Community & Economic Development Committee - Regular Meeting

To the to the members of the public, we are just waiting for a quorum to start the meeting. Good afternoon and welcome to the community and economic development committee meeting of Tuesday 12/10/2026 the time is now 01:48PM and this meeting may come to order. Before taking roll, I will provide instructions on how to submit speaker cards for items on this agenda. If you're here with us in chamber, would like to submit a speaker card, please fill one out and turn one into myself or a clerk representative no later than ten minutes after the start of this meeting or before the item is read into record. Online speaker requests were due twenty four hours prior to the start of this, meeting.

This meeting came to order at 01:48PM, and speaker cards will no longer be accepted ten minutes after, making that time 01:58PM. We'll now proceed with taking roll. Council member Spike?

Present.

Council member Unger? Here. Oh, sorry. Council member Ramachandran? Present. And Chair Brown? Present.

We can check-in. Given the presence of council member Houston I'll entertain a motion to adjourn into a special meeting. So moved.

I'll second that.

Thank you. Due to the presence of council oh, sorry. We have a motion made by council member five, seconded by council member Unger to adjourn the community economic development committee meeting and and reconvene into a full city council meeting due to the presence of council member Houston. On roll, council member Spive? Aye. Council member Ramachandran? Aye. Council member Unger?

Here.

And chair Brown? Aye. Thank you. At 01:50, sorry motion passes with four ayes and at 01:50 we reconvene into a full council meeting. Sorry. Before we begin chair do you have any announcements?

Yes. So first I just wanna welcome everyone to the community and economic development committee. This is our first gathering of 2026 and so delighted to be back and look forward to a productive year. Also want to extend a warm welcome to assistant administrator Baker who will be joining us in CED committee. And then in addition, I know we have some special guests. Councilmember Unger, did you wanna take a few moments to welcome the students we have?

Alright. We've got a bunch of students here who are studying government from Oakland Tech, the heart of d one, and I've I've been in contact with some of them working on a project over the last couple weeks, and I can tell you from personal experience that they're asking good questions, that they have a good understanding of of what's going on in city government and I'm so pleased to welcome them here today to deepen their understanding and involvement and I hope that we will see some of you sitting up here in the not too distant future.

Excellent. Thank you so much and welcome. It's a pleasure to have you here in CED. And I believe that my last announcement will be just kind of given the sake of time and wanting to get back on track for our committee meetings we will limit public comment to just one minute.

Thank you. Sorry reading in item one approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting held on 12/09/2025. There are no speakers that signed up.

Excellent. I'll entertain a motion.

Move approval.

Second. Thank you. That was a motion made by council member five seconded by chair Brown to accept the draft minutes from the committee meeting held on 12/09/2025. On roll, council members five? Aye. Ramachandran? Aye. Unger?

Aye. And chair Brown?

Aye. Thank you. Item passes with four ayes to accept the draft minutes from 12/09/2025. Reading in item two, determination of scheduled outstanding committee items also known as your pending list and there are no speakers on this item.

Excellent. Thank you so much. So to the administration, any, changes to the pending list?

To this year, no. None this time.

Excellent, thank you so much and I will entertain a motion.

So moved.

Second.

Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Fife, seconded by council member Unger to accept the determination of schedule of outstanding committee items as is. On roll, council members Fife. Aye. Ramachandran. Aye. Unger. Aye. And chair Brown.

Aye.

Thank you. Item passes with four ayes to accept the pending list as is. Reading in item three, adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to submit a foreign trade zone alternative site framework application and to execute an agreement with the foreign trade zone board of the US sorry, board of the US Department of Commerce and we have no speakers that signed up.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And so I believe for this item we will hear from our EWD team.

Okay. Good afternoon members of the committee. My name Eric Zamunza with the Department of Economic and Workforce Development in the Business Development Division. So the item before you is a resolution that will allow staff to submit an application to the US Foreign Trade Zone Board, part of the US Department of Commerce, to convert Foreign Trade Zone 56 which is currently administered by the city of Oakland to the alternative site framework. Which is a model adopted by the FTZ board in 2008 and now used by most FTZs nationwide.

FTZ 56 has been in operation since 1980, provides direct competitive advantages to the port and its customers through deferral of duties and tariffs on imported goods. The value of FTZ benefits have only been underscored by recent changes in federal trade policy and tariff rates. This action will complete a process initiated by city staff over ten years ago. The FTZ board requires a resolution within six months of application submission. While counsel previously authorized the submittal of an ASF application in 2014 and 2016, delays from the FTZ board revisions as well as staff turnover are prevented completion.

Currently, the only subzone of the FTZ is a general purpose zone public warehouse at 9401 San Leandro Street operated by Matson Logistics, which serves as a public warehouse for multiple unrelated users. The ASF will allow for a streamlined process to designate new FTZ sites, which is now a time consuming and expensive process that few firms have pursued, which limits access to the benefits of the FTZ. Converting to the ASF will expand our FTZ's capacity to attract manufacturing, goods movement, warehousing and distribution activities, driving job growth in Oakland and increasing business and FTZ license revenue to the city. The ASF will also strengthen the city's ability to market the FTZ as part of a broader business attraction strategy while supporting the Port Of Port Of Oakland and expanding international trade in the region. And that's my presentation.

Any questions?

Excellent. Thank you so much. Colleagues any questions on this item? And there were no public speakers? Okay. Excellent. So I I didn't personally have any questions. I thought that the report was very clear But I did notice that the staff report mentioned that without the without making this change there could be some business constraints. And so I was just curious if you had an example, some examples.

Well the examples would be that right now the process to add a new subzone to the FTZ is very onerous, it's expensive and it takes a lot of time. It's something that small businesses certainly would not go through. And we have gotten some There's been a lot of interest in the FTZ in the last year from companies who wanted to get those benefits. But when they see what the process would be to actually designate say an individual warehouse of an individual company for the FTZ, it's just too much for them to take on. And in some cases there are companies that when they have goods imported, they're doing some sort of additive manufacturing or assembly.

And they can't do that in a shared warehouse. They need to do that in their own warehouse. So this is something that would allow us to provide those benefits to companies that otherwise would not be able to access those benefits.

Excellent. Thank you. So it sounds like it's a good idea that we do move forward with this. Council member Ramachandran. Just

a quick question. Why did Contra Costa County ask to not be a part of this?

They had a concern which was that they wanted to be able to approve or reject any site that's within Contra Costa County. Are actually we are working with them and we think we may be able to come to an understanding or potentially agreement that would allow them to be part

of this.

But you know, I think it's that if they had a bad bad actor within their county, they wanted to have the ability to be able to have some mechanism to approve or reject reject based based on on that. That.

Thank you. And then I'm curious about the time between when counsel first supported this, I think almost a decade ago. What happened in that period of time? Did was there a lack of was there like a rescission of support from from other folks or was it just logistics that took a while?

My understanding is that this was led by a particular staff member that left the city during that time and it was it was took some effort to then restart the submission of the application.

Okay. Thank you.

Alright. If no further questions I will entertain a motion to move this item to the is that the February 17 city council meeting.

So moved.

Second. Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Unger, seconded by council member Ramachandran to approve the recommendation of staff and to forward this item to the February agenda. On roll, council member five. Excused. Excused. Council member Ramachandran. Aye. Unger. Aye. And chair Brown.

Aye.

Thank you. Item number three passes with three ayes, one excused. Five. To forward this item to the city the February 17 city council agenda on consent. Reading in item four, adopt a resolution accepting the annual report on the affordable housing transportation capital improvement and job housing impact fee for fiscal year twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five and we have two speakers that signed up.

Excellent, thank you so much. And so I believe on this item we will be hearing from multiple departments, planning and building, HCD, department of transportation, and Oakland Public Works.

Through the chair, good afternoon committee members. My name is Albert Marid, I'm the assistant director for planning and building. I will be presenting with my colleagues, deputy director Faye Darmawi from HCD, assistant director Jamie Parks from DOT, and acting assistant director Jimmy Mack from OPW. So the item before you is the annual impact fee report for fiscal year 2425. This report is published one hundred and eighty days after the end of the fiscal year.

It was published in late December to meet the requirement of the Mitigation Fee Act. The report can be found at the website that you see up there, wwoaklandca.gov/topic/impactfees. Oakland currently assesses four impact fees. First one is job housing according to chapter 15.68 of the Oakland Municipal Code. This started back in 2005.

We have affordable housing chapter 15.72 of the OMC that was launched in 2016 and the capital improvement in transportation impact fees, that's Chapter 15.74 of the OMC also launched in 2016. For fiscal year 2425, for affordable housing impact fees, we collected about $1,300,000. For job housing impact fees, we did not collect any amount. For transportation impact fees, we collected $227,593. And for capital improvement, we collected $165,000 As you can see, that was significantly less than what we have collected on average over the last five years.

As far as these impact fees, what you see on the board on the right hand side is the total amount assessed. So for affordable housing, we assessed $2,200,000 but it's important to note that only $1,300,000 actually $1,030,000 of those assessed amounts actually pulled a permit. So for everyone's understanding, we assess impact fees when projects come in and apply, but we don't collect anything until they actually pull a permit. So we've made an adjustment to the report that reflects what has been assessed and how many of those projects have actually moved to pull a permit. And for job housing, the assessed amount was $6,000,000.

None of them at this point have pulled a permit. For capital improvement, the assessed amount was $2,900,000 Only $171,000 worth have pulled a permit. And for transportation, that amount is 2.7 assessed and $281,000 have pulled a permit. I will now hand it over to the deputy director of HCD.

Thank you.

Hello. Good

afternoon, chairperson Brown and council members. My name is Faye Darmawi, and I am the deputy director of housing at HCD. I'm gonna go a little bit into some of the affordable housing impact fees impact, actually. So the housing the affordable housing impact fee, was established in 2016, and these are fees that we exact from market rate developments, and they can be used to finance affordable housing, new construction, or acquisition rehab projects. It's really important to note that most affordable housing projects are funded through a layer cake approach of funding sources, and these impact fees are just one of many layers.

So for the affordable housing impact fee, you can either pay a fee or in lieu of paying a fee incorporate the affordable housing into your project or build standalone off-site. And attachment b and attachment C of the staff report has a list of those projects in those two categories. This is an accounting of the balance of the affordable housing impact fee for the period, 2020 2024 to 2025. It's just, important to note that we've actually committed the full amount as of November 2025. And I'm just gonna go quickly through the list of projects that have been funded in part by the affordable housing impact fee.

Since we reported last, there's been a lot of progress. So for three fifty international, that has started construction and is actually close to TCO so we'll be occupying that very soon. And for two thousand seven hundred international and thirty fourth in San Pablo, Closing of the loan is imminent so construction will be starting on that soon as well. Here are some more projects. I don't know what that means.

This is another sort of spotlight on the three fifty international Flicker Bird homes. So it's 75 affordable units including 31 units that are for homeless exits and it's in Council District 5. It's noted that on the Ground Floor is the new health center, being developed by the Native American Health Center. The other, type of impact fee that goes through HCD is is the jobs housing impact fee, and we charge this fee on new office or warehouse distribution developments. Again, what's important to note on this chart is that we fully committed the balance as of November 2025.

And you can see some of the same projects here. So this fee also helped build twenty seven international, thirty fourth in San Pablo and thirty fifty international. Some of the same projects that you see here, some acquisition rehab projects. Here's a notable acquisition rehab project at 2,030. The loan that we provided to this project will help the rehabilitation of a two story wood construction, 55 units, with new plumbing, windows, and earthquake retrofit.

And now I will turn it over to Jamie Parks from Oak DOT. Thank you.

Good afternoon, members of the committee. Jamie Parks, assistant director with DOT. So I'm gonna present quickly on the transportation impact fee. The transportation impact fee is authorized under the Oakland Municipal Code and collects fees based on new square footage added for non residential units and new housing units added. And the fee is used to compensate for the increased demand on our transportation infrastructure caused by new development.

Projects funded under the transportation impact fee must fit a few different criteria. First, they need to be consistent with city goals, plans, and policies. And they also need to improve or expand the city's transportation network. They cannot be used for rehabilitation or maintenance. They need to be creating new capital assets that accommodate additional transportation demand.

And importantly, we use our transportation impact fee to cover projects that are already prioritized in our city's capital improvement program or our CIP. So we don't have a separate set of projects funded by the TIF and a CIP. We use the TIF as one of many funding sources by which we can accomplish projects that are prioritized in our CIP. In terms of the summary of where we are with collecting and expending the fee revenues, at the beginning of the year we collected around $10,500,000 of translation impact fees in fiscal year twenty five. We've expended around $1,500,000 Our policy is to leave approximately 20% of our fees in contingency and that's contingency for potential refunds that we have to provide cost overruns in the projects that are funded.

And the remaining balance of nearly $8,000,000 has been entirely programmed to existing projects, most of which are in active construction. The table on this slide goes through the five projects that are active that have program funds for transportation impact fees assigned to them. I won't go through all of these in detail, but they are five major projects, each of which are improving safety on key streets throughout the city of Oakland and helping to respond to the increased demand on the transportation infrastructure from new development. And you can see four out of the five are already in active construction. And then finally, because pictures are more fun than tables, here are a few examples of some of the great projects we've been able to fund with our impact fees.

Fruitvale Alive, which is a substantially complete project on Fruitvale Avenue, and then also the Lakeshore Avenue bike lanes around Lake Merritt, are under construction right now and broke ground last year. And with that, I will turn it over to my colleague, Jimmy Mach in Oakland Public Works. Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair Brown, committee members, members of the public including students here. My name is Jimmy Mock from City of Oakland. I'm an acting assistant director for the Bureau of Design and Construction for Public Works. I'm here to present the capital improvement impact fee and the projects that come out of this fee that utilizes this fee works with planning and building departments, city attorney's office, also part of the two year CIP adoption. There are four funding criteria that can be utilized with the impact fee for these projects.

Firstly, it needs to be a capital improvement program. It needs to support fire, police, library, parks, recreational services, and also it needs to improve or expand city's public facilities, and, it cannot be used for maintenance. Also, it can support storm drainage services to improve, expand, rehabilitate our storm system, which we do have a project in. And the project may include preparation and revisions of plans and studies. This slide shows the starting balance, fees collected.

As you can see with our commitment of $4,000,000 approximately, we do plan to commit to the fully utilize the rest of the funds for our projects. We have a total of 18 projects that utilizes this impact fee. Firstly oops. There we go. Firstly, with the storm drainage master plan, we are currently 70% complete.

We're working on understanding, what our needs are with since we don't have a drainage fee and really wanna work on, providing education on our system. Fire stations ten and twelve renovation project is in the closeout phase completed. Brookfield Library, is in the construction phase. Moving on to the next slide. I wanna highlight a few projects that are pretty much almost near completion.

We did a lot this year as compared to the last annual reporting. So the digital arts culinary academy, it's near completion. Mosswood Recreational Center, we're actually planning a ribbon cutting for that, so that'd be exciting. Next slide. There's a few main few smaller capital projects, a junior science center, West Oakland youth center from our facilities division that has completed.

And also there's a master planning of the community center and a Rivo Vayo Park remodel. Holly Mini Park is one that was done. We had a ribbon cutting and so and it goes on and on. So as you can see, we've done a lot. Cotacot Trail, we're currently in design.

Tyrone Park renovation is currently gonna it's in construction right now. And here's a picture of the Holly Mini Park that was completed with the ribbon cutting that was already done. So for future projects, there's really not much more left of of the impact fees for us to utilize, but these are the two items that we plan to fully utilize. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Jamie. Through the chair, this slide shows where we are as far as the impact fee studies. There was a five year review that was conducted in 2021 according to state requirements. We did do a phase two analysis that was completed in 2024, and it was enacted last summer through the council. We will be doing another five year review in 2026, again, according to state requirements.

The study that needs to happen has an eight year life. So currently we're about five years into it. So that analysis will not be happening along with the five year review as it did the last time around. And with that we ask that the CED committee receive the annual report on the affordable housing capital improvement transportation job housing impact fees for fiscal year twenty four-twenty five.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Colleagues, any immediate questions or comments? Council member Fife.

Yes. Thank you. Through the chair hello. We recently made changes well, the council recently made changes to the impact fees and and where they're collected for the housing impact fees. So when this study comes back in 2026, will it include any development projects that may have been spurred by the changes to the exist to the new impact fee ordinance?

So the report that will be coming out this year is just going to be giving pretty much a five year shot of what we collected and how the monies were used. The next study is, as I mentioned, currently we're about five years into it and it's an eight year study, so it won't be happening this year. But when it does, it will take into account the fact that starting this fiscal year we have switched how we collect and when we collect impact fees.

So when should we see a report on on if if there have been any development projects that have been spurred. When when specifically?

The next the next report that will be published in December?

December. Understood. And there were some specific references to projects in District 3, specifically I think the second to the last slide referenced an additional $75,000 for Malanga Arts, formerly Alice Arts in Uptown. And I I just wanted to get clarity if that's in addition to the 500,000 that was set aside because there's an inordinate amount of deferred maintenance that needs to happen to save that jewel of of the city. So I was just curious, where is that 75,000 coming from? Is it the impact fees?

You already chaired Jimmy and Mark Carey. Yes. That's correct.

Okay. And has that been allocate identified, allocated, and where will it be used? Because, like I said, there's a lot of deferred maintenance, and and I'm just interested because that's a that's a very important location.

Yeah. I think it's a proposal that's gonna be part of the the mid cycle.

Understood. Thank you. And thank you for your work. I saw all of these different projects that are breaking ground or on the cusp of breaking ground and with all of the limitations that we currently have in the city of Oakland. It's a tremendous job. I'm super excited about Mosswood Park and I look forward to the ribbon cutting for for that center. Thank you.

Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much. I also just wanted to briefly share you know thank you to you know staff in planning and building, HCD, transportation, public works for just you know putting together, I know this is an annual report but just putting together such a comprehensive report outlining just all of the ways that these dollars have been utilized community. You know one of the first last year one of the first events that I was able to attend was the Holly Mini Park and that was actually a park back when I worked with the city of Oakland back in 2019 that community members were asking about hey when will this park be reopened and so that was definitely a full circle moment and it just having reports like this helps us to really have transparency as to how these dollars are being used and utilized. I did have one question I think it's also on the the last slides so Oakland Public Works around as we're looking at the projected dollars that are needed for some of the projects.

Is it similar to what happens in like with some of the HCD projects? Are there multiple funding sources in order to complete those projects?

Yeah. Jimmy Malkier again through the chair. Yes that's correct. It does use a variety of funding primarily from the bond measures.

I see. And so the one that caught my attention and I know that it has been a very long standing one which was the Arroyo Viejo Recreation Center and I know that that one was originally slated for a remodel and I I believe in the slide it kinda had that but it only had the amount being 25,000. And so I just was curious if you had more of an updated status on that

item. I can get back to you on that but I think this is just to do the study just to find out what's needed.

Okay. Excellent. Yeah. I think I was under the impression that there was a study done on that one prior in 2020. And then it was moving forward with the community engagement portion of you know what the community wanted and I think that those community members have been on standby really waiting for that park to that recreation center to to be remodeled and so would love to hear back a little bit more

on

that one.

Great. Acknowledged.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Council member Ramachandran.

You. I think the projects that these that these fees are funding are great. My concern is with the declining fees. We know for lots of reasons, there's less developments in projects new projects in Oakland, but I'm looking at the table on page nine comparing you know, in every category, there's a downward trend of how much we've collected. It's the lowest amount in all the categories the past the past year on on this data. What's the impact of this on this long list of projects that we're funding and are we gonna be able to continue these projects?

I can pull some of my colleagues from the departments that actually do these projects for us, planning and building. We assess and we collect and we did see a significant drop as one of the slides show. We did a percentage comparison on average what we've collected versus what we collected this past year and there was a significant drop. I can tell you that what we have done is change the way the impact fees are implemented moving forward in order to motivate additional development. Moving forward starting from the year that we're currently in, Impact fees are collected at the back end which should support our developers because that's not money that they have to spend upfront.

But I'll pass that on to colleagues.

Hello. Faye Darmawi, deputy director of housing at HCD. Yes. Thanks for asking that question. So affordable housing as I mentioned before is a is an endeavor that takes a multilayer cake funding approach and impact fees are just one layer.

So when we have reductions in impact fees which inevitably happens in the downturn, we have the ability to benefit from low income housing tax credits, let's say state HCD funding, county funding, vouchers that create more cash flow so we are able to place a private sector permanent loan for example. So there's many ways that these projects get done despite the fact that the impact fees are sometimes less.

Good afternoon. On the transportation side, the transportation impact fees are an important but relatively small part of our overall capital program, representing a little bit less than 10% of our overall capital funds, most of which come from outside grants or bonds. So the projects that are listed here in this report are fully funded with a combination of the impact fees, bonds and grants so they can continue. But to the extent that the impact fees decrease, we'll be able to fund proportionately fewer new projects going forward in the CIP.

Excellent.

Jimmy Muck from Public Works through the chair. Yeah. For the capital improvement fees, all the 18 projects that we listed are fully funded. So it and they're pretty much mostly done as well.

Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Council member Ramachandran.

Oh, thank you. I'm very glad to know that these projects that you're referencing are either fully funded or that there's other funding sources because I am concerned in some of these categories, the decline from, you know, collecting $10,000,000 in 2021 to 1,000,000 last year in the affordable housing and jobs and housing trust fund, and then just the jobs and housing fee. We went from 2,800,000.0 in 2020 to 0 last year. So, I mean, these are sizable jumps. And you mentioned the change of which I recall going through last year of having developers paying that fee once the project's completed rather than is there anything else that you're working on, a proposal or something that's already there to try to stimulate more things going on so we we get these numbers up?

We're constantly looking at what we can do. You know, we're in the middle of an economic adjustment now when it comes development across this area in California. So we're constantly working with our colleagues in other cities to see regionally what we can do to make adjustments that will stimulate development. So I can't point to any singular thing but I can guarantee you that we're constantly looking at this and working on it because we understand how important it is.

Thank you. Excellent.

Thank you, colleagues, for your questions. We could go to the public speakers.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number four, mister Samuel Ramey and Jeff Levin. If you're here in chamber and would like to speak, you you can come up to the podium. Or if you're on Zoom, please raise your hand to be easily identified. Mister Simuel Ramey and Jeff Levin?

Good afternoon, host. Good afternoon. My name is Samuel Ramey. I'm with the California Oakland Mental Health, a a homeless project out in the Chicago National. We have a urgency. I had to go to Chicago a couple weeks ago because you got 58,000 mental health people running around the city of Chicago plus in minus two to 10 degrees. Man just died yesterday, 63 years old, four years ago. We don't have any problem if we have a problem. When are we gonna start addressing these issues? I told y'all

they waiting I'm waiting on y'all give

me a landfather. It's already paid for. I'm fairly funded to how senior citizens and middle disabled. I have a contract with the government with her too. Y'all playing. I'm not. We have people to take care of. Senior citizen are they made a way for us. You got homeless events. We take care of people from

another country before we take care of you. Thank you for your comments, mister Ramey. Switching to Zoom user Jeff. You can unmute yourself and begin your comment. Thank

you. Good afternoon. Jeff Levin speaking on behalf of East Bay Housing Organizations. We did send you a comment letter yesterday evening, and I think in one minute's time, I can't really summarize all of that, but we'll just note a couple of things. One, we would really like to see an estimate of all of the unpaid impact fees pending for projects that have pulled building permits and are under construction.

Those are the fees we can count on coming in in the future, and then should be able to start making fund reservations based on that anticipated revenue. Secondly, a number of changes were made last year, converting from a per unit fee to a per square foot fee, suspending the fee altogether in Zone 3 and expanding that zone. We would like to see an assessment of whether those changes are having their intended impact, and we don't understand why we would have to wait five to eight years to get that. We know that the study that is eight years pending was three years delayed last time.

Excellent. Mister Levine, did you have more that you wanted to say on this subject?

Thank you. I just, you know, wanted to note, the last five year review was supposed to include a program evaluation at the same time, and that portion was delayed for three and a half years. And we do not want to have to now wait another five or eight years to evaluate new changes that have been made to the program. We don't understand what staff is referring to about an eight year time frame. I think the city can assess the effectiveness of its program changes at any time.

Thank you for your comments, chair. That concludes all speakers on this item.

Excellent. Thank you so much members of the public for your comments. I did have a quick question for the building and planning team. Just to confirm we'll be getting some of the changes that we made in 2025 we'll be getting, I would just want to confirm we'll be getting that report towards the end of the year. Correct?

Yes. It is required that the report be posted one hundred and eighty days after the end of the fiscal year and we will be doing that.

Excellent, sounds good. So I have no further questions. I'll entertain a motion on this item.

So moved.

Second. Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Ramachandran, seconded by council member Fife to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the February 17 city council agenda on roll. Council members Fife? Aye. Ramachandran? Aye. Unger? Aye. And Chair Brown? Aye. Thank you. Item number four passes with four ayes to forward this item to the February 17 city council agenda on consent. Reading in item five, receive an informational report regarding the fiscal year 02/2003 and quarter four update on the planning and building department's code enforcement activities, and we have no speakers that signed up.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And so we will hear from the department on this item. Yes.

Good good afternoon council member Brown and committee members, members of the public, and future leaders of our city. Today, we are representing an informational update on the planning and building department's code enforcement activities for fiscal year 2024 and 2025, specifically for quarters three and four covering January through June 2025. My name is Cecilia Moila, and I'm the billing official currently overseeing the code enforcement unit for planning and building. The purpose of this report is to provide transparency into complaint trends, inspection activity, enforcement outcomes, case resolution timelines, and key initiatives underway to improve service delivery. It is important to note that our code enforcement efforts are well aligned with an equity lens that focuses on being able to set standards for compliance that are consistent and across the board.

Really focusing on our housing and making sure that we have fair safe housing for all of constituents in the city of Oakland. Next slide please. As you can see here, we're gonna kick off the presentation with just a before and after of our team's great work. This is what our code enforcement unit focuses on every single day is ensuring that we are not only safeguarding public health and safety, but we are making sure that we're reducing blight and creating safe communities for all in Oakland. Next slide.

Today, we're gonna go through our complaint complaints received metrics, first inspections, the case management duration, any enforcement actions, and our fees that are assessed through our code enforcement program, as well as we're gonna go through some numbers regarding our abatement and closure of cases. We're gonna review our open case totals at the end of the quarter and then go through some additional resources that we provide through our program. Next slide. So as you can see here in this slide, code enforcement has three primary enforcement categories, blight or property maintenance, housing maintenance, and zoning. As you can see here through that column under blight, we focus on trash, debris, overgrown vegetation, use of gas power leaf floors, any recycle bins that are left out, and then we move over to our housing maintenance which focuses more on habitability, making sure that our constituents in the city are in safe, healthy housing while assessing plumbing and electrical hazards, heating components, mold, unpermitted work.

And then we go into our zoning code enforcement types, which focuses on businesses and residential zones, commercial zones, industrial zones, and then also tackles even the minor things that we would think are minor such as fencing. Next slide. Here we have a clear depiction of our fiscal year twenty twenty four quarter four or twenty twenty two quarter four through fiscal year twenty twenty five quarter four. As you can see here, Oakland has received an average of eighteen thirteen violations or complaints per year. Just in quarter three of fiscal year twenty five, we had eighteen seventy and ending in quarter four, we had 2,052 complaints that came in cumulative in these three specific areas.

Next slide. As we see here in our first inspections, we had an increase beginning fiscal year of 2023 into 2024, and this correlates with our deployment of our inspection app, which has allowed us to be more efficient in our compliance measures. So what this means is that the complaint or the employee I'm sorry. The coenforcement app allows our inspectors to focus a bit more on how we are assessing complaints out in the field, uploading our results, generating our notices, and makes us more efficient. Next slide.

Under q three and q four for January through June 2025, we see here our inspections for first inspections per category, our reinspections, and our total. So just to give you a quick preview, blighted properties, we received nine hundred and seventy one first inspections or conducted nine hundred and seventy one first inspections. Out of those, we had a cumulative of 2,579 reinspections. What that means is the 971 are included in that 2,500 mark because it also includes other inspections that were previously in queue for a total of 3,550 for this reporting period. Next slide.

Here again, we show the good work of the teams, good work out in the field enforcing for our communities blight nuisance cases. Next slide. So this here depicts our enforcement tools. So code enforcement counts on cleanup contracts, notice of repeat violation, stop work orders, and compliance plan. So as you can see here, our cleanup contracts are agreements that the city, agrees to work with other contractors that help us clean up blighted property.

When it comes to cleanup contracts, we saw two contracts come through through this reporting period. We had zero repeat violators in this reporting period. And I I wanna note here that this is an effort by our unit to make make sure that we are looking through code enforcement through an equitable lens. And what does that mean? That means that we understand that some properties are gonna be hindered by blighted conditions.

And so rather than focusing on issuing a repeat offender violation, we are working closely with property owners and constituents to make sure that they bring their property into voluntary compliance. In the same reporting period, we issued 58 stop work order notices. So this is a notice that we issue for properties that are doing work beyond scope or doing work without the benefit of a permit. We also see here that we entered into 31 compliance plans. Now these are important because a compliance plan service a tool of enforcement to allow us an opportunity to work with property owners on a milestone plan that allows them to not only submit for a permit, but also work with their architects, engineers, professionals to assist them with plans, approvals, and inspections.

And as they're meeting their milestones, we're able to work with them. Now if there's ever an opportune or a condition where they aren't able to meet their milestones, depending on the situation, we will continue to work with this property owner. Or if they're flat out not not wanting to work with within the measures and agreement of the compliance plan, then it allows us to be able to escalate that enforcement. Next slide, please. Here we have our metrics on abated and closed cases.

This also includes non actionable complaints. So non actionable meaning complaints that we received but we weren't able to verify, there wasn't a contact, we weren't able to see that in fact there was something going on on-site. So as you see here, from our first quarter until 2025, we had a heightened rise in the middle two quarters there. And these are indicative of changing of climatic changes. So for example, winter season tends to create more mold cases, heat cases because of lack of heat, moisture, water intrusion, or when it gets real hot, you know, there tends to be other elements of maybe perhaps rodent infestations and such.

Next slide, please. Now this is a slide that is most representative of of the good work that the code enforcement units do. And as you can see here in fiscal year twenty twenty two, we were abating cases as much as we could and trying to do the best job that we can. And as we get to fiscal year twenty twenty five, that number has increased by more than 55%. So we are, we were successfully able to close 1,277 cases.

Again, this is attributed to our efficiency and being able to leverage our electronic app or our app that allows us to be able to generate resulting from the field and our noticing once we complete inspections on-site. Next slide please. So the average resolution time here as you as you see for blight cases is twenty six business days. Now I know that at first glance you might think, oh my gosh, twenty six business days. I wanna walk you through this a little bit.

So from case intake, meaning somebody calls in a complaint to the first inspections, there's a total of seven days here that take place. Give or take holiday or a weekend. And then from first inspection to the notice of violation that's being sent, there's a total time period of fifteen days there to allow for mailing. This might be inclusive of staffing that might delay that time frame or fluctuate that time frame a little bit. And then from intake all the way to abatement, you see that there's a fifty six day turnaround time.

Now I do wanna expand on this a little bit. Most jurisdictions in the state of California and actually nationwide provide a thirty day compliance time period. Within that thirty day, that's your first initial compliance period. That doesn't mean that in thirty days most of these cases are gonna be complied with. That just means that we're gonna give you for an initial thirty.

Most cases will go beyond that to an additional fifteen to thirty days. So really you will see that the total abatement period between intake and abatement ends up being about sixty days total, if not a bit more depending on the type of complaint that it is. So as we see here, we see fifty six days from intake to abatement which is actually a really great number to see. Next slide. Now here we have our housing case management duration.

You'll see that the number is a little bit more. This is indicative of perhaps permits being required. Right? So if somebody comes in on a housing habitability complaint, maybe there's lack of heat, maybe somebody created a new space, maybe there's a plumbing issue, they're gonna have to come in through our permitting process. They might need to hire a contractor.

Here's where we work with the property owner to be able to retain the services of a licensed professional to be able to do the work effectively. So the time period will increase here because of those those things, those considerations. Next slide, please. Once we get through our zoning case management here, we have about seventeen business days. Again, walking you through case intake to abatement.

We have the first five days for first inspection to take place, twenty three days for us to be able to send a notice of violation, and then fifty six days to completion. Now the notice of violation here, you see that there's an uptick in days there. I'm happy to report that since this time period, we were able to, hire a zoning investigator who then has been able to absorb some of this workload and has helped us manage this time period better and lower this number or this the days the number of days that it takes us to issue our notices. Next slide, please. Once more, this is what your code unit does here in in enforcing their tools.

This is what makes us proud. It makes us proud to serve our community as well as all of you here today. Next slide. So our total open cases from fiscal year 2024 to 2025, we see here that we opened about 2,132 blight cases at the '2. And fast forward to '4, we have an uptick of those 2,339 cases.

Maintenance saw an increase as well of of about 200 as well as the zoning complaints that we were receiving in our office. Next slide. So through our escalated enforcement process, we do often, if there is no compliance, assess fees. Here, you see the depiction of how many cases were invoiced per fiscal year quarter as well as how many fees included bonds. Now if I can just elaborate on that, a bond is something or a number, a fee that we take in to ensure that work is going to be done or completed when we enter into a compliance plan with a property owner.

So for example, somebody comes in and they say, hey, Cece. I wanna go ahead and, you know, make sure legalize my addition to my house. But it's gonna take me some time. I can't do it right away. This is where we say, no problem. We'll enter into a compliance plan. We'll go ahead and take in a bond of about $5,000. You get a a list of milestones that you have to meet. If you meet all these milestones, getting your permit, plans approved, and inspections, then we return that bond to you. If work is incomplete, milestones are met, if unfortunately the property owner doesn't comply, then that bond is collected by the city.

It's basically a promise to do this work. Next slide. So moving on, we have some some other fees that are assessed and collected. As you can see here from fiscal year twenty four quarter four to your latest quarter in fiscal year twenty five, we are collecting about 42% of all fees assessed in this reporting time period. Next slide.

So here are some key initiatives. Our digital enhancements, this is a code enforcement inspector app. Again, this helps us reduce inspector time out in the field. It help us helps us generate those notices, a violation directly from the app. It reduces the time frame that we spend on these, makes it more effective for us to respond.

We also have our proactive rental inspection program that we're currently working on and coordinating with our housing partners and their LHAP program focused on older housing stock. We are working collaboratively with other units of the city to include the encampment management team as well as our special activities team, DOT, MPW, fire so that we can make sure that our our enforcement is parallel across the board. Next slide, please. This is some additional information and resources that are available that speak a bit more about our code enforcement program. And again, I just wanted to highlight that, you know, we have stepped up since this reporting period.

So you will see at our next reporting period that some of our numbers are gonna be a lot better than they are this reporting period and so we're very excited to have more staff on board. With this, we ask that you please accept our report to this committee for the fiscal year 2024 and 2025. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much for the very detailed report and also incorporating some of the questions that I had asked as well prior, especially around the staffing piece and look forward to seeing just the updated report after, right, once we since we've included brought on more staff. Colleagues, any questions? Council member Ramachandran?

Thank you. Good to know that more hiring and onboarding is happening. I wanted to know how many full inspectors there are currently.

Through the chair, council member Ramachandran, we currently have 42 inspectors. 20 of them are dedicated specifically to our code enforcement unit.

Thank you. And how many vacancies are there?

We currently have seven vacancies that we are actually actively looking to fill.

Okay. Thank you. The report mentions continuous recruitment for inspector roles. So does that mean that they're constantly being prioritized or how does that work?

That's correct. Currently, we we had we have a continuous recruitment, yes, so that we can fill those positions.

Okay. Because it's one of the rules I don't see on the city website. Okay. So I just wanted to know what's being done to prioritize it even though if it's continuous, typically, they stay on the or supposed to stay on the city's web site.

Through the chair of council member Ramachandra, in addition to the 42 positions that we have as a combination code inspector, we also have five assistant code enforcement positions that we're trying to fill. We're working with HR for them to make an adjustment to that classification so we can actually fill it. Currently, we have some ELDs in those positions. We do have a list that has been compiled from the continuous recruitment. So we will be going through that interview process before that goes back into circulation.

Great. Thank you.

Excellent. And while you're there director or I just wanted to ask this question that I was noticing in the report page six. It looks like in Q1 we saw you know basically double of the blight cases. I just wanted to I was curious if we had some insights as to that increase.

Council chair Brown I can go ahead and answer that. So yes we definitely did have an increase in our blight cases there. That had to do with vacancies that we had at the time. This number has now seen a more positive change.

I see. Okay. It definitely helps us understand how when those positions aren't filled, you know clearly the work is unable to get done and and then you can see it automatically just go right down. I thank you. Council member Fife.

Yes. Thank you for the presentation. I just had a couple questions. Clarity, if you could provide. You said that digital enhancements are part of the the process moving forward. Can you speak to what those digital enhancements are and if they're connected to any of our existing technology like our three one one system?

Yes. Through the chair council member five, the digital enhancements focuses on the code enforcement inspector app. Now this app launched in 2024, 03/01/2024, which allowed us to reduce our response time for field work resulting and issuing our notices of violations. So before, what would happen is we would go out well, we will receive our case, go out, conduct our inspection, come back, result in the office, and then prepare notice which ate up a lot of our time and it really impacted our response. So now with the inspector app, we're able to do everything through this app, upload a photo, result right on-site, issue the notice, kicks it back to the office, and off it goes into the mail.

So it's really improved our process.

That sounds very efficient. That's that's awesome. The type of incidents that are being captured through this app, can you give me like one or two scenarios?

Absolutely. Some of the scenarios would be like flight cases, graffiti cases that come through. Anything that comes in through that three one one system gets generated through our Acela portal. That Acela portal then allows us access through the app so we can see everything that comes in when it's assigned to a code enforcement officer. At that moment, they're able to respond in real time to that specific case by scheduling it, resulting, and all the other items that I mentioned.

So these are connected to three one one requests or there's a way for the two systems to talk to each other?

That is correct. Yeah. It all lands in for us to be able to schedule and respond.

Hypothetically, an ongoing case where, say, a youth center was continuously tagged with graffiti, could you look that up through a 311 ticket number to see what the process was through your system? System?

We would look it up through through the address itself and it'll show us anything new that has come in for that particular address. Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

Of course.

Excellent. Do we have any public speakers? Alright well I don't have any more questions. Thank you so much for this detailed report. Thanks for all of the hard work and then we look forward to you know the new staff that will be joining to help further the work that needs to be done. So thank you. And so I would entertain a motion on this item.

So moved to receive and file.

Second.

Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Ramachandran and seconded by council member Anger to receive and file this informational report in committee. On roll council member Spike. Aye. Ramachandran. Aye. Anger. Aye. And chair Brown. Aye. Thank you. Item passes with four ayes to receive and file this informational report in committee. Moving on to open form and we have one person that signed up, mister Samuel Remy.

I don't get it. These old people need housing just like everybody else do. The veterans that fought for this country need houses like everybody else do. I want to continue to fight for their right because I'm gonna fight for my right. Our human rights have been violated. You guys gonna be next because they ain't gonna stop. They grieve. They're not gonna stop. Capital is not gonna stop. We have to stop. There's something right now health education welfare. That's why I said give us some land so I can do this for our people. We have to go do this. I spent not one piece already. We have $52,000,000,000 on surplus right now. I'm not gonna touch a dime with you. Just do things on paper saying we're build this do what's right for American people. God bless y'all.

Thank you for your comments mister Rameychard. That concludes all speakers.

Excellent. Thank you all so much. This meeting is adjourned.