Worst Police Academy Enrollment in Years; Building Trades Fail to Link New Measure U Funding to Labor Agreement; Grand Opening/Closing for CHP "Surge"

OPD Struggles with Worst Academy Performance in Years

A staffing update at the Public Safety committee meeting Tuesday revealed that Oakland’s current police academy is struggling with one of the smallest class sizes in academy history; the low attendance follows several poorly attended and graduating Oakland police academies.

The OPD is budgeted in most years for academies of 33 trainees. But in the last 6 academies, OPD has struggled to reach 30 for its initial academy enrollments and has had historically small graduations. The 189th academy graduated 22 OPD officers; the 190th and 191st graduated 18 officers; the 192nd graduated 22 officers. The current 193rd academy began with only 22 officers, one of the worst enrollments of any academy in years. At the meeting, OPD Deputy Director Kionna Suttle updated Committee members that as of Tuesday, 2/13, there were 17 trainees in the 193rd academy. Two days later on 2/16, when this publication confirmed that information, that number had dropped to 16. Suttle cautioned that with three months left of the academy more recruits would likely drop out.

The last time OPD has had such poor recruitment and graduation rates was in the academies recruited immediately following the Celeste Guap scandal. In all of 2017 and 2018, OPD’s average academy graduation rate was 16, according to OPD statements. For several years preceding the Guap and other scandals, the Jean Quan and Libby Schaaf administrations had a recruitment push that created historically large academy classes. But those graduating classes saw their share of "bad cop" headlines including the Guap scandal, with up to 23 graduates of the 2013-2015 push seeing criminal charges and a notable officer suicide that opened the gateway to the Guap scandal.

OPD’s current sworn staffing as of the Tuesday meeting is 711. But Suttle also noted that 81 officers are on extended leave. With an attrition rate of 4 monthly, combined with what could be 14 or fewer graduates in three months, OPD will continue to experience declining staffing into the near future.

Oakland's current struggle with recruitment appears to be part of a noticeable nation-wide recruitment crisis, and even local CHP has a current staffing crisis—likely the reason the agency could not maintain a “surge” for longer than a few days.

Building Trades Bid for Leverage on Measure U Funded Construction Project Labor Agreements Fails at CED Committee

An attempt to introduce Building Trades-backed amendments that would ultimately delay Measure U affordable housing funds faltered at a Community and Economic Development Committee meeting last Tuesday.

Original legislation introduced by the Housing and Community Development department [HCD] last Tuesday at the Committee meeting was intended to release an additional $22 MM of Measure U funding for affordable housing projects that applied for City funding in 2023. 2023’s initial NOFA [Notice of Funding Availability] allocation of funds failed to meet the needs of all applicants for the City’s tranche— even with a subsequent addition that topped the amount at $88 MM in March.

In its report to Council, the HCD notes that the current needs of the affordable housing providers that applied for the 2023 NOFA are at least $123 MM. The legislation proposed by HCD would allow the department to grant $22 MM additional Measure U funds without returning to Council for projects that had applied in 2023 but did not receive funding due to the financial limitations— providing flexibility in what HCD Director Emily Weinstein characterized as a chaotic state and federal affordable housing funding environment.

But during the public comment period for the legislation, Andreas Cluver, the Secretary-Treasurer of the Alameda County Building and Construction Trades Council, urged the Committee to incorporate amendments into the legislation that he said would be introduced by a committee member during the deliberation. Cluver noted that the amendments would obligate the City Administrator to pursue a type of project labor standards template with the Trades for Measure U funded affordable housing projects—and would add a specific binding clause that would require all new disbursement of Measure U funding for projects with more than 60 units to first come before council until such standards have been created [excluding two projects which would be allowed to go forward]. In his comments, Cluver mentioned that the Trades seek something similar to the project labor agreement the lobbying group was able to win on countywide affordable housing bond measure, A1.

“In terms of now giving sole discretion for staff to move ahead with projects without labor standards, we think it is problematic. And so we are really in support of an amendment that's coming on to the floor, which would allow two of the projects in terms of the EBALDC project and the Unity council to move forward. And then projects above 60 units to come back to this body for deliberation around these labor standards until we have a policy in place that will set the tone,” Cluver said.

After the comment period, CM Kevin Jenkins—who received outsized support from the Trades for a successful 2022 run for the D6 seat—introduced the amendments Cluver had mentioned. He was joined by Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas via Zoom—though Bas is not a Committee member, she dialed in to advocate for the amendments. The amendments had not been included in the agenda packet for the committee meeting and were read on the floor by Jenkins, with slides of the texts presented on the Council video monitor. Bas has also received significant support from the Trades constituent bodies for her current run for ALCO Board of Supervisors.

The proposed amendments would have allowed only two of the 60-unit-plus projects proposed to receive additional funding to move forward under the Measure U additional spending plan —EBALDC’s Lake Merritt Parcel project, and the Unity Council’s Fruitvale Transit Village. HCD would have to bring each allocation to council separately for their allocations, presumably, until Council created the labor standards the Trades seeks.

During public comment, Jeff Levin of the East Bay Housing Organizations [EBHO], an affordable housing advocacy organization opposed the amendments. Levin noted that the Trades were not the only labor stakeholder on issues of good labor standards and that adding the standards now would constitute changing the rules for projects that had already applied for the U funds.

“I just want to say we are very much in favor of having a conversation about how to incorporate workforce or labor standards into city projects. But that's a complicated issue. That involves, among other things, alignment with the city's equity goals around contracting and employment and needs to bring in a broader array of parties to the table. And we hope that the city administrator will convene a process that includes the trades, the developers, the contractors, employment folks, as well as all the affected departments within the city. We think that conversation needs to happen. But that needs to happen prospectively,” Levin said, urging the council to forego the proposed limits on the additional funds.

After the amendments introduction it became clear that HCD, which oversees the funding criteria and disbursements, did not support the Cluver/Bas/Jenkins amendments.

“By requiring us to come to Council, to award funds, it would be undermining the flexibility that we are seeking as part of our resolution,” HCD Director Emily Weinstein told the committee.

Weinstein noted that the current funding environment is unusually competitive, with rapid release and deadlines for state and federal funding opportunities—which the Measure U funds are meant to leverage as a guarantee that the project is viable—becoming available with little notice. Particularly at risk, would be the 119 unit affordable housing project by Eden Housing and the Black Cultural Zone at the Eastmont mall parking area, which would be challenged to compete for a new federal grant, according to Weinstein.

After Weinstein's comments, CM Carroll Fife said she was surprised to hear that the amendments being introduced would actually undermine the process sought by CED after Weinstein’s comments.

“Well, that was an important piece of information that I didn't expect to hear,” Fife said. Fife also confirmed that another project for 73 senior housing units in West Oakland would be affected.

Fife then led a break with the proposed amendments, eventually stating directly that she opposed the requirements in the amendments and favored instead dialogue toward the labor standard without controls over the funding process.

“If you're waiting for a second [to the amendments motion], I think we need to have more conversation. I have not been able to talk to the building trades, nor HCD about this amendment nor any of our affordable housing developers. From what I'm hearing from director Weinstein, there is a level of urgency and flexibility that's needed with the resolution as it was originally drafted. And I want to have those conversations before we make a decision on the counts in the committee,” Fife said.

Fife, like Levin, noted that there are more labor stakeholders in Oakland than the trades, referencing a long-simmering struggle by Oakland’s Black contractors to have greater inclusion in City contracting and funding processes. The ALCO Building Trades have been criticized in the past for failing to have meaningful Oakland resident representation through a decade-long sustained building boom. A public lands policy from 2018 failed in large part due to the Building Trades intransigence in bringing demographic data about its membership. ALCO Building Trades has still not provided substantive demographic data about Oakland hiring.

Throughout the deliberation, CED member Noel Gallo appeared not to be completely aware of the conversation directly preceding his comments, and also appeared unsure of the effect of the proposed legislation and that of the amendments. Nevertheless, Gallo said he would not support amendments that delay affordable housing funding. Prompted to repeat CED’s position on the amendments due to Gallo’s confusion, Weinstein added that the process for bringing a project to Council for approval can mean critical delays to the timeline for funding.

“The process…generally requires about six to eight weeks of work in order to get in front of Council. And so every single time that we would have another project to award funds, where their context is changing constantly, we'd have to then be doing that work to come before Council,” Weinstein said, noting that the department had only become aware of new funding opportunities for one of the projects that same day.

With the negative commentary clearly portending the failure of any amendments, Chair Dan Kalb noted amended legislation would not make its way to the Council. Jenkins eventually agreed and moved to add the amendments only as supplemental options in the item packet.

But it appears that Jenkins and Bas backed off of the full amendments at some point later; the legislative packet for this Tuesday's Council meeting does not include the amendments proposed by Jenkins at the Committee meeting. Rather, the Jenkins/Bas supplemental proposes a different set of amendments that place the burden of labor standards solely on the City Administrator's office.

In the new proposed amendments, the City Administrator would be directed to create a stakeholder process and develop a labor policy standard that affordable housing developers would have to meet to apply for Measure U funding. The “future policy on labor standards for Measure U Bond funding for affordable housing projects” would apply to the next Measure U NOFA.

But notably, the amendments no longer obligate delays in the meantime, though they do request that affordable housing developers meet with the trades and city officials to develop the standards. The timeline for the labor standards—before the next NOFA—is a new feature of the amendments, essentially reversing the focus from the CED funding apparatus to the City Administrator’s work on labor standards. Importantly, as well, the amendments remain optional and are not written into the legislation presented to Council on Tuesday.

Grand Opening, Grand Closing: With Some Questions Only Beginning to be Asked, CHP Announces End of Hyped “Surge” For Now

Five days after it began, Governor Gavin Newsom’s hyped CHP surge ended last Friday, according to an announcement first made via social media in the Governor’s Twitter account the following Wednesday.

The end of the operation came as a surprise to local media, pundits, officials and residents who spent most of the week wondering if the surge described by Governor Gavin Newsom had even begun. There has been no response to this publication by the CHP about the Flock Automated License Plate Reader system. Last week, this publication requested evidence of receipt of the $1.2 MM state loan that was to pay for the Flock system. Stay tuned.

Also at Council Tuesday

All the Committee items discussed in this article moved forward to Council for Tuesday.