Finance & Management Committee - Regular Meeting

Good morning, and welcome to the Finance and Management Committee meeting of Tuesday, 03/10/2026. The time is now 09:30AM, 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. With us in chamber and 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. Registering to speak via Zoom is now due twenty four hours prior to the start of this meeting time. This meeting came to order at 09:30AM and speaker cards will no longer be accepted ten minutes after making that time 09:40AM. We'll now proceed with taking roll. Council members Brown? Present. Council member Unger?

Here. Council member Wong?

Present.

And chair Ramachandran?

Present.

Thank you. We have four members present. Chair before we begin do you have any announcements at this time?

No announcements. We can go ahead.

Okay. Thank you. Starting off with item one, approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting held on 02/24/2026 and there are no speakers on this item.

Is there a motion?

Move approval. Second. Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Brown, seconded by council member Unger to approve the draft minutes from the committee meeting on 02/24/2026. On roll council members Brown. Aye. Unger. Aye. Wong. Aye. And chair Ramachandran.

Aye.

Thank you. Item number one passes with four ayes to accept the draft minutes from 02/04/2026. Reading in item two, determination of scheduled outstanding committee items and we have one speaker that signed up for this item.

Okay. To the staff, if you are ready to present.

At this time we have no changes to the pending list that I'm aware of.

Is there a motion?

You have a have a speaker. Oh.

Council member comments, requests? Okay. Then to speaker.

Okay. Mississa calling in the name that signed up for item number two, miss Asada Olubala. Thank you. All names have been called, chair. We just need a motion.

Okay. Is there a motion?

So moved. Second.

Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Unger, seconded by council member Wong to accept the determination of scheduled outstanding committee items as is. On roll council members Brown. Aye. Unger. Aye. Wong. Aye. And chair Ramachandran. Aye. Thank you. Item number two passes with four ayes to accept the pending list as is. Item three, receive an informational report on measure q. One why was extreme fiscal necessity declared without open discussion and what the time or sorry. What the timeline is for making changes to this practice?

Following the grand jury report, when can the biennial audit report be expected? Three, what will the process be defining extreme fiscal necessity with measure q and other stakeholders? And we have a number of speakers on this item.

Thank you. Council member Unger, anything you wanna share before staff presents?

Nope. I'm just, eager to hear staff report.

Great. Thank you to director Brown there.

Good morning, everyone. Brad Johnson, director of finance. I will be providing an oral response to the questions asked by council member Unger, I'll be flipping back and forth between them as I as we move through. So your first question was why is extreme fiscal necessity declared without open discussion and what's the timeline for making changes to its practice? This is related to grand jury finding number twenty five seventeen from the grand jury report, which the city council the extreme physical necessity clause to measure q without open discussion and public debate.

And we actually disagreed with this finding with the grand jury. So we both at the and our explanation was that as a ballot measure was put on by the council, we actually had an active and open discussion around the clause. And as it relates to the enactment of this clause, we do have this at a council meeting where we have a conversation about it. And actually, I make a I've made a presentation to you for the last probably four declarations we've done where we have a conversation to talk about this. This is always included in the packet in advance.

It is your prerogative as a counsel, per the measure to declare or not declare the state of extreme fiscal necessity. It's a recommendation that has come from staff in the office of the mayor in the production of your budget for the last four years, but it is ultimately your decision whether or not to declare it or not to declare it. Should the council not declare it, we have to adopt a budget that complies with the strictures of those measures in full. And traditionally, both, neither the proposed budget nor the sets of amendments that come from council members, tend to do the work that would be required to adopt a budget without that necessity declaration. So if there's a desire for measure q or any of the measures to be fully, to not require a fiscal, necessity declaration, We should have that conversation sort of in anticipation.

My office, my department is happy to do that with all of you in the preparations of your amendments should the mayor's proposed budget not be in compliance with that at the front end. I think we do have to adopt, we do have to present and adopt those findings. There is always staff report that explains our rationale why coming from us. And again, the decision is ultimately yours. Your second question, on the report, and I apologize as I flip back and forth.

Following the grand jury report, what can the biennial audit report be expected? So we have commissioned We do, I should say, audit measure queue as a component of the city's financial audit. And we have gone through additional, we've looked for additional contract services to do more detailed audits and presentations around from a fiscal perspective. The city auditor's office, I'm not sure if the auditor is here, oh, is responsible for the routine audit per measure queue. They have completed one audit and we have had some, city auditor Houston, if you want to speak to it yourself, the staff will respond to that audit as per our AI regarding it, and we will work to ensure that we are in compliance with the recommendations that are made by the city auditor through that normal process.

And we'll continue to follow-up on that as the city auditor does his duty to audit that measure on a routine basis. And so there are two sort of or three sets of audits. There's your routine financial audit, in which case we have had a clean audit for the last many, many, many years which includes Measure Q led information. There is a more detailed audit that we're gonna be looking at doing with on the financial side to maybe provide additional scrutiny and a little more scope around that as well. That's strictly a financial audit.

And there is the independent audit conducted by your city auditor, which goes through your normal audit process per the measure, and the administration responds to it per the AI, that is jointly between the city administrator and the city auditor, as to how we address any findings that he may have. And I'm sorry, I don't remember the specific timing of our last audit. I know we have we have just gone through one. I can remember doing it. I don't remember the particular timing around it.

Your final question, what will be what will be the process for defining extreme physical necessity with Measure Q and other stakeholders? So we're in the process right now as we received your report at your, I think it was two committee meetings ago, which talked about compliance with the local measures. We are in the process of trying to develop a plan to come into compliance with these local measures, Measure Q and all the others. That is a key desire of ours. The measure does not require you to come up with a definition.

However, as a component of the review of your consolidated fiscal policies and then the adoption of your prior measures, we've had a working definition and we're gonna look to formalize something in conjunction with the measure advocates. I will be I will be clear as I was clear at your last committee meeting when we presented on what would be needed to come into compliance. That definition and it would be the standard perspective from finance should not lock you out of being able to declare it. We cannot adopt a definition that would not meet our current circumstances. And I know there may be some disagreement to come about how severe extreme physical necessity should be.

I would note that your current framework which is the framework that was developed by prior councils, I know we spoke with Councillor McCallb's office about it as well. My predecessor, Erusman, had detailed discussion, was to cascade sort of three definitions of, financial distress, an adverse financial condition, an extreme fiscal necessity followed by a fiscal emergency, to understand that financial distress is not all one thing, that there are gradations and we had defined extreme fiscal necessity as sort of that second tier. But I want to make sure whatever definitions we come up, we have clear and bright line distinctions between stream fiscal necessity and fiscal emergency, which is the one that we have not declared. We have not been in a space to declare and has much more severe financial consequences and we're not at that stage certainly now and we were not at in prior budget cycles. So we're looking to develop your consolidated fiscal policy and bring back large amounts of changes in the fall.

And so that would be our timeline for looking at definitions. Should we not be able to agree with definitions to the advocates, we will as staff provide you our best advice. I'm happy to take any questions you have around that.

Thank you. My preference is to go to public comment first, but councilor Ronger, since you brought this item, please. Okay. Can we call in the public speakers?

Calling in the names that signed up for item number three in no particular order, you can come up to the podium, and please state your name for the record. If you're on Zoom, please raise your hand to be easily identified. David Boatwright, Asado Olabala, Kevin Dally, Mark Barish, Naomi Schiff, I see you're ceding time to Brook Levin. And Brook Levin, you'll have a total of three minutes since you have time ceded to you.

Good morning, Chair Rameshandra, members of the committee, city administration, and finance director. Brooke Levin, former public works director, co chair of Measure Q, the group that brought this measure to the voters. After the city council approved it, we worked very closely on it. First of all, I wanna go to mister Johnson's first point. When the city council put this item, this ballot measure on the ballot, I was at the meeting with mister Bliss, my co chair.

At that meeting, at the eleventh hour after all speakers had spoken, extreme fiscal necessity provision that's in the measure was added by council member Lynette Gibson McElhaney. There was absolutely zero time for any public speaking at that point. The council was going to vote on it. It was the last possible day the council could vote to put a measure on the ballot for that March twenty twenty election. That is what we're referring to in the grand that that's what the grand jury referred to in the report that there was no public discussion on it.

Secondly, there's never been a definition of extreme fiscal necessity when it was adopted. There was nothing in the consolidated fiscal policy at that time and there was no other document in any other ballot measure that also have this reference of what the definition of extreme fiscal necessity was. It wasn't until June 2023 when the council got their packet on a Friday for a Monday morning budget meeting to adopt their council resolution that that definition showed up. We had never seen it until that Friday when the budget came out in a supplemental report. I just wanna be really clear about that.

We had then in September '24, there was a finance committee meeting. We asked to work on this definition. The committee said yes and directed the city administrator, mister, Johnson, to work with us. It took until 04/15/2025 for us to have the first meeting and now the meetings have been derailed into this road map for fiscal recovery, which is also a good thing, but we still have not got a definition or criteria for extreme fiscal necessity. On the other items, the biannual audit report is overdue.

We're into the sixth year of Measure Q and we've only had one two year report. And I will just say in defense of the city auditor, his staff has been cut and he has not been fully funded. He needs to be fully funded even if some of the money comes out of measure q to do this two year audit every two years. That is an accountability measure. Every ballot measure should have an accountability measure. They have an oversight commission which is the PRAC and the PRAC chair is here today. You need to have this accountability. How can the voters trust a ballot measure? We have a crazy ballot measure on this ballot coming up for public safety and lots of other things with no accountability, an oversight commission that has no jurisdiction over anything except to review a report as given to them. And I know that was a citizen initiative quote unquote.

But it's really important to know that we have worked really hard to get this half billion dollars of money into the city. Thank you.

Kevin Dally predominantly I just agree with Brooke Levine. Let's get things moving forward. The auditor definitely needs funding to wherever that money comes from. Forward to looking forward to resolving some of the problems. Thanks.

Good morning. Good morning all. Thank you to the chair for bringing this matter to the public. And thank you for all the work you do. I wanna echo Oh by the way, my name is Mark Barish. I serve as chair of PRAC. And I wanna echo the points that Brooke made. She said them so eloquently that I don't think I can repeat them quite as well. But really I just wanna draw a couple points just to emphasize them, which is to date there still is no very clear definition of what extreme physical necessity is. How long it lasts, how it's removed, what are the criteria?

We don't know and we've been trying to get those answers for a long time and indeed work on that together with you. So that's one. The other one that's very important is in the grand jury report. Indeed, there never really was a public discussion about it, going all the way back to the inception of the ballot as Brooke laid out the exact timeline. And as it relates to the biennial audit, it's true the auditor's office seems to be underfunded for this purpose.

But six years is way too long to have only one audit. So we are really overdue. In my remaining time, I wanna bring up a related matter, which is as chair of PRAC, I have to say that the commissioners and and I are struggling to stay on top of what's happening because of this dearth of reporting. And it's not just the topics of reporting that we're talking about now. Owing to the short staffing in public works, the number of measure queue reports has gone from two years ago, monthly reports from 10 to seven to five expected this year.

So with that limited reporting, which is really half as much as it was just two years ago, it's incredibly difficult to know precisely what's going on. And I feel a little bit hung out here because I have a personal obligation as well as a statutory one to provide oversight on the spending of Measure Q. Thank you.

I'm gonna take a little time to talk about PRAC. They have too much authority. Y'all jump all over the police commission because of their abuse overreach. Pratt makes decisions that never come to counsel about trees. Last meeting I went to was some time ago. I stopped going to their meetings. They were discussing putting a fence around the perimeter of the garden for the staff to protect their cause. I leave the meeting and the fence is already up. So y'all need to look at they're the ones that made the decision and came up with a plan for Lake Merit's vendors how to deal with them. That wasn't their that wasn't their authority to do.

That should have came from you. So going back to this, don't go jump all over one group of people and you let some people do whatever they want with these committees, especially the privacy commission. Financial management around And who let me say this. Who is gonna speak for the part of Measure Q that has to do with the homeless community? There's no voice for them around this.

These people are talking about parks, but measure q also encompasses homelessness and there's nobody representing their best interest as it relates to measure q. The Alameda County grand jury identified poor stewardship of measure q funds. Although funds were designed for improvements, audits revealed the city did not have a baseline to measure effectiveness resulting in funds being inconsistently used for parks and homelessness services. Okay? And there's also some issues around underspending in action, lack of oversight, failed performance, equity concerns related, and the wrong use of of the funds.

David Boatwright, district four. I have one simple question and that is any money ever taken out of measures to be used for items in the general purpose fund? I've heard people make those comments. I've seen things that indicate that might be happening. And And you say we've not spent any of the money in these funds or done anything in measures as a result of this emergency that we have with the budget. But it sure sounds like there's some money being moved around in these from these measures that's inappropriate.

Chair, that concludes all speakers on this item.

Thank you. I really appreciate all the work that PRAC and those who helped organize Measure q have put into trying to not only get it on the ballot, but maintain some level oversight and accountability. And a couple of weeks ago in this committee, we did hear a report on a potential road map to compliance with these different measures. Obviously, there are more expedited steps that could be taken rather than a five year gap. And I think as we begin and embark on this year's mid cycle budget process, hopefully, we will able be able to make sure that more measure q funding and and as well as the MOEs are directed to that regard.

Last year, our council budget team, which is actually all the members of this committee, tried our best to reinstate some of that funding, for example, by reinstating about half of the tree services division and some related services in the park. We have a long way to go, very much admittedly. But but, again, we are, I think, as council members, I think we're very, very committed to seeing what we can do to make sure that the money voters have entrusted us with and the additional money from our general fund that should be going into these measures based on what voters passed is in fact allocated as so. I had one question for director Johnson. So I was here on council when some of the earlier discussions on the definitions came up, and it was a little all over the place.

And I believe you've met with some members of PRAC and this and and the coalition. What is the status and do you have future meetings planned?

Absolutely. And so and I wanna thank actually deputy city administrator Monica Davis who's not couldn't be here today for doing the heavy lifting on convening everyone around that. So the desire to put in definitions was originally brought by a member of council. There's a resolution in your budget resolution where we did provide sort of an interim definition of these things. We haven't formalized them in your CFP, but the the initial definitions came from the finance department at at the request of a council member.

We are still gonna be actively meeting in advance of our fall fiscal policy update with the with the measure advocates for measure q and all the other measures around what the definitions should look like. And again, that's an active conversation that I look forward to continuing to have with the measure advocates so that we can present something to you in your fiscal policy update in the fall. So that's an active segment of work. People who are involved in that right now are sort of knee deep in budget preparation, if that makes sense right now. So once we sort of come on the other side of that space, we'll be looking to reengage with all the measure advocates on definitions, what they might look like along with other updates we may need to our CFP.

Thank you. And of course, regardless of definitions, do strongly believe it's the will of this current council to put as much money back in as allocated. But in the meantime, much look forward to well, sorry. I have a question. If this is if these definitions are coming in the fall, what would be what would we be considering in the mid cycle budget?

So the measures themselves do not require you to have a definition in order to declare one. That is a element of how these are set up. They did not contemplate in their inception that you define the item. They require us to justify it, which we do in the staff report that accompanies them, but they do not require a definition. You have working definitions that finance has adopted for that has provided for you and you have adopted in the past.

You could choose to use those. But should you decide you do not wish to use those definitions, you do not have to. We do not have to include them in a resolution. We could strike them from a resolution. It would not actually impact your ability to either pass or not pass a declaration of extreme fiscal necessity. Conceptually, you've already adopted one for the biennial as well. So conceptually, we may operate under the paradigm of the one you adopted with your biennial budget. However, it's been our practice for transparency and clarity to bring back a resolution and report with every mid cycle so that it's seen again in the public and it's really clear what's being done by the body at its action.

Is it at all possible to expedite the discussion of definitions in our CFP even if it's not the whole CFP that we adopt part of it with these definitions before we vote on the mid cycle in June.

I'm happy to have those conversations on the front end with the advocates. Would say I have to be circumspect, a little circumspect about it. We have a real capacity issue in terms of doing that work prior to getting the budget through which is why we had a fall timeline for the CFP in general. I will say I'm happy to meet with them and continue to have that discussion. I do want to sort of and this is just me setting expectations.

I'm not sure with the sort of breadth of advocates and that same measure, that same language multiple measures, coming to a consensus agreement on what that definition should be may prove difficult. If this body wishes, what I can commit to you is getting a definition that is the best expertise of my department as to what it should look like. And a commitment to meet with them in advance around that and any feedback or conversation we may have, I can commit to that. I can't commit to necessarily us getting to consensus before then. And I'm hoping but I hope that we can.

So it's a capacity issue. I'm happy to have a meeting this some initial meetings this spring to try to continue to talk through this in advance of the adoption of your mid cycle budget. But I do think fall is actually a more reasonable timeline for us to get to a really solid work product.

Thank you. Yeah. I would greatly appreciate if if the CFP could be bifurcated to discuss these definitions ahead of time. If a consensus can be made, all the better as far as transparency and our trust with voters goes that we're complying with things. And and I know there's different perspectives on to the extent that measure q requires a definition, things. But I think regardless of that debate, it would be, in my belief, the best practice for transparency to have those definitions written down and agreed upon and voted on by council before we pass the budget if at all possible. Council member Unger. Council oh, come council member Brown Unger Wonk.

Excellent. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you council member Unger for bringing you know, requesting this report and just always grateful to everyone who shows up to kind of speak on behalf of this. I know that during the when we were doing the budget last year there was great consistency in bringing this to our attention especially as you know new council members.

And so I guess I'm really interested in question number two around the biannual audit. You know in reviewing the audit that took place in 2024 there were a handful of I think upwards of 13 to 15 recommendations that were asked of the administration. I guess I am curious when the next audit will occur and then also what is the status of some of the detailed recommendations especially around like how the funds are actually being utilized.

Good

morning. Michael Houston, the city auditor. As far as the status of the biannual audit of measure q. It's in our current work plan for 2526. We plan to launch it before the end of the fiscal year.

It's taken quite some time to get the contract executed for that one. So but we do plan to to launch that very soon. As far as the status of the recommendations, we're gonna have our ARFU report very soon which kinda summarizes the statuses of all the outstanding audit recommendations. Okay. Don't wanna we're still confirming those statuses but we'll have a complete report very soon.

Okay. So I guess first question, we're using an external vendor to move forward with the the audit. Was that the same did we do the same for the twenty twenty four one?

No. The the the first one we did in house. Okay. But we've really just fallen behind on all of our recurring audits. So measure m, measure n, measure q, measure d, measure d, the other measure d, measure c. We're gonna have to rely on the outside contractor to help us catch up.

I see. Okay. And then for the follow-up on the recommendations. I know you said very soon. Could we expect that before we I guess pass our mid cycle budget? What would be your

estimate? Yeah, the recommendation follow-up report that we're gonna publish very soon probably next as soon as next week. That's as of the period through December 2025. Okay. And then yeah.

Because we do it semi annually. Right? One for the period ended December and the other for the period ended June. And it will summarize all this, the measure, all the outstanding audit recommendations but including the Measure Q outstanding recommendations. I will say I came in a little late but I think that the last audit recommendation in measure q was around the required financial reporting for the ballot measures which yeah, the state requires that. And I believe based on the preliminary status reports from the administration that that one might be implemented because they've executed a contract. Mhmm.

Excellent. Okay. Thank you.

Councilor Brounger.

Okay.

Thanks. Thank you for putting this on the agenda agenda as well. I I have a couple of questions. I'm reading the grand jury report, and a couple of the questionable expenses that the advocates had had concerns with include included that, measure q had been used to pay for three police officers' salaries, a high level human services employee, including the director that was charged to measure q. There were capital expenses associated with Union Point Park that were charged to measure q.

And then there were also, it looks like, 6.4 positions in the city administrator's office, at a cost of 3,900,000.0 that were also, possibly billed to measure q. I'm just, wondering since you all have to develop a response to the grand jury report and I haven't had the chance to review it but what what is the commentary on how measure q was used to fund these types of positions?

Absolutely. So I'm So I I and I am not the person to speak to all the items in the grand jury report so I apologize. I would note that we do we did provide a response as per the grand jury's policy. There is a formalized response. I believe and I'll defer to the city administrator that it was presented to counsel before we delivered it to the grand jury.

I can attempt to go through and restate what's in that. I will note just to the sort of the breadth of your questions. We on a compliance basis do, from a finance perspective, do try try to at the budgetary stage make sure that to the best of our knowledge everything that we're allocating resources for is compliant with the measures. The language of the measures is a little bit complicated and it's actually spent a fair amount of time actually going through them to make sure that we're doing them properly. They're not super simple.

I would note on, for instance, on the the homelessness side, the city administrator's office is actually the entity that administers a fair amount of our programming related to homelessness. So it's not necessarily that that's wrong would come out of the city administrator's office as a department because they do that's who does the work on large components. Just picking that as a particular example. If we want to have a, if you have more specific questions, again I'm trying to point to the specific audit findings so I could read it back to you. But I'm happy to have an offline conversation with you on that and or make sure that, whoever the subject matter expert is to that particular finding is there to get you the answers you need, council member.

When we developed the response to the grand jury, was it an interdepartmental process and that didn't all come through finances. Again, I may not be the best person to respond to all of them.

Okay. And and, my other question is just around, it looks like the Commission of homelessness is or on homelessness, excuse me, is supposed to publish an annual report on measure q. Has that ever been done or I don't know if you're the person to ask or who who do we have somebody from the city administrator's office that sits with that commission or do they just need independent of any sort of administrative support?

To the chair to council member Wong, when you say they, who who is they?

I'm sorry.

The Commission on Homelessness.

Yes. So that commission is staffed by two of our teams that are on the encampment management team.

Okay.

I see. So yes, you have two staff members that support that committee.

Okay. And do we know if they've ever published that annual report on measure q?

And I apologize. I don't have that answer right now. We can certainly bring that back.

Okay.

Council member, I will note that as of the grand jury space, the finding this is finding twenty five twenty six which was that Oakland's homeless commission has not met its measure q oversight mandated including the preparation of annual report as required by ordinance number thirteen five eighty four in order to updating the duties of the commission. And I would note that we agreed with that finding at that time, so I'm not sure if anything has happened between now and then, but I can say at the time of the publication with the grand of the grand jury report that was the administration's response.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you for the report. When we declare extreme fiscal necessity, obviously it affects a lot of different ballot measures. Do we sort of treat them all equally? Do they all get implicated in the same way or do we sort of pick and choose more from one than the other?

So your adoption resolutions do have separate resolve clauses for each one of the measures to make it really clear. And your staff report typically outlines sort of by how much, which is not strictly required in all of them. But we try to be transparent and say, it's this amount, it's we're waiving it vis a vis, I'll give you an example. The measure Q amount is this far below, which is what we try to say. And then we may say that the charter requirements regarding the city auditor staffing is this much below our one position or two position.

So we try to articulate specifically what the variance is to that. And in your every budget document, there is a page actually explaining how the compliance, how how far off are we into waiving the maintenance of effort, what the scope is. But I believe our our practice on legislation is to do them all specifically. Should you not be out of, need to declare a fiscal, declaration of fiscal emergency and be in compliance with one the measures, we could omit it from the particular resolution that does them. But we do try to do one resolution. So it's really clear because it's often across multiple measures that we are not just doing this in one particular service space that is happening for the reasons indicated and adopted by council across multiple spaces.

Alright. And then more of a statement just building on what Chair Ramachandran said at the outset. Obviously we pass the budget and we make these decisions but we're always building off of a budget that you have created with the mayor's office. And so I just wanna put out there that it is the hope of myself and I believe some of my colleagues that we work back towards fulfilling the voter mandates. And I understand that we may not be able to do it all at once but that is sort of our broad my my broad direction is to try and get back towards fulfilling them as best we can.

Per the report that the city ministry approved that went to you to me two minutes ago, I think that is the intention of the organization.

Great.

Okay. Colleagues, to the author, would you like this to be filed or go to counsel or if you

I think we can just receive and file it here in committee.

Okay. Second.

Okay. Sorry. Through the chair was that a motion made by council member Unger? Okay. Sorry. Thank thank you. That was a motion made by council member Unger seconded by council member Brown to receive and file this informational report in committee. On roll, council members Brown? Aye. Unger? Aye. Wong? Aye. And chair Ramachandran? Aye. Thank you. Item number three passes with four ayes to receive and file this informational report in committee.

Point of clarification, please. I have sat in many meetings where members of the police department come to these meetings. We have the chief sitting here, and he has a lot of work to do. So I'm gonna ask again, anytime the police department is is scheduled, could we put that as a number one item? I'm just embarrassed that the chief has to sit here all this time with the volume of work that he has to do.

We're about to call that item right now. We can call the next item in.

Thank you. Calling in item number four, receive an informational report regarding OPD overtime and we have four speakers that signed up for this item.

Good morning chair and members of the committee. Laraja Marshall, fiscal services division manager for the Yelkom Police Department. Before you is the fiscal year twenty twenty through '26 overtime report covering the data through the second quarter, 12/31/2025. At the start of the fiscal year, council approved an adopted budget of 33,600,000.0 reflecting a 11,100,000.0 or 25% reduction compared to the previous fiscal year for twenty twenty four twenty twenty five. As of today's date, the department is authorized for 678 sworn positions with six fifteen positions currently filled leaving 63 vacancies.

Of the six fifteen sworn personnel, 85 are off due to medical, military, or administrative leave. 17 are on modified duty. In total, a 102 sworn personnel approximately 17% are off work or not fully deployable which directly impacts overtime usage. To better align overtime spending with budget expectations, in November 2024, the department took proactive measures and drastically reduced internal overtime by 20% which carried over into the current fiscal year, which equals a target of $8,400,000 per quarter. At the end of the second quarter, actual overtime spending totaled $6,200,000 $2,200,000 below the quarterly which includes reimbursable overtime and salary savings.

Year to date overtime is projected at $50,400,000 approximately 16.9 over the budget allocation. After factoring in 7,500,000 in third party reimbursables which these funds are deposited into the general purpose fund and are not returning to the department's operating budget And the 17,300,000.0 in salary savings the department is currently projected to end the fiscal year with overtime underspend of approximately 8,000,000. However, it is important to note that the salary costs associated with acting sworn positions do reduce the salary savings and are not reflected in these projections. These costs are estimated at approximately 2,000,000 which would adjust the projected overtime spend to about 6,000,000. Additionally, the report includes supporting tables that display key overtime drivers, budget allocation versus actual expenditures, the tracking system improvements and timelines, and details on the top divisions contributing to overspending.

This concludes my portion, and I'm going to turn it over to chief Beer.

Good morning, chair. Good morning, counsel. So just for a summary from 07/01/2024 to 06/30/2025. Within just four months, the OPD's overtime budget was cut from $44,600,000 to $22,800,000 That's a 51% reduction, including a 20% cut implemented by me, which required careful adjustments to the department's operations and deployment of resources to maintain the reduction of crime that we've been seeing for the last three years. So for the original breakdown, the budget of 44,600,000.0, that was actually reduced by nearly 2,000,000 to a new budget of 42,800,000.0.

And as stated before, in November 2024, as I was the acting chief of police, I proactively reduced it by 20%. That was all discretionary over time was shut down. After that, our budget was cut again by 20,000,000 ending up at 22,800,000.0. So that's went went from 44,600,000.0 to 22,800,000.0. The current overtime budget is 33,600,000.0 which is more than $11,000,000 or 25 percent less than the amount allocated at the beginning of the previous fiscal year. So with that, I'm open for any questions.

Thank you, colleagues. If you're open to it, I'd like move to public comment first.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number four. In no particular order, you can come up to the podium and state your name for the record. If you're on Zoom, please raise your hand to be easily identified. David Boatwright, Asada Olubala, Millie Cleveland, and Kevin Dally.

Hi. Kevin Dally. I appreciate the report and I'm disappointed by the amount the number of years, number of quarters over and over again we have police over time. One of the biggest single officers, I think the biggest single officer who's collected overtime was Lieutenant Dolan who made nearly half 1,000,000 in overtime as reported by Oakland's side. He's responsible for crash data and accident accident reports.

In 2021, one way of solving the problem, at least some of the overtime, is moving this reporting responsibility over to Oak Dot. This was suggested in 2021 by the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force. The council actually supported that, specifically recommendation 59, which implicitly includes that suggestion. If you move the accident reporting over to Oak Dot, I know they don't have as much of a problem with their overtime. You also can put more sworn officers on the beat where they belong.

Accident reporting, police tend to report what code violations are done. For example, last week there was a death on San Leandro Street in front of the Oakland Coliseum. Speed limit is 35 miles an hour there. It's a deadly speed. If the driver was traveling at the legal speed, that was an extreme risk of death for the pedestrian. If the person had been traveling at 25 miles an hour, it'd be less of a risk of death. Oak Dot's able to see this, understand what the real cause of the accident is, and not limit themselves to violent.

David Boatwright, District four. Three questions, And this has been talked about before. Why is overtime reimbursement go to the general purpose fund versus the OPD's budget? I think that would help reduce the overtime problem a little bit. The OPD officers on leave are now a 108 and they were only in the eighties not long ago.

Curiosity I would like to hear more comments on. And there's nothing in the overtime report. It's very good overtime report. It's more more detailed than I remember in the past, but it doesn't say how many of these special events that the police are having to deal with because that takes their time away from working as city employees in their primary jobs. Thank you.

Millie Cleveland with coalition for police accountability. I have to admit I'm a little disappointed in the OPD informational report. The report seems to lack any critical analysis as to the root causes for the excessive overtime costs. This is particularly alarming when Oakland side reports that one officer received $490,000 in overtime, and the city can't find records detailing what he did. The general employee unions authored a detailed research paper entitled smarter public safety.

Significant cost savings that could directly affect staffing and overtime costs are contained in the report. There are at least 38 sworn officer positions that could be civilianized in internal affairs, IT, public information, training, recruitment, background checks, and performance auditing that were approved by city council for transition to civilianized staff. Why hasn't the city administrator moved on this, and why are there no council members asking for status reports? The city auditor has recommended creating a better system for monitoring an approving officer over time. Why hasn't the city administrator moved on any of these recommendations?

Negotiations with OPOA are occurring right now, and these recommendations should be proposals on the table. Clearly, this counsel could benefit from hearing from other voices and not limit your information from the very department that has created the problem.

Thank you, chief.

For the past decade I'm sorry. That's already been said. I'm not gonna repeat. The department lacks a full computerized system relying on paper based tracking, which leads to inefficiency in managing overtime and controlling overtime, causing us to spend more on overtime. Since 2019, 51% of added overtime hours have been attributed to shifts extensions that officers can initiate without prior management approval.

And this came up on Google, chief, so it could be wrong. And so correct me if that's that's not right. So oh, I gotta go answer the phone. Oh, that's my son. Thank you, chief. And please take into consideration our whenever our police officers are here for reports to prioritize their time so they can get back to the busy their business of protecting us. Thank you for your service. Oh, no, these ladies too, they busy working. Alright.

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

Thank you. I have I'll I'll let my colleagues go first, I do have a number of questions. Councilmember Brown.

Excellent. Okay. Thank you so much. So thank you for the detailed report. I have a handful of questions. I guess my first one just for clarity when in on the table on page three when it says special enforcement, does that also mean special events? Excellent.

Yes. Actually it's great. Sorry. Yeah. That's a great question and that was brought up probably one of the public comments.

So for the special resource section or special operations division, they're two separately. The special operations division includes anything from sideshow enforcement, parades, celebrations that we do not reimburse for, these all add up. And then not even taking into account major events like the NBA All Star Weekend where the police are called in to do traffic control, extra enforcement, high visibility, security for other events related to that that are not special events. You're talking about FIFA World Cup just previously back in you know, we just had the Super Bowl, and that was all out of OPD's budget. We were not reimbursed for that.

So you're looking at multiple different events where OPD is requested to actually staff and be the primary role driver or organizer for a lot of these events. Some parades are third party reimbursed. Sometimes we're not fully reimbursed for that. We have an event that's coming up pretty soon this week that there's a lot of city partnership and collaboration with. We just had a meeting this morning.

That's gonna be a lot of o OPD overtime. A big portion of that event is gonna be, you know, repaid by third party. However, there's other resources that will drain the OPD's budget, not just on straight time, but also on overtime where we're actually contributing officers out of our budget to sustain that. So those are just a few, and it was one of the things that was brought up here. So the root cause, obviously, is lack of staffing, but the the actually, continued burden on the police department where we're actually taking on more events.

Then if you actually look at now you got the Oakland Unified School District, their police department has been since defunded. We've taken all of their calls and all that are burden for the Oakland Unified School District. We haven't been reimbursed from them or staffing has increased there as well as the Oakland Park Rangers. They have also been defunded in years past, we've taken over their responsibility. So that's just a few of the additional burdens that the police department takes on. That's not actually part of the budget that does drain some of our resources.

Excellent. Thank you. And so that actually leads me to my next question. And I guess it's more of a, like, forward thinking. So with the, with the, dollars that we were able to, allocate for, police academies and bringing on new officers, what is your maybe what how would you estimate potentially that overtime would go down as we're bringing on new officers? And and, you know, I guess at what point do you think that we would start to see a decline in overtime?

Well, unfortunately, now we're playing catch up. Right? We've had academies canceled in 2025 or one academy at least canceled in 2025. And as we're making the rush, it's obviously very competitive to bring new police officers online, and we're not gonna lower our standards. So it's very difficult recruiting nationwide, and it's something that not just OPDs actually experiencing. But, you know, prior to today's today's meeting, I took a look at myself. Right? This is very concerning to me. I I live here. I've raised my family here.

These are my tax dollars as well. So for that question, it's not just as a resident, but also as the police chief and a member of the police department. It puts the community as well as the officers at risk because the women and men of this department are working hard every day, in many cases, on their days off and double shifts. I I if we continue the path where we're going right now, which has improved, we actually have officers that wanna come back to OPD more than we do that are leaving. The attrition rate's slightly lowered.

However, we are in that sweet spot now where there's a there's an opportunity many members of the department to retire. Thankfully, they're committed and they're remaining past their retirement age, but that is a concern. So if we factor in that piece and offsetting more more recently the officers coming back to include the, you know, next academy that graduates in May and then the additional academies to follow, it's gonna take us multiple years to get back up where we're at. So if you look back at 2009, we had 800 police officers and our population was 390,000. Now looking at this year, our population is 443,000.

That's 53,000 more people. Multiple different police agencies that were working here within this jurisdiction that we've taken on. That's a 23% reduction in staff because we have a 185 less officers, but yet a 13.5 increase in the population. So you're talking about a population increase and the reduction of other law enforcement agencies that we've now burdened, and we have to actually deploy resources. So when you're looking at the population increasing four times the size of Emeryville, almost the same size as the city of Alameda, and we're not gaining their police departments.

In fact, we're losing our own officers. Our staffing levels have been reduced by 23%. You have to rely on overtime, but that does concern me. As soon as I took over in December 2025, I immediately sat down with director Suttle, as well as other executive staff. And like I said, I even saw it as the assistant chief, and I tried to proactively, when I was the acting chief, reduce it by 20%.

We looked at it, and then we did see some irregularities, and we started to act on that as well. But overall, the root cause is we're not properly staffed and this is nothing new to the police department. When you see city departments across the city are are experiencing the same thing. They're doing more with less. I mean, the city auditor who did an audit for the Oakland Police Department in 2019 followed up in '21 and '22, and we did not disagree with any of their recommendations and some of the points that were brought up in public comment.

We do need a tracking system and we are going to have the first installation of the tracking system in the June 30 year, we're working on the contracts. But it's gonna come in phases, and it won't actually be fully implemented till December 2027. And that tracking system is a necessity so we could properly supervise who's doing overtime, where they're doing overtime, and how they're doing overtime, not just fiscally being responsible, but just for the officer wellness piece and to make sure that they're being getting the adequate rest.

Excellent. Thank you. And I think you answered my next question, which has to do with the digital overtime being a new digital system for tracking and that that would first be implemented 06/30/2026?

Yes, council member. That's the first phase, but however, we will not get to the full product for that platform till December 2027.

Can you explain that a little bit more?

So it's as far as the technology piece, the first iteration of it comes online June 30. Did you want it? Oh, sorry. I'm gonna turn it over to the expert right here.

Good morning, everyone. Deputy director Kiana Suttle. So OPD is currently working with city ITD on a new scheduling system known as Telestaff. The contract for that system is anticipated to be complete by June 30. Once the contract is complete then OPD IT will continue to work with city ITD in order to implement the overtime tracking system piece.

But as chief Beer said it's gonna be in phases. So the initial phase has to do with scheduling and then phase two, that's when the, department is gonna work with ITD to implement the overtime tracking. But again the overtime tracking cannot be implemented initially because of other operational needs that have to occur.

In operational needs within OPD or outside?

Correct because it's it's tele staff is a scheduling system or an assignment managing system and so we are working with the vendor to be able to add a module that can track overtime but that module is gonna have to interface with the city's Oracle system. So it does take time.

I see. And so I guess that brings me to the other point. I think all of us probably read the article from the Oakland side where it was detailing, you know, just officers that have really accrued quite a bit of overtime. And so I guess my question here to the chief or even to the city administrator, how will we well first off is that information accurate and then also how given that is going to take until December 2027 to actually implement this online scheduling tool for efficiency? What is our plan to ensure that we are controlling overtime?

No. That's a great question. Do you mind, if I can go first? It's a great question. Again, going back to the end into January, that was one of my concerns, especially once I was briefed that the system wasn't gonna be online for some time. So immediately established a high low list, which is published, every other week, which all the commanders can look at and identifies the people within the department, professional and sworn staff, that are getting paid the least, but more importantly, those that are getting paid the most. So that way, we can identify them right off the bat. There has been a previous special order that was put in place. And then before the Oakland side article actually was released, we were discussing strategies to address certain concerns, which are my concerns again. I'm a taxpayer here.

We'd also actually had scheduled meeting with the, city auditor to kinda go through the previous audit to get me up to line and, up to speed and our concerns that we'd already identified. So there is a policy in place. There was a previous special order. We met with the city admin, city auditor. I can't speak to the details of the investigation, but I can tell you an investigation has been initiated, regards to the information that was in the open side article.

We were already analyzing that prior to the article being released. It was a concern of mine right off the bat. In addition to that, by mid February, and we'd already been working on an order directly from me to kinda seal everything up to make sure there's more accountability for the commanders to ensure that everybody is being audited biweekly from the officer, sergeant, lieutenant, all the ways up to the chain. And there's more onus on it now by the command staff to follow-up on that and be able to back brief me.

Okay. And then I guess maybe my last comment. I know a public speaker mentioned how we should be inquiring around, you know, how how I think previous councils even my colleagues here we've all inquired about just some positions that, you know, necessarily doesn't doesn't need to be done by sworn officers. But I know that administrator deputy administrator Davis is gonna is working on our policy directives that we passed during the budget cycle. And so hopefully we'll be getting a report on kind of the status of some of those key positions on whether or not like what would be the timeline to transition some of those some of those roles.

But I'm not sure if you have an awareness into or an update on any of that.

So we've been in the process of transferring sworn duties over to professional staff within the police department or members of other departments within the depart within the city itself. I will say that we're gonna have keep analyzing those on a case by case basis because what we're learning now is other departments want to give them back because they're more efficient while they're inside to the police department. Those conversations are going right now for, say, the vehicle abatement unit. We are committed to making more positions as a professional staff and most currently, thankfully, through commitment with the community and some of our business partners, we're bringing back the cadet program, which is also a non swarm program, which I'll be presenting later on tonight. It's a public safety council, which will be nine positions to free up sworn officers, whether that has to do with certain type of report taking, answering calls for service, case management, assisting with criminal investigations, follow-up phone calls.

So, I think when it comes to, like, a report out with regards to transitioning certain sworn staff over, we just have to be really specific about it. Because some of those actual positions that we had reimagined are under discussion as to coming back under the umbrella of the police department.

Excellent. Thank you so much, chief. Really appreciate your leadership.

Thank you, council member.

Okay. I will pass it on, but just on that last point that council member Brown made about the civilian staff. So I think one of the questions, I know she was referring to, but I really have is not about civilianization of the new rules, which is an ongoing conversation, and I know that your department is working on it. But there were five positions that in our budget that were that are civilian civilian rules. Roles.

The fleet compliance coordinator, police intake technicians, and those those are total of five positions. It was four FTE intake techs and one FTE fleet compliance coordinator that in the budget, we restored funding funding for hiring, and those positions were civilian but hadn't yet been hired. And our goal in this was being able to put those five sworn officers who we were told at the the time were not on any kind of modified duty back to patrol by being able to restore funding for this. So my question, I'm not sure it's for you or for miss miss Marshall, but what is the status of those five? Because five is better than nothing as far five is something to be back out on the streets for patrol rather than doing a desk job that's coded as civilian work.

Okay. I'm gonna turn it over to director Suttle who's the director for bureau services that oversees our professional staff and then I can follow-up for any additional questions in regards to this

one. So

for the intake technician that's assigned to the Internal Affairs Bureau so interviews occurred and from those interviews three people were selected and are currently in the background process and the department is going to work with HRM to host another recruitment for that particular position because the eligible list has been exhausted. So again three of the five positions individuals are in the background process right now. As far as the fleet coordinator, OPD is working with city HRM on the specific the job specifications for that particular position. So that is with city HR right now to revise the job specs.

Thank you. That's great.

The person that is occupying that position right now it actually is someone on modified duty. So it's not a full duty police officer that could work the streets right now. But until the job specifications are revised and we're able to begin that recruitment, the position is being filled by a sworn personnel on modified duty.

Okay. Thank you.

Also that position actually I don't know why I don't think the microphone likes there we go. That position was actually staffed by a professional staff, non sworn member. Unfortunately we recruited him to go into the academy. He's from Oakland. He was working for the city of Oakland.

So when that position opened up, the officer that's on light duty is not deployable to the into the field. Not to get into specifics, but his injuries are are severe enough that he cannot really be used anywhere else. So one of the other rules I had when I came back was to just reduce the every the number on admin leave, which we reduced over 50%, and then bring people back that were off medical with certain restrictions. So the position he fills is tailor made. He has the knowledge of how to deploy the vehicles and where they need to go just citywide, not just downtown within the police department.

So it actually brought a police officer back to work that would have been otherwise sitting at home. But that position was filled until we recruited the the the professional staff member to join the police academy.

Thank you for the update. I will pass to my colleagues in a second. But you had mentioned the point, which was one of my questions, about those reduced on administrative leave by 50%. So the number in the report of those on medical, military, and admin leave is, as of writing the report is 83. How many are currently on admin leave as of now, and how many were you able to get off since you began the role?

So the number's fluid. I I gave a a presentation last week. Initially, it was around 38 people on admin leave. I was able to reduce that down to 16. Currently, it's at 18.

Thank you. And out of I think 38 to 16 slash 18 is a great number. What was done in such a short period of time? Because it'd be great to keep that moving.

Well, investigations were continuing as well as I changed the method of how it was assessed. The deputy chief of internal affairs and I sat down. We went line by line. We looked at each case on its merit. And, if we were able to bring back, people to work and it didn't pose a risk to the city or to the police department, then we brought them back to work under in some cases, under additional supervision or they were assigned, duties within the police department or they were returned full duty.

Thank you. You're welcome. Council member Unger, then Wong, then Madam.

Thank you. So I wanna dig into the tracking issue a little bit more. I I don't have any problem with spending money on overtime as long as we can prove that it's being used to to make the city safer. And 2027 is is a long ways out. You are already using Telestaff. Correctly?

We are. The Telestaff version we're using is really antiquated and not, it's not up to speed for what we are. It's not the industry standard. It's also a challenge, when you talk about such a large department where we're tracking different assignments and reporting pieces. So we have to get to a point where we're able to track people real time and understand where they're being being deployed and the, you know, the resources. So how it affects the the department, the as well as the individual officers as well.

And so these officers are getting paid even though Telestaff and Oracle are not communicating. So they are somehow putting in a report or a time card or something for the overtime hours they work. Why is it not possible with that time card or however they're doing it to also say what they did during that period

of time? So that's the part. So since I took over, that's why I created the special order to reinforce the original departmental general order regards to overtime, but also the reporting piece that when the officer works, whether the overtime slip itself gets lost, they still have to email their immediate supervisor which shift they worked and how many hours they worked. Then they couple with that, the additional overtime and a follow-up piece is the new order that I sent out to reinforce that and to put the high and low list so we can track it, every other week. And then it's now the responsibility of the commanders up to the captains and deputy chiefs depending on the rank to ensure that they're auditing those until we can get that tele staff online.

This, again, is not just an issue for the police department. I've spoke to other directors within the city. Over time and over time tracking, has been a problem for years since nothing new. It seems to become highlighted more every couple years for certain different reasons. But speaking with the fire chief and other directors, the reliance on overtime is across the board.

And it's specifically when you get into certain departments where your expertise could be very limited as to who could work those events. And then when you have a broad range of opportunities, whether it's to work patrol as a watch commander or you're mandated to work for a sideshow. So there is mandatory assignments for other things as well. So it's some of the overtime is not even the discretionary for the person working it. We're trying to get to a point right now.

I mean, I think it's important to understand. We should be you know, we had a staffing study. It says we should have 877 officers just to maintain basic services of what we're doing right now. That's answering calls for service. We have less than 500 operational.

If you wanna do better and we provide the best possible police services to what this community deserves, you should have about 1,200 officers. The fact that we continue to drive crime down for the last three years with the resources we do have is a testament to the women, men that work every day at the police department and to also our other city departments that are partnering with us. But it's also leveraging technology. So although technology will help us reduce that over time, it's not a replacement for the human being shown up to your door. But ultimately, to go back to your question, it's more supervision.

We have to until the technology gets online, we have to hold our commanders responsible for ensuring the supervisors are monitoring and properly supervising the officers all the ways from the bottom to the top.

So again, I don't have a problem with with the overtime. I just wanna know how it's used. So if we have what what we can't have is an officer who we say, oh, we know he worked a hundred hours of overtime, but we don't know what he did during that time. And so it sounds like you have a system now which is cumbersome and email based and hard to track. But are we at a place now where we would be able to know what every overtime hour was spent doing?

For each officer under the, commander, yes. It's still difficult. It's very laborious. There's gonna be mistakes because there's the human, human element in there. I I'm looking forward to the time we actually have that platform in place Yeah.

Because there's going to be mistakes. But previous to even with when before I took over as the interim chief, chief Mitchell was able to identify, what he thought was another concern. And what they did is they went back and dissected it all, and there wasn't an issue with that one particular member. However, it's gonna take that effort on the command staff level. It's gonna take the chiefs and myself to make sure the captains are getting very in the weeds with it. Am I comfortable with it? No. I like I said, I I live here. I'm I'm raising my kids here. I'm a taxpayer, so it affects me.

I wanna have the best systems online for our department to be successful so we can properly track it. Am I confident that there's gonna be more oversight and more actual digging down into to know where the officers are working, where the overtime's coming from? Yes.

Yeah. Again, I I mean, I I understand that, you know, we're waiting on the on the new Telestaff module and and I but I am heartened to hear that at least now even though it's cumbersome, even though it's difficult, even though it's a pain in the butt, you would be able to tell us what each overtime hour was spent doing. Because presumably when an officer is assigned to overtime, we know why we're assigning that officer to that overtime. So we should be able to then retrospectively say why we assigned that officer.

Absolutely. And then so for the portions that you're talking about are really more specific to special events. Right? So you're talking about parades, sporting events, other type of, like, discretionary events. The discretionary overtime is only allowed now when we're starting to see a spike in crime in a particular area.

What we're doing for now, the the overtime that's automatically approved is if patrol is not fully staffed, right, then those positions are gonna be authorized right off the bat because you need officers on the beach to answer the calls for servers. Those are easily easily tracked. Where the, where the confusion can come in is when you you have a lack, just use an example, you have a lack of a supervisor. So you have to pull another sergeant from another squad that goes to another part of the city who's gonna report to another lieutenant, and he's gonna work in that area. And then the very next day, he ends up working sideshow or then he ends up working for the vice.

You have different commanders. So that's makes it what's very difficult to track. The new platform will help us track that. But now it's one, at at the order that I gave out in February is that they have to submit an email to their supervisor so their supervisor can track what they're working on over time. And in addition, the finance office is actually highlighting which officers are the highest paid and which are the lowest. And then that triggers the captain to make sure that they can report to the deputy chief or ultimately to me as to what hours they're working.

Well I appreciate all you're doing to try and track this during this time while we're waiting for the new, system to come in. So thank you for all of that headache.

Thank you, council member.

Thank you to the chair. Thanks for this report. And, I absolutely hear what you're saying on the understaffing crisis. You know that I've been working as a partner with you on this issue because I just think it's absolutely a crisis. Nonetheless, you know, things like that Oakland side report are concerning and one thing I just want to understand because the way that this report is written, I I thought was a little bit confusing.

So just to clarify this statement. So this paragraph says, despite this progress year to date overtime expenditures through q two, excuse me, exceeded the fiscal year budget by 16,900,000.0. After accounting for $10,600,000 identified savings, the department's net overtime spending is projected to result in an underspend of $8,000,000. I just want to confirm that what we're talking about is that because there was $33,000,000 budgeted for overtime that were projected by the end of the year to actually meet around 25,000,000 if that's an 8,000,000 underspend. But that's driven really less by not the fact that we're actually doing less overtime but the fact that there's salary savings and the reimbursements.

Reimbursements. Is that correct?

That's correct. So I think one of the community members, their public comment actually highlighted it. So the third party overtime, we get reimbursed, but not the police department. That money goes to the general purpose fund, which isn't accounted for for our budget. And then addition, what's also not accounted that we're accounting for is the salary savings, the lack of officers that so you're actually saving money by not having police officers and paying for them on overtime.

And unfortunately, this has been a formula that's been in place since I started back in 1997. And the city saves money by being understaffed because you're not paying for a full fully burdened police officer with with benefits. You're paying for overtime. So what we're doing is we're we're reporting back out to you on the salary savings per the officers that are not filled, but plus also the third party overtime that does not go back to our budget.

Right. Okay. That's that's helpful. I will say that I was reading a 2021 city auditor report and it was discussing just the progress on addressing the overtime recommendation that were that they were made and it was even back in 2020 I think was the original time frame for this IT implementation that is now set to be complete by 2027. And I know there's tech technological challenges all over the city, not just OPD.

This is our whole city could modernize, but I do want assurances from both the city administrator and and you yourself that that that timeline is not going to be further delayed, that this tele staff implementation is going to be, is going to be here, completed and implemented by 2027 per the report?

Yes, council members. So the initial audit was in 2019 with follow ups in '21 and '22. Again, it's gonna the the first phase comes online June 30 year. But all the other phases, we can't guarantee that because it the it's reliant on Citi ITD as well to do their piece as well and to pay for the rest of the phases to be upgraded so.

Right. Perhaps city administrator can you comment on that on the city IT part?

Through the chairs to council Member Wong. So yes, we are committed to try to make sure that we can achieve the deliverable of this project, have it implemented by the timeline. Again, this is a technological improvement. I think the one variable that we have is the fact that the implementation in the Oracle it it in and of itself is a significant challenge. So in your budget process, no surprises, but there probably will be a request for some improvements on the Oracle side.

But I don't know what at all the vendor would have to reconstruct to fit into this antiquated financial system that we have here in the city of Oakland unfortunately. So so commitment to the fact that yes, we're gonna hard charge and just try to make sure we can get this thing implemented in a timely manner, but that's one variable that I have to be honest with you all that's something to keep in mind that may cause some delay or not.

Okay. Sounds good. Well, we'll we'll keep on checking in on this. And then, know, as you know, I was trying to get the scheduled to public safety and I acquiesce because I recognize you know OPD's time is valuable. But one thing that I want to see built into these reports and I want to actually see a supplemental is this is addressing it mostly from a finance and management point of view.

I also have concerns around the amount of overtime that is done from a public safety point of view especially actually for officers. We know that once a certain level of overtime is achieved it actually increases the likelihood of use of complaints. The International Association of Chiefs of Police actually have these thresholds where basically officers you you know this already but just for the public's awareness, officers should not be doing more than sixteen hours in a twenty four hour period. They shouldn't be doing more than sixty hours per week because it really beyond that, enormous risks accrue for the officers who are doing this level of extreme overtime. So I do want to have a supplemental report that actually has the number of personnel that are exceeding those thresholds due to overtime and I would I think it's important that we have that on an ongoing basis and see if we're starting to drive that number down in terms of personnel that are again exceeding these dangerous thresholds.

So with that I'll make a motion to accept the informational report with the the supplemental information.

Are

you receiving and filing in committee as is typically done for for this?

Yes. That's right. Receiving and filing it and then also for the supplemental report and then for that to be included on ongoing basis since this is a regular report.

Counselor, are you referring to this the next report to have the information?

I I would like it actually for this report as it comes to as as it's filed and then sent to full full counsel.

If it's file if it's received in file as it's done for this, it doesn't go to full counsel. I see. We wouldn't typically, these reports come to finance and they're received in file. But if you want extra information, a, which I have done in the past, I've asked for it in the next report that comes to this committee or in an email or in a public memo.

Okay. Why don't we because I don't want to have yet another discussion on this. We have it, you said via a public memo, chair?

To the city administrator, is that possible?

Through the chair. Can you be more specific about what the ask is? Just so I'm I'm I'm tracking.

Yeah. I I would like to see a supplemental report going forward that also includes basically the number of officers that are that are exceeding these thresholds that are set by the International Association of Chiefs of Police where essentially officers should not be working. The general guideline being no more than sixteen hours in a twenty four hour period and no more than sixty hours per week. So I'd like to know when our due to overtime how many officers are exceeding those thresholds?

Would it

be possible that we follow our own departmental general order which could be more restrictive?

And that is fine if you actually have a more restrictive general order, then let's go with that.

Because the general orders are already set in place, whether it's more restrictive or not. Right now, at the top of head, I can't remember, but it's already agreed upon. And it's in the departmental general order.

Okay. And and through through the chair to council member Wong is what I've also heard is just an informational memo that can be shared about the implementation. Here's what, you know, I guess, pertinent information that would be helpful for this body to just stay informed about where we are with the tracking of overtime. That

Yeah. That sounds good. Yep.

Thank you.

Thank you. I have a couple of follow-up questions. So as far as the number goes, it seems like 14,000 has been spent in q one and q two, which is a little less than half of the 33.8 33,000, allocated for this fiscal year. So does that mean we're projected to be under budget, on overtime this year?

No, council member. I mean, we're we're less, but I can't commit to that either. I mean, just to give you an example, if we have a civil unrest incident and there's a protest, all of that overtime is not budgeted either. So, I mean, it really depends on the state of the city, the state of the country. And although I've canceled all nondiscretionary overtime, we still have to maintain a negotiated settlement agreement.

So there's gonna be overtime that's gonna come up related to use of force investigations, internal affairs investigations, meeting, standards that are that posed upon us by the courts, but are also the industry standard we should be doing anyways. So, it's not just, understaffed on the professional side or or the sworn side, but we're also understaffed on the professional side. So whether that's public records requests, everything else that comes into play, those things are not budgeted. So, I as far as a forecast, operationally, it's gonna be very difficult because I don't know what the future has in store for us. But I do know there are special events coming up just in in that alone. But I'll turn it over to director Sutton.

So to answer your question, based on current projected spending and then factoring in salary savings and reimbursable overtime, yes, we are projected to underspend by $8,000,000. But as chief Beers said, you you can't guarantee it. That is based on current projections.

Thank you. And chief, you just mentioned that you've canceled discretionary overtime. Okay. Great. So that means if it's not a mandatory situation like a callout for lots of for several officers because of a homicide has been called or or those those type of situations, if it's just someone that would like to extend their time, that's not possible anymore?

That's not possible. So one of the different like, give you an example, case reduction in in CID. So officers cannot just arbitrarily start working overtime and close out cases on their own without having approval through the chain of command. We cannot run violent suppression operations unless there's really a vetting all the ways up to the top. And in some cases, I actually reached out to the city administrator before we deploy resources.

We look at the actual data and where the complaints from the community are coming from. And thankfully, we have had some funding to address human trafficking, for instance, or $700,000 that's broken down to two years for 350,000 a year. That is managed and analyzed by multiple different groups, but that's an additional that that doesn't need to be that that's not, I would say, discretionary. That's actually driven by the the area captain, as well as the community. But when you're looking at, say, robbery suppression, again, unless it's the captain can't deploy units on overtime unless that's approved through the the chief as well as the city administrator, and they have to justify as to why.

What what would not be, again, would be, to your point, if we ended up arresting someone that's wanted for a series of robberies, that will have to require a call out. So investigators would come or a homicide. Those would create overtime for investigators to respond. Also critical incidents. So if officers in the field respond to a homicide and it's like an hour from the end of their shift, they're not just gonna say, hey. It's midnight tonight. I'm clocking out. I'm gone. You know, they're they're expected to extend their shift and finish the call for service, but it's only for critical incidents.

Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Just two more questions. I think you did explain this, but are there any caps on overtime, a certain number of hours, or is this something that will be implemented in a new system? So at the end of the year or at at the end of each pay period, you can't work above a certain number of hours overtime.

So the departmental general order does state that you have to have a rest period. So as long as you're adhering to the rest period, and the departmental general order, you can work the overtime. That's gonna cap it naturally. Just you cannot, just work twenty hours straight, three days in a row. Now I know that's one of the scenarios that was brought up, and I can't talk about the investigation.

But there there are nuances there that are not discussed, where when you look when you look deeper into certain things, you can see why that could happen, whether someone's on vacation and they come back in to do backfill. And that's, again, not just something that's unique to OPD. That's for a lot of other departments within the city. So that that that is why sometimes it could appear that there's no cap. But, you know, during the for certain things, again, I can't speak for specific, cases, but that's where the vetting piece comes out and the over oversight. And if there is an issue or an allegation, then that's what the investigations will actually dissect.

Thank you. And the very last question, I have raised this in previous overtime reports that have come to finance, but it's the answers just haven't been clear. It it's pretty clear when it comes to overtime spending on ceasefire on in certain, OPD districts, all of that, but there's some that still confuse me, like the overtime for training. Is that not something that's already budgeted in to the cost of academies or other related things? It's it's consist and it's not the biggest amount of overtime spent, but it seems like one that could be under con that could be controlled.

So for training, it's not just the police academies. Training could also be your four hour qualifications, your patrol procedures, or, any other type of required event. I have canceled and it has been previously canceled by the city administrator's office that would not attend any training unless it's mandatory or absolutely required. But in the past, you would have to if you say you work dog watch and you have to do your your four hour qual, then you kinda have to either backfill for your four hour qual and be paid the overtime piece. Qual.

Sorry.

Oh, sorry. Qualifications. I'm just using it as an example. Or if you need to, training sometimes has to utilize because we're not fully staffed in the academy staff itself, so you have to bring other instructors instructors in for vehicle operations, d t, defensive tactics, even I was a prior instructor myself for, missing persons and some sex crime stuff. So although my overtime sometimes my when I was a lieutenant and sergeant doing that, I it was typically done on straight time.

Other instructors have to come in and it's paid for an overtime because the academy just like the rest of the police department is not fully staffed to include the in service training staff. So sometimes they have to bring other because there's only two people that are in the in service training for the entire department.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Great. So there's a motion on the floor to receive and file. And is there a second?

Okay. Thank you. Through the chair to council member Wong, just for clarification this is a motion to receive and file this informational report with the request to staff to provide additional information on the number of personnel that are exceeding the specific thresholds due to overtime in the next quarterly report? Okay. Okay. Thank you. With that motion made by council member Wong, seconded by council member Brown to receive and file this informational report with the request of staff to bring forth additional information and for the next quarterly report on roll. Council members Brown? Aye. Unger? Aye. Wong? Aye. And chair Ramachandran?

Aye.

Thank you. Item number four passes with four ayes to receive and file this informational report in committee. Moving on to open forum, calling in the names that signed up to speak. In no particular order, you can come up to the podium, state your name for the record, or raise your hand on Zoom to be easily identified. Miss Isado Olabala, David Boatwright, and Kevin Dally.

Okay. Related to this overtime, I am tired of repeatedly having the police department come and do a report. You have some work to do. Your work is how do I budget for unforeseen circumstances related to not only the police department, but any department for unplanned spending, reserve budgeting. Because there are gonna be occasions where you're have overtime not budgeted by the police department, and that was brought up.

How do you create the system? You can't keep coming here with the police department giving you a report. It is your responsibility, how do we create, and we have to have a system that says once you have a budget, no matter what it's called, you can't go over that budget without following certain procedures. That has to be put in place. So how are you able to spend $490,000 overtime for one officer with somebody not interceding to say this has to stop?

Thank you for your comments miss Olavala.

David Boatwright, District 4. I'll say initially that I'm not against spending on the homeless, but it would be very helpful for the city to provide a report detailing where the hundreds of millions of dollars on the homeless has been spent by year and by spending category, I. E. Services to the homeless, housing, cleanup movement and whatever else there is to determine what the city can do to more effectively fund the homeless and make progress toward its housing objectives and not go backward. The other item is if this new parcel tax passes in June, it would also be helpful to understand how the finance department allocates funds to the objectives listed in the tax petition without any meaningful guidance in the petition other than 5% on administrative costs.

That's important because the city is taking 100% of the authority for filling out what goes where. And I think the citizenry needs to know.

Thank you for your comments, mister Boatwright. At this time, chair, all names have been called.

Thank you. This meeting is adjourned.