At Committees This Week, 10/28/2025

Despite an aborted effort to have an additional special city council meeting on Monday right before a full day of Committee, tomorrow’s meetings are full to the brim with important issues for Oakland residents. Probably too many for any one person or group to focus on.

After an item is heard at committee it is largely understood by CMs to no longer be an issue that will be discussed by full council, and is approved on a bulk list at Council meetings. These Committee meetings are often the only time the public can weigh in on important matters.

It should be a challenging day to cover it all for OO and given the frenetic activity of Council last week, it’s also a big lift to preview it. Below, the VERY important stuff, but by no means an exhaustive list. Order of importance, per this publication’s pov and capacity:

Public Safety Committee

—City Auditor’s Report on 911 Response Time

—City Wide Flock Surveillance and ALPR

It would be workload enough for this late evening committee to conduct a high level overview of the City Auditor’s finding on 911 response time. But that’s not even going to be the heaviest thing on the agenda tomorrow night.

The PEC will adjudicate for the first time a $2 MM game-changing proposal by OPD that would add dozens of privately-owned surveillance cameras and a 40-unit network of City owned surveillance cams to the City's already existing Flock platform currently operating only automated license plate readers [ALPR]. The Privacy Advisory Commission [PAC] wrestled with the proposal over several months, but the one element that created a through line of concern for the body was the platform provider, Flock.

The contract, if passed, will bring the currently deployed 290-odd Flock ALPR cameras owned and controlled by CHP under OPD control and ownership; purchase 40 Flock surveillance cameras for city deployment, and permit OPD to use its Flock platform to access real-time and historic private video footage with standing permission from a private owners who choose to opt in. That latter access appears to allow streaming of privately owned camera feeds for authorized OPD view.

Concerns About Flock's Expansion, Comfort with Government Surveillance

As the proposal unfolded over the Summer and early Fall, Flock made headlines for having slippery language in its contracts and a backdoor agreement with the DHS. The news that Flock created a bridge from sanctuary cities surveillance to federal authorities—despite having laws that prevented such sharing—was a subtext at most of the PAC meetings.

Most importantly, however, Flock runs like a major corporation looking to expand into new platforms, tools and capacities. It's a position that often clashes uncomfortably with public facing service paradigms, as former AIPAC representative, and now Flock's Bay Area Public Affairs rep, Trevor Chandler discovered in awkward presentation at the PAC several months ago. Flock is currently exploring a partnership with Amazon's Ring Camera system, for example—and its not clear how iterations of the platform like this will mesh with the City's potential contract.

The PAC was also displeased with OPD’s lack of rigor in the process. OPD brought boiler plate contracts that allowed data sharing that clearly violate Oakland's laws, as well as a retention period out of step with current best practices at the state level. Flock has shared data without the consent or knowledge of some jurisdictions because, often unbeknownst to the agency, Flock's boilerplate contract allows it. Flock lied to the public about its contracts with the federal government, which likely diminished due diligence many jurisdictions may have had when entering into the contracts.

Because of these and many other issues, one question that PAC members asked repeatedly was why the OPD had failed to put the contracting system out to bid. But OPD argued that it already has Flock, it's a popular consumer brand, and other systems, like Axon, would present the same issues. The contract will seek a waiver from Council on local purchasing rules that require a bid.

OPD's Proposal Has Evolved Since PAC Meetings

During PAC deliberations, OPD’s reps argued that the contracting process was still fluid, and now have elements in the contract that superficially answer some concerns. These include a clause that terminates the contract immediately if the City is the subject of a Federal take-over—but the City's report has little to say about whether Flock could simply renew its contract with the new Federal entity for the hardware and platform Oakland purchases. OPD also shortened retention for its own ALPR and video system from a previously proposed 90 days to 30 days if the footage is not incorporated into a criminal investigation. And the contract would allegedly be terminated if Flock entered into a third party agreement with the federal government that obviates Oakland's ownership of data.

OPD says that it already has authorization to spend on Flock—$1.5 MM per year on Flock in the current biennial.

As a result of the contract as well, OPD will have stewardship of the Flock system initially owned and run by the CHP. Previously, OPD only had an MOU for use by OPD.

The PAC did not offer a recommendation report to Council, and the fact that the PAC voted against the contract and project is noted only in a brief two paragraph summary in the OPD’s report.

PSC Chair Wang Has Criticized PAC, Asked Rules to Bypass Her Committee and Schedule the Surveillance Package Directly to Council

How Wang will navigate the issues is unknown, but some of her actions over the past several months as the legislation has been in the PAC give some insights. Wang tried to obviate her committee completely from the process, according to Rules Chair Kevin Jenkins, last week, asking that Rules schedule the surveillance directly to Council, not her committee.

Jenkins: "So council member Wang has asked for this item to go to full Council, to expedite. Do any of the council members have any issues with that? So she wants to go to...full council and to bypass her committee..."

The Rules committee did not support that and scheduled it for PEC Tuesday.

In comments at a private event held by the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, PSC Chair Wang criticized the PAC, suggesting that the PAC had prevented an affluent Home Owner’s Association from uploading its own Flock system’s ALPR to the OPD—but the reality at this time was that OPD was still wedded to its decrepit vehicle-mounted system and was still several months away from getting Flock ALPR’s via CHP. The issue of Flock sharing never came before PAC as an independent issue, and it was never opposed in OPD’s current use policy.

Finance

—Options To Raise Additional Ongoing $40 Million In General Purpose Fund Revenues: City staff will answer some of the questions posed by Committee members with the intention of finding a parcel tax/x-tax split for potential ballot measure revenue generators.

Public Works and Transportation
–42nd And High Street I-880 Access Improvements Resolution Of Local Support

—27th Street Complete Streets Construction Contract Award

Community and Economic Development

—EBALDC Property Sale/Loan Forgiveness: Long and short, EBALDC flubbed the first attempts at converting existing rental properties to deed-restricted affordable housing in the ACAH program. Long-term vacancies caused by offering too many units at virtual market rate prices as well as poorly predicted deferred maintenance issues caused EBALDC to take on water on the projects. The City would forgive $9 MM in grants to EBALDC for the purpose, so that EBALDC can unload the properties. But its not clear whether on top of the forgiveness, EBALDC will keep the proceeds from the sale.

—Transient Occupancy Tax Sharing Agreement With The Oakland Roots And Soul Soccer Club

—Homekey Project Approvals

—General Plan Update

Life Enrichment Committee

—Restore Cultural Affairs Manager Position In The Economic & Workforce Development Department:

A decision to remove the Cultural Affairs Manager position largely attributed to CM Ramachandran’s budgeting in the FY 25-27 budget brought hundreds of angry arts-supporters in opposition after the fact. CM Brown, who was given nominal credit for the budgeting, briefly tried to restore the money during the June Council meeting that rushed the budget through in a matter of hours, but received no support from others. Fife later championed the reversal, and received support from Mayor Barbara Lee in doing so; this budget amendment will make it official.