Council Committees Round Up, Week 9/11/23

Coming to Council Committees, Week of September 11, 2023

Finance Committee, Tuesday 9:30 am:

–A Report of City Contracts with Non-Profit organizations…was on the agenda for this week's Finance Committee, but it was pulled by Rule 28. It was a continued item, however, and has been reviewed before. The report covers the non-profit contractors the city employs for a variety of public safety and homeless services, along with the total amount of contracts since Fiscal Year 2019.

It’s a revelatory report worth a read. For example, 7 major non-profit organizations have received 30% of the City’s total public safety and homelessness contracts, per the report. Roots Community Health has the highest number of contracts at 14. The orgs with the most contracts all provide services to at least the Department of Violence Prevention, and often to Housing and Community Development. You can still read the reports here.

–Issuance of Bonds for Measure KK and Measure U and Designation of Projects: Legislation will be discussed and potentially forwarded to Council, along with a list of projects designated for the funding. While the remainder of KK funds will go to refurbishing the Police Administration Building, much of U’s funds will go to affordable housing, as well as rehabbing city streets and the City’s failing drainage system after flooding over several of the last years.

–Cash Report: A report on the City’s funds and investments in the context of the current fiscal climate, both locally and nationally. Expect the discussion to be very general, though the report is extensive and detailed.

Public Works, Tuesday 11:30 am:

–Sidewalk Parking: The Committee will review a report on the thorny issue of sidewalk parking, a contentious one in an infrastructurally aging Oakland desperate for adequate affordable housing and infrastructure. According to the report, various City Attorney opinions and Council instructions over the years have instructed the public they can park on the sidewalk in certain areas–but ADA requirements are state and federal, not local, and the City is not allowed to officially condone the practice. The report also notes that the majority of sidewalk parking citations are already given in the most economically impacted areas of the City in East Oakland.

According to the report, OakDOT will ramp up enforcement, which is currently complaint driven only. Warnings will be mailed to locations that were given the impression by the City they could park on the sidewalk previously, such as Underhills Rd and Hillsborough Street. The enforcement will move to limited on-view in November and to full enforcement on all City streets in January 2024, per the report. The report says that the new level of proactive enforcement will be done in a manner that focuses equity.

Many streets in East Oakland have impacted sidewalks due to narrow roads that would be difficult to traverse if drivers parked against the curb. Some of the impact also comes from increasing density per unit; one of the primary ways working class and working poor have stayed in an ever-costlier Oakland is by doubling and even tripling up in units in East Oakland, as Alameda County studies have shown over the past several years of rising rents. Consequently, Oakland's streets are not sufficient for the real density of East Oakland communities.

–Sanitary Sewer Contracting: A contract with National Plant and Pipe and Plant Solutions, each for an amount not exceeding $ 2 MM [total not to exceed $4 MM] will also be considered for forwarding to Council. OPW says it needs the additional “televised” services in order to meet its requirements in the sanitary sewer consent decree. The City has paid out several big settlements for overflowing sewers to businesses over the past five years, according to public records.

Community and Economic Development, Tuesday 1:30 pm:

–Contract for Centro Legal de la Raza [CLR]:  A contract to CLR to provide tenant counseling services for Rent Adjustment Program [RAP] hearings will be heard and considered for forwarding to full council for passage. CLR was the preferred responsive bidder, but the report lays out challenges for the tenant counseling sevices program itself. Though CLR intook over 500 cases that fit the criteria for free RAP counseling, many tenants could not take advantage of the services because they were behind on rent–a requirement for the services is to be current with rent payments. CLR closed cases for 22 tenants, and have an additional 16 open cases. Most of the closed cases prevented homelessness. All but two of the clients served were extremely low income–the remainder were very low income. The contract is from October 1, 2023 to September 24, 2024.

–EIR for General Plan: The new General Plan, a sweeping set of City-wide policy on planning and zoning changes now years in the making, requires an Environmental Impact Report. It's a deep document that lies outside the Oakland Observer’s skillset to analyze properly. OO will have more information after an informational report next Tuesday and before the EIR goes to full Council.

–Exclusive Negotiating Agreement with Roots Soccer for the Malibu Lot on Coliseum Complex: The committee will consider an Exclusive Negotiating Agreement with Roots Men’s Soccer; and Soul, the Women’s Soccer organization, for a ten year lease of the “Malibu Property”. The Malibu property is the 8.8 acre empty lot on the Coliseum complex used for overflow parking that used to be the site of Malibu Grand Prix. Roots tentatively plans to create a pop up temporary stadium at the site to host its futbol games with a lease of up to ten years.

An ENA is only the first step in buying or leasing city property. It’s fairly literal; a period, in this case six months, in which the City works with only one developer on a proposal that can grow into a full-fledged development agreement. The initial period can be extended twice, for a total potential year and a half ENA period, after which the City is free to pursue other developers.

If the ENA were to lead to a Lease Disposition and Development Agreement, it’s assumed that the terms would be flexible enough to allow Roots to move to another permanent site or for the City to pursue another use for the site within the lease period. The ENA is not yet a good indicator that Roots and Soul would stay at the Coliseum indefinitely. Roots has announced it will be playing at Cal State East Bay in Hayward for their 2024 season.

The City argues no Surplus Lands Act requirements–like putting the property out to full bid before entering into an agreement with Roots–are required.

Life Enrichment Committee, Tuesday, 4:00 pm

Most of the items at life enrichment are required reports from several commissions–the Commission on Aging; Youth Commission; and the Oakland Fund for Children and Youth. The only action item will be the discussion and potential forwarding to full council of a resolution establishing a Latinx Arts District in what is traditionally considered Fruitvale, a neighborhood with 54% self-identified Latinx population. The district would span:

the area starting at East 12th Street and 23rd Avenue, continuing on 23rd Avenue to Foothill Boulevard, continuing on Foothill Boulevard to High Street, continuing on High Street to Alameda Avenue, continuing on Alameda Avenue along the Oakland Estuary to 23rd Avenue, continuing on 23rd Avenue to East 12th Street, and continuing on East 12th Street to the starting point, East 12th Street at 23rd Avenue;

The proposal comes from Noel Gallo, who has brought little legislation during his decade in office. The vote won’t immediately change anything, but it will direct the City Administrator to return to Council with proposals for investment, enhancement, preservation and funding for the arts in the proposed district.

Public Safety, Tuesday 6:00 pm

–Required Annual Report of OPD MOUs with Federal Law Enforcement Agencies, including the ATF, FBI, DEA, US Marshals and Secret Service: OPD maintains one officer [per agency], often dedicated to as much as 40 hours per week as the main liaison with several federal agencies. The reports detail actions and projects OPD has assisted in. The ATF report is particularly worth looking into as it details several operations the OPD participated in dealing with interstate illegal firearms trade.

–OPD Quarterly Staffing Report: The report is rarely current enough for accurate gauge of how OPD staffing is doing, but it does maintain an ongoing record of attrition and the reasons for it, as well as demographic data–like the fact that the majority of officers live in Contra Costa County and Alameda County, excluding Oakland. Only 9% of Oakland's officers live in Oakland. OPD remains largely white/Latinx and male, about 20% of OPD's officers are Black and 16% Asian. 84% of officers are male.

In the 12 months from April 2022 and March 2023, 63 officers left OPD–that's the average monthly departure rate that OPD usually predicts of about 5 per month. Most resigned [22] or retired [16]. 9 officers were terminated and 7 washed out during field training after graduating academy and becoming sworn officers. 7 of the total resignations were officers leaving for a job at another law enforcement agency, which is nearly one third of the resignations.

An agenda report for the Community Police Advisory Board for September predicts that a potential 81 officers could retire by the end of 2023. That could bump the monthly average to 7 for 2023 without including any other reasons for attrition. Another 31 officers could potentially retire in 2024, according to the same report. The meeting was canceled, however, and no further context was available at publication time.

Reports from police officials show that no more than 61 officers will likely graduate from academies in total in 2023, and the number will likely be lower. If the numbers hold, OPD is heading into another staffing crisis like the one it experienced in 2021–something CM Dan Kalb seemed to have referred to several times during budgetary deliberations, though no one followed up on the dais. There's been no public discussion of this potential and only that CPAB agenda report exists to highlight it.

–OPD’s Crime Report: Several things came together to prevent OPD from presenting its regular crime report to Public Safety over the past few months; first a cancelled meeting, then OPD came to the next meeting with no new stats. Things have changed considerably from the crime climate in the statistics of the previously agendized report, which only covered crime reporting through May. The OPD stats say that all forms of crime are up, including violent crime–homicides increased dramatically since the time the report was submitted in a brutal three week period that has seen often daily reports of murders, including this weekend.

But questions also remain about the abrupt change in the OPD statistics that indicate that either a method of recordation changed; the stats were not being updated regularly; or something else has gone deeply wrong. But the OPD have no explanatory reports. The issue may come up in discussion on Tuesday, however.

The report also resolves what became a public claim about home invasions in Oakland this summer. During the last PSC meeting, CMs asked the OPD to return in September with better reporting about claims of an uptick in home invasions that OPD failed to provide data for. The OPD claim morphed into more specious claims by Dan Noyes, a tv news reporter with ABC7, who wrote of an uptick of around 50 home invasions, “mostly” targeting Asian households.

The report itself also makes a similar claim, that a "majority of victims are elderly Asians", indicating that Noyes was given an advanced version of the report last month. But the data presented does not support either claim–Asian households were the single-most represented cases, but not by a meaningful margin compared to Black and Latino households. The incidence for white households, however, was significantly lower than any of those groups, indicating that the suspects are targeting non-white households in general. According to the report, the home invasions are occuring in higher income areas. The uptick happened in July and August, and is apparently suspected to be due to activity of one crew operating in high income areas.

The report that will be presented is already out of date, and the OPD give up to date more generalized stats weekly. The report is still worth looking at because it breaks down the different police areas by crime incidence.

–Extension of Department of Violence Prevention Funding: Funding for DVP was a contentious issue during budget deliberations this year, but on the ground, the contracts behind that funding need to go through a council vote for allocation of funding. After an extension of the contracts in May, the contract cycle for 52 grant agreements with 24 non profit organizations through September 30, 2025 will be considered for fowarding to Council. The continuation of the grants program will rely on a new ballot measure to replace the sunsetting Measure Z in 2024. It's an open question what would occur should a new ballot measure not pass. More on this next week.