Significant Items at Council Committees Tuesday. This is not an exhaustive list of the committee legislative items, just a roundup of those considered significant in the point of view of this publication.
Finance Committee, 9am
—Enterprise Electronic Cashiering System: The City Administrator proposes to enter into a contract with a new cashier system to replace its aging and cyber-vulnerable system. The cost of the system appears to be a near-match of the current system at $200K/yearly, meaning that per the legislative report, there is no extra cost involved.
Council will also review the Oakland Police and Fire Retirement System status and investment portfolio.
Two items will be discussed as continuing items from previous meetings, but have no new reports or information provided—the City’s major sources of revenue in the General Purpose Fund [GPF] report and the status of implementation of City Council directives.
Public Works and Transportation Committee, 11:30 am
Several large contract proposals:
—Ford Parts and Service contract for 5 years at $800K/yr from Ron Dupratt Ford
—$775K purchase of a storm drain vacuum truck from Vac-Con through a Sourcewell Cooperative Purchase Agreement
—Extension of the contract for encampment cleanup with Beautification Council by $450K, for a total budget of $3.93 MM for another contract year, 24-25. While the agreement is with the City, the funds come from a state of California grant. The BC has been working under this grant since 2021.
Community and Economic Development, 1:30pm
—Housing Accelerator Fund: $40 MM of Measure U to recharge a City-sponsored Affordable Housing Acquisition Fund and Project. It’s a continuation of a program that has existed since 2017, and has been funded with Measure KK funding since.
—City Administrator report back on stakeholder process on Measure U labor standards. As reported by this publication, back in February, the Building Trades tried, with the help of council members, to add language to a Notice of Funding Availability that would make Measure U awards for affordable housing construction contingent on Project Labor Agreements [PLA]. The attempt failed. But in the aftermath, the Council gave direction to the City Administrator to gather input from stakeholders in affordable housing and labor on the potential for PLA requirements on Measure U funding. The City Administrator is back with the report.
The City Administrator states that three potential options for labor standards for Measure U funded affordable housing projects emerged from the input:
- Apply current labor standards and fully implement and enforce the laws.
- Expand current labor standards with an Ordinance based on regional labor standards modeled on state legislation.
- Adopt a Resolution that requires developers to negotiate a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) with specified labor standards terms.
The first two options, per the report, would not require big changes. In the first option, the City already has rigorous rules about employment standards, union-level pay [the prevailing wage] and equity. The Department of Workplace and Employment Standards should be empowered to more rigorously pursue workplace equity and prevailing wage rules through Council legislation, staffing and programming—all of which would require amplifying DWES, with personnel and programming costs increasing.
In the second recommendation, Oakland would follow state level guidelines applicable to regional affordable housing construction in Bay Area Housing Finance Authority [BAHFA] standards. The only real difference in the BAHFA standards are adding specific structures on higher level healthcare to the prevailing wage rules. But the report finds that the changes would rely on how Oakland interprets the concept of high level healthcare, as Oakland's prevailing wage is already set to union-level standards which include a higher level of health care costs, and BAHFA are set at a more inexpensive standard.
The third option would be to incorporate PLA’s in the same way County Measure A1 does. A1 requires that any affordable housing projects with 80 or more units funded by the bond measure have a PLA with construction unions. PLA’s come with no strike clauses and require local subcontractors to use union workers. The report notes that of the three, the PLA received the most negative reactions from affordable housing providers and non-union small business contractors, with concerns about lack of transparency into the union workforce demographics, a history of union racism, and the lack of any real need to increase the labor standards.
The report adds that a RAND Corporation study in Los Angeles indicated that PLA’s add to the cost of affordable housing units, adding to concerns that PLAs would reduce the number of affordable housing units created by Measure U funding. The Los Angeles Rand study found that the PLA added 43K per unit, and led to 800 fewer units of affordable housing being built. The City Administrator's reports also has several memos from stakeholders stating their views.
Public Safety, 6pm
—OPD already got its Fixed Wing Aircraft’s surveillance system okayed by the Privacy Advisory Commission and Council months ago. But in the meantime, a years-old lawsuit brought by current PAC chair Bryan Hofer, resulted in a settlement that required OPD to set use policies for its infrared FLIR technology. Because the FWA’s surveillance system uses FLIR, the use policy then had to be rewritten to incorporate the new policy, requiring a new approval process at both the PAC and Council. The FWA’s surveillance system is necessary because the FWA will fly at such a high altitude that unaided vision will be useless. More on all that here.
—Helicopter Maintenance Contract with RSI: The Fixed Wing Aircraft idea got its start when, over a year ago, the OPD brought its request to continue paying $850K per year on helicopter maintenance for its aging fleet of two helicopters, collectively known as ARGUS. During the discussion, the continuing cost of ARGUS—and the eventual need to replace it—led to an initiative to phase in the FWA. At that time, Council agreed to only approve one year of payment in the two year proposed contract, in hopes the FWA would be available before the next contract renewal was required. It’s not completely clear when Council believed the FWA would be available to replace ARGUS and its required maintenance program, but the committee will find itself in the awkward position of being faced with the same maintenance program while being asked to approve the surveillance system of the FWA.
The report notes that the FWA is years out from purchase. The City Administration still has a lot of paperwork to do before presenting Council with a contractual agreement to purchase the planes. The report says that it will be 2-4 months after that action before the move can be made to purchase or finance the planes, then another year before the plane is in OPD possession. Thus, the OPD is returning with the same request that it did last year, when it only received approval for a one-year contract with RSI–a two-year contract with RSI at a total cost of $1.7 MM.
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