In October, public participation in legislative processes, and the lack of it, became an over-riding theme at the Oakland City Council's scheduling meetings. Three issues of significant importance to the public—a major institutionalization and expansion of Oakland's Flock surveillance, big changes to Oakland's homelessness policies, and a significant overhaul of Council's Rules of Procedure—were all the focus of scheduling practices that have visibly curtailed public access to Council deliberations.
While all the meetings have been properly scheduled according to Brown Act and Oakland Sunshine Ordinance Rules, the City relies on a pre-determined Calendar passed by Council vote prior to the legislative year, with pre-scheduled special and regular meetings. The Council President, and the Rules Committee by majority vote, can create new special meetings with only 48 hours notice, however—and it's up to the CMs to advertise they’ve done that beyond the Legistar Calendar update. The Rules committee can also hold on to items after they've been initially introduced, scheduling them at future meetings after initial scrutiny has moved on. In the past months, scheduling of contentious items reflected an increasing practice of scheduling short-notice special meetings to hear contentious items with little regard for public notice and participation.
PSC Chair Wang and OPD Try to Have Flock Surveillance Legislation Bypass PSC
OPD first introduced its use policy, upgrade and existing contract transfer proposal to the Privacy Advisory Commission in the Spring. OPD is seeking to transfer the current contract for 300 or so ALPR cameras and Flock platform held by CHP to OPD—but OPD wants far more than that. OPD’s new proposed use policy would allow any private camera owner to opt-in to OPD’s Flock platform with a simple form, giving OPD the ability to livestream from a potentially unlimited number of private cameras throughout the City. OPD would supplement this with more Flock video pan and tilt cameras—initially 40 throughout the City, but also with no upper limit. That may not be the end, because Flock is constantly innovating services, allowing OPD to include a drone fleet into its network. Flock and Amazon have partnered on linking individual users' feeds into the Flock cloud, potentially creating an unimaginably large citywide network in the middle of Oakland's residential neighborhoods
Privacy Advisory Commission Recommends Against OPD's Proposed Flock Plan
The Privacy Advisory Commission [PAC] voted 4 to 2 on the Flock expansion legislation—deliberation during two deliberation meetings suggested that while the body was open to the concept of video and ALPR surveillance, after already approving the City’s Flock ALPR Use Policy in 2023*, it was Flock’s increasingly questionable reputation that concerned the majority.
Oakland’s use policies deny Federal agencies access to the City’s Flock data, but that stricture is only as good as the other local agencies OPD allows to search their Flock database. Unlike siloed surveillance systems, Flock’s main selling point is that its interconnected cloud serves as a literal social media platform for surveillance with other approved agencies, individuals and groups. Other law enforcement jurisdictions, like the SFPD, while agreeing to Oakland’s terms, had nevertheless searched OPD’s Flock system on behalf of federal agencies, according to media reports that became viral in the Bay Area during the first months of Trump's frenetic anti-immigrant policies. OPD has no way of guaranteeing local agencies don’t share OPD data once they have it, thus to a great degree negating the intended siloing effect of the use policy.
Other concerns about Flock were accumulating nation-wide with dizzying speed literally as the PAC deliberated through summer and early fall:
—Flock had just been exposed for untransparent contracting language that allowed surveillance to be shared with federal agencies against the will of the contracting jurisdiction
—Flock entered into an agreement with Federal Customs and Border Protection and misled the public after it became public
—and the reality behind Flock’s contractual ownership of the cameras was revealed when Evanston, Il discovered Flock has absolute power to remove the cameras and had to cover them with trash bags to ensure the public would not be recorded against the city government’s will. Oakland's Flock contract has similar language.
As a result numerous cities were rushing to cancel their contracts as well during the PAC’s deliberation—and like Evanston finding that was not so easy either.
OPD appeared to exacerbate the PAC's concerns with visibly sloppy processes. OPD initially brought a boiler plate contract with no express prohibition on federal sharing to the deliberation. OPD representatives were also unable to explain why the why they sought an exemption from the normal bidding procurement process required by city law—OPD’s refusal to even consider another vendor under the City’s open bidding requirements with the argument of "urgency" troubled Commissioners. OPD has since included more safeguards in its Flock contract, including a stipulation that the contract is nullified if the Federal government under Trump were to take over the City. But Flock’s ownership of the cameras remains in the contract, and Oakland cannot remove–or even move–Flock’s cameras if such a contract cancellation were to occur.
OPD Seeks Scheduling Short-Cuts, as Does Public Safety Committee Chair
Despite the negative recommendation from the PAC, OPD is still bringing its proposal for a bold expansion of the current Flock ALPR system for Council approval. But the agency doesn’t appear to want to vet the contract and use policy to a broader public at a committee—Council’s established primary deliberation process. And the Public Safety Committee [PSC] Chair, Charlene Wang, also appears reluctant to vet it there.
Over the past weeks, both OPD and the PSC Chair separately attempted to bypass the PSC to expedite the Flock contract to a full Council meeting with short public notice. At the October 16 Rules Committee, Wang transmitted a request to Rules Chair Jenkins to bypass the PSC and schedule the OPD’s Flock contract directly to Council. Rules Committee members Brown and Ramachandran declined [Fife was absent] and only agreed to schedule the contract and legislation to the pre-existing Public Safety Committee [PSC] meeting. But the following Tuesday, that PSC meeting was cancelled at the last minute, regardless, ostensibly over issues of quorum**.
The expectation would have been for the Flock contract, and the other items on that day's agenda, to appear again at the next PSC meeting on November 18. But at the Thursday 10/30 Rules Committee meeting, OPD tried to schedule it instead to a 9 am special meeting on November 4, less than three business days later*. OPD’s tech specialist Dr. Carlo Beckman argued that there was urgency for the contract as the current contract with CHP/Flock would soon expire, although he gave no date for the expiration. OPD’s own legislative reports don’t list the CHP contract end as a reason for “urgency”. Rather in its arguments for why OPD seeks to obviate the City’s normal procurement process that requires open bidding, OPD simply suggests general “urgency” dictate an expedited timeline.
Rules declined the request and for the time being, the item is still presumably scheduled for the November 18 committee meeting, although no agendas have yet been issued.
Stealth Scheduling of “EAP” with Little Notice and No Published Amendments
The scheduling arc of the D6/D7 joint “Encampment Abatement Plan” since July also reflects attempts to evade public participation. A special PSC meeting had initially been scheduled for the item at a July 25 Rules meeting at the insistence of CM Houston. Houston told the Rules Committee that the item was so urgent, it couldn’t go to a regularly scheduled committee meeting in September after the Council’s regular break—it must go to a special Public Safety Committee meeting in the first week of September with consequent immediate introduction at the first Council meeting of the Fall five days later. But Chair Jenkins did not schedule the special meeting at that Rules meeting, and it was only scheduled in late August.
At the September meeting, scheduled at an unusual 11 am start time, dozens of homeless advocates and Oakland homeless residents vocally rejected the EAP’s central theme that homeless people are a public safety concern with few rights. But the potentially bigger obstacle to the legislation was a letter and redlined re-draft of the policy from a state body that adjudicates the City and County’s homelessness grants, which this year represent $22 and $44 MM in funding, respectively. The potential to lose already earmarked funding over hastily crafted legislation prompted CMs at the committee meeting to balk and claim they would revise and add amendments to the EAP before considering it for a vote.
At the meeting, PSC Chair Wang said she would endeavor to schedule a new special committee meeting by the end of September or early October—but the EAP disappeared with zero explanation for over a month. The EAP suddenly re-emerged with an on-dais scheduling attempt by Houston at the October 16 Rules Committee, facilitated by Jenkins. Houston demanded the EAP be scheduled to a special meeting on Monday, October 27. But concerns about CM availability prompted Jenkins to claim he would seek a date that all were agreeable to, again, with claims of urgency trumping public access. Jenkins said he would aim for a meeting on Wednesday 10/28—once again declining to schedule the item in a public forum.
An email received from a public records request shows that the next week, during the October 21 Council meeting, Jenkins directed the Clerk’s office to schedule a special meeting for October 27 for the EAP. Jenkins received scheduling confirmation within minutes—but Jenkins did not inform the public about the scheduling during the remaining three hours of the meeting.
Even with the special meeting scheduled, Houston was still required to schedule the EAP to 10/27 meeting, and at Rules that Thursday, October 23, Houston’s staffer attempted to do so.
The legislative packet still had none of the promised amendments or changes, just the D6/D7 Offices' original legislation that caused alarm in both public and Council from early September. That meant that if CMs wanted to add amendments ahead of the meeting, they would have about 4 hours to do so—and the public would not be able to see the amendments until the agenda was published on Friday afternoon, less than one business day before the proposed 9 am meeting. Houston even called in to the meeting on his staffer's phone, demanding the "urgent" placement of the item.
CM Houston is on phone: pic.twitter.com/JoNTvloAAa
— The Oakland Observer (@Oak_Observer) October 23, 2025
But CMs again balked at legislation that would have to be introduced to the public with less than 24 hours notice and asked that the meeting be rescheduled to November 4.
Finally, at Rules the following week, October 30, in a seeming acceptance of critiques about impromptu scheduling, Houston requested that the meeting be pushed forward to December 5 at 6pm, so that "constituents and business owners" in his district could participate—concerns about urgency now absent.
New Rules of Procedure Scheduled to 9am Full Council Meeting Tomorrow
A similar process occurred with new Council Rules of Procedure. The item was initially introduced at Rules as a subject matter discussion for 9/25, then withdrawn without explanation. The item returned for scheduling on October 16, but CM Fife and others felt there was not enough time at that meeting to discuss significant changes. The new Rules of Procedure was tabled for another substantive discussion at the Rules Committee for 10/30—but at that meeting, no one opined on the legislation at all, and it was scheduled directly to the 9 am November 4 meeting, tomorrow***. The pattern hews closely to the scheduling of recent Police Commission appointments that were held in the Rules committee through various measures as substantive matters of discussion, never discussed at Rules, and only forwarded to Council after significant delay and attendant public uncertainty about when the appointments would go before the full body.
The legislation has significant changes for public participation:
—the proposed new rules will remove discretion from Committees about whether items are scheduled to City Council's Consent list, where legislation is passed in bulk without discussion, and Non-Consent, where legislative items are fully deliberated. The Rules Chair would make that decision during scheduling.
—proposed new rules would make it harder for CMs during a full Council meeting to shift such items to Non-Consent—currently that action only requires a motion and a second during a Council meeting. If the new changes are passed, that same shift would require a majority vote.
—And currently, Non-Consent items are required to be heard after 5pm, so that the public can have an expectation of being able to participate with a known target-time. The Rules changes would remove that structure. A meeting with few items, thus, could wrap up before 5pm, with the public having no way of knowing when the meeting may end to gauge being present or commenting.
New Rules May Facilitate Evasion of Public Scrutiny
It's possible that increasingly visible attempts to bypass the public may have become a hard load to carry for CMs—for the time being, both the EAP and Flock surveillance items have reasonable advanced notice. But the new Rules of Procedure may succeed in curtailing public participation in other ways if passed at tomorrow’s 9 am meeting. before the EAP and Flock contract are heard.
Oakland Observer will have more in-depth reporting on the Flock surveillance contract and the EAP in the weeks to come.
*The City’s Flock ALPR system was initially contracted by the CHP. CHP currently holds the contract with Flock, and the City operates the system under separate MOUs with the CHP and Flock. As the CHP’s contract ends, OPD intends to renew the standing profile of around 300 ALPR cameras currently in place. But OPD also wants to augment the ALPR stable with the addition of 40 Flock video surveillance cameras, and a use policy that will allow the City to use Flock to livestream and record privately held cameras whose owners opt in.
**Anti-Police Terror Project [APTP] had a standing call to action for those concerned about the Flock contract, along with a 5pm rally in front of City Hall—the rally was promoted on APTP’s instagram account on Monday, and a press release sent to local media at 8 am Tuesday. The meeting was cancelled due to lack of quorum shortly afterward at around 3pm. APTP still met to rally, but that morning, another organization backing and misrepresenting the Flock legislation as only passage of the already existing ALPR units, sent out press releases for a 4pm rally. Both rallies were held, with a gaggle of local media splitting its focus on the hastily called press conference of less than 15 supporters and the larger planned APTP action. A text blast sent out by Wang’s office obtained by OO urged constituents to gather at City Hall at 4pm, the same time as the hastily called Flock supporting rally, so that “opponents” did not outnumber supporters at the meeting.
*** the regular meeting to be held tomorrow, November 4, election day, at 3:30 pm was cancelled. A 9 am special meeting was scheduled instead with the claim that the schedule would better facilitate voting.
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