The Oakland City Council Finance and Management Committee convened on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, at 9:31 AM in the City Council Chamber, 3rd Floor, with Chairperson Janani Ramachandran presiding. All four committee members (Councilmembers Brown, Unger, Wang, and Ramachandran) were present. The meeting addressed eight agenda items and included public comment on several topics. All votes were unanimous (4-0). The meeting adjourned at 11:29 AM.
Good morning, and welcome to the Finance and Management Committee meeting of Tuesday, July 14th, 2026. The time is now nine thirty-one AM, and this meeting may come to order. Before taking roll, I will provide instructions on how to submit speaker cards for items on this agenda. If you're here with us in chamber, I would like to submit a speaker card, please fill one out and turn one into myself or 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 came to order at night nine thirty-one AM and speaker cards will no longer be accepted ten minutes after, making that time nine forty-one AM. We'll now proceed with taking roll. Council members Brown. Present and Chair Ramachandron. Chair, before before we begin, do you have any announcements at this time? No, this is the last set of committees before our summer recess, which is why we have a packed agenda today, and I look forward to getting through it. Sorry. Unger. And Chair Ramachandran. Thank you. Item one passes with four eyes to accept the draft minutes from June 23rd, 2026. Reading in item two, determination of schedule of outstanding committee items, also known as your pending list. We have one speaker that's signed up, but he is not in the queue. So okay, thank you. Anything from administration? Nothing at this time. Thank you. Okay. I will entertain a motion. Second. Thank you. That's a motion made by Councilmember Unger, seconded by Councilmember Brown to accept the determination of schedule of outstanding committee items as is. On roll council members Brown. Aye. Unger. Aye. Wong. Aye. And Chair Ramachandran. I thank you. Item two passes with four eyes. So accept the determination of schedule of outstanding committee items as is. Reading in item three. Adopt a resolution to accept an appropriate grant funds from the Oakland fund in an amount not to exceed 200 2,500 for a comprehensive independent audit of the City of Oakland's technology systems. And we have three speakers that signed up to speak on this item. All right, we will hear from staff. Good morning, Chair and Members. I'm Erica Estrella, Director of Data and Technology Transformation in the Office of Mayor Barbara Lee. The item before you is a resolution to accept 2025 202,500 in grant from funds from the Oakland fund. The funds will pay for an independent audit of the city's technology systems. If I may share an anecdote anecdote, when I started last year, I sat in the budget meeting and learned about people needing to hand walk hiring documents between departments due to lack of systems integration. I have to say I was shocked. For context, my background is over 20 years in private sector technology. And if that had ever been the case anywhere I worked, everyone would drop everything to get it fixed. We pursue this funding because we have heard over and over that our systems failures like this are part of many of the challenges facing the city, not only just in hiring, but in contracting and other areas as well.