At Council This Week, 10/7/2025

The headline at this week's council meeting will be Mayor Barbara Lee’s first State of the City address. The State of the City address is mandated and required at the first regular meeting in October, but through the years, Mayors have been loose with the scheduling in the murky phase of legal consequences for violating the charter—former Mayor Libby Schaaf scheduled her state of the City address a month late in 2019, then refused to give it, using the agendized moment at City Council to advertise a February event with the same name off site*.

Lee’s first state of the city will be a bit different than her predecessors for other reasons besides timeliness. Unlike all of her predecessors in their first state of the city address after election, Lee has only presided as Mayor for about 5 months instead of ten. The chambers will probably be at overflow, so plan to get there much earlier than usual if you plan to attend.

Right after Lee gives her presentation, State Senator Jesse Arreguin will give another on state legislative priorities and accomplishments and how they intersect with Oakland. The item was scheduled by Council President Kevin Jenkins.

Much of the rest of tomorrow’s agenda consists of items heard at Committee and forwarded, and almost all of it is on consent, which means there is no guarantee there will be substantive discussion on the items. You can read more about many of those items here.

There are also 9 mayoral appointments to City boards and commissions.

The Council President has 4 appointments of CMs to regional bodies with required participation from Oakland.

The only non-consent item is a proposed million dollar two-year “hot mix” asphalt contract with Martin Marietta, a company that stepped into the shoes of the former provider mid-contact in a buy out some years ago. The previous contract began under Lehigh Hanson and appears to have continued under Martina Marietta after it bought the company's west region business.

Like the current contract before Council, the one that began under Lehigh Hanson was originally for two years, with two one year extensions under the power of the CAO written into the authorization, along with month to month authorizations while new contracting is completed that have now reached their credible limit. This leaves Martin Marietta to ink a new deal with all of the City’s requirements on foregoing business with immigration agencies and border wall construction. Martin Marietta has refused to sign a vow to abstain from doing business with entities building the border wall and with immigration enforcement agencies, necessitating a waiver if Oakland is to do business with the company.

The waiver contingency is written into the border wall and sanctuary city laws in cases where no other company can feasibly do the work—the Department of Public Works argues that’s the case and that there’s no other company that can bring hot mix asphalt to an Oakland site feasibly and cost-effectively. You can read more about that and a live report of the deliberation here.

*The Oakland Observer reported the events at the time, but somehow the City has deleted the legislative item from Legistar’s database. Though the agendized item can still be found on the corresponding PDF agenda, the corresponding legislative agenda item no longer exists on Legistar’s database.