This week, the Finance Committee meeting was moved up to 9am, but the rest of the meetings are scheduled at their normal times. As usual, this guide is by no means an exhaustive list of what’s on the agendas, just some things that OO believes will be especially noteworthy for the public. You can see all of the items for each committee agenda by clicking the link on each header.
Finance
Budget Advisory Commission Reports
There’s several reports here from the Budget Advisory Commission [BAC]. One confusing one in particular examines the potential 40 MM parcel tax measure that will come before voters in June without really going into the fact that Council budgeted the measure and never actually proposed any initiative.
Special Revenue Collection Report
CM Rebecca Kaplan was one of the CMs who requested this report back last year, along with CM Janani Ramachandrean. At the time, the “Special Revenue Project” hadn't had a chance to do much yet– basically, the group within Finance has pursued delinquent and scofflaw businesses that hadn’t paid business tax and/or registered for a business tax license. The report request was subsequently joined by CM Rowena Brown. Now, several months later, the report is back with good news about the amount of additional revenue it was able to pull in after shaking the trees. One interesting note here is that landlord payments tripled for the period, indicating that as well observed over several years, landlords are one of the biggest single groups stiffing Oakland on taxes.
Public Works and Transportation
Increase for Cooperative Purchase Agreements for Oakland Public Works
Noting this one due to the fact that cooperative agreements came up in the City’s contracting disparities report as a driver of disparity, at least in lower contract levels, although there’s rarely mention of that fact. The size of the increase is likely to raise eyebrows, at $16 MM, however.
Consultant Contract Increase for Fire Station 49 on 66th
The new fire station project appears to be underwater. It had a completion date of 2025, now pushed back to 2028 on city-owned land not far from the original station, which has unanticipated site issues. The cost of the consultant services would raise from $1.8 MM to$ 2.5 MM and is likely to generate some discussion.
Community and Economic Development
New ENA for Museum of Jazz and Art
The City-owned Fire Alarm building currently serves warehousing tasks for the Oakland library, but more importantly, is a critical fiber optic housing center for ALCO and Oakland. A non-profit calling itself the Museum of Jazz and Art approached the city about creating a Jazz museum on the site in 2020, although no current museum exists elsewhere, and received an Exclusive Negotiating Agreement via Council vote at the time. But the organization failed to meet the required bench marks to move on to a development agreement—specifically, it did not submit its planning applications to the Planning Department despite extensions.
As a requirement of creating a new ENA, the City obligated the organization to turn the applications in, which the org has apparently done.
MOJA is largely the brain child of local architect Brian Allen. But the org itself is nebulous. Though it has nominal funds it doesn’t appear to have a development partner or funding source and its only current purpose appears to be winning the rights to build the project. The new ENA will require community input meetings, and importantly, either a City easement for the fiber-optic hub or a plan and payment for relocation.
Surplus Land Declaration for Long Vacant Lot off Macarthur in East Oakland
The City once had this long-empty lot earmarked for eventual development of low-income housing, but the challenges of a sloping hillside made it an awkward fit for affordable housing developers. The City now plans to put it on the market for any kind of development, since it is a difficult lift for housing. It’s not clear what is motivating the move at this juncture though.
Life Enrichment
Report Back on New L/SLBE Certification And Road Map
A report on changes in the way corporate presence in Oakland is determined for L/SLBE certification are pretty middling at this stage, there’s really no definitive change. There's also a very basic update on the "Roadmap" to improving contract diversity, which was an outcome of the most recent Contracting Disparity Report. The City's agencies have met with stakeholders and developed areas of coordination, agreement and priorities.
Summer Youth Employment Grants for 2026 and 2027
The legislation would authorize distributing about $3.2 MM to 21 organizations to run summer youth employment programs. Grants range from about $40K to $300K in two separate sets of programs.
Public Safety
No Bid Contract with Israeli-based Vendor Cellebrite
OPD is requesting a no-bid renewal of its Cellebrite data extraction contract, with a consequent 50% increase in costs. OPD has used a Cellebrite data extraction tool to crack cellphones and access and extract data for years but only recently began abiding by the City's surveillance technology laws that require annual auditing and reports and presentation before the Privacy Advisory Commission. During that process, OPD cleaned up many of its policies around using Cellebrite. OPD requires a warrant to use Cellebrite but in the past has used clauses in the conditional release of formerly incarcerated residents to pressure them into allowing them to use it on their phones—a practice now banned once a use policy was put in place. OPD also uses it as a fast extraction device to monitor officer phone use, despite the fact that officers provide pin numbers and no de-encryption is necessary. Read more here.
Cellebrite is a now notorious Israeli-based company whose products have been used throughout the world by totalitarian regimes to extract cell phone data from dissidents and reporters. The technology was most recently used during the Gaza genocide. Because Cellebrite is now acknowledged as a surveillance technology, city law requires that the OPD must also submit an annual use report and the City Council must, in their vote, make a determination on whether to use the technology going forward. OPD argues no other company makes the technology, but this is untrue as this report shows. OPD is also asking to change requirements on demographic usage because the device can only be used with a warrant or with recorded permission under the new use policy.
Peregrine Law Enforcement Records Search Platform
OPD currently uses a law enforcement database search platform from Soundthinking nee Shotspotter, but in its report, OPD now says the service is too flawed to renew when its contract expires in June. Soundthinking’s CrimeTracer has no barriers to outside agency use nor tracking on sharing Oakland data with outside organizations—apparently, any agency can search Oakland’s database through CrimeTracer and Oakland has no way of tracking or knowing about it, which is a bit of a story in itself.
OPD also argues that as more local agencies migrate away from CrimeTracer to Peregrine’s system, Oakland cannot share data with those agencies. CrimeTracer’s contract expires in June, and OPD argues it needs the new Peregrine contract before then—again, OPD put out no bids because no other company offers Peregrine’s service model. Peregrine service will cost about $330-350K per year, but there is no information about what the current Soundthinking platform costs.
OPD Federal Taskforce 2025 Annual Reports
*honestly not enough time to look through these...
NSA Sustainability Report
The report focuses on the City’s last Case Management Conference, and provides a transcript of the conference and the submittals from City, attorneys, etc—the conference discussed the 11th sustainability report. The information is slightly out of date already, however, as the monitor has already issued the 12th report in late March which paints a more positive image of OPD and suggests OPD is on its way towards exiting the NSA.
Auditor’s Report on Police Commission, OIG and CPRA
The report basically finds that the bodies have lagged in implementing audit recommendations from a previous audit and also are failing to meet certain charter requirements. But the Auditor's conclusion and recommendation suggest that the failures are due to low staffing and vacancies, and that the best way to improve these performances would be to increase the independence of the bodies. The Auditor argues that tight budgets may have given self-interested opportunity to the Mayor and CAO to cut police oversight.
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