record, so it's clear what the council is voting on.

Um it's a motion to reconsider the prior action, which was to adopt staff's recommendation, which is the resolution in the packet, um, including the nine um fines in the amount of nine hundred and fifteen thousand one hundred and thirty-five dollars and forty cents.

You're out of order.

Starting the vote over, council member Brown.

No, council member five, no.

Councilmember Guyo.

Aye.

Councilmember Houston.

Well, yeah.

No.

Councilmember Ramachandran.

Aye.

Councilmember Unger.

Aye.

Councilmember Wong.

Aye.

Councilmember Jenkins.

Aye.

Motion passes with a vote of five ayes.

And I'm that motion was to close the public hearing as well.

And adopt the staff recommendation.

We have dispensed with this item.

Going to the public hearings.

Starting with item five.

I'm sorry.

The non-consent calendar.

Starting with item 5.1.

Adopt a resolution amending and restating council members council rules of procedure in their entirety in order to add Rule 33 regarding hybrid meetings and technological disruptions thereof.

Do you have a presentation?

I have just a few words.

Go ahead.

This rule, this item is before you as the Brown Act requires a rule for hybrid meeting disruption.

So we are proposing to add Rule 33 to the Council rules of proceeding to the current council rules of procedure.

We have not um changed anything else in the rules of procedure, just simply amending to add Rule 33 for disruption, and the city attorney is here to address any specific questions you may have about this item.

Thank you.

Let's go to the public speakers.

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

Please state your name for the record before beginning.

Emily Wheeler, Blair Beekman, Mrs.

Ada Olabala, Ralph Cannes, and Jesse Rosemore.

Hi, I'm Jesse Rosemore.

Um I brought popcorn to the right item.

For all I know that uh that one skipped the Brown Act too and uh went straight to council after uh failing in committee, but you know, who who knows.

I have some serious reservations about this item.

Uh it allows uh council to just say, like, okay, like the meetings disrupted, so we're gonna cut something and do something else.

And uh, you know, we were all here for flock, and um we saw the council president switch the meeting time, the time the item was heard, so it would be heard at 1 p.m.

Uh and we know that um all of that was worked out in advance with all the people who are anti-uh police accountability and pro-surveillance so that they could all speak on time, that a lot of other speakers would be cut.

So I you know it's up to you as a council to uphold democracy, and uh we're seeing you fail at that uh many many times, especially the first the six first-term uh counselors that we have on the dais.

Um so reading what's in this uh legislation, I just don't trust you to uphold the democracy that you're required to do based on your prior action, which we've seen again and again.

I think the flock item which we're all here for is the most indicative of that.

Um and there's there's many other pieces.

Uh the other thing I want to say is if you want to invest in tech, um, you know, you're not investing in this, but you're giving the cops all kinds of AI stuff, and they uh submit their time cards with a pen.

That's thank you for your comments, and as in the next speaker comes up, just to clarify this item did go to committee before being placed on the council agenda.

Thank you.

Good evening, Ralph.

Start me up.

Okay, good evening, Ralph Cans.

Um this is just a continuation of the Kenny continual decline in the public's involvement in the city council process.

It's been going on ever since this has been a 25 to 30 year process where we went from having city council meetings every week.

That was the good old days.

It means right now the city council meets like less than half of the number of meetings it has.

That's why we have these meetings that are jammed up.

Meetings that don't give the people enough time to make their input on items that are being heard.

The final thing I'll just say on this is this whole thing, it these rules of procedure are just continued and continued to erode the public's participation in this process.

It's being done for the convenience of the city council members.

You're supposed to be here for the convenience of the people of the city of Oakland.

And that's not what I see going on.

The other thing I would say is these issues should be sent to the public ethics commission for comment according to the charter and the code.

Thank you.

Okay.

So according to what this uh rule will do, if you have some disruption in your telecommunication services, you're gonna stop the meeting and you're gonna give technology one hour to work on fixing it.

How did y'all come up with one hour?

I mean, you gotta make sense of what you're doing.

So how did you come up with one hour?

Why not half an hour, 15 minutes, whatever?

Then if you don't fix it within the hour, the technology, you're gonna resume the meeting without any availability of to of uh zoom or the meeting being exposed to telecommunication.

First of all, why is this on the consent agenda?

High priority.

Now I've already been insulted with the trees.

Now I'm coming to this issue, and we can't fix it in an hour.

We're gonna resume the meeting.

When y'all gonna deal with gentrification?

When you're gonna deal with your sanctuary city status, you up here talking about following the law, but you do not follow the law when it says you can't come into this country legally.

We're gonna ignore that law.

You allow 16-year-olds to vote when this constitution of California says you have to be 18 years old in a citizens to vote.

You selectively follow the law.

Thank you, Miss Olabala.

Your time is up.

With how we not be homeless 7%, and you won't talk about some damn tree.

It was a tree that not moving my house any longer.

It called me to have a thank you, Ms.

Olabala.

Your time is up.

This uh rule is required by the Brown Act.

It is uh taken verbatim from the Brown Act, and this is the non-consent portion of the agenda.

I have Emily Wheeler and Blair Beekman on okay, Blair Beekman on Zoom.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hi, uh Blair Beekman.

Um I'm in San Diego at this time.

We're going through our budget stuff.

They're having a meeting right now, and I'm uh speaking here on Zoom at the at the meeting here.

Hi, everyone.

Um, I thought this item was uh in reference to there's uh a Senate bill from state level SB 707 that's requiring all cities have to have Zoom in their public meetings starting July 1st, and you're trying to help update that process right now with this item.

And I thought this item uh initially set out by the new SB 707 stated that um if the meeting after an hour isn't uh fully um resolved, the issues of problems with Zoom, the meeting cannot continue until the problems are resolved.

And if you can provide some clarification uh at the end of public comment, what exactly this item is meant to be doing, because uh the uh item seven uh seven, the Senate bill is an awesome bill.

I mean, it gives it it codifies that Zoom has to be a regular part of California public meetings.

City uh, you know, uh cities like San Jose that don't have Zoom anymore, and uh Baywasi that don't practice Zoom, they now have to use Zoom and allow the public process.

So there is something really important to this that I hope you can better clarify for ourselves.

And uh thanks for this item, and thanks for allowing a minute 30 for public comment today.

A really nice gesture.

Thank you.

Those are all the speakers on this item.

Is there a motion or any comments?

I'll understand a motion.

I'll make the motion to move this item.

Second on the motion by Councilmember Brown, second by Council Member Bonger to approve the staff recommendation.

Councilmember Brown.

Aye.

Councilmember Fife.

Aye.

Councilmember Guyo.

Aye.

Councilmember Houston.

Is absent council member.

Um not you yet.

Councilmember Uger.

Aye.

Councilmember Wong.

Aye.

And Chair Ramachandran.

Hi.

Noting that Councilmember Jenkins and Councilmember McHouston are out of their seats.

Motion passes with a vote of six ayes.

Going to item 5.2.

Adopt a resolution approving ongoing cooperative purchase agreements exceeding 250,000 for Oakland Public Works, Bureau of Maintenance and Internal Services, goods and services contract as outlined in Table One, an additional amount not to exceed $16 million 815,000 and adopting appropriate CEPA findings.

We have three speakers on this item.

No presentation.

This is the Bureau within Public Works that encompasses fleet facilities, sewer, and storm drain.

I'm here to talk to you today about 33 cooperative contracts in the equipment services division.

We provide full support for the city's approximately 1,800 pieces of fleet equipment.

The 33 contracts today are necessary operational contracts, I would say routine and necessary to conduct the city's business and encompasses items such as repair and maintenance of city vehicles, fuel, software technology such as the information system we use to create work orders and dispatch vehicles, as well as items such as tires, uh mobile data terminals, radios for police vehicles.

The amount of these contracts totals 16 million dollars.

These are increases and extensions, and it's approximately over a two-year period, although the contracts may vary.

These contracts are also intended to be used by other departments such as police and fire.

So these are not just equipment services and BMIS contracts.

We're about 20 to 25 percent short in the heavy equipment truck shop.

Um this means that we have to outsource more work.

Uh consequently, we have to rely on the contracts to get the work done.

Uh some of these contracts will enable that work, some of these contracts will also provide the parts that are needed to repair the vehicles.

And if I haven't communicated previously how dire of a situation we're in, um just recently we have a total of 13 flusher trucks between sewer division and storm drain.

Uh 12 of those were offline and unavailable, so we were forced to rent a flusher truck, which costs about 14,000 a month.

We are still currently renting that truck to ensure we we remain in compliance with the sewer consent decree.

Out of 17 street sweepers we have at time, only had eight to ten available, which is about a 50% availability of street sweeping.

Uh fortunately we were up to 11 uh this morning, so that was a positive move.

Out of seven animal services trucks, as many as six have been unavailable and not capable of providing service to the community.

And both of the lightning loaders, the only two trucks that are assigned to illegal dumping were both unavailable at the same time.

In order to continue moving forward, what we need to get these contracts approved.

While these are cooperative contracts, uh we recognize the interest in making opportunities available to Oakland businesses to bid on contracts.

We are moving to an RFP model.

We have 33 cooperative contracts that um were requesting approval to allow us to continue doing business, but we also year to date have 28 RFPs requests for proposals that have been advertised and are available for Oakland businesses to bid on.

So with that, um I would uh entertain questions that you might have for me and also the public speakers.

Thank you.

Any public speakers?

Yes, we have three public speakers.

I call your name, please approach the podium or raise your hand in the queue.

I have Blair Beekman, Mrs.

Sada Olabala, and Jesse Rosemore.

In any order, please.

So you look so concerned about being responsible with your trees, but you're being irresponsible with these 33 contracts all at the same time, 16.8 million dollars, contracts that have already been in place with the city, and you did not ask for a performance evaluation to guarantee that the contracts that you currently have in place are fulfilling what is necessary related to those contracts.

You also have varying amounts of money being spent with no identification why they increasing the amounts that previously had not been increasing it.

We don't know why.

We don't know why we have extending contracts that have ended in 2025 already, 2026, and some ending in 27-7, but you're increasing the amount not knowing why they need more money, not knowing 33 contracts on a as needed basis.

So after you approve it, you don't have nothing no more to say with the dysfunctional public works department who couldn't find a violation in 2021-22, did it in 20.

That that capacity makes me very suspicious.

The same public works department when you go outside and see the white tape on there instead of white paint.

What's wrong with white paint in this city?

Did you have that in the contract to get some white paint?

Thank you, Ms.

Olabala.

Thank you, Mrs.

Adam.

Thank you, Mrs.

Adam.

It's okay.

I would never tell you politely.

Politely.

Okay.

Hi, I'm Jesse Rosemore.

Um, I looked at this item and it seems completely innocuous.

It seems the only reason it's on non-consent is because a particular council member who voted no on this in commit in committee, uh, has a very strange interest in contracts, a very corrupt, kind of weird interest in contracts.

And uh, you know, we're watching uh Donald Trump uh do inappropriate media posts, social media posts saying diminishing things about uh his opponents and uh just doing wild ethics comp uh violations, and uh we're seeing that here with the council member who voted no uh in committee on this.

And I just wonder when you guys will, you know, we have uh six of you first termers who are sort of line up behind them for your supermajority conservative right wing agenda.

And I'm just wondering when it's gonna be in like too much, when you're gonna actually formally censure this behavior, because we're watching it just happen over and over and over and more and more and more.

And this is just one example of the fact that we even have to talk about such an innocuous contract.

Uh you know, why is he so interested in this particular contract?

Um, it's just it just comes up again and again and again.

And you know, we're watching federally um how our federal government is failing us, and without you censoring behavior from uh this particular council member, we're watching all of you fail us, all of the first-term council members that are up here on city council.

I just wonder when that liability is gonna be too much for you, and you will actually say something about it.

Thank you, Jesse.

Thank you for your comments.

Going to our final speaker on this item, Blair Beekman.

Blair Beakman, thank you.

Please mute and begin your comments.

All right, thank you, Blair Beekman.

Uh, I'm reading over the uh the Brown Act things right now.

So I I may have been wrong in my initial assumptions.

Thank you for public comment and uh good luck and how we're talking about this sort of item.

I like public comment on this item.

Uh thank you.

At this time, all names have been called.

Thank you.

Councilmember Houston.

Thank you, thank you.

I ran downstairs because I was gonna get a ticket that I would have had to pay.

Um, so um through the chair, Mr.

Richard, thank you so much.

Um I'm not council member they're talking about.

That's me.

Because if we have 33 contracts, and only three are Oaklanders, I guess um, you can call me whatever you want to call me because I'm gonna continue to fight for SLBE.

So I have a question through the chair to Mr.

Richard.

Um we have contracts that's coming up, like for for collision.

We have contracts coming up for just the basic tires, right?

We have in my district, we have um a tire company that can provide the tires to public works, right?

And they have a huge one in my council members' Fife's district, but we're going outside of Oakland to get these tires.

We have many um companies that can repair cars in our my district, and we're going outside of Oakland to get that done.

So, how can we make that work, Mr.

Richard?

Um, where we embrace, and I know some of them have problems with us paying on time.

I got it, I understand.

Um, and sometimes our process is very difficult.

I got it, I understand.

So, how can we embrace because 33 out of the city contracts and only three?

Me, I'm the one that did it, me.

Um three are Oaklanders, and now we're waiving it.

But I understand if we had relationships with them and they were doing the work, but express that about the tires in the body shop.

Sure.

Um, through the chair, and and thank you for that question, Councilmember Houston.

Um, I've in public works committee.

I've said it and I'll say it again.

We are committed to moving to RFP, which is request for proposal, where the local businesses will have an opportunity to bid on these contracts.

We are looking in through this agenda report for some bridge support, some bridge contracting support until we can get those RFPs out and on the street where Oakland businesses can bid on them.

Uh, I provided earlier a staff identified 28 uh individual RFPs that were either recently awarded or in the process of being awarded.

And council member Houston, you'll be happy to hear that uh collision repair is one of those categories, it has not yet been awarded.

Um, we are looking at tires as well.

Uh the the I think for convenience in the past, and also just because of work or or workload restrictions, the contracting process has become very cumbersome.

What you're looking at with these 33 cooperative contracts, you'll note some of them expired in 2025.

Staff didn't wait for the contracts to expire before they started trying to increase or renew them, they started work on them.

This is, I think, about an eight month time frame for these 33 cooperative contracts.

So we've got to figure out a way to do better when we just need to increase or extend the contract.

Um, but to more directly answer your question, I think breaking up some of these larger contract awards where because of expediency, because of workload restrictions and time frames, we've tried to put a large contract out.

So a single vendor is providing most of the tires.

We can break that down to where one vendor does police pursuit tires, another vendor maybe does heavy-duty truck tires.

We are happy to work with anyone that can share ideas with us where we can increase the participation of Oakland businesses.

I believe in keeping the tax dollars here in Oakland.

I believe in supporting Oakland small businesses, and I believe in following the will of the city council, and we get the message not just from you, Councilmember Houston, but from other council members, and I just want everyone to know we in public works agree.

We're doing our best to move the needle, it's not fast enough, but we are in conjunction with our colleagues in purchasing, city attorney's office, risk management, and even DHRM under these very challenging times, we are trying to course correct.

So thank you for making us do our best work, Miss Asada.

Thank you as well.

Um, I welcome all criticism.

Even I can, you know, I've been in this business over 30 years.

I can learn new things, and switching from co-ops to RFP.

Co-ops used to be the fastest, most straightforward way to get a contract approved, increased, or extended because another municipality has already done the public bid, or it's a bid that's being sponsored by a GPO, a government purchasing organization that meets that public bid requirement before expending public funds.

In this day and age, the opposite is true.

Now cooperative agreements are so difficult and challenging to get through.

The RFP is faster and more efficient.

So we recognize that and we're adjusting.

This unfortunately is going to make extra work for our colleagues in purchasing.

So they're going to need support with the additional staffing resources to do all these RFPs, which take more time and effort because now you're advertising, you're soliciting bids, you're answering questions, you're evaluating bids and making awards, whereas with the co-op, someone else has done all that work.

So I apologize for the really long answer.

No, that was great, Mr.

Battersby.

I appreciate that.

Through the chair, one more sec question for Mr.

Battersby.

Um why couldn't we do like RFQs, Mr.

Battersby?

Because RFPs, you get more, but if you do the qualification, you have people that you don't have to go through so many.

Ed again through the chair, folks are gonna think we rehearse this.

RFQ, I agree, multiple awards is the way to go.

That's what we're trying to do with the collision repair, the body shop, have multiple vendors instead of just a single vendor, you know, winner take all, and then you're stuck with that vendor for three years or five years, whatever that contract term is.

When I say RFP, I mean RFP or RFQ interchangeably.

Okay, thank through the chair.

Thank you, Mr.

Battery.

I really believe in you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Brown, Wong, and then Guile.

Excellent.

Um, thank you so much for um ensuring that this item came before us.

Um, I you know, I'm not on the public works and transportation committee, um, so I definitely have a couple questions.

Um I guess just to um I guess repeatedly we we talk about ensuring that we're supporting Oakland based businesses.

Um I guess my more specific question is um I know you mentioned that it there is a goal to go out for our RFP, um, but as I'm looking at the agenda report, I noticed that a lot of the contracting dates um they vary.

And so um can you share with me uh what is the timeline to try to um uh I guess go out for RFP, and then also can you um also answer the the larger question of how come we're why why do we have 33 separate contracts?

Um, just looking at some of the vendors, it looks like it could be consolidated.

Yes, uh, through the chair, thank you for the question.

Regarding the number of contracts between equipment services and facilities, we have over 200 contracts that we administer just within the Bureau of Maintenance and Internal Services for efficiency purposes.

We are in lack of staffing, we're forced to batch process contracts where in the past we would come to council two, three times a year, and there are much smaller numbers.

Uh, because of the again, those limitations, you see a backlog of contracts that we just couldn't get executed, and here they are before you today.

Um what was the first part of your question again?

Um, I was focusing on the uh when do you predict going out for RFP given the different contract times, like and at different times?

Sure.

Uh again through the chair, it's an ongoing process.

Uh I mentioned we've got 28 that we've awarded or are or are in progress in 2026.

Three of those RFPs are actually for contracts that you see right here where we've awarded a co-op.

But we in order to continue business, we had to get some contract mechanism in place.

We've been trying to get this item in front of the council since January, and prior to that, we were working on it for four months.

We realized the timelines were becoming unacceptable.

So in the meantime, we've already started RFPs I know of on at least three of these contracts that we're trying to get the co-op extension approval.

The RFP process will typically take us probably two months, and that's working really well.

That's our purchasing colleagues really you know holding holding their nose to the grindstone and getting the work done.

I think it's amazing.

But the co-op process is so cumbersome that here we are talking about contracts that we initiated, the extension or renewal process back in 2025.

The RFP process is ongoing.

It could be on a daily basis, it could be on a weekly basis.

You're gonna be seeing a lot of me up here.

All right, sounds good.

Thank you so much.

Wong and then Guile.

Um thanks through the chair.

So I I do want to defend just like this the council scrutinizing these public works contracts.

Um, I used to work in civil engineering and environmental engineering, and it was one of those well-known things that public works contracts often have in old boys um network.

That that it that is true.

I'm not saying that this department has that issue, but it's just it's a well-known fact.

Um, and so I just want to defend that.

Um, I also want to say that um, you know, I think one so some of what I've been scrutinizing as someone who sits on the public works and transportation committee is just making sure that we have levels of service like expected performance metrics, especially we've had a number of cooperative agreements that have had no sort of expectation, and so um I think it is definitely a positive development that this report has some of these operational metrics, but I also want to make sure that these are inbuilt into those contracts.

It's not just an estimate in a report, but that we have these expectations of these performance standards for these contractors, and it I do think it is good that we are moving to an RFP process considering what we've learned around with the the disparity study.

Thanks, and I will move to adopt the staff recommendation.

Thank you.

Uh council member Guillo, can you press your button so we can get to it?

Thank you, and thank you for for the information and for your service to Oakland.

Uh having grown up here in the city of Oakland, I never seen the streets in O like I've seen them in Oakland today.

And we do need more tools, more vehicles, for more personnel to bring this city back in order.

And I appreciate I I work with you every day.

My five employees in my office are on the streets cleaning them up, picking up the legal dumping, the trash, and certainly other activity that's going on that we see daily, but we do need the the tools and the personnel and the and um the vehicles to get the job done in this city, and uh we can sit here and talk a lot, you know, about we need this, we need that, and complain and blame everyone in town.

But the bottom line is we need the equipment and the personnel to get the job done.

So with that, I appreciate the level of service, and I second the motion uh that's been made to support public works.

Thank you.

Councilmember Gayle.

I mean Raman Chandra.

Thank you.

I support this as well and appreciate the detail that you gave.

I was a little surprised by some of this.

I knew we had an issue with our fleets, but I was a little surprised with some of the statistics of the inoperable street sweepers and animal control uh trucks.

Um, what is the situation with our fire apparatus and our fire trucks as well, given that it's one of the more frontline vehicle services.

Yeah, um, thank you for that question through the chair.

I actually have it on my notes here.

I neglected to mention it.

Um council member Unger's well aware uh as we enter weekends and end of day shift um transitions.

We are sometimes entering these periods with a single ready reserve and no spare apparatuses.

There are minimum vehicles uh availability requirements from the firefighters union where if we fall below that level, we actually have to shut a fire station.

So we are in very dire straits, make no mistake.

Uh and the the bigger issue at hand here is even if we were to order new apparatuses tomorrow, it's gonna be 48 to 60 months before it's delivered.

Now think about that for a minute.

That's gonna be four to five years before that fire apparatus we order tomorrow shows up.

Not only is that a detriment to the operation, frankly, I'll probably be retired by then.

I won't even see the equipment that I'm ordering.

So we need a strategic plan to put in place where we regularly purchase replacement vehicles because we're putting off investments now that are gonna create a crisis later.

And I you know, I I keep referring to council member Unger because he and I talked about this issue regularly before he was elected as a council member.

Uh we got our hands, we got our arms around it.

We were having problems earlier, but now we're at crisis mode because we haven't been replacing vehicles regularly since 2022.

So that's four years of not buying replacement vehicles, and pretty soon we're gonna have to pay the piper.

Thank you.

All right, we have a motion and a second.

One item 5.2 move by council member wong, second by council member guillo to adopt the staff recommendation.

Councilmember Brown.

Aye, council member five, aye, councilmember Gaio, aye.

Councilmember Houston, aye, council member Ramachandran.

Aye, council member Unger, I council member Wong, I chair Jenkins motion passes with a vote of eight ayes.

Now we are moving to item six point two five.

I will read the item.

Members of the public, please note that I have posed your cards from the consent calendar if you signed it for this item.

Item 6.25 does require an urgency.

For the urgency.

Guile urgency motion.

Second.

Noting that there was a title change at the three-day portion of this agenda, so it does require an urgency motion before being heard on the urgency.

Councilmember Brown.

Aye.

Councilmember Five.

Through the chair, if we could just finish the vote to hear the item, it does need an urgency because it was added at the supplemental for noticing, so it does need a motion to be heard.

So we're in that vote.

Council member five.

Aye.

Councilmember Gayel.

Aye.

Councilmember Houston.

Councilmember Houston.

Aye.

Councilmember Ramachandran.

Aye.

Councilmember Anger.

Aye.

Councilmember Wong.

Aye.

Chair Jenkins.

Motion passes with a vote of eight ayes.

I will now read the item.

Adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to weigh the request for proposals and qualifications.

Competitive process, execute a construction contract with capital repairs and replacements at Feather with excuse me, Feather River Camp, located at 5469 Oakland Camp Road, Quincy, California, and a total amount not to exceed 523,938.

With Ackley Engineering for the replacement of three septic septic tanks, drain system and the drinking water system and adopts appropriate sequel findings.

You have 13 speakers on this item.

Thank you.

Staff good afternoon, Council members.

I'm Quincy Williams.

I'm the assistant capital improvement project coordinator for Oakland Parks Recreation and Youth Development.

I'm here to present on this resolution.

Prior to me going into more details, I want to give you an executive summary from the actual uh agenda report.

So Oakland Feather River has been founded in the city of Oakland since 1924.

And the city opened the camp in on June 28, 1924.

While the U.S.

service force owns the land, the city as the holder of the special use permit operates and maintains an organization camp for public use and the camp improvements, which consists of tents, cabins, restrooms, showers, water shipment plant, a water tank, and a sewage system.

Pursuant to the special use permit, the city has a license agreement with the nonprofit camps in common to provide outdoor programming at the camp.

Uh in 2025, the executive director approached us, OPRYD, um to inform us that the 5,000 gallon septic tank drain field and 14-year-old drinking water filtration system needs replacement.

Um let me just tell you about the uh number of people that are served by this camp.

Last four years, 1,130 open youth were served.

Also the river camp serves families in the last four years, 4,10 open residents attended this very uh integral and valuable asset that the city owns.

Again, the reason for the urgency is that um we need this uh septic and water filtration systems are past their lifespan, and so again, because of the preferred maintenance, we're at this critical nature for this repair to take place.

Um there are any questions.

Me and Director Uh Micah Hammett can answer those any questions.

Thank you.

Any questions from Councilmember Houston?

Then Guile.

Yes, I have a few questions.

I wanted to um see if um Darlene Flynn was online because I have some equity questions about this, and while they're pulling her up, I want to know if Micah uh Ms.

Mike, is she around too?

Because I have a couple of questions, but not just yet.

I just wanted to share this.

This um organization, um, feather river camp.

Uh I'm gonna give a little history.

I'm third generation Oaklander, been here all my life, all my life.

And this organization been around for a hundred years.

I never heard of it.

I never got the equity to or my friends from my district.

I'm talking about district seven, never got the equity.

And I want to share something that was very, very troubling to me.

Um, but I learned some things also from the city administrator Justin Johnson and my city attorney, Ryan Richmond Richardson said can.

You know, it's what you the decisions you make have to be in the best interest of the city, right?

So I'm gonna vote on this, but I want to share something that was very troubling, and I have a board behind me that I'm gonna just show this board shows that the the percentages of district one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven.

And my district has been under served for so many years, and the children from my district, district seven, the percentage is two point nine nine.

2.99.

That's troubling to me.

That is troubling.

I'm sorry, Guile, President.

That's troubling to me.

I see that District 1 is 28 percent.

I see District 2 is 13 percent.

I see District 3, 5 percent, district 4, 33 percent, 5, 5%, that's yours, Councilmember Guile, 6, 10 percent, president, district 7.

2.99%.

I wasn't just mad, I was angry when I saw who allowed that to happen to my community.

But after talking to you, Micah, you you you you brought up my spirit, you did, you really did.

Um, after talking to the to Justin Johnson, he brought up my spirit, he brought us together.

And I wanted us just have um Darlene Flynn to come on because this is an equity problem, equity problem.

I want to find out um what are we plan to do to bring equity, equal um equity and outreach to this program?

So my kids that are at nine, two point nine nine percent that I didn't know about over a hundred years, or some of my friends would not be dead today in the streets if they had that opportunity if the outreach was there, and these numbers are real.

So, can we pull um um Darlene Flynn up online?

Because I just want to get her opinion that brought me to rest along with you, Micah, you did today.

Um, so can we get Darlene Flynn on for a second to talk about this?

How we're gonna increase the equity across um the districts and specifically my district, district seven.

Yes, Councilmember Houston, through the chair, I'm here.

Can you hear me?

Yes, ma'am.

Great.

I'm gonna I'm so glad.

So this is not these kinds of outcomes are not surprising.

I I often say to people, if we look under a rock, we'll find these kinds of disparities because they are a product of a hundred years of practices and um oh and more recently, because I know the organization that's running the camp now actually came into.

I've been doing some research since we spoke this morning.

I've just been brought into this issue today, but I've been doing some research, and the organization that's running the camp now has actually um come together fairly recently um to save the camp, to keep the camp going during COVID and and various um hard times that the camp has been through.

The problem is that if we don't uh approach this in a structured way with the intention of producing equity, the normal barriers that uh present themselves to marginalized communities, communities that have been most impacted by other disparities, will cause these to be the outcomes.

So, in order to undo that, we need to do some analysis, uh speak with the community, um, at large talk about what are the barriers that are keeping the the children in your particular part of the city from accessing this service that has always been there and that lots of families in Oakland and children in Oakland have been accessing, but not equitably.

So, what's being proposed is that we do that work to understand more deeply what the root causes of these disparities are, and then we can work on undoing or strategizing to um mitigate those barriers or remove those barriers and increase participation.

And that's a commitment that that we can make.

And council member, you're saying that district seven tax dollars are going to the septic tank, and there's an equity issue with campers being coming from district seven.

You're relating it back to the septic tank, right?

So, yes, going back to the septic tank, and it's like you just said how bad um district seven was on the Hagenberger corridor.

You'd mentioned it just a minute ago.

So that's what my children got to deal with.

So um Micah, you um brought up my spirit after I spoke to you, and even so it's going back to the septic tank.

What I mean is that I'm going to vote yes on this.

However, my conscience tells me to say no.

But like the city administrator, my city attorney said, Ken, this will benefit your children if this happens.

We can do the outreach.

We can outreach and get them there if it's not up to date.

My children can't go visit it, right?

So share a little bit with me about the septic tanks.

So earlier, so earlier when we discussed about the septic tanks and what it would like if we don't get this job done, no one, not your children, nobody in district six, all districts would not be able to attend Feather River Camp.

Just understand.

Once the septic tank is is done, the job is done, all the all the sites will be able to attend.

And once again, I told you earlier.

If you want your children in your district to attend Feather River Camp, I am willing, my department is willing to outreach to the families.

Make sure they contact our sites because you have two sites in your district, TASA and Ira Jenkins.

All it takes is a phone call or email to myself or my staff to make sure that the children in the district six is able to attend.

Now the numbers that you're showing, just know that the kids did not last year go to Feather River Camp.

So the numbers that you're showing is not from Feather River Camp from last year.

Through the chair, what are they from?

We went to OVY last year.

Yep.

So camp, so Feather River Camp didn't occur due to the due to the system of last year.

We wasn't, we didn't know we're going to be funded through OPRYD.

So the leadership had to wait to decide on what was the next step.

But the council, you guys have voted on us to go and fund our programs for summer.

When we got the AOK, the Green Light from Council, when we contacted Camps in Commons, they gave our dates away.

So that's why the children did wasn't able to attend Feather River Camp.

So this year, we're going to have a larger number, but we're making sure that every kid in Oakland attend Feather River Camp.

So once again, like I said earlier, if you want your kids, if you have kids in mind that want to attend, let me know, let the department know, and I will make sure that they're able to get there.

All right.

So through the chair, thank you, Darlene Flynn Online.

Thank you, Micah, for uh making me happy, and I want to move this this item.

Thank you.

Congratulations, Director.

Thank you.

Um, I support the item as well, but I do have a question for staff.

Um I even if those numbers are not specifically to Feather River Camp.

My guess is that they're not that far off.

There's gonna be inequities and where in what districts um kids come from.

And while there's a lot of support in my district for Oakland Feather River Camp, and I very much support the program, and I hope to stop by for the first time this year.

I do wholeheartedly agree that a city resource should be used for should have an have more of an equity lens and should be way more proportionately different districts.

Um but I am a little confused in the race and equity statement that it says the population served for this program is overwhelmingly composed of black African American and Latino Hispanic residents, including youth from low-income households who are already experiencing racial difficult disparities, etc.

Um, regardless of what could you talk about the racial demographics?

So the racial demographics is all across the board from each district.

It is every race that attends Feather River Camp.

And then this in this race and equity part, we have to put, you know, we put that in there to make sure that it is solidifies everyone of all color attending Feather River Camp.

So this time what we're doing, we're gonna do analysis so we can make sure we get the correct data to show exactly who's attending Feather River Camp across every district, and up and even up at Camps and Common, who are they serving as well?

Because right now we don't know who all they're serving because we don't do the analysis with them.

We just know the analysis on our end because we pull it from our data from Perfect Mind.

Thank you.

And is our outreach focused on OUSD or are there ways we can be more proactive in District 7 and telling the you know youth over there and spreading it to underenrolled districts, or or is OUSD, do they are they the ones that cover the marketing?

No, no, no.

So we market our own programs through social media through Perfect Mind, our our system that we use, and then our staff, when they come into our building, the staff breaks down to the parents what programs we're going to be doing for the summer in Feather River Camp is one.

Some parents in District 7 back out of it because it's like, okay, we're in Oakland, but now my child has to be five hours away from me.

It's kind of hard because if something happens, how are they going to get up there?

A lot of parents don't have the transportation, the means of transportation to get in their child in case of emergency.

And and the septic tank, too, right?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate these efforts to spread access across the city.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Let's go to the public speakers.

So I can easily identify you.

Farana Tabasun, Yassi, Safenia, Vince Yorba, Diana Christine Essex.

Is it Letiri?

Johanna Brecka Brecke Brannell, Lucas Brecki Mensener, Katrina Breckey, Menzneer, Mrs.

Adolabala, Mr.

Hazard, Jesse Rosmore, sorry, Rosemore.

Karen Louis Legal.

Vanessa Sadino.

Can approach the podium.

Hi, good afternoon.

My name is Forhanatobosum, and I'm speaking in my capacity as the former lead fiscal person for the Oakland Parks and Recreation Department.

Before OPRYD, I work for Head Start, Aging, Public Works, and Violence Prevention.

So my broad overview at work in a different department, it helps me access which uh which projects are the most impactful.

And I must strongly argue to vote no for the Federal River Camp because the Federal River Camp is a money bit.

It's not only the 70k thousand dollar for room and board that you see on the budget, it's the 25 to 30k in transportation cost, another 25 to 30k in labor and materials, plus the grants you have previously given to the tune of 100k for administrative cost.

I feel like we can achieve the same same goal at different nearby camps where the money would be reverberated back to the Oakland economy, and it can be done at much cheaper.

So you can uh like we have the police activities leak camp, we have the OVY camp.

We've previously we had a co-op agreement to uh for getting camping really cheap with the East Oakland Regional Parks Foundation.

Uh and the savings from this can be divested into meaningful projects that you ma'am, your time is up.

I'm Carol Lego.

I am yielding my time to Yaussi.

Uh good afternoon, um, Chair, Council members, and members of the public.

My name is Yassi Safinia.

I'm the executive director of Camps and Common.

We're the operators of Oakland Feather River Camp called OFRC.

Um, and I'm also speaking as somebody who attended camp as a kid with my mom and sister.

Um, before anything else, uh I just also want to thank you today for your public service and also for the care of Oakland families.

Um, to the equity issue, I just want to say that compared to other campsites and family camps sites, we're actually leading the way nationally compared to what equity looks like across the entire country.

So despite these numbers here, I can let you know that camps in common, we do report these numbers, and we have over 53% of our campers reporting as non-white.

Um, we're also thankful for our ongoing partnership with the city and Oakland Parks and Rec youth Development Program.

So that is a separate entity.

We do do direct outreach with uh OUSD, and we particularly work specifically to provide our camperships with the community schools managers.

So our camperships go all the way up to 100% worth the cost of coming to camp.

One quarter of all campers are campership campers.

Um we also have created a partnership with First Five in Malameda County.

It's a $500,000 grant over two years that makes sure that folks who are accessing first five programs are coming, and we have reduced all of the barriers aside from people coming directly and asking to come.

Um that's why I emailed council member Houston yesterday and said, let's find that bridge that gets people from your district to the camp.

I just started as the executive director last May, and I'm very eager to make sure that we have true Oakland representation showing up at camp.

That was the quote platform under which I applied for the job.

I'm I'm Oakland all the way.

So I just want to say that you know the thing about a septic system is it is it it's a health risk, it's an environmental risk.

Period end of story.

Um, a water filtration system, it's a health risk.

We cannot operate camp unless we have these systems in place.

Um, this is almost a 40-acre campus.

It brings people from all over Oakland and has for over 100 years.

The inception of this camp was exactly about equity.

Its location was placed so that people could go straight from the train station right up to the camp, so that while there was a national movement to make sure that people could access the outdoors, that would be accessible to working class folks.

Um I just want to say that we have been growing the numbers.

As you can imagine, after COVID, it was hard to convince people to want to go camping or to want to do a lot of things.

Um, so from 2022, our growth went from 644 to over 1,300 people from the city of Oakland coming and participating at camp.

And so far, we already have over 1,200 Oakland enrollees.

Um we're just really thankful for the fact that you all are considering this item.

We are also one of the speakers.

Thanks.

Please say your name.

Diana Essex Letierry.

Thank you.

Um, we're also leaving no stone unturned to keep this camp strong in the future.

Um, in addition to developing long-term sustainability plan in partnership with the city, we're actively inviting philanthropy to help sustain Oakland Feather River camp so that we can continue to serve Oakland families for generations to come.

Again, this place has been around for over a hundred years.

Um, it its inception was about equity.

Um, in the time when the city decided that it was not able to continue continue the camp.

I recognize and admit that it is because of people with access and resource that the camp has continued to be a viable place that continues to be able to work with OPRYD.

We have a lot of work to do.

And I hope that if I reach out to you as a council member and talk about how we can be people from your district up to camp, you'll respond so that we can find that access.

Because we definitely want to make sure this is for every every single Oakland family.

With all the issues that we have with respect to isolationism that the US Attorney General reported on in 2022, this is an antidote to that.

When you talk about ACEs, this is an antidote to that.

When you look at the landmark report that just came out about the nature gap and particularly the fact that it's hitting black and brown communities the most and rented communities the most, and that the health disparities that come with a lack of nature, this is an antidote to that.

So we invite you to please make sure that Oakland families can come, come to a place where they're disconnected from these things and reconnecting with one another.

Oh, yeah, we've got a good evening, President Jenkins and members of the council.

My name is Vanessa Sadeño, and I'm here on First Five on behalf of First Five Alameda County, one of our early childhood local county agencies.

In strong support of this item, S6.25 to fund critical capital improvements to the subject and drinking water systems at Oakland Feather River Camp.

First Friday First Five is proud to partner with Oakland Feather River Camp to expand access to outdoor family-centered experiences for Alameda County families with young children.

Since launching our partnership in 2023, we have invested over $800,000 to provide fully subsidized family camp experiences covering transportation, meals, gear, and programming.

So that cost is not a barrier to participation.

As we heard, there are barriers.

Through this partnership, we've supported hundreds of families each year, growing from just 28 families in our first year to an estimated 50 families this year.

And over 65% of these families are from Oakland.

And for about seven and ten, this is their first camping experience.

We consistently hear from families that these experiences reduce stress, strengthen family bonds, and provide rare opportunities to connect with nature and each other.

Outcomes that are directly tied to early childhood development development and kindergarten readiness, which is our North Star as a system.

Good evening.

I'm a fourth generation Oaklander, born and raised in East Oakland, and I'm a lifelong Feather River camper.

My mom first got a job at Feather River Camp when she was 19, and my family's been going up ever since.

And now I get to grow up and I get to watch my uh my daughters, Valencia and Naeli Frolic run amok in the trees.

Um, and it's been a critical resource for Oaklanders for a long time.

And um, you know, when camp was founded in the 1920s as an escape for working class Oaklanders to easily get out into nature, um, it's brought thousands and thousands of Oaklanders up.

Um, and as an executive director of Oakland Kids First, I work with young people at Castlemont, Fremont, Oakland High, Skyline, Tech.

I know experientially how important it is to get our young people, get our families up into nature.

Um, and the investment that the council is considering in infrastructure is really critical.

Can't, you know, was gonna be closed 23 years ago.

Um, and it was community rallying to save it programmatically that has kept it alive, but the city's commitment has continued in the form of a partnership around infrastructure.

And so uh, you know, Councilmember Houston bringing up the stuff around uh outreach and equity and access, we always have room to improve in all those areas, and yeah, we can't improve on any of it, right?

If we don't have septic, we don't have water filtration, um, etc.

So I really encourage your support on this so generations of Oaklanders um can continue to have immersive access to nature and continue to represent Oakland proudly.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Jesse Rosemore.

Um yeah, you know, uh Councilmember Houston seemed proud of flipping us all off during the flock vote.

He seems proud of uh being called out for his absurd uh you know interest in uh city contracts.

Um you know, we got this thing about uh equity.

If he really cares so much about equity, uh we'll see how that goes in the next item where celebrite is used inequity inequitably against black people specifically.

Uh we'll call it Ms.

Sada, please give this gentleman his time.

Okay, if uh if Councilmember Houston really cared about his district and the people in his district, uh, you know, we would uh see something different in the public ethics complaint that Sean Everhardt of the of the Privacy Advisory Commission levied against Ken Houston.

Um everything in there shows Ken Houston's disdain for his district, his disdain for uh Mr.

Rosemore.

Do you have anything about Feather River or Septa Tanks?

Yeah, you know, um this is a lot of pontification by the council member about uh Feather River and septic tanks, and uh you know I don't appreciate as a member of the public having to sit through this council member's uh pontification, and uh I don't think you should either.

It's a little bit of a liability for you as you line up behind them for your right-wing agenda.

Um it's disgusting.

Thank you for your comments.

Ms.

Asada, Mr.

Hazard, do you wish to speak on this item?

Anyone else's name was called for item 6.25.

Leave that black man alone.

I've got you, brother.

So I went and looked up this Feather River camp.

And on their site, they have family, basic camp, youth camp, group, at rentals.

So if you want to rent for four weeks or be a part of the camp for four weeks, nine thousand eight hundred dollars.

Two-week session, five thousand two hundred dollars.

One week session, twenty-six hundred dollars.

So they have a 75 cent percent discount for Oakland residents, but they serve anybody that wants to come into that camp.

It's not an Oakland camp.

So since it's not just for Oakland, while we're doing like you did with the $700,000 for the training facility over there at what used to be the Raiders camp, paying there for everything.

Why are you paying for everything?

You have agreed to facilitate the infrastructure kit care for this place, and they're making money.

Four weeks.

I don't know what they're doing in four weeks for $9,800, two weeks, $5200, one week.

This is not no charity group.

hundred thousand dollars for the training facility over there at what used to be the Raiders camp paying for everything why you paying for everything you have agreed to facilitate the infrastructure kit care for this place and they making money four weeks I don't know what they're doing in four weeks for $9,800 two weeks $5200 one week this is not no charity group they making money and we're helping them to make their money and who participates I know black folks is just like that ice rink over there that y'all helping to take care of it's good it's there I saw Michael I'm okay how can I go how many people no you you you still got time all I'm saying is this you might putting that assign back up for me thank you desmond they had called you desmond they called you don't be every single DeMile Council um I was basically gonna Mr.

Soder took the words out of my mouth I don't think this feather river camp I think it's a good idea a great place for the kids but we have a lot of organizations coming to Oakland like it's a cash cow and we're putting a lot of money out instead of putting money we have an East Bay water facility sometimes that doesn't have enough lifeguards in Ken Houston's district we have a lot of other recreation centers that need swimming the swimming pools need to get redone they need lifeguards at those centers so are we just giving our money out and allowing other organizations to take it that are not residents or organizations that reside in Oakland so just think about that that's my work thank you anybody online do you have a cart do you have a cart uh even Cambridge did you sign up for the item yes okay go ahead all right um so I actually worked for the Boy Scouts for five years as a senior executive I have experience running camps um I would say that a camp is a money pit um and if we aren't asking the real questions of how viable is this camp we need to bring this camp's finances as a matter of uh uh meeting item and actually look is this camp solvent how solvent are they how much are they profiting with all that being said you have to spend money on the septic tank you can't not spend money on the septic tank simply because you can't sell a camp to anyone else if the septic tank is ruined however we should consider selling the camp if we are not uh if the camp is not viable we should consider selling it for the simple fact um this camp is akin to uh gas subsidies for oil company if they're profitable and we're footing the bill for five hundred thousand dollars for their septic they should be able to afford that themselves thank you sir your time is up if your name was called you want to speak on this item Mr.

Hazard Vince Joanna Brecky and Katrina otherwise at this time all names have been called for item six Mr.

Hassard are you coming up oh you gave your time thank you for being thank you for that appreciate that anybody online if not council member brown excellent um thank you so much I just wanted to just say um you know I fully support um this uh feather river camp um I I remember just growing up um one of the first times that um being able to actually attend for three weeks actually um and we did a lot of amazing activities and so I just know that it's definitely transformational for a young person to be able to have that experience um and I think I also wanted to note um I think it's great that we reach out to OUSD but also keep in mind that you know Oakland actually is full of charter schools right um and all of those youth live right here in Oakland most of the time right so uh and actually I would say actually in district seven there's probably more charter schools and so that could be a part of the gap um of ensuring equity as well and so I definitely look forward to working with um uh the executive director and team to help support the efforts because I think the equity and ensuring that black and brown young people in our city can have access to this because I think it's really transformational.

So uh and actually I would say actually in district seven, there's probably more charter schools, and so that could be a part of the gap um of ensuring equity as well.

And so I definitely look forward to working with um uh the executive director and team to help support the efforts because I think the equity and ensuring that black and brown young people in our city can have access to this because I think it's really transformational.

So and did we already have a second?

I think you might be the second.

Second.

All right, let's go to the roll call.

Oh, yeah.

Read testing one, two, three.

I just want to take a minute of of your time.

I've been to Feather River many times, several times, uh being parks manager and so forth, and also from the neighborhood.

And the reality is some of these youngsters out of our neighborhood never have that uh that experience or that opportunity to see a different environment, a different discipline to learn something different that you can provide, and but it's youngsters from other neighborhoods coming together, you know, they provide not just recreational, educational, but working together, and that's something we don't get in the hood growing up in East Oakland, but but it's a different positive environment that the children and young people can enjoy and bring back home.

And so with that, I I will support uh Feather the Feather River Camp to continue, but I do want to also acknowledge that you know we need to reach out to the neighborhood, and certainly that decision is up to mom and dad to allow me to go as didn't have that opportunity yet.

You can shake your hand, but many of us didn't have the mom and dad at home.

But what we received our discipline, information and exposure through other avenues, and this is a a great avenue where children in East Oakland get that exposure working with other um other children from different neighborhoods and the the environment is a real positive one.

So everyone sitting on this council, if you want to go up to Feather River and take a look at it, they provide those experiences for adults here in Oakland, whether you're in the leadership or the Oakland Unified or within government here in the city.

So just contact them and you can go up there right and spend the night and be able to see what goes on.

So with that, I also support the motion.

Thank you.

We will all go up there and see the septic tank.

Will you septic tank?

Yeah, keep it on the septic tank.

Let's get to work.

All right, let's run the roll.

On the motion by Councilmember Houston, saying goodbye, Councilmember Brown to adopt the staff recommendation.

Councilmember Brown.

Aye.

Council Member Five.

Aye.

Councilmember Gaio.

Hi.

Councilmember Houston.

Aye.

Councilmember Ramachandran.

Aye.

Councilmember Unger.

Aye.

Councilmember Wong.

Councilmember Wong.

Aye.

Chair Jenkins.

I motion passes with a vote of eight ayes.

Going back to item 5.3.

Going back to item 5.3.

Adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into a professional services agreement with Sellbright for provision of universal forensic extraction devices and related services for the Oakland Police Department for a contract amount not to exceed 140,000 for the period of July 1, 2026 to June 30th, 2027, waiving the competitive multi-step solicitation process and local small local business enterprise program requirements, and accepting the 2024 Sale Bright annual report and making a dirt determination regarding whether the city should continue to use this technology.

Thank you.

Staff to the staff.

Good evening, Council members.

I'm Sergeant Zow with Oakland Police Department.

I work in the uh co-case section of the homicide unit.

Um to kind of begin, I was wanting a really quick rundown of what this technology is and how it works.

Um it's a little box that OPD owns.

Um what it does is that it downloads cell phone uh data onto this onto for a um forensic report for criminal investigations.

So the way it uh logistically work is that OPD sees a cell phone uh pursuing to either search warrant or probable cause.

And in almost all but one or two use cases, OPD will seek a search warrant to extract data from this phone.

The other cases would tend to be on consent.

Um so once we have a search warrant to um search as phone, it's gonna be pursuing to a criminal investigation.

This device is the cell phone that's hooked up to this device where it extracts the data on the phone.

California law and also OPD's use policy uh dictates that the investigator to seal information on that phone that's unrelated to the investigation.

At which point they examine the report that's generated by this uh device uh pursuing their investigation, and to kind of give an example, uh sometimes in gun investigations, a photo of the suspect holding the gun is obviously extremely important to the investigation.

Uh we tend to see a lot more usage in terms of robberies, homicides, human trafficking, or we're building uh relationship of the user device to the victim or to other suspects, um, how a robbery is planned, or do you wear about how homicide uh occur because of prior communication between victim suspect, fuse or what have you.

So it's a piece of evidence that's critical to a lot of the serious felonies that we investigate.

Uh once it's done by an investigator, this data is uploaded into our evidence.com for safekeeping and encryption, and it is shared with the district attorney's office for discovery process, and if other law enforcement agencies serve OPD with a search warrant, obviously, pursuing a judge order, we would have to compile with a search warrant to provide that data over.

And to kind of go into the practical usage for OPD.

Uh last year, OPD used um OPD extracted over 700 uh cell phones uh pursuing uh search warrants.

I believe one or two was under consent, but the everything else, almost everything else is on uh search warrants.

Out of those, um we rely on the cellbrite to extract almost all Android devices that OPD encounter.

It just because the technical code of the technical uh build that uh cellbrite device, and and it is it is the only device that OPD and other forensic lamp have encountered that works very viably in terms of Androids.

Uh out of those 700 devices, about 30 percent were Androids, so which translates to a little over 200 devices that were searched pursuing these uh criminal investigations.

Uh almost all of them usually come uh to us locked.

It's very rarely do we get uh passcode to phones, um, and so we tend to be dealing with a locked device that we're trying to get evidence in.

Um consulting with outside experts and other labs and the best practice.

OPD have not identified any viable alternatives to this uh vendor in terms of Android extractions.

Uh OPD does understand the optics of this company.

Uh unfortunately we have done some testing and some other alternative vendors in terms of looking for um possibilities.

For example, uh right now we're undergoing a 30-day uh testing and testing process with a uh particular vendor.

Uh and to kind of highlight how a lot of these sales pitch and how a lot of these vendors present their um products.

When I was in the initial meeting with this particular vendor, it was you know the way they sold a data sheet, the way they sold the product, it was a direct one-to-one replacement for Cellbrite.

It works just as well, if not, or it will ship you able to come uh meet your needs.

Uh we have this particular device for about a week now.

We're gonna do it.

We usually run 30-day tests on these things.

Uh we have tried eight lock android on this device, and he has failed on all eight.

Uh in contrast, we tried uh these same eight devices on the Celbrite and has passed um seven out of eight.

And obviously, these are not devices OPD particularly use.

These are uh uh devices that OPD has sees pursuing the criminal investigation and are searching using a search warrant.

So we're using we're testing in terms of you know real world um experience, and we have not encountered anything that's viable as we stance.

So therefore OPD is asking that we're allowed to continue to use a Cell Bright with the understanding and continuous search for a better alternative that can we place this capability because the capability to extract these phones are so important to our investigations uh that OPD would it would be a detrimental to OPD's criminal investigations without this technology.

Thank you.

Any questions from the council members?

Councilmember Gaio, then pressure button.

Yes, I'm making motion to approve recommendation.

Motion from Gaio, Council Member Five, then Council Member Wong.

Yes, through the chair, could you say more about the the statement you just said you're testing other vendors?

Is it one vendor or multiple vendors?

And can you state the vendor that you tested that you did not like?

Or no?

We're ongoing undergoing the current one with testing.

I don't want to name them because we haven't gone through the whole testing.

It could be one of those weird just luck where like if fail on these eight and it'd be very successful on the other ones.

So I don't want to speak to the effectiveness.

I'm just saying as ongoing what we observe that it's not meeting to my standards.

Uh there's not a lot of vendors in this uh space that are that that that does this kind of thing.

And so it's rare that we encounter vendors that we can use or try.

Um there's a couple that does it, and we tend to Motorola does uh has some sort of uh Motorola has a product that we had tested a while ago, but they haven't made any updates, so it didn't make sense to reach back out to them.

So we tend to uh wait until at particular conferences where someone proposing that they came up with a new product, and that's when we start the testing uh phase.

Are you aware of any data risks with uh Cell Bright's technology?

The extraction that OPD perform is stored locally on the OPD computer after it's done, it's then uploaded into evidence.com.

Um that's controlled by OPD.

So the data risk would be a breach of evidence.com server.

Uh Cellbrite does not touch our data.

So we who owns it?

We owned it, but we store it in the cloud with evidence.com with axon.

Okay, and then how is that information how how long is that information stored?

And is there a framework that's available to be made public around how the information is used to, or it can you give us data that shows that use of this technology has actually led to um an impactful uh decrease in crime or solving uh the crimes that have happened?

Yes, so it supplements our investigative efforts.

I don't have any um stats in terms of you know it increased our solvability by 20, 30 percent.

However, uh anecdotally, we have seen significant uh uh um in terms of assisting and helping prove uh particular statements or particular case.

Um it's case in point, so we live so much of a life on our phones.

Uh even the location on your phones that we extract from it helps put you at a crime scene or not put you at a crime scene.

Uh the communications that individuals have prior to you know committing a robbery or prior to committing a homicide helps to prove state of mind, helps to prove uh helps to go to like um particular if they were having a few with the victim.

So anecdotally, it's sheds a lot of light and it's a very strong piece of evidence that helps support an investigation.

It's almost like video surveillance, right?

It's one of the key pieces of evidence that the DA's office came to expect in a criminal investigation of any manitude that whether we have examining the mobile forensics for any way to either uh find exculpatory evidence or incriminating evidence, because um, you know, just personal anecdote.

We have found uh on a particular shooting case that this individual that we done had committed a shooting, um, the data location puts them somewhere else, and that kind of sheds a different light on the investigation and direction we went.

So it's it assists in the in in most investigations, but unfortunately, OPD doesn't have the status say it you know it helps off 20% or however it is.

And how long have you been using it?

OPD has some form of this thing for almost a decade.

Uh we've been using not some form like this vendor.

This yes, I'm sorry, this particular vendor.

Um, and uh we have been using their technology since about 2014 and 2015, I believe.

Uh we had our use policy passed by the PAC and I might be off by a year or two.

I think 2021, 2022.

And kind of to go back to your question about retention, I forgot to answer that question.

The way retention or these data are stored on evidence.com, it's associated for our use policy, our uh uh mobile forensic extraction use policy.

It's tied to the uh adjudication of the case.

So if this criminal case is adjudicated and set uh data set to purge along with like with the body one cameras and everything, all the other digital evidence associated with this case that lives on the axon, the phone data gets purged along with it.

So is there a reason if this has been you utilized for 12 years since 2014, why the data is still just anecdotal on whether it actually has a tangible percentage decrease in the amount of crimes we're able to solve using it?

And the reason I'm asking is because it is it's been really problematic in other parts of the world in the ways that it's been used, um, and I'll get more into that after our public speakers.

But is there a reason why we're not collecting hard data about how it's helping us solve crimes versus anecdotal results?

Sure.

Because solving a you know, solving a homicide, it's like building a giant Jigsaw puzzle.

Uh each little piece helps, right?

Uh it would be uh uh CellPri is a very enormous piece that helps.

Uh it would be uh uh celebrite is a very enormous piece that helps, but without the other pieces, without your witnesses, is without your uh electronic records from the phones, without your um video surveillance, without you know, tying your um, you know, tying your victim and suspect to the scenes without all these other pieces, even though you have a good piece of evidence, you might not be able to finish solving this case.

It's akin to kind of trying to explain how important or how much video surveillance would help solve a case.

It we all know logically that it's a huge part of this case.

However, without this video, could it be solved?

Possible.

Would it be extraordinary?

But would it be important to the case to have?

Absolutely.

So that's why we I don't I can't I don't have a heart stat and as I stand, I have what I was struggle to come up with a heart stat in terms of like how you know X percentage, other than you know, it's all these things that we need are uh huge part of uh criminal investigation division.

And without one with this part, we would be at a huge disadvantage in terms of solvability.

That I I hear what you're saying, but I'm having a hard time connecting the dots that if it's so significant that we can't actually document how significant it is, how it's actually contributing.

And the reason I'm asking is the same reason I've I brought up issues around Flock, is because the vendor is horrible, horrible.

They are Celebrite is an Israelis Israeli surveillance company whose CEO admitted that most of his employees come from Unit 8200, which is a military intelligence warfare unit that is used to undermine civil rights uh and torture people uh in the countries that they sell their their technology to, and it's been used in in ways that have outed um you know non-heterosexual individuals, used cracking people's phones in order to coerce them into becoming informants, targeted people's.

I mean, the what this is a powerful tool, I don't disagree.

But what I'm asking for is with this vendor, why can't we show after the use of over 10 years of of um data that we can't say Celebrite directly helped us solve these many crimes in the city of Oakland?

And that is why we're using it versus I found four vendors when I was doing a search, and I do not have the the professional expertise that you have.

But I I want to know why do all of the public safety tools that come before this body have such a terrible human rights violation record um and in public uh surveillance record that we have to only use the worst vendors in the world?

If I could find a better or cheaper vendor that does just as effective effective, we would switch over tomorrow.

Well, can you tell us what the process is to investigating other vendors or because what happens with this body is and I hear this with OPD all the time?

The city council is tying our hands.

We can't do A, B, C and D because our hands are tied.

I feel like the city council's hands are tied when we when we are brought legislation, particularly contracts at the last minute at the 11th hour, to have to approve without a full the due diligence being done of investigating other potential vendors.

So I feel like my hands are tied when I have to engage in critical decision making around contracts, um, but have to do it within a certain amount of time because we're gonna lose um you know some continuity because things are not improved in a in a certain time frame.

So can these when you're bringing these forward, can you bring other um because you're right now you're in the middle of reviewing another vendor?

Can you bring at least like when I get quotes for my house, I get three.

Can you bring three quotes of other vendors that you've investigated to see um what pans out the best?

Absolutely, OPD would be happy to continue to do this for um the next annual report and document all the efforts that we have spent and tested.

Um we the the way it works that we reach out to these vendors that um we have not tested before that or maybe vendors that made significant development and asked for a testing unit, and we would test it for about a month uh against our real uh our world rural usage to evaluate them.

Um but OPD will document that on the next agenda report and provide that full transparency in what we have tested.

Okay, so what I want to just say to the public, so you can have a little bit of context for my um concerns here is because we keep having to approve contracts that have been shown around the world to have proven uh violations of people's human rights, and Celebrite has a documented record of arming repressive regimes around the world, and this company's technology has been used to um used against journalists in Myanmar who exposed a massacre, it's been used against a blogger, tortured in Bahrain for criticizing the government, which is something Oakland is known for.

It's been used against a blogger, tortured in Bahrain for criticizing the government, which is something Oakland is known for.

It's resistance models, it's again it's been used against journalists in Botswana, um, who were arrested over social media posts against activists in Serbia, where Amnesty International documented Celbright's tools been used to secretly unlock phones during police interrogations and internal spyware.

Celebrite has been sold, um it has sold its products in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Venezuela, and other countries with serious humans right human rights records, and I just don't want Oakland to be a part of that list of bad actors who continuously violate human rights, and so I will I will end council member uh council president.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Fife.

Council member Houston.

Houston.

Uh sorry.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

Okay.

So what's the what's the timeline to find alternative vendors?

When will you come back to counsel?

We have to identify them and we have to try them out.

Um I think at this point, um, if Council Member Flight wants to name the four that she looked at, we probably have tried most of them, if not all four of them.

Uh, because there is it's it's a space where there is really limited amount of people making these things.

And unfortunately, they you know, Cellbrite's been in this business so long, they kind of have, you know, they had they they have that first step and they're keeping up with the um forefront of that the level of technology.

So that's the problem we're facing.

What's the adverse impact to that approving this item?

So if we don't approve this, will you be able to find other vendors or like what will happen when it comes to like I don't know closing of cases?

Uh help me understand why this needs to be approved.

So if we didn't have it last year, looking at our stats, there we probably over um 200 something devices that we cannot access for data.

Uh and these devices would span over you know, robbery cases, shooting cases, gun possession cases, homicide cases.

So and they all they're all obviously associated with this with the criminal investigation, and we searched these 200 plus devices with a search warrant.

Uh so that is a significant impact.

It's about 30 percent of the device that OPD look at for our criminal investigation.

So one in three devices would not be able to look at by OPD.

Um so I would imagine that would be a significant in terms of our solvability.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

So when when you're looking at like using CellBright and trying to figure out what a totality of number is, it it's it's not as easy as saying we use Cellbright on 30% of our cases.

And because when you're looking at the technology, when you use Cellbright, if you're you using a looking at a a homicide case, if there is video surveillance and and a bunch of really strong evidence, that case may be solved in a very short period of time.

But if there's not very strong evidence, that case may take years to solve.

And if Cellbright was used in that case, let's say the case of four years to finally solve in Celebright was used in that case, now you have to tell the investigator four years later that Celebright was used in that investigation.

So it's it's not as easy as saying we use CellBright on these 50 cases and they were all solved because some of these cases may take time, and so it's very challenging to try and you know, when Sergeant Zhao was saying trying to give it an exact number of how many times this technology was used.

To question with the Cellbrite usage, is this common in the region?

Like which one of law enforcement agencies are using it?

Do we know who's not using it?

Do we know who has alternatives?

Yes.

Um I have spoken to pretty much most, if not all the forensic labs are uh department that uses it.

Uh so the biggest one would be the regional forensic computer lab down in uh Silicon Valley, and that's ran by the FBI.

Uh it's a regional task force that helps with electronics, right?

So they use two major devices, Cell Bright and Grey Key.

Cell Bright is still the device that they defer to in terms of Android extractions.

Uh the Secret Service Task Force, uh, also same day.

Um it's it's a running team when you uh talk to dial them, uh SFPD, uh the Alco Sheriff Department.

Uh just uh was it not maybe not MMB, but is the running team that they um you know these departments or labs have two major devices.

You have Silbright and they have uh magnet gray key.

Great keys pro predominantly used for iPhones and Cellbright predominantly focused on Androids.

Um it's we're not tied to this company in terms of you know we have uh we're tied to it because of necessity.

We have not with there's no one else using some other vendor that are like almost as good or or or as a viable replacement.

If there is a viable replacement, just because of cost alone, I think most of us would switch over.

So that's and that's the unfortunate part.

We're stuck here, we're stuck you haven't using it because it's such an important tool for investigation.

But we did we there's no vendor that would uh that any of us regionally have to identify that we would just prefer to switch to.

Thank you.

Let's go to the public speakers.

Oh, council member Houston.

Through the chair.

So if we stop using cell right, what will happen?

Over probably close to a third of our device, the devices that we seize and want to search as soon into a criminal search warrant and a criminal investigation would not be searchable.

We wouldn't be not previewed of that data.

30% roughly.

Whoa.

A second net.

Umelle's motion.

All right, we have a motion, a second.

Let's hear from our public speakers.

Please.

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

Please state your name for the record before beginning.

If you're on Zoom, please raise your hand so I can easily identify you will be taken after the in-chamber speakers.

Ralph Brown, Emily Wheeler, Keon Bliss, Juan Abanel, James Birch, Simon, I think it's Seaman Lee, Blair Beekman, Peter Alexander, Miss Asada Olabala, Madeline Stacy, Peter Brown, Mitra Zarabeth, Jesse Rosemore, Mark Dudley, Juan Canham, Charlotte Ione, Kathleen Kinney, Nicole Dean, Pamela Drake, Matt Boyd, I think Lori Christine Castro, Francis VN Croto, Sumitra Kelkar.

In any order, please begin.

Peter Alexander, thank you, and uh beautiful blessings to everyone here.

And let's see here.

I want to do a uh uh quick shout out to uh local 81 that gave me this wonderful shirt on May 1st after I talked to them and the students about uh striking the system into submission uh for 40 nights and 40 days.

I am Peter, I am commanding this strike for all time is now, and now is the time.

Now, regarding uh this particular topic, I think that you guys are in really good luck because you have an amazing uh uh alternative.

An amazing alternative.

You go ahead and set a meeting with uh the police chief and you guys with uh Tom Steyer, Elon Musk, Michael Riconazuto, and JD McAfee.

These four brothers possess knowledge, honesty, and sincerity above and beyond most all other wealthy alleged so-called experts.

And even law enforcement is not beyond being controlled by mind control programs.

Uh, I could give you a dozen examples, but let's start off with the most well-known, Oscar Grant.

Umfficer Peroni was a CIA handler who disappeared after Officer Meserly, a total mind-controlled manchurian candidate, shot Oscar Grant.

That's a fact.

And we have the ability to do better for this for our law enforcement.

They need help, and I I'm advising them the best way to get this help.

Now he brought up human trafficking, and I advise you to include Detective James Rothstein human compromise into this operation.

And please know that.

Thank you, Mr.

Alexander.

Your time is up.

If your name was called, please approach the podium.

Hi, my name is Mitra.

I'm a member of East Bay Democratic Socialist of America.

I'm urging all council members to vote no.

Um, like Councilmember Five said, this is an Israeli company.

It is also on the boycott divest sanction list, the BDS movement, and they've tested their technology on Palestinians with the Israeli defense forces.

It's also used by ICE.

So I have to ask what kind of example is OPD attempting to serve.

Let's say celebrate celebrite is actually necessary.

There was no bidding or consideration of other vendors.

But actually, I just learned it seems like there may have been.

So we're not even done reviewing vendors.

So why are we even considering this uh technology today?

This is an ongoing pattern with OPD.

I don't know when it's going to stop, and I don't know how long we're gonna let OPD continue to use our tax dollars like we can't or shouldn't have a say.

But I do not believe OPD needs this technology.

I saw how much it was utilized, but how often was it actually useful?

Also, this is coming from them considering their federal oversight, overtime corruption, and flock house flock somehow getting past public safety and their bloated budget.

How much more tag do they need to play with?

There was no public outreach for Israeli tech during a genocide in Israel bombing my family in Iran.

I really do think some residents would have something to say because these are not separate issues at all.

Last thing I'll say is I read the report, it said that race was not going to be considered in most of these with the new tech and all this talk about equity, racial identity.

I would expect the same from OPD.

So I urge you to vote no.

Hello, my name is Francis Crutot, and I would like to say that you're talking about optics, it's not optics, it's people's real lives.

You are using technology created by Israel.

They are actively committing a genocide, so it's not really an optics kind of situation.

You either choose to support them or you don't.

And I would love to urge you all to please not support this kind of technology.

It's a s it's a fast track to a surveillance state.

It's it's just, it's frankly, it's disgusting and it's kind of disturbing to me that you don't seem more concerned with the fact that you are using technology that has been routinely used to essentially uphold fascist dictatorship around the world.

I think that if it's that important, it that would have proved itself a lot sooner.

Because if you've allegedly been using this for like a decade or so, how come only in the last year you've seen any kind of statistics proving that the crime rate has gone down?

All crime rates went down broadly after the pandemic.

You have no idea if it's causative or correlative.

You're just saying it's causative because it works for you to call it that.

Um speaking to you, lovely, lovely um city council members.

Please, please, please vote no.

Do not give them 140,000 to then send to a company that is.

Hello, my name is Soma Thrakelkar.

I'm a longtime Oakland resident and former OUSD science teacher.

The city of Oakland should not in any way, shape, or form, invest public funds in businesses that operate out of a country whose entire society is militarized and structured to exploit, subjugate, and exterminate other human beings.

If OPD is allowed to spend our public funds on a contract with an Israeli company, we will not be able to trust that our information and identities and those of our neighbors will not be sold to entities like ICE and DHS who seek to do us harm.

It is unreasonable to believe that an Israeli surveillance technology firm will not exploit our contract with them to put our community members at risk on the grounds of their immigration status, political activism, or country of origin.

We've recently made major strides towards protecting public safety and reducing violence throughout Oakland and the ceasefire lifeline program, which has delivered the lion's share of these benefits, is a system built on personal relationships and trust.

City Council must not jeopardize the public's trust in our public safety policies by allowing OPD to enter into this contract.

Since I have time left, I will also say that yes, they have said that the data will not be shared with the company.

Uh the data will belong to OPD.

Uh, but given the history of what Israeli surveillance technology companies have done and what former members, former and current members of the Israeli defense forces have done, it would be extremely foolish to believe that promise at face value.

Madeline Stacy, hello again.

Um I spoke at the uh public safety committee meeting about this, and so I'll say a little different things this time.

Um Google locations, your Google searches, your password manager, your photos of your children and your grandchildren, your news, your private messages, universal forensic extraction devices, celebrate, are used to extract the maximum amount of information possible, which can then be promically searched with the amount of sensitive information on our smartphones today.

People call it a window into the soul, our cell phones are a window into our soul.

And so my question is do we really really need to look into that window?

I I talked about the um usefulness of this tech before, and um council member Fife said almost exactly what I had written in my comment asking if it's 30% of seized phones are Androids, and we need this specific tech for those 30% of phones, then what percentage of crimes are solved due to keyly solved due to this technology?

If it's a big puzzle and there's all these different pieces, do we really need this piece of the puzzle?

It might expedite it, but at what cost?

What percentage of crimes are solved, like I said, but solely due to data extracted?

What are the stats of lives that are being saved with the information that's extracted?

Where is that data?

What exactly are we gaining from relinquishing?

Jesse, you're out of order.

That's your final warning.

That is your that is your final warning.

Do not do not touch that.

Please speak.

Oh my God.

Okay, so um, please vote no on this.

OPD's lying about this, they were lying about Flock.

And um, you know, it's not just Ken Houston that uh mistreats the public.

Um, you know, one of the lies that we're gonna hear about this is that this isn't used against activists.

And um, you know, I went to the Flock vote at in Alameda City Council at Alameda Board of Supervisors two weeks ago, and I was mistreated by the council member there.

Um I was giving an interview with KQED.

He walked by with a smirk on his face and said my name over and over and over and over.

So, what I would like to know from you all is how we can trust you to like have this technology not be used against activists when members of this city council are mistreating activists now.

It is not just Ken Houston, it is also you, Council President.

Your behavior reflects on the entire city council, and the people that witnessed this behavior that I'm mentioning, they said that this was intimidation, harassment.

I felt intimidating and harassed.

You're reminding me that you know my name in this specific moment at the specific time when I'm asking another elected body not to sell us out the way you and these others have.

You wanted this item to be on non-consent.

You didn't even want, are you on this item to be on consent?

You didn't even want us to talk about this.

This will be used against activists.

There you have council members as models of this kind of misbehavior already, now.

Hey, thank you, Jesse.

Uh Nicole Dean, Care for Community Action.

Democracy's great, right?

We get to have these conversations together.

I want to thank my honest and principled council member uh for District 3, Carol Fife for keeping this no-bid contract off of the consent calendar.

Oakland is supposed to have a commitment to equitable contracting, right?

So why are we waiving a competitive bidding process for two politically controversial surveillance companies that are run by literal white nationalists?

Like, I genuinely want y'all to answer that question.

How are we committed to an equitable competitive bidding process, but we want to waive this one for literal white nationalists?

This contract warrants community input and a competitive bidding process.

Instead, this council is bypassing committee once again, telling residents that we have to choose between safety and human rights.

That's a lie that I'm really, really tired of hearing.

We can use technology as part of our public safety strategy without investing our tax dollars into a company that is aiding in a genocide and attacking journalists and activists on behalf of authoritarian governments around the world.

I'd like to see OPD turn their GPS trackers on before asking for more invasive spyware.

Maybe use the resources they already have.

OPD brings all of this urgency to these discussions like they did around Flock.

Three months later, they haven't even executed the contract that they pressured you all to vote for, that they told you you have to vote for it or we're gonna be in trouble.

They haven't even executed it.

Thank you, Ms.

Dean, your time is up.

Council Member Wong, did this bypass committee?

Um it was a three to one vote.

Yeah.

It went to committee?

Yes, it went to public safety.

Matthew Boyd, Care for Community.

Uh, in addition to what Nicole said, um this seems evasive when we're talking about the competitors to celebrate.

I know it's a small vendor space, there's pretty much gray key and there's celebrate.

And celebrite is preferred for Android, is my layman's understanding.

But I think it's a misrepresentation representation to say that if we only had great key, like all Androids would be off limits for us.

Like is there an analysis of how much worse it is?

Like when asked if there'd been a side to side comparison.

I think the wording was I don't want to say the name and kind of put them on the spot, but like it's great key.

There's nobody else, as far as I know.

Um so what happened when they compared them to side by side.

Like if we're going not going to have a bid on this, shouldn't we at least be able to answer that?

Hey.

Hello, my name is Mark Dudley.

I'm here as a tech worker and an Oakland resident in District 2.

I'm here speaking against 5.3.

I do not think our company, our city should be entering into contracts with companies like Celebrite Technology.

This is a company whose bones are based on the exploitation of a CAFA population, and with a history of harassing folks for speaking up and at least one product suspension for enabling the targeting of civil citizens by an authoritarian government.

A company with a history like this can never be a trusted partner.

And we certainly shouldn't be paying for the privilege.

Drop the counts, drop the contract, counselors.

There are better uses of 140,000.

Thank you.

Hi, everybody.

But usefulness alone is not enough justification for adopting powerful surveillance technology without strong safeguards, oversight, and public trust.

A cell phone today contains nearly every aspect of a person's life.

Private communications, financial information, medical data, and um information about family members and third parties who are not even under investigation.

Um this level of access demands extraordinary care and accountability.

This is a no-bid contract involving technology that raises significant civil liberties and human rights concerns nationally and internationally.

And I know that the Israeli government has used this against my family and people as well.

Oakland shouldn't move forward with this with this technology and without demonstrating that civil liberties and democratic oversight are being fully protected.

So we want both as says as residents, we want both public safety and civil liberties, and those values are not in conflict.

Please vote no.

It has raised a lot of questions about the work, uh, the workflows and lack of independent auditability, which prevents defense experts, courts, and the public from reviewing how the data were extracted, parsed, and interpreted.

So if for any reason you do go with some kind of phone extraction, uh, it needs to be an open source, not closed proprietary data workflow data that can't be analyzed by anyone.

This will lead to um accusations that can't be verified independently, and so you should also look not just at which crimes you saw, but which how many crimes, how many people were accused and then found not to be guilty of anything or just guilt by association?

So thank you.

Your time is up to the present there, he is.

He's awake.

Um Pamela Drake with the Wellstone Club and the Progressive Working Group.

And I just want to say we had a lot of talk earlier about Oakland youth, particularly Oakland Black and Brown youth, and the idea that we can't connect the dots between I will.

I mean, how these kids, first of all, they'll have no privacy, they'll have no protection for their families with these kind of companies being allowed in to take up every bit of their information.

No protection.

If if you look at the fact that right now the president is trying to get into the poll workers, the volunteers in Atlanta, Georgia, and get information about them so that he can persecute their families, and you think that can't happen here.

I think you're being a little naive.

But the fact that we're also then continuing to donate to companies that commit war crimes day in and day out.

Does everybody know who Hint Rajab was and how old she was when she was murdered with her family?

This is not hyperbole, people.

The young people that spoke here are the people that are voting in the future, and they're watching you.

Well, I thought I thought white people on top of everything.

But last year, I came to you and told you you approving a contract that was based in Israel, and nobody said anything.

You didn't say anything while you were discussing the reasons why this contract should be approved.

Nobody spoke about Israel.

They're not gonna talk about Israel.

They're not gonna talk about Israel.

But you were given the information by me, and you approve the contract, and I told you it was based in Israel, you did it anyway, so y'all they're gonna approve the contract, they might disapprove the contract, but they're not gonna talk about Israel.

Their political careers would be at risk if they do that.

How can a city that for 23 years plus you have had human rights violations of black people based on your police officers, excessive force, racial profiling, and you sit here and you haven't been able to take them and put them in place around that issue and come in compliance with the NSA, but you won't talk about all over the world, human rights violations, and your police department, human rights violation, but African Americans, you can't fix it.

But all these people coming up here talking about Israel, they're not gonna say nothing about Israel.

They're not gonna talk.

Thank you, Ms.

Olabala.

If your name was called and you're in chambers, please approach the podium.

At this time, we'll be moving to the Zoom speaker, starting with Emily Wheeler.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Emily Wheeler.

Hello.

Um my name is Emily, and um I am here to ask City Council not to enter into a no-big contract with an Israeli terror firm.

Um this council claims to support a ceasefire in Gaza, but you're bankrolling the genocide there by funding this horrible company.

And additionally, OPD should not be rewarded for failing to follow Oakland surveillance law.

It's really, really simple to just have a competitive bidding process.

There's no need to approve this no-bid contract.

Uh, and I am especially disappointed in Councilmember Ramachandran, who specifically ran on cleaning up City Hall.

Yet now instead of reviewing these contracts and requiring them to go through the competitive bidding process that they really should be going through, is more focused on social media.

Um, so please do your job, City Council, and please uh do not send this contract through without a bidding process.

Thank you so much.

Have a great day.

Ralph Brown, you are next.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Ralph Brown.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

All right, we will come back to you.

Simmon.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hi, my name is Simeen.

Um, I currently mostly work with unhoused people to support their rights, which are being violated life and right without um much uh dispute from the city council.

But in my past life, I worked with the Potomac Institute of Policy Studies and worked on um analyzing racial bias in machine learning.

And I think it's telling that no one has brought up how a cellularite uses generative AI to help summarize which chat threads are important and relevant as reported by the Business and Human Rights Center, as well as their own website.

And generative AI is flagrantly racist.

Um, there was a paper published in Nature just in 2025 that shows the trend has deepened that AI generates covertly racist decisions about people based on their dialect.

Um, if you look at their findings, they found that if uh you someone uses the word FINA, sorry, I'm not African American, um, or ain't or in, and depending on their inflection, there are far more likely to associate negative stereotypes with someone, um, including calling them dirty, lazy, stupid.

And in fact, it's gotten worse over the time because researchers have tried to scrub current uh racist language.

They're starting to bring up racist language from uh years in the past.

So I would very much encourage you to not support this uh genocidal company and consider some other companies that aren't using um such terrible practices.

Thanks.

Juan, you are next.

Can you please confirm your last name for me?

Uh hi, yes, this is Juan Albanel.

Thank you.

Please begin.

Hi, yes.

Um, I'm Zahan.

I'm a tech worker uh with digital security experience, and I'm here to urge the members of the council to vote no on this motion.

Uh, like council member five and others here.

I am very tired of having to show up to city council meetings to push back against 11th hour requests from OBD to use limited public funds on technology that even a very quick online search will show you are just evil tech with little to no evidence of positive public safety outcomes.

Cellwright has a documented record of human rights violations as already mentioned by others here.

We should really not be supporting a company with our public funds that has done such evil abroad.

I won't repeat all the things that we already said in Israel and Serbia and other places.

Um, but more importantly, it's it's been used on minorities to discriminate against them.

It's been used on journalists and activists assignments to silence them.

And while I understand that these sort of perfect criminal scenarios might sound like good use cases, the reality is that they can and will be this technology can and will be abused on our most vulnerable neighbors.

This is a no-bid contract, and the OBD representative already said that they're not even sure if the other tool they were testing perform worse because of bad luck.

So clearly there's still work to do here.

At the very least, we should push back until we have properly completed an honest analytic analysis of other alternatives.

So council members, if you vote yes, I promise that all of us who talked in opposition today will ensure you are either not re-elected or recalled.

Vote no.

Ralph Brown, please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

You know, I think it's rich to hear council members uh like Jenkins wax poetic on the need to enforce uh open's laws, and yet uh as many of us have noted already.

You know, I think it's riffs to hear council members uh like Jenkins wax poetic on the need to enforce uh Oakland's laws, and yet uh as many of us have noted already, last December, seven of y'all sat there and ignored the city's surveillance policy and sanctuary ordinance to force a two million dollar no big plot contract through that your dumbasses are now being sued for at our expense.

And here we are again, about to do the exact same thing to waste more money.

I don't know how many lawsuits will it will take before you actually start following the law and stop listening to these numbers on OPD.

First of all, it's a costly waste of resources, considering that uh Celebrite's price jumped 46% from $96,000 to $140,000, despite no competitive bidding to justify the price hike.

OPD cannot tell us how many of its hundreds of extractions actually led to arrests or solved cases.

That money should go to violence prevention or mental health crisis response, not just some unchecked surveillance.

But here we are, uh contracting with an Israeli company whose tools have been used by totalium regimes against dissidents, journalists, and most importantly, civilians, most recently during the Gaza genocide.

OPD claims no other company makes this technologies, but that's actually false, considering that there are multiple alternatives that have been documented by uh organizations like Upchurf that show gray fix um and and other Charlotte Ion, you are next.

So please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hello, my name is Charlotte.

I live in District 2.

Um, this contract is a mistake, and it fits into a constellation of recent decisions by this council.

You hand in millions to flock surveillance, breezing past the fact that crime is falling, a lack of solid stats from OPD, a record of bad behavior from Flock, and the overall ethical ickiness of doing business with a company that is 100% enthusiastically down with mass deportation and mass detention.

Last month you empowered OPD to harass unhoused people and push them to the literal margins, creating literal maps of where those who can't pay rent are allowed to exist.

No one was surprised where you wanted to put them, and no one was surprised that it comes at a time of sky high rents, a housing market stuffed with tech dollars, cuts to HUD, and so on.

Now OPD is back asking for more toys, and this body seems poised to back to put back on the blinders.

La la la, Palantir, Israel, who cares?

Something something force enhancer.

President Jenkins, you balked at the label fascist being applied to members of this council.

Well, sometimes when you carry this much water, you get a little wet.

Uh I won't be speaking on the next item, but you can imagine I'm saying the exact same thing.

Kenyan Bliss, you are next.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

I'm calling on this uh council to vote no on any uh continuation of uh Celebrite or its technologies, given uh what everybody has just said uh from its costly waste of resources, uh, to the fact that OPD has used Celebrite for years without following uh Oakland's own surveillance laws, which now the department is asking you to stop tracking the racial data that already shows 65% of the people whose phones were cracked uh by this Israeli company are black.

Not only does this hide the full impact of racial profiling on Oaklanders, but it is also prevents us from actually measuring whether Celebrite is worth uh this additional cost.

That's not transparency.

That is a cover-up at the city taxpayers' expense.

Considering the fact that Celebrite is an untrustworthy company that profits off oppression across the globe, particularly of black and brown folks like many of us in Oakland.

Uh, Oakland is a sanctuary city.

Yet most of you are about to hand a no-bid deal violating uh and waiving your own uh competitive procurement process and procurement integrity in order to award a company that has 48 million dollars invested in ICE as we speak, helping to target and kidnap our immigrant neighbors.

I would I appreciate Council Member Fight pulling this contract, and for good reason.

This should not be what our city spends money on.

Please vote no.

Listen to like listen to what your constituents are telling you.

Blair Beekman, you are next.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

All right, Blair Beekman.

Uh thanks for everyone's public comment.

Uh, this has been a good learning experience for myself for this item.

This item was brought to public safety committee, I think March 2st or so, 19th, something like that.

Um I was really impressed that um uh council president at large brown and um council person wang a bit, they were questioning the item.

And um seem to have genuine concern that they are hearing from the community and that uh different practices for uh this item need to be developed.

Uh it was stated at that meeting that they could come back in a year's time to better uh clarify different uh uh sources and choices for future sites self right.

I've been offering at public meetings.

Can that be in a six-month time frame?

Can we speed that up a bit and get some sort of uh standard going?

How is the ALPR process going of the new vendor?

Um, can that come to at least a public meeting sometime soon just to give anything update on what how that is going overall?

Uh I've heard uh some stories that I would like to better clarify in future meetings that uh concern me about uh is the block contract actually taking place right now that was supposed to be uh of an urgent order back in December.

Um otherwise, thank you for your efforts on this.

It's part of a large series of things we're talking about uh towards P.

Juan Canham, you are next.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hi, I'm Juan.

I'm a D4 resident, a member of DSA.

I'm once again asking what the hell is wrong with this council.

Most of you run as Democrats, I think.

I'm not sure about Houston, to be honest.

Yet you sit here finding more and more ways to shovel taxpayer money into the hands of fascists.

OPD think you're stupid.

They're claiming they can track evidence for years, yet they can't track what tools they're using.

Come on, they're lying to you.

Uh, this is at least the third piece of tech they've given credit for the decreasing crime.

First it was fluck, then it was the speed cameras, now it's this.

There isn't anything they won't claim they need renewed immediately because it caused the decreasing crime, that honestly had more to do with the actions of this council bringing back ceasefire than any of these technologies.

Uh Ramachandran specifically ran on cleaning up City Hall, yet now instead of that, instead of reviewing these awful contracts, requiring they go through competitive bidding processes, you seem more focused on making TikToks.

It will be nice if you spend as much time digging into these million-dollar contracts as you do on your social media.

Uh Celebrite is in particular an Israeli hacking firm whose turn whose tools have been used against Palestinians, journalists, and citizens in repressive regimes around the world, including by ICE here.

How can the council claim to support a ceasefire?

Yet you want to keep funding the war on Palestine by rubber stamping the stodgy deal.

OPD already used Celebrite for years without following the law.

I guess thank you for your comments.

At this time, all names have been called.

If your name was called and you wish to speak in your chambers, Laurent Zone, please raise your hand as steps at the podium.

There's a motion and a second.

There is a motion in a second on the floor.

Move by Councilmember Guyos, second by Councilmember Houston to Yeah, I just I do want to make some comments.

I'm the chair of public safety, and um, you know, I take those responsibilities extremely serious.

And I think after the conversation and the public comment that we had in uh public safety, I really did a thorough review just to see how really my values match up with this contract.

Um, I want to say that it is undeniable that Celebrite has been used by authoritarian regimes to surveil activists and journalists without consent.

I don't want to downplay that.

Um is being used with this technology is it is heinous, it is anti-democratic, but what's also not being told is that it is also widely used in democratic nations, known for being at the forefront of human rights to investigate violent organized crime and human trafficking.

These countries include Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and New Zealand, which rank at the very top of worldwide rankings for human rights and freedom.

And yes, I do want to acknowledge that these countries are fairly homogenous.

They don't have the racial diversity that we have, and we know that black and brown communities have been historically unjustly and unfairly surveilled.

That being said, in the United States, the use of Celebrite is bound by the Fourth Amendment.

The courts have established with Riley versus California and ruled that police must obtain a warrant before searching a cell phone using this technology.

It's that fourth amendment protection that distinctive order is the use of that technology here in the United States versus the use of this technology in these authoritarian regimes.

And because this technology is so widely used, both domestically in the United States and internationally, we're not going to make a dent in Celebrite's financials by not signing a hundred and forty thousand dollar contract with them.

And what we will do is undermine our own ability to solve violent crimes.

It's just been this last year that we've been able to bring up our homicide clearance rate, which has been an abysmal 50%.

And those families, which are also disproportionately black and brown, also deserve justice.

And much of that improvement has been credited due to the use of surveillance technology.

Due to our police severe under our severe police understaffing crisis.

And it's because of this that these surveillance tools that are needed.

If we had enough officers, it wouldn't be so critical to have technology like this.

No, I hate to say it, but I have to confront that reality every single day when I go on International Boulevard.

Just two weeks ago, the police rescued four juveniles in one night that were being exploited on the blade.

This was actually an article talking about the controversy around this this technology.

But Kaylee Haywood, a 15-year-old girl, met her killer through Facebook.

When her body was found, police use a special phone unlocking device to extract information.

That was Celebrite from her badly damaged and locked cell phone or a smartphone, which helped them track down who had been messaging and their whereabouts.

This evidence helped uncover her groomer, okay, Luke Harlow, and her killer, um, her the neighbor here.

Anyways, the point is I've also independently verified that Celebrite has an integration with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

So we do have trade-offs to make.

Um and I do want to see that in a year from now that we do have an RFP process, especially when we have this incredibly controversial surveillance tech.

I will say from my own review, they all look problematic.

They are all being used in some sort of problematic context.

Um, but what we do have to do is we have an obligation to protect our citizens and and to use this technology um wisely um here in the city of Oakland.

Thank you.

We have a motion as second.

Uh Councilmember Fife.

I think this is a very worthy debate, which is why I wanted to have it on non-consent versus consent.

And I I do want to appreciate the comments made by my colleague that you know, Celebrite was used in this one case to identify a groomer that later killed a victim that is tragic.

What I want to see is concrete data.

So I want to ask for three specific things when this item comes back because I know fear is a hell of a tool when it comes to uh directing elected officials who are not able to say that Israel is a uh is a terrorist state that is perpetuating genocide on um Palestinians to this date, and the reason why they're able to have technology that is so advanced is because they utilize fear of all of these governments from either governments that want to control and oppress or governments who utilize the tool of fear to beat police departments in the United States over the head for you know utilizing their technology.

So you get you can be an advanced uh organization or company when you soak up all of the resources to advance uh this problematic tech.

But that said, um, the three things that I want to make sure that we bring back to this item when it comes back in you said a year through the chair?

Well, earlier than that, but yes.

Uh it if it's earlier than that, what are we?

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure when the annual reporting is do you actually it should come back in front of um public safety March or April next year.

If the annual reporting cycle runs.

Okay.

Um April, actually, I mean dull.

April.

Um, and and I want to be super clear because people always um you know try to frame me as anti-public safety when I think um when I have questions, and I think it is our diligence as uh council members to ask these tough questions.

So I want to ensure that the three things that come back in April, if if this is allowable according to the parliamentarian, for a review, a thorough review of all of the market of all of the different vendors, because I I talked about the four that I found, but I you know, because council member Wong mentioned Sweden, they are using their own version of uh Celebrite type technology um in Sweden that could be potentially reviewed, but I want a full review of all market vendors that are available, and I want to understand, even if it has to be discussed in closed session, um, what are the other vendors that have failed the test that you required?

Um I understand that that could lead to potential litigation if it was discussed publicly.

So I want to, but I want to understand who you're testing and how they're failing.

Um I want to get an independent legal analysis.

I'm asking to our city attorney what what we need to do in order to have a legal analysis of this contractor's data access and and their policies because it has been abused in other places, and I would like a public uh reporting of how extractions are actually leading to a decrease in crime, particularly part one crimes, if we're saying that it's having an impact in the city of Oakland.

If we've been uh using this technology for 12 years, the in a in a uh uh a trial takes four years, then we should still be able to look back and say we use celebrate on a certain type of of case, right?

I would think that if we're using celebrate sell, celebrate, I don't know.

Um we should be able to identify all of the cases that Cellbrite is used on, correct or incorrect.

We do track all the cases that sell buys have used on.

The last three annual reporting have success stories.

Um and we will OPD will try to OPD will figure out a better reporting in terms of how these usage and DSS stories leads to decrease.

I understand what you're asking.

So yeah, that I think that data is critical, so we move from anecdotal into actual.

So even if it's a little checkbox, I don't I don't know the um technology.

I will find out how you create reports.

Celebrite was Celebrite was used, and then later, four years from from now, or whenever the case is solved, the case was actually solved or not.

Um so I I would I think we need to get concrete data so we know what we're um getting into.

I don't support the use of this vendor.

Israel is a genocide state, they are utilizing their power and their control and their monopolies in the public safety sector to uh address, I mean to to monopolize uh law enforcement agencies around the world.

And so I would like and I will share with you the different agencies that could potentially be investigated for future contracts.

Thank you.

Okay, to the parliamentary uh to the chair to council member five's questions about um those other items.

So I would recommend that that would be a separate item.

Uh you could work with my office and we could come up with the title, we could schedule it rules, perhaps like an information report that would cover that information.

But a lot of that would go be beyond the scope of how this is noticed for this particular item.

So let's go to the royal on item 5.3.

There was a motion by councilmember guile, second by council member Houston to adopt the staff recommendation.

Councilmember Brown.

Aye.

Councilmember Fife, no.

Councilmember Guile.

I councilmember Houston.

Aye.

Councilmember Ramachandran.

No.

Councilmember Unger.

Aye.

Councilmember Wong.

I and Councilmember Jenkins.

All right.

Motion passes.

Going to item 5.4.

You are adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into a three-year agreement with peregreen technologies for the provision of a law enforcement records search platform and related services for the Oakland Police Department at a cost not to exceed 1 million 24,000 for the time period of July 1, 2026 to June 30th, 2029, and waiving the competitive request.

I'm excuse me, waiving the competitive multiple step solicitation process in the local small business enterprise program.

We have 21 speakers on this item.

Evening again, Council members.

To give a quick background what this is, uh OPD had a have used policy with this technology.

I think almost 20.

So prior, we were using our um, well, currently we're using what's called crime tracer, and it's different iterations as the vendors call it.

Um essentially is a uh search dashboard for uh for the police department.

Uh OPD feeds in uh informations uh such as reports, stop data, traffic tickets, um SHASPR activations, um essentially records that will show up in the public record requests are fed into this database that allows OPD and other outside agency that shares access to uh research, uh conduct research of our records or particular things.

Uh that allows OPD and other outside agency that shares access to uh research, uh conduct research of our records for particular things.

Uh, what is not fed into is when we don't feed flock data into it, and that is not something OPD isn't asked to be uh fed into.

Uh the way it kind of works is that when we were using Crime Tracer, we run, say I'm looking for a purple Honda court with a black door.

We feed into it and it searches the records that OPD have access to for any dimension of this particular thing.

It allows ease of access of data that we already have, and if we're sharing this data with other agencies, allow to see into regional data that we have access to, such as SF, um San Dieandro or Richmond.

Uh so we've been using this as crime tracer.

The problematic thing that OPD uh had with Crime Tracer uh it was that it was not auditable, uh meaning our data is fed into this uh into Crime Tracer, and OPD has a hard um does not have a clear insight into who have access to our data, who sees into our data, and who uses our data.

Uh, we've been attempting to identify a secondary or a different vendor uh for a while.

The other thing that also locks OPD into particular vendors is that which agency chooses uh this vendor.

So when uh if you know we we would like access to SF's data, we want access to all the regional partners' data.

Uh if they're no longer if they're not in a particular company or particular database, we don't have a vision in that.

So years a couple years back, I think SFPD was within Crime Tracer, and we're able to see into SFPD's data.

Uh as the regional agencies transition to peregrine, we no longer have views into those uh agencies.

So as it stands today, OPD does not have any view into uh SFPD's data.

Uh and obviously the other problematic is that we're using Crime Tracer, our data is fed in and it's uh and we don't have a control over it.

We can't opt out of other agency viewing into our data using crime tracer.

Whereas Peregreen allows us this um audit ability.

Um with with with the way um their system is set up.

I OPD would have individual oversight over searches of conducting our system as well as what agency that we have allowed access into, what they view in terms of our data, and obviously it's an opt-in process.

So OPD can pick and choose which agency we share our own data with, uh meaning we can control access to only a local um regional partners and not allow uh other um uh agencies uh to use our data that we have with not prior approval or MOU understanding with.

But obviously, even with California laws, this data is not shared with federal partners or outside of California, just given the uh the law within California.

Now, the cost well the cost of the crime tracer contract for the next three years, which we lock into is about $800,000, and obviously it's uh up to a million dollars.

OPD does use this technology significantly.

Uh we conduct tens of hundreds of thousands of searches, and this is primarily use both by uh responding patrol units as well as criminal investigation uh investigators.

Uh responding officers usually tend to use this by making simple follow-ups on uh reports are taken, such as license plays or names they provide it.

Uh you know, something like John, John Robby, and you know, they might conduct a search in terms of any John that was contacted within this particular area to such crime happen and see how valid that is.

That's the basis of it, or like a license play.

Uh or when they go when they are dealing with a particular residence, the history, or all the prior reports that OPD has made or receive regarding this address and determine like what kind of situation they're dealing with.

Criminal investigation division use it in terms of following up leads, uh, allow them to sort through the reports that are available to them at a you know much faster rate uh because it searches all our reports and field contacts as opposed to using RMS and different data uh system to kind of find the one piece of looking for.

And a lot of these other uh record management system we're using are not that search friendly.

Um so it greatly reduces the the amount of work investigator need to in looking up a particular lead or particular information regarding a uh a case or investigating.

Uh these tends to become in forms of you know um researching a victim's um history or contacts in terms of homicide, right?

Like uh whether they have prior contact with other people within particular area or other ongoing issues that they have, or a particular vehicle they're looking at that the investigators are looking for, where did this vehicle has been contacted by you know police officers or seen in other areas, it speeds up investigators' uh ability to sort through all of the data that they already have at their tooltip or fingertip, fingertip, and it's it dramatically reduces the amount of hours that they need to go through reports, right?

It speeds up investigators' uh uh ability to sort through all of the data that they already have at their tool tip or fingertip, fingertip, and it's it dramatically do the amount of hours that they need to go through reports, right?

Especially with OPD's staffing at this point, that uh anything like this would greatly enhance our efficiency.

And again, I also you know, finally this gives OPD the ability to control our data and audit our access of data.

Um, and that's what OPD is here asking for.

And we're also wanting to be that due to my regional partners moving to Peregrine, we're stuck in terms of following with if we want access to their data, we have to follow on that platform.

If we choose to stay with crime tracer or we choose a different vendor, we will not have access to the agencies that went to uh Peregreen and vice versa, obviously.

With that, I'll take any questions.

Thank you so much.

Any questions from council members?

Councilmember Field.

Do we have any data on the um part one crimes that have been solved?

What would our solve rate is for 2025 or 2026?

I don't have the annual reporting in front of me.

But we have that okay accessible, right?

Or no?

Because the last uh the last I recall is 2024, and so I was just wondering if we have if that acts uh if we have access to that information.

What's the most recent?

Maybe.

Um so a little bit of data that I have in terms of search and uh usage in 2024.

Um over 400 OPD users have conducted 204,000 searches into this platform.

I I apologize.

Could is it DC Johnson over there?

What is it?

AC ACDC.

Council member.

I did not do that on purpose.

Do you know or do we have access to our investigation reports on solve rates for 25 or 26 yet?

So, what our current what our current rates are at for see here.

So currently our part one crimes were where we're at now as far as how many versus this year versus last year.

I'm asking because I was in my latest research, it says that the solve rate for part one crimes um through investigation was three percent, that we solved three percent of our part one crimes in 2024.

And I understand that that's up.

I just want to know how much.

Uh let me see if I can find that my email here real quick.

Because I'm trying I'm trying to ascertain how this technology, and I I want to state for the public that this is a palantier created firm, and they are creating a uh mass um system of surveillance, and I have the same concerns with this technology that I had with the other one, and it just feels like again, the only people we can contract with because uh the region is contracting.

Um it gives us access to other bodies in the region.

Within yes, within here in the Bay Area in California.

Um are we doing the same?

So it doesn't even matter if we wanted to use a less problematic firm because we wouldn't have access to the other this is that is correct.

Crazy.

This is wild.

Okay, there's nothing to say then because it feels like the impetus for wanting to engage with this palantier firm is because everybody else is using it.

And it just makes it it is part of it, and when you look at all the other surrounding agencies that use this, it's being able to share that information with these agencies.

As we know, crime doesn't have borders, it doesn't just happen here in Oakland, doesn't happen in San Francisco or St.

Leandro, but being able to share that information with each other helps us combine our forces in hold those accountable who are committing crimes here in Oakland in all over the Bay Area.

So being able to share that information with each other is is a great tool and a very useful tool for our investigators to follow up on crimes that have occurred and hold those accountable okay.

Thank you.

I don't have anything else to say other than we're screwed as the human race.

Council member Guy, Pusha Butter?

I motion approve Steph's recommendation.

Okay.

We got a motion, Councilmember Houston.

Do the chair um when council member five says solve rates, is that um has that been prosecuted through the district attorney's office?

Is that how that would work?

Would you mention that I don't have an answer to how that particular numbers um calculate it?

Uh just speaking from experience, I can only tell you to solve for homicide, how that's calculated.

How's that calculated?

Um OP to calculate homicide solve as charged by a DA's office.

Oh, so not just an arrest.

Okay, got it, got it.

Thank you.

I'll second it.

All right, we have public speakers.

Let's go to our public speakers.

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

Please state your name for the record before beginning.

If you are participating via Zoom, please raise your hand so I can easily identify you.

We will take the speakers in chambers first and then take the Zoom speakers immediately after.

Blair Beekman, Missisado Labala, James Birch, Madeline Stacy, Mitra Zarambaff, Jesse Rosemore, Lori Castro, Kathleen Kinney, Mark Deadley, Buffalo Sojourn, Matt Boyd, Pamela Drake, Nicole Dean, Sylvie Crota.

Please approach the podium.

Go ahead.

Madeline Stacy.

This platform software will consolidate a wide range of residents' personal information, including geospatial mapping into a mass surveillance data base that is vulnerable to security risk and constitutional privacy violations.

Paragreen is currently working with the National Fusion Center Association in an attempt to implement nationwide to be implemented, excuse me, implemented nationwide in fusion centers.

They brag about it online.

These fusion centers, federal immigration enforcement agencies like ICE, can have access to our local data in violation of state and local law.

We may put amendments and guardrails into place now, but those can not only be ignored by agencies like ICE, but can be changed further down the line, as is being done with the ALPR policy in the Privacy Advisory Commission on Thursday.

Accepting this tech starts us down a slippery slope.

Millions of data points aggregated into a platform which prides itself for being a leader in predictive policing.

Predictive policing is simply a method of automating the already existing disparities faced by a constantly over policed community.

In Santa Cruz, predictive policing and companies that provide predictive policing were banned in 2020 because they, along with other cities, saw the danger it would have on communities of color who are already victims of targeted over policing.

The only way to lower crime is to fund community programs that treat the root causes of crime, not by continuing to increase an already inflated police budget.

1 million 24,000 OPT contract.

That's big money.

So I think actually a contract with crime tracer is also a bad idea because I think predictive policing is a really bad idea.

I guess what I think of it is sort of like um like a dog chasing its own tail in the sense that you say, well, there's more crime in this area as based on our data of where more arrests are made.

Therefore, we're gonna put more cops there who can then make more arrests in that same area, which means that there's more crime in that area, therefore we need more cops in that area.

That's a circle.

It's not logical.

It doesn't feel like it's contributing to any kind of lasting solution as far as making people safer or like I don't know, putting us on a path towards things that we want to create.

It seems like another way of allowing surveillance to expand its boundaries and to um give awful companies like Palantir a foothold in Oakland, which is something that I think they don't deserve, and you shouldn't give to them.

You definitely shouldn't pay them for the privilege of.

Um in general, I would say that I think I believe that all of you could act in a really wonderful way by choosing to um vote against this contract.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Mark Dudley, and I'm here speaking against 5.4.

These tech oligarchs cannot be trusted as stewards of Oakland's data.

I recognize the tune they play suggests greater transparency, but these people have shown time and time again to be lacking scruples.

This is not a mom and pop tech shop, and the fact that they are being fast-tracked through this local business enterprise process seems ridiculous to me.

They are a venture capital funded firm with a 2.5 billion dollar evaluation.

I think they can afford a proper bidding process.

These folks do not care about us.

They do not care about what we want them to do or not do with our data.

Their only animating belief is chasing exponential growth and damn anything that aims to stand in that way.

Tech has long plagued the Bay Area with its ethos of move fast and break things.

Our right to privacy and our community should not be one of those things.

At some point, we have to stand up to these people and say enough is enough for that region.

I urge council to reject tightening the relationship with Peregrine.

Thank you.

My name is Jesse Rosemore.

I would love to see the OPD come with a no-bid contract for something that fills out their timesheets, other than this.

We have fascist tech contracts coming here before you, and we know you're all gonna vote for it.

Um, but they're filling out timesheets with a pen.

Um this like rampant overtime fraud, and meanwhile, uh they're asking for this nonsense.

Um, you know, in the public safety committee, there is a question about facial recognition as it came to this, and uh OPD's response for an inability to give a real response was kind of telling.

Um, you know, I'd like to see you ask them uh you guys lied to us about Flock and said it won't use facial recognition.

Now this data is going to go into Peregrine and use facial recognition.

So where does it end?

Um, you know, I I he cut you guys could at least insult us with some performative amendments and say that this technology doesn't do exactly what it does.

Um, you know, kind of say that, oh we aren't doing what we are doing right now, and we're just gonna go on this uh fast track to authoritarianism and fascism with this six uh first termers that are just uh kind of going off on this right wing untethered path.

Where does it end?

Where does the ball end?

This is the people's house, and we will one day take it back.

Vote no on this.

Hello, this is Mitra with East Bay Democratic Socialists of America.

I'm here to encourage you all to vote no.

And before you bring up a specific story to uh defending fascist technology, I want you to remember that every time a crime is quote unquote directly solved because of this technology, that hundreds of people are ending up in prison for minor offenses, no offenses, racial profile because of um because of tech like this.

And if you're going to vote yes on this fascist technology, I would really appreciate it if I heard your justification before you just put our lives away.

I'm glad Oakland's going to end his contract with ShotSpotter, but Peregrine is far from the answer.

Um the city of Durham rejected Peregrine after public outcry, Alameda County last week postponed the vote because of its AI usage.

Algorithms are coded for predictive policing.

It's going to create crime out of racial biases, a suspect of a suspect, and details that are unnecessary for a criminal case because all of a sudden to finding someone's years in prison.

This is because it relies on historical data in coding.

Today I read in the police car building it on a police car wrote building relationships to the community.

How in the world is this instilling that ethos?

We are handing data off to a third party that's going to decrease public transparency, and like Flock is gonna give that uh data to ICE, and they're going to access that data.

We need people, not fascist technology.

The quotes, all the attachments were from Peregrine, all from cops.

Where were the community leaders talking about, oh, I love Peregrine.

There's none.

One second.

Are we getting rid of Spot Shatter?

No.

Um Crime Tracers owned by Shah Spader.

Thank you.

Yeah, Dr.

Loni Castro, um, I oppose this contract with Peregrine for all of the reasons that have already been mentioned, but also this predictive policing combined with AI is very dangerous.

Oakland does not have to be at the forefront of this.

This is something that you can go slow on.

Uh this other cities are now reconsidering or not doing it.

You will will not be alone in that.

Um, but again, it's this built-in opacity, it's kind of black box policing.

Uh it's very dangerous.

The algorithms and and all the data that they collect, even the systems engineers can't parse out what's going on.

So if one data point, for instance, um, if there's an error in perhaps a false gun gunshot detection, that's put into the system.

It combines that data point with all the other inputs, and these can compound the errors, and you can't even figure out where the error originated and how to address it.

So these police departments have not shown the value of this, and you don't need to be at the forefront of this.

Oakland can go slow on this.

Thank you.

Hello again, Kathleen Kenny, District One.

Um, I hope this doesn't go the way the last vote went, honestly.

Um I'm opposed obviously to this uh this contract.

We're being told that Oakland should adopt the system because other regional agencies uh are using it and it makes it investigations faster, but everyone else is doing it is not a sufficient standard for Oakland public policy, especially when we're talking about expanding surveillance in infrastructure.

Paragreen was built by the former Palantir executives, they pioneered large-scale aggressive uh aggregation of surveillance and law enforcement into searchable intelligence systems with my people in Palestine.

That model raises profound concerns because it concentrates enormous amounts of information, expands the government's ability to monitor track and profile people in jurisdictions.

And believe me, as an activist here in this community, I certainly don't support this effort.

The issue here is not convenience, it's power.

When multiple agencies feed data into interconnected systems, oversight becomes harder, mistakes spread, and surveillance expands quietly over time.

I'm I'm uh I hope you won't approve this no bid contract that further embeds Palantir stuff.

Desmond, before you begin, I do not have a card for you for this item.

Oh, you don't have a card.

Got one right here.

Well, I think that's ridiculous as being a citizen and a resident of district six.

I should be allowed to speak.

So if you didn't turn it in, Desmond, the rules have to apply equally to everyone.

Do you want him to come up there with you?

So no, no, no, he has to come up there with you.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I can't talk.

Go up.

Thank you.

And Desmond Jeffries, District 6 resident.

Technology is moving faster than policy.

That is bad, and there is no regulation or oversight.

These private companies have a monopoly and will have more data than our very own government and you guys.

We have Silicon Valley and SF Tech right in our backyard.

We could create a position in-house.

If there is a security breach, how many times has that happened?

Who's gonna have our data?

Is it gonna be staying within the nation or is it gonna be all around the world?

Around the world.

It's gonna have all our information, our pictures, our passwords.

No one will be safe.

We need to err on the side of caution.

We need, and it's okay to slow down and hold on this.

And so I move forward with resolution one.

I hope you guys are right.

We need to not do business or have contracts being solicited to states that take away voters' rights, such as Florida, Texas with the gerrymandering, and of course DC right now with the current administration.

Second, we need to do have a resolution to not have contracts with organizations and companies that are committing genocide or human rights violations around the world.

We need to keep the money here.

We could have this debt.

Thank you, Desmond.

Thank you, Ms.

Olabala.

Your time is up.

Simeon, did you fill out a speaker's choir?

Oh, okay.

Moving to the Zoom speakers.

Keon Beliss, you are first.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Mr.

Bliss.

Yes.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Um I'm urging this council to vote no on this terrible uh peregrine contract and just to call out how OPD and specific members of council like uh Wong and Houston uh are collaborating to tech stack uh and build this massive surveillance infrastructure that will be used uh by ice and uh the federal immigration agencies um using what paragraph markets itself as predictive policing, a soft like you know, a model of policing that is widely discredited as unscientific and prone to automatic racial profile.

And it uses historical crime data to flag people in places, but when that history is polluted by decades of racist over policing of black and brown communities, that's not actually fighting crime, it's just automating racial profiling on a massive scale.

Alameda County just delayed its own peregrine vote after massive public outcry over exactly this issue, and but the city claims or OPD claims that there is an urgency because the current contract expires June 30th, but this is a manufactured emergency.

Staff knew about these deadlines for months and chose not to start a competitive RFP process.

Voting yes under pressure means voting without independent security audits without cost comparisons to other vendors and without real public oversight for those reasons and more.

Mr.

Brown.

Okay, we'll come back to you.

Emily Wheeler, please begin your comments.

Hi, um, my name is Emily Wheeler.

I am here to comment, although it's not like you really listened to the last set of comments very well.

Um just chills for fascists, and I really hope you don't pass this.

But regardless, you all suck.

Have a great night.

Thank you, Ms.

Wheeler.

Trying Mr.

Brown again.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Mr.

Brown come back to you again.

Juan.

You are next.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Um hi, this is Juan again, uh tech worker uh here in the Bay Area, just urging members of the council to vote no on yet another evil surveillance technology.

Um predictive policing, as mentioned already, and and specifically its use of artificial intelligence is prone to racial profiling and discrimination.

There's endless studies on this.

Um we are eventually effectively just going to put people in jail who do not necessarily deserve to be in jail and who are not here to voice their concerns, unfortunately.

Um also just generally, there are so many better ways to spend a million dollars when it comes to public safety.

I feel like this we often forget to talk about this because of how evil these technologies are.

So I will just briefly remind ourselves that there are many understaffed under-researched programs that Oakland runs that would love help that would love a million dollars or even a chunk of that, uh, supporting youth services, community outreach programs, and so on so forth.

Preventing crime is certainly a much better system than trying to police uh more aggressively.

And just uh uh as I said in my first my earlier comment, just look who's showing up here.

Uh it's people across districts, across backgrounds, every single one of them so far in opposition to this contract and the one before it.

So once again, council members, I urge you to vote no.

If you vote yes, we will come at you at upcoming elections, a special member council member Wang and Jenkins.

I know you have that one coming up in 20 in this later this year.

Or if you're not coming up, we will try to work on recall.

Um so vote no.

Simeon, you are next.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hello.

I would also like to um encourage the council to vote no, echoing everything that people have said about racial bias and predictive policing.

Um look at ground faking papers from black uh academics, like Joy Blowony, who wrote gender shades showing how basically predictive policing essentially it's very good at repeating trends.

And clearly the biggest trend in America is how people of color and black people are continually punished.

Um police.

And I think there are so many programs that you can spend this money on.

I can give you a taste of predictive policing.

I'm currently working with two individuals who are in active DB situations.

I have been calling centers, churches, places to see if there's a place that they can stay because there's not enough shelter.

And I'm very sure that something very bad is going to happen very soon.

Yet there's not enough money for them to actually have any shelter or any protection.

And how is this gonna help them?

Tell me.

Thanks.

Blair Beekman, you are next.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Mr.

Beekman.

Sorry, got it.

Ready.

Uh thank you.

I don't know what happened.

Claire Beekman, uh, I'm back to my old self again.

Uh I'm not fully understanding how I'm like a few steps behind and it hurts, but I'm trying to keep up.

And uh thank you for the fact that you've had two really important items here today that I think very much are considered what you've worked on previously with the flock issue.

Alameda County is seriously questioning their future of flock come July.

San Diego is actually, you know, uh now starting to openly talk about leaving Flock.

So I mean, I think that should be a really important point uh in this time of continual war, that we actually can be talking about um technology of best practices, and to do that in a time of war, uh really says something important.

And I know it's difficult for you guys to do that at this time, especially you know, Zach Gunger is trying to work on a declaration about opposition against war in Iran.

Um, how can we bring that all together without insulting Israel at the same time?

And I think there's ways to do that.

I think if we talk about US democracy, the importance of civil protections in law, uh, you know, our best practices and still practicing good public safety.

Uh, we have to learn how to have that conversation more openly.

And I thought you guys were gonna have that conversation today.

You're not really having it.

We have to be working on that stuff, and then we could be doing really important work that you're trying to do for this item.

Please try to work on it.

Ralph Brown trying you one last time.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Mr.

Brown.

Let's see, Juan Canyon.

Does that conclude all speakers?

Juan, please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hey, I'm Juan.

I'm still Juan.

I'm still a date for resident.

I'm still unclear what the point of this council is.

Why not just give out Office of Doland or which have office again cost us the most money a year, a credit card and see how much they can rack up, then retroactively approve it like we do for the overtime.

Uh Peregrine was built by former palantir executives.

Well, they haven't put out a finest fascist manifesto.

The tool predictively flag like the tool's predictive flagging is just a minority style, minority report style tech veneer on a tool that will primarily be used to report minorities, because that's how data analysis in a fundamentally racist system works.

Again, this is a bad contract for bad tech, owned by owned and operated by fascists.

OPD know that, which is why they're asking for yet another rubber stamp.

If you pass this, it's clear there's no oversight in this city.

This council should just be replaced by the drinking bird toy that just approves whatever OPD requests, uh, regardless of what voters want and how much it violates our rights in order to shovel money into the hands of fascists.

Uh I see the rest of my time.

Okay, trying Ralph Brown one last time.

Please unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yeah, uh, if this council had any integrity that wasn't paid off by Power Oakland and Revitalizing Spay, uh, the story that OPD is telling you should make serious.

Um here's what OPD has admitted to, both in privacy committee and uh here.

Their current database platform has no barriers to outside agency access and no tracking on who searches open data.

Any agency any anywhere could have been searching our police records, and OPD has no idea how often or by who uh we're doing so.

That would be a scandal in any sanctuary city uh with integrity.

But so OPD solution is to ignore procurement integrity and rush through a no-big contract with a more expensive vendor, peregrine uh that we know has billions of dollars invested uh in federal immigration agencies.

OPD has had up to nine months to issue a RFP for competitive bids uh but did nothing of the sort entirely their fault.

Many yet here they are manufacturing a sense of urgency um for you to push through and vote on this multi-million dollar contract.

Alameda County just delayed the same vote on this technology based on widespread public outcry, and this council should do the same.

But I don't have any faith that you're actually gonna do so.

But I would love for you to prove me wrong.

Oakland should actually follow their lead and not repeat the mistakes that it's already done.

That's getting it that's currently has it uh being sued uh for its recent block vote.

Is that kind of thank you for your comments?

All names have been called.

Councilmember Houston.

Yes, through the chair, I'd like to thank um Councilmember Wong for doing her thorough research as a chair of public safety.

Um, she says she takes this very seriously, and as the vice chair of public safety, I do too.

And I just wanted to make sure I heard what she had said because she does real thorough research.

She has said they needed a search warrant um before they could implement this.

Is that what you heard, Chair?

Or do the chair is that what you said, Councilmember Wong?

Yeah, and that was the prior technology.

So do is that the same?

Is it's across the board or does it even apply to anything?

I would maybe OPD can take this one in terms of the use of a warrant to to conduct these searches.

So for this technology, it's not a search warrant, it's a dashboard for us to search it.

Perhaps it might be easier if I could kind of take it for what OPD used to use and how we're using it now.

Yes.

Um, so when I first started in 2008, uh, if I want to search a report, right?

If I get an information of John Smith did this, I log into our RMS system and I go person and type John Smith.

If this person was listed in the police report under the proper subject name, that pops up.

However, if John Smith was listed in the narrative without two that we have packed in that we're actually still using now, that would not pop up.

So that narrative is gone.

We I we won't, I won't have any searches like that.

Um 2012, we bought the earlier, earlier, earlier version of crime tracer.

I forgot what it's called now.

That searches narratives of these reports.

So now, you know, John Smith pops up.

So we're certain so um um and and this peregrine also does similar things, right?

We're feeding police reports, stop data, um uh traffic citations, um, uh our emails into it.

It doesn't do predictive, we're not using for predictive uh policing.

It's allowing us to look for all our records to find something that's written down.

So that's what we're using it for, and obviously, we also ask you to share and see regional agencies information so that when I run John Smith, that I can particularly see that in their written narratives.

We're not feeding uh flock, we're not feeding uh license plate image into this database.

That was good, thank you.