CMs Announce Plan to Keep Fire Stations Open—But Issues Around New Revenue & Contract Cancellations May Grow; CAO Rescinds Significant Number of Layoffs, Sends New Layoff Notices; Police Commission Budget Reduced to Level of one OPD Officer's Salary

A week of visibly colliding city hall interests has left questions about the future of the cost-cutting City budgetary actions taken in December by the City Administrator’s Office [CAO] and supported by the City Council. Last Tuesday morning, a coalition of unions held a rally in front of city hall where over a hundred city workers from the City’s three major civilian labor unions—many who’ve received layoff notices—rebuked the City Administrator’s layoff process, and announced they’ve filed a PERB charge over it.

City employees and their union representatives say the CAO failed to follow minimum noticing requirements and obviated other requirements under the City’s Civil Service rules like selecting temporary and less senior workers for necessary layoffs ahead of more senior employees. The CAO was also directed by Council resolution in December to discuss the scope and type of planned layoffs with unions and to use layoffs only as last resort—the union coalition now says the City did neither. The coalition says that the City is overspending on OPD as well, and making rank and file workers pick up the tab through departmental decreases and layoffs. Though no representative of the OPOA joined the group, the President of the IAFF 55, Seth Olyer, spoke at the rally, noting that though his union hasn’t received layoff notices, IAFF 55 stands by fellow workers. [as of this writing, the CAO does appear to have rescinded some of the layoff notices while issuing some new ones and "bumping" employees to lower grades, with an as yet unclear effect—see below].

Just two days later, at a Rules Committee meeting, CMs Janani Ramachandran, Rebecca Kaplan and Zac Unger introduced an item for scheduling that would, according to Ramachandran, use revenue from various funds* to reopen two closed firehouses, and stave off the closure of the additional four this month.

Ramachandran, who sits on the Rules committee and Chairs the Finance Committee, requested that the item be given an urgency finding to place it on the February 18 Council agenda—an urgency finding would be necessary, because the item bypassed introduction at the Finance Committee. The City Administrator’s office, instead, requested that the resolution be moved back to March 4 to vet the trio’s calculations. After some deliberation with Rules committee members, that March scheduling won out.

Questions Around Funds

At the meeting, Ramachandran claimed that the three sponsoring CMs have found about $8.1 MM in funds in the General Purpose Fund [GPF], the Affordable Housing Trust Fund [AHTF], the Self-Insurance Fund and other sources.

“We did verify numbers with respective departments and fund balances, and have assured that the roughly $8.1 million that we're using in this resolution to be able to reopen two existing fire stations that were closed, as well as to prevent the closure of four additional stations, is money that we have and that council has a jurisdiction to use. We took out any additional sources of funding that may provide some wiggle room of where we didn't have confirmation yet, so we do feel confident that these numbers have been verified by the respective departments,” Ramachandran said.

About $2 MM of the total is a rebate from the Coliseum JPA, later comments by the three at a press conference revealed. The JPA rebate has been expected for some time, and was first announced in December by Council’s JPA appointee, CM Kaplan.

But despite Ramachandran’s claims, several colliding issues suggest there may be questions about where the rest of the money would be coming from and what it would pay for. The City Administrator’s preference to present its own findings about the funding alongside the expected First Quarter Revenue Report available in late February suggests the possibility of disputes about the existence of the monies and how they should be used.

Despite Claims, Fire-Houses 25 and 28 May Not be Reopened with Funds

Indeed, the firehouse refunding itself already faced a brief tug of war during Rules, as District 7 CM Ken Houston, who also sits on the Coliseum JPA as an appointed Council representative, complained that he had understood the fire stations serving the East hills areas, including one in D7, that were already shuttered could be reopened with the funds—a direct contradiction of Ramachandran’s claims a few moments earlier.

" [I heard] disturbing news this morning about fire stations 25 to 28...that some monies that we found, like $8 million that was going to be overlooked for 25 and 28 and pushed too keep other fire stations from closing...I'm very disturbed about that, because that money that I voted on with the JPA should be to open up fire stations 28 and 25...I need some information about this," Houston said to fellow CMs during public comment.

Olyer’s statements during the meeting suggest that he also believes the funding is to avoid subsequent closure of 4 stations, but that the two stations already closed would not be reopened with the funds. Houston claimed that he was told at the JPA that those stations—25 and 28—would be opened first with the over $2 MM rebate to the City from the Coliseum and asked that the item be pushed back so that he could assess how the funds would be used.

"I understand council member Houston's concerns about the 2.6 going directly to reopening engine 28 but the fact remains that [failing to] prevent these four additional closures would have a detrimental impact..." Olyer told council members.

Ramachandran didn’t return to the issue to correct or clarify.

Non-Profit Service Providers Point to Canceled Contracts

And then there is the issue of what to refund when new revenue becomes available. Through January and February, City officials have moved to lay off non-sworn employees and cancel third party service commitments with service providing Community Benefits Organizations [CBO]. Reversing the firehouse closures, a key link in budget balancing from December, will bring with it scrutiny about the way the CAO and Finance Department have gone about their cost-cutting, and how Council has gone about scrutinizing it.

At the meeting concerns were already apparent. Karla Guerra, Senior Manager of the Unity Council called in to the meeting to urge Council to consider restoring funding to the 13 service organizations recently cut by the CAO, themselves a significant threat to Oakland’s public safety.

“[The cuts jeopardize] a whole ecosystem of care and community services that has taken years to have in place in Oakland, such disruptions will create a terrible public health and a public safety crisis on top of the crisis we are already living with the federal policies impacting these services, the cuts to the 13 providers jeopardize the well being of many people,” Guerra said.

A representative of another organization bearing a relatively large proportion of the cuts, SOS Meals on Wheels, also urged Council to be included in a transparent and public conversation about how to use the funds.

“I'm here to ask that we be included in these contract discussions along with the 12 other CBO non-profit partners that recently received contract cancellation notices,” Kim Olson, Director of Advocacy at SOS Meals on Wheels said.

City Moves to Rescind Some Layoffs

As for the union coalition, it remains to be seen how they will approach the news of additional revenue for fire stations, a concession to IAFF, while other city unions are struggling with the CAO about their own members’ layoffs. An SEIU 1021 spokesperson told this publication on Friday that though they support keeping firehouses open, they also urge Council “to fund the vital public services provided by city workers,” as well. An email sent to all employees from the CAO Tuesday morning notes that some layoffs have been rescinded following the union's PERB action, but that other workers, likely temporary, have been laid off instead.

The emails states that 42 employees will be laid off in the new layoff scheme, and that 24 employees layoff notices have been rescinded. 34 employees will be reassigned or reverted into a previously-held classification. Six vacant positions were deleted. The net outcome of the actions is hard to gauge at this time, because the original notice of layoffs was not disaggregated—but it does appear that fewer workers may be laid off than originally announced in late January, and that many with seniority may stay on after initially receiving layoff notices.

A request for more information from the City Administrator’s office was not answered by the time of this publication.

Affordable Housing Trust Fund Source in Dispute

And there is yet another front to the issues. The legislative digest for the firehouse refunding states that some of the monies will come from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, a fund that is at the core of yet another budget struggle playing out in parallel. On Thursday, Oakland Housing Secure, a $ 1MM annual grant to CBOs for eviction defense and tenant counseling was bumped a third time from potential scheduling even as the firehouse refunding was announced. The withdrawal of the legislation, usually funded with monies from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, alarmed tenant advocates.

During a short back and forth when the grant was originally withdrawn at the January 30 Rules meeting, CM Carroll Fife wondered if the item was being pulled due to "lack of funds for the program". Hugo Ramirez, the Deputy Director of Housing and Community Development, initially indicated in a vague response to Fife that though he didn't know the reason for legislation being pulled, lack of funds in the AHTF was a "viable" assumption for it. A City Administrator’s representative later told CMs that the delay was due to a necessary report amendment and promised that the item would come back at Rules the following Thursday. The legislation was pulled again at that meeting, however, and once more the issue was said to be a necessary amendment–at that time the CAO said the item would re-agendized for the following week. But the item was not agendized nor introduced at last week’s Rules meeting—again the issue was said to be non-substantive in a short exchange with the CAO’s representative.

As the names of the representatives of the five non-profit tenant organizations that have been receiving the grant since 2018 were read for public comment at Rules Thursday, CM Ramachandran hastily interjected that the AHTF was no longer being considered as a source for the firehouse refunding. But even after Ramachandran’s statement, neither she nor any other CM moved to delete the fund from the title, despite ample opportunity and the deletion of other language from the legislation by Kaplan’s staffer.

Megan Gordon, a co-director of the housing practice at the East Bay Community Law Center urged council members to publicly discuss the Oakland Housing Secure grant, given the consistent pulling of the item from scheduling agendas, as did several other representatives of the groups.

“I'm here once again requesting that the council please agendize the Oakland Housing Secure contract. It is our understanding that there have not only been oral requests from council members here, but also, in addition, outside of [the body], asking to have a public discussion about the grant, which funds five nonprofit organizations right now,” Gordon said.

Samantha Becket, Centro Legal’s Tenant Litigation Director asked for transparency on the Housing Secure grant issue, as well, describing the contract as “still in limbo” despite Ramachandran’s statement.

“It's helpful to hear that [firehouse refunding] doesn't affect other funding, but we need transparency about that so that it can be discussed with the whole council,” she said.

At the press conference later in the day, CM Unger implied that the source of the potential firehouse monies was not as concretized as stated at the Rules meeting.

The City’s first quarter revenue and expenditure report is due to be discussed at a special Finance Committee meeting on February 27. The report on funding sources for a potential fire house refund may be presented at that time, but is agendized to a March 4 full council meeting. Neither agenda or report is available at time of publication.

Oakland Police Commission Lays Out Stark Budget Issues for Commission and Agencies

Last Thursday, the Oakland Police Commission laid out a bleak budgetary future that will have its budget pared down to 6 figures in a latest round of cuts. The proposed cuts come after several previous reductions over the budget initially proposed in the FY 23-25 budget passed in June of 2023. As the City’s poor budget prospectus has come into focus, the OPC and the two bodies it oversees, the Community Police Review Agency [CPRA] and the Office of the Inspector General [OIG], have seen their budgets slashed—at the mid-cycle in July, then in November due to the adoption of the City’s “contingency” budget, and now in a third round of cuts imposed by the City Administrator in the Mayoral interim. All told the Police Commission and its oversight bodies face an over 70% cut from what was initially proposed a year and a half ago.

In a presentation, the Police Commission laid out a stark half-million dollar budget, in which its already diverted some of its funding to cushion the impact of separate cuts on the Office of the Inspector General. The CPRA, where the bulk of daily oversight work of the Commission is carried out, for its part, stood at the precipice of a historical transition of oversight duties from the OPD’s Internal Affairs Department with optimistic budgeting of additional CPRA investigators in the initial two year budget.

But the additional investigators were cut in the mid-cycle budget adjustment of July, leaving the budget at $5.1 MM and little likelihood of beginning that transition this fiscal year. As Coliseum funds did not become available, the Council's contingency budget was implemented, and that meant a further reduction—at a recent meeting, the CPRA’s Director said that was functionally about $4 MM. Now, the CAO appears to be cutting even more from the budgets of the bodies in what appears to be a new round of city-wide cuts that include layoffs and cuts to contracts.

The Commission, an all-volunteer body, has a smaller budget than the agencies it oversees, but the monies cover vital services like the OPC’s independent attorney which helps steer the body away from Brown Act and other violations and staying within designated Charter parameters of work. Travel expenses, such as those for a yearly convention of oversight professionals called NACOLE, are also being cancelled—seminars and networking at NACOLE have often been cited throughout the past 6 years as inspirations for OPC policy. The OPC is preparing for a budget of just a little over half a million dollars—a budget lower than the actual salaries of some individual police officers.

At the meeting, CPRA's Chief of Special Investigations and Training Roger Smith told Commissioners that far from the robust CPRA envisioned in 2023, the CPRA was heading down a road that would make the IAD transition more unlikely.

"With these cuts, we're becoming less prepared not just to meet our own responsibilities but to even consider something like an IA transition," Smith said.

At a previous meeting, Muir told Commissioners that the CPRA now has fewer investigators than mandated by the charter. Smith told Commissioners that the CPRA, with fewer investigators, would have to sacrifice taking on all the investigations within the CPRA's jurisdiction to meet investigation deadline requirements. In 2023, the CPRA had a large backlog of investigations, and inevitably was unable to complete some by time requirements—the backlog was cut down, but it's likely to revive now with fewer investigators.

*Several of the funds would not normally be available to use on OFD and other General Purpose Fund expenses, but the City Council passed a resolution that for the time being allows them to be.

**Oakland Observer has been referring to the contract in several ways, but it’s being termed during meetings as the Oakland Housing Secure grant, and so OO will refer to it that way going forward.