Yes.

Good evening and welcome to the public safety committee meeting of Tuesday, June June 9th, 2026.

The time is now six.

Oh, two PM, and this meeting may come to order.

Before taking roll, I will provide instructions on how to submit speaker cards for items on this agenda.

If you're here with us in chamber and would like to submit a speaker card, please fill one out and turn one into myself or a clerk representative no later than ten minutes after the start of this meeting or before the item is read into record.

Registering to speak via Zoom is now due twenty-four hours prior to the start of this meeting time.

This meeting came to order at six oh two p.m.

and speaker cards will no longer be accepted ten minutes after, making that time six twelve p.m.

Uh sorry.

We'll now proceed with taking roll.

And Chair Wong.

Present.

Yeah, just one announcement.

Uh, due to the number of people that we have in the room, and we want to make sure that we can get through all of the public comment in a timely manner.

We are going to limit public comment to just one minute.

Okay.

Thanks, everyone.

We are limiting the public comment to one minute.

Starting off with item number one approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting of May 26, 2026.

We have no speakers on this item, just need a motion.

Thank you.

We have a motion made by Council Member Brown, seconded by Council Member Five to accept the draft minutes from the committee meeting of May 26, 2026.

On roll council members Brown.

Aye.

Five.

R.

Houston.

Aye.

And Chair Wong.

Aye.

Thank you.

Item number one passes with four ayes to accept the draft minutes as is.

Reading in item two, determination of schedule about standing committee items, and we have one speaker that signed up to speak.

Okay.

Great.

Um, anything from the administration before we go to public comment.

I do thank you, Chair.

Um, through the chair, item number two on our pending list, no date specific.

We want to go ahead and remove that because it is a duplicate item.

Great.

Okay.

Calling in the name that signed up to speak on item number two, Blair Beekman.

Okay.

He is not on Zoom.

Chair that concludes all speakers for this item.

We just need a motion.

Councilmember Brown.

Oh, I'm five.

Thank you.

You want to move it?

Okay.

Councilmember five, second.

Thank you.

We have a motion made by Councilmember Houston.

Seconded by Council Member Fly to accept the determination of schedule outstanding committee items as amended, noting the withdrawal of item number two under the no date specific.

On roll council members Brown.

Aye.

By Houston.

Aye.

And Chair Wong.

Aye.

Thank you.

Item two passes with four ayes to accept the pending list as amended.

Now reading in item number three.

Adopt a resolution awarding grants to 21 community-based organizations for community violence intervention services set forth in tables one and two for the period of October 1st, 2026 to September 30th, 2029, in a total amount not to exceed $38 million, 100 38, 100,000, and authorizing the city administrator to negotiate and enter into grant agreements with the named grantees with authority to extend the terms of the grant and modify the grant amounts as set forth herein.

And we do have over 60 speakers on this item, just noting that as this item has been read into record, it is now too late to sign up.

Okay, thank you so much, Madam Clerk.

Uh Dr.

Joshi, this is the major item of the night.

The floor is yours.

Thank you.

And thank you for everyone who's come.

The Department of Violence Prevention is here to present our recommendations for community grants for the period of 26 through 2029.

I understand the advocacy in the building this evening.

I've been in the agency director's shoes, working to keep the doors open and services flowing in an Oakland-based nonprofit is not an easy job.

I've read each advocacy email in each letter sent.

My lack of response does not signal lack of awareness, understanding, or lack of compassion.

Instead, it represents my commitment to my duty to follow the city contracting process, which includes not interacting with CBO applicants about the RFP process during active and open RFP process.

So before I get into the slides, I think it really is important for me to put tonight's presentation and associated conversation within the context of the funding landscape that we were all facing as community violence intervention practitioners.

The field of CVI, despite a growing body of research that speaks to the efficacy of this work, is underfunded.

We know what is happening at the federal level with the closure of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and large cuts to CVI grants across the country that have impacted us here in Oakland.

CVI is underfunded by the state, and in Oakland, our total investment in CVI is approximately $22 million to include $5 million from the general purpose fund and the measure NN dollars that we are here to discuss tonight.

So considering these realities, the resources we have available to us to allocate to CBOs through this process are clearly not enough and do not adequately address need, and very challenging decisions have to be made.

So we are um recommending awards to 21 community-based organizations for community violence intervention services from October 1, 2026 to September 30th, 2029.

The total annual amount is approximately 12.7 million, and the total amount for the three-year period is 38.1 million dollars.

And please keep in mind that we are updated by finance each year as to what the actual revenue amount will be.

And so we're usually being presented with um estimations until the measure and and revenues are come into the city and are solidified by the finance department.

So just as a reminder for everyone in the room, Measure N passed in November 2024 and replaced Measure Z.

That is really an important point because some folks who weren't here during the Measure Z and Measure Yes believe that this is new money.

It really is replacement funding.

This is a sustainability fund for the city at this point.

It does not represent deeper investments in CVI or in our CBOs.

It allocates approximately 40% of the annual tax revenue to violence prevention services.

75% of that 40% that comes into the Department of Violence Prevention must be allocated to community based organizations in the form of grants.

Just one additional note about the money flowing out of the city to community-based organizations.

Although we are grateful for the voters passing Measure NN, the CBOs did experience a reduction in overall funding because when the city was in a stronger financial position, we would supplement Measure Z funding with general purpose funds.

And it, of course, the city council also invested one time reimagining public safety dollars into CBOs in 2020.

So again, Measure NN is 16 million plus estimated for violence prevention services.

12.7 will be allocated to the CBOs, 4.2 million is kept internal by the DVP for our staff that administers the grants and for some of our direct service providers currently working on the lifeline, the ceasefire lifeline strategy.

The measure requires that the department that all departments receiving funds develop a three-year spending plan, and that is exactly what we did.

We presented that spending plan to the Measure NN Commission as required by the statute in June 2025.

That spending plan that informed the RFP process focuses on evidence based community violence intervention services.

The spending plan built off the values and service priorities that we identified in the 2022 through 2024 spending plan, and that spending plan was based on an extensive community engagement process.

It involved town halls, focus groups, and interviews with a wide range of stakeholders.

We updated those findings based on surveys with staff at CBOs and the DVP, interviews with the leadership at those CBOs, surveys of participants, best practices in the growing fields of community violence intervention work, and of course, findings from the Urban Institute's evaluation of Measure Z services.

The final plan incorporates what we already knew to be true about CVI work and new insights and lessons learned, and it outlines the evidence supporting each service.

The plan focuses most specifically on individuals who are at the highest risk of gun violence or gender-based violence in Oakland.

The core tenet of community violence intervention work is focusing prevention and intervention work on individuals at the highest risk of violence.

It is not upstream services for individuals who may be at risk in the future within the city of Oakland.

Many upstream services are covered through funding sources, including OFCY, EWDD, employment development.

This is our gun violence criteria.

It must be documented in our system.

This is how we will ensure that our agencies are working with the highest risk.

I know that question has been asked of the Department of Violence Prevention by numerous council members who are concerned and committed to making sure that tier one or Oakland's highest risk individuals are served through these proposals.

With that being said, I'm going to turn it over to the deputy chief, Jenny Lynchie, who will go over this request for proposals process, which I know folks have questions about.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Council.

Jenny Lynchy, Deputy Chief with the Department of Violence Prevention.

We undertook a structured competitive request for proposals or RFP process to award this funding to agencies.

One important thing to note is that the RFP process has two components to it.

The first component is that applications that are submitted go to our city's citywide contracts team.

They review the applications for all required application elements, and then agencies that meet those criteria, that screening are then forwarded to the department for reading and scoring, and that's the case with all departments as with the Department of Violence Prevention.

So we first undertook an RFP process that started in December of last year and closed in February.

Unfortunately, when the DVP received the applications that were approved by the citywide contracts team to do our review and scoring, we 14 of the 41 that were submitted were deemed ineligible based on technicalities with the application process.

So that's a 34% failure rate.

We felt that that was unacceptable.

We consulted with the citywide contracts team and the city administrators' office, and we're told that we only had two options.

One was to accept that failure rate and continue with the agencies that were deemed eligible, or to cancel the RFP entirely and to reissue it.

And so we elected to cancel the RFP and reissue a new RFP in order to establish a fairer process that allowed more agencies to pass that initial screening, which again was simply technicalities around submission.

So the second RFP, which is what these funding recommendations are based on, was released on March 13th.

It closed on April 1st.

In that process, we received 40 responsive applications from the citywide contracts team for review and scoring.

That was out of 44 entities that attempted to submit applications.

So that was a 9% failure rate.

So we reduced it from 34% to 9%.

We then undertook a very structured review and scoring process that involved three reviewers reading and scoring every application.

The citywide contracts team requires that three individuals review and score all applications, but they do not require that any external reviewers are included in that process.

They can all be citywide or city staff.

But we elected to have teams composed of two internal DVP staff members and one external reviewer with expertise in the service category.

As an overview of our funding recommendations, we're looking to award funding for a three-year period from October 1st, 2026 through September 30th, 2029.

The total funding awarded is 38.1 million, which is 12.7 million dollars per year.

We are looking to allocate 22,875,000 to gun violence services and then 15,225,000 to gender-based violence services.

And we are looking to fund a total of 28 or sorry, 21 total community-based organizations, and that is the same number that we currently fund.

So we're continuing the number of agencies.

Okay, so we are keeping our investment in gun violence services relatively constant.

We are increasing from 7.5 million to 7.625 million.

That's essentially cost of living increases for staff.

The way that we conceptualize our gun violence services is into core services, violence interruption, hospital-based intervention, life coaching, and youth diversion.

Those are the services by which we identify and engage individuals who are at highest risk of gun violence in Oakland.

Then we have support services, emergency relocation, housing, employment, healing, and family and victims services that are primarily available to individuals who are engaged through this core services based on need.

You'll see that some services, specifically housing and employment, appear to be potentially duplicative from services that are funded through other departments in the city.

We have entire departments that are focused on employment and housing.

But it's really essential that the Department of Violence Prevention fund specific versions of these services that are tailored to the unique needs and safety concerns of individuals at highest risk of gun violence.

So some examples of the unique needs and considerations of this population are that individuals at highest risk of gun violence cannot travel freely throughout the city.

Even within specific regions of Oakland, it's not safe to travel several blocks from where one may stay.

And so services need to be mobile.

They have to be brought to individuals where they are.

Another example is that group services are very unique for our population.

Individuals cannot be in groups with other individuals who they are in conflict with.

So if an agency is delivering group services, we have there has to be a deconfliction process where you understand the allegiances of the individuals and take precautions to make sure that again individuals in conflict do not come into contact.

A third and last example is specifically related to employment.

It's often safer for individuals to seek employment opportunities outside of Oakland because again of the concerns moving safely throughout Oakland.

So across our core services, we are proposing to fund 24 full-time direct staff members who will serve at least 288 individuals, and the annual funding for that is 4.55 million.

We envision this to actually be closer to 200 unique individuals because we expect individuals who are served through the hospital-based intervention strategy to then be referred to life coaching or in some cases youth diversion.

So if we take that 200 number of unique individuals, and we add that to the DVP's capacity to serve approximately 150 unique individuals through life coaching, we get 350 unique individuals served through these core gun violence services.

And you may remember that the California Partnerships for Safe Communities that conducted an audit of the ceasefire lifeline strategy back in 2023, found that at any given time in Oakland, there are approximately 350 individuals who are at highest risk of drawing or driving gun violence.

For our support services, we are looking to fund 16 full-time staff who will serve approximately 400 people at a cost of 3,075,000 per year.

These 400 individuals are some of them will be duplicate individuals, but we should still have capacity to serve the 350 who are being identified and served through the core strategies, as well as some additional individuals who will be who can be referred through other pathways.

A group of individuals, again, approximately 350 who are at highest risk for drawing or driving gun violence in Oakland.

I should also note that the emergency housing relocation services will be augmented by a $500,000 grant from a philanthropic partner that the mayor's office was able to secure through a partnership between the DVP and the city's Department of Housing and Community Development.

So that work will be enhanced by with the hiring of a full-time housing navigator and additional funds for relocation.

One thing to note here is that there was a typo in the resolution for this item, which says that $275,000 is being awarded for housing services to Bay Area Community Resources.

We the overall funding amount in the resolution is correct, but it's just that one line item.

There's a typo, and the city attorney's office has confirmed that we can amend that and submit an updated resolution to full council.

Moving on to our gender-based violence services.

So similarly, we conceptualize these services as being divided into core services that result in the initial identification and engagement of individuals at high risk, highest risk of gender-based violence, and then support services that are available primarily to those individuals based on need.

We're increasing the investment by 1.66 million, going from a current 3.4 million to 5.1 million overall.

So across our core services of crisis navigation hotlines and life coaching, we are looking to fund 15 full-time direct service staff members who will serve 371 individuals at $2,675,000 per year.

This we are thinking of as really being closer to $275 to $300 unique individuals because the hope is that crisis navigators refer to life coaching.

So again, the unique population is closer to $275 to $300.

We are significantly increasing our investment in crisis navigation services.

We're going from approximately 4.5 full-time crisis advocates to seven.

This is a response to a few things.

One, feedback from community organizations that it's incredibly hard to staff full-time crisis response services, and additional resources are needed in order to adequately do that.

We also have heard that OPD is looking to increase their human trafficking operations, and so we want to ensure that we have enough capacity to respond to that while also maintaining capacity for domestic violence response.

And then one last thing to note is that crisis navigation services will also include street outreach.

And then for life coaching, we are significantly increasing our investment in life coaching.

We currently fund two youth life coaches.

We're going to a total of eight youth life or eight life coaches, four focused on youth and four focused on transitional aged youth.

And this is resulting from the fact that the two current life coaches are always at capacity.

As well as findings from the Measure Z evaluation that was conducted by researchers from the Urban Institute.

This was one of the number one findings as it relates to gender-based violence services was that we need more capacity for life coaches and individuals who can serve as the quarterbacks, the individuals who are navigating people through services and who are holding them through the process to make sure that they don't slip through the cracks.

And that just one last point on the life coaching.

That makes sense to us from a gun violence standpoint because that's what we use as well for gun violence services.

Our life coaches serve that quarterback role and are very effective in helping people access different services and move through barriers and challenges they face.

For our support services, healing, housing, and legal services, we are looking to fund seven and a half full-time direct service staff members who will serve approximately 420 people annually at 2.4 million per year.

Again, if we're looking at serving 275 to 300 unique individuals through the core services, we should have capacity to serve those individuals through the support services plus additional individuals who are identified through other referral pathways.

We are increasing our investment in housing services by 275,000 here.

Housing is seems to just be the number one support service need for this population, no surprise given that in the Bay Area, but also again unique to this the population of survivors of sex trafficking and domestic violence.

And so what we are looking to do is fund a variety of different housing options that can respond to the unique needs and preferences of individual any individual.

So we have emergency hotel stays, we have relocation assistance if individuals are looking to get out of Oakland, we have rental assistance if individuals are looking to stay in their homes but simply need support paying rent.

We have shelter for youth, for transitional aged youth, and for adults, and we have transitional housing for youth and for adults.

And so we again we're really looking to meet people where they are in terms of what they need.

And then lastly, partially in response to concerns that have been raised by this body previously, we are strongly prioritizing performance management in this in the upcoming grant cycle.

So we will be establishing service deliverables and service benchmarks in partnership with the community-based organizations that we get into contract with.

This has always happened since Oakland Unite, but what is newer is that we are aligning service deliverables and benchmarks with evidence-based models.

So things like number of contacts per week, number of in-person contacts, those expectations are being raised and are being aligned with evidence-based models and with practices implemented by the DVP's own direct service team.

The service deliverables are reviewed by the planners and program officers within the DVP who manage the grant awards on a monthly basis so that they can see how agencies are progressing in terms of meeting their deliverables before a quarter ends and it's time for invoicing.

So in circumstances where they are seeing that agencies are falling behind, they can have conversations ahead of time proactively to understand what's happening and to work together to address any service concerns to provide training, support, capacity building, whatever is needed.

If those, if that attempt at support and proactivity is not successful, and we do continue to see deficits in deliverables over time, we can do payment withholdings of up to 20% based on not meeting the scope of work deliverables.

And then ultimately, if we are seeing that services are not being delivered as expected over an extended period of time, we can terminate grants early and reallocate funds to different a different agency.

Secondly, we have participant surveys that are expected to be completed when individuals complete services.

The surveys ask questions about the quality of the services delivered, the service experience, and then also the impact of services.

So the changes in individuals' lives, behaviors, thought processes, support systems as a result of services so that we can really start getting at impact.

And this is a way for us to continually be hearing from and learning from individuals who are who are directly impacted so that we can be adjusting services and service models based on that feedback.

We also, this grant cycle re-implemented program site visits where program officers and planners go out to agencies, they observe programming, they meet with staff, they review documents to really get a better understanding of what services look like.

We are also will also be doing annual fiscal audits during the upcoming grant cycle to review backup documentation for invoices.

This unfortunately is in response to prior experiences that we have had with agencies where we have discovered that funds were not being used appropriately.

And in some cases, we have had to terminate grant awards due to that.

So we really want to make sure that we're being good stewards of public funding.

And then lastly, of course, we will always support and participate in impact evaluations that are conducted by external evaluators.

So we know that the Measure NN Commission is tasked with hiring an external evaluator to evaluate NN services, and we will obviously fully support those efforts, and it's written into the contracts with our community-based organizations that they will also need to support those efforts through focus groups, surveys, interviews, whatever is being asked.

That concludes our presentation.

We are happy to take questions.

Okay, great.

I also just before we go to colleagues in public comment.

I know this is thank you for so much for the thorough report, and I know this is incredibly important work.

Measure NN is something that is critical to get right.

Also, as you know, especially the topic of human trafficking and domestic violence, the gender-based violence services.

I uh care a great deal about, just um, so just thank you guys for the work on that.

Um, Councilmember Brown, you have a comment or question.

Yes, um, I I have many questions, but I'm interested in hearing from the public speakers first, but before that I wanted to just get some clarity on the um, I guess the amendment that was mentioned, um, because Bay Area Community Resources in the tables, they are they have two funding allocations, so can you just clarify what the error is again?

Yes, it's for the housing services for gun violence.

In the resolution, it says 275,000 annually and 825,000 over the three-year period.

That should be 300 and 900.

Okay, excellent, thank you.

Thank you.

Uh council member uh Houston, go ahead.

Through the chair, I wanted to come back up.

Um, I want to be clear, and I'm gonna say this, we in East Oakland are the most at risk with this gun violence period.

Point blank.

And some of the individuals that I know have mentioned and said is how's um East Oakland being represented?

And I want to know how is East Oakland being represented, but before I ask that, I got technical questions on the technology and the platform that we were using the first time.

And I saw some percentages.

I heard you say nine percent and then a 34%.

So tell me on that what was the old platform and what was the new platform and the individuals that did qualify for the first time.

Were they put in a placeholder to qualify for the second time, or was it done over?

So again, the RFP process entails applications being submitted through a platform called iSupplier.

Initially, when applications are submitted and received, they are reviewed by the citywide contracts team to ensure that they have all required application components.

Um, then they are forwarded to departments for review and scoring.

In the initial RFP process, 34% of the entities that attempted to submit applications did not meet the criteria, the just the administrative criteria necessary to then be advanced to the department for review and scoring.

And so our only options after consulting with the contracts team and with city administration were to entirely cancel that RFP and issue a new one.

So to your question, no, the initial agencies that applied and that did meet the criteria were not held in abeyance and and preserved for the second cycle.

All agencies had to reapply to the second RFP process, and in that process, only four agencies or nine percent were deemed ineligible for further review and scoring.

Okay, thank you.

And through the chair, I want to find out, and I'm hearing East Oakland is not being represented.

So through these nonprofits that were chosen and they were ranked by their application, how can we clarify?

Like I said, East Oakland, we, we in East Oakland are the highest at risk.

Yes, through the chair, absolutely.

As you're aware, the Department of Violence Prevention is completely committed to East Oakland.

I am personally connected to and committed to East Oakland, both Deep East and all the flatland areas.

I think the statement or the assumption that East Oakland is being left out of the service provision priority because there's not enough in some folks' eyes, agencies that are located in Deep East Oakland on the list of recommendations, is either a very strong talking point, or it's a lack of understanding of how community violence intervention work is deployed in this city today.

The way that community violence intervention work is deployed in this city is not based on the geography of the community-based organization.

It is based on the reach of the staff that are from Oakland that are credible messengers and that have the ability number one to be safe across the city and to do their work anywhere in the city, but also for the agencies doing the work, hiring to staff that have specialization in specific areas of the city.

As we all know, Fruitvale, including the track in the Blade area, San Antonio Park, West Oakland, and Deep East Oakland are the areas of most concern that have been historically impacted by gun violence that continue to be at the top of our list for priority areas for gun violence.

As an example, a practical example of what I'm describing, the Department of Violence Prevention is based in downtown Oakland.

I had my staff run a heat map, which I'm happy to share with everyone, to indicate where is the Department of Violence Prevention staff currently focusing our priorities, meaning from the highest risk clients that we serve in the Department of Violence Prevention, where are they most often coming from or where are they most often living?

And to no surprise, the reddis areas are the hot spots, the places that have the most clients are deep East Oakland and West Oakland Flatlands.

So again, the location of the community-based organization matters in many service categories.

If you are providing a drop-in center for particular population in your neighborhood, it's important that people can access the drop-in services in their neighborhood.

If you are providing medical supports where people need to come into the physical building and they can freely move in and out of their neighborhood safely, those are important geographic considerations for where the physical building is located.

But for the way that community violence intervention is deployed, including life coaches, hospital-based intervention, violence interruption, the expectation is that us as an ecosystem are hiring to staff that have expertise in particular areas of the city, and as a team, we can deploy to those areas.

We as CBI practitioners have to go to where our clients and participants are, not the other way around.

We're not the expectation is not the clients and participants are coming into the physical location on a regular basis.

In fact, if we're all working with the highest risk populations that are currently at the highest risk of either drawing or driving gun violence, then we understand that even our clients that are laying their head in deep East Oakland or West Oakland at night are not free to even oftentimes move three to five blocks outside of where their house is, let alone move completely freely all over East Oakland.

That's not how the service population is moving in this city.

And so I just want to stress that our investment in the entire city, but specifically where the need has historically been and continues to be, will remain intact.

Through the chair, thank you, Doctor.

Um, I wanted just to make sure, and I saw numbers 275 and 300 of the high risk tier ones.

I want to make sure that money is going to my brothers and sisters that are tier ones.

Is that going to be shown in the data?

Absolutely.

So first and foremost, based on your concerns, based on other concerns made by council, based on the evaluation done by California partnerships back in 2023 that led us to this path where we are focused on the highest risk individuals.

The entire RFP process was meant to rank and score agencies based on their application and capacity described to serve those specific individuals that you're asking about.

Thank you.

You answered my my third question.

So I got a couple more, but I'm gonna pass it on and at the audience bank because I want to get into the audience.

Okay, great.

Um, before we move it to the audience, I just had a couple of quick uh clarifying questions.

Um, so there was a 1.6 million increase in the GBV services.

Is that uh on an annual basis or overall?

Okay, yes.

And um, other question, this is directed at the procurement team, which uh I believe is online.

Um, so just I would love to understand in terms of process since there were two um there were two rounds or not rounds exactly, there was the first RFP.

Um 34% of people were failed out, uh, as we understand, or not eligible, whatever the term is, and we did a second round.

Can we get clarity as to why is it that the only option is to restart the whole process?

So, and for the record, Brad Johnson, Director of Finance, and we have our contract and purchase again.

Laura Gonzalez Woodward on Zoom.

If uh Laura, please jump in if I uh you need to provide any initial context.

An RFP process is designed to be a level setting, impartial process by which uh organizations, contractors, uh community-based organizations present their best uh pitches to the city as to how they will utilize scarce dollars to execute on a resource.

When we go out and do a round, we are bound if we are going to follow sort of ethical and procedural standards to follow that process either through the end or terminate it midway.

We cannot put our hands on the scale and allow favorable treatment to one group of applicants versus another.

We have to allow it to move directly through the entire process from the beginning to end.

When it was discovered at the application stage that we had a high level of failure of uh community-based organizations submitting applications to this program and it was such a high rate, the termination was made at that stage, it was probably a flaw in communication or the process, and so the appropriate thing to do was to go back to the beginning and give everyone a fair shot from the beginning to apply with it to the additional round of noticing, and that is actually how we have to do procurement across the entire organization to not have favorite treatment to certain applicants versus others.

We have to treat everyone in the same process.

I would note this is analogous to hiring when we when you all apply for an application, there's a deadline to where you can apply to for a job, and we can't open the application period later on because we'd like to get a couple more applicants.

We have to have a fair impartial process that is governed by rules, and the same thing aligns to procurement to ensure we're aligning with our Muni code and our standards.

And is that set by ordinance or just it's the like yeah, it's a combination of your purchasing code and the uh professional practices that exist within public procurement?

And again, most of these are anti- anti-corruption and anti-favoritism procedures.

Understood, thank you.

All right.

Let's move to public comment.

Okay, alright, fine.

Councilmember Houston, go ahead.

All right, um, Brett, um, through the Chair Bradley.

Um, Mr.

Brad, can you come up?

What was your decision to um to choose RFP over RFQ?

Normally, when you have a pool of money out and you have a set pool, and RFP is the particular instrument that's normally used for that as opposed to an RFQ, which would normally be used in like a professional service context, as opposed to a place where you're doing evaluations of like late-stage criteria or providing direct services.

Normally, an RFP is that process.

Again, Laura, if you're on, can you speak to the difference between those two procedures?

Most of the time, an RFP is the appropriate space for directly provided community services or like bidding a public infrastructure project contract, and RFQ would be used more on like professional services, information support analysis, that sort of thing.

Uh Ms.

Gonzalez Woodward, if you wouldn't mind jumping in a little bit on the distinction.

Sure, yes, you were accurate, Bradley, to further share request for qualifications.

That's the RFQ process.

It typically would put folks in a pool, and then there would be an additional round of review and evaluations to later um enter into an agreement via award based on the scope of these grant agreements and the timeline, it was recommended to move forward with a request for proposal.

Okay, through the chair, because I'm thought that RFQ is for qualifications in it to have the individuals that were qualified for this RFP as proposal because anybody can throw a proposal out.

I just wanted to know what was your what was your reason.

It's a the distinction between RFQ and RFP is more on the process by which you would do selection.

In an RFP, everyone's noting their proposal on the front end.

Um everyone has sort of the front-end space where they provide the proposal and RFQ has on the back end that process, but they both involve scoring the proposals that that come in.

In both an RFP and RFQ, you sit down and you score and you evaluate the different pro the different options and you evaluate the criteria against them.

They're just slightly different procedures under the MUNI code and they use them in slightly different circumstances.

Most big community-based things are going to be RFPs, and again, most professional services we need help with this analysis are going to be RFQs.

Uh Brown, excellent.

Since we're on the subject of this, what specifically changed between the two um RFPs, and did the RFP actually require um proof of concept?

Basically, did does the the agency that applied for said service do they actually do the service?

Related to the actual scope of services, I'm gonna defer to DVP as it relates to the change in in the operation what happened.

Uh and some of the initial RF uh queues were coming duly in on a separate platform, and so some of the information was provided via mechanism that is not compliant with the city's munity code where we could see that people were attempting to get us the relevant documents, but we're not doing it in the proper way.

So we saw sort of a mechanism why we were getting non-compliance at the same time, and so the second time around, we were being very clear that iSupplier is the only mechanism by which you can submit, and that was it was I would say at the time there was some rationale why there might have been confusion at that space, and so remedying it with a reapplication seemed particularly useful because it allowed us to eliminate that confusion, and we did see a much higher uptake rate of the people who wanted to apply in that second round.

And through the chair, I can confirm that there was no substantive, there were no changes to the content of the RFP, only to the instructions around how to apply.

Okay, go ahead, Broom.

The second part of my question was um, did the RFP, you know, outside of providing proof of concept, did the agency actually need to prove that they can do that service that they've applied for?

Like what was that kind of factor in that determination?

Through the chair, we had a number of questions in the RFP that agencies had to answer to, specifically related to their prior experience delivering services, the skill sets of their staff members, the cultural competency of their workers, their experience serving individuals at highest risk, highest risk of violence with serious safety concerns, things of that nature.

And so the narrative portion of the grant applications spoke to that.

Excellent.

So all of the awardees in our attachment currently perform the services that they are receiving, like if this is approved.

Yeah, I would say for the most part, there are some examples of ones where maybe agencies are um have done similar work and we are asking them to um pivot slightly or the chair.

I just want to add some nuance to your question.

I think that you may be getting at a point, uh, a question that we also had for the contracts unit, which was are we able to include in the scoring rubrics a section for past performance for the agencies that we have contracted with in the past?

So we had that specific question.

Are we able to include a section or a metric for past performance?

And the answer was no.

So we were directed by the contracts unit to score the applications based on the articulation of the agency's capacity in the application, not um, we were not able to score on past performance.

Um that wasn't quite my question.

But is it it was genuinely um just looking at like some of the allocations and this question of hey, does this organization do, and I'm just throwing this out there as an example, it's at random.

Do they provide housing resources?

Is that something that they currently do in their portfolio?

Or was the application that they provide it more of, hey, here's this lane that we want to get into.

I did not review the application specifically.

Jenny and her team may be able to speak more detailed to it, but from my understanding in the briefing that I received from staff, there's there wasn't an organization that was far outside the box of what they work on.

People were applying to their subject matter expertise.

I see.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, council member five.

I just want to hear from the public, it's been about 84 years since we said we're gonna hear from a public speaker, so I want to kind of get to that.

Okay, I was about to get there.

Sounds good.

Let's go to the public comment.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number three in no particular order, you can come up to the podium, state your name for the record before making your comments.

Also, if you if anyone is seeding time to you, please um state that before beginning.

Um, if you are seating time or have time seeded to you, the person seeding their time must be present to acknowledge that they are giving you their time as standard practice.

We are going to take in-person speakers first.

If you're on Zoom, please raise your hand to be easily identified.

Again, in no particular order, you can line up.

Uh Amba Johnson, Dr.

Aisha Mays, Madison Barton, Asada Olavala, Blair Beekman, Domo Frazier, and I do apologize if I uh miss mispronounce any names.

Uh Jamie Gomez Usiguera, Demaria Truck Evans, Dwight Hasklins, Daryl Alums, Harry L.

Williams, Satia Frazier North, Terrence Washington, Cs uh Caesar Johnson, uh Keelus Martin, Carlton Crossley, John Jones the third, Couche, Myesha Johnson, Jonte Gamble, Esmeralda Manzo, Calvin Colding the Third, Anthony Martin, Andre Park, Stephanie, uh, Stefan Brooks, App Jones, Rashad, Nortu, David Boltwright, Darius Alma's Desmond, and other, Dr.

Nicole Petway, Jerry Law, Marissa Seco, Andrea Barnes, Aaron Scott, Millie Cleveland, Tanija Owens, Lisa Williams, Brenda Grisham, Almaz Yadego, Joan Hoffman, Desmond, Iman, Michael Uvell, Paula Hawthorne, Jarrell Miles, Anthony McNeil, Dendon Team, Jonathan Rumfield, Martin Hurtardo, Harris Conn, Gary Miller, Nimrod Cain, James Delgado, Alfonso, Rodriguez, Linnea, Portsinth, Kawant, Hislew, Prewary G.

LeJon Loggins, Madeline Stacey, Anne Jenkins, Demarier Evans, Jeffrey, Michelle Clark, Nilda Aldredge, Jennifer Lyle, and Dwayne Jones.

Again, please state your name before beginning.

If anyone is seeding time, please state their name, and they must be present in chamber or on Zoom to acknowledge that they are seeding their time.

You can come up to the podium.

Well done, Madam Clerk.

Go ahead.

Good evening, esteemed council members of the public safety committee.

My name is Dr.

Aisha Mays, and I'm the founder and CEO of the Dream Youth Clinic here in Oakland.

Dream provides 100% free services for the most vulnerable youth of Oakland, ages 13 to 25, medical care, mental health care, and crisis intervention services.

80% of our young people are impacted by gender-based violence, and over 50% of our young people experience sexual exploitation.

Uh mobile clinic for sex trafficked youth on international boulevard, directly serving young people impacted by street level sex trafficking from across the city, Deep East Oakland, Fruitville International Boulevard, the bottoms of Oakland, downtown Oakland, and Lake Merritt.

We are grateful for the Department of Violence Prevention that they recognize the importance of resources for youth-based, youth-serving organizations to lead CSEC and gender-based violence efforts in Oakland.

Thank you for your comments.

Hi, my name is Amba Johnson.

I'm the grant manager for human trafficking prevention for OUSD.

I have been working in human trafficking services in Oakland in every aspect of it for over 25 years.

The agencies that are being funded in this grant are the agencies that have worked most closely with us in the last years so that OUSC had the partners they needed for the interventions when youth were identified.

It has been painful that their services were limited by their funding.

There's not a school in OUSD that I have not been to, that I have been to that does not have youth that are impacted.

Every single school in OUSD system, secondary school that I've been to have youth that are at risk being currently impacted, and we are struggling to surround them with all the questions.

Thank you for your comments.

Hi, I'm Satya Fraser North.

I'm seeding my time to Donald Fraser.

Dr.

Nicole Pitway, I give you my time to Donald Frazier.

Good evening, Councilman's Lisa Williams, sending my time to Donald Fraser.

Good evening, you're gonna buy seating my time to Donald Fraser.

Give me one moment to adjust your time.

You'll have a total of five minutes.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And uh good afternoon.

Good evening.

My name is Donald Frazier.

I'm a CEO with Boss.

Chair, Vice Chair, committee members.

I um I've been doing this work for 35 years, uh, working in uh esteemed organizations in Los Angeles, uh, San Diego, San Francisco, and now Oakland.

I've never heard of a process like this in terms of reissuing an RFP because of a failure rate or percentage.

I've never heard of that.

And if it was part of the procurement process the way they did it, why would they have to go to the city attorney to get a legal opinion on it, right?

It's ridiculous.

I want to just move to my comments.

And by the way, with the community-based organization in East and Deep East Oakland, it was more about relationships.

It's not about place-based issues, it's about relationships, deep relationships that those organizations have with the people.

Their families come to those organizations, excuse me.

I'll get to my uh comments.

So across all media outlets, Oakland City leaders gave credit to an all-hands on deck approach to fighting crime and crime prevention is one of the reasons for the huge drop in in crime statistics.

In 2025, the city recorded its lowest number of homicides since 1967, when Oakland's population was significant significantly smaller.

That momentum has continued into 2026, with year-to-date figures showing that total homicides down 38% and assaults with a firearm down 9%, building on double-digit reductions in both 2024 and 2025.

Additionally, more than 54% of violent crime goes unreported, because many people are distrust the legal system and community-based organizations have filled the critical gap that traditional criminal justice system often fails to support.

By these facts alone, you must recognize the current CBI ecosystem was working.

Just based on the facts, on the numbers.

And so, why would you want to change it?

And where's the logic with the DVP DVP funding recommendations?

So, you know, they say if it's if it's not broke, why do you want to fix it?

I want to go to four final points.

Hopefully, I'll get through it with the time.

Uh, it's aligned with the violence prevention coalition request that we're asking for full scoring and audit record uh for the 2026-2029 CVIRFP, including applicant scores, scoring sheets, ranking, service categories, scoring rubric, uh, reviewer composition, reviewer conflict disclosures, and any written rationale used to determine the final award recommendations.

We're asking that bridge contracts be bridged with funding before October 1st, 2026 for CBI providers needed to prevent dangerous gaps in citywide services, especially with attention to East and Deep East Oakland.

Then we're asking for full violence prevention funding map showing measure in general fund purpose dollars, carry forward balances, federal grants, state grants, county funds, philanthropic funds, uh, and whatever other sources that are uh restricted that are not restricted or flexible.

And the map should also show how much funding support directs DVP operations, CBO contracts, intermediaries, technical assistance, policy organizations, and frontline neighborhood-based providers.

Um, with the remaining amount of time, I just want to go back to this whole contracting process, and and it may have been legal, but is it fair?

Uh the person from the finance department said it was ethical, far from it.

Far from it.

So if you are gonna give the folks who didn't do the process right the first time, so you're gonna say, okay, we're gonna give you a second chance to do it again.

So we're gonna throw out all of the folks who did it the first right the first time, that matter.

Then we're gonna give everybody else another chance.

Kind of leads to a situation of not just fairness, but maybe even picture true favoritism that's cloaked in a process of decisions that we're just gonna have everybody do it again.

I'll just uh if I could give my 20 uh seconds of somebody else's cool thing, David Bowright.

And this item, CBOs are to receive 12.7 million dollars per year based on the continued work of the Oversight Commission and using a structured review process whose ranking point system has not been described in the report.

This is a tremendous amount of money spread over 21 different entities, some of whom may never have been used by the DVP before using the in progress commission report and undetailed CBO ranking process, i.e.

were the questions objective or subjective.

These qualifications aside the CBO's performance review parameters include surveys of the CBOs and individuals, but no well-supported actual violence reduction results.

The order to justify the grant funding, I recommend uh more uh concrete support.

Thank you for your comments, Mr.

Boatray.

I know my man Carlton Crosley, I see my tongue, Darrell Allen.

How are you doing?

I'm Terrence Washington.

I like to wave my time for Darrell Allen.

Hey, my name is Quash A.

Johnson, I'm waving my time my time to Darrell Ellams.

My name is Achilles Martin, and I'm waving my time to Darrell Allen.

I am Darrell Allen's.

So first and foremost, we're gonna take some time and have a moment of silence for our sister Bridget Cook.

Amen.

In honor of Bridget Cook and the last former VPC chair, I now sit in that seat as a violent provincial coalition chair.

Behind me, I have credible messages from Haven for Black Killing in East Oakland and Deep East Oakland, where we serve on a daily to our community, not first team responders like our CVIs, right?

We ain't that, but we come behind them as brethren supporting our other fellows, right?

This math, right?

I'm from a foreign country called Deep East Oakland, okay?

Let's get that on the table first.

But the math, right?

When you cut out, I seen the recommendation, not taking nothing away from those powerful organizations that got recommended to receive the measure in money, not taking nothing away from them.

They go crazy.

We need them all, but you're missing some pieces.

The CVIs all through the city of Oakland.

If you got 30 right now, not including the school base, not including the hospital base, but if you got 30 right now, and then you only go down to eight, that's missing 22.

So I'm gonna say this here.

With those individuals, those violent interrupters out there, just one individual have at least 50 relationships in our community.

That's not they're not just losing their jobs, we're killing relationships, and then East Oakland, my foreign country, where we have the highest violence in our community, shootings, other violence, gender based.

Indeed, East Oakland, East Oakland.

We don't have a haven.

Where is the doors open?

Where is the funding going to our East Oakland CBOs to keep those doors open?

Because sometimes little jewel buggy nane, they need to run a bit somewhere, because they need some help more than just resources, right?

These CVIs, I know this for a fact.

I didn't see them talk people off the Golden Goldegate Bridge.

I didn't see them stop people from jumping in the lake marin and killing themselves and drowning.

They are here on a daily fighting for our people's lives on the front line, being first team responded to the shootings and homicides at the bedsides, at the hospitals, but also in the schools.

The concerns is right now is these relationships.

You got all these relationships about to get killed and demolished.

And it takes time to build relationships.

And oh, by the way, we do have a search and rescue team where we done brought back since 2018 over 400 missing black girls in Oakland, California.

Yes, we have did that.

Frontline, right?

But we have to remember about East Oakland.

We gotta remember East Oakland.

We gotta remember deep East Oakland.

We got to remember this here because it's CBOs out here that do that work.

And they doors are not being able to be open because the funding not there.

I seen the recommendations.

Man, those are powerful people that got awarded.

But it's some other ones too that was left behind.

So I'm asking y'all not to take nothing away, but go find some more money.

I know y'all could do it.

I know right now, if y'all say recess and y'all go back there in those chambers, y'all can find some money for these other CBOs.

It's lives on the line right now.

Bridget Cook, save.

Soldiers against violence everywhere.

They stayed on the corner.

And this is what they say.

Somebody died here.

We need to care.

That's what we do in these streets.

Supporting our families.

So I didn't come here to big.

I came here to speak peace.

But also know there's powerful minds that sit behind these seats.

And I know if y'all all come together, y'all can help this problem that we have.

This funding.

We like gang bangers right now in this room, all these organizations.

We might as well have guns and everything about to shoot each other.

Because we fight for crimes.

Tired of fighting for crimes.

We voted y'all in these seats to support our community.

Y'all put us out here in these streets to support our community.

It's a team effort.

So let's work together as a team.

So make sure that East Oakland be able to get funded and these C VI, these CVIs, these credible messages don't get cut.

Thank you for your time.

My name is Reverend Harry Williams.

And my whole life changed one day when I walked outside of Allen Temple Baptist Church at 85th and International Boulevard.

And I walked by the parking lot and somebody had been shot to death during the church service.

That told me that religion had to come from behind the walls of the church and into the streets.

And during my journey as a violence interrupter and a community, somebody who loves this community.

I've learned that these people that are here fighting for their jobs, fighting for resources, do the work because I know what it is to pick up the phone and call Darrell Alves and say there's a problem here, and I need you to show up, and I know what it is for him to call me.

And also tribe in Fong Town who are doing amazing work with people.

There's so many people of goodwill here.

Mr.

Holly Joshi and so many of our chefs do amazing work.

But I think we can stretch this a little bit more to keep the numbers going down in the homicide department.

Thank you very much.

How are you doing?

My name is Dwight Hasklin, uh CVI for Boston.

I'm giving my time to Mr.

DeMaria Evans.

Hey, my name is John Tay Gamble.

I'm from Boss.

I'm a VI and I'm um giving my time to truck ever.

Yeah, you're doing it.

My name's Jaime Also.

Please give me one moment to adjust your time.

You'll have a total of four minutes.

You can go ahead and begin.

Okay.

Um, I am uh a bereavement pastor in the city for 18 years.

I have participated and served in some capacity in over 1,200 funerals, 600 plus was due to homicide.

Somehow, some way I ended up in this CVI work, is where I need to be.

I'm not here to say who shouldn't be, but I'm just here to ask why not us.

The time I've been here, I've been able to develop relationships with a bunch of different people who look just like me, come from a lifestyle like me.

I come from amongst the crowd.

I'm someone who was cleaned up, trained up to be able to go out and serve this city in the capacity and what you need it.

I have the license to operate.

Just like all of the other organizations and the people that I work with and the relationships I built because I lean on them from tribe to youth alive to uh uh um uh courage and and and and even DVP, right?

We all work together.

But to be on this in this work field and on the street and working amongst the community and seeing that district six and seven is not covered.

The people is not covered.

I'm saying that because when we look at the time in which we have to respond, East Oakland, Deep East Oakland gets a lot of our time.

The relationships that is developed doing this work is gonna be so key going forward to continue to see the numbers that we see in.

Am I saying we don't need life coaches?

No, because they've been both working together.

But to see the reduction of who's going to be on the street, the fight was fought with the Joshua's of the world.

And we have to be able to be able to connect with the people.

We have built relationships in communities.

I know people in East Oakland.

I never knew because of this work that we've been doing, still in contact with families that we didn't serve, making sure folk are safe.

So again, I'm not saying who shouldn't be, but I'm just asking based on the numbers that we're seeing.

No, they're not all ours, but we've been a part of it.

We done helped in every kind of capacity you can think of.

So all I'm asking is, not why them, but why not us?

Why not us?

Not us.

Council members, how y'all doing?

Uh my name is Cesar Johnson.

I'm a life coach, violence interrupter, and a senior case manager through a couple different programs.

Through San Francisco with BACR through Success Center 2.

Run my own organizations.

I lost my brother to gun violence, my nephew's three generations.

When we were politic and I had this violence provincial coalition and all that, right?

I never seen you in East Oakland a day in my life.

And you say you were there, that's that's not cool.

But we're here right now, right?

And it's been people doing this work, and we do this work at a real large capacity.

And for this not to get funded like that, continue to this work is fire.

It's real fire.

It'd be a lot of games and tricks and be playing.

But here, I watched this for years.

And I'm gonna just say this.

We're here right now, we can make some choices, and y'all can talk about, you know, put some find some money about that 800 million that's back there, or we can continue to be in places from somebody did what they were supposed to do, somebody didn't do what they were supposed to do, or somebody did some shit they didn't have no business doing.

Choose wisely.

Good evening for the record, John Jones III.

Uh, through the chair, I want to begin by first thanking the chief and the amazing staff over here and the team at DVP.

Through you all, I know you all care about public safety in Oakland.

And I think it's important to understand a few things.

N was meant to supplement, right?

Our existing funding sources.

So we would, it would be egregious to overlook what was once the elephant in the room, has now become a woolly mammoth.

And that's OKD's budget.

We gotta come to terms with the fact that we have a department that routinely accedes the overtime of uh budget allotment that you all as our legislative body puts into place.

It's unconscionable to allow that to continue.

And it's a disservice to DVP, it's a disservice to these community-based organizations to be reduced to scrambling for crumbs when we do have money, but it's being mismanaged by a department that chooses to exceed and operate with wanton impunity.

You have an opportunity to address that on Friday.

So thank you very much for your service.

Good afternoon.

My name is Anthony McNeil, and I'm here today as a community member who cares deeply about public safety, youth and families, and the future of our neighborhoods.

I want to speak about the decision to take money away from an amazing organization called Boss that is doing good meaningful work in the community.

When we talk about public safety, we cannot only talk about what happens after the violence, real public safety starts before the crisis.

It starts with prevention, intervention, relationships, mentoring, outreach, youth engagement, healing, and supporting the families.

Organizations like Boss are the ones who's closest to the people.

They need help the most.

They know the youth by name.

They know the families by name.

They know the neighborhoods.

They're able to step in before things get worse.

That's the kind of work that cannot be measured by numbers or statistics.

Sometimes the success is the fight that did not happen, the young person who did not get arrested, the families that did not fall apart, or the life that did not get redirected.

Taking money away from organizations.

Thank you for your comments.

Your time is up.

All right, my name is Jerry Law.

I'm from East Oakland.

I'm a product of boss.

Spent 15 years in prison.

I don't know where to live.

I didn't have a job.

Boss supplied that for me.

Supply that for a lot of my brothers and sisters that's coming out of prisons.

And I like to thank them, brothers.

Now, if you take the money away from them, what do you say about these people here?

This is real life.

I just got one question.

If we all know that East Oakland is the proverbial house on fire, why would you sit in the fire trucks that way?

That's all I got to say.

71st and International.

I just wanted to come up here and speak in honor of the RFP.

Um, you know, working with DVP, uh DVP in general, I'll just have support because we know firsthand we can see like what happens with these services, and I feel like any delay, any disturbances will obviously have you know, the results, the consequences, and that's all I wanted to say.

Good evening.

My name is Aaron Scott.

I'd like to cede my time to L.

Autumn King.

Good afternoon, Council.

I am L.

Autumn King.

I am representing Family Violence Law Center as a board member and a proud East Oakland resident.

DVP legislation states that the purpose of DVP is to reduce both domestic violence and commercial sexual exploitation.

But as provoked proposed, the DVP's investment in legal services for domestic violence was cut by more than half.

Also, domestic violence restraining orders do not just prevent future violence, they have the ability to settle custody, visitation, child support, property and insurance issues, and the ability to determine whether the survivor and their children can stay in their family homes.

DVP is not recommending any funding for culturally responsive services for Latinx and Mayan immigrants, service survivors of violence.

These cuts jeopardize the jobs of Spanish speaking attorneys who provide culturally responsive services to Latinx and Mayan immigrant communities, and these cuts eliminate the therapeutic and supportive services provided by Mujeras Unidas y Octivadas.

We ask the city council to request that DVP to restore funding for legal services for domestic violence and trafficking survivors and restore funding for culturally responsive services for one of East Oakland's, for one of Oakland's excuse me, largest population of survivors.

I will say I am on the board because I intimately understand the work that these people do.

I am intimately involved and have been serviced by this organization.

I beg of you, I ask of you to prioritize our families.

Domestic violence is on the rise right now, whereas other crimes are decreasing nationwide.

We have just now had three major cases here in the nation where husbands killed their wives.

We also see it in reverse.

We are asking that funding be restored so that we can protect families, save families, and prevent future violence.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Andrea Barnes.

It helps our clients to stay in the place.

It's a way to also get child support and custody, which is often a thing because children are also abused in these relationships.

Um just as trying to escape the abuse again, it's always not because a lot of our clients don't want to leave.

A lot of clients aren't looking for emergency shelter relocation or housing relocation because they feel comfortable.

People don't want to leave outside of Oakland as an Oaklander, I feel the same way.

I don't always want to have to leave my home to go somewhere else for to first to in order to protect the person that's harming me.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Tunisia Owens.

I am the policy and advocacy manager at Family Violence Law Center.

I am a homeowner and a voter in Deep East Oakland.

The city's proposed massive cuts to legal services for domestic violence survivors will eliminate services to Oakland survivors like Alicia, who sent this message to FELC.

Thank you so much for helping me prepare my de domestic violence restraining order for that hearing.

It was the lowest point in my life.

I had to take a medical leave from work because of the stress of dealing with the abuse.

Thank you for your comments.

Your time is up.

Thank you for your comments.

Okay.

We'll have two minutes for the um for Alicia and then two minutes for translation.

Just give me one moment to adjust your time.

You can go ahead and begin.

Good afternoon.

My name is Alicia.

I'm a survivor of domestic violence, and currently a member leader of Mujeres Unidas y Activas or MUA.

I'm here today to share my story and ask you to consider the real impact that these funds have on the lives of many people like me.

In 2019, I arrived at Mujeres Unidas Yactivas in uh seeking support.

I was in that time in a situation of domestic violence.

I felt sad, alone, and I didn't know where to go.

I needed support, orientation, and hope to be able to overcome this.

Upon arriving at the organization, I found much more than just resources.

I found an entire community of people who listened to me, believed in me, and accompanied me during the one of the most difficult times in my life.

I received emotional support, orientation to legal services, and access to resources that help me recuperate my safety, my confidence, and my independence.

Thanks to the support, I was able to start a new chapter in my life.

I'm now not only a survivor, I'm a leader who accompanies other women going through similar situations.

I've learned with my own eyes how an organization can transform lives, uh, bring hope and help women and families find a path to security and stability.

For this reason, I ask with all my heart that you do not eliminate this funding.

Behind every program and service, there are real people who depend on this support to escape violence, protect their children, and reconstruct.

Thank you for your comments.

Through the chair to the member of the public, the lady that spoke had time ceded to her, so she had two minutes to speak and two minutes for translation.

Good evening.

My name is Dr.

Gary Millari.

I'm a psychologist, program evaluator, and program manager with safe passages.

I'm here to support the continued uninterrupted funding for violence prevention services.

As an evaluator, I care about data and accountability, but as a psychologist, I know that some of the most important outcomes can't be fully captured in con in a contract.

The question I ask is are young people better off because of our involvement?

Do they have trusted adults that they can turn to?

They feel connected with schools and the community.

Do they have a future worth investing in?

Even more fundamentally, am I safe?

Do I belong?

Does anyone believe in me?

Violence prevention works because trusted adults consistently show up and build a relationship over time.

Those relationships cannot be paused or restarted without consequences.

This is why funding stability matters.

I urge you to protect funding programs that are demonstrating results and actively serving Oakland youth.

The young people we serve deserve consistency, stability, and continued support.

Thank you.

First, I want to say we honor the RP process because we do know the impact that DVP services have uh we reduce violence throughout East Oakland from Sabrini Park all the way to Haven's Court and from Hayward's Core all the way to West Oakland through this process.

Uh what we don't want is for any interruption of services based on anything that's going on with funding.

So with that being said, we would just like for whatever choices being made that you do not interrupt or disrupt what's been going on with the services that all of us are providing.

Thank you.

My name is Haddis Khan.

I am the program assistant for Get Active and Youth and Workforce Development at Safe Passages.

I just want to say that we want to honor the RFP process because this programming has had a significant impact in reducing violence in Oakland and any disruption to that process would cause violence to go up.

Thank you.

My name is Martin Artado.

I'm a life coach for Safe Passages, and I just want to talk about the importance about the DVP grant.

You know, start violence because like an example, like I'm able to give them a stipend.

If uh they complete one of their goals, it may be like get off probation, complete GPS monitor, so like that kind of motivates the youth, you know, to want to do better, or like if they need like emergency funds, like they might have a they might need their electric bill, you know, it might be due, we'll we're able to pay them with those funds, and like I think that helps like the youth from thinking about doing some negative to go get some money illegally.

That's all.

Uh hi, my name is Alfonso Rodriguez.

Uh, I work for Safe Passages.

Uh work at the local middle school and high school in East Oakland.

Uh so what I see through my time working with the youth uh we it comes to a point where the youth glorifies gun violence and crime and you know being in the streets, you know.

I know that because you know I used to be in their shoes.

You know, I used to be a young man myself not that long ago.

Uh these uh say uh this program, the DVP grant through safe passages, you know, helped me get out the street.

It helped me uh have a new vision in life, you know.

I'm can be good at multiple, it made me think I could be good at multiple things.

So I think these kind of little programs and you know, you know, stuff like that, you know, it's good for the youth and it's good for our community.

So, you know, to get these young guys or whatever, you know, out the street, you know, working.

That's all I gotta say.

Uh good evening.

My name is James though, got almost safe passages.

I'm just here to say that we honor the RFP process, um, knowing that DVP is a pillar in reducing violence.

Any interruption within that process could increase violence in Oakland.

Thank you.

I'm Michael U Bell, I'm ceding my time to Paul Hawthorne.

And Jenks, I'm ceding my time to Paula Hawthorne.

Paula Hawthorne.

So, first of all, I'm asking you to reject this resolution.

Please reject it and send it back to the DVP.

It is for three-year grants.

We have not done three-year grants in my memory.

Three-year grants are too long.

We usually do two-year grants, sometimes even one-year grants with the option to renew.

This means for three years, the grants are locked in.

People that didn't get it won't be able to get it for three years, means for three years, you will not see it back at city council.

Do you really want three years with no oversight from the measure and in commission or from you?

I am asking you, please reject this and send it back and have them come back with two-year grants.

That's the first thing I'm asking.

The second thing is we need more money.

We all see we need more money.

Measure NN should not be the only thing funding community violence prevention.

Let's be clear here.

Measure N uh provides all of the funding that you see in this, it provides seven percent of the funding for the police department.

What if we said the police department was only funded from NN?

That'd be interesting, wouldn't it?

But I'm not gonna ask for money from the police department.

Look at the budget that you have before you from the city.

You will see that public works gets $14 million dollars more in this budget than they did a year ago.

Fourteen million dollars for public works more.

Transportation gets nine point six million dollars more than they did last year.

Just last year.

What has changed there?

You'll see the city administrator gets $4.9 million more than they did last year.

Just last year.

That's not just cost of living, folks.

That is an incredible increase.

You look down, and I have brought the numbers, which you can get yourself.

It's on the city website.

Not the way that I did it, by the way, because I went through and found how much money people are getting.

If you had, if you had this amount of money and you took it, and even half of it, you could double the amount of money going to the DVP to fund these people and people like them.

We need more money for community violence intervention.

Either you believe in community violence intervention or you don't.

I assume that you do.

If you do, then you know we need more money to do this work.

You have before you please look at this budget that you've been given.

Pull the money out of it that we need.

A budget is a moral statement, our morals.

Many of us have a shared faith that our neighbors are is the second commandment given to us is to care for our neighbors.

Good afternoon.

My name is Brenda Gersham, and I uh work in a community.

Um, I'm here to say just a couple of things.

The work that I do is the work that I do.

I don't get funding because I don't have time for this stuff that's going on right now, but I tell you when I need some help, I can get it from the people that are not being funded right now, and that's very unfair.

I don't like to get into these entanglements about crumbs and all of that, but I feel that there's a way that everybody can benefit from keeping the people in Oakland safe.

I'm in district two.

Now I heard nobody talk about district two because I tell you I get calls three times a week, like I'm the police with the people holding the phones up with the pimps shooting back and forth on Instagram.

There's a video of two young men running down international with guns shooting at each other.

Who got them?

I mean, are they a part of that percentage?

Are they a part of the DVP or are they just on their own?

We got to be concerned about everybody.

If you got people that's boots on the ground, that's who you need to fund.

Hi, my name's Almas.

Uh I am um I'm here to represent Global Communication, Education and Art.

The African Resource Center.

I want to bring by I want to begin by saying, City of Oakland, the Department of Violence Prevention, thank you, and an organization recommended to the measure and funds.

We are not here to oppose funding for the uh for the other organizations.

We are here because important community appears to be left out.

GCEA, which is the African Resource Center, was on the community organizing in uh involving on the outreach mobilizing, listening offers and helping shaping the original violence prevention department.

We are we are repro we are participating.

Through the chair to the members of the public.

If people are ceding their time to you, please state their names.

They must be here to acknowledge that they are ceding their time and they must have an individual card filled out for them.

I'm Jeffreys.

No, not now.

I'm Dennis, and then uh Jeffrey.

Dr.

Joy.

Dr.

Joy.

Aralo.

Sitting my time tomorrow.

Kowanic.

My name is Linda.

Okay.

And then do the church of the members of the public with seating time.

There's a maximum of five minutes as you've already had one minute.

You'll have four minutes remaining.

Okay, then.

So we are also good evening, everybody.

We're not here to complain.

We are here to see what the solution really is.

This funding, this funding opportunity was released March 13th and closed April 1st.

That was just approximately 19 days.

The recommendation covers approximately approximately 38 million, 38.1 million over three years for communities that are already connected to the city system.

So what happened to those communities that are not connected to the city to the city system?

That is why we're here today.

You know, how do we how do we you know gain access to this to this to this funding?

It does not.

Now my record shows that you know uh only one percent of African American um firms have received this uh this funding.

Only one percent of African Americans.

We Africans, you know, Africa, the African community is the fastest growing community in the Oakland, uh Oakland area.

We have businesses everywhere.

We get robbed all the time, we get beaten all the time.

We just recently lost one of our very good one, uh, good um son last week to go on to go on violence, you know, and yet, you know, we feel left out from this kind of opportunities.

So the question is not we're not coming here.

I didn't come on the way from Africa to come and beg for beg for money.

We're not coming here to beg.

We just want to have access.

And the requirement that they put forward, you know, does not guarantee access for everybody.

Because if we look into their program right now and their record, you will see that the access is within, you know, the people that have the access are the people that you know you know somebody that knows somebody that knows somebody.

So there are a lot of opportunities.

There are a lot of communities like us that don't have access to it.

All we're asking for is seeking for access.

And how do we get those access?

So the way they have it set up right now does not benefit everybody, it just benefits the few, the people who already have access to the city system.

African African immigrant families are navigating violence, trauma, housing instability, language barriers, immigration challenges, and growing uncertainty around access to health care, food assistance, and employment authorization.

These pressures affect community safety and family stability.

GCA responds to these needs every day through legal navigation, medical, medical enrollment, cow fresh assistance, workforce support, civic engagement and housing stabilization services.

Last year alone, GCA served more than 1,700 individuals, reach over 25,000 community members, house 84 individuals, and help more than 700 people access medical enrollment and reenrollment.

The Department of Violence Prevention was built on the principle that those closest to the problem are closest to the solution.

GCA helped inform that original vision.

And today we are asking for the our opportunity to help fulfill it.

Tonight we are asking the city to work with GCA to establish a three-year African immigrant community stabilization and healing initiative that includes one culturally responsive licensed therapist, one immigration legal representative representative or legal navigator, and two community case managers dedicated to housing benefits access, family stabilization, and violence prevention.

This investment would help ensure that African immigrant families have access to culturally culturally responsive support systems rooted in trust, language access, and community relationships.

We are not asking the city to take resources away from the community, we are asking the city to recognize a growing community, acknowledge existing service gap and invest in.

Thank you for your comments, thank you for your comments.

All the time that was seated.

Through the chair to the members of the public, we will honor two more minutes as you guys have seven total.

Through through the chair to the member of the public, if there are seven cards, there will be a total of seven minutes.

You guys have already used five.

There are two minutes remaining for your time.

Please give me a second to adjust the clock so you guys can use your two minutes.

Give a second.

Please give me a moment to adjust the clock so I can give you your second.

Okay.

From north, east, west.

We are people are literally there, they're that have violence against them within the community and the largest community.

So I can volunteer.

I only can give an hour here, an hour there for seven years, but I could not see funding that permit to support the African immigrant at large.

We as an African, we commit, we work, but when things go wrong in our community, individual, excuse me, individual like myself.

In my household, I have violence for mental illness within.

Yeah, the African comes out and they look good, but I have to couch serve.

When I go to the largest community, it needed, needed just a place to stay, and I have three surgery.

Well, cannot find when, but I have to cut couch serve for six homelessness, affect our community, our children, in mental health.

I can bring them for you.

The violence that is affecting us.

I can help you, one household, two households in one in one community.

Uh I won't be saying Pacific.

I can just go to the north and get you 200 people who are affected by violence, by an advantage.

Thank you for your comments.

Thank you for sharing.

We have treated us.

Okay.

We have visited me.

Thank you for your comments.

Ma'am, your time is up.

We still have a number of speakers.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Linnea Forsyth.

I'm the managing attorney at Bay Area Legal Aid.

Um, and I am here to express deep gratitude for the uh recommended funding for legal services in Bay Area Legal Aid.

Um, we know that there is a justice gap.

Uh there needs to be 9,000 more attorneys to meet the civil legal aid here in California.

Forty percent of the survivors that we serve have at least five or more civil legal needs, and FVLC spoke very powerfully about the need for more legal services in Oakland.

Um we need help with restraining orders, uh, family law to keep families safe, housing, immigration, re-entry services, public benefits, um, all of those services which we are committed to uh providing with this funding, wraparound legal services for survivors in Oakland.

Uh and we are excited that Oakland is investing in that and encourage you to grow that investment.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Dwayne Jones.

I'm a director at Youth Employment Partnership.

I want to first thank you all for asking many of the questions that I had so I don't have to ask those questions about track record and process and things of that nature.

I got some of those answers tonight, but not many of the ones that we've been writing letters and trying to figure out some of the devil of the details to.

I think one of the things that should be clear is that this is not an us versus them.

We see the um the advisors, the um life coaches uh every single week.

The credible messengers are in our office constantly trying to connect our kids or their kids or our collective kids to the opportunity in a real context.

YEP has been part of the violence prevention strategy from day one.

It is insane for us to be on the outside of that loop, and I hear kind of, I wouldn't say wrong.

I would hear I would say strange things in a process that says we're gonna restart and somehow.

Thank you for your comments.

Your time is up.

Hi, um, my name is Michelle Clark.

I'm the director of YEP.

I've been out on leave, but I am here tonight because it's important.

This is extremely important.

Um, I want to talk, I mean, it is insane that YUP is no longer part of this.

But more insane was this process.

So this process was adopted in between the two oversight committees, and there were dramatic changes to the strategy without the community involved.

And we see what happens when the community is not involved, and what is the most important way to have a strategy?

The whole I've never been in 37 years of being at YPA, I've never been in a process that was not so untransparent.

We weren't even notified that we weren't funded.

Not only were we not notified, I bet you weren't notified about who isn't funded, which is amazing programs who were doing amazing work.

I have never seen an RFP process that behaved that way.

Please push this back and let's get a fair process.

Thank you.

Um, my name is Millie Cleveland.

I'm with coalition for police accountability.

I want to talk about why the community has been forced to fight over crumbs when this council constantly is ignoring the elephant in the room, which is OPD's overtime.

We had a lieutenant that made 450,000 in overtime in a year.

The council is just now discussing how to convert sworn officers doing civilianized work to give that to civilian employees so less money, so to pay out less money.

And we also have a budget that was presented by the mayor that allocated 450,000 to a police oversight position within the city administrator's office without fully funding the police commission.

So I want to ask you how many shelter beds would that provide?

How many interruptors would that provide?

I'm talking about over.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Stefan Brooks.

Uh I'm a street peace ambassador for Tribe.

I'm here to urge you to delay the funding until you have taken a look at the potential impacts.

Others will talk to you about various aspects, but I want to speak to you about what I know.

From being out here and growing up here, I know how violence works.

I know how real community safety works from having the VIs uh having the VIs program cut from East Oakland and from our organization tribe is going to affect the whole structure we have set up.

Um the VI program is a big part of this, helping to watch our backs and letting us know the situations we need to be aware of and keep in mind that we are outside on the avenues and streets all day, every day.

Um I urge you please take a good look at the funding and prioritize East Oakland, prioritize place-based organizations who are outside every day.

Thank you.

Anthony Martin, and I'm seizing my time to Andrew Parker.

Hello, Andrew Park with Tribe, and uh yeah, just gonna speak on relationships and this ecosystem.

I think what happens sometimes is people talk and uh like using this language, and it'll mean one thing, but then when they go to other rooms but mean another, and people get confused.

That's how we always come with like who's outside, who's really doing the work, what's this gonna hurt, who's it gonna hurt?

How's it gonna affect things?

I just don't want it to be like a year from now, and we didn't speak up because it sure does feel like we are fighting for crumbs out here.

It's not it's not your fault.

Maybe it's y'all's fault.

Uh, maybe it's OPD's fault.

I don't know.

But the thing is is that that's the feeling.

But I need to let you guys know that for Tribe, District 2, East Lake, San Antonio, I mean, even parts of Fruitvale, it's like it's a whole ecosystem that we've been putting down.

Stefan, you know, shares what he does with ambassadors every single day.

Maybe part of the Chris's criticism of what we do, what other organizations like Roots and Boss and whatever is like we do more violence prevention and not interruption, right?

You gotta go more ceasefire, you gotta go more focused deterrence.

And you know, that's a strategy.

It's like we have difference of opinions.

But we just need to let you know what we see out here, how we're answering the call, how you know, for very violent situations with shootings, we're handling that every single day.

It's just smart and sound.

I'm gonna join the chorus of uh voices are saying let's get this process more transparent.

Let's get the scores out there with OFCY.

I think they probably had three times the number of applications, right?

But they put out scores, they put out rankings, uh, you know, and they put out a way to appeal to as well, right?

None of that is available here, and we just you know, we just need to let our people know our community know.

Because we don't want them, you know, come a year from now, Tribe.

How come you're not out here?

See the VI, the ambassadors, the resource navigators, they all work together in an ecosystem for us in order to be able to deliver the service being outside every single day.

Hello, I'm Esmeralda.

I'm a family navigator with Tribe.

Every week I see the needs of families we serve through outreach, food distribution, and family navigation.

We um we serve 250 families weekly.

And we're we help them with uh CalFresh, we provide them with diverse clothing formula and referrals.

The VI team is an important part of the work we do, they help build relationships in the community, respond to situations before they escalate and help create a safer environment for the families we serve because of their presence.

We are able to do outreach, connect with residents, and provide uh services in the community more effectively.

Thank you.

Madeline Stacy, D3 resident.

I have been touched by domestic violence.

I think nearly everyone in this room has probably been touched, if not directly and directly by domestic violence.

I know it's uh uh personal uh a topic personal to Chair Wayne, um, and that's why I'm concerned that the Family Violence Law Center is getting zeroed out on legal services and even youth services and housing services.

Nearly half their clientele are Oaklanders, and they support like roughly 500 survivors per year.

These are big numbers, and a lot of our residents that would be losing services if they didn't get funding.

Oakland Department of Violence Prevention is proposing slashing legal services funding by about 50% this cycle, and legal services are vital for survivors.

I'm also concerned about our immigrant siblings.

The uh one agency that's receiving legal funds cannot support undocumented clients, but family.

My name is Lee John Loggins, and today I feel a little different.

At least want to start off by saying that the application process was a little confusing at first because, you know, they said some requirements you can apply, then the requirements later.

You will have some, you would have to prove some of the requirements later.

Um there was some changes in the RFP as far as like letters from um hospital and different stuff like that.

So there's some changes, but I I digress in that.

Um it's been hard for me because I've been in it I'm trying to come out of mind because I've been losing loved ones, right?

I lost my auntie, she was hitting a car in San Francisco, and I just lost somebody Aisha Lewis today.

And I've been on reflection of when I'm gone, what will people say about me and my work?

Whenever I come in here, I'm always telling people whatever, and I don't feel good sometimes because I don't want people to think that I'm an asshole or something like that.

I just love this city, and I want better for this city.

And so I think the committee and everybody for at least given some of the thank you for your comments.

Thank you, Lijan.

Hello, my name is Jennifer Lyle, and I'm an Oakland resident and the executive director of Missy, an Oakland organization serving young people impacted by sexual violence, commercial sexual exploitation, and sex trafficking.

For 19 years, Missy has provided housing, food, coaching, workshops, supportive relationships, and safe spaces for young people to heal and rebuild their lives.

Last year alone, we served more than 730 youth.

I want to thank the Department of Violence Prevention team and acknowledge Dr.

Joshi's leadership and recognize the many community organizations doing extraordinary work across Oakland.

I know difficult funding decisions had to be made.

My concern is not with the process.

Everyday organizations are reducing violence, preventing exploitation, and I'm concerned about the fact that there is an underinvestment in the Department of Violence Prevention and Violence Prevention in this city.

Hello, my name is Nilda Aldridge.

I'm the Integrated Services Manager at Missy.

I am an Oakland resident.

I am an Oaklander from West Oakland.

And like many young ladies, black ladies specifically growing up in Oakland, we have to escape being targeted, groomed, and turned out for sex trafficking.

That is why I do the work that I do.

I now supervise the team that works directly with our young people, and I just want to thank you all for the consideration because I have a friend who lost her life being exploited, turned out, using drugs the whole nine and lost her life.

And today I do this work in her honor, and this funding helps us continue to do that.

So thank you.

How y'all doing?

How are you doing?

My name is Rashad Norry.

You can call me country.

Um, I wasn't going to talk today, but just hearing the statement that an officer made 400,000 a year is crazy.

450.

450, half a million.

And we and me and my team over here are doing the work with no gun.

So that just shows you what type of work we do with no gun.

Um, I'm on my second year going to Mary College to do be an SUD counselor, and I want to get in public health.

I couldn't do that unless they had this program to be involved to evolve myself into different healing groups to actually go out and see the difference that certain programs can help you.

So I just want to really, really, really, really, put this on your mind, and think how many people are you saving that looks like me?

That who does this work and who can start off.

If your name was called and you're in chamber and would still like to speak, please come up to the podium.

The document speaks to in the report on this item that they will be an opportunity to assess the quality of the services.

And that's so that's going to be done by a exit survey, exit survey.

Now what you need to find out when you evaluate the quality of services, is uh measure the outcomes, identify areas for improvement, and determine whether the goals were met because certain goals were supposed to be met.

I don't know how you're going to do this with a exit survey, and that happens at the end of services.

Uh I'm also concerned with uh equity.

Would y'all be in a sanctuary city?

There's the possibility that citizens are.

Thank you for your comments, Mrs.

Sada.

Switching to Zoom user.

Madison Barton, you can unmute yourself and begin your comment.

Good evening.

My name is Madison Barton speaking on behalf of Love Never Fails, an anti-trafficking nonprofit that has served Oakland and Bay Area residents for the past 15 years.

Thank you to the City of Oakland and DBP for investing in our housing program.

In addition to housing, we also submitted proposals in crisis navigation, life coaching, and healing in mobile service categories.

These proposals were intentionally built around partnerships with Deanna White of Faith Four Ministries, Valerie Brown of DPSS, and Norma Ward of Progressive Transitions.

These are three black women with deep roots in Oakland who live in Oakland, serve Oakland, and have spent years supporting their communities.

They are not waiting for grants to do their work.

They're already responding to crisis.

As future funding opportunities are developed, I encourage the city to continue finding ways to invest in trusted community leaders who have already demonstrated their commitment to Oakland through years of service.

Thank you for your comments.

Chair, all names have been called.

First of all, I wanted to thank every single person who either commented here in person or online.

Truly, and I I just want to thank you all for being, not only for being here, but for doing the work that you do.

And just that is gratitude for myself as the um the chair of public safety.

Um I uh did want to you know acknowledge I have I do have look, there are some there are lots of good things uh in this proposal.

I also though have some concerns uh in particular this two-round process really does seem like an aberration that um that I have concerns about in terms of we know of at least two organizations that got kicked out the second round, but their applications qualified the first round, and um it it just that seems incredibly unfair, and seems unusual.

I don't know how often this has happened.

Can somebody from the procurement office speak to how often this happens because those individuals don't get to even have their applications evaluated, right?

And that to me, I think is is the concern I have on that.

Is uh Bradley Johnson or is Teresa?

Through the chair, um uh the contract administrator is on Zoom to answer.

Good evening, this is Laura Gonzalez Woodward, the contracts and purchasing administrator.

Um, sharing that when we run solicitations, RFPs, RFQs, any formal solicitation within the RFP.

There is language around the, it is at the city's discretion to cancel an RFP at any given point in time.

Um, I do want to clarify that these are not actually rounds.

We issued the original RFP, it was canceled, um, and then when we reissued a new RFP, we did notify all of the original uh proposers of the um cancellation as well as the new solicitation.

So we did, we did send communication, um, not just through the ISO ISUPLIAR portal, but we did reach out via email as well.

Um, and we have canceled RFPs um for a variety of reasons within the city.

Um it's not a standard, you know, it's not something that we we do often, but it has occurred.

Um, and I will share that it was a risk assessment that was provided to the DVP as well as the previous city administrator to opine on how we would like to move forward and um collectively it was decided we would cancel the original RFP and offer a new solicitation.

Was there anything in the first round or whatever we want to call it?

What was the cause of uh such a high degree of failure at 34% failure rate?

In full transparency, the original RFP required proposers to submit on two different platforms based on conversations, it was um internally, right?

That we believe that uh proposers did not follow direction and they wanted to uh collectively the city wanted to ensure an equitable process for all proposers.

So we reissue we canceled that RFP and we reissued a new RFP in which we only required one platform for submission, which was in fact I supported.

Okay.

Um I'd also think it's important because I um and it's been stated by the the public comment as well.

Uh, if you can make if if somebody can make clear what are the consequences of not voting this through, given that the RF uh the contract period starts October 1st.

Will there be a lapse in services?

Because that is also a key thing we need to grapple with as a body.

Through the chair to um Chair Wall.

The contracting process takes at least three months.

Um, so once we have approval from city council, we are able to then embark on actual scope negotiations, reviewing of budgets, we prepare contract packages, it then gets sent to the citywide contracts team for extensive review and then routing for final approvals, and that entire process, unfortunately, takes at least three months to do.

Um, and so if this doesn't move forward at this time, it will delay that process.

And if we are unable to have contracts executed by October 1st, there will be a delay in services because we have been told in no uncertain terms from the city administrators' office that we cannot have people operating out of contract.

Okay, that's helpful.

Go ahead, Councilmember Brown.

Um, thank you so much.

I guess I just had a follow-up to that.

Um, because I believe when I think this item came to us last year, the current contracting agreements with the current CBOs, when does that expire?

Through the chair, September 30th of this year.

Okay, um, and then Councilmember Wong, I have a handful of questions, but did you want to complete?

I just wanted to hop on while you were on that subject.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

I do have uh a couple of more questions.

Again, I want to also acknowledge the positive things, especially around the street outreach.

I think I see a lot of that coming out of uh directly some of our engagement with the human trafficking providers.

Um I did want to understand why this was a three-year RFP.

If it if there was a deliberate policy decision around that the measure and then legislation requires that departments create three-year spending plans.

So the RFP process and the grant award process aligns with that requirement in being three years.

The other benefit of three-year grants, which is standard practice from the state and from the federal government, is that it provides consistency, continuity, stability uh for agencies who are able to um know that that funding is secure over that period of time, and then it also is a more efficient use of city resources when we go through this RFP process, it's an extensive um use of staff time.

Um so to minimize that is another benefit.

And sorry, can just to follow up since you mentioned a three-year spending plan, does a spending plan require a three-year contract length, or these are two different con because to me these are two different concepts, but I just want to make sure we we clarify for my colleagues as well as the public.

The NN legislation does not require three year grant agreements, it requires a three-year spending plan, which to be in alignment with that, we have decided to do three-year grant agreements.

Okay, uh understood.

I think the other thing that um struck me was that the RFP like the timeline to respond didn't seem very long.

Um, which I think for me tends my concern with that, and not necessarily a deal breaker, especially given I do not want a lapse in services, but I I have concerns and that can skew the favor in terms of organizations that have grant writers, right?

And those that are um sometimes the organizations that have grant writers and those who are able to do the the work on the ground have completely different skill sets, and um I just would like to understand that since I think I would imagine an organization that was very scrappy was out there doing the work in the field, maybe doesn't have great in-house grant writing capacity, would need longer than I think it was what roughly two or three weeks to put together a grant application.

Right.

So the original RFP was 10 weeks, I believe.

Um so agencies had ample, maybe not ample standard, very standard amount of time to create grant applications.

Um when we canceled the original RFP and reissued, the pure intention was to allow agencies to submit correctly.

So the um in fact, the explicit um request recommendation was that in was that agencies upload all of their original materials again without editing.

Um so it was simply we were reopening to allow agencies to correctly apply, not necessarily to prepare fully new grant applications.

Okay, thank you.

And then I just have one final question, and this is for the procurement office.

How many organizations uh qualified in the first round or whatever we're calling it, the first iteration of this RFP, and then they were disqualified in the second round, and which ones were those?

Oh, this is Laura Gonzalez Woodward.

Uh through the chair, I will share that.

I just wanted to add some additional insight regarding the advertisement period for the second RFP that was released.

Uh, for our OMC, we are required to publish for a minimum of 10 days, and we recommended to extend that time period.

Um, so I do want to highlight that was um we were mindful in that approach.

Um, but we did meet the requirement of the OMC in advertising.

Um, and then to your next question regarding the original list of applicants from the first RFP.

Um, I believe I will have to verify.

I can do a um a compare list, but I know for Laura, I I do have that number.

You do great, thank you.

I'm sorry.

It was 27.

So 27 applications, 27 agencies applications, were sent to our department for review and scoring in the first process.

And that was out of 41 that attempted to submit.

And how many of those were disqualified in the second iteration?

Our understanding is that of the agencies that applied to the first RFP, only one was disqualified in the second version.

Okay.

Do you know which one that is?

I do.

Okay.

Okay.

Um council member Houston.

So you to chair.

I want to know who that organization was.

Okay.

I'm sorry, we've been under very clear instructions from the contracts unit to not share information about the process, but the agency was the LG LGBTQ center.

Okay.

You have a question?

No, I have to do that.

Okay, Councilmember Brown.

Go ahead.

Do you want to do that?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, you do have a question?

Okay.

Council Member.

I have a bunch of questions.

Um, a unique seat here.

Um I ride with East Oakland and I'm from East Oakland, and my community has been suffering for a long long time.

I heard country just say something about officer making 450,000 dollars.

Okay.

So so and and I let me finish.

I and I and I just asked my council member, because I didn't know.

I asked her what was our yearly budget.

She said two billion, what was it?

2.1 billion dollars.

And I got the budget right here, right?

I feel that if we can't find something in this budget to close that gap of what's needed in my community where I sleep at night, where my family died where my family died.

So I got a bunch of questions that I'm gonna let Councilmember Brown, because I want to know if there's a appeal process.

See, I don't know the legal ramifications of me making a decision because I'm vice chair, I got I have voice too.

So I want to I'm gonna let Councilmember Brown say what you want to say, but I want to find out is there an appeal process or um how can we hold back because we got this two billion dollar budget right in front of me, and why can't we find these peanuts?

Yeah, before we move to Councilmember Brown, why don't we have somebody either from procurement or DVP respond to the question around appeals?

Sorry, Brad Johnson Director of Finance.

Laura, could you speak to the process as it relates to any appeal process that sits within our authority in this in this space?

Sure.

So I do want to highlight that we are currently in an active RFP.

Um typically once a formal award has been made, um potential protests are allowed, um, but it's essentially protesting our process, not necessarily the award, as far as who the selected uh CBOs are.

Um they can always do a public records request to inquire about the evaluation process, however, um typically protests are um regarding the like an unfair and um unjust process with with the RFP.

Um we typically would review, we'll complete our analysis and our investigation and identify if there was anything that was unfair throughout the process, but it's truly based on what the protest um includes.

Uh but as I mentioned, we do a full investigation and we provide the results um and if you know it's it's a system um inquiry if it's regarding I mean we'll take care of that right we we investigate that um however if it's regarding the evaluation process we would coordinate uh with the DVP to address that um but I will share so long as we are in a if we have an active and open protest that will delay um the uh execution of those new agreements okay well we have a tough decision ahead of us council member Brown all right well thank you so much um I you know I of course want to start off by just thanking um the DVP team for all of your amazing work um and I recognize and honor the the strategy um that informs the recommendations that are before us um and also at the same time you know when I think about the or just the public commenters or even this letter that's in front of me highlighting some of the um uh organizations that definitely support deep East Oakland uh I have concerns right so usually when we are facing um you know kind of a matter of this kind of magnitude I always take notes of each public commenter and I'll say okay did they say yes they're in favor of this or no and so I'm just gonna read off just some of the organizations that I heard no right so we heard from boss we heard from Violence Prevention Coalition we heard from the family violence law center um we heard from Ms.

Pamela and then we also heard from the African resource center and and you know one of the main questions that I actually was going to ask was going to focus in on uh how um when I look at the table and I see how the funding is being allocated um one of the questions that I had was you know who's supporting our LGBTQ community members right and so um as was noted the only one in in the resubmission of this RFP that was the only organization that uh did not um I guess you know basically fell off and so you know all in all I have concerns um I'm not necessarily concerned about the space of where location is located um more than anything I'm concerned about the cultural competency and the ability of organizations to do the work and the work that has been that they have been doing and so um I have a handful of questions I'm gonna start first by I think I wanna um just really address that you know as a city um yes we do have a really large budget budget and I think that we as a body we do need to look um very critically around the the funding that we are providing to certain departments um the public speakers mentioned OPD um so I do think that we should make some shifts and changes um but I did have this question around what is the current funding gap that I guess measure measure Z used to provide uh to support the uh the violence prevention efforts and how does that compare to you know the measure in in um allocation and just want to see what that difference is.

Through the chair I want to make sure I'm understanding your question Councilmember Brown are you asking about the difference between the investment here I I can clarify.

Thank you.

It's been a long day for me I've been here in this in this share since nine so um my brain is a little tired.

So I'm I guess I'm specifically talking about how in Measure Z there used to be support from the general fund to help support violence prevention.

Do I have that correct?

Right.

And so then I I think I heard someone mentioned that you know I mean we're so grateful, we should all be really grateful that the voters approve Measure NN to support this effort, right?

And we can't take that for granted.

And I think that it's amazing the amount of investment that we are pouring into uh violence prevention.

Um, but with that said, I guess I'm trying to identify like uh when I'm looking at all of the money we are allocating to the various organizations, it still seems like we are lacking, and so I'm curious like what what is that number?

Okay, I understand your question.

Thank you for the clarity.

So it wasn't that measure Y or Measure Z allocated more money to CBI work, it was that as a city, we were allocating additional funding on top of the measure.

So to many of the speakers' points here today, Measure NN at this moment in time is serving as the city's only investment in community violence intervention work for the CBOs.

That wasn't the case in the past.

The case in the past was that Measure Z or and Measure Y were supplemented by investments from 1010.

So that is why you're hearing from us that the investment does not represent the need and that it represents a decline in the overall city's investment in CBI.

But I guess once again, I guess I'm trying to figure out like when we're looking at the table and we're adding up the total amount, what is the like dollar amount that is that is a gap?

The difference?

Yeah.

Okay.

So it has varied over the years depending on the city's budget, but it has most often been between three to five million additional dollars from the general purpose fund.

Okay, and how does that compare to what we're allocating right now?

Right now there's no additional money from 1010 going.

Okay, so more specifically on an annual basis.

When we look at the chart, um, I don't know what the number is.

So the annual amount right now for year one is what?

Over 12 million million for CBOs.

And so if it's 12 million, basically we would be adding an additional plus three or plus five, depending on the investment year and what the city's 1010 general purpose budget looked like.

I see.

And then I'm sorry to put you on the spot.

So I'm gonna ask a uh question just so that I can get some like historical context.

Okay, can you share with me like, for example, in um 2024, how much did we allocate out of the door and what was the general fund contribution?

Do we know that number?

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

Maybe May Lee does.

Maybe we can remember.

I'm gonna call up my deputy director of administration.

She has a lot of institutional memory.

Excellent.

Hi, Maylee.

Hello, Maile Wong through the chair.

I don't remember the exact years, but what I can say is that the seed money from reimagining public safety allowed us to deep our investment in CBO contracts.

So for instance, say one year of Measure Z was um 10 million dollars, we supplemented about five million dollars from the general purpose fund to put out a 15 million dollar spending package the following fiscal year, it was about 17 million dollars.

I see excellent.

Thank you for providing that clarity.

Um, and so just uh a few more questions.

Um was the last time we had a report back on just the the impacts of you know these contracts that have gone out of the out the door in previous years, whether it's 2024 or even the impacts in 2025 of some of the service providers, because I guess my larger question here is um as we can see many folks in the room are saying, hey, these services are gonna be impacted if they are not funded.

Um can you speak to um like hey, like what could be some of the impacts of not servicing some of the providers that were mentioned, uh not providing funding to some of the CBOs that were mentioned, through the chair.

So we I know that the urban institute, which was contracted by the city um with Measure Z dollars to conduct an evaluation of Measure Z funded services presented to council on their um findings and their impact analysis.

I'm not sure that the DVP, at least in my time, has come before this body to present on um deliverables of specific contracted organizations, although we certainly could do a report if that would be of interest.

Yeah, I think so.

Um I'll hold um my questions.

Okay, I have a couple more, but I'll hold.

Okay.

Thanks, Councilmember Brown.

Um I did want to just in in a discussion with the committee on how we move this forward I think for me I am very concerned about a possible lapse in services.

I think that's real and I do not want that to happen.

And I think there is there are good programs being funded through this.

They there really are so I don't want perfection to be the enemy of the good at the same time this is 38 million dollars.

This is an enormous funding package over three years and so I have discussed with the attorneys that it would be possible to recommend this forward but as within a recommended amendment as a one year um contract only and I wanted to plant that seed and see what the body thinks.

Councilmember Fife.

Yes I would like to understand if if you got this information from the city attorney I would like to hear from the director of DVP and um our parliamentarian on how this might conflict with the ballot measure that was passed if it was required that there's a three year spending plan that was included as a part I'm not saying that I agree or disagree I just want to understand if there's any conflict there and if we're gonna run a foul of the actual language of the ballot initiative.

Yeah absolutely I did just hear that there was no contract there is a spending plan requirement but not a contract length requirement but yes let's turn it over to uh Chief Joshi.

Through the chair thank you for that question.

It is true to our understanding from the city attorney as well there is not a contract time limit within the legislation to my deputy's earlier point we were simply trying to align the three year spending plan with the three year RFP process for ease of accessibility for community based organizations and to spare the DVP staff and community based reviewers from going through that very lengthy process of an RFP pro RFP and the review that goes along with that but there is no requirement that we enter into three year grants.

Yeah I I would argue that there is probably a there is an accountability element too in requiring people to apply and uh in subsequent years and it's not guaranteed.

I understand there's also downsides right the the lack of stability and not lack of guaranteed funding but I think given some of the process concerns that weren't even the DVP team but rather what happened uh the upfront with the procurement side of things where things didn't even qualify to begin with that we have an argument to be made that um to shorten the the grants uh so we don't have a lapse in funding we shorten the grant period and we give um the end you know many of the organizations that spoke up today the opportunity in a year's time or less than a year whenever would open up to to apply so that's my thought council member brown I I mean I had I had several questions and I do want to I I wanted to get an understanding from you chair in your prep do you know approximately how long the next agenda item has I mean I saw at least one public comment uh here from uh Mr David Bope right here but I I think the next item uh I don't sense it's going to be as um rigorously discussed as this item so and we only have one other item on the agenda.

I thought one item was removed from the agenda do we have three?

We have three.

Okay.

Uh the first one is removed we still have the measure M, not measure NN.

So okay I would just like to ask a few questions.

I of course I did want to get a reaction from from you uh Director Joshi about the impact to changing the time frame because I I do know that it is um challenging sometimes for city departments on the runway to get an RFP out.

And I hear my colleagues saying that, you know, maybe an RFQ um but I I want to understand in terms of the time timeline, starting a whole another process and going through several rounds, how would that impact your the services that we all care about?

The service delivery.

Through the chair, I would ask and recommend that we do not do one year grants through an entire RFP process.

What we did last year was we asked for extensions to existing grants, and that is why the one year made sense for extensions to existing grants.

But to turn around and go through the same RFP process that we just went through in six to seven months from now, that is when we would need to begin to prepare another RFP process, is not my recommendation.

The lift that it it takes for staff that are still continuing to do the other their other jobs, we were involved in this RFP process at the same time we were working on our budget at the same time that appraisals were due, etc.

etc.

And keep in mind that on the review panel I had included my direct practice team because we did want the expertise coming from the streets, and so the direct practice team was also holding all of their clients, holding all of their violence intervention work across the city while being asked to review and participate in the procurement process.

So I would say that if we were going to reduce the timing, if that is important to the council, I would ask that we do it to two years instead of one.

I support that, I support that.

I know it, I know the work that it takes, um, and I've seen things go awry when we're rushing the work, and then there's the our staff have to do more than one job at a time.

I think we just heard I can't say it better than the director did, but I did have other questions around through the chair.

Um, I'm not sure if it's Ms.

Lynchy or or you, Director Joshi, I just have a couple questions about protest to the process because this sounds incredibly messy, and I'm not exactly sure why.

I I haven't I haven't heard in the presentation about why there were two processes or why the it was canceled.

Can you run through that again for me, please?

If direct if Laura is still on, please, Laura, jump in and correct me.

My understanding is off, but I'm gonna try to speak it in plain language, council member, because it we were catching up with with the procurement process and being trained on it by um Laura and her staff as it was moving along, so by no means are we experts.

But from my understanding, when we issued the first RFP, it was our intention to utilize a grants platform.

So we included a grants platform with I with iSupplier, and so the applicants were required to submit their application on two separate platforms.

Because that seemed to be overly complicated for almost 40% of the community-based organizations who failed to successfully upload the technical documents necessary into both spaces.

We did not, I come from the belief that if 40% of the students fail the test, the teacher didn't teach.

That's that that's simple from my perspective.

So we went to the city administrator and to the grants and contract folks, not the city attorney's office, they were not involved and did not need to be involved in that conversation, to ask what our options were.

And we were told that the only options were to either move forward with a 40% failure rate, which some of the agencies in here today would have failed the first test and would not have even been sent to the DVP for ranking at all.

So we decided to cancel the first one that too many agencies were disqualified from for technical reasons, because again, remember that this is a two-part process that involves two departments.

So the DVP does not even get the list of applicants to review, we don't get those folders unless they have passed the technical piece of the test with the contracts unit.

So because so many people were 40%, well, 34% were not passing the technical aspect of the test, we were seeking to modify and simplify the technical aspect of the test so that the applicants could actually make their way to DVP for the formal review process and not be taken out of the process before they had the opportunity for their applications to be seen.

So that is what occurred, and although it was not uh completely perfect process, it's the process that made the most sense in the moment, and the process got us closer to what we wanted, which was we would always want to see every applicant come before us so that they at least had a fair chance to be scored.

As was outlined by Jenny Lynchy, the failure rate then became 9% instead of 34% once we reissued the second RFP.

I hope that that was helpful.

I got it that time.

Thank you.

And have has out of that 9%.

Have then there been protests to the process still.

Out of the 9%, the only, and Jenny, please jump in if I'm wrong.

The only organization that we know of that is protesting and sending letters.

I don't know if they've done a formal protest through the contracts unit, but that is sending protest letters and advocacy letters is again the LGBTQ center.

Would the population that they prioritize still be served by the grants that have been issued?

Because I know there was a lot of conversation about it's not about where you're it where you're located, it's about the services.

Do you can you speak to that?

So first and foremost, I want to say and uplift the LGBTQ center.

They have always been a really important partner in this work.

So this RFP process for all of the agencies is not an indictment of the agency's performance.

We were not reviewing performance.

The LGBT kind of LGBTQ center serves a very important role in citywide violence intervention.

With that said, we are confident that the organizations that are recommended for funding here today are able and in fact do serve LGBTQ populations.

To you know, specifically name one of the agencies' Missy, they have on their application and website the percentage of young people that they serve that identify as LGBTQ, and I believe it was 25% with 10% specifically trans.

So the vast majority of the organizations that are being funded are specifically working with the individuals that are at highest risk, particularly when it comes to gender-based violence, when it comes to intimate partner violence, when it comes to sex trafficking, because we know that LGBQ youth in particular are at greater risk for trafficking in the city.

And have the applicants, the agencies who have not been awarded been notified that they have not been awarded through the process, all of them?

Through the chair.

That we are not allowed to communicate directly to the agencies until the RFP process is actually officially closed, and that the RFP process is not considered officially closed until the council votes to move to approve the recommendations.

And so we have not communicated at all with our organizations about this RFP process at the direction of the contracts unit.

And so what will what would the impact be if we did not move this item to the full city council tonight?

I think first and foremost, it the impacts are the timeline and the considerations around significant disruption in services.

That is definitely my number one concern because we have done this process a few times now, and the timeline that we mapped out was considering uh the contracts process and how long it takes to get the procurement settled.

With that being said, I think the other thing philosophically is that an RFP process is a competitive bidding process.

That's what it is.

It's it's not a process of guaranteeing or ensuring that the same agencies get the money year after year after year.

Although I understand the agencies' struggles, their concerns, their desire to have sustainable funding from the city, an RFP competitive bidding process is not set up that way.

It is set up to open up the city services opportunities for other folks, and that is the flip side of the coin of the critiques that we have heard over and over again, is that the procurement process ends up never being open to community-based organizations outside of the folks that people think are the anchor agencies.

So I would just encourage council that if we want to think about Measure N allocations differently, then we should do that.

We should think about do we want measure NN dollars in the future to go out through a competitive bidding process or do we not?

Or do we want part of it to go out through a competitive bidding process and part of it to be allocated to agencies that we believe are anchor agencies?

That is a council decision.

That is not something that the Department of Violence Prevention can do.

The Department of Violence Prevention was tasked with through the direction of the city administrator to run a competitive bidding process, and that's what we did.

Understood.

Thank you.

Okay.

One point of um clarification I also wanted to make just to the body.

I did have conversations with the uh city attorneys because I I do have concerns around the LGBTQ center in particular because they were the one agency.

If you get two bites of the Apple, right, because there were two iterations, they, you know, they successfully did the first one.

Second one weren't able to get through because of an aberration and this addendum, you know, it's if you read the documentation that Sean had sent us uh over today, but uh we do not have the authority to uh direct staff to say, I I asked, like, can we because my interest is not saying let's direct money to a specific organization, but to ensure that at least there's process fairness and that individuals can essentially any organization that qualified the first iteration uh and didn't qualify the second iteration could have at least been evaluated, right by the DVB team, but we cannot do that.

Uh that is not uh an authority that we have as a body, we have to uh either vote this through, vote uh shortened time period um or vote it down and and face also the consequences of of a lapse.

So uh council member Houston.

I have a question.

Um as Councilmember Brown had mentioned it was a gap like three to five million dollars.

Um, if we find that three to five million dollars in here, where does that go?

I'm just saying, I'm just if we find in this 2.1 billion dollars, does that go to the organizations that have been qualified or that went through the application, or could it go to other ones that were not?

And and here's the other question.

If one of the organizations fall off, what if they don't like bring the result-based accountability or they just fall off?

Does that money go to the other ones that are in queue, or does it go to the ones that did not make that cut?

Okay, thank you.

Through the chair.

So for the first part of your question, council member Houston, if we're able to find additional funding, who would that go to?

That is the question for the council.

I think that there's three options.

The first is that we would allocate additional money to the organizations that were already selected for funding.

That's option one.

Option two, because it's there's a ranked list that we're happy to provide.

Option two is to go further down the ranked list and bring more organizations into the fold.

You know, if we're if we are currently, for example, funding the top three agencies, then additional funding could open an opportunity to fund the top four agencies in a particular category, for example, or the other opportunity that I believe you all may have as council, and has been has happened in the past.

I wasn't here for this, but again, my deputy May Lee was here for this.

Was that council in the past had a discretionary fund?

And the discretionary fund for council is that council can decide to do mini grants or give grant funding to the organizations essentially of their choice.

So I think that those are three options if you all find additional money.

And last question.

It goes to full council.

And it's another reading on if we move it or not, correct?

Because I want the public to know that.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, I don't think we're gonna be moving this on consent, that's for sure.

So, um, yeah, and I Councilmember Brown and then I'll I'll put a motion on the floor.

Excellent.

Um, thank you, Councilmember Houston, for those additional questions.

We I think Bradley is still here from finance, who could uh hopefully it's not outside of the scope, but shed some light on how our general fund is doing and whether or not we have this agency to pull from it, given our current fiscal state.

I will say it this way.

The council through the amendment process, which we'll hear on Friday, may make adjustments to the proposed budget in the way you deem uh fit.

Any changes to that budget need to be costed and budget neutral, so any additions need to be accompanied by reductions, and that would be uh relevant to the council to provide.

I would note that I believe the deadline for submitting amendments for Friday has passed, and so these would need to be amendment.

The council would have to not take action on Friday in order to put amendments of this nature on and consider them on Wednesday.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Um, and then I guess my last um question andor comment.

I guess I continue to be um, I guess I've I've found, um, and I'm not sure who can answer this.

Maybe um Laura from contracts, Bradley, or the administration.

Um, as various items come before us.

Sometimes we get insight into the scoring uh criteria that goes into uh who is receiving like the funds.

And so I I do have this question around like I I guess for this specific kind of allocation that we're making, um, at what point are we like as we let's say we advance this to the full council, are we actually able to get that attachment of everyone who applied and then the the score for each?

I'll defer to Laura on whether or not we can deal with that under our current rules.

Laura, would you go ahead?

Sure.

As I mentioned earlier, this is Laura Gonzales Woodward, uh, through the chair, I wanted to share that um we are in an active solicitation, right?

And so a formal award, this is essentially just a recommendation.

Um, and the formal award is made after we've consulted with Dwess.

Um, in most cases.

I will share that.

Um we could provide you information.

Um I think that may be beneficial, uh, but we are unable to make any changes to the scoring evaluation uh for any of the proposers.

So I just want to make that clear.

We could provide a background and share those scores, um, but we are not at liberty to change them.

That's that that evaluation period has concluded.

Um, but I just want to be completely transparent that typically we don't share scores until we've made the formal award, but you know, I think if if it if it highlights more transparency for this conversation, I would be I would welcome the idea.

Are you gonna add more, Brad?

Bradley.

I was simply gonna make the point that uh I understand that this process is confusing and difficult, and as we work through the process that's being led by deputy city administrator Davis on contracting reform, part of what we need to focus in on is better understanding of the scoring rubric on the front end so that we are not having conversations on the back end of who is awarded, and we're able to stand behind the outcomes of our processes.

And I want to I want to uplift that because there's been a lot, lot live conversation around the contracting process.

We understand that our processes are difficult, that's driven heavily by government procurement rules and our Muni code as it relates to things, and we are working on changing those processes, and they need to do more work on the front end so that the back end results, whatever wherever they may lay, are more uh are better able to stand up to scrutiny I'll say it that way thank you.

Okay.

And the chair could I just add one point of clarification.

So the questions that agencies were asked to respond to were detailed in the RFP itself as well as the what like how what percentage each section would be weighted so that information was provided in the RFP.

Got you thank you.

Okay I'm going to put a motion on the floor um I'm just given some of the conversation I'm going to put a motion on the floor to advance this item what is a year and a half long contract process um I think just given again that this is 38 million dollars that's an enormous amount of money and I think it's actually worth having that accountability that halfway through there is another um RFP process especially given the aberrations or uh involving ISUP or et cetera that that happened this this round or this iteration whatever we want to call it um and I also want when it moves to the full council I do want the full evaluation criteria to be included as well I think that transparency is important.

Councilmember Houston oh and I guess um the other um thing that was coming to my attention and I guess I just wanted to say it out loud that um and and maybe we have some precedent here um I guess I just don't fully understand why we would have like an RFP that's open for 10 weeks and then because of the the need to like cancel and resubmit why would we not give the organizations the same amount of time which is the 10 weeks so how's that decision like I know I heard Laura say oh you know we follow the standard procedure and it's 10 days like it was more than 10 days but I like I guess I'm curious why we wouldn't do the same time frame.

Yeah through the chair again the intention was to allow the agencies that applied to the original RFP to submit correctly it was not to reopen the RFP to all agencies in Oakland to like craft new applications the intention although that still could have been done in a three week period but the intention truly was for the agencies that applied originally to have them all apply correctly so that we could re receive all of their applications and read and score them.

Interesting.

And do we know offhand of any organizations that applied the first time didn't make it to that shorter timeframe the three of one agency which is the LGBTQ center.

Oh I'm sorry I thought that they just didn't make it because of a technical error or something.

They didn't make it the second time because of a technical error got you they made it the first time yeah I guess my larger question is with the reopening of the RFP how many organizations were there any organizations just missed the communication altogether right like say they applied the first time and they're like okay we're done and they didn't even see that it had been canceled and reopened.

All of the agencies that we know to have tried to apply the first time successfully applied the second time except for the LGBTQ center.

Okay.

Through the chair um Dr.

Yoshi spent they spent a lot of time they went through this this whole process with the applications is complicated.

And if we moved and you said a year and a half I I don't get it if she just said two.

I mean, what if she says she couldn't do it in a year and a half, well I mean two years maximum.

Well what I heard is that it's she wouldn't advise it, which I understand.

I also think that and the reason I put the motion on the floor and anyone's welcome to put a substitute motion for two years right is that I think that this is a three-year spending plan.

A checkpoint halfway given that this is an enormous amount of money is actually an important part of also accountability.

And that is really important and also given the unusual nature of this particular process where we had two uh iterations of the RFP that um I I think that is something worth thinking about and therefore I am recognizing a motion at least to advance this with the recommendation for a year and a half long contract period.

I guess I should just say it I don't think you have a second chair and I I can't support that because I know I just shared the life enrichment committee where we ran into issues because the individuals in the department um were doing work on top of work for somebody else's work and there were errors in the process because they did not have the proper um staffing and oversight to manage a process with procurement with um an entirely different department so if if we're hearing from the the chief director of the department of violence prevention that she needs a minimum of two years I support what's the staff recommendations in this particular case because she knows what they can deliver and what they can't and so I don't want to have to come back here.

We're already shortening the length of time on a competitive process work.

This this this whole system is messed up as far as I'm concerned the fact that we even have to be here debating like these dollars is just ridiculous but it it's the system that we have and the fact that people have to compete I see so many of my people in here I see so many folks that I've known for years that are doing this work and somebody said a labor of love.

No it's a labor of necessity it's a labor of life and death because if it's not done we know that people will die.

That's just what it is and the fact that we have to be constrained by these minimum dollar amounts we we heard from a public speaker like if we could have the courage to explore overtime if we could have the courage to look at our pensions if we had the courage to do some of this other work then maybe we could spread the dollars out a little bit more but we don't today we are here our director asked us for uh for a minimum of two years that is the motion that I would like to put forward I'm I would appreciate a second so we can at least make sure that the organizations who have funding can move forward with their work I would like to work with the mayor's office Madam Mayor I don't know if you have staff listening to help to try to find out how we can fill in a budget deficit for these other organizations that were not funded.

I'm happy to do fundraising and it would be behested payments my staff don't typically do this but I will beat the streets to try to get support for organizations who typically don't have access to these resources to have access but what we are here to debate today is the the framework that's in front of us I'm amenable to shortening the time frame by a year um and again that is the motion that I'm making to move it to the full city council on um next Tuesday.

Councilmember Houston.

I'm gonna second that to to move that with us looking in this in this two billion dollar week is coming up on Friday to find some money.

I mean, it's like this, it's like we're fighting over peanuts, you know.

I mean, they might not think it's peanuts, you know.

They might say it's a lot of money.

It's not a lot of money when you got two billion dollars.

We playing with and we got somebody doing four hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

And and they're not seeing something else in here, another five, well, colleagues.

As much as I hear what you're saying, I didn't think.

Let me finish.

Okay, let me finish.

I'll let you finish.

So we got another like 500,000.

I'm saying here that shouldn't be in here in my opinion.

Then I see another four hundred and fifty, sixty-four thousand in here for a DOT project manager.

I mean, I see some stuff in here that I don't I don't even like.

So I'm I'm I'm you know, I'm gonna be straight.

We gonna m I want I'm gonna do that second.

We're gonna move it for discussion, we're gonna look for um some money in this this this budget.

Okay.

I I just wanna say I hear what you are all saying, but also I want to point out we have an uh I'm allowed to talk about the budget item on Friday, the special session.

I haven't seen in any of our amendments, you know, added funding for what these folks have asked for.

So I also think that we need to uh vote on this item, assuming for now that this is what we have, and then we move in the budget process to how can we get that added funding, but we cannot assume that.

Councilmember Brown.

Um thank you so much.

Um, in order for me to support moving this forward, there's some specifics that I would need to see um that would entail um like a one-year report back.

Um and and I'm happy to I feel like I don't have the specifics in this moment, but I feel like I want to focus on two things, right?

Um, like cer service impact levels of providers no longer per like providing the service and then impacts of those who have received the funding, like one year, and so if we're gonna move forward with the two-year um contract, um, I would want us to get an annual report.

Through the chair, if I can comment, we're more than happy to provide any type of check-ins on whatever schedule is amenable to to the council.

Councilmember Houston.

No, you know, you can do I need to get them.

I had to ask through the chair, I had to ask for a six-month report back for result-based accountability, Councilmember Brown, um, for data collection.

I want to make sure that they was touching our tier ones that needed to be touched.

That's what I had at that spoke to Doctor about because I wanted it not a year later.

I wanted like six months.

I'm not stepping over you, Councilmember Brown.

I'm just saying I had asked for six months because I want to know who's doing the work and why my people dying and why my people ain't eating.

Um that's what I was asking for.

Through the chair, six months is what you'd asked for in a previous meeting.

Council member Houston, um, administrator Phillips and I had met on the um whether or not DVP could do that, and we can.

So six months is the time frame for council, we can do that as well.

Yeah, this one.

Through the chair, I just have a quick question.

Can I get clarification on the request from uh council member brown?

I'm making my notes, thank you.

Can't may I submit it in writing to you?

Through the chair, yes, ma'am.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Five.

I'm I will I'm complete.

I predatory capitalism.

I don't know.

I think everyone council member Houston asks why this are we here, but I would like to call the question.

We do the chair.

We have a motion on the floor to through the church of the maker of the motion.

Does your motion include the amendment?

That was stated previously.

Uh the amendment to the legislation for the housing service dollar amount.

This is this amendment to like is this motion to include that amendment from staff earlier?

Through the chair, we were told by the city attorney's office that we could simply submit a new resolution with that amount corrected since the overall amount is correct.

Oh, the typo that they mentioned earlier.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

So we have a motion made by Councilmember Five, seconded by Councilmember Houston to approve as amended the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the June 16th City Council with the amendment to the legislation to change it from a three-year contract to a two-year contract with the request to staff to provide in a six in six months a report back regarding the service impact levels no longer providing services, impact of those that and impact of those that receive the funding on roll.

Before you go on with the motion, we I know that there's um been direction of city attorney about that typo, but we still are right now recommending including that information about the the funding amount for that particular grantee.

So we'd also recommend that being part of the motion also.

Through the chair, do you need me to state it again?

Okay, okay.

Okay, repeating the motion.

A motion made by council member five, seconded by council member Houston to approve as amended the recommendations of staff and to board this item to the June 16th City Council agenda with the amendment to the legislation to change it from a three-year contract to a two-year contract and to amend on page three of the legislation correcting the dollar amount under the housing service for the Bay Area Community Service Resource Inc.

to reflect an annual amount of $300,000 and total funding of $900,000 with the request to staff to provide in six months a report back regarding the service impact levels no longer providing services and impact of those that receive the funding on and for the report that goes to city council to include the evaluation criteria, and to include in a supplemental report the full evaluation criteria on roll council members brown aye five Houston and Chair Wong I thank you item number three passes with four eyes to forward this item to the June 16th as amended um on nonconsent with pass before eyes now reading in item S4 before we beginning.

This item was added at the three-day noticing.

So this does require a motion to accept the urgency finding.

Um can someone make a motion to accept the urgency finding colleagues.

We have one more item.

Can someone make a motion to accept the urgency finding?

What was the what was the rationale for the emergency for the urgency?

Can you uh spell that out?

This item is a requirement of measure MM providing public accountability and oversight of the use of wildfire prevention funding under the voter approved measure.

This was the urgency finding provided.

We have a motion made by council member Brown, seconded by council member five to accept the urgency finding on item S4.

On roll council members Brown.

Aye, five.

Aye, Houston, aye.

And Chair Wong.

Aye.

Thank you.

The motion passes with four ayes to accept the urgency finding.

Now reading in item four S4, receive and file, verbal and written annual report on measure MM spending the or spending from the Oakland Wildfire Prevention Commission, and we have four four speakers that signed up to speak on this item.

Okay, all right, Daniel.

Take it away.

Thank you, Chair Daniel Hamilton, chief resilience officer in the city administrators' office.

Thank you for your patience.

We will do our best to be brief.

Um we're recommending that you receive and file a verbal and written annual report for measure MM spending from the Oakland Wildfire Prevention Commission.

We are at the end of year one of this commission created by a voter approved measure in 2024 to oversee 2.7 million dollars in parcel tax revenue, primarily to implement the vegetation management plan of the city.

Uh, the chair of the commission, Tom Grossman, is here to summarize his report for you.

Alright, thank you, Daniel.

So uh my thanks to the council members for for being here.

Um I admire the strength of your Zitzfleisch and the fortitude of your bladders.

Um I'd like to uh thank members of the commission who to join me in our work this year.

Three of them were present, one had to leave, but two others are still here, so wave hello.

I'd like to thank the many members of the city staff who came and spoke to us.

They are listed in the commission and in our report.

In the interest of brevity, I'll speed up on my planned remarks.

We have a number of recommendations for you.

The context is it's early days, and we don't yet know enough about the spending, and we have not yet received all the information we need to make sense of what the city is doing.

The single most important recommendation we have is to expedite the hiring of a measure MM supervisor.

The person who is necessary to administer the measure MM monies has not been hired.

We have a the city has bringing in a temporary person for a 90-day pro 90-day period of time to manage this.

This is a complex thing.

There's lots of details.

There are 600 page environmental impact report that has to be honored.

There's a lot to it.

And so if one thing you could do is to expedite and get that person hired, that would do more than any other single action you could undertake.

As described in the report, there are many opportunities to improve the city's ability to survive the fire that we know is coming.

It's difficult for us to understand what is happening.

We have many more information needs.

We are optimistic that we can solve next year, but we don't yet have all the information we need.

There's detailed information on specific mitigation activities that have been undertaken this year and going forward.

There's no good reporting structure in place that we can make sense of.

It seems that they are not being maintained properly.

There is not seem to be a mechanism to go to those property owners and get them to take necessary action.

And it is possible, but not verified, that there may be parcels where the owners have specific mitigation commitments, either in their lease with the city or in their conditional use permits, where again it's possible they're not undertaking mitigation activities.

So an inventory of those would be very important and very helpful.

In addition, there are very detailed strictures in the environmental impact report related to endangered species that may not be adequately adequately honored to date, and that would be very important to do.

There's other recommendations on wildfire evacuation routes, particularly hardening of wildfire evacuation routes.

We lost a police officer in the 91 fire storm due to congestion on an evacuation route.

We've seen many fires where evacuation routes have not been cleared of flammable fuels, causing the evacuation routes themselves to basically become ovens.

And our city seems vulnerable to that.

There's more details in the report, but in the interests of time and the late hour, I think I'll stop my remarks there.

Okay.

Um let's go to the public comment.

Following the names I signed up to speak on item S4 in no particular order.

You can come up to the podium, state your name for the record.

David Boatwright, Asada Olabala, Blair Beekman, and Elizabeth Stage.

Yes.

Thank you.

Uh good evening.

I'm Elizabeth Stage, D4 resident.

I'm a member of the Wildfire Prevention Commission, but I am here speaking as a community member to underscore the urgency of these recommendations.

Tomorrow night, the Oakland Hills will be under a red flag warning.

I'm sure you all know what to do.

You got it on AC Alerts.

You got your go bag ready.

You know your evacuation zone, right?

I do.

Um I will uh tell you how worried I am and suggest how worried you might or might not be.

Why the urgency?

Oakland Fire did a great job with the Keller fire, contained it before it engulfed the whole city.

If the winds hadn't died down in '91, the entire city of Oakland would have been toast.

As it is now when we have fires in the hills, the particulate matter hits everybody in Oakland, particularly the.

Thank you for your comments.

Your time is up.

David, but I there's no way I can get through this in one minute.

You guys have a copy of it.

Can somebody up there just read it out?

I mean, you've got more time than I do.

Seriously.

I've been here for three hours.

Try your best, David.

The public safety committee and all council committees should improve their oversight and follow up of approvals by requiring periodic reviews of the many high-cost, high-impact projects it oversees.

Measure MM was authorized one and a half years ago by voters.

However, the management and implementation of this measure is not progressing, so that it's very important.

Objectives can be met.

Examples of areas needing more attention are in its April 16th meet meeting, five months after the wildfire prevention commission's first public meeting.

The city's MM supervisory uh employee borrowed from the parks department, was introduced as a 90-day temporary position that ends about June 30th.

Thank you for your comments.

I was asking if you wanted the time.

I continue to challenge you on the fact that Skyline High School with 1400 students.

There is no evacuation plan.

Those students are instructed to go to the football field and shelter in place.

You continue to ignore it, the credibility of that, I question your credibility.

Shadow Woods, where I lived before.

The balconies allow barbecuing with less than 10 feet structure, and they uh there's high risk for fires.

When my son lives there now and downstairs, he's using charcoal flames popping up all over the place.

So there are a lot of things that are not being brought up.

That's one of them.

That is high risk.

You're just talking about the visitation, but they have practices.

Thank you for your comments.

Chair, at this time, all names have been called.

Okay.

Thank you.

I I do have some questions.

When I look at this report, and I've I've started to really ask some questions around the parcel taxes that we level levy and how we're spending them.

I I don't see a like an itemization of what we're spending the money on.

I see a lot of narrative.

Why is that not available?

An itemized spending plan for measure MM was included in your budget adoption process last year for this.

I'm happy to go through the high level for it.

It's about $800,000 for goat grazing.

The majority of the rest was for shrub clearance with about 200,000 additional and for uh the hiring of and measure MM supervisor that you heard about from several commenters, and about 200,000 for tree clearance, which is um right now set to be spent um, I believe in Laurel Canyon over the next month or so.

So that constitutes most of the 2.6 million.

There's small parts in there for attorneys for finance and for others in review, but that's the bulk of the spending um as outlined in your budget approval from last year.

Okay, thank you for clarifying that.

I I would just my commentary is that reports going forward need to include that level of detail.

I don't want just narrative, it needs to be spelled out.

There's a lot of um just skepticism, obviously uh clearly with what happened with measure E.

With that, we're spending the money right that we're even spending down these parcel taxes, and so um I I just we need to see that evidence, and whenever we discuss uh a parcel taxes and just aimed at you, that is the sort of uh level of detail that I expect.

So thank you.

Any questions from my colleagues?

Councilmember Fife.

Yes, through the chair.

What is the timeline timeline on hiring that um director position, the manager position?

Do we know where we are in the process on anybody?

So through the chair, I actually just had to ask our parliamentarian if there is a full-time FTE built into the measure or if this is something that was allocated so um through the chair um to council member Fife.

I did that's why I went up and asked Daniel if we had it funded as well.

So I was doing a little bit of research here.

So I don't know if um we have that information if it's a full-time FTE that was budgeted through the measure, um, and if there is continued funding for this FTE ongoing.

I don't know the answers to that, but my colleagues may.

Oh, the ones that are at home eating dinner right now.

Okay, is it possible that we get that information emailed to us before Friday?

Yes, it's a it's in the measurement.

So the measure specifically says that it will include staffing to manage implementation of the funds and in the last budget process, the council appropriated funding in Oakland Public Works for the hiring of that position.

But my question is what is the timeline because what I heard from our our presenter is that that's the single biggest action that we could take to bring that person on.

So I'm not trying to understand the timeline and what needs to happen to bring that person on.

We don't have a representative here for public works tonight, but we'll be sure to um get you that information as quickly as possible, certainly before Friday.

Is it public works or HR?

Do we know?

The position is housed within public works, but obviously the hiring is done through the HR process, so we'll ensure that we get opinions for both of them to provide the accurate information.

I also understand that Chief Covington happens to be online.

Chief Covington, do you happen to know this?

The answer to this question, even though it is within public works.

Yeah, good evening.

Um, Chief Government and Open Fire.

Um, through the chair.

Um, this has been kind of a back and forth issue um between public works and fire.

Um, the the measure money was put into public works budget.

That's why this position falls within public works.

But as we've tried to hire that position, um, one we we found we came into budget issues, obviously, as the city, the entire city did, but also there's some very um specific qualifications that this particular uh position has to have um for us to be thinking compliant.

Um, there's another um compliance issue with bird nesting, so some other issues have come up as we've tried to identify this position.

We've uh public works has put um one of their um current positions into an interim position just so that we can keep the measure going we can get contracts approved and get the work done but um it is still ongoing process that we're working our way through uh it's been a little clunky but I think we're towards the end of it.

Okay.

Can someone just explain why this is a public works position.

I I've just noticed you know for example when we had our life enrichment committee that again there was through measure Q money that was being for parks that was were was going through public works and I and I know that an ongoing conversation is just you know this sometimes this disconnect between public works and parks like the people who see the the daily degradation of parks and the department who's responsible for the actual maintenance so um madam chair I could answer from the fire department's perspective um the reason that I believe the the budget and finance department put the funding into public works is because they are the keeper of contracts and so they had some contracts in place and they were procuring other contracts for roll flag clearance and other um vegetation management measures and that's why they receive the measure in and money we were initially we thought the fire department was going to receive the funding but it didn't so we'll we'll see we you know we're kind of using it as a litmus test to see how things go for this first year and see if there needs to be adjustments moving forward but we've worked with um tirelessly with public works to make sure that we get contracts in place and these positions are hired um full time so that we can get the get the work done throughout the city.

Okay thank you it director Johnson did you have anything to add here no okay council member houston uh do the chair I have one of my commissioners in the audience and I wanted to know how what her thought is is how public works can assist the commission um that was just my question I wanted to call her up and see what she thinks um Rhonda can you come up here real quick I just wanted to find out what do you think about how how can we assist this commission that's been that's come on up here young lady good evening you've been here all day I saw you up in the crowd and all of a sudden everybody going I still see you how can how can public works assist assist the commission how can they support you guys.

Thanks a lot for asking the question um the biggest support would be for public works to provide the monies that are needed to support our commission and um we've already have the support of the fire department and uh that's pretty much about it.

We need the funding.

Okay thank you I just want to from oops.

Just give the mic yeah we okay thank you Rhonda thank you I just wanted to hear your voice.

Give me a voice okay you want to make a motion council member Houston yes I'll make a motion move.

I'll second that this is to receive and file in committee.

Okay yes you got it we have a motion made by council member hewson seconded by Chair Wong to approve the recommendations of staff and to receive and file this information report in committee on role council members Brown aye aye I wanted to ensure just that we're getting that information as soon as possible.

If the budget has been already allocated I want to see if we can do what we were asked by our commissioners so um I don't know if that needs to be reflected it doesn't I'll um yeah, I just it's unnecessary.

Okay.

Through the chair um to council member Fife.

Uh, if you wanted to get additional information on this item, um you could maybe the motion instead of accepting it would be to continue it to another date to get that information.

Because otherwise, if it gets accepted, the item is done.

And so to get that information, um, you it could be a different motion to forward to council and at that point ask for a supplemental for that information.

Or I've just wanted to lay out there what the limitations are.

If you accept it and you want additional information, the item is done at this point.

I just recanted because it feels like this can be done administratively.

So that's why I said never mind.

Okay.

Okay.

Aye.

Uh I'll quickly repeat the motion.

It's a motion made by Councilmember Houston, second by Chair Wong to receive and file this information report in committee on roll again.

Council members Brown.

Aye.

Bye.

Hi.

Houston.

And Chair Wong.

Aye.

Thank you.

Item S4.

Um, passes with four eyes to receive and file this information report in committee.

Moving on to open forum.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak up for open forum.

Uh Deborah Nelson, Asada Olabala, Blair Beekman, David Boatwright, Millie Cleveland, Ann Jenks, Paula Hawthorne, Gabriel Garcia, L.

Autumn King, Burnett, Anna Ordaz, Maria Leon, Daniela Flores, DeMarcus, Demares Jimenez, Norcada Matias, Leticia Diaz, Leticia Ramirez, Florestina Tuck, Mark, uh, Martha Sanchez, Male, Meiko Coma, Laura Aguilar, and Adriana Martinez and Griselda Jimenez.

Um, here's some uh guidelines for the NSA.

Please do not be insulting, bragging after 23 years.

You coming out of the NSA.

I heard some conversations uh about people in the city bragging 23 years.

Please do not be insulting by saying we're gonna be enforcing constitutional policing.

The NSA is the Pacific lawsuit around police brutality, excessive force, racial profiling, falsifying of records related mostly to African Americans.

A hundred and nineteen people filed the case, a hundred and eighteen were African Americans.

I don't want to come back in here and tell you don't brag about you coming in.

And when you're in when you come out of it, you still have anti-blackness going on in the Oakland police department.

The black police officers' grievance indicates in 20.

David Boatwright, I'm not gonna read the rest of this, but the important comment is as a resident of the city and a payer of measure M wildfire prevention parcel tax.

I do not feel confident entering the second fire season since MM was approved one and a half years ago that the city has done everything it needs to do to try to avoid a wildfire in Oakland.

Hey everybody, wake up.

We have a fire danger.

We need to be doing something about it and not just talking.

Read this list, pass it on to whoever needs to see it, but we gotta do something.

It's dangerous.

My name is Gary Garcia, I'm the policy and advocacy director for Youth Alive.

Uh it's been a long day.

I just want to thank you for your attention to the violence prevention intervention and healing spending.

Throughout the conversation, your critical, thoughtful questions were really appreciated.

Um I know for us, just listen to some of the comments you made, Councilmember Fife, and Houston.

Um our goal has been to bring in additional funding from the state of California to augment measure NN, and I would like to reiterate that measure N is the floor, not the ceiling on the city's support for violence prevention, intervention, and healing.

We're grateful for the proposed funding from DVP.

There are many great organizations and programs not included in that funding.

So as you're looking at the budget, would definitely appreciate consideration on how we could just bring more funding, more attention, more support to those programs and organizations.

Thank you.

Anne Jenks, District Three.

I'm with the uh Coalition for Police Accountability.

And you know, you're not going to rationally balance this budget without looking at OPD spending and ensuring that uh that efficient and effective policing and public safety is not just throwing whatever dollars you have at it.

Um I don't hear this committee spend time looking at the OPD budget seriously.

Uh over a year ago, you uh instructed the city to look at beginning to civilianize the uh internal uh affairs staff over to CIPRA, which would be less expensive and more effective.

Internal affairs has been part of every scandal and every cover-up.

And you could have saved money there, but then you never followed up, and the city administrator for over a year just didn't do anything.

That's why I got it.

And I'm sorry.

There's also the police union contract that's being negotiated right now.

There's massive money involved in that, and it needs to be discussed here.

It needs to be discussed in this committee.

It's been a long day.

515.

I've been waiting for this.

Uh good evening, council members.

My name is Deborah Nelson.

I'm a lifelong East Oakland resident, and I'm here regarding the 73rd Avenue Active Routes Transportation Project.

For nearly two years, I have been asking questions about how community engagement was conducted for this project.

I am not here to debate whether safety matters, safety absolutely matters.

I'm here because transparency matters too.

I want to acknowledge Director Josh Rowan for meeting with me directly, helping me to facilitate responses to questions I had raised.

My concern is not with one individual, it's whether overall engagement process for people who matter, the voices in East Oakland, not the bike and the pedestrian community, but transparency in engagement.

That hasn't happened.

DOT doesn't even have an engagement component.

And to that extent, transparency needs to engage.

Thank you for your comments.

Thank you for your comments, Chair.

Sure.

Go ahead, Council McPherson.

Oh, so so can you elaborate on that a little bit, Deborah?

I can since 2024 when I heard about this project, and I have lived in East Oakland for the length of time I have, and I have watched Oak DOT and the bike and pedestrian community come and decimate Oakland, and I saw that BRT come through.

We knew it was bad.

It's no surprise, it's that amount of fatalities along that corridor.

Brookens, Alan Temple, probably not the social services components that are within East Mont Mall.

Definitely not the principal at Markham Elementary, not my uncles, not my colleagues that live not on 73rd as the Oakland side report reported yesterday that they engaged people on 73rd.

They haven't engaged.

And what happened to asking for $30 million dollars in 2024 and now it's 40 million dollars.

I want to know for public funds, where does that what's the difference?

So I wrote my letter today to DOT to several of you, all as a council, to mayor, to city administrator, and I will continue to advocate for transparency rather than the lack of voices that come from East Oakland because we tired and everybody's not going to sit here until nine something at night like I did.

But I'm trying to represent and I think that there is an expectation for fairness and equality and that nobody is riding bikes to the extent that the city of Oakland can consciously request 40 million dollars to put a bike lane down 73rd from Foothill to East 14th Ken.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Did you hear me?

And it was 30.

What's the difference in the 10 million?

That ain't right.

We need an audit and we need a lot more and I'm gonna be back because I'm not letting this go I have a trail of emails from 2024.

And and I'm on this thank you for your comments chair all names have been called okay thank you thank you for everyone who came and uh has stayed engaged with us through uh this late evening uh and with that we are adjourned yes thank you