In the Details, Week Ending 6/14/26 (2): Seniors vs Police Overspending in Mid-Cycle Deliberation; As Crime Falls, DVP Defends Measure NN Expenditures to Public Safety Committee

1) Budget Discussion Pits Seniors and Police Oversight Against Rampant Police Spending

This month’s mid-cycle budget headline may have been that the Council and Mayor have managed to balance the budget without Measure E. But the marquee at Friday’s budget meeting, where Council passed the FY 26-27 mid-cycle adjustments, blared OPD vs seniors and police accountability.

Fighting Over OPD's Scraps Becomes Theme of Meeting

At the beginning of the meeting, CM Kevin Houston, praised the Mayor and Council for finding funds that will add an additional day to scaled-back senior centers, from austere 3 to slightly less austere, 4 days.

But as senior advocates took the podium during public comment, it became clear that the City had found the money for the additional day by deleting senior aide positions. Dozens of seniors were at the meeting to demand the additional day of operation come with the staff to run the centers.

“We also urge you to find a way to open the senior centers full time without cutting asset programs, senior aides, or other senior services to add additional hours to the senior centers. The mayor's budget cuts 10 halftime senior aides* in the assets program, a cut of $174,245 These are part-time jobs that contribute to senior centers and other city programs,” Celeste Neal, a client of the East Oakland Senior Center, told CMs.

Though the seniors groups were the most represented issue group, the next were those calling out Council’s and Mayor’s police spending prioritization. City union IFPTE 21 and other organizations like SURJ Bay Area and APTP called out overspending on OPD’s staffing and overtime, while other city services languish and workers’ pay falls behind on cost of living.

"We need to staff up, we need to deliver the city services that our residents deserve. And how do we do that? Well, if I were going to balance my family's budget, I would look at the biggest expense, OPD. It's always been OPD. We urgently need you to stand up to OPOA and get back the overtime money and additional money that comes from overtime fraud and ineffective policing. Give it to your staff, hire more people," said IFPTE 21 worker, Colin.

Several speakers also blasted the seeming defunding of police oversight agencies under the Police Commission—the Community Police Review Agency [CPRA] and the Office of the Inspector General [OIG]. Remarkably, after Lee’s amendments had already cut several CPRA investigator positions with a $700K cut, Council’s restorations relied on even more cuts from the CPRA and the OIG. Michelle Monterosa, the sister of Sean Monterosa, who was killed by Vallejo police in 2020, urged CMs to restore the CPRA and OIG funding.

“I'm here to urge you to fully fund Oakland civilian police oversight and honor the will of Oakland voters. This is a critical moment for the city of Oakland, with federal oversight of the Oakland Police Department potentially ending as early as September. It is important that now more than ever, accountability measures are in place. If the federal monitor leaves, Oakland civilian oversight bodies will become the primary mechanisms available to ensure transparency, accountability, and public trust. As someone who's been directly impacted and knows the loss of losing a loved one to police violence, the message is clear from Oakland residents and community members: accountability cannot be frozen,” Monterosa said.

Millie Cleveland lambasted both the Council and Mayor for appearing determined to dismantle the independent oversight agencies with claims of budgetary considerations, while the Mayor has funded a brand new $400K position mirroring the duties of the OPC and while OPD overspends on overtime by tens of millions.

“While the community is facing the loss of shelter beds, violence interrupters, and cuts to senior centers, what does this council do? They propose a budget that's designed to protect the police union…our council refuses to promote civilianization of police jobs that will save money and put more officers on the street. You move one PIO out of the Inspector General’s Office, when there are at least 50 [OPD] positions that could be civilianized….the question I have is, who are you serving, the people of Oakland or the Oakland Police Department?” Cleveland said.

Pyrrhic Victory for Seniors Highlights Community Complaints on OPD Spending

After public comment, Council President Kevin Jenkins’ took up the seniors’ demand and proposed to take $200K earmarked for lead remediation at Oakland schools in the Council’s amendments and restore the aides. The pyrrhic budgeting move with the “elephant” in the room of tens of millions in police overtime overspending–$15 MM at last count—did not escape notice. In back to back Open Forum comments after the deliberation, Anne Jenks and John Jones III both took the City’s police spending to task.

“So you just decided to take money away from clean water for kids to give it to the seniors. I got to say the seniors care about kids. I'm not sure that they wanted that money to come from clean water for the kids, but this is what happens when you don't address your big budget items, you don't look at the OPD budget, you leave everybody scrambling over scraps,” Jenks said.

“It's frustrating as a community member to hear all the important things that need to be funded go through a level of scrutiny that never happens with OPD and I'm not here to debate the merits of the department as much as for you all I think it's crucial that this body works with the city administrator to really reel in how they exceed the overtime…and we're talking about 200,000 here, 50,000 there, so I want to encourage you all, really have the courage, I understand it's difficult, but we need you, the city needs you all to hold that piece accountable in order to make sure these other services can receive the funding that they need…please take care of that, because that's been a historic problem. So, it's not your fault, but now you are tasked with dealing with that reality, Jones said.

Fife Confronts Jenkins on CPRA Defunding Excuse

As the budget deliberation wound down toward a vote, CM Carroll Fife, who failed to convince the team to add her amendment to restore one CPRA investigator role, echoed complaints that vital services are pitted against one another for leftover monies after police spending overages.

And in a subsequent back and forth with the Council President, Fife eviscerated Jenkins' illogical rationale for defunding CPRA. Jenkins argued that CPRA has too much trouble filling its vacancies, a test other agencies, including OPD are not held to and an echo of anti-oversight arguments made by local hills-bound OPD boosters. Fife responded that if Jenkins took his logic to its fair conclusion, the City and Council should decline to fund OPD academies that attract few recruits and cut funded OPD vacancies [which in the current budget number 64 funded, but empty, police roles].

Fife: So, that my addition of [CPRA investigator restoration] that is not included in the amendments is of deep concern to me. And I want to say that I'm deeply grateful for all of the additions that were made, especially my on the floor amendments that were made today, but this really, this is really difficult for me to accept the CPRA item when I'm just attempting to add back one position. So if I could get an understanding of how this body is thinking about fulfilling the mandated requirements of Measure LL and the will of the voters, I would really appreciate that.”

Jenkins:...We should find the funding source to absolutely fund CPRA. I absolutely agree with you, but as I said before, the challenge is CPRA has never hired as many positions as they're budgeted for, never. So, we add this position and there's still going to be vacancies there, so there is some deep searching that we need to do with the CPRA director to figure out how we can better aid them in getting these positions hired.

Fife: …we have over 800 vacancies, and we don't apply that same logic to the vacancies in other departments, particularly the Oakland Police Department. If we apply that same logic to say open spaces in our training programs, then you know we wouldn't allow these vacancies to continue…if we know that we're going to have 10, 15, 17 [trainees] that actually graduate out of the police academies, then maybe we wouldn't budget as much for the police academies, and we could use those budgetary savings in other places…the logic fluctuates depending on which department we're talking about. We have a civilian workforce that is from their words, not mine, on the verge of striking, because we're not looking at all of the dollars equitably…the scrutiny is not there in the same way that it is for other departments…you best believe, I swear to God, if y'all want my vote today, then I need a commitment from everyone around this dais that we're going to dive deep into the Oakland Police Department budget to figure out what we need to do differently.”

Wang and Gallo Vote No on Budget After Failing to Achieve Goals

The tense moment was a break from a largely collegial budgeting process, but Fife was not the only CM displeased with the outcome. Charlene Wang proposed several amendments on the dais, including adding Oakland City Attorney staff to carry out administrative fines for Wang’s human trafficking ordinance passed last year. In doing so, Wang appeared to reveal that the City has not carried out any of the administrative fine processes in her ordinance, making the ordinance a moot portion of the City's human trafficking enforcement.

“The issue that we have right now is the ordinance that we all passed that ensures that fines against the Johns and traffickers and the businesses go to exit services for the women and girls on the blade, that is not being enforced right now,” Wang said.

Wang’s request was added as a limited duration OCA staffer to do that work. But Wang’s additional requests for quick build traffic structures using special funds to prevent sideshows and a revival of Oakland’s red light ticket program were not adopted. Wang complained about the rebuff as a prelude to her no vote.

CM Gallo, who inscrutably requested $180 MM of expenditures in his budget document—including an additional $50 MM for OPD—with no revenue sources, also panned the mid-cycle amendments. Wang and Gallo were the sole no votes on the budget.

After Fife’s direct statements, Jenkins, Wang and Houston, respectively committed to being open to agendizing the issue of out of control policing costs. In a revealing moment, however, Chair Wang appeared to suggest she believes scruting on police spending harms recruitment and retention.

“Yeah, I mean, absolutely. You have my commitment. I just, I want to do it responsibly. I want to do it in ways that are not also going to drive away…you know, some of our, you know, just our current staffing challenges, right? And I want to make sure that we're able to do this in a way that is just responsible, but you have my commitment, absolutely, to do this,” Wang said.

2) Public Safety Committee Grills DVP on its Bidding and Procurement Process for Grants

In a contentious meeting, Public Safety Committee members grilled Department of Violence Prevention [DVP] representatives over the department’s fiscal disbursement of over $30 MM** of Measure NN funds to 21 community based [CBO] violence interruption organizations over a three year contract process. The fraught discussion ultimately took over 2 hours.

Among concerns of city council members and public was an initially scuttled Request for Proposals [RFP] process for the grants that saw some consistent organizational partners replaced by other organizations. But the discussion also laid bare the reality that even as DVP receives a lion’s share of the credit for historic drops in city-wide violence, the agency has less funding now than it has had in previous years. Community-based violence prevention organizations must fiercely compete for the agency's more limited resources.

Initial RFP Failure Leads to Mistrust of Process

Staff explained that an initial RFP was scrapped when it became clear that the requirement to post documents to two separate portals had caused 34% applicants to wash out on “technicalities around submission”. The DVP, in cooperation with the City Administrator and contracts compliance, decided the fairest way to resolve what appeared to be a poor application design was to start the process again, informing all the applicants of the new process.

Both processes occurred within the minimum timeline required for RFPs, although the second was shorter. The second process had a much lower fail rate of 9%, but one organization, the LGBQT Center, which had been in good standing as a service provider for DVP for several years, failed on a different set of technical errors. The failure of the organization remained a concern for CMs Charlene Wang and Rowena Brown, and an apparent contestation of the process could delay the disbursal of monies for the program.

Many public speakers represented high profile organizations that have consistently won DVP grants that did not make the cut, such as Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency [BOSS] and Youth Employment Partnership [YEP] as well as individual violence interrupters who work for those organizations.

BOSS’ director Gerald Frazier expressed his suspicion that the process was corrupted and demanded raw data from the scoring along with NN finances.

“I've never heard of a process like this in terms of reissuing an RFP because of a failure rate or percentage, never heard of that,...it's ridiculous…By these facts alone, you must recognize the current CBI ecosystem was working just based on the facts on the numbers, and so why would you want to change it?” Frazier said.

Others characterized the issue as one of a lack of funding for all of the violence interruption necessary to save lives in Oakland.

“Not taking nothing away from those powerful organizations that got recommended to receive the measure NN money, not taking nothing away from them, they go crazy. We need them all, but you're missing some pieces. The CBIs all through the city of Oakland, if you got 30 right now, not including the school base, not including the hospital base, but if you got 30 right now and then you only go down to eight, that's missing 22..” Daryle Alums, CEO of Adamika Village, said.

As the committee appeared deeply swayed by the complaints of the organizations that lost out on funding, Joshi cautioned that the RFP process by design is not meant to guarantee an organization a permanent grant funding role.

"An RFP process is a competitive bidding process. It's not a process of guaranteeing or ensuring that the same agencies get the money year after year after year. Although I understand the agencies struggles, their concerns, their desire to have sustainable funding from the city, an RFP competitive bidding process is not set up that way. It is set up to open up the city services opportunities for other folks. That is the flip side of the coin of critiques that we have heard over and over again—that the procurement process ends up never being open to community-based organizations outside of the folks that people think are the anchor agencies," Joshi said.

Committee Questions Grants Process

During deliberation, DVP representatives Holly Joshi and Jenny Lynchy found themselves having to defend the process, not only from questions of the RFP and the funding scale, but whether the contracts are going to organizations with proven records of results. CM Brown returned to the concern several times during deliberation.

“Looking at some of the allocations, and this question of, hey, does this organization do—and I'm just throwing this out there as an example—do they provide housing resources? Is that something that they currently do in their portfolio? Or was the application that they provided more a ‘hey, here's this lane that we want to get into’,” CM Brown asked.

Joshi replied, “In the briefing that I received from staff, there's there wasn't an organization that was far outside the box of what they work on, people were applying to their subject matter expertise.”

Despite concerns raised several times by Public Safety Committee Chair Wang that made the NN funds appear to be an inordinately large sum, ironically, DVP is relying on fewer funds than it has in the recent past, even as the results of its efforts appear to be reducing violent crime at historic levels. Joshi noted that despite the popular characterization of Measure NN as “new funding”, it only replaced the previous measure’s funding.

“So, just as a reminder for everyone in the room, Measure NN passed in November 2024 and replaced Measure Z. That is really an important point, because some folks who weren't here during the Measure Z and Measure Y times believe that this is new money. It really is replacement funding. This is a sustainability fund for the city. At this point, it does not represent deeper investments in CBI or in our CBOs…the CBOs did experience a reduction in overall funding, because when the city was in a stronger financial position, we would supplement Measure Z funding with general purpose funds, and of course, the city council also invested one time re-imagining public safety dollars into CBOs in 2020,” Joshi said.

The DVP reps also had to field concerns that the funds did not go to organizations brick and mortared in East Oakland’s violence epicenters. Joshi told CMs that it was more important that the violence interrupters be credible interlocutors, not that the organization be visibly headquartered in East Oakland. The crowd was split on this issue, but even BOSS's Frazier, amid his own criticisms of the process, appeared to agree.

The complaints and concerns caused CMs to reduce the contract period from 3 to 2 years before forwarding the contracts to Council on non-consent. CM Wang initially sought to have the contracts go for just one year, and then 1.5 years, although Joshi cautioned that the contracting process strains staffing at DVP that takes time away from its primary role. CMs declined to accept that short a process. The Council also requested the raw RFP scoring data and rubric and ongoing progress reports. The data is now included in the legislative package.

*the Mayor’s budget suggests this number is 7 aides

**the total three year budget amount is $38 MM, but about 20-25% of the funds stay in DVP to run the program