Fraught City-Wide Security Guard Contract Founders in Late Night Council Vote
A failed bidding process for the City’s security guard contract was a focus late into the night at the City Council's Tuesday meeting, leading to an ultimately frustrated vote to extend the City's contract. The City’s current security provider, ABC Security Services, must receive an extension in a City Council vote to continue providing services at City Hall, the City's libraries and parks. But Tuesday's vote to extend the contract produced a tie, and with no regular meetings left for the tie to be broken, the contract can't be considered again for months. With no contract for ABC, and with a new bidding process for security just getting started, the near-future is unclear. But the City could be left with no civilian guards and would need to rely solely on police at City Hall and other sites.
Contract Extensions During Failed Bidding Process
The new contract extension is the latest in a series of extensions and increases to ABC. ABC’s initial contract was awarded in 2018 for an initial three year period, with two one-year extension options, which were both used without returning to Council by the City Administrator at that time, Ed Reiskin.
As the final extension allowed by contract was due to sunset in 2023, Council approved extensions to cover the required Request for Proposals [RFP] process which was expected to end with a new contract for a security services provider by June 2024. The RFP process, which is the City’s competitive bidding process, usually gives contracts to the lowest responsive bidder. But at some point along the way, the RFP process that began in 2022 failed, according to Building and Services Manager, Darren Minor, who presented the item.
The bidding process was supposed to be complete and the new contract awarded by February 2024, according to an accompanying report, leaving ample buffer with the old ABC contract, set to end its last extension on June 30. But the RFP process had still not been completed by the end of that extension.
To complicate matters, in 2022, the City Administrator also began returning to Council to increase the initial amount for the three year contract, due to increased needs for guarding Covid testing facilities and buildings shut down during Covid, cost of living increases and the contract extensions themselves. By 2024 the original $12.5 MM contract with ABC meant only to last to 2021, had grown to a $21.5 MM contract. And as this new contract extension request came in June, so did a new request to increase the contract to cover the additional year, bringing ABC's total contract amount to $29.6 MM if the contract should continue into 2025.
Failed RFP Process
The RFP and contracting process has failed on multiple levels, and even the latest extension request is arriving late to Council due to scheduling delays. The extension request arrives after the last extension terminated on June 30, 2024.
During Tuesday's meeting some insights into the failure of the RFP process were discussed for the first time before Council. During public comment, Marina Security Services CEO Sam Tadesse revealed that his company was a finalist in the 2022 RFP process, along with a partner contractor, but never received any subsequent information about the process, and still hasn’t two years later.
“Two years ago the City issued an RFP for security services, in that process we were very proud to be the two finalists [alongside a partner company]...the prolonged wait has been an impact on our planning and operation, I therefore request that you expedite the process,” Tadesse told council members.
Minor filled in the blanks on the failure. According to Minor, as the RFP process progressed, the decision was made by “an interim” City Administrator to add armed guard services to the contract, putting the RFP process on a brief pause. Then the confluence of the changing bid, budget issues, and transition to the permanent City Administrator, changed the funding parameters completely, and the RFP was no longer valid.
“[Marina] was going to join with the top company, Allied, to do the contract. After we did the RFP and got everything prepared to come to council, there were changes with the scope of security needs. We added in an addendum to add armed guards based on the prior city administrator's request, and at the time, it got postponed until we would have a permanent city administrator to come into Oakland. When the new city administrator came in, we went over everything again…the pricing had changed. We were also contemplating budget reductions and reductions of staff, so that would totally throw off the bids. So we decided to just go out with the new RFP, and that's where we're at currently,” Minor said.
New Extension Would Have Added Another Year of No-Bid Contract to ABC
The new request is for a bridge contract that extends to June 2025, in case the RFP process is protracted again. Minor told Council that he expects the RFP process to wrap up by September 2, 2024 and the new contract for the lowest bidder presented to Council by January 2025—but that the budget office recommended extending the current contract to July, 2025 in case there are more delays. In the meantime, ABC would get what amounts to another year extension of its contract— that would mean that, in total, ABC will have received a near-two years additional extension from the original three year contract that began in 2018 with no competitive bidding process.
Extension Vote Ties...with No Tie Breaker in Sight
By the time the item had been read in, attendance at the meeting had dropped to five, and CM Carroll Fife ended up being a key vote by abstaining. Fife said she had serious doubts about the entire process, and she had submitted questions that had not been responded to by staff.
“I'm deeply concerned about how this RFP process went. The gentleman [Tadesse] that spoke today was second on the list. It's a locally black owned security company that was left hanging. And so I would like more information on our processes. I can't speak to what's in front of us today. I wanted more information before it came back. But there's an issue with how we conducted this RFP and the selection process,” Fife said.
CM Dan Kalb, who was chairing the meeting, noted that Fife’s abstention meant the vote would fail prompting CM Kevin Jenkins to wonder aloud about voting to withdraw the motion instead. It was already too late in the process as noted by the City Attorney’s office, and any affirmative four CM vote would lead to a tie under recent charter changes in Measure X. Fife assured her vote would not change, regardless, due to questions about the process.
“I'm concerned about the way that we've engaged in this process, and we continuously get rushed with items that we are forced to make decisions on without the appropriate information. I'm deeply concerned about the process, and if I had more information about how things would change, I would reconsider. But this is a problem,” Fife said.
Fife's abstention caused a technical tie that would need to be broken by Mayor Sheng Thao in her charter-capacity—Thao was not in the building and the process would be complicated by Council rules and the Council’s summer recess which begins in August. Tie-breaking votes must occur at a regular meeting. The next meeting before Council’s break on June 30, is a Special meeting, and any new meeting scheduled during the summer would also be a special meeting. Kalb briefly queried about the potential to pass legislation suspending the rules, so that Thao could break the tie. But in the end, nothing was resolved.
“In the meantime, we have no other option,” Kalb said, moving on to other legislative matters left in the meeting.
ABC Security guards continue to work at City sites—at least at City Hall. Questions about how the contract is currently being bridged without council approval weren’t responded to by the City Administrator’s office by Friday.
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After Initial Opposition, Elevator Repair Legislation for Disabled Tenants Passes Council
In a unanimous vote Tuesday, Council passed legislation that will require landlords of buildings with more than three units to offer relocation, or a subsidy to relocate, to any disabled tenants if an elevator repair takes longer than 24 hours. The legislation also offers injunctive remedies to disabled tenants if elevators are not fixed in the time period or tenants are not offered alternative accommodations. Tenants can sue for statutory damages of up to $1,000 a day past 24 hours that the elevator is out of operation. Disabled tenants can also sue for statutory damages of up to $2,500 a day for each day that the building operator failed to relocate them when the elevator was inoperable after 24 hours.
Per the Office of the City Attorney [OCA] reports and commentary, a primary goal of the ordinance is to ensure that landlords keep their elevators maintained to avoid the expense and inconvenience of outages and that disabled tenants have alternate accommodations during an outage. The legislation mirrors a similar Berkeley ordinance that has been in effect since the early 90s. The OCA under Barbara Parker wrote and brought forward the legislation. CMs Nikki Fortunato Bas, Carroll Fife, Treva Reid and Dan Kalb co-sponsored the legislation.
The Elevator Ordinance comes on the heels of an incident at a large elder housing facility, Oakland Station, in East Oakland when the OFD was forced to shut down the elevators of the building after a reported legacy of failures—culminating with an inoperative state during fire and medical emergencies.
While there are already laws that require regular elevator maintenance, and laws that require equal access for the disabled, the City law, according to an accompanying report, bridges the kinds of gaps experienced by disabled tenants who rely on elevators to access their daily life.
Legislation Faces Initial Opposition in Committee
The legislation initially faced opposition from the East Bay Rental Housing Association [EBRHA] , a landlord advocacy organization, when it was reviewed in the Community and Economic Development committee. At the CED committee where it was introduced, EBRHA’s CEO, Derek Barnes conveyed the EBRHA claim that the legislation would ultimately create unspecified “unintended consequences”. Though Barnes is the nominal administrator for the organization, EBRHA is run by a group of 4 to 5 permanent “directors”—among them Chris Moore, the current campaign director for the DA Pamela Price recall. EBRHA has a long history of opposing protections for Oakland tenants and elsewhere.
CM Kevin Jenkins also opposed the legislation initially. EBRHA and Jenkins statements seemed to echo one another.
“If I inherited a building from my family right now and it had a broken elevator, I wouldn't be able to do the maintenance, and then that causes me to lose the property because I can't afford it,” Jenkins said.
EBRHA, according to Barnes, wanted the legislation tabled, to increase the threshold for units and increase the repair time.
“The thing that really concerns me is that area of right to sue, and I think that sets the stage for some terrible outcomes. Additionally, we want to definitely stay out of areas where we're trying to figure out the level of disability, when is someone disabled—who defines that? All of those things, I think, just set the stage for areas where we should not tread because of the unintended consequences. What I would suggest is maybe delay moving the ordinance as written, so that we can refine it a bit more, perhaps looking at increasing the number of units in the building with an elevator to council member Jenkins, point looking at other exemptions for certain types of building. And then the third thing would be to increase the time to repair.”
CM Fife noted that being a landlord is a business like any other, where overhead is part of the cost.
“I want to just reiterate that the rents that landlords collect…a portion should be set aside for the repairs and upkeep of their properties…that's one of the things that you have to do when you go into this business. And if you're in any other business, you have to account for the challenges of that business. So the amount of having to pay for a hotel or some lodging for a few days while repairs are being made is, I would assume, is part of doing the business of being a landlord,” Fife said.
Kalb said he supported a 12 hour extension for the 24 hour period. Regardless of the complaints, all four members of the committee voted to forward the legislation to Council.
But at full Council, much of the opposition had fallen away. City Attorney staff member Laura Lane reported that in talks with stakeholders, EBRHA had been satisfied with delaying the implementation of the legislation until December 15 in order to notify members of the changes. Kalb had dropped his interest in a 12 hour extension, and Jenkins voiced no opposition.
Disabled Tenants Speak Out
Over a dozen disabled and elderly residents commented in support of the legislation at the meeting, and no member of the public spoke against it. Thomas Cloyd, a member of the Mayor’s Commission on Disabilities said that the legislation would preserve housing for disabled individuals.
“If passed, the ordinance before you today would protect disabled residents who rely on elevators for access to their homes from being further excluded from the already tiny percentage of housing that meets their access needs. I've experienced firsthand the indignity and danger that is caused when I'm unable to access or leave my home due to an elevator outage, and urge you to pass this ordinance,” Cloyd said.
Cathy Harris, a disabled senior who lives in the Oakland Station apartments, complained about the poor elevator conditions there. Harris said the elevator problems were illustrative of a larger issue of “senior citizen abuse” at the site.
“The elevators keep going out in our building and we have issues where people can’t get to their dialysis or even go out to the store or anywhere, from the 6th floor,” Harris said.
During the unanimous vote, Fife commented that the legislation was the “easiest” vote decision of the night. The legislation passed unanimously.
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Council Members Push Through Port Commission Appointment After Objection by Kalb, Environmental Advocates
CM Dan Kalb failed in a bid to delay the Mayor’s reappointment of Arabella Martinez to the Port Commission pending consideration of environmental science backed candidates for the role. CMs Treva Reid and Noel Gallo were the primary obstacles to putting the Commission appointment on hold.
Kalb's effort began at the Rules Committee meeting last Thursday when Rules Committee Chair Bas proposed continuing legislation for the reappointment of Port Commissioner Arabella Martinez, the founder of the Unity Council, to allow consideration of environmentally focused candidates. The Rules Committee is the subject matter area of discussion for appointments to City boards and commissions. Bas said she was proposing the idea on behalf of fellow Rules Committee member Dan Kalb, who could not be at the meeting. The idea immediately received vigorous push back from CM Noel Gallo, who spoke at the meeting but is not a member of the committee.
"I'm really surprised at the action," Gallo began, listing Martinez's accomplishments, "we talk a lot about race and equity, but when it comes to certain communities we're not represented. I'm asking for your support, to support Ms Arabella Martinez."
With no CM to second Kalb’s move at the Rules Committee, the motion failed and the item was voted to go before Council on consent July 16, where it would receive little discussion before being passed in bulk. At the July 16 meeting, Kalb, again tried to pull the item for more discussion, but Fife, who he said agreed to be his second for the vote pull the item to non-consent arrived too late to the meeting to vote. No other CM would second Kalb’s motion but Noel Gallo moved to hear the item on the Consent calendar—an unnecessary motion, since the item was already on that consent agenda.
When the Consent Calendar was discussed, Kalb and Fife both advocated a pause on the appointment to consider an environmentally focused candidate. The Consent Calendar is voted in bulk, but CM’s can vote no or abstain on individual items regardless—Kalb, who said the Mayor was open to holding off on the appointment to discuss alternativces, asked other CMs to do so on the port commission appointment. Only Fife agreed, registering an abstention. The reappointment item passed, reappointing both Andreas Cluver and Martinez. Cluver is the Secretary Treasurer of the Alameda County Construction and Building Trades Council.
Numerous speakers from environmental groups, including the League of Concerned Scientists and West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project founder Ms Margaret Gordon, asked the Council to consider an environmentally focused alternative.
“I'm here to talk about the port appointment as the history of the port has been that we have never had a real scientist, a person with a background in public health. It is overdue that such a person be appointed at this time...we would like to see our scientists, a person with background and public health, be in that seat,” Gordon said.
Katrina Thomas, an attorney with Earth Justice, suggested that the advocates supported Fern Uennatornwaranggoon, a climate activist specifically focused on Port issues, instead. Uennatornwaranggoon’s name did not come up in any of the discussions otherwise, however.
Both Cluver and Martinez will be serving their third term on the Port Commission. Gallo was recently cited in the ALCO Grand Jury report as having connections to the Unity Council that he does not disclose in votes that involve the body, including that his wife has been a board member of the Unity Council in the past. Cluver is currently waging a campaign to add a Project Labor Agreement to Measure U affordable housing funding allocations that would require any U-funded affordable housing projects sign the PLA with Trades unions.
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