Finance & Management Committee - Regular Meeting

Good morning and welcome to the finance and management committee meeting of Tuesday 01/27/2026. The time is now 09:30AM and this meeting may come to order. Before be before taking role, will provide instructions on how to submit speaker cards for items on this agenda. If you're here 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.

Sorry.

Council members Brown? Present. Council member Anger? Here. Council member Wong?

Present.

And chair Ramachandran? Here. Thank you. We have four members present. And before we begin, chair, do you have any announcements at this time?

No. Welcome to the first finance committee of 2026. Looking forward to a productive and positive year.

Thank you. Starting off with item number one, approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting held on 12/09/2025 and we do not have any speakers on this item.

I'll entertain a motion.

Move approval.

Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Brown seconded by council member Wong to accept the draft minutes from the committee meeting held on 12/09/2025 on roll. Council members Brown. Aye. Unger. Aye. Wong. Aye. And chair Ramachandran. Aye. Thank you. Item number one passes with four ayes. Now reading in item number two, determination of schedule of outstanding committee items. And we do have one speaker on this item.

To the administration, any changes?

No changes at this time. Thank you.

Okay. We can move to public speakers.

Calling in the public speaker that signed up for item number two, missus Sato Olabala.

I'm asking that the city administrator's annual report on spending contracts up to $250,000, which has not been done since 2023, be brought to this body. A report on business closures and how that has impacted revenue for the city. A report on democrat, democratic dollars. The ethics commission is speaking as if in 2028 there will be revenue available, but they've been informed by, president Jenkins there will be no money available in 2028 for democracy dollars. A report on why Oakland was not included in the state grant for $419,000,000 for homelessness.

A report on outstanding invoices in the city of Oakland. And lastly a report on fiscal spending related to the NSA.

Thank you for your comments. Share that concludes all speakers on item number two.

Okay. I will entertain a motion.

So moved.

Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Unger, seconded by council member Brown 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 determination of schedule of outstanding committee items as is. Now reading in item number three. Receive an informational report on the Oakland's police and fire retirement systems, PEEPRS or systems investment portfolio as of 09/30/2025 and we do have one public speaker that signed up.

Good morning, committee chair and members of the finance committee. My name is Tayyor Jenkins, and I am the investment and operations manager for the Oakland Police and Fire Retirement System, more commonly known as PFERS. The purpose of today's report is to give you a quarterly update on the status of the of the PFERS fund. To assist me in presenting this information, have David Sandwich from Makita Investments. Just to give you a brief overview, PEEPRS is a closed retirement system closed in 1976.

All current active employees were then became members of CalPERS. Currently, all the members are retired and as of as of the date of this report, we had 585 members and approximately 498,000,000 in investments. And then based on the most recent actuarial valuation dated 07/01/2025, Peepers was a 100% funded. Next, I'll I'll hand it over to our consultant who'll give you more detail on the investment portfolio.

It is January and the report's dated ninethirty, so I will just give a very brief summary without having you flip through the book. As highlighted by Tayyr, the portfolio was at $498,000,000 as of September 30. Preliminarily through December, it's at $500,000,000 and had a 12.4% return. That includes the $500,000,000 includes the benefits that are being paid out of the portfolio. The other good news is that we have fully transitioned the portfolio to 60 plus percent fixed income.

So we've successfully done our first stage of derisking. We're going to move forward with the Board tomorrow in the next couple of meetings and talk about next steps for the portfolio allocation. But the portfolio is doing very well. The only thing I'll highlight is that this portfolio has a 5% return assumption, so it's not high. So we will be dialing back the risk needle even further moving into 2026. I want to see if there's any questions.

Colleagues, questions, comments? Councilmember Wong.

Yeah. I just have one question. In table five of the report there was a comparison of the performance with some other investments. I noticed that East Bay MUD has very high rates of return. Do you know what they're doing that what are the decisions they're making that enables that?

Yes. I won't get into specifics other than to say PFERS is not even on the same ballpark as East Bay Mud. East Bay Mud is an open active pension system. So they are continuing to take on more equity risk and more private market risk. PFERS is a closed system. And to use the example we talk about in the Board meeting, this is a portfolio that's played 18 holes of golf and we're beginning our walk to the club house. There's only about 500 or 600 members left and the average age is somewhere in the 80s for PFERS. That's different than East Bay, CalPERS and CalSTRS that we use in that table. As we continue to derisk, I would expect the PIFRS performance numbers to look even more different from their peers, moving forward.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Any other questions, comments? Okay. We'll move to public speakers.

Calling in the name that signed up for item number three, missus Sata Olubala.

The reason why I signed up for this item is because it got me a little bit more confused about the ballot measure that's going to the voters related to membership of this board. So in the report it says that the total membership is 585, 376 are retirees, and 209 are beneficiaries. So I would assume that these beneficiary who are not elderly necessarily could be potential members of the board and you wouldn't have to go through this change of membership requirement based on this age component that you are saying is the the issue. So I contend that it's not about anything other than a large percentage of these members don't live in Oakland, and therefore it's an inconvenience to come here, to serve on these boards, unless they do it on Zoom, I might be wrong. But, I just think that ballot measure needs some more verification of the of validity of being put on

the

ballot because membership has 209 beneficiaries who are not necessarily elder members of the community.

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

Okay. I will entertain a motion.

Excuse me. David Jones, treasury administrator and plan administrator, for the police and fire retirement system. I just want to let this body know that mister John Speakman, a long standing board member of about twenty years, passed away during the holidays. It was a very, very sad, unexpected, situation. He also served as a firefighter, as council member Unger knows, for, you know, twenty five years.

So he has put or has put over forty five years of his life, for the city of Oakland. And just want to let you know that tomorrow at 10:00, we're gonna have our, monthly board meeting, We'll be presenting a resolution, to the family in honor of, of mister John Sweetman. I don't know, member Unger, if you wanna adjourn, or, you know, if you would like to do that this, this morning, but I would really appreciate that.

Thank you. We will we will do so.

Councilman Brown.

Excellent. Should the motion be just to receive and file the report?

I believe so. Okay. Yeah.

I'll make that motion.

Yes. Accepted and filed.

I'll second that.

Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Brown and council member Wong to receive and file this informational report in committee. On roll council members Brown? Aye. Council member Unger? Aye. Council member Wong? Aye. And chair Ramachanjan? Aye. Thank you. Item number three passes with four ayes to receive and file this informational report in committee. Reading in item number four, receive an informational report on the ratings for the general obligation bond series 2,025 measure u from Moody's Investors Service and the Standard and Poor's rating and we have two speakers that signed up.

Okay. To the staff.

Good morning. Through the chair, members of the committee, I would like to take a moment to introduce mister Jaime Trejo with p a PFM Financial Advisors. Also want to, you know, once again publicly acknowledge the esteemed team in our finance department that led us through our bonding process and also counsel. Thank you for your leadership and support throughout this process. Also, I want to take a moment to acknowledge miss Deborah Edgeley and miss Jan Mazzek who have been key advisers through this process.

And also, would be I'll be remiss without acknowledging mister Bradley Johnson and Monica Davis who supported this effort. Certainly, was quite a process. I'm very excited to be here. I think the information that will be shared today is very pertinent for where we are going into our budget process. Certainly And we're taking that under advisement. So it's great that PFM is here to give this presentation. And with that said, I will turn it over to Jaime. Thank you.

Good morning. Jaime Trejo, PFO Financial Advisors. Now you do have a presentation. I'm not sure where it gets shown. There we go.

All right, so this presentation is broken up into three parts. The first part we'll talk about the background of credit ratings just so folks kind of have a little bit of background on what we're talking about. Then we'll talk about Oakland's credit rating. And then we'll see how Oakland compares to other cities in California and nationally. First things, I guess a couple of things. One, I used to be a former rating analyst. I used to work for S and P. Don't hold that against me. And the second thing, don't shoot the messenger, right? I'm just presenting information that rating agencies have put out there publicly.

I just summarized and present in it, not my opinion. All right. First slide here, what is a credit rating? Credit rating, it's a symbol used to define the credit worthiness of a municipality. So what credit agencies wanna know and what they wanna signal to investors is the likelihood you're gonna repay and the willingness to repay. Are you gonna pay your bonds on time? What determines credit rating? We'll talk a little bit about that in the next slide. They are determined by pretty much three agencies, Moody's, S and P and Fitch. There are a few others out there but those are the three kind of nationally recognized credit rating agencies.

Who uses them? Institutional and retail investors to make a decision on whether or to buy bonds. Commercial lenders, right, if you're looking for a line of credit or bank loan, they use credit ratings. And why is it important? A higher credit rating signals to the market, you know, your credit worthiness, it increases your investor base and it lowers the cost lowers the cost of borrowing. In here, on the right hand side, we kinda see investment grade ratings. So anything from a triple b to AAA are kind of investment grade ratings. If you're below that, it makes it a little bit harder to access the capital markets. And if you do, you would have to pay more money for what you borrow. The next slide here.

I won't read this in detail, but these are the factors that determine a credit rating. And this is a summary of the criteria for both S and P and Moody's. They look at the same thing but slightly differently. They look at the economy, the financial performance. By financial performance, they're looking at how your general fund is operating.

If you have a rating on utilities, they look at how the utility funds are operating, whether there's a surplus or deficit, reserves and liquidity. They use the audit to kind of a backward looking view and your budget for forward looking view. So for reserves and liquidity, they'll look at what they consider available unrestricted on an audited basis. Management, this is not a score on personnel but a score on policies and practices. So these policies and practices are supposed to outlive whoever's there.

When there's turnover, the kind of the culture of management should live on debt and liabilities. It should say notching factors, nothing factors, but notching factors would be one of them would be local resources. So does the city have ballot measures, parcel tax, geo bond capacity, something that Oakland scores very well. And the last one is other considerations. When they determine a credit rating, they'll spit out their models, spit out an indicative rating and then they'll see how you compare to other peers in similar categories.

Is this more like a double A, triple A? They'll make that determination. In addition to credit rating, there's outlooks. So an outlook is a signal to investor, investor community the direction a rating might go. So all rating agencies have outlooks and its opinion on how the rating might go in the next twelve to twenty four months.

Oakland, all three are negative outlook and what that means is that a meaningful chance of a rating downgrade in the next twelve to eighteen months, a stable outlook which the vast majority of ratings have, means unlikely to change and a positive outlook means there's a chance for an upgrade. All right, now let's talk about Oakland. Here we have Oakland's three credit ratings. So on the table chart to the right, the right top corner, you see Oakland's Moody's credit rating a AA two, which is the third best rate you can get. So they're very high, very strong rating.

For S and P, you're still in the AA category but at a AA minus. And Fitch has your rating at an A. Fitch doesn't actually rate any of your general fund debt that's tied to utility, and they look at the general fund, but it's a a nonetheless. And in these three boxes on bottom, we have the rating history. And as you're aware, all three ratings were lowered in late twenty twenty four.

But since that downgrade, the ratings for at least Moody's, S and P and actually Fitch have been affirmed. So that's good, that means the ratings have stabilized. Next slide here, Oakland's credit rating. So here is a summary of the strengths of your credit rating. Both agencies talked about the large and diverse economic base.

You're centrally located in the Bay Area, high assessed value per capita, economy is major sectors like logistics, tech, health care, transportation, strong local support for supplemental revenue from voters, taxpayers, liquidity. Citi maintains high cash investment levels, which is a credit strength. And management actions, both agencies said that Citi was proactive in enacting balancing budget actions and 25 to close the gap. So you receive credit for that. Now what are some of the challenges?

The main challenges identified is structural budget imbalance. What that means that your expenditures, particularly in the general fund, are outpacing your revenues in the general fund. They noticed you projecting deficits in the out years. So in '27, '28, '29, they looked at your declining financial flexibility. Reserves, again, they looked back at the audit, but they saw that your general fund reserves, which they can they look at the those are unrestricted, available and committed and declined 23 through '24.

And they place a high emphasis on financial flexibility. And last one here is high fixed cost. I mean, this is pretty common in California, but high pension and all PIP liabilities. In the credit rating reports, they do state kind of upside and downside scenarios. So they'll tell you what you need to do to get an upgrade or downgrade.

So the negative outlooks here are kind of this is taken exactly from the reports. They reflect near term financial headwinds and anticipated structural deficits driven by expenditure growth. And they believe that future budget reductions will be needed to restore long term sustainability. So that's why the Citi's credit ratings in negative outlook for both S and P and Moody's. Now let's look at the upside.

To get a higher credit rating from Moody's, what they wanted we did have a higher credit rate, but what they wanna see to get back there is meaningful increase of financial flexibility, meaning they wanna see your general fund reserves increase both on an audited and budget basis and your long term liability ratio decline below 200. That's specific to them and their criteria. Downside scenario, sustained decline in reserves. Future budget deficits could lead to a downgrade. S and P, again, we could return to a stable outlook if we eliminate the deficit spending, meaning we stop using general fund reserves to fill the gap and achieve positive operating performance.

Again, and P is looking they wanna see your general fund revenues outpace your general fund expenditures on both audited and budget basis.

Alright.

So now we're gonna take a look see how Oakland compares to cities rated nationally by Moody's. Oakland's credit ratings here at AA2, which is about the average for Moody's. So you're about the median credit rating nationally for Moody's, and this is from April 2025. Ratings don't change all that much year over year. And then on the next slide, we look at how you compare to cities in California that are rated by S and P.

Here, your credit rating at AA- is slightly below the median. The median for all California municipalities is a AA. The last slide here. Again, why are we talking about credit ratings? Because it all leads to impacts the sale of general obligation bonds. As you know, we sold bonds, it was a good sell. In December, there was a strong investor demand. We had about $640,000,000 of orders for about $335,000,000 offered. 26 institutional investors individual institutional investors participated. Tax rates, we're happy to report for the tax exempt bonds.

We received a TIC of less than 4%, 5.5% for taxables, obviously because it's a higher interest rate. And we did include a refunding, that refunding saved taxpayers $4,700,000 So that concludes the presentation. I'm available for questions. Thank you. Jaime, would you do me a favor real quick before we finish the presentation?

Could you go back to slide eight on your presentation? Counsel, it would be remiss if I did not highlight for you the importance of this slide. This is your roadmap for improving our credit score with both S and P and Moody's. It's very clear criteria that we need to meet in order to stabilize our outlook and look for better outlooks in the future. They have notable metrics here regarding our reserve numbers.

Operating performance, again, that just means we actually need to run surpluses and improve our general fund balances and about, again, addressing our long term liabilities. If you take a slide away from this in terms of what our work looks like going forward to improve our outlook, This is a key one for them because these are their criteria. Thanks Jaime, appreciate it.

No problem. Yeah, I'm gonna tell you exactly what you have to do. Thank

you. I will start on that, with a question on that point on this slide. So under the Moody's section of that slide, it said, or the outlook could improve if reserves exceed 30%. What is our current guidelines as a city that we follow on best practices related reserves because I know there's a legal requirement and then this this is what would be optimal.

Your current city reserve policy requires seven and a half percent of your general purpose fund to be appropriated into your emergency reserve. And we have reserves that also exist for capital improvements and for a rainy day fund. There's nothing in that rainy day fund right now, but the totality of those and other reserves that would be looked at for this particular metric.

Thank you. And 7.5% is pretty far off from 30% that's recommended. Do we have any analysis of what other cities with slightly higher ratings go from within that range?

I don't have a detailed analysis. I'll let you know that the GFOA standard is closer to about 17%, roughly two months worth of operating performance is the best practice in GFOA. When we in the fall go back and re examine your fiscal policies, think that this meeting this target and what it looks like would be a really clear key conversation for us to have.

Thank you. And sorry, what standard did you say?

The Government Finance Offers Association. I'm sorry. I should not talk in acronyms. GFOA or the Government Finance Offers Association recommends two months of performance, which is roughly 17%.

Thank you. And has I know this you don't have the numbers in front of you. Has the city been at that 17% level before or have we always been close to that 7.5%?

We have, especially coming into the pandemic, were in much bigger numbers. We have been closer to this sort of higher ratio in the past. I don't have a particular history on my at my fingertips right now, but we have done better. A key element that you did, and Jaime mentioned you got credit for, we did stabilize this. And the evidence of that stabilization will be coming at your next FMC committee meeting when we talk about your Q4 and your audited ACFR where we'll be able to show that data to you.

But the action balancing actually did stabilize this which has sort of helped us again stabilize our rating. But we have in the past both immediately going into the pandemic and then when we were sort of in mid pandemic we were at higher numbers in terms of our reserve numbers.

Thank you. And then another question before I turn it to my colleagues is around If we can go back to slide five. If it's not pulled up, that's fine. Have it on the attachment. But, in slide five it talks about why we're still negative. We have a negative outlook from all three rating agencies and then there's the roadmap on

the next

page. Yet in our bond sale things looked pretty positive. Is there something you could explain kind of either why when it comes to bond sales the negative outlook doesn't matter as much or you know is this standard for most cities to be negative given our current state of economy right now?

I can't bring up the presentation, I'm not sure how do it here. But for slide five, most cities have a stable outlook. I would say maybe 90% of them have a stable outlook. And sell went fine because where you're still in investment grade rating, you still have ratings in the AA category which is they're very high ratings. If you had a straight, for example S and P straight AA minus with no negative outlook, a stable outlook even positive, the results would have been a little bit better.

Could you repeat that?

If you had a stable outlook or positive outlook, the results could have been a little bit better.

I guess my question is really what factors make us in the negative category despite having a positive bond sale experience and what's the discrepancy there?

S and P and Moody's do not look at the bond sale. Those analysts have like no sense or anything of how bonds are sold or even how they're structured. They just look at the credit fundamentals, financial economic fundamentals of a city. So what they saw compared to other cities in the state and in the country, your reserve levels significantly declined between fiscal twenty two and fiscal twenty four. So they felt that your rating was no longer merited to be in the double A or double A plus category so they downgraded you to double A minus.

Thank you. And if one was to summarize that outlook, it seems like the two most relevant factors was is the reserve levels and the rising expenditures proportional to revenue. Correct. Okay.

Sorry, Chair, if I could just interject. What Jaime notes about we had a positive performance in the market. We are always striving for a better performance. A higher bond rating could result in lower interest rates which would mean savings for our taxpayers. That's the sort of the train to fully fall through. As we improve our outlook, we move from a negative to a stable outlook, from a stable to a positive or up our ratings. The interest rate charged in the market for a bond sale on a given transaction will be lower, which results against savings to our taxpayers. And so that's what we're after. It also opens more opportunities for refinancing of even prior debt, which again can result in savings.

Thank you. And one last question. One of the slides mentioned a $4,700,000 the last slide, $4,700,000 in present value savings from refunding bonds. Could you explain what means?

That's correct. We refunded a series of bonds. It was 2,015 bonds, bonds originated in 2015. We refunded them with this transaction, so we essentially sold new bonds to pay off the old bondholders and we borrowed new bonds at a lower interest rate which resulted in savings in net present value of $4,700,000. So that means the interest payments you would make on debt service was reduced by nearly $5,000,000.

Thank you. Colleagues, council member Wong and Brown.

Hi. Thank you. This is really informative. When we say savings for taxpayers like what does that exactly mean? Does that mean that their tax rate is going to be lower? Can you just walk us through that?

So our GEO bonds are the debt service for our general obligation bonds are covered on the property tax rule. So when you get a property tax statement, there's a line there below this, the 1% property tax that says City of Oakland. That tax rate, that ad valorem tax rate is based on our outstanding debt. If our debt payments are lower, the assessment we put on the property tax is lower and all of the owners of property in the City Of Oakland will pay less. So every time we go out for a bond issuance, we're putting new debt onto that role. And every time we refund it or are able to get a better deal on it, we can lower that collective debt amount. Sorry, David do you wanna jump in there please?

Yeah, just look at it like refinancing your home. Basically that's the analogy that you could use where interest rates drop, you you know, you're in a better position just to refund that. So that's kind of the analogy. So when we go to levy in August for the property tax rate, it's just lower basically.

Okay.

And also I wanted to just comment on, you know, your discussion on the negative outlook. That was done it toward the 2024. And typically, a rating agency, they wanna see it's gonna take some time. So when we went to them in 2025 of this or last year, it was about almost a year or so. So they were like, you're looking pretty good, but typically they like to have you in that eighteen to twenty four month window before they'll make a decision.

So you know, I know our budget is coming up. We should be mindful of that, okay. There is gonna be some tough decisions to make. We, you know, are planning to potentially go back to the market at the beginning of next year. Okay?

So that's a year away to, you know, stay on this proper trajectory. Okay? But I just wanted to make it very clear that, you know, when you get into your budget deliberations, just be mindful of, you know, what Jaime has presented and and what what Brad was was saying, your roadmap. You wanna stay on that roadmap. And if you look in the agenda report, I think it's on page four. There are four boxes. Talks about reserves as well as expenses. Those are other items that they really want you to address. And I also wanna say that they're probably looking at this meeting right now. So be mindful of that as well.

Is that, you know, S and P, Moody's, they're analysts. They live in Oakland. They attend the meetings. Some of your investment bankers attend your meetings. So just keep that, you know, be be in mind keep it in mind basically. That's all I kinda wanted to say. But, you know, just keep on the, you know, right track that we're on right now. But, yeah, just look at the lower tax rate as just refinancing your home.

Okay. So basically, look directly lowering the taxes that would be collected.

That is correct.

How much of a difference does it make? So let's say if we got an upgrade like I know it's hard.

Yeah, can't quantify. You can't quantify. I can't tell you you know it's gonna cost this much less or that much less if we get a stable because you can't get an upgrade until you get to stable, okay.

But

you should see some movement in the proper direction. Let's just put it to you like that.

Okay. And it was also noted though for example in slide 11 that it said here on the bond sale that strong investor demand allowed the city to secure lower than estimated interest rates. What were we able to secure versus what was the estimated interest rate?

Excuse me, can you repeat that?

This was, so slide 11 on the recent bond sale we had this last December. Right, right. It's noted that we actually secured lower than estimated interest rates.

Yes. Yes.

What was the differential between what we secured versus what was estimated?

The market is always moving. Don't tell you what we what we got were, out at. But the point that you want to look at is $638,000,000 in total orders. So you can see that's almost doubly oversubscribed. So you had almost double the amount of bonds in the market versus the investors that were willing to invest for it.

And as a result of that, as Jaime mentioned, what happens is you reprice your bonds. So basically you lower the rate, some of the investors will not care anymore. They'll go away, but you're still able to fill those orders for that $304,334,000,000 offer, which is a good thing. As well as I'd like to point out to 26 institutional investment firms who are interested in your bonds. And I took a look and there are some names that are interested in the Oakland bonds that I've never seen before.

I don't wanna mention them here, but there are definitely some asset managers that you know haven't looked at our name in the past. So let's continue with that. I don't know if you want to add to that Jaime or not, but that's a good thing as well. So, but to your point, you know, we were able to reprice and get the tax exempts to you know, a little bit under 4% and then your taxable is at around five and a half.

Through the chair, through the council. And so one thing I also wanna add, one of the key drivers with respect to the value of those bonds is what's on your project list that we get from departments. Department transportation, public works, whatever the case may be. As David mentioned, you're looking to get back in the market here pretty soon. One of the things I think is really critical and important to emphasize in over and over again is the fact that the investment in our public facilities is critical and it's important specifically these facilities that we own.

We're in a place where we have to take care of our own house and and and by that I mean our public works our parks facilities all across the cities have to be a priority. In addition, our public safety facilities, our fire stations are at a point of in some respect beyond disrepair. And so we have to as we go back into the market, that's one there'll be competing interests across the entire city outside of this organization, but quite candidly, we have to reinvest in our own facilities. So that's something I'm gonna ask that you all keep in mind. I've had conversations with many of our labor partners and this is at top of mind for them, especially on the public works and on the fire side.

So I just want to put that on you all's radar, but one of the key drivers is the value of the items on your on your project list as well.

Okay, great. And just I have one last thing which is on slide seven it was also noticed that we rely on optimistic assumptions and budgets. Is that something Bradley you can speak to or is that something we are correcting for?

Right And this is speaking to what Jaime and I were discussing in turn earlier about ensuring that we actually have positive performance at the end. When we go through the budget process and this body will not be unfamiliar with me saying saying this, we have to have an accurate estimate especially on the expenditure side of what we actually plan to spend. Our revenues, we're working on truing up in terms of methodology. Some of that is it's hard to catch a market that's changing. But on the expense side which is where I think we really need to be focused, we cannot plan for service demands or expect service demands that we do not budget for.

Because when we do that, we produce overspending and that is one of those things that again David was mentioning, if you go through the report on the expense side that they're very, very interested in. What we demand, what we expect in terms of service needs to be commensurate with the resources we put aside for those same services. And so as we move forward through our budget process, we'll want to make sure that we have a good link between that service delivery on the expenditure side and the resources we're allocating for it.

Gotcha. Thank you.

Oh, sorry.

No. I was just gonna add that with regards to the optimistic assumptions, you know, that's primarily tied to that measure for the $40,000,000 that is gonna go before the voters. So they're mindful of that as well. Sorry about that Brad.

I was gonna answer one of your questions. You had a question about on the last slide, stronger investment allowed for teachers to secure lower than estimated interest rates. So that's comparing the good faith estimates we provided when the bond authorization resolution was adopted. So there we said our good faith estimate that we thought interest rates would be at. I don't have that number with me unfortunately, but the sale price is lower than what was presented to City Council that day.

Anything else from administration? Helpful. I understand that rating agencies are really wanna see are are noting significant progress in 2025, and I think that's very important to point out compared to the 2024. There's been massive progress made, but the point is to keep that going for another minimum year till we see changes in ratings, and that is very much noted. And we'll be though that road map is certainly hopefully will be taken into consideration in the upcoming budget process. Colleagues, councilman Brown.

Excellent. Well, I can't you know, to chair Ramachandran's point that's what I wanted to continue to emphasize. I think that the report really clearly laid out and also prior reports I know during the budget time we had the roadmap to physical health and then we also have the item that's coming up next just kind of further aligning with just our strategic goals and I think that is important to just really emphasize you know what the difference was in 2024 right being able actually in comparison to 2025 being able to actually be able to balance the budget and that being like one of the most important one of many factors and really being able to go out and sell the bonds and so and then on page which page is that? Page eight where it literally outlines for each of these agencies how we can you know hopefully continue to increase our ratings. So I really hope that you know whoever ends up being on our budget team as we move forward in the coming months that we continue to really focus and prioritize on these efforts.

And then I do want to just give an amazing shout out because in 2025 you know myself Councilmember Unger, Councilmember Wong, all of us you know ended up being on the budget team and at least for myself I was newer to the process and I think that there's just so so many amazing leaders within the city of Oakland whether our finance director Bradley, Deborah, administrator Johnson, Monica, and Ben Rosenfield right. Just so many folks that really came alongside us to help guide us through the process and so I just want to really recognize and honor that it was a 100% a team effort and just really grateful for that guidance. And I think maybe the last question that I wanted to ask is on slide 10 where it outlines other municipalities and like what their rating is. I think in the future I would love to maybe if we could enhance this slide a little bit more where it actually outlines you know who are what are some of the cities in the state of California that are currently have a more of a positive rating so that we can really dive in dive into and look to see what they are doing with within their local governments to see if there's any things that we can also align with.

And then on the flip side of that making sure we understand you know what are some of these other cities that have lower ratings and how we can avoid those pitfalls. Thank you.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

I also would like to kind of reiterate for this board, you know, the work that goes into this. I mean, this is like a nine month project. So I'd like to, you know, this is a long term thing. This is not just a snapshot in time. So, you know, we've had issues in the past.

We're on the right trajectory, but this is really a long term process. And it's not gonna happen overnight, and I just wanted to let that be known. And I also would like to introduce, you know, one of my my assistant, Don Granados here from the treasury department who really spearheaded this financing along with mister Greg Danilian. He's not here today, but I did wanna pass that along because anybody that has gone through this knows how much work really goes into doing a financing. I mean, it's I mean, we are already talking about, you know, next year right now and we're just, you know, about to move into February.

So it's, you know, and that is in addition to our daily activity our daily workload as well. Donna, don't know if you wanna add anything.

No. I just want to say thank you David and I am honored to be part of the process and moving things forward.

Thank you. Okay. We will move to public comment.

Calling in the names that signed up for item number four, miss Asada Olubala and Kevin Dally.

I'm not sure, but my memory says that when the grand jury report came out and said some of the things about your negative rating, you kinda like was dismissive of it. Because if you took it serious at the time the report came out, you would have had this kind of presentation given to you based on that presentation, then you would apply for bonds. But you applied for the bonds and then get a report, did we do the right thing? I mean the order of the the way you did it doesn't make sense. The other thing is, in order for you to move forward with some credit sustainability of your budget, you're gonna have to make future budget reductions.

So at any time, you can go back and address the budget. You don't have to wait till the 2027. Are you gonna do this right away or you're just gonna let it linger on? I suggest you do it right away. The other thing is because you have now invested with Measure U in affordable housing, you've and roadway safety, infrastructure improvements, renovation of parks, libraries, senior centers, and other public facilities.

That means that investment has to stay stable. So when you do budget reductions, you're not gonna reduce in those areas. You're gonna continue because the administrator just says this is important that you invest in these areas. So what are you gonna do budget reduction areas are? What are you gonna be? The homeless? Affordable housing? No. Illegal dumping? Maybe. So you can get on this right away because you're saying you're not going to divest from the support and investment in all the areas I just identified. And if you try to do it, I'm a come back to you and say, why did you go after bonds to support something and took up

Thank you for your comments, miss Olubala. Okay. Thank you, chair. That concludes all speakers that sign up for item number four.

Thank you. And do we receive and file this to the parliamentarian, or is this going to full counsel?

Okay. Receive and file at the discretion of

the state. Okay. Thank you. I will make the motion to receive and file this report.

Thank you. We have a motion made by chair Ramachandran 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 four passes with four ayes to receive and file this informational report in committee. Now reading in item number five. Receive an informational report from the city administrator on the fiscal year 2025 to 2028 citywide strategic plan six month update, and we have four speakers that signed up for this item. Thank

you. Good morning. Monica Davis, deputy city administrator. I'm here with a wonderful team of staff who've been really hard working on bringing forth an update to the strategic planning effort. To remind you all, the strategic planning effort kicked off in March 2024.

We held a retreat with the agency directors, the mayor's office at that time, and key stakeholders to really just ideate on, you know, what are we seeing here in the city and where are the opportunities for growth. We engaged a consulting firm called Be Present Consulting to help facilitate a number of interviews with department heads, key stakeholders within the city to just also better understand the landscape of what's going on here at the city. Also met with five focus groups of staff across the city, ranged from, you know, our public safety team to, know, brand new hires, trying to digest what their experiences were so we could incorporate that into the plan. Also convened 30 person staff team, the strategic planning design team to help, you know, pull all of that feedback together and create the strategic planning document. So you all heard this item in the 2025, and we are now in implementation phase six months in.

So I've committed to providing a six month update as we progress through the plan, and so that's why I'm here. Just to remind you, there are five strategic priorities, streamline operations, fostering cross departmental collaboration, enhancing communication and coordination, optimizing our workforce management, and aligning our budget with city wide priorities. I've been able to hear from all of you that this is also in alignment with what you all wanna see more of. And the goal here with implementing these three years of strategic priorities is to really develop and build our organizational health for the city. And the plan is to then implement or develop then a more outward facing strategic plan in the out years.

So, this first year, we're really trying to implement this menu of actions that are in the strategic plan. In the second year, we'll be iterating more, trying to benchmark what we've accomplished and sort of shift as needed. And then year three is trying to figure out how to continue our sustained growth through this work. And then we have a lot of folks involved in supporting the strategic planning effort. Really grateful for the staff engagement on this high performing organization team that we have with leadership.

From their steering committee, we have six folks really helping provide guidance around the implementation and then a dedicated 27 staff members helping to uplift each of these respective priorities. And I just wanted to note that as we've been engaging in this work, there's a lot of crossover in this effort. So at times, moving forward, for example, we'll be partnering a couple of the teams to be able to help leverage those that brain trust to move them forward. I'm so grateful to this team. This is my favorite part of my job, to be able to uplift and have this really hard working group of folks help move these key items forward to help make the city of Oakland better.

And with that, I'm going to invite our team members to provide updates on the progress they've been making. And I'll start with Michelle and Tara.

Good morning. My name is Tara Dubal. I'm the management assistant for planning and building. Today, I am representing the streamline operations team. So the goal of our streamline operations team is to work in areas identified in our strategic plan that could make the city more efficient.

With the help of our coach, we were able to meet with some key members of both the HR and contracts team during which we work to understand their processes and discover ways in which our team could help meet their efficiency goals. While we're just getting underway with HR, we found out more about the external contracts audit that happened and the recommended action items that came from it. Our team is currently working on ways to help prioritize the recommendations for a smoother contracting process. And then I will hand it over to team two.

Good morning. My name is Karina Liu. I'm here to present on strategic priority two. This, sorry, The priority for this is around cross collaboration amongst departments. Sub priority one focuses on coordination through working groups including community engagement and data collaboration.

This work aligns with an existing administrative instruction to institutionalize community engagement standards and procedures and is progressing as expected. Sub priority two focuses on the development and coordination of housing plans. This work has been ongoing and is progressing as expected largely because housing and community developments department has a comprehensive and strategic approach. Several sub priority objectives were already accomplished in year one and this area has transitioned into ongoing tracking, monitoring and refinement to ensure alignment over time. Sub priority three is building a holistic approach to public safety including emergency preparedness and foundational progress has been made in this area including enabling AC alert contact information to be updated using employee data, improving the city's ability to communicate with the staff during emergencies, and a disaster council public information warning team meeting has been convened bringing together fire and police to improve coordination around emergency messaging.

Because of the focus of sub priorities four and five I'm sorry, because of our focus on sub priorities one, two and three, sub priorities four and five will continue to advance through intentional sequencing. In year one we identified codependent tasks across departments and progress in these areas will continue to create conditions necessary to move the remaining sub priorities forward in a coordinated way. Overall progress has been made in each sub priorities and the city continues to position itself to strengthen and foster cross departmental collaboration.

Good morning. My name is Monica Pillaioloc, and I am the public information officer for the office of inspector general. And I am here as part of team three to really look at enhancing communication and coordination for the city. So my job here is to really look at the gaps in communication internally and think through how to build awareness of the work that city staff is doing, deepen connection, and potentially create collaboration. A lot of the work that we're doing is also in relation to what Team Two is doing.

I spoke with folks around the strategic plan team to really understand what that gap was, and the response I got was more information from administration and agency directors about what is happening in the city, a space to celebrate wins, communication that would be more periodic in nature and available in a variety of formats. So keeping that in mind, we have started working on our action items which are progressing. We're about the midway point. If you notice for the needed improvements, there are nine sub actions outlined. Of those that have an asterisk, the citywide communications team has already started working on that which is what Karina Liu was alluding to.

And so I took on, or our team has taken on really working on that monthly interdepartmental newsletter and really thinking about uplifting that. And so we've gotten progress done and we're currently in the process of building out an editorial template and looking at the processes so that digital leads who are people who will be contributing to the newsletter can have a streamlined way of doing it so that we're not adding to people's portfolio. And then year two and year three are really about including city council and then looking at what we've done and see how we can improve on those. So those are currently stable there, but we're making progress along the way. So I'll give it over to team four now.

Hi, good morning. Andrea Mariano, she her he pronouns and I'm manager over organizational development and training. And we also have Janera Burton just on the team to answer questions as well from our workforce optimized workforce management team. So we wanted to come to you along with the handouts you've already been given and talk to you about how we're really approaching this work. We want to approach workforce optimization from a structural perspective, which is going to really focus on improvements in the employee lifecycle. So we're gonna define that as from talent acquisition, recruitment and hiring, to onboarding, career growth and development, performance management, really keeping

an

eye on advancement and retention, and then even off boarding and succession planning. So we want to look at it as a whole. From there we want to look at the processes for employees and some of the frameworks we can improve and utilize such as the SPOC model, which is the single point of contact existing in every department. Looking at that framework and then also just HR processes in general. And then we want to enhance access to resources.

We think this is a pretty large gap. Everybody using the same forms, everybody utilizing the same process, and really starting to focus in on improving just HR processes as well as optimizing them to be more efficient. And from there, what we we do have some things in the exploratory phase that we're looking at in year one. So this is really enhancing communication. We plan to use the intranet for that, kind of revive it and improve it as a central hub for information for employees, as well as be able to for departments to be utilizing the same resources.

Another thing that we're going to look at is really increasing how departments communicate with each other when we are looking at advancing racial equity. So we will partner with our stakeholders, Department of Race and Equity, that is a little bit down the road. They're now working we're working on what type of tools we'll utilize to get that information, but our goal as this team is to provide access to frameworks, tools, and analysis. Things that they can pull data from different departments and the Department of Race and Equity is going to partner with us. The last two things that we're going to look at and we're in the exploratory phase is is we want to make sure that we're strengthening our core leadership here in the city from our top tier of leadership to our management frontline supervisors is providing a roadmap of just structured and development and skill enhancement.

So we can and we're looking at that in the employee lifecycle from who's currently here, tapping talent of future leadership, and then also succession. Making sure that our knowledge doesn't go out the door when people do exit the city. And then the last thing that we're looking at is workload management and that's a really big topic that's come up within the departments is a couple of questions. Are the jobs that currently exist modern and current? Do they meet the needs of modern government? And if not, should we be looking at those classifications? And then the other is the workload that is being presented to employees. Is it as efficient as it can be or should

we be looking at it differently?

And that is it for ours. I will pass it on to our money team.

Good morning, Maylee Wong deputy chief of the Department of Violence Prevention. I'll be presenting today with Megan Weir from DOT then I also want to acknowledge our other team members who are part of our team which is Tiffany Kirkpatrick sitting over there from the budget office. We have Damon Simmons from the fire department and then also Shana Hirschfeld Gold from the sustainability and resilience division of city administrator's office. And together we are called the money team. We're excited to be working on strategic priority number five as you see up there.

We have two main objectives over the next couple of years which is overall to align the budget with citywide priorities. In year one we're going to be focused on launching the evaluation criteria tool citywide in preparation for the budget process. We realize there's a lot of need out in the community, lot of services that people would like to be see funded and so we're providing a tool to departments to help approach the budget planning process in a way that is equitable and also prioritize essential services through a consistent and transparent framework. The second objective is to establish aligned priorities for integration into departmental work plans and this is really to ensure that priorities from city council and the mayor are integrated consistently into departmental work plans. Okay.

So here's a timeline of where we've been and where we're going. As I mentioned, the first objective is year one, that's where our team is focused on right now. The last six months, our team presented to the finance meeting, the finance managers at the meeting, monthly meeting to refresh people's memory on the evaluation criteria tool. We then administered a survey to understand how folks used the tool during the last two year budget cycle. We met with the DOT capital improvements project team to understand how they center equity in their budget planning process and we've also met with the race and equity team to explore the synergy between the evaluation criteria tool and the already existing service and equity impact statement that the departments have been using for several years now.

Over the next three months our team is going to develop a single tool that integrates both the evaluation criteria and the service equity impact statement into one. We're going to be piloting that tool with the Department of Transportation, DVP, IT and also the fire department during this upcoming mid cycle budget process and then we're gonna gather feedback from that process to create a single tool that's rolled out during fiscal year twenty seven-twenty nine bi annual budget planning process. Now my colleague Megan is going to talk to you both, talk to you all about the tool and I'll hand it over to her.

Thank you, Meily. Megan Weir, Assistant Director, DOT And really just wanted to provide you a little bit more of a concrete example of what we're talking about with respect to the evaluation criteria scale. This slide depicts the scale that was adopted by the citywide strategic plan and with criteria including whether or not a budget item has a legal mandate, implications for equity, an assessment of the planning and viability, alignment with whether or not there's existing resources, the department's capacity to implement the recommended action, as well as support and communications. And you can see a high level of alignment overall with the strategic plan framework and these criteria. On the next slide, I wanted to talk a little bit more about this is actually what departments have been implementing in recent years.

So the evaluation criteria is really a leveling up by the city of criteria and assessing additions to the budget. So previously, departments have assessed service impacts as well as equity. Keeping equity as a as a north star for the city and our departments, we've been working closely with the Department of Race and Equity with respect to lessons learned to date and how this new evaluation criteria scale can help us really evolve the assessment to encompass more of those categories. And as Meily mentioned, we're excited that DOT, the Department of Violence Prevention, the Fire Department, and IT will be working with us in this mid cycle budget process to develop and pilot the tool. And that concludes our presentation.

Monica, I don't know if you had

any Thank closing you everyone. Colleagues, any questions or comments? Councilmember, Unger then Brown.

Thank you all for this. I'm not sure if this is for the streamlining team or the workforce team. Obviously, there are a lot of priorities here, a lot of things we need to fix and we're probably not gonna be able to get to all of them. You know, we're gonna have to prioritize and I wanna put my thumb on the scale in favor of fixing our hiring practices. We have a real bottleneck with hiring where people die on lists, where people wait on lists so long that they get hired elsewhere by other cities.

You know, I've been and I don't know why this problem is so intractable. I've been fighting against this for thirty years when I missed the first day of the Fire Department training tower because HR never told me that I was hired. And, you know, these sort of problems have persisted for so long and I don't think we can solve any of our problems in any of our departments until we really fix the hiring piece. So that's just sort of my statement about priorities.

Excellent.

Yeah I just wanted to also just thank everyone for their hard work. I had the honor of interacting with team four around some of the hiring and onboarding practices and was able to give you know just some feedback whether it was you know when I was hired first with the city of Oakland and then again for a second round and I think I've even in a short amount of time I've been able to see some of those practices like at least hiring in the council offices begin to get better and so I just want to shout that out because just really being able to see like the coming you know everyone coming together to really try to solve some issues that have been just really long standing and so I guess to my council colleagues if you haven't had an opportunity to meet with the you know team four around like just hiring to share like your experience, I think that the the feedback that I was able to provide I really saw very quickly some of the updates be made so I just wanted to shout that out. And then lastly of course I'm interested in all of the teams but really having a look at just team five around just some of the alignment around citywide priorities.

Very you know looking forward to seeing the evaluation criteria utilized. I know it will just be a pilot as we approach the mid cycle but I guess I kind of have a question as we go into, once we kind of get feedback from the pilot and how it goes. I think the form is great. Just I guess through the chair to the administration I guess Monica wanted to ask do you plan on using like this tool? You know how we had those budget it was the budget study sessions where all of the departments came and presented to the council.

I just wanted to to ask like what what would it look like to utilize this tool as the departments are presenting to the city council?

Through the chair to council member Brown, I don't have an answer yet because we have to do the pilot to see how it turns out. I will say that the current tool is not shared during the deliberation time period. It's created at the end during the publication. And so if I'm hearing you correctly, there could be a desirability to see that in advance of the adoption of the budget?

Yes indeed. I think I guess you know I guess my reflection would be as we were approaching the budget and during the budget session we were able to hear from the various departments and maybe each department kind of articulating to us in different ways like what their priorities were, what the impact would be and so when I look at an evaluation criteria here you know I know this is just a pilot but I imagine that you could probably create something that all of the departments are kind of reporting out in a more streamlined way. So just wanted to put that on your radar. Mhmm. Excellent.

Okay. Councilmember Blanc.

Thanks. I I did wanna echo my colleague's comments, council member Hunter, on just the emphasis on hiring. Some people know that I applied to eight different jobs with the city and I know I was not qualified for maybe all of them but I didn't hear back on a single one of them. So my joke is I was so determined to work for the city of Oakland that I had to run for city council. But just there is something wrong that I it also befuddles me and we need to to fix that.

The other thing I just wanted to note is the use of technology that I think is gonna be really important especially around cross department collaboration and opportunities to do that. I've mostly worked for government and I've still been struck by I think by some of the outdated both hardware and technology that we have here in the city of Oakland. And I I think we live in, you know, Silicon Valley. We should be able to use technology to, you know, modernize our our government. And then I had just one really specific question criteria on the support and slash communications criteria, which I I can understand why it's also needed.

I also wonder if there's something about that that would bias us towards things that are the status quo just because you know can that be spoken to more around that specific criteria? I'm sorry. The team. This is from the

Yeah. Through the check.

Could you

just clarify the the ask? I I I missed it. Yeah. Just an explanation on this

sorry. The from team five on aligned budget with citywide priorities. Just an I just like to understand this concept around evaluating on support slash communications which is an evaluation around you know stakeholders and communication strategies and and whatnot and whether that is going to evaluate for like I just wonder if as we because this is going to be used to evaluate each of the services right and that if this could inadvertently bias the service simply because there's been more you know public communication around it and that could also then bias things towards maintaining status quo versus maybe a new service that there's not as much public awareness around. So I just want to understand what is the intent with that particular criteria.

Sure. I can I I think that's a really good question and something that as we're conducting the pilot, I'm excited about the different departments that we have represented in the pilots, you know, from the fire department to DOT to d VP and IT? So for each of these those categories, it's going to be something that we're gonna be really learning by doing with subject matter experts as we work work to figure out, like, how do how do we refine these categories and how does it reflect the the city's larger values with respect to the services that we're hearing we have a need for. So I think that will definitely be something that we'll be addressing in more detail in the pilot.

Okay. Yeah. That sounds good. And I understand why it's there. Just again, when we think through criteria it's really important in case it biases us towards certain decision making and I just wanted to point out that that could potentially be used to bias towards just maintaining status quo or just the or or even departments or divisions within the department that have a large communication capacity versus those that don't. So thanks.

And if if I may, through the chair to council member Wong, that criteria isn't about existing dedicated resources. Right? It's about the the thought process of the department to identify and be strategic in the resources and the community stakeholders they're planning to talk to, how thought through is their support identified and their communication plan identified.

Okay. Got it. That's helpful.

Thank you. Councilman Brown.

And then I just have one more clarifying question. I guess, and I I don't think I saw it in the report so through the chair to the administration. Is will you all be reporting back to us on updates every six months?

Okay.

Through the chair, yes. We will be providing updates every six months unless it's in a regular course of business on a dedicated item that would come before you.

Okay. Excellent. Yeah. I think I would really I would greatly appreciate the continued updates because it really helps us understand where we are in the process on some of these things. And then I think maybe lastly I would share I know I've had the opportunity to meet with some of the the teams but I guess you know through the chair to the administration is it is it your goal to also have more of the teams kind of engage also at the council level with like some of the the things that they're working on as well?

Through the chair to council member Brown, the the there are four coaches, myself and one of them, Candace Parker Trigg, Fiss Ayer, and Patricia Marino Price, and we each have a team or two. And we help facilitate engagement with subject matter experts or key stakeholders as they move through the priority identification and action implementation.

Excellent. That sounds good. But I guess just putting on the radar that, know, always great to engage with the council members as well whether it has to do with you know what we're directly hearing from constituents in the community about their experience and then even just any feedback that we may have as well.

Thank you. Let's move to public comment.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number five miss Asada Olubala, Kevin Dally, David Boatwright, and Blair Beekman.

I can't understand how you have a plan for racial equity when you can't even identify where you've ever accomplished racial equity for African Americans. So I just don't see how you're gonna be able to do it. I'm concerned about with this new identification throughout the country of financial fraud and programming services, and if we're gonna uplift that opportunity to take on identification. I'm also concerned with nonprofits that we never evaluate and some kind of plan to have an evaluation. I'm concerned about the lack of transparency and lack of monitoring of the housing authority, Oakland Housing Authority, that provides your public housing, but you have no accountability or reckoning on what's going on.

I'm concerned about grants that are awarded and the credibility of those grants. I'm a give you an example. There was a grant that was supposed to be an opportunity to deal with communities who had been victims of redlining, and we gave that grant to Chinatown to be able to facilitate building a walkway to Jack London Square. I'm also concerned about the lack of potential not dealing with the gentrification in this city, the fact that you are a sanctuary city and what is your strategic plan being a sanctuary city. You don't have anything for the NSA sustainability plan which is crucial that you have to have as a strategic plan.

Don't have you don't have anything that guides the partnership with OUSD which is supposed to be a relationship that's valuable. You don't have anything that's fixed. Thank

you for your comments, miss Olubale.

David Boatwright, District 4. For the current budget and beyond, we need to focus on some things. Authorizing only spending in the balanced budget, keeping in mind over expenditures that inevitably occur and dedicate more, and I emphasize more manpower to project and operations oversight, to limit over expenditures. And some examples of that would be the city's lack of oversight on the tiny homes project and past, and I emphasize past, Fire Station four renewal missteps and all grants. Plans are nothing without good execution.

Hi. Kevin Dally. I'm a cochair of the policy and legislative committee of the Bicyclists and Pedestrian Advisory Commission and speaking for myself. I'm concerned on how the change the plan changed the dismantling of the Department of Transportation removing parking parts of parking over to finance will affect their strategic plan. They'll no longer have the ability in transportation to fully control transportation decisions.

Finance does not have the expertise in parking that that Oak Dot has. Last night, I was leading a discussion with the committee on the topic. The city refused to show up to this. They refused to reply. They refused to provide information.

This seems to be a violation of m t c forty one zero eight, which requires the city to provide administrative and technical support to BPACs. If that's not provided, MTC could pull funding from Oakland. So I'd like to find out what's going on with her strategic plan is related to parking. There will be a million dollar charge, maybe, more or less. City won't tell me for sure, but thanks.

Thank you for your comments. Switching to Zoom user Blair Beekman. You can unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hi. Thank you, Blair Beakman. Happy morning to everyone. Happy new day that we can work as a country to, work our selves out of Minneapolis. The problems of Minneapolis, we can work together. Good luck on those efforts, what we come up with. Thanks for this item. I listened, to the bond item previously. I forgot to sign up for it. I didn't realize to sign up for it. So I listened intently. Thank you for these two items today. I was around when you're going through the the budget deliberations in the 2025. Or was it '24? I'm sorry.

Yeah. I guess it was '24. It was a hectic time. It was a harrowing time, and you guys are trying to come out it out of it the best you can. I heard words of a three year plan and how to be working on your budget deficit issues, I'm assuming, is what the three year plan was about.

In being from San Diego, I think they're only second to you guys as having the the biggest budget deficit in the state, for local cities. So definitely compare notes with San Diego. I think they can learn a lot from you guys that I think you had a real sense that we don't have to fix budget things immediately and that we need to definitely be providing social services. I think you guys may have done great in that department for the community. Thank you immensely.

San Diego is having a bit of trouble in that area. They're cutting things and slashing things first and asking questions later kinda thing. So we've been trying to work it out. Good luck what you can be doing. I hope this sort of effort, you know, our continued work on macro putting macro first with our issues. We can ask we can build our future for this country in asking for macro funding and macro issues. We can get get a great examples. Good luck in those continued efforts to create good examples. Thank you.

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

Thank you. And is this to receive and file in committee as well?

The request is to, board on consent for the February 3 meeting, please.

Okay. Is there a motion?

So moved.

Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Unger, seconded by council member Brown to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this informational report to the February agenda on con sorry. February agenda. On roll council member Brown?

Aye.

Unger? Aye. Wong? Aye. And chair Ramachandran? Aye. Thank you. Item number five passes with four ayes to forward this informational report to the February 3 city council agenda on consent. Moving on to item sorry. Moving on to open forum. Calling in the names that signed up for open forum. Miss Asada Olavala, Kevin Dally, and Blair Beakman, in no particular order. You can come up to the podium.

In 1994, president Clinton appointed Barbara Jordan, a US representative, to chair the US Commission on immigration reform. The goal was to look into immigration and determine whether it was having an impact on the American worker. The result of the report that she laid out say that immigration at its present state in 1994, if it continued at the level it was, was gonna hurt the average African American male engaged in low skilled work. Her recommendation was to cut immigration into this country by one third. Her recommendation was ignored.

And in 1996, open borders became the

Thank you for your comments miss Olubala.

Kevin Dally again speaking for myself.

Yesterday,

the city administrator announced told employees that the effective date of the move of parking from transportation to finance is February 7. That's three days before the report to public works and transportation was scheduled. City administrator requested a postponement from today for two weeks apparently so that they could go ahead and make the move before they gave the report to the city council. I think it's time for the city council to step forward and take action. There are currently trans departments don't have a description.

They just have a title. Lawyers say you can do anything you want with the departments. Some depart it's time for the city council to act and decide.

Thank you for your comments. Switching to Zoom user Blair Bieckman, you can unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hi. Blair Beakman. I wish open forum was two minutes to to note. To again to again go over some continuing questions and concerns I have about a very interesting compromise, Joyce, about the future of leaving flock in in Oakland. Are we going to be truly committed to find a new ALPR vendor?

To again describe, I I feel it can be of help to have something like six month updates, a councilor committee, and how the new ALPR vendor procurement process is moving forward. And I hope there can be a follow-up Oakland committee meetings and open public discussion that reduced placement of surveillance tech in local neighborhoods can often do the same amounts of public safety work as an oversaturation or plethora of surveillance technology placed in a neighborhood. Good luck that this can be a community effort of procurement and not just by the OPD. PAC and community needs to be involved as well. And we can really be keeping the federal government in check at this time and with a open love life philosophy. So

Thank you for your comments, chair. That concludes all speakers on open forum.

Thank you. This meeting is adjourned. Yes. Okay. Thank you.