Finance & Management Committee - Regular Meeting

Good morning, and welcome to your finance and management committee meeting for Tuesday, July 8. The time is now 09:33AM, and this meeting has come to order. Before taking roll, I will provide instructions on how to submit a speaker cards for item on this agenda. If you are here with us in chambers and you would like to submit a speaker's card, please fill out one and turn it into a clerk representative before the item is read into record. Online speaker requests were due twenty four hours prior to this meeting.

This meeting came to order 09:33AM. Speaker cards will no longer be accepted ten minutes after meeting has begun, making that time 09:43AM. With that, we will now proceed to take roll. Council member Brown? Present. Councilmember Unger? Here. Councilmember Wong? Here. And chair Ramachandran? Present. We have four members present. And before we begin, chair Ramachandran, do you have any announcements for today?

No announcements.

Alright. Moving to our first item, approval of the draft minutes for the committee meeting on 06/24/2025.

I will entertain a motion.

So moved.

Again. We have a motion made by council member Unger, seconded by council member Brown to accept the draft minutes of the committee meeting of 06/24/2025 as is on roll. Council member Brown? Aye. Councilmember Unger?

Aye.

Councilmember Wong? Aye. And chair Roma Chondren? Aye. This motion passes with four ayes to accept the draft minutes of the committee meeting on 06/24/2025. Item two, determination of scheduling outstanding committee items. And you do have one speaker for this item.

Thank you. Anything from the administration?

Nothing at this time. But if if if it's a pleasure of chair, I'd like to take a moment to introduce our interim finance director, Jamazik, who joined us on on last week. So I wanted to give her the introduction, and also if you're want to share a few words this morning.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for being welcoming. It's good to be back in Oakland. I look forward to working with, all of you, and, feel free to reach out, when you need to. Thank you so much. Bye bye. Bye bye.

Thank you, director Mazzek. Welcome. Thank you, administrator Johnson. And I will entertain, a motion oh, sorry. Public comment.

Move approval.

Motion? Second. Thank you. Moving to our public speakers, miss Asada Olavala.

I'm requesting that the following fiscal issues have a report on them. The Local Immigration and Integration and inclusion grant for 275,000. Where are we with that grant? The 2024 immigrate immigrants micro business support program with the fiscal obligation around that. The $100,000 that mister Gallo is putting forward to fund street level day labor program when the day labor program has been taken out of the budget.

A report on the translation department because when they did give their report, they did not give a fiscal or financial accounting related to translations, A report on the budget for Arthur Shanks junior's signs and plaques that were approved last June and nothing has happened. A report of the at risk federal funding circumstances that we're dealing with, a report on the $101,000,000 spent out of Measure U, including the $32,000,000 for the Lincoln Rec Center, which was not required spending because the organization who put forth the spending said they would raise the money, and BASC went out and gave them the money from Measure U. A report on why we are not seeking funds from the California Black Freedom Fund, why we are not seeking funds from the state black ownership in inclusion program, a report on what funds can be made available through the reparations task force of the state of California.

Thank you for your comment, miss O'Sullivan. That concludes your public speakers for item two. We do have a motion made by council member Unger, seconded by council member Brown to accept the termination of scheduled outstanding committee items as is on roll. Council member Brown? Aye. Council member Unger? Aye. Councilmember Wong? Aye. And Chair Rumachandran?

Aye.

This motion passes with four ayes to accept the termination of scheduled outstanding committee items, also known as your pending list as is moving to item three. Adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into a professional services agreement with Keenan and Associates for the provision of employee benefits broker and consultation consultation services for the five year term with an option to extend the two years for a total amount not to exceed $481,250 And you do have one speaker for this item.

Morning council members. My name is Tammy Honda and I'm the benefits supervisor in the Department of Human Resources Management. The item you have before you today seeks your adoption of a resolution authorizing the City administrator to enter into a professional service agreement with Keenan and Associates to provide employee benefits broker and consultation services for a five year term with an option to extend for two years for a total amount not to exceed $481,250 As background, staff completed a request for proposal on 10/06/2015. Council authorized a resolution granting the City Administrator the authority to award professional services agreement to Keenan and Associates for a three year term for an amount not to exceed $502,044 for contract years 2015 to 2018, with an option to extend the agreement for two additional one year terms for a total not to exceed amount of $309,647 for contract years 2018 and through 2020 for a total not to exceed amount over the five year period of $892,691 The city conducted another RFP for employee health and welfare benefit broker services that concluded on 05/21/2021. Kenan was again selected because their RFP response is most closely aligned with the city's needs.

The city entered into a contract agreement with Kenan effective 09/01/2021, through 08/31/2023, for an amount of $137,500 On 01/03/2025, the Human Resource Management Division Benefits Division completed another RFP process soliciting qualified vendors to provide employee benefit broker and consulting services. Two benefit brokers responded to the city's RFP, including Keenan. Keenan's responses again demonstrated its ability to provide quality employee benefit broker and consulting services as specified by the city at cost effective rates. Staff therefore recommends that council authorize the city administrator to negotiate and execute a five year agreement for the provision of employee benefits, broker, and consulting services with Keenan and Associates. Since 2015, Keenan has demonstrated its ability to provide qualified employee benefit broker and consultant services through the firm's high level of knowledge, their experience and ability to navigate the ever changing benefit mandates that all employers must meet, Keenan has successfully partnered with the City Benefits Division to maintain existing benefit plans while strategically implementing legislated employer mandates, such as Affordable Care Act, and introducing innovative employee education and communication tools, such as the virtual benefits fair platform.

Keenan has represented the city in all negotiations with carriers on issues related to premiums, services, benefit levels, plan designs, special terms, conditions, etcetera. They have had direct negotiations with non CalPERS health and welfare providers, including negotiating cost effective renewal rates, premium rates, benefit levels, performance standards and guarantees, contractual terms and conditions, quality assurance standards, utilization and performance reports, and statistical and financial reports. Staff is confident that Kenan will continue to provide quality services to the city to support the city's employee benefits needs. Staff recommendations that the city council adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into a professional service agreement with Kenan Associates to provide employee benefit broker and consultation services for a five year term with an option to extend for two years for a total amount not to exceed $481,250. Thank you.

Are there any questions?

Thank you, colleagues. Questions, comments? I have one. Are there other nearby cities cities of comparable sizes that use Keanan Associates?

There are. I don't have that information right now, but I could get it for you.

Okay. If you can just share by email. Okay. That's fine.

Okay.

Councilman Brown.

Excellent. Thank you so much for the report. Just a really quick question. Based on the report on page three, has the Keenan been providing services for the City of Oakland, like, out of contract for the last two years?

Speaking through the chair, yes.

And, was there a particular reason why we were unable to, you know, have this go out for RFP earlier?

I believe, speaking through the Chair, I believe we believe that the contract extension was through 2024. When we looked, it was 2023. However, we did start the process in 2024 for the RFP.

Okay. Alright. Thank you.

Number one. Have we done any surveying or polling of our employees to see which parts of their benefits packages they're most satisfied satisfied with? With? Any Any areas areas for for improvement? Improvement?

Speaking through the chair, I don't believe we've done any formal polling through employees.

If I may jump in, this is Mary Howe, director of human resources. Through the chair to councilmember Wong, think that to do so would be kind of stepping on direct dealing with employees, and that is really a discussion that we need to have with their labor representatives. Okay.

We can take public comment. Thank you.

Thank you. Once I call your name, please approach the podium. And we have miss Estado Obala.

I don't know how you care. Thank you, Ms. Brown, for that observation about the contract. How can we have someone performing a duty for the city without a contract? And I didn't see that, but thank you.

And I think we need, at some point, for every department to put to post an update that all contracts in that department are current, and to identify any contracts that are not current so that can be dealt with. Even though staff made the statement that they are confident that this agency or vendor is capable of performing what we need, that's not enough. You need some kind of quantitative or qualitative document that determines that what they have been doing is is of quality, is equitable, and legitimate. I hear staff do that all the time. We feel like they're doing a good job.

We don't care what you feel like. You have to produce structural data that says that this company can do what we need. Now, what stuck out for me was when I looked at the current benefit types that we have. We have medical, dental, vision, life, and under that AD and D, disability and employee assistance. I don't know what that means.

We we cover a lot of stuff, and the question is, consultant determine are we mandated to provide all of these benefit types? What's the minimum amount we have to provide? Y'all y'all not serious about looking at this structural deficit and how we can reduce spending. But somebody's gotta start looking at everything and saying, can we make changes here to save some money? When I was working, I didn't get the benefit of all of this. I sure didn't get dental, I didn't get vision, I didn't get life. But that was some forty years ago, so I don't know what has happened that changed that we've taken so much responsibility with these benefit types.

Thank you for your comment. That concludes your public speakers for item three.

Thank you. I will entertain a motion.

So moved.

Second. We

have a motion made by council member Unger, seconded by council member Brown to approve the recommendations of staff and to support this to the July 15 city council agenda on consent. On roll, council member Brown? Aye. Council member Unger? Aye. Council member Wong? Aye. And chair Ramachandran?

Aye.

This motion passes with four ayes to approve the recommendations in the fourth as to July 15. City council agenda on consent moving to item four. Received an information report on the Oakland Roadmap to Fiscal Health, a plan to address mid and long term city financial challenges. And you do have three speakers for this item.

Thank you. We will hear staff or administrator.

Thank you to the chair, to members of the committee. So I'll take a moment and introduce our team here just a second. What you have before you is the framing of our roadmap to fiscal health. It's something that was discussed going back to December and in our collective one on ones and in this meeting, we've talked about you presenting this more formally. I'll take a moment to introduce our team, Ben Rosenfield, who is our external consultant that's been helping guide us through this process.

In addition, Deborah Ederley who's our retired annuitant, who is operating out of the sales office, also deputy city administrator Monica Davis, as well as Mr. Bradley Johnson. So collectively, we'll be tag teaming this presentation, but we'll go ahead and jump right into the heart of the presentation.

Good morning council members and thank you mister city administrator. My name is Ben Rosenfield. I'm a consultant to the city administrator's office. Pleased to be here with the rest of the team here presenting this item. If we could pull up the presentation.

So, briefly, what is the roadmap? What is this document that's in front of you that the team has been working on for, in recent months in parallel with the budget? I think it's pretty common in public financial management to place all of our focus process. And, I think fundamentally, the roadmap is an acknowledgment that more than that is needed here. That the effort to restore the city's financial position to where we want it to be and to provide the level of service that Oakland residents demand and deserve is a multiyear effort.

It will involve a set of complicated strategic projects that have kind of two areas of focus. One is within the bookends of a given fiscal year, a set of projects required to both manage and implement the budget. And then secondly, beyond the budget period, looking ahead to years three, four, five and beyond, keeping our eyes on the horizon, looking up, and beginning today to work to solve challenges and solve problems that won't you don't immediately see in the annual budget process. The document is a high level project plan. It includes aggressive, but we believe achievable timelines for completion of this work.

It can't all get done at once because it is complicated, time sensitive work. So, is prioritized and staged in a way that we are happy to talk through here today. Very importantly, it's important that this work remain transparent. That it's clear where the city administration is moving, on what timelines, so that council, the mayor, other stakeholders can have a sense of what the priorities are, when information's gonna be be arriving, and recommendation is gonna be are gonna be arriving. And, that that information arrive in time that the council can kind of inform future directions, and it can inform decisions that are coming in front of you.

A very quick high level recap of, again, the big arc of our kind of financial health, where are we? There's obviously, the, the roadmap is focused on restoring the city's fiscal health. As we know, Oakland's finances, like a lot of cities in The U. S, on the West Coast, and here in the Bay Area, have been strained in recent years. These are fundamentally for the same reasons in most of these places.

The pandemic had significant impacts on local government tax revenue basis, particularly in core cities. Those impacts are ongoing as the recovery has been very slow. During that recent period as well, cities, Oakland included, worked through periods of very high inflation. So, at the same time, the revenue base was depressed and slow to recover. We were dealing with high inflationary costs that kind of drove up expenses for everything we spend money on employees, benefits, materials, etcetera.

In recent years, Oakland, like other places, has heavily relied on one time solutions to bridge that gap between ongoing revenues and ongoing expense. The use of federal stimulus funds, the burn down of reserves. And while that got us through that moment, it masked longer term fundamental challenges that we see looking ahead. And that's manifest in the five year outlook that this council has reviewed and knows well, I know, where we project $130,000,000 plus structural budget gaps each year looking ahead that we'll need addressing. It's important to note that recent progress has been made on this front by this council, by the mayor, by the city administrator, by the finance team.

In 2025, a number of early and important steps have been made by the city to kind of write its fiscal house. Quick actions were taken last year to close the midyear budget gap. Passage of an ongoing sales tax measure to provide diversified revenue base for the city in May, another critical and important step. And then lastly, and most recently, the adoption of a more structurally sound budget by this council just weeks ago. All important steps to kind of building towards the financial health that we are looking for and the service that to support the services that we're trying to provide.

Importantly though, returning the city to full financial health and reaching the level of service that we're gunning for is going to take time. It's not a task that's solved in a single budget. And we should view this as a multiyear project to get to where we want to go. Again, that's the fundamental purpose of the roadmap is to inform the steps that we're planning to take. And, with that, I'll hand it over to Deborah Edgeley to begin talking through some of those strategic projects.

Good morning, Finance Chairperson and members of the Finance and Management Committee. Deborah Edgley working out of the City Administrator's Office. I'm going to start by just going through the first couple of major projects that we have under this plan. Actually, first two projects have been completed. The first one was to form an executive team.

This team will consist of the finance director, the budget director, and key members of the CAO staff. The second thing was the adoption in June of the biannual budget. Counsel took that first critical step by adopting a prudent balanced budget, bringing together ongoing revenues with ongoing expenses. The adopted budget included spending reductions and revenue enhancements to support city services. One of the key major proposals in the budget is to diversify the city's revenues in the second year with a $40,000,000 voter approved tax proposal.

And, the plan is to bring you in October recommendations and options for that proposal. Then in January, hopefully council will take action in January 2026, and then and it would be on a ballot in June '26. This is needed to maintain the city's structural balance and to safeguard city services. Next, I'm gonna turn it over to Bradley Johnson, our budget director, who will discuss maintenance of effort and our ongoing pension concerns.

Thanks, Deborah. Brad Johnson, Budget Administrator. So the next two planks of our planning or roadmap to getting the city in a better and more sound fiscal state is creating a multi year plan that will ensure that we are in compliance with all the city's various adopted ballot measures. The city has measures that our voters have been very generous in approving across many different areas of service. We have, as of late, been waiving the maintenance of effort requirements in those ballot measures in order to preserve existing services.

A multi year plan will go beyond the current biennial into future budget cycles to ensure that we make steady progress on an annual basis into a point where we are complying with all of those ballot measures without waiver of the maintenance of effort provisions. This will obviously regard tradeoffs that will need to be considered at that time. But the nature of both those trade offs and the schedule for compliance will be coming to you in a plan by January 2026 so that we can begin to be incorporated into your mid cycle budget. The second plank of our plan that I'm going to be discussing is related to our pension costs and our other long term liabilities. Throughout this budget process, myself and many others in the Finance Department have been noting that the rising the increased rate of payment we are required to pay into CalPERS and various other benefit costs exceeds the rate of growth of our revenues.

Meaning that when we balance a budget in the next cycle, the deficit opens again. And we can close it again, and then it opens again. Sort of putting us on a treadmill while constantly looking to close the deficit and never can get to the point of providing higher levels of service. And so the key elements of those are pension and benefit costs. And so we have to look at a multi pronged, multi step approach that looks at a mix of actions to contain those costs, mitigate them, balance them out.

And those recommendations will be to you by March 2026 to inform both the mid cycle budget and our future bargaining cycles with our labor partners. For a reminder, this is, again, that chart that we walk through all the time through the budget process. The dark bars at the top are your past liability. Remember, I used that funny term UAL, or unfunded accrued liability. The bottom lines are your costs in the go forward amount, what I said that funny term of normal cost.

This is the curve we are trying to bend such that it's a flatter, more stable curve that grows at the rate of our revenues and stabilizes in order for us to provide services. I'm going to hand over the clicker to Ben Rosenfeld to go through additional slides. Working

down the timelines in the plan, it will be important for the city to develop contingency plans for risks that we know are out there. At the top of that list, at the moment, are contingency plans for the potential loss of federal grant revenue. This is affecting, well, is likely to not just affect the city, city of Oakland, but the County Of Alameda, the Oakland Unified School District, and the state itself. All of which will in turn make choices that may back up onto the city as well. Our our plans here are to provide an interim report to council following the recess in September.

That will include a cataloging of at risk federal funds. And, then following up from there with completion of prioritized contingency plans, which will be an ongoing effort during the coming fiscal year, with a final product completed no later than May 26. Which will then help and inform actions that may be needed in the biannual budget process update. Fundamental to the, to the path forward is reviewing the city's fiscal policies and practices. This has been a practice, a project that started last year.

With a new finance director starting, it's a perfect moment for the city to consider its reserve practices, the uses of special funds, its budget calendar, its budget practices. The policies Oakland has in place, from my perspective, are strong as they are. But it has been some time since they've been reviewed. And circumstances have changed. And, so we're recommending a review again with recommendations coming to counsel by October 2026.

So, that will be immediately following the adoption of next year's budget. Next on the list is completing of multi year infrastructure plans. This is a standard practice across local governments. The hope here is to develop multi year, meaning five ten year plans likely to inform investments that are needed for infrastructure, roads, streets, parks, fleet, IT systems. These all have in common the fact that they are very expensive.

The need vastly outweighs the ability to pay for them. And, the need to prioritize and plan for those over a multi year cycle is critical. The the the plan here is to have those plans completed and presented to counsel in time to enforce inform the next biannual full biannual budget. And, I will hand it from here back to Ms. Egerly.

Okay. Thank you.

One of the major projects that we're going to be on taking, what we've started already, is improvements in the city revenue collections. There's been a number of numbers floating around there as to what the city is owed in uncollected taxes. So, the first part of the project is to hire, we are hiring a project manager, three, to undertake special projects primarily in business tax, but we're gonna be looking at all the city's taxes. We also have undergone a recruitment for the revenue and tax administrator. That position is currently open.

And, a new finance director, the announcement should be coming soon. Another key project, that we plan on achieving this year is the development of a new automated collection system. In, revenue, collections are currently done manually. It's very cumbersome. And, if we had a new collection system, we feel like we will be on our way to really improving our collections.

The last thing that we're going to do is, which I think is very key, we used to have a robust communication outreach program to our internal and external partners. That communication seems to have broken down. We're going to revitalize that program, and hopefully we'll get the message out to everyone as what's required to do business in the city of Oakland. The next thing that I'm going to discuss is economic development plans and and actions. This is includes two projects.

One is the development economic development action plan, which should be coming to this council in September 2026. The plan will include goals to attract and grow and retain businesses, and the plan will also include, code amendments to streamline the, entitlement process.

Monica Davis, deputy city administrator. Finally, the final item on our road map includes improving structures needed to hold the city and its contractors accountable for the delivery of city services. We'll be leveraging the citywide strategic plan and utilizing our implementation teams to support revisions to our procurement rules, contracting processes, ensuring timely payments to our contractors. We will also be integrating performance standards in our contracts by July 2026. Further, we'll be building out a performance management program for our departments to roll out the next biennial budget in May 2027. With that, I'll return the floor to Ben to wrap up.

Thank you for having us today. We, we realize this is a high level presentation of a, of a project plan. We'd be happy to answer any questions you have or take any feedback or comments you have. We we do think that this is an appropriate and important set of projects to be completed over the next couple of years. It will take dedication and focus from the city administrator and his team, from the council and the mayor as well to work through. But we think at the end of this project, with progress can be made on all of these fronts, restoring kind of the city's financial health and the services it provides to the place we know we all want to be. So thank you.

Thank you for that comprehensive but high level presentation. Like you mentioned, there's a number of important goals, and that there is an aggressive timeline. I just had an initial question of, so who is on the team that's guiding this effort? And, I I guess, what can we expect as as far as the timeline goes and feeling like you will have the capacity to meet this timeline, especially when there's transition happening.

We have someone very excited about our city's financial health here today.

Appreciate it. Thank you for the question, council member. The the initial project team that the city administrator can has convened includes obviously, he is he is chairing that effort. It includes key individuals from the city administrator's office, including Monica who presented here today. The director of finance, which we know we have Janet in the interim role, and we we have a recruitment ongoing for a permanent finance director, Bradley Johnson, Mary Howe and the human resources team, given the connection to bargaining and to human resources needs.

And I think we envision that group will grow as some of these projects mature and project owners are identified for some of the further out project work. So, but that is the initial team that is now having regular meetings and beginning to work on the initial projects. We have, we've imagined that we will have regular updates for counsel and and the the mayor. Mayor. You have specific timelines in this document where you can expect product from the city administrator's office.

For example, the parcel tax proposal by date x, the MOE plan by date y, the pension plan by date X. But we've envisioned having more regular updates on the overall project status. We I don't know that we finalized what we would suggest for that. And I think your feedback on how to accomplish that would be welcome. We do have regular financial reports that come forward to counsel. We've talked about whether to include updates as part of that or whether a separate communication would be helpful. And I do imagine that in private briefings with all of you on ongoing financial issues, this will be an ongoing topic. How are we doing on the the projects outlined in the plan?

Thank you. And just one follow-up question on the revenue generating project. I know that there is a project manager three that's being recruited. Obviously, there's lots of delays and competing priorities with HR. Do we have an estimate of when someone might be able to start in this role?

That recruit that recruitment is started, and, hopefully, with the city's elongated onboarding process, I'm hopeful that they will be here at the end of the month.

Awesome. Thank you. And, one final question before passing to my colleagues. And that is about the voter, the ballot measures and the plan to be on track with regard to MOEs. I know that plan is in the works, and I I forgot what the timeline said specifically. But could you elaborate a little bit more of what we can expect out of that process to basically figure out how we make sure we're complying with all the voter approved ballot measures?

Well, we're gonna be meeting, and coming up with a strategy to to bring them to include them in the, second year of the budget. It's a $50,000,000 undertaking, and that's a lot. So, and we also have been meeting with some of the stakeholder stakeholders on this issue. So, we should, you know, get that done by the end of the year.

Thank you. Councilmember Braun, then councilmember Wong, then councilmember Unger.

Okay. Perfect. Well, first off, just wanted to, do the chair, to the team that worked on this so diligently, just want to thank you all for all of your hard work on this. So thank you. A couple of questions just for clarification. I wanted to confirm the date of the economic development action plan. I know that in a prior report it says that report, that plan would actually be coming to counsel September 2025. I So just wanted to confirm what the date is.

I thought it was '26. This thought it was September 2026, but I'm being told it's September 2025. It should be 2025.

Through the chair to council member Brown. We'll confirm that date. I do know Ashley Cannett who's back this week. We can get that answer to you here shortly and confirm that date.

Okay. Because the item was originally scheduled for CED and we moved it back to September. Okay. Excellent. And then, just another question about I know that there is going to be a lot of ongoing efforts to really ensure that we're collecting fines and fees and, you know, all of the work that's going into that.

And, I think one of the things that we've heard from various departments is that, you know, they don't really, you know, have the infrastructure to really, you know, go and collect all of the fines, whether we're talking about like parking and, you know, parking fees. And, so, I guess I'm just curious if any of the responsibilities will be shifted to the Revenue Bureau in this work?

Well, council member Brown through the chair, the revenue division is actually the final stop for the collection of all city revenues. So, if you take parking, parking takes it to a certain point, know, first letter, second letter, third letter. If you don't pay, we take you either to tax intercept where we can intercept your taxes or, you know, we send you to citywide collections. And, in citywide collections, if it's a small amount, we'll take you to small claims court and to get our payment that way. If it's a large amount, and I'm just using parking as an example, it we will we have an attorney that will take that to court for us.

But, at the end of the day, it is already revenues division responsibility as the last stop to either take you to citywide collections or to take you through the citywide lien process. And then you remember last week we had a series of liens. I think where there's been some breakdown is that departments are not sending stuff to us. And so, we need to reach out and remind every department that at the end of the day, when they finish their initial process, anything that is left uncollected for the city, needs to go to the, Revenue and Tax Administration Bureau. A prime example is, in fire.

There has been, in the last couple years, a breakdown in us collecting the fees we charge for inspections. And, so, that last step has not been happening. So, we're initiating that in this process too. So, it it is already finances responsibility. And, so, we're gonna be doing the outreach. That's the purpose of the outreach to our internal clients is to make sure that everyone knows that at the end of the day, those items need to go through finance.

Sounds good. Thank you.

Council member Wong.

Thank you chair and really appreciate this presentation. This is really important work. One thing that I wanted to confirm is on the voter adopted revenue proposal in the presentation it said that this was a parcel tax in the report or the document. It leaves it more open as just as a voter approved tax that we need to define and I'm just wondering what that process looks like. I would love to explore not just the parcel tax but other taxes that we could use to diversify our revenue base.

Yes. I think the plan is to to bring you options in October that will be a variety of options. It won't just be a parcel tax. Okay. And, so, counsel can make that decision, you know, by January. January. So I think that's why we changed the language a little bit. We had kind of heard that from this council that they wanted to explore other options.

Okay. Fantastic. The other thing that I wanted to ask about is just in general, all of these items are incredibly important. How did you decide the timelines for each of them? Was there a logic to the sequencing?

I think I would say that one area that I'm interested in moving up the timelines are on the improving structures to hold the city and its contractors accountable for delivery of city services. I think the performance measures for city departments make sense by May 2027 because we're adopting the next biannual budget. I think I have questions around whether we can push the timeline on the performance standards and measures for the city contracts earlier than July 2026. Or if there's a logic to that.

I can comment generally about timelines and then Monica Davis can speak more specifically to that specific item.

Okay.

In general acknowledging that all of this can get done at once, we were sensitive to which initiatives needed to get completed first because they are either necessary to implement the budget as it's adopted, to inform next year's bargaining process, which is rapidly approaching, or to meet voter mandated requirements that are already in place. And, so that really kind of prioritized a set of projects to complete this fall, winter, and early spring. That leaves a set of other important projects that fall after the adoption of next year's budget, just given capacity to complete everything at once. And, for the most part, those projects, the majority of those projects are intended to inform not the current budget, but future ones. And so, there's a bit more time to develop them.

I hear your point regarding the accountability measures. I can turn it over to Monica Davis on that front.

The other component to the pacing of these is what resources currently exist to support those efforts. And so, this most recent biennial budget cycle, there's a soft launch of performance measures. Each department was requested to do performance measures when the adopted budget gets published. That performance measure platform will also be published. So, it's not that nothing is happening but a more refined deliverable occur in 2027. But there used to be positions and resources dedicated to performance management that were reduced because of budget limitations, and so we have to move at that pace we're resourced.

Okay. Thank you.

Roger.

So there are 11 planks in this plan, but they're not co equal. Are they right? Each one of them is not gonna deliver us 9% of the way to to closing the gap. Where do you see the lion's share of the gap closing come from out of these 11?

You may get different answers from all four of us on that front, but I'm, I'm happy to share mine. If you're thinking about in financial terms, I think there's a set of projects here that are probably more critical and more immediate. The tax revenue for June 2026, which underpins the current year adopted budget. The MOE plans, which are a significant unfunded cost that's not carried in the budget or the city's financial out or outlook. That's a $50,000,000 a year annual effort to to pay for that.

That's a significant financial input here. Improving revenue collections, which has been a focus of much attention in the adopted budget and the plan, also incredibly critical. And then lastly for me would be not losing sight of the importance of developing mechanisms to control and contain pension and long term liability costs, which really are very quietly driving a lot of the city's budget troubles in the current period. And given that ramp that Bradley talked through, we'll continue to create pressure and throw the city's budget out of balance in future years. So those would that would be my list.

Not that they're not all important, but those would be the the top from my list.

I agree. I agree.

Okay. Sounds like consensus at at least among the four of us.

You will move to public comment.

Thank you. Calling in our public speakers, you have two minutes, and please approach the podium. State your name for the record. If you are participating via Zoom, please raise your hands. You are easily identified. Kevin Dolly, Mississauga Olubala, Brooke Levin.

Hi. Kevin Dally from Transport Oakland. I'm really encouraged by this plan. I see a lot of interesting possibilities. I definitely hope to work together on some of the street some of the street plans on the infrastructure as well as the fire department vehicle purchases, improve that process in the future.

One item that I want to see, I'm really encouraged that they'll be working on collecting fees for fire department inspections, and that that's a wonderful step. But we also need to make sure that the fire department requires fixes for the violations. Currently, building owners are allowed to continue violations, leave them unfixed for years. Every once in while, there's an inspection, a fee that's charged, usually unpaid. Good news is that we're now collecting fees, but there's not a process in place yet for getting the problems fixed.

As far as I can tell, the fire department's still not requiring it. So next step is how do we get things fixed so we don't have another ghost ship fire? Outside, maybe, of the immediate financial area, but someone needs to help the fire department with this. Thanks.

Thank you for your comment.

Good morning, Chair Ramachandra, members of the committee, city administration. My name is Brooke Levin, and I am here on behalf of the Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation and the Measure Q co chairs. We are supportive of the city developing a roadmap to fiscal health, especially interested in items three and four. Development of a plan to meet voter mandated staffing and service levels, impact not only Measure Q, the half billion dollar parcel tax for parks, homeless services, and clean water, but it also impacts Measure C, D, X, Z, N, N, and sugar sweetened beverage. The advocates on ballot measures have been meeting with the City administration to discuss the definition and criteria for declaring a fiscal necessity and have deep concerns regarding how and when the voter mandated ballot measures will be back on track.

Measure Q is unique among the ballot measures because the maintenance of effort provision is not dependent on general fund allocation, There's not just a 2.4 and $2,100,000 gap as identified in the budget, but there's another $4,000,000 that has been put into other funds. Although the revenue for Measure Q has grown by $10,000,000 we're still not meeting performance measures, and we're still not meeting the expectations of the voters. Item three. Please consider full funding for the auditor as defined in the charter as you put $40,000,000 measure on the ballot. The city auditor has not been budgeted for the mandated audits for ballot measures, including Measure Q, which needs to happen now.

It's past due for this last two year cycle. This was identified in the twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five Alameda County grand jury report that just came out, and it said it must be included for Measure Q in the twenty twenty five-twenty six work plan for the city auditor, yet the council which controls the budget has not budgeted adequate provisions for not just Measure Q but all the ballot measures. So, it's critical that these mandated audits be done to assure accountability and transparency, especially in light of doing another ballot measure. We hope you'll include the auditor in that ballot measure. Thank you.

Thank you for reminding us why we've got to get it right so that beautiful baby can have a future of substance. We've got to get it right. So, I am concerned about anything that comes before you, what are the fiscal impact statements around what's being recommended? What cost factors have to be made available in order to implement anything? So my my concerns came out of the grand jury report around what what you're trying to do.

The grand jury said that the city of Oakland has had significant financial issues because of a breakdown in oversight and accountability. So what's the plan to improve oversight and accountability? The grand jury's report also says that the city finance department and administrative staff constantly warn the city council about issues and the council ignored their concerns. So, are you gonna pay better attention to what your finance department and your city administrator is bringing before you? Now, what really got my concern was, in this report, G and P Global Ratings said that the forecast for spending of bonds says that you will have structural imbalance through fiscal year 2028.

2028. I'm also concerned that if you drive you're about putting something on another partial tax. Drive up my street, Keller, today, 11 homes for sale. 11 homes just driving up Keller for sale signs. You are driving people out of this city with these taxes. There was a gentleman that came in here, the last committee meeting that you had. I can't remember what Pacific one. He said he was spending $12,000 for his property taxes. My sister spends over $7,000 for property taxes. You can't keep pushing that button Thank you.

Because people can't afford to stay in this city mostly because of these partial prop

Thank you for your comment. That concludes your comments for item four.

Thank you. Any additional comments from colleagues? Seeing none, just wanted to

express gratitude to the whole team for coming up with this plan and very much look forward to seeing seeing the results in the next

few months. And with that,

I will entertain a motion.

Motion to adjourn.

Second.

No. To I'm I will entertain a motion to forward this report to counsel on the consent calendar

Motion to forward this to July 15. Second.

We have a motion made by council member Wong, seconded by council member Brown to approve the recommendation of staff and to receive and forward this item to 07/15/2025 city council agenda on consent on roll. Council member Brown?

Aye.

Council member Unger? Aye. Council member Wong? Aye. Chair Roma Chandra? Aye. This motion passes with four ayes. To approve the recommendations, staff to receive and forward this item to the July 15 city council agenda on consent. Moving to open forum, we do have three speakers for open forum. Kevin Dolly, Ms. Asada Labada, and Brook Levin. Please approach the podium and state your name for the record. You have two minutes.

Okay. So let's have our sanctuary city conversation that you won't have. The Alameda County, Board of Supervisors in two sessions in March and in April approved $3,500,000 for our undocumented illegal community. Now in order for the $3,500,000 to be made available, they had to take the money from already existing programs or resources. So they took some of the money from the county's social service agency, they took some of the money from the probation department, and they took some of the money from the Alameda health department to fund, and that's my problem, fund whatever you wanna fund as a sanctuary city, but do not fund anything on the backs, particularly of black people not getting services and resources.

We don't have housing. It's always very interesting. In Mexico, they had a major protest because of gentrification going on in Mexico, and the people who are the the indigenous people of Mexico are saying people from United States are pushing them out of their homes and creating a high economic scale that they can't afford to live in their own cities. That's what you're doing to black people in Oakland. Gentrification pushing us out.

And you won't speak about it, but it's happening. I'll continue to speak about it. Do whatever you want to do to help any group, any organization, but don't do it where we have to pay a price for it. And that's not anti nondocument. That's pro black people.

And you have to stop and look at how you're spending. I I identified doing this the number two, where you need to look at, you have programs through the state to facilitate helping non undocumented people. You have hardly nothing. When we asked for reparation in this state, two things were approved that we if you are victim of, eminent domain or redlining, that could be corrected. The governor vetoed it and said that we could have a plaque and a letter of apology.

Stop doing this to the African American community. And you know who's getting that money? The Asian Progressive

Chair Ramachandran, members of the council committee and city administration, my comments relate to the twenty twenty four-twenty five Alameda County grand jury report. I hope you have all been given a copy of this report. The city administration has ninety days from the date of issuance to respond to the report. The four things under the measure q portion of this audit, which was called Oakland's poor stewardship of measure q jeopardizes its effectiveness, have to do with the city auditor's work plan, including the required audit for 2022 to 2024 and into the future. There's two recommendations on that, and they use the word must.

And, there is a recommendation on the independent financial audit, which the city auditor had recommended in his first audit, and was to be included in the city's audit contract that came to this committee several weeks or maybe over a month ago. However, it was excluded and you had a supplemental, but it did not get added to the contract in a resolution update or anything like that. So, I'm just going to keep mentioning that the city audit needs to include the financial audit of measure Q, because there are a number of questions that have been raised about where all of the revenue actually is going. So, the fourth thing was that the city of Oakland must ensure that annual reports documenting revenues, expenditures, the status of projects are completed in a timely manner. Apparently, these have not been completed.

PRAC is oversight for the parks clean water portion, and and the homelessness commission is the oversight for the homeless portion of the funds, which is 30% of the revenues. They have failed to take their ownership and their responsibility for oversight, and that is highly identified in this grand jury report. It's not something that I follow and track, but whoever is leading that effort needs to circle back on that. It's been identified in the auditor's report as well. Thank you.

That concludes your public speakers for open forum.

Thank you. It's 10:34, 10:35. The meeting is adjourned.