Last Meeting for Police Commission Chair and Vice Chair Fails on Quorum; Oakland City Council Meeting Preview 10/17/2023: Update, 10/16/2023, Police Commissioner Rudy Howell Resigns

Last Meeting for Chair and Vice Chair of Police Commission Fails Without Quorum as Commissioner Boycott Continues

The last functional meeting on the Police Commission for Chair Tyfahra Milele and Vice Chair David Jordan passed Thursday without quorum, as the Commission again failed an attendance roll call. The meeting was the fulfillment of claims made by three Commissioners—Regina Jackson, Marsha Peterson and Karely Ordaz*—to deprive current Commission leadership of the opportunity to propose any policies in the waning days of their tenure.

Milele and Jordan’s terms on the Commission end on October 16. They will be replaced by Ordaz, who successfully campaigned for a seat from the community selection panel after filling a role as a Mayoral-selection alternate; and Wilson Riles, a well-known former City Council person and civil rights and social justice advocate. Riles recently sued OPD after being violently assaulted and thrown to the floor and arrested when Planning Department staff reported him to police, alleging disruptive behavior. No charges were ever filed against Riles, who was awarded a $360K settlement from the City last year. Mayor Sheng Thao has yet to replace Brenda Harbin-Forte, the Commissioner she removed earlier this year. 

Last Monday, Chair Milele called a special meeting to give charter-required authorization to the Community Police Review Agency [CPRA] to “concur” with the findings and discipline for an OPD Internal Affairs Department [IAD] investigation involving sustained findings of sexual misconduct. The CPRA is charter-mandated to take up such cases, but because of well-reported problems at the agency, the CPRA was unable to initiate its own investigation, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation. In such cases, the CPRA is required to seek Police Commission authorization to “concur” with the OPD investigation, findings and discipline recommendations—but the lack of quorum at the meeting in the continuing Commissioner protest prevented that outcome. The San Francisco Chronicle confirmed that the officer in question has been fired by OPD, but the CPRA apparently was unable to fulfill its charter-mandated role in the process.

This publication reached out to Commissioner Jackson for comment on the apparent failure of CPRA to fulfill its charter-mandate due to the boycott and received this response via email:

“I am unable to comment as this is a personnel issue. The meeting was to retroactively approve decisions that had already been made. Further comments on my part would be irresponsible.”

At what appears to be the final meeting of the current leadership, Milele took roll call noting the absent Police Commissioners [Jordan also did not attend] and the presence of Commissioners Jesse Hsieh and Rudolph Howell. Milele used the occasion to give a farewell statement to other commissioners, staff and city officials. Milele also lauded the NAACP, and Terry Wiley among others. The meeting could not go forward due to the lack of quorum, however. The Commission’s Chief of Staff, Kelly Yun, also noted that she is leaving the Commission as well, leaving the body with no Chair, Vice Chair or policy support staff as the body enters its next era. 

Milele, Jordan and Howell, who together made up the Commission's hiring committee, sent along an unofficial list of preferred Chief candidates to the Mayor as one of their last acts. Though the list is not an official document and is likely to simply be ignored, it does reveal that former Chief Leronne Armstrong has applied for the role anew. Milele scheduled the next Commission meeting for October 19 and set the agenda in one of her last actions as Chair.

Update 10/16/2023:

The Oakland Observer has learned that Oakland Police Commissioner Rudy Howell resigned this evening from the Oakland Police Commission effective immediately. OO reviewed a document/email of Howell's resignation.

Howell was appointed to the Commission by Selection Panel in October, 2021, with a term that would not have ended until October, 2024. Howell was one of three Commissioners on the hiring committee, along with Commissioners Milele and Jordan, tasked with finding a new Police Chief. Howell was a signatory to the set of 7 recommended police chief candidates that included Armstrong.

According to a source with direct knowledge, despite the City Administrator's extension of the application deadline, no new applications were received after the former deadline. The extension to give time for more candidates to apply was the ostensible reason for denying the hiring committee the opportunity to officially make recommendations before the end of Milele's term.

The departure of Howell leaves the Commission with only 5 Commissioners, and one alternate, Angela Jackson-Castain, who has missed all meetings since she was passed up for permanent placement to the full Commission. Five is the minimum attendance for quorum.

What's At Council This Week, 10/17/2023

*due to an impacted schedule, Tuesday's Council meeting will convene at 2pm. Of the items detailed here, only the Centro Legal de la Raza grant and the Flock Camera program will receive focused deliberation as part of the Non-Consent Calendar. Others could be pulled to Non-Consent, however, at the request of Council Members. The Mayor's State of the City Address is a stand-alone item that will likely be lengthy with additional public statements. This isn't an exhaustive list of all the Council items, but those most relevant and of interest to the public in the view of The Oakland Observer.

Mayor’s State of the City Address

The Mayoral address is a requirement contained in the charter; the Mayor must, in the first Council meeting of October, “ deliver a general address on the state of the City, and recommend the adoption of such measures as [the Mayor] may deem expedient and proper”.

For the past several years, former Mayor Libby Schaaf downplayed the requirement, opting for only a perfunctory address at Council and holding an alternate state of the city in a private venue where community input was not mandated by the Brown Act. Schaaf even missed the address completely one year**, opting to have the off-site one only instead—the City Attorney only briefly opined on the violation of the Charter at a meeting.

Traditionally, Mayors have remained at the lectern to listen to the public speaking portion of the item, although Schaaf left the Zoom-platform meeting for her last address after speaking, claiming prior engagement. Like Schaaf, Thao has not gone out of her way to advertise the state address at Council. The address could be an opportunity to lay out Thao’s direction for her administration over the next three years, but will likely also host several regular antagonists from the public.

OPD ALPR, State Funding, FLOCK Contract

OPD/City staff successfully argued to the Rules committee this week that the ALPR legislative package should bypass the Public Safety Committee as an urgency item. Tracy Jones, OPD's Police Services Manager, argued that increased crime necessitates an expedited timeline for ALPR and that oversight from the Privacy Advisory Commission earlier in the month obviated the additional committee oversight. Jones also noted that OPD currently has no “active” ALPR system—though she did not mention that OPD turned off its own system earlier this year after proving unwilling or unable to meet the previous use policy passed by Council.

OPD's accompanying report obliquely refers to OPD's decision to shut off ALPR, but also floridly and ironically describes its current self-created ALPR-free situation:

Time is of the essence. Every day without ALPR is a day the OPD
cannot further their investigations in identifying potential vehicle(s) related to crimes, and each and every day without ALPR evidence is lost.

There are several other bombastic passages in the report which seem atypical for a legislative report as well.

The three year contract will initially be partially covered with the $1.2 MM grant that Thao sought from Governor Gavin Newsom, but afterward will add $900K yearly to the OPD budget for the placement of 300 cameras. OPD's report requests that the OPD budget be amplified yearly to accommodate the additional funds necessary to maintain the Flock system after the initial loan funds have been spent. An addition of over $500K will be necessary to maintain Flock in the FY 2024-25 mid-term budget. The legislation will also approve, accept and allocate the state loan and the three-year contract with Flock that will ultimately cost $2.87 MM.

Presumably, a new contract with Flock will need to be negotiated and passed at end of that three-year period.

You can read more about the Use Policy, PAC deliberation and capacities of the Flock Falcon system in OO’s reporting of the PAC meeting where the use policy was recommended for passage. 

Given the fact that CMs Jenkins, Kaplan, Kalb, Gallo have offered themselves as co-sponsors to the item, the likelihood of the ALPR package failing to pass Tuesday is minimal. The system request also has the emphatic support of Mayor Thao, who has mentioned the system several times in her public statements about crime in Oakland.

The OPD report suggests that the Flock system could take up to a year from the passage of the legislation to implement, however.

Limited Campaign Public Financing

Council will consider a legislative patch to maintain public financing for upcoming City office races in the 2024 election cycle through the Limited Public Financing Act Of 2024. The legislation was written by the Public Ethics Commission, which voted to recommend the legislation to Council and the legislation is being brought by CM's Carroll Fife and Nikki Fortunato Bas.

The Act would bridge Oakland's failure to implement Measure W, the ballot measure that would have instituted the “Democracy Dollars” program intended to create credits for Oakland voters to give candidates financial support. The ballot measure had a clause that allowed the delay of implementation for budget-related reasons in the first two years—Mayor Sheng Thao announced earlier this year that the Mayor intended to recommend to Council to invoke that clause and Council subsequently passed a budget lacking the funding for Democracy Dollars.

In the meantime, the Public Ethics Commission created this work around which temporarily adds a version of the Limited Public Financing mechanism that existed prior to the ballot measure.

Limited Public Financing will extend to 2024 Oakland elections only and will set aside at least $155K of discretionary funds at the PEC for the purpose of the financing program. Because it is essentially an amendment to the ballot measure, two-thirds of the council body must vote to approve the legislation.

The safety valve in the ballot measure terminates at the end of the 2024 election cycle, so the Council and Mayor will have to come up with some way of funding Democracy Dollars by then, despite anticipated and ongoing revenue shortfalls. 

The Limited Public Financing for 2024 will be slightly different than the previous program as it hews to Measure W's campaign finance rules. You can read more in the informational report here.

$ 1 MM Business Corridor Safety Ambassador Grants

Despite a seemingly solid response to public safety requests from local business, an already budgeted $1 MM set of Corridor Safety Ambassador Grants got off to a rocky start at a Rules Committee meeting two weeks ago with a polemic started by D4 CM Janani Ramachandran. The ambassador grants are focused on three business districts with historical rises in crime and high business traffic, per the accompanying information report: the downtown to Jack London Square Area; the Hegenberger Corridor; and the Fruitvale Corridor on International Blvd. According to the grant, the largest geographic area. The downtown to JLS grant, which would be accepted and disbursed by the Jack London Business Improvement District, represents half the grant. The other half of the funds would be split evenly by the Hegenberger and Fruitvale business corridors. The funds might have gotten a boost from a state public safety grant the City whiffed earlier this year, but now the City only has the original budgeted fund amount pulled together in a challenging budget year. 

The Economic and Workforce Development Department [EWD] bringing the grant request asked the Rules committee to use an urgency finding to schedule the grant to the forthcoming Community and Economic Development [CED] meeting. EWD argued that a primary focus of the grant was to make the funds available in time for the holiday season. Ramachandran, who had a prior engagement during the meeting where the ambassador grant was to be scheduled, argued that the item should be delayed so that she could personally be involved in the deliberations. Ramachandran said that she represented residents and businesses of Oakland that won’t see the benefit of the grant, and apparently focused on diverting some portion of  the limited funds to the Dimond and/or Laurel districts in D4.

But Rules members Bas, Fife and Dan Kalb weren’t swayed by the arguments. The Committee took a vote to confirm the item should be heard on the proposed urgency schedule, with only Ramachandran voting no. 

Ramachandran sent an email to constituents ahead of the meeting, misrepresenting the grant, and urging residents to call in to and attend the meeting and to demand funds for D4 business corridors. Ramachandran told constituents that the Mayor had personally instructed EWD to remove D4 from the plan. But at the meeting, EWD staff clarified that the department itself chose the districts in most need of the grant in consultation with various business corridors and that the Mayor had not informed the decision.

"We took a look at...using an equity lens, which we are required to do, to identify the highest priority corridors, and so that was criteria number one, and that's how we came up with the list of those three neighborhoods potentially..." Cristy Johnston Limon, Deputy Director of EWD, told Council members, adding that increases in crime in those areas as well as organizational capacitation were factors.

At the CED meeting held last Tuesday, dozens of representatives, mostly from the Fruitvale district, told Council members about the need for the ambassadors and funds in their businesses corridors, but only two supporting Ramachandran’s focus on D4 spoke. Only one of those speakers, the area’s BID director, was a D4 resident. Regardless, CM’s modified the language to direct funding for ambassadors for other districts should additional funding be found. 

$1 MM Grant for Centro Legal De La Raza Tenant Legal Aid/Support

Centro Legal de la Raza received a $1 MM grant to provide a combination of legal services and emergency rental assistance for renters last year, during Covid. Housing and Community Development [HCD] has brought the grant format back for another round of funding. HCD recommended allowing Centro Legal to define the ratio of expenditures—which in the previous iteration of the grant was 75% legal services, to 25% financial support and the CED committee agreed. During deliberation in the Committee, D6 CM Jenkins opined that HCD hadn’t offered a scope of work or efficacy for the program and he voted no, which means the legislation is on non-consent and will be discussed at the Council meeting. 

Centro Legal has received similar grants since 2018, when it received a two year grant for about $1 MM per year. An annual report on that grant award had City staff detailing a ‘course correction’ with the assistance of ACCE when City staff noticed Centro was failing to reach African American households—that report noted that with ACCE’s help, the outreach to Black households increased by 10%.

Since then, Centro Legal has received yearly funding for a similar set of programs which it carries out in partnership with Eviction Defense Center, East Bay Community Law Center, Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach and The Unity Council.

CED affirmed Jenkins' critique and directed HCD to return with a broader report on the program’s 2022-23 efficacy. The report, which has has been added to the legislative packet since the CED meeting, outlines scope of work, demographics and outcomes of the '22-23 program.

Centro’s scope/goal included providing outreach and education, legal services and financial stabilization to 298 residents.

The report details that Centro continued to serve more Latino households than any other household group, the next largest group served was Black households—26% of the services were to Black households, a proportion slightly higher than Oakland’s Black population. The program’s Latino participation was 47%, a much higher proportion than Latino representation in Oakland. Only 8% of the households served were Asian, a number lower than the representative population. Nearly all of the households served were either very low income or extremely low income [the majority at 68%].

According to the report, Centro met many of its goals and fell short of others, and provided legal services to 200 residents, and financial assistance to 16. 

Head Start Substitutes Contract 

Council will consider adopting legislation that would increase the dollar amount for a substitute teacher contract for Head Start by $500K—from $250K to $750K.  According to the accompanying report, the contractor, Childcare Careers, has been providing substitute teacher services for the City of Oakland’s Head Start program. The program must, by law, provide certain student to teacher ratios or suspend operations. The report argues that it needs more substitute support as there are 37 vacant positions to fill in the City’s Head Start program, with a current shortage of Head Start instructor applicants, and recent expansion of Oakland's Head Start programs. The City report states that the City’s unions have been notified of the decision, and that the contractor usually fields good substitutes—but it’s clear that non union workers are intended to fill City roles for months and perhaps years to come in the expanded program. The length of the contract may raise eyebrows—the original contract was for 5 years, with this amendment increasing the allowed expense over that time. The City argues that there are no other local contractors with expertise available to fill the contract. 

Latinx Cultural Arts District

One of only a handful of Noel Gallo’s personally written legislative items in his decade in office finally heads to Council after being bumped last month. Read more here. 

Changes to the Lobbyist Registration Act

Council will consider changes to City ordinances brought by CM Nikki Fortunato Bas which would limit and waive lobbying fees for non profit, and/or low-income organizations. It includes a fee waiver for 501c3 orgs and community based organizations with less than $750,000 in annual revenue; a fee reduction for small businesses/organizations w/less than $200,000 in annual revenue; and a 50% fee reduction for lobbyists registering in the second half of the year.

Flex Streets Encroachments Return with Fife Legislation

D3 CM Carroll Fife is bringing legislation that would return Flex Streets requests as an administrative, not Council-approved process with multiple opportunities for businesses to request street closures. Businesses had the opportunity to request a street closure permit [encroachment permit] for events during Covid-era Flex Streets rules. But when the City codified many of the rules into permanent law, it left out the opportunity for multiple closures and defaulted back to a cumbersome process requiring City Council authorization. Fife’s legislation would add back the opportunity to apply for unlimited numbers of street closures by businesses, with a streamlined process that goes through the City Administrator’s office. Fife’ program is again, in essence, a pilot program, as the legislation sunsets on December 31, 2025.

*Ordaz is an alternate, whose presence at meetings became indispensable after former Commissioner Brenda Harbin-Forte was removed, and second alternate Angela Jackson-Castain stopped coming to meetings completely after she failed in her quest to be nominated to full Commissioner in July. Peterson and Jackson are both appointee hold-overs from the Schaaf administration.

**At the request of Council, Schaaf eventually appeared before Council in November, and gave a two minute address where she advertised the off-site state of the City address. Thao is technically one meeting late with her address.