Finance & Management Committee - Regular Meeting

Good morning and welcome to the Finance and Management Committee meeting of Tuesday, June 9th, 2026. The time is now 9.30 a.m. and this meeting may come to order. Before taking roll, I will provide instructions on how to submit speaker cards for items on this agenda. If you're here with us in chamber and would like to submit a speaker card, please fill one out and turn one in to myself or a clerk representative no later than 10 minutes after the start of this meeting or before the item is read into record. Registering to speak via Zoom is now due 24 hours prior to the start of this meeting. This meeting came to order at 9.30 a.m. and speaker cards will no longer be accepted 10 minutes after, making that time 9.50 a.m. We'll now proceed with taking roll. Council Members Brown. Present. Council Member Unger. Here. Council Member Wong. Here. Thank you, and Chair Ramachandran. Present. Thank you, we have four members present. Chair, before we begin, do you have any announcements at this time?

No announcements, we can begin, thank you.

Thank you, reading in item one, approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting of May 26, 2026, and we have no speakers on this item.

All right, I will entertain a motion.

I move approval of the meeting minutes. Second.

Thank you, that's a motion made by Council Member Brown, seconded by Council Member Unger to accept the committee meetings of May 26, 2026. On roll, Council Members Brown. Aye. Unger. Aye. Wong. Aye. And Chair Ramachandran. Aye. Thank you, item one passes with four ayes to accept the committee meeting, committee draft minute meetings, meeting minutes. for May 26th, 2026. Reading in item two, determination of schedule of outstanding committee items, and we do have two speakers on this item.

Okay, anything from the staff?

Nothing at this time, thank you.

Okay, we can move in a minute to public speakers.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number two, Mrs. Sada Olaballa and Blair Beekman.

According to your schedule, you have the annual report listing all purchases and contracts authorized by the city administrator or designee within the city administration's control authority that's on your schedule you haven't had a report since 2023 and on your agenda you have the next report scheduled for march of 2027. what is the issue we have brought it to your attention several times As it relates to some of the properties that you own like the ice ring. You need to have a report on what are the revenues that you receive. I understand that you had a contract that was approved with shock management in 2026 without any fees being paid by them. but they take 70% of all revenue in excess of $73,000. What is the revenue you receive, if any, and where's the report from any of the other, Fairyland, Feverella River Camp, the zoo? Do we get any revenue or are we paying without getting any? revenue from these nonprofits or these organizations or the property that we own. Sharks agree to pay for field trips for at least 1,000 school students, as well as offer every student enrolled a after-school program free trip. Now here's the one that I found out about, that you give free parking validation at the ice rink. Monday through Friday from 4 to 1 o'clock in the morning, validated parking, free parking for anybody going to the ice rink. How much money are we losing because you give this free parking? And you have on Saturday from 8.

Thank you for your comments, Ms. Olabalot. Thank you for your comments. Zach Thayer, you can come up to the podium to speak on item two.

Good morning. I know I'm gorgeous. Donald, or I mean, Hans Alexander, Goreen Littenberg-Vine, Redden Trump, Sir Keir Starmer. You know, there's a thing called the Tusk, Trump and Tusk. You can, you know, that a little bit. I have a little bit of an issue. and a view of the state, determining the outstanding committee notes, and a view of HR 1096, Senate Bill 5896, a challenge in measure Q, measure O, measure NN, and the view of Senate Bill 8196. SHOWS A TERM DIFFERENCES BASED ON THE APPLICATION. MICHIGAN V THE EPA, CALIFORNIA RIVER BASIN V THE U.S., DOE V RUBENSTEIN, HENSLEY V THE NRDC, I, ZACHARY, JOHN, THAIR, AND DOE VIEW A PROCEDURAL APPLICATION IN GV AUSTRALIA. and quantifiable review of standard of deviation. I, his gorgeous Mr. Slade, am New York pistol and rifle and am challenging the right of review under a complianary review of the NEA IEA hearings tied to the NRC and view a delegation of authority of command. I, his impeachment agent, the interim president under the 46th administration, am requesting that a state sponsored measure be identified in view of an LBR reactor as an improvement to economic development and in view of private wealth management. I wish to challenge that and this committee and these draft orders. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments, Chair. That concludes all speakers on item two. We just need a motion.

All right, I will entertain a motion.

Move approval.

Thank you, we have a motion made by Council Member Brown, seconded by Council Member Unger 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 two passes with four ayes to accept the determination of scheduled outstanding committee items. Now reading in item three, receive an informational report on the implementation and performance of the City of Oakland prompt payment policy. And we have three speakers that signed up to speak on this item.

Good morning, council members and members of the public. Pooja Shrestha, I'm the controller here, and I have a brief report for you today on the implementation and performance of the city's prompt payment ordinance. Under the Oakland's municipal code 2.06, prompt payment penalty interest is owed to Oakland vendors and grantees who submit a valid invoice but are not paid within 20 business days. These penalties are calculated automatically in the city's financial system and are administered by the accounts payable unit in the controller's bureau within the finance department. As shown in table one of the report before you, over the past five fiscal years, approximately 96% of all payments subject to the ordinance were issued within the required timeline. This indicates that prompt payment penalties are relatively a rare occurrence. While the overall compliance rate is high, performance does vary across different departments, and table two in the report provides a summary of departmental compliance rates. As you can see in the table, departments with larger complex or construction-related contracting activity tend to have lower compliance because they're managing complex contracts, multiple funding sources, and high invoice volumes. but even so, most departments maintain compliance rates above 90%. We see a parallel pattern in the dollar impacts of prom payment penalties as well. Over the past five years, the city has issued nearly 1.8 billion in total payments, and the prom payment interest totaled only approximately $394,000, which is about 0.02% of the total payments. Additional detail on prompt payment penalties by department and vendor over the last five years is included as an attachment to the report. While reviewing the data, we identified several common causes of payment delays, including incomplete or incorrect invoices that are submitted by vendors, departmental approval bottlenecks, contract compliance reviews, and funding or budget The report also outlined several opportunities to strengthen the prompt payment performance, which include expanding vendor participation in the city's centralized invoice submission portal, which will improve efficiency and enhance departmental accountability for timely approvals. And also continuing on the city's ongoing implementation of the virtual pay system, which will reduce and accelerate payment issuance. In conclusion, the city maintains a strong overall compliance rate with the prompt payment ordinance and continues to implement improvements that support efficiency, accountability, and vendor service. That concludes my presentation for today, but I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. I had brought this item forward firstly because of the experiences of city vendors that we hear in the community. Certainly for contracts issued to organizations that I work with, including in my district, this does not reflect the experiences you know folks wait seven eight nine plus months to get payment on their contracts executed so um i'm a little confused with the discrepancy and we have people coming into city council not a 9 30 a.m finance meeting but to council meetings regularly talking about They've been waiting six months, nine months, a whole year for payment. And so can you explain the differences? Because the vast, and then we also heard in the equity report, in the racial disparity study a couple of months ago, that failure to pay promptly, specifically minority and small businesses, was one of the biggest concerns that harmed our commitment to equity and contracting. So can you explain the differences between what's here versus what the experiences of the majority of city contractors face?

Right, so what is presented here is just data based on the numbers we were able to pull from our system. And I'm assuming that experiences we hear here are individual experiences of people. But what is presented in the report here is just looks at the overall total payments that are being made by the entire city. And so it just seems like maybe when you look at the overall picture, it doesn't look like the impact is that big as it looks like the compliance rate is still 96%, but the individual experiences of the 4%, that's where the invoice delays are, are probably what we've been hearing in the meetings. And I don't know, Brad, if you wanna add something.

Sure, I'll dive in a little bit more. Many of the payment problems experienced relate to the fact that non-valid invoices are submitted. Prompt pay only applies when we receive a valid invoice. I'm just going to give you a specific kind of example. If a department has agreed and let a vendor start working and we do not have a contract with them, we cannot pay the invoice. And we've seen a number of circumstances that we are trying to remedy with that. But until there is a contract, we do not have a valid invoice or ability to pay. And so that would be an example of where you might see a vendor working still through the contract process after having performed work and they may be waiting a long time because our contracting process will take that time. It would not be subject to prompt pay because again, no work should be performed by the city through a contract or grant agreement until a valid grant agreement or contract document is signed. And so that's part of what we're working on, not so much in Pooja's shop, but through our contract and procurement unit about ensuring that we do not have work done on the city's behalf prior to execution of a contract agreement. Prompt pay would then apply to the valid invoices submitted from that point onward. And I know a lot of what I have heard anecdotally and I don't want to downplay that because it's real from our vendors relates to that prior issue They are still getting into contract with the city. They don't have a contract yet. And that is why we cannot pay an invoice Thank you.

And just to follow up on that the contracting Process procurement unit is that within finance or various stuff? Okay. I Well, I will pass it to my colleagues in a minute, but I think I have a number of follow-up questions So my interest would be to hold this in committee until after the August recess so we can pull together a little more information perhaps including some specified questions to other departments, but I will pass it to my colleagues councilmember round and long

Excellent, well, thank you so much for the report. And so I guess I'll start off with the positive. I did a compare and contrast to when this report was brought in 2024, and I found that this time around, there were more specifics. because in the 2024 report, it just lists number of interest payments paid from 2022 to 2026, and it didn't really go into as much detail. Well, it was from 2020 to 2024. and it didn't really go into as much detail, and then it just listed out a handful of departments that were, I guess, had the highest percentage of not meeting this prompt payment, falling into this prompt payment penalty. So I would start first there. But I guess I am curious, I guess through the chair to Bradley, in answering Council Member Ramachandran's question, I just wanna clarify that the information in this report is actually reflective of, this isn't a situation where there was an issue with the invoice. The data here in the current report is not a situation where the invoice that was provided had an error, is that correct?

Right, this is prompt pay only occurs when we have received a valid invoice against a valid contract instrument and we have not paid within 20 business days. So it's like these are the spaces where we have had all the valid instrumentation and on the back end we have not paid in time. Sometimes there are issues with the invoice, but not typically, I would say they're not typically vendor issues. Most of the delays that we're seeing often will happen with sort of receipt mail processing type issues. It's really, really common if an invoice sits on someone's desk when they're on vacation as opposed to being received centrally through our portal, which is why our controller mentioned the fact that solutions to this process are about centralizing the intake through our accounts payable portal. and getting online our e-check systems that we can reduce the one or two days to issue a paper check on the back end.

And in this data, are we able to really figure out where the accountability lies? Because when you look at the various departments, I think I just heard that the compliance rate, being in compliance for this is if you are over 90%. And so there are, well not many, but there are a handful of departments that are under that 90% threshold. And I guess I'm curious, have we been able to really drill down like is it actually departmental or is it actually the issue maybe lies somewhere else within the city?

It's a combination of issues. So I think what you're seeing, the lowest compliance rate is easily with our CIP program, like very, very clearly is with our CIP program. Those are complicated construction contracts. They often involve draws of trustee funds in order to make the payment. They are more complicated transactions. and they typically involve split funding. And so those are spaces where you see a delay in payment. They often also require a different kind of certification for work done. So before we pay an invoice against a contract, we want to actually make sure that we have received the good, had the work done, et cetera. And so construction projects often have a little bit more of a check in them, and so that's part of the reason why they tend to be more delayed. related to the other departments where you see the delays or the impacts those candidate departments have a high volume what I would note there is part of what you're seeing is some departments are processing a greater number of invoices from vendors and grantees than the others are and so that element is also at play here I do think centralized intake and processing is your is the answer here because that allows us to with proper technology have greater accountability for where the problem lies, because we would actually be able to track things in the system by it coming in. But while we have an AP portal right now, it is not as robust as we'd like it to be, and it doesn't integrate as sort of seamlessly with our financial system as we would like it to.

I see, and so I just have two more questions. I was reading the 2014 resolution and it states that each department should have this business liaison to ensure the prompt payment. Do we have that within each of the departments?

I do not think we have the equivalent of business liaison. We have a fiscal manager for each department, and that is normally the person who would be responsible for this sort of activity. But I will happily look back at the ordinance to ensure that our fiscal managers are aware of their responsibilities under that ordinance as well.

Okay, excellent. And then I guess lastly, as I was digging into that resolution and just some of the specifics, given that I was from 2014, do we have an awareness of if there, and then I was comparing it to the California prompt payment, And so I guess, and updates have been made at the state level around compliance and what those standards are. And then I think I heard you say that our current compliance for this is above 90%. I guess I would be curious, I mean, since this, you know, the interest payments that we have to pay, no matter what, these are tax dollars. And so I think it could be most appropriate that we shorten that percentage to ensure a higher compliance. And so I guess my question is, do we have an awareness of if any local cities have moved that threshold to like 95%?

I'm not aware. Pooja, have you seen anything where you've seen changes in local, the assumed compliance rate for other local jurisdictions?

No, I have not. And the 90% that was presented in the report is just what we see now based on the data. There is no, I'm not aware of any requirement of the 90%.

Okay, excellent, thank you.

Thank you. Before moving to Council Member Wong, just also a note of gratitude for bringing this report forward with, again, like Council Member Brown mentioned, quite a bit of detail compared to before. I think I would like a little more and a little time to flesh out some follow-ups that, including some of Council Member Brown's questions and that of others, but I do appreciate what you have collected from the data that's there. Council Member Wong.

Thanks, and thanks to the chair for agendizing this item. I think maybe the disconnect that I'm seeing with this report is that even though the financial impact to the city is insignificant, right, but for the experience of the individual where you have a small business, it's significant for the delay. think one thing i just have a question around is it does seem like we're actually sliding backwards according to the report um because uh 2026 year to date we have 231 interest payments and this is payments processed through may 11th so you know back of the envelope math we'd be at 400 plus by the end of the year um is there a reason for that It's just challenges that we've had with our own internal processes or more vendors that we're bringing online. But yeah, it just looks like we're on track to hit a higher number compared to 2023 in table one.

I think most of what we see, as you can see in the table, is that the interest penalties and the number of interest penalties do go up and down from year to year, and that has a lot to do with timing as well. It depends a lot on when the grant agreement was signed, when the actual payment was made. So some years might not be so heavy based on when the grant agreement aligns with the timing or when the construction actually happens versus another year. So there's a lot of different factors that goes into play. Okay.

The other thing I'm wondering about, on a good note, is Planning and Building seems to be doing a good job of driving down their late payments. They, in prior years, had been in $12,000, $26,000. Were there process improvements that they pursued that there's lessons to be learned across the departments?

That's a great question. I think we can bring this back up to and kind of figure out if they have implemented anything in the last couple years. As of now, we're not aware of anything specific that they have done. So I think we can go back and see if it just has to do with, again, the variation of timing or if they specifically implemented something system-wise or something like that that the other departments may be able to learn from. Okay.

And I will say, since you all have noted the capital improvements, it just strikes me as like the number is much higher this year compared to the prior years. We were at 3,000 last year, but year to date this year we're at 17,000. So I hear you all on the you know the need for more checks in the capital improvement side of things but why are we setting seeing such a substantial increase this year?

I do think that some of this, as Pooja mentioned, varies year to year to year. There's just some sort of inherent variation in it. I knew CIP more recently has done, there's been more work being happening, I think, over the past CIP year, especially due to bond draw funds. So I think that may be an element of it, if you just have more work happening. One of the things that I think is really important that is sort of underlying all this data is the variances that different departments have at various times with the amount of fiscal staff they all have on hand. If you are short staff in your fiscal unit, your compliance rate will fall typically. You have fewer people trying to process invoices, they're going to be less timely at doing that. And so one of the things that I know happened in the case of like planning and building, as our Deputy Assistant Administrator mentioned, is one thing that's happened is planning and building has gotten a more full fiscal staff in that time span. And so just the number of people that you have able to work and available in processing invoices does make a difference in terms of your timeliness, especially when you're talking about a 20-day business day turnaround.

Okay, got it. That's helpful. I think there was a motion on the floor by the Chair. I'll second that.

Thank you. I'll restate my motion, and that is to continue this item to the September 22nd Finance Committee meeting. And if there are questions that you would like answers to, please direct them to the Finance Department or my team. Thank you. And it's a public comment.

Thank you. Calling in the names that sign up to speak on item three. In no particular order, you can come up to the podium, state your name for the record, and make your comment. If you're on Zoom, please raise your hand to be easily identified. Zach Thayer, Asada Olaballa, Kevin Daly, and Blair Beekman.

Here, Donna, you know what this means. I am view of prisoner of war designation as the impeachment agent of Donald John Trump. The 47th and Merkleby, the articles of impeachment, have been taken in view of bankruptcy. and view a private enterprise as the chairman of Lehman International, Lotus Capital, operations analyst in Janus Capital and Royce Investments, as the principal in TSO Capital and division head in Main Street, am the foundational and controller of that as an entity. In the view of the division, the 10.92 mitigated and removed out of the bus estate, or out of the Dolan estate, and the 6.97 moved out of the bus estate. It liquidates through Kepler Capital, Ronald Jeffrey Rockefeller, Ames Brewster, Eisenhower, Kemper, Kennedy, Rothschild, as my contractor controller. with $16.5 billion liquid as the chair and principal and Ladera Capital v. the United States, Ladera v. the State of California, and as boatyard insurance through Chicago Title. In the view of the state, I am mitigating cost recommendation and admitting as the chairman, as well, of Ocean Technologies, Rivian, and Regeneration. I, Prince Essex of England, the next monarch of England, I, Patrick Hannibal Xavier, Uling, Volanovic, Melaninchikoff, Eldon Anderson, Cromwell, challenges the right of the state in the view of fiduciary responsibility. I will be liquidating that for procedures of active combat under the Department of War Help.

Kevin Daly, I appreciate the report from the finance department and Councilmember Ramachandran for requesting the report, and the questions from Councilmember Brown and Wong as well, but my interest is to see more local businesses bidding and receiving contracts. And I'm wondering why, you know, obviously an oak dot for me, public works in elsewhere. So if we see that this record for prompt payment looks pretty good, but the council members are still receiving complaints about A LOT OF PAYMENTS THAT AREN'T PROMPT. IS IT POSSIBLE WE'RE LOOKING AT THE WRONG METRICS HERE? THAT FINANCE DEPARTMENT IS DOING A GREAT JOB ONCE THE CONTRACT IS VALID AND EVERYTHING SUBMITTED OF PAYING. AND THAT'S GOOD. AT LEAST WE KNOW THE FAULT IS MOSTLY NOT THERE. BUT IT WOULD BE GOOD TO TRACK DOWN A FEW EXAMPLES THAT THE COUNCIL MEMBERS HAVE RECEIVED OF CONTRACTORS COMPLAINING ABOUT NOT payments that aren't prompt why is this happening if it isn't isn't because if it doesn't fall under the prompt payment policy where does it fall and what can we do to get the vendors receiving correct Good payment and probably it isn't just the prompt payment policy. There's probably a whole lot else that we need to help the vendors submit the correct invoices and receive correct, uh, contracts. Now, why are people working on contracts that aren't valid yet? I mean, it's great for the city, but not necessarily for them. Thanks.

So I'm still in a quandary about the payment that is due for the 37 police vehicles, 2025 Ford vehicles, that are currently sitting on the lot at San Leandro due to an ongoing dispute of agreement. And it says that the funds are being held up because the city finance director stated that Oakland cannot tap into its equipment service fund to pay for the cars due to federal regulations. So what situations are you not able to pay because you're not in compliance with some area of regulation, rules, whatever? So the payment for whatever reason is not happening, not because you don't have the money, it's because of some other issue. So did the report validate that every situation of non-payment had to do with lack of funds or did it have to do with some other issue why payment was not being made? So I don't know if you are also interested in the fact that since we don't have the ability to pay promptly, what is the interrupting factor related to services or programs or whatever because we can't pay our vendors? or pay on these contracts. It's a more in-depth conversation besides, oh, we just didn't give them the money, but because we didn't pay, we have lost services, staff, whatever. So in the future, maybe we could have a more in-depth report when we're not able to pay promptly.

Thank you for your comments. Chair, all names have been called at this time, and we do have a motion made by Chair Ramachandran, seconded by Council Member Hwang, to continue this item to the September 22nd Finance and Management Committee meeting on- May I just add a quick comment?

Thank you. And I think what we will submit questions on will be related to outside of the payment policy what are related bottlenecks and contracting and procurement i completely hear that sometimes organizations begin to execute contracts before they get the money but speaking from experience of organizations that i know sometimes it is time sensitive that the project starts when it comes to public safety and certain timelines that the community has been informed certain tasks will begin i speak from experience of certain organizations that have felt compelled to do this because of various reasons and frustration again that, yes, probably the issue is the contract not being executed, but a little more clarity on that. It's not just organizations are going ahead and starting their projects. I'm sure that's some of the case, but I know in a lot of other cases, there are organizations that want the contract executed, so where the bottlenecks are for that, but are otherwise, because of reasons related to them getting this money in a very public way, needing to expend that at certain times, need to start the project at certain times. So we will follow up with questions when it comes to that contracting and procurement piece.

And this is Malia McPherson from the city attorney's office. So the scope of the current informational report is on the performance of the prompt payment policy. Would you like to request, through scheduling, a second informational report that's more related to the contracting information? Or are your questions going to be limited to the prompt payment policy itself?

I think it's relevant to the prompt payment policy. An identification of related factors.

Okay, I just want to make sure that we're scoping this appropriately for the informational report.

And through the chair, the administration could provide a more comprehensive report if you were to bring a separate scheduling item that articulated some of those other components of contracting, if that's preferred.

Yeah, well maybe let's continue this for now and if we we have a little time. So if we want to bring another scheduling item to replace this, I'd be happy to. After thinking it through.

consumer one uh... i have a question just based off of the discussion that we've had his colleagues uh... i'm wondering if uh... just i think the report is helpful but we need to dig in one more layer which is what is the compliance as it relates to small and local businesses and see if the compliance rate is much lower for that said that subset it might uncover Specific challenges that these small local either businesses or nonprofits that are encountering if it's possible to carve out that data Through the chair I'll just note that you know the prompt payment policy doesn't apply to the subcontractor Component right so we pay the prime contractor sure so in terms of like data availability Yeah, I'm talking about the prime contractor meaning small local business if it's possible to carve that out and

And that's one aspect of the small local business enterprise program, but certainly another component is when we have larger contractors who then engage small subcontractors to comply with the small local business enterprise. And so if you're trying to understand that, I just will advise that the report may end up also then showing a gap of information that you are,

interested in but that our prompt payment policy doesn't specifically address okay that's okay i think that that layer is actually an important thing for us to understand thank you

Okay, we have a motion made by Chair Ramachandran, seconded by Council Member Wong, to continue this item to the September 22nd Finance and Management Committee agenda. What direction to the committee to provide their questions to staff? On roll, Council Members Brown?

Aye.

Unger? Aye. Wong. Aye. And Chair Ramachandran. Aye. Thank you, item three passes with four ayes to continue this item to the September 22nd Finance and Management Committee meeting. Reading in item number four. Adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to waive the competitive solicitation process and enter into an indefeasible rights of use, sorry, rights of use agreement with SonicNet LLC, a wireline internet service provider in an amount not to exceed $720,000 for a term of 15 years to lease dark fibers to complete the city-owned network Oakland Connect. Two, enter into a memorandum of understanding to connect to the city-owned network at no charge for a term not to exceed 10 years with the following housing providers or affiliated entities to A, Oakland Housing Authority, Fruitvale Development Corporation, and Bridge Housing Corporation. And three, waiving the competitive solicitation process and entering into a fiber lease agreement with another corporate ISP LLC, DBA Monkey Brains, a local internet service provider to access and integrate city fibers into a service network to enhance broadband and availability for Oakland residents at a rate of zero dollars for a term of 10 years. And we have two speakers that signed up to speak on this item.

Is there a staff presentation?

Good morning, everyone. We do have a presentation, I believe. I'm Tony Battalla. I'm the director of the Information Technology Department, and I'll be presenting the item today. So this actually represents a major step in the Oakland Connect project. If we could go to the next slide. Oh, I have a clicker right here. Nice. Okay. So a little bit of background on this project. It is, as I said, this is a major step in years in the making. So starting around 2023, my department led an application for what was called a technical readiness grant program, and we were awarded $500,000 from the California Public Utilities Commission to develop broadband plans. in anticipation of them releasing what was called the last mile grant in the future. So we started planning for that in 2023 and we made our application, our grant submission in late 2023. And in 2024 in July, the CPUC awarded the city of Oakland $14 million, $14.1 million through the application that our department submitted. The project is called Oakland Connect. The city has a $2 million measure you match, so it's a total of $16 million for this project with the goal of building a fiber optic network that will connect into multiple affordable housing locations throughout the city as well as provide a backbone to provide free or low-cost internet service throughout East Oakland, West Oakland, downtown, and Fruitvale. Those are the primary areas that we're looking to serve. So in 2025, we completed our broadband master plan, which really brings all of the thinking behind these projects together and outlines a roadmap for it, which we're now executing. And we also executed a contract with Kimley Horn for the design and engineering of the construction. We are currently in the middle of negotiations with the state of California to access their middle mile, which is a separate project that was funded by the state, and that our design and engineering for construction is around 60%. When we reach 90%, we'll be going out to bid for that. $10 or $11 million construction project that'll build the fiber network. That is a separate item that we will be bringing forward after the recess when we are ready to award that contract. And presently, what is in front of you, so that's all the background, the context. Presently what's in front of you today is several pieces of legislation which all connect to this and tie together. These are agreements that would allow us to access our nonprofit partners' locations to construct on their private property, would grant them access to our fiber network, would name an internet service provider, Monkey Brains, who would provide the internet service. We, the city, are not going to be the internet service provider. We're going to have a company do that on our behalf. And we're also working with Sonic, which is a separate internet company, but they have a lot of fiber in the city that they've already built, and rather than construct some fiber in certain locations in East Oakland, we determined it would be better to get the IRU with them, which would give us access to that right away without having to go through the construction. So that would complete our segment. Our broadband master plan is available. Our design and engineering plans will be published when we go out to bid so you can see these construction plans and what the full network looks like. I don't have that available now. I'm gonna talk specifically about the legislation in front of you. So as I said, we're recommending actually, there is no less than five agreements that this resolution will authorize. The first one I'm gonna talk about is the Sonic Indefeasible Rights Unit, which you don't see that too often, but it's used in the fiber optic world. it's just a legal agreement that gives us access to their fiber for a period of time they will fully maintain it's you know they take care of the fiber they maintain it but we have access and we can use it in any way that we want to to connect into our network that is the first agreement we are recommending that that be moved for the authorization for the city administrator to execute that agreement and it is in the amount of i think 720 000 again this is all grant funded this is funded through the grant that i just discussed um and we are seeking a waiver on the competitive bidding we did do informal bidding it is not very easy to do bidding for fiber, dark fiber in a certain location. Only so many people have it. We did talk to, we did get information from AT&T and Xeo, and we did cost comparisons, not just cost, but also terms, access, the type of usage we would have, the locations that they would connect us into, and we determined through that process that Xeo, the agreement with Xeo for $720,000 for 15 years was by far the best plan for us. So we're recommending to move forward with that and waive the formal competitive bidding on that. And again, that completes a critical segment in East Oakland of the Oakland Connect Network. The second, we put these together as affordable housing provider MOUs, or memorandums of agreement. These are actually three separate agreements with three separate affordable housing providers in Oakland, the largest of which, of course, is Oakland Housing Authority, who has been a number one partner of ours throughout this. They were our partner when we submitted our grant in 2023. They were committed and all in with us, and they remain committed, and this is the culmination of that work, so here we are. two plus years later, two and a half years later, seeking authorization to enter into a formal agreement with Oakland Housing Authority to make this partnership official. They are doing the same thing with their board to get authorization to enter into this memorandum of understanding with us. And so in short, it does a couple of key things. It allows us an easement to go onto their property to do construction, you know, because it's private property. We have to pull our fiber into their buildings to deliver service to the residents. And it will also allow us to do some in-building wiring upgrades. We identified some affordable housing units that the actual wiring in the building is not really suitable for fiber internet, so we're gonna upgrade that as well. And we are going to commit to provide sufficient fiber to Oakland Housing Authority for the future at no cost to connect additional housing units as they become available. So it's a commitment on the city to ensure that Oakland Housing Authority has access to this fiber network for the future at no cost. So that's really a substantive agreement. That's with Oakland Housing Authority. We're doing very similar agreements with Bridge Housing on a couple of sites that they have, and Unity Council, which is, their official title is Fruitvale Development Corporation. They all have locations that will be on the network when it is constructed. I wanna say there are something like 16, Patrick could tell me, 15 or 16 different affordable housing unit sites that will be connected through these agreements. and thousands of actual units will be connected with this free internet service, which Monkey Brains will deliver. And so, of course, Monkey Brains is the final agreement. So this is an agreement with Monkey Brains that would give them access to the fiber network so they can use this to connect into their service as a service provider, and then they would actually deliver the free internet service. Through this agreement, they would commit to delivering free fiber internet service into all of these affordable housing units. they would provide wireless internet service on top of that, capped at no more than I believe it is $50 a month, it might even be $40 a month, but they would commit to that for the foreseeable future to have an affordable internet option anywhere this service is available, and our backbone network would make that expansion possible. so it's a very strong public private partnership agreement and again we're seeking a waiver of the competitive bidding here we did do a request for information in late 2022 in anticipation of all this happening and we asked internet service providers to propose ideas to us about how they might connect and serve the city of oakland and the community and Monkey Brains was by far the strongest and they have verbally agreed to commit to free internet service for the affordable housing units, low cost wireless service in the surrounding areas so they really can expand deep into the community with that and in exchange we'll give them access to our fiber network at no cost. That has a value and so it's an exchange which makes it a public-private partnership. So those are all the agreements. It's a little complex. It's a resolution with five separate agreements, but it represents multiple years of work and the culmination of a lot of people I wanna recognize. Patrick Messick and all his work, and Louisa Calampong, who couldn't be here today, she's out of town, the broadband manager in ITD. They really have spearheaded and led so much of this work, and our partners, OHA, Bridge, Unity Council, Monkey Brains, and Sonic, they've all been all in with us all the way. we are uh recommending that these be moved to the full council for consideration at an upcoming meeting um i can stop here oh we should have been going through the slides sorry you can go thank you that that's okay we're actually past time we lost that we are past time but thank you for the presentation uh colleagues questions council member brown hunger the monk

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for the report. I had the opportunity to be very supportive of the letter of support when I was working at the state level for Assemblymember Bonta and then Patrick's here in the space. And so just always so grateful for your advocacy and just really delighted to see this project moving forward. So just wanted to start there. Did have a couple questions. because I was also working for the city during 2020 when there was a major investment that was made in broadband infrastructure around like Oak Wi-Fi. And I just wanted to ask this question of, uh you know i think the comparable difference is is that i guess maybe the investment for oak wi-fi was you know maybe around four million dollars this project is about 16 million and so i wanted to ask the question of like how can we ensure that some of the i guess obstacles that uh were presented or some of the the impacts of the oak wi-fi and how like i believe Oak Wi-Fi isn't even being utilized because some of those fibers were cut. And so how can we ensure that with this state investment that we're not having the same impact of what happened prior?

Yeah, through the chair to Council Member Brown. It's a very important question. The Oak Wi-Fi project. You know, I was not here for that personally, but I'm very familiar with it and certainly worked on it when I came into this role in 2022. And I think it is not operational right now. It is not for a lack of effort or a lack of trying. It is for a lack of sufficient infrastructure to power the system. And as you had alluded to, there were several fiber cuts over the years that rendered the backbone system um inoperable and that backbone system was the bus rapid transit brt system so when the brt network was built there was fiber installed along international boulevard which would have been a pretty great Unfortunately, it was very vulnerable and it was installed very shallow in some places, just a few inches deep and thus susceptible to those types of cuts. So despite our best efforts to try to repair it in 2023 and 2024 to bring the system back up, we were unsuccessful. And we actually have amended our CPUC grant to not utilize the BRT network at all, precisely to your point, to avoid this type of situation in the future. That's also one of the reasons why in East Oakland we're recommending to do the IRU with Sonic to get those key locations that are around International Boulevard rather than rely on the BRT system. It is unfortunate. But we have made plans around that to ensure that the Oakland Connect network is sustainable. And one of the key pieces of that is building rings and loops and making sure that there's interconnectivity through those. And in a design standpoint, if you have a ring, If you get cut somewhere, the traffic just goes in the other direction and it can still get to where it needs to go, which is why fiber networks are built in, rings like that, when they're designed for broadband. So I think the difference is that Oakland Connect is purposely built for broadband service, whereas you know, other other fiber that the city has was not. And so when we try to use it for for broadband, we run into situations like that. So we were also working with the Department of Transportation, which I should have mentioned, to ensure that, you know, we're doing construction methods that are suitable for broadband. You know, the conduit is deep in the ground. It's going to be protected. It's going to be monitored. Things like that. So I see.

But the agreements that we have in front of us right now is not the construction, correct?

No, no. The IRU is a critical segment, and Sonic will maintain that fiber throughout the agreement. But no, the construction project itself is still underway.

Okay, sounds good. And then the reports, and so is that the International Boulevard from 66th Avenue to 98th then that is specifically...

that sounds about right okay yeah that's it yeah that's the sonic link from there so we're going to have fiber come around the top down macarthur and 98 to connect there and then that we'll use that sonic piece as the interconnect between 66 where the city fiber will end and 98th where the city fiber will end

Okay, and then in the report, there is a sentence, I'm not finding it right now, but it basically made the statement that other locations, as determined, who would determine additional locations? It was in the sentence around Oakland Housing Authority and it was actually naming out various locations, the town center, et cetera, and then there's a sentence that said in other locations. Who would determine additional locations?

No, that's a great question. Again, through the chair, I think that language is intentional to leave open the future possibility of future locations. Say a location that doesn't exist today gets constructed in five years. We would want the ability to bring that online if it were near the network. So all the sites that are named are going to be on the network. They're on the streets and intersections and thoroughfares where the network will be constructed. But we wanted to leave open that possibility that there could be future things. And so as we learn about those through either our housing department who's working on projects, or if we learn about those two partners who are building projects, any kind of new developments, or any other kind of opportunities. I would really call it more opportunistic in the sense that you leave open that opportunity because we don't know what might happen in five years or 10 years. And if something comes along, you want to be able to connect it.

Yeah, absolutely. And there's an amazing project being built partnership with the Black Cultural Zone in Oakland Housing Authority right on Bancroft and 73rd, I believe that is. And so that could be a possibility, right? As far as another location, given that OHA is a partner.

Through the chair. So we are working, we have already worked with the housing and community development department to get a list of upcoming projects. And we're aware of that. And we're going to install conduit in those locations to make future connections available. So they're already considered in the project. Awesome.

um i like it and i feel like i have one more question uh oh it's just more of a statement just for my colleagues um uh well first off thank you so much for i know we don't consistently always see um uh an attachment that includes like all of the providers that um you know applied and so i'm always grateful to see like okay what was this lay of the land and I've been a customer of monkey brain since 2020 and I would say that the the service is just really reliable and no hiccups and so I think that Oaklanders or whether it's East West Oakland or wherever they will be providing service they are very reliable so just wanted to make that plug thank you yeah

Thank you, Council Member Unker.

I may have misheard, so just to clarify, I think you said the agreement to provide free and low cost service was a verbal agreement?

Oh, yes. No. And it's where this will make it a formal agreement. So what we have is talked to monkey brains and discussed what a partnership would look like. So I don't mean to use a legal term, verbal agreement. I just mean that we've presented some ideas of what a partnership would look like, and they are very eager to work with us and very committed.

So that would be a subsequent resolution if we agreed to do that with them? No, no. We don't have anything in writing? We do have something in writing now.

Yeah, no, we don't, we need the authorization from the council to execute the agreement. So the agreement, this monkey brains fiber agreement would include that. Okay, thank you. It would formalize it.

Thank you, Council Member Wong.

Thank you. This is fantastic work, so thank you for doing this, you know, incredibly important initiative. One question I just have is, or actually a comment. I just wanted to know when we talk about the downtown area being underserved, it's actually really Chinatown. And I just, I don't want that neighborhood to be rendered invisible in this because one in five households in that neighborhood does not have internet access. I see it matches up with your own data in terms of the highest need and I think it's just important to call that out since many people do not know the extent of lack of internet access in that neighborhood. The other question I just have is, How are people going to sign up for the actual Internet service? How can we support you as council office since the traditional means of outreach through the Internet are obviously not going to work with the intended recipients of this service?

Through the chair. Thank you for the awareness of Chinatown. We can certainly talk to monkey brains about how they can you know, continue to serve and expand in that area. And I think with their addition of wireless internet on top of the fiber internet, it really does allow that kind of expansion cost effectively. So we can certainly talk to them to the second point about how we kind of communicate and help. I think the housing providers will be the number one partner as we get into the affordable housing units. So they'll work with the residents of those locations to ensure that when we roll those services out in those locations that the residents become aware, they know how to connect, it's free. And Monkey Brains will play a large part in that too. I think there's a larger opportunity in that expansion service, that wireless low cost service that they'll be able to provide on top of the free fiber at affordable housing units and that's where we can probably play a role in making this more visible and more aware where Monkey Brains has a presence and can connect to small businesses or to any kind of housing affordably, there could potentially be a role for us to help raise the awareness of that in the community that there is this alternative and it's low cost and it's reliable.

yeah i would love to be helpful so if you need any support and outreach to district 2 communities i am here to partner and then final question is just is any of this going to require just digging up like trenching the wires and digging up some of the roads is the coordination happening with oak dot and this isn't just to you but i've noticed just around the district of the neighborhood that there isn't that coordination happening between utilities being dug up and and the paving and neighbors expect oh we're going to have our roads paved not so it's we're just digging up the road and that's it yeah

um no we're coordinating very closely with the department of transportation and public works on the plans and we have modified our plans per their feedback to ensure that our methods as i said construction methods are compliant with what they're recommending and we're also going to follow their procedures very closely so what we have also done with them is coordinate across what their road pavement plans are so that in many locations we're able to go in before where we know they're going to do paving we'll go in before and we'll do our work and then they'll come in and pave later and then in the areas where they're not doing that we're going to do the pavement as part of our project so we're trying to you know be as efficient as possible and realize a lot of efficiencies again i don't have that data in front of me but i know there's been a lot of route modifications to say hey we're doing paving over here why don't you move over one block and then you can do your construction and then a year later we can do a fresh repave over it. So that type of coordination has been very beneficial and I'd say we've done a lot of collaboration with DOT through this to make the project as efficient as possible. In terms of the second part of your question about kind of the impact to the community, I think that's something that I hear and I would want to track. as we move through this to make sure that residents kind of understand what the impacts are, you know, small businesses understand if there's gonna be construction. It's not intended to be like deep trenching. It's more micro trenching and underground construction.

Right, okay, great. Thank you so much. I'll move the item.

Great, and I will second that. I do have... Two quick questions. So as far as well, firstly, thank you for working on this. I think it's a very exciting initiative. What is the timeline for it to be ready to be used by residents?

Thank you, Council Member Ramachandran. The timeline, so we are looking to bring the construction project for consideration later this year. The construction project's anticipated to take about a year to complete, with service planned to come live as locations come live. So we would be constructing, and as soon as a location is connected, we could turn on service there. So service would be turned up as the project is happening so that by the time the project is done all the service would be live so we're probably looking at late 2027 for our final completion of the entire project okay thank you and um approximately how many housing units would this serve In our total plans, there are 2,500 units, 1,400 of which are going to get direct internet service from this project. The other ones will be what we call fiber-ready, meaning that there's fiber at the building for future connection.

Got it. And so the proposal is a 10-year plan after that. Would we need to re-up payments? Would there be another CPUC contract? Or how does that work as far as, I mean, The fibers are in place, but I imagine there's maintenance costs and all of that.

Yeah, no, that's a great question. And so I think there would we would need to leave open the ability to, you know, do an extension of the agreement with monkey brains. And also the monkey brains will need to have agreements with the housing of providers themselves, which we will the city will not be part of. But yeah, there's After 15 years, when the IRU ends and we need to continue that, there could be a need to consider then how to maintain that connectivity. So that's something we have to think about.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, public comment.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number four, Ms. Asada Olaballa and Blair Beekman.

I do see that the matching funds of $2 million is coming from measure you. When was that agreed upon? Was that in the budget for 26, 27? I don't know, but when was that approved? You have to really pay attention to, and I think Ms. Brown alluded to this, actually when you have groups like Fruitvale Development Corporation and Bridge Housing Corporation, where they're producing developments and who's gonna be impacted. So Fruitvale, 3357 International is the development, 2700 International, 2610 International, and East 12th Street, two developments. Nothing being developed by them in Deep East Oakland. But the statement is made that they have developments in East Oakland. You also have the Bridge Housing Corporation, their developments is in West Oakland. So nothing in the Housing Authority, when y'all had that informational report, you alluded to receive and reported, but you're not going into that report. They deal with 18,000 families. But they are part of, I don't understand all of this, and y'all need to get to the bottom of it. The City of Oakland Housing Authority has connection with the federal government HUD voucher program, also with the state of California, and you're creating financial support for them coming from us.

they get money for from other sources other than the city of oakland thank you for your comments chair all names have been called and we have a motion made by council member wong seconded by chair ramachandran to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the june 16th city council agenda on roll council members brown aye hunger aye wong aye and chair ramachandran Aye. Thank you. Item four passes with four ayes to forward this item to the June 16th City Council agenda on consent. Moving on to open forum, calling in the names that signed up to speak on open forum, Ms. Assata Olavalla, Kevin Daly, and Blair Beekman.

Kevin Daly, it looks like Measure U is failing, which means we need to take a look at whether there's any other way we can increase revenue. There aren't a whole lot of possible taxes on the potential agenda right now. I know there's one coming up in rules, but we need to look, what are the odds of it passing, well, council first, but what are the odds of it passing the city? in the vote afterwards. I always like the Transportation Network Company tax to tax Lyft, Uber, and Waymo, especially as Waymo's coming in. The vehicles make the streets more crowded, even while they do provide useful services. Councilmember Kaplan introduced T&C taxes quite a few times, so it could be yanked out, probably not in time for November, unfortunately, but maybe for the next round.

So I asked you if you get any revenue from the ice rink. You do, you're supposed to at least. You get base rent. The city collects an annual base rent of $335,000 offset by required $100,000 annual capital contribution from the city towards facility maintenance. Percentage rent. Oakland earns 7% on all annual gross revenues generated by the facility that exceeds 4.3 million. Advertisement revenue sharing the city was received 50% of all net advertising revenue generated at the rate after operator retains the first 100,000. When you're going to give a report on this. When you're going to give a report on this. Again I say you are not fiscally responsible until we get a picture of all revenue.

Thank you for your comments. Chair, that concludes all speakers on open forum.

Thank you, this meeting's adjourned.