Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Good morning. We're still waiting on a couple of technical issues up here, but I do have a couple of quick announcements.

We are going to move the parking issue to first in the queue because I believe that's what most of the folks here are here to talk about and because we have such a large crowd we are going to do one minute per speaker. And I will wait until you say oh and then I'd also like to adjourn into a full council meeting because we are joined by additional council members who are not on the committee so Okay. Are you ready? Go ahead. Call this to order.

We've got three.

Good morning, and welcome to the Public Works and Transportation Committee meeting for today, February 10. The time is now 11:39, and this meeting has come to order. Before I take roll, I will provide instructions on how to submit a speaker's card for items on this agenda. If you are here with us in chambers and you would like to submit a speaker's card, please fill one and turn into a clerk representative to my left, your right, before the item is read into record. Online speaker requests were due twenty four hours prior to this meeting.

This meeting came to order at 11:39AM. Speaker request will no longer be accepted ten minutes after the meeting has begun, making that time 11:49AM. With that, we will now proceed to take roll. Councilmember Gayle? Present. Thank you. Councilmember Houston? Is excused. Councilmember Wong? Present. And chair Anger? Here. We have three members present and one excused Houston. And chair, before we begin, you can announce your announcements. Thank you.

Nope. Just that we are gonna move the parking item to the front. And and we will adjourn into a special special full City Council meeting. We need to take a vote on that. I will make that motion that we adjourn into full counsel. Thank

you. Due to the presence of council member council member Brown, we will adjourn this into a special full council with motion made by council member chair Unger, seconded by council member Gayle to adjourn the meeting of the public works and transportation committee meeting and to convene into a special meeting of the full council at 11:41AM on roll. Councilmember Gayle? Aye. Councilmember Houston is excused. Councilmember Wong? Aye. And chair Unger? Aye. Thank you.

We will now proceed as a full council. Moving to our first item. Item one is approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting on 01/27/2026. And you do have you do not have any speakers for this item.

I'll move that we accept the minutes. We

do have a motion made by chair Unger, seconded by council member Gaio to accept the draft minutes of the committee meeting on 01/27/2026 as is on roll. Council member Gallo? Aye. Council member Houston is excused. Council member Wong? Aye. Thank you. And chair Unger? Aye. This motion passes with three ayes, one excused. Houston? To accept approval of the draft minutes of the committee meeting on 01/27/2026 as is. Moving to item two, determination scheduled outstanding committee items, and this is also known as your pending list. You do have one speaker for this item.

Okay. Do we have any updates from staff or council?

None at this time.

Alright. Let's hear from our speaker please.

Miss Asada.

I'd like to request that if there is a report that can be given on the ticketing of stolen vehicles that are parked, a report on where we stand when we have to store RVs and cars that have been towed related to the homeless encampment issues. A report on how we are storing our homeless items because they're saying that's not working correctly. We need to have a report on the effectiveness of street cleaning and I'm asking that because many of the efforts to street clean involves cars that are parked and the street personnel has to go around, so we're not being very effective with that. A report on how we are storing hazardous materials or dealing with hazardous materials that are part of the illegal dumping component. We need to look at Caltrans announcement this morning of the closing of nine eighty as a recommendation from Caltrans because of the homeless situation being untowardable.

We need a report on

Thank you for your comment, miss Asada. And please note the presence of council member Houston at 11:43AM. Thank you.

Do we have a motion to accept the pending list? Alright. I'll second that.

We have a motion made by council member Gallo, seconded by chair Unger to accept the termination schedule outstanding committee items as is on roll. Council member Gallo? Aye. Council member Ray Houston? Aye. Council Member Wong? Aye. And chair Unger? Aye. This motion passes with four ayes.

To accept the termination, schedule outstanding committee items as is as discretion of the chair. Moving to item five. I will now read an item into record. Re receive an informational report for the city administrator on the proposed rec reorganization of the Department of Transportation parking division, including, one, the rationale of the proposal, two, a fiscal impact statement including any new or unfrozen staff costs in an analysis of the operational cost savings, three, a summary of the outreach that occurred to the Department of Transportation staff, the public, and the parking division's collaboration with other departments. And you do have 40 speakers for this item.

Okay. 40 speakers. That's great. So I want to I appreciate everyone who came out today. There's been a lot of sort of Sturm and Drong around this potential change to the parking division and I just wanted to take this opportunity to get some answers, some some transparency and and highlight what what's going on here. Know, I'm not the kind of person who gets wedded to any particular org chart. I care about the functionality of the department. And in the case of parking, you know, I have a few criteria. Obviously, our revenue is strong and growing. Our abandoned autos being removed efficiently and quickly.

Is the public right of way, being maintained clear and safe? And are workers themselves safe, experiencing high morale, and being given the agency and dignity they need to do their jobs well? If those conditions are met, then I don't really care if the parking division reports to the old woman in the shoe at Children's Fairyland as long as we're we're doing everything that we need to. But I don't know yet whether this reorg, satisfies those conditions, that's what we're here to to find out today. So I appreciate the city administrator and staff for being here, for preparing this report.

And I think it's important to recognize that parking is about a lot of different things. Obviously, revenue is a big piece of it, and I'm not gonna give short shrift to the fact that we need to do everything we can to maximize revenue. But it's about more than that, and I think that's why we see advocates here today from our business community who wanna make sure that there are safe routes to their shops and that there is adequate turnover in parking. And we also have advocates here from bicycle and pedestrian world who probably will say that parking isn't about money at all, but it's about how we maintain the right of way in the safest way possible. So, you know, I I have some initial feelings about this, but I think we can we can get into into questions there, and and I appreciate all my colleagues for for having questions.

So I wanna thank you again for delaying this until after the sort of chaos of Super Bowl weekend and delaying the the move until after we had a chance to ask these questions. So, thank you for that. So, why don't we hear a report from our staff first and then we can move to questions.

Thank you to the chair and I'll certainly give space for director Johnson as well as we have Deborah Edgley on the line. I think she's on the Zoom call as well. So, certainly want to echo your sentiments with respect to the acknowledgement of the fact that there's been a lot of work put forth and a lot of transparency with respect to conversations that have been had as we started this process which began with discussing it with leadership from both the Department of Transportation and the Department of Finance to figure out is there a path forward that we certainly want to explore, acknowledging the challenges that we've had historically when we talk about you know our parking operations, but also recognizing the opportunities and the benefits that we've realized over the last several years with respect to you know the transition into the Department of Transportation. So, I have to make sure I acknowledge that. But also acknowledging the fact that there has been a lot of work that's been done with respect to over the last two cycles, the acknowledgement of the collection of revenue which, this body has certainly and the public has really placed a lot of emphasis on making sure that the revenue collection side is certainly top of mind, but also with that being said, wanting to acknowledge the realities that there are those levels of internal controls and customer service that we have to make sure are in place and continue to be maintained.

I won't seal director Johnson's thunder, but just very quickly, the acknowledgement that this report, you know, proposed shifting the day to day parking operations to a couple of areas into the finance department and as well as the Oakland Police Department while keeping overall parking policy and curb management in the Department of Transportation who quite candidly do a fantastic job of doing that. And also the acknowledgement there's a minor addition in staffing costs which, you know, director Johnson can certainly speak to as we get into deeper into the the presentation or even just some of the questions that you all may have. The administration certainly proposes the reorganization to the city's parking functions so that finance can we can work towards addressing the the enforcement component, customer service, citation collections, coin collection, garages slash off street parking lots, and residential parking permits. And as I already stated, you know, DOT remains retains the policy curb slash parking infrastructure in OPD which anecdotally, as I understand, about 70 to 80% of the abandoned auto operation is handled in many respects by the department by the Oakland Police Department. So,

I will pause there and certainly give some space to Director Johnson and also Deborah Edgley who is on the line. Thank you, Chair. The proposed reorganization does transfer some functions currently housed within Department of Transportation to finance an OPD. The key element is to align with the existing functions within those departments. I'll start with OPD.

As the city administrator mentioned, roughly 70% of the operations related to abandoned auto are housed within the police department. The hope for realigning abandoned auto functions there is to ensure that there's continued and built capacity for ensuring that our right of ways are clear of vehicles that are not operable and that our neighborhoods are clean and secure. And OPD has the functions by which to do that. This would involve moving the unit that's currently working on that in total over to the police department including the supervisors over that unit. As it relates to my department, the finance department, the functions that would be moving are related to day to day parking enforcement.

That is sort of the ticketing and collection functions, meter collections, the parking citation and mobility assistance center, and some of the administrative operations over garages and other similar issues. The idea behind with finance is to align with best practices in collections that do already exist within finance and to synergize that. I'll give you some examples as it relates to a patron coming in and paying a parking ticket. That patron, while maybe not so super happy to pay that ticket, deserves from the city of Oakland an efficient, fair, and speedy collection process on that ticket that they deserve seamless access to our methods of payment including payment plans. And the city deserves an efficient collecting process to ensure that we are able to rapidly collect on that revenue via the Via interceptor or other mechanisms.

When it relates to revenue collections, time is money in a very specific way. Delays increase delinquency and having very tight and clear collection practices is super important to ensuring that we're maximizing our revenue. That's both from citations and garages. I will note that the Citation Assistance Center is also under planning to handle ticketing operations or the review of ticket ratings that are coming from our new speed enforcement cameras. And so additional, oversight of that operation is necessary as we increase the work and bandwidth of that.

And that's a plan that was, a grant that was proposed and received by our DOT, thankfully, to increase public safety. And so we want to ensure that all these operations on the customer service and financial side are really aligned, do align with what we do in finance and we want to build those synergies to ensure that we have again good customer service, good and timely collections process. There are some fiscal impacts that are tied to this proposal. There are two key ones we're looking at. The first one that we will find as it relates to the Department of Finance, parking would come over as its own bureau and so we would need a new bureau lead over this particular item.

So we would be creating a bureau administrator position. There's a small delta between the current lead job classification and a bureau administrator of about $16,000 annually that we would need to make sure is done to ensure that that bureau administrator aligns with all the other bureaus administrators within finance. The other position and that candidly I would recommend regardless of whether or not this move takes place is to include that we have a parking supervisor directly over the parking citation assistance center. That center has right now three senior public service reps and three public service reps that are reporting directly to the manager of the whole division. As I mentioned earlier, the citation camera, program, review of those tickets is coming into this unit.

And candidly, that function had always been, that function deserves a dedicated supervisor to oversee it on a day to day basis and provide support, to those staff. For a little bit of history and I'm sure Ms. Edgley will jump in and add additional color to this. Parking used to sit within the finance department. It was reorganized at the same time the redevelopment agency was dissolute was dissolved.

At that point in time, the citation assistance center and meter collection stayed within finance while enforcement operations went to the police department and the then Oakland Public Works Department handled meter repair and some of the other functions. When Public Works and DUT was separated, one of the first actions that happened as a result of that was parking enforcement was transferred from police to DOT. And then subsequently, the citation and sentencing center and meter collections were moved from finance to DOT. So this is to say, and I understand the concerns, of our staff members, there has been a lot of ping ponging of these organizations. I understand that that can be disruptive.

I will say both, on behalf of myself, and speaking for the chief of police, we really value the work that these employees do. As potential new members of our departments, we really respect their work and we are looking forward to engaging with them and ensuring that they have the tools, equipment and support they need to support to provide their functions. I'm happy to take any questions that you may have as a body or wait until after your public commenters.

Thanks. Let's do questions first and then public comment. Yeah. Ms. Ederley, are you have your hand up? Ms. Deborah, you may unmute yourself. We can also wait and if there are specific questions that she'd like to jump in on. Did she have something prepared or Just like the announcement she did. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We do have Ms. Ejerli on. So a couple of questions. You know, I think we want to start with the problem we're trying to solve. On the revenue side, how have parking revenues been in the last year?

So we have not generally achieved our targets as it relates to parking overall. We did a little bit better on citations last year. But we have, over the last couple of years, seen some declines in that particular space that are not entirely, and I would say this is not entirely due to statutes. Some of these are economically driven. It's not entirely the pandemic did affect us.

But we do note that we have some delays in process which I think are our larger concerns on the collection side. I would note that the timeline to get a parking citation into collection is again really, really important for delivery beyond just citing the parking patron that may have violated one of our muni codes. I would also argue similar to that same space, we have seen a decline into greater and greater negatives in the fund balance in our multi purpose reserve fund which is the resources that are supposed to be self sustaining from our parking garages. Again, this is large to a large extent economic factor driven by the pandemic, but we need to ensure that we have good management of those contracts to ensure that those move back to being a space where they're at very least cost covering, if not revenue generating for the city.

And can you help me understand the how there are not gonna be additional costs accrued by these new positions? Because the I believe that the person who was overseeing parking before has been moved elsewhere, so his salary still exists. So we'll be creating essentially two new positions.

So we have enough salary savings within the current fiscal year to cover this and just about any other reorg. When we move an employee in over to another vacancy, you actually sort of cover that vacancy. And so you do create a new vacant position. That is what we're at deleting. I will note that the new supervisor for the parking citation center is a new cost. I fully understood that that is new cost. But again, it's one that I would recommend we would do regardless of this particular move. Again, in my opinion as manager, that unit does need a dedicated supervisor to oversee it on a day to day basis.

So in our previous committee

No, I didn't.

In our previous committee, I think we recognized that a lot of the reason why our Q4 report was better than expected was because we had so many vacancies and the hiring freeze. So obviously, we can hire all sorts of people, but this does seem to me that we are going to instead of having one person doing this job, we're gonna have one person still being paid to do a different job and two new people create it. So we're gonna have to collections are gonna have to increase by the amount of both of their salaries in order to get to zero.

I think we can achieve some additional revenue collection targets with the additional integration within finance. I do think we can get some better performance.

DOT presented this plan at the last budget and that was incorporated into our budget. And so did you have confidence in the plan six months ago? Why are we changing it now in the middle of the year rather than at the fiscal?

I would note that finances taking direction from the city administrator's office in terms of sort of that timing and whatnot. I know we don't want to wait on opportunities as it relates to revenue collection for this body. You've made it very clear to us in our conversations at our prior finance committee meeting and over the course of the cycle that collection practices are really, really important to you. We know that they're very important to the organization. They support the salaries and wages of our employees across the organization. And so this is a priority I know for the city administrator. I defer to him if he has any additional comment on that particular time.

Sure. To the to the chair, members of the body. And that that's correct. Just a recognition that in our finance committee, when there's ever whenever there is something that needs to be addressed, I think this body has consistently said, hey, look, when are we moving forward? And so the identification of the revenue collection piece, and it's certainly not to say that there isn't confidence what was presented six months ago, it's just the reality that look we're trying to move as aggressively as possible with the recognition of what's still outstanding. And so, we have the opportunity to address those issues to go ahead and move forward with the implementation of key internal controls, that's certainly important to us so we wanna move as quickly as possible to do so.

Okay. Moving to the abandoned auto piece and and if that moves over to OPD, does OPD have the capacity to do that? I realize they're doing a large chunk of it now but asking them to do more. I think reports show that when DOT was doing abandoned auto removal, the numbers of abandoned autos removed went up. And we're also seeing the numbers of abandoned autos that we have going up every year. So does OPD have the capacity to do this and do they have the capacity to do this without devoting any sworn officers to oversight? Like I understand we can move the 15, you know, people over there, but we can't afford to have any OPD officers who are taken away from police work to supervise this.

To the chair, and I'll certainly defer to miss Egerly who I know met specifically with the chief, one of the things I wanna acknowledge, as I understand, historically, it was in the Oakland Police Department, as I understand, there were four individuals that were assigned at that time. I think over the years and the wisdom and the leadership within DOT acknowledged and really advocated for increasing the number of folks that are doing this work. So, that has helped tremendously. But but, I will say that within the within the Oakland Police Department, Chief Beard was very clear, you know, we're we're doing a lot of this work anyway. So, this does increase their ability to do a lot more.

One of the things that also that we're mindful of the fact that that it has been stated consistently that there is a safety component and this is coming directly from within the department of transportation that has been stated, there is a safety component and there are concerns for our employee safety when we are addressing some of these abandoned autos. And so, that's something we acknowledge and realize that. But, I don't wanna and miss Ejerlea can certainly chime in because she did have I don't wanna speak for her but I wanna give her the space to kinda chime in on that conversation as well.

Hi, miss Deborah. I have allowed you to speak. Please unmute yourself and begin.

I just unmuted muted myself. Can you hear me?

We can. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you. Yes. I met with the chief and his staff to see if this, request to move abandoned auto was feasible for his department, and I expected someone from the police to be there. They said they would, but, however, the chief, felt that it was beneficial, that it would be better coordination between the two departments.

We talked about the fact that sometimes people will call the Department of Transportation, and it turns out that and they wait for however long they have to wait and then find out that it's really a stolen vehicle, so it ends up in the police, lap anyway. I specifically asked him, about additional sworn staff. He said it would not take any sworn additional sworn staff. They would the three supervisors that are coming over with, the unit would report directly to the current lieutenant that is handling that.

Okay. Sort of moving to the question of of finance, do you all have the capacity to do this work? That's a lot of additional responsibility. We are prepared. I

have the pleasure of dealing with an incredibly resilient department. I think we do have the capacity to do this, to take on this work at this current time. We're going to continue to connect the what would then become the parking bureau and integrate it with our revenue and operations bureau. That particular bureau has a lot of the experience. And again with our synergy across those two operations, I think we can actually get some immediate wins and some key performance, key performance metrics met in this space. And so I'm really looking forward to ensuring that we have that alignment and I do think we have the capacity to bring this particular function in as a separate bureau.

And I very much believe that you have the capacity to do the collections and the call center and all that. It's the boots on the ground piece that I'm a little more concerned about, like whether you have the expertise and the ability to oversee that kind of sort of day to day ticketing and meter collection work.

No. I think we Bradley,

do you do you mind? Absolutely. Let me just say let me say two things. I I'm a I'm a real proponent of fiduciary responsibilities belong in the department in the Department of Finance. So that was kind of my first, when I first looked at this.

In terms of boots on the ground, the Department of Finance ran parking enforcement for over twenty three years. So we understand boots on the ground. We have noncompliant officers that go out to businesses. That's boots on the ground. And the other the other thing for me was when I came back to the city, the citation center operations were 10:30 to 01:30, and I just found that to be you know, in terms customer service, you want every opportunity for customers to come in and give us this money, their money.

Now as of December 8, they do have longer hours. But in in finance, we run business tax and and other operations that are very forward facing. So I don't think having enforcement officers on the ground is gonna be any different than what we did for twenty three years.

Okay. Thank you. Moving on, I think the fullness of this room is testament to public interest in this. I've gotten a lot of reach out from the business community around this. Did you all engage with the the business community or the sort of bicycle pedestrian advocacy community prior to announcing this move?

Through the chair, we did not. Yeah. Know there was a request from the Bikepad Committee or coalition for some engagement. But quite candidly, I'm I'm very much a proponent of the fact that there's still staff work that needs to get done. So we're not gonna get into a space of having a a broader public conversation when the staff is still trying to do their work and put the plan together and have the requisite conversations with the department, with labor, etcetera. So, we were not And, I did not give them the direction to have those conversations.

No. If this moves forward, think it's important that we engage with both the business community and the the bike ped community to make sure that, you know, there there are concerns that that we might not be thinking of and and what they need to, you know, especially make make the the right of ways clear and safe.

Through the shared sale, I don't disagree with you. I think at this point now that we have this thing, courtesy is given to the counsel first.

Okay.

But I also am committed to having those conversations now that you have something more substantive in place that we can have a fuller conversation with repositive stakeholders outside. And I did have a very brief conversation with someone from the uptown downtown bid on this weekend about this, so I think that's an important discussion to have and I think it clarified some misinformation that was being communicated. So that conversation was helpful.

And along those same lines, have you completed to the satisfaction of all parties any meet and confer or labor discussions around this?

Through the through the chair, I'll certainly defer to miss Ederley because I know both she and Brett have been having a number of conversations. Do recall that back in December there was a request for meetings and there was a large gap in time by which we were given dates. As I understand, but miss Ederley, please feel free to add any more color and context.

Okay.

Yes. We have I have met and Bradley has met with both SEIU and Local twenty one. I think 21, we've had three meetings and answered, a number of questions for, I think, around 26, 27 questions. And with SEIU, we have met, and we are going to meet with the staff. SEIU requested that we meet with the staff, and that meeting was put off, but we're gonna finish that, and so we should be complete once we do that meeting with the enforcement officers.

Okay. And then just just wrapping up two questions. Are are you aware of other cities that house parking within finance?

I did not I did not do a survey of other cities terms of the org that operation.

And then and then finally, how will we measure the success of this? It's not just revenue, there are other factors. How how will we measure that if this change goes through?

Absolutely. I think we need to, so it's not just the revenue collection. I think we need to actually ensure we have good metrics consistently done on our time to collection, our compliance with our internal cash handling policies. Would candidly, from my perspective, the even the subjective opinions candidly of our staff are really important to me. I hope that at the end of a transition window we have gotten some good buy in and some good thoughts and some additional feedback from them that we're moving in the positive direction around this.

And I think that's a continual assessment that every manager needs to do. Would want to see improvement on our performance as it relates to our garages. I would want to see us employ successfully delivering on the new proposal that has come out regarding speed cameras and ensuring that we are accurately moving through that ticket quantity and backlog. I would want to ensure that we have any backlog of tickets that is currently existing performed. I would want to ensure that our voided ticket process is both audited, collected and resolved because there's a backlog in that space.

So there's a couple of these spaces where we have some technical backlogs. On the OPD side, I would ensure that I'm sure that the chief would say he would wanna see the volume and number and speediness by which we have vehicles moved off the street removed. And we wanna we'd wanna ensure, and this is really important, that we maintain connection with DOT in these spaces. DOT remains the policy arm in this space. Which curbs should be painted blue or red?

What where should we have a residential parking permit from? We will need to maintain an ongoing and clear line of communication with DOT to successfully operate these programs both between OPD and within finance within DOT. So those are all metrics of success that we will need to achieve as we move through this transition.

Yeah, I'm not sure how

we measure the success of the bicycle and pedestrian safety piece of this, but I would encourage you to work with some of our advocates to see if they have any good ideas. So those are my questions. I wanna, turn it over to Councilmember Brown as, coauthor of this informational request, and then we can go from there.

Excellent. Thank you so much Chair Unger and also you know thank you to Administrator Johnson and Director Bradley Johnson for just you know giving us the space to have conversation, especially given, you know, just outreach from, you know, employees, right, wanting some more transparency in the process. So I have a couple questions. I would love to actually start kind of where council member Unger started around you know what is the problem we're hoping to solve. And I just want to pick up on something that you mentioned director Bradley around the timeline for the collections.

You mentioned that very briefly. I guess I'm curious around you know what is you know I guess what is currently occurring and what is the goal? Right.

So the optimal timeline and I would, I don't have my collection people here on me, but the key timeline that we would want to move is we want to move through no more than three months to trying to get to a final collection space if at all possible. That's kind of the magic window for collections. For us that means interacting with a parking patron as soon as we possibly can, moving through the appeals process quickly as it relates to anyone that has filed a valid appeal, moving to the intercept or other collection process or ideally moving to everyone to a payment plan. We do offer payment plans within the city. We have a number of circumstances where we have had some customers unfortunately subject to dual collection where they're receiving both a payment plan and they've been sent for DMV intercept.

I want to ensure that that sort of thing is not occurring because that's not good for our parking patrons to boast and there's fees that accrue when that sort of thing happens. Is that helpful? Sorry.

Yes, definitely helpful. I'm hearing that the goal is a three month collection and what's currently taking place now.

We're seeing things that are delayed sometimes beyond six or seven months in terms of the collection window. One of the things that one of our first steps is to actually open up and ensure that we have a really detailed look at the backlog of where we sit. We know that we're seeing a backlog and the data that we're able to receive right now as it's transferred over from finance just in terms of the dates of the collection. Obviously, as we the function would move into finance we do a lot more detailed analysis around what needs to be looked at there.

I see. And I also know that there's some historical precedent around you know this particular division kind of moving you know at one point it was in finance and then it went to OPD and now it's in Department of Transportation. I guess I'm just curious do you have an understanding of kind of in that first move why? Like why did it move from being in finance in that first time to then OPD and then to Oak Dot and then I guess maybe the follow-up question there is you so what were the learnings so that now we're kind of circling back and it's back here and with the goal of it being in finance.

Totally understood. So to come back to that time span, that is 2012. That was probably the largest set of reorganizations we did in the city. That's the point in time actually where we broke down the not just the redevelopment agency, but some of you will remember we used to have an agency called CEDA, which was actually the combination of your housing, planning, and economic development departments. Those actually were separated in that moment.

So there's a very, very large series of reorganizations that happened across the city at that time. Then city administrator Santana wanted wanted to see a different org structure sort of broadly across the organization. She felt at that point in time that, and I think the specifics was that the enforcement operations, I think this is where I think the driver was if I remember correctly, the enforcement operations should be co located with police in terms of driving additional one revenue collection and enforcement of public order. That was her sort of perspective, I think, at the time. I'm doing that off of memory.

It was it's been a while. At that point in time, the revenue the citation collection and meter collection margins did stay within finance. They're actually incorporated into our revenue management bureau. And again, the meter infrastructure elements had gone over to public works which then ended up transferring over into DOT when it was when DOT was separated from public works. In terms of lessons learned, there is no such thing as a perfect organizational structure.

Like, that goes without saying. Maintaining the connective tissue between the elements of the city is really, really important. I want to make sure that at the city administrator's direction, you know, based on this reorganization, that we maintain that connectivity, that we have units that are specializing in what those key functions are. In my mind, DOT is very clearly the policy lead arm on how parking policy should work and they should be able to lean in and focus on that function. As Ms.

Egerly noted, I think we have some particular advantages related to revenue collection and customer service within finance. And we've noted earlier that there's a lot of this operation related to abandoned autos already happening in OPD and synergy in that operation should hopefully allow for greater efficacy and more delivery of services.

I see. Thank you. And that kind of leads me to my next question that was going to be around just like policy decisions. But it also reminded me that in our last budget cycle I know that the council made you know huge investments in ensuring that we could bring on more parking technicians right and we know that as a result of that that you know of course would further increase revenue as well and so I guess I'm just curious with even well if you know the status of you know how that hiring is going and then also you know how does that kind of encompass this you know switch over to finance and being able to manage an even larger step?

Absolutely. I want to thank DOT for doing a really, really aggressive job of getting the list set up for parking control technician. That's probably the, the bulk of the FTE in this group. We do have a list. There is we have every intent to hire everyone that's qualified and eligible off that list to fill our vacancies.

DOT has also done a large work, which I think is really important to moving our parking control technicians who want to from part time status to full time status. That's been a long term desire of both our bargaining partners and SEIU and of this body to ensure that we have where people want to be full pies and employees of the city that they're able to do that. So we have, DOT has made really good progress over the last six months in doing that. We do have a list. We do the intention would be regardless of the entity to fill those vacancies.

They are revenue generating positions. I will note there also is a list created for parking parking control technician two to help support the abandoned auto work. There's some questions around that that we're still having with our bargaining partners. But DOT has been really, really important in getting that classification established and getting a list for it as well. I think we'll want to double down and ensure that we have good lists.

Also for the public services reps who serve in our citation assistance center, we right now only have a three person meter collection unit for the entire city. That's another space that I think we'll want to look at as we go into the budget process. I'll be as director of this of these entities, make sure we have clear evaluation of any spaces that are of any needs that are happening here. Again, this unit is largely revenue delivering. And with that as a lens, should augmentations be necessary, they should be able to more than cost recover if we find those needed in the future.

But again, we have really good statuses on hiring and DOT has done a really good job of setting us up for success in this unit.

I see. But and so ultimately it's still a work in progress to get those technicians

I think we are, we just did a hiring round if I remember correctly for the parking control technicians. There'll be another round that will be necessary when we move staff permanently into the abandoned auto roles. They're currently sort of duly occupying for their prior spaces parking control technicians and their new roles until we get permanent assignments. The second those assignments happen permanently through internal promotion, we'll have a series of vacancies and we'll move really aggressively then to fill those as well. But there isn't a list which is the key thing to being able to move.

Okay.

Let's see I just want to see which question I want to ask. I guess I am really curious around like the joint responsibilities between you know the finance department and also Oak Dot and just really having an understanding of how those would be managed. I believe the report states you know parking meter, parking fee collection technology, expansion, installation, repair also included associated contracts, apps, machines, contracts, and payment options listed as joint responsibilities.

So key elements of those joint responsibilities, if you think about a single space meter, right, There is both a meter head that would remain DOT's job in terms of servicing and there's actually a collection box. And that actually sits within the meter collection unit. And even when these were separated units, we have to make sure that those are, we're using the same technology, we're aligned with it. You typically do those through master contracts and so we would collaborate in that process. We use a number of apps to ensure that we have the ability for patrons to pay for parking across a number of spaces.

We would want to maintain that sort of diversity of ability for people to pay for meter collections, but also to drive the parking policy that DOT is responsible for. So as we would look to onboard new apps, we would want to make sure that they are not only efficient and compliant with sort of revenue collection practices, which is really, really important that we've got audit logs, good trails. We make sure that any vendor that's remitting resources to us is doing so in a financially responsible way, but also has to meet obviously our parking policy goals across the organization and be properly audited. And so those are spaces where we would need to collaborate. Again, even in small spaces DOT will still be responsible for submitting and making sure we have properly established residential parking permit zones.

The citation center will issue those permits. We obviously have to interface with one another to know is this a new zone, are we changing its own boundaries, who's sitting there, do we have the right permit to be issued. So there's lots of communication that will continue to happen.

I see and I think maybe the question that comes to mind maybe it's twofold you know do we have the internal infrastructure to manage that and or in the staffing I know the staff reports only mentions the bringing you know the staff that you're going to bring on which is ensuring that we have infrastructure to actually go about that joint responsibility.

I think we're not DOT remains DOT is maintaining its, you know, engineer positions that do a lot of this work and its policy people. We in finance will have the current staff coming over. I mentioned the one add immediately is the supervisor of that citation center, so I think can do actually do a lot of work to ensuring a lot of this collection activity happens. We won't necessarily have a person in that role right away, although I'm going to move, I would move pretty quickly to get some interims of award and coverage over that unit. The, as I mentioned earlier, you know, these are the bare minimums in my mind for taking over this function.

Again, think the biggest one is the one position ad that I would recommend one way or another. I remain let's say, I reserve the ability to like, as we would do an assess, to assess this whole function as it comes in and make recommendations to this body through that budget process. Should we find anything else that is necessary, like I want to reserve that capacity as we see it. I want to make sure that we're maximizing our ability to comply with our parking policy, generate revenue, and be customer friendly. And so if there is something, especially something that I think is cost covered, I will make sure we propose it to you as we get through this process.

So this is what we've been able to sort of see on the front end that we would need to do an immediate move. If there's anything that else that we discover in this process, we'll want we'll want to get to that as well.

Excellent. Thank you.

Alright we have council member Wong next in the queue.

Thank you through the chair and thank you for scheduling this item. I think for me it's just really important that the city as the city we engage in data driven decision making above all and, you know, I've heard some compelling reasons as to why we might reorg but I don't see it in the report. And so I will be blunt, I found the report to be inadequate in terms of providing the rationale for for doing the shift. I I would like to see in a supplemental supplemental that we can see the historic parking revenue generation including before and after the reorg that happened in 2012. I'd like to see a breakdown of you know meters, how much was collected through meters, garage, tax, fines.

And then to council member Unger's point, I've heard a lot from the business community. Would actually, I know this is not necessarily a direct causal relationship but I've been interested in seeing overlaying the sales tax revenue alongside that to see if there's an inverse relationship at all between parking revenue generation as well as sales tax. And then there were some things that were commented on abandoned vehicles, collections time, parking fines that were not collected. I just I want to see the data that that substantiates this and see what are what were the collections time before the reorg versus now. What was the abandoned vehicles?

How many vehicles did we tow before the reorg versus now? And that's just my main goal is I want the transparency of the data and I think that's important for a decision of this type.

Council member Houston.

Good morning, Bradley. To the chair, many of my questions was asked from council member Unger and Wang. I just wanna for the record, are we moving the towing over to the police department from DOT? Is that what we're doing?

To the chair, yes.

Yes. Because let me share this with you from my personal experience last week. I had worked directly with DOT to remove 38 that I moved off of city property, 38 stolen vehicles, two of them was in felonies and that happened for about a couple of days and I would not want the police to be out there removing these cars and data collecting the data that you just asked about council member Wayne. I wouldn't want that to happen. So I just wanted to hear if that's what we're trying to do. I I totally disagree with that part. But I do want to hear from the public first before I ask any more of my questions.

Councilmember Gaye.

Yes. Thank you. And thank you for the information. It's about the delivery of service to the community, not the collection of resources. We gotta make that very clear because I was here when we made some changes. Not only did we deal with with transportation, but we also dealt with the crossing guards. Why did we take the crossing guards from the police department and gave them over to transportation? Not only for the safety issue, for the delivery of service with the schools, but at the same times the police department had gone and reduced the numbers, what are we now at today? 500? When I remember we started here, we were at eight fifty, eight zero five.

And we don't have the capacity to be able to be on the streets like our parking assistance through transportation. The community has a lot of respect and don't listen and don't see it as an intimidation. Right? And the only time being in the hood all the time doing delivery service and not sitting in a city hall talking about it. What what what helps me out a lot you talk about abandoned carts.

I can call transportation and go there immediately. The police well, I gotta give a 100 reasons why I gotta have a police officer there. And so that work is done, but then but then at the same time, we're at a new time where when we made the change and where we are today, we didn't have the bicycle program with the new lanes, the new this, the new that. And some of our business areas became AC transit related. They became red zones, but the Department of Transportation were able to respond to my calls to address those needs and were not challenging or intimidated because 90% of the time, the police say, well, they're too busy.

And the only time that an officer will respond to me that if a vehicle is blocking your driveway. That's the only time they'll come and say, sir, you gotta move your driveway so the gentleman can get out of his home. And but but for me, I wanna hear from the public, but we made some changes to make sure that the public and the residents received a service level that was not intimidating, that was you know, people were there on time, that were respectful, and that's why we're we are where we are today with the Department of Transportation and Parking. Right? And and and I'll leave you with this last thought.

I still remember, you weren't here. When I used to have the motorcycle officers who would number a good 16, they went down to eight, and now they're down to how many? I never see them around. But at the same time, when there's an issue of parking violation, parking on the on the sidewalk, it's the Department of the vehicle right here that come out of respectfully says, sir, I'm sorry, but you cannot block the sidewalk. And people move. We don't have to have a confrontation and a challenge that if I send an officer, well, it becomes a whole different discussion. So, anyways, I wanna hear from the public, but I think we have to recognize why we made these changes in the past. Thank you.

Council member Houston.

Yeah. Through the chair I do wanna make it clear that when those 38 vehicles that I removed personally and had DOT to take them away, the police department did come out and they did work in unison with them to get the cars that were felony charges like shooting, homicide, it was two of them on that lot. So I do wanna hear the public.

I've got one more question. You know, obviously I'm not an expert in these processes, but it just strikes me as someone looking from a bit of a remove that the a structure whereby DOT does the actual boots on the ground work, finance does the collections and call center, OPD does the stolen vehicles, and DOT does the true abandoned seventy two hour vehicles strikes me as sort of a natural division of labor. Are you willing to consider other structures than the one you've presented today?

I'm gonna say the finance will do as is instructed by our city administrator. I do want to defer to him and his wisdom in terms of what would be done there. If there is a request of through him or through, you know, action that is taken through at the policy level, finance will make sure that we deliver as best we can services in whatever structure. But city administrator, please.

Sure. Through the chair and members of the bodies, we're certainly open to exploring all options. I think the analysis that was done initially to get us to this point, we looked at the risk through a specific lens, but certainly open to explore of options that will make this, like you said, a natural division of labor. But in its current form, I think there is an opportunity to explore something a little bit more broader.

Council member Gaiau.

Just one more example. Alright. Okay. We have a young lady that was hired to work here for the city of Oakland for the city council. Her car was stolen, broad daylight, in front of the city hall.

She tried to call the police to come and get a report again. They never came. So she asked me 56 later, mister Gayle, I've tried to get a report, but I gotta get my insurance. Somebody stole my car in front of City Hall. So I made the call, didn't get a response, so I had to put her in my get her in my car, drive down to headquarters so I can get through the police chiefs who gets someone to give report to get her insurance because the car was stolen, wound up in San Jose, wound up in the parking lot, and I had to get the towing truck and get the mechanic to take it out of there and get a service where the service from the city that should have been delivered, stolen right in front of City Hall.

Police never came and gave her a report of what happened for her to collect the insurance. And that's an example of what's going on throughout the city, throughout my neighborhood. We're not getting the the response and of the services that we do we're due, from the public safety issue. Thank you.

Okay. Seeing no more blinking lights, let's hear from our public speakers.

Thank you, chair Unger. I will call the speakers in two sets of 20. Please approach the podium in no particular order. State your name for the record. You have one minute to speak if you are seating time.

You you will receive one minute of speaking time for each seating speaker. For the first set to 20, it's miss Asada, Brooke Levin, Noel Ponodontic, excuse me if I mispronounced your name, miss Ruth Meza, Keith Skreholz, Carlos Rosas, Derek Kilgore, Miss LaMajana Lee, Tammy Bird, Benquez, Shayla Azimi, Sevelan Hauser, Michael P Ford, Dana A Irving, Dante Hollowell, Andrew Jones. Those are the first sets. Once again, please line up. In no particular order, state your name for the record.

You do have one minute if you're exceeding time. You'll receive one minute per speaker up to five minutes. And if you're participating via Zoom, please raise your hand so you're easily identified, and we are taking Zoom speakers after in person speakers. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Brooke Levin, twenty six year employee of the city of Oakland. I retired as public works director. I'm pretty familiar with the parking enforcement function as when I first came to the city, I believe it was in public works. Why is this large reorganization happening outside the budget process? That's my major question. Every reorganization I know of in the city of Oakland has happened with the budget process so you can dig in and get all those financial pieces lined up. There's a lot of things and a lot of moving parts here. I don't agree with this proposal, but it should be done with the budget process so you can actually see the dollars and cents on paper. What are the real costs?

What is the existing vacancy savings in the parking division under ten ten and what is the existing vacancy savings in the multipurpose fund which is 17 50? That was not in the report. It said that some this cost will be covered by that, but I think that should be defined. And it would be if it was in the budget cycle. The abandoned autos. I was on the reimagining public safety task force.

Thank you for your comment.

Hi, everybody. I'll try to

go fast. Svelan Hauser. I'm the chair of the Oakland Bid Alliance.

Please state your name for the record through the chair.

Apologies. Savlonhauser, chair of the Oakland Bid Alliance representing 11 districts, reinvesting over $13,000,000, and offering daily stewardship of our commercial corridors in partnership with the city. I really appreciate the city administrator and our elected's willingness to discuss this publicly given its gravity. Parking and enforcement is an integral part of transportation and mobility in Oakland. It is also critical to the success of our commercial districts, our effective response to encampments, as well as safety access and mobility for all.

Feedback is severed if functions are disbanded and is out of alignment with other cities. Finance also does not oversee building permits, by the way, even though there are revenues collected. These key objectives are a mandate of our DOT. They have done a stellar job. It is huge progress in responsiveness and public trust as a council member was mentioning from previous operations. Revenue collected should not be the only metric of a successful parking system, but the DOT has reached record revenue levels. This is a bright spot in Oakland government. Oakland's commercial districts are to the cultural, social, and economic lifeblood of our city. Any restructuring of parking management should strengthen rather than

Thank you for your comment.

Good morning. Michael Ford. And I'm requesting that three other public comment cede their time to me. It's Derek Kilgore, Lemi Janae Lee, and Doug Mount.

Are they president Chambers or online? Please state your name for? Thank you, you will have up to three minutes, thank you. Four, yes, thank you. Okay,

thank you very much. I'm gonna go off script here, actually present, I prepared a four minute talk but I'm gonna go off script in order to address some of the great questions and the information that we received from the administration and director Johnson in particular. One of the things that really struck my struck me when I was listening to director Johnson, who I have a great deal of admiration for, and I think the city is very lucky to have him in the role he's in right now, is he said that there's no such thing as a perfect organization. I would beg to disagree. I think that what this administration is proposing to dismantle is the closest thing that this city has to a perfect organization.

Moreover, I wanna pick up on what Brooke Levin started to say before she was cut off. This department and this division in particular are the product of ten years of public processes and council authorized decisions that built this. Second, as far as the capacities that director Johnson can bring to bear in terms finance's ability to improve cash handling, increase the the the turnover time of collections. All of these things should be happening now. They should have been happening the last ten years that I've been responsible for overseeing parking enforcement.

We are here ready and willing to work with you. We don't need to be reorged. Third, the the fact that the the administration is attempting to solve problems by adding two management positions when every problem they've identified apart from those that finance can help with are actually due to severe staffing shortages on frontline employees. So if we are not answering the phone, if we are not turning around administrative reviews, it's because we're at historically low staffing for our public service representatives. Third, abandoned auto.

Thank you so much for talking about abandoned auto. DOT recovers stolen vehicles. We help our city recover stolen vehicles quickly. We have a clear division of labor as council member Houston explained. We took 36 stolen vehicles, and OPD came in to take the two that had felony warrants associated with them. That's what we've been doing for four years. Okay. And and now I wanna get to my my actual original points. Okay? And there's there's two, and I'll I'll talk about them briefly.

First of all, the the the city's plan is to delete my position, my parking I'm sorry. My project manager two position. It is a protected position. As your parking manager, I have spent the last ten years talking to people in power and telling them no. I can't do anything about your citation.

I cannot give you special privileges when it comes to monthly parking. I'm able to do that with the confidence that nobody can take me out, and that I can consistently uphold the law and and city policies. If you put a parking administrator at a bureau level, they will be at will, and the next time they will be tested, they're gonna have to make a decision. Is my career more important, or is the interest of the city more important? Finally, I only have ten seconds left, but I want you to look very carefully at the supplemental the unofficial supplemental report that Local twenty one and staff has prepared.

It it tells the story about the revenues. Look at the revenues as they were presented last

Thank you for your comment.

Good afternoon, chair Anger and city council, city administrator, Shahla Zimi with the Department of Transportation. I wanted to just mention over the past several years that I've been with the department, with the parking and mobility division in OPDAT, it has undergone a remarkable transform transformation. Since the vision moving to the Department of Transportation, we have been seeing stability, improved performance, accountability, and extremely engaged team. The proposed move back to finance does not address a performance problem because there is no performance problem to fix. Instead, it risks disrupting a high functioning team, undermining morale, and reversing hard earned progress.

Reorganization always carries consequences, and in this case, those con consequences are clear and avoidable. We truly recognize and support finance's critical role in fiscal oversight. However, oversight does not require

Thank you for your comment.

Hello, council members. My name is Ruth Mason. I'm a proud IFPTE Local twenty one member and a resident of District 2. I've been with the city for six years and served as a transportation planner in the major projects division in Oak Dot. Thank you council member Unger and Brown for requesting an informational report for the parking reorg. I'm here to request a pause for the parking division reorg for several reasons. Parking plays an essential role for Oakland's transportation system. It falls under traffic safety and helps provide safe access and mobility for everyone, as everyone has already mentioned. It's a tool for supporting local businesses which in turn supports our local economy. The revenue we get from parking enforcement is a useful byproduct, but managing our curb holistically is an essential part of how we create vibrant, accessible and safe streets.

There's no evidence that realigning parking under finance department will increase revenue, but there is evidence parking revenue has grown consistency of parking enforcement has improved under Oak Dot leadership. There needs to be more information on the cost and transition and analysis on how this move would affect staffing, project delivery.

Thank you for your comment.

Hello, council members. My name is Keith Scherhalts. I'm a proud IFPTE Local twenty one member. I've been with the city for twenty six years and served as a public service reprie. Thank you council members, Unger and Brown, for requesting an informational report on the parking reorganization proposal. I'm here to request a pause in this reorganization. Parking plays an essential role in Oakland's transportation system. It's about traffic safety, accessibility, supporting local business, not just revenue collection. Moving parking from Oak Dot to finance disregards our hard work building public trust and reduces our employees to fee collectors. The numbers prove parking has thrived under Oak Dot.

Citation revenue is up 50%. Meter revenue is up 30%, and assistance center revenue is up 37%. There is no evidence that this move will increase revenue, but there is clear or unclear impacts on staffing, service delivery, and costs. I urge council members to examine why this enormous change is being proposed.

Thank you for your comment.

Good afternoon, counsel. Carlos Rosas. I cede my time to Kirby Olson.

My name is Dana Irving and I also concede my time to Kirby Olson. Dana Carlos.

Morning council members for the record. Kirby Olson. I'm gonna request three minutes.

You may begin. For

the record, Kirby Olsen speaking as a concerned Oakland resident and local twenty one union member. Thank you to council members Brown and Unger for bringing this item to the committee. The administration's report says they want to reorganize the parking division in order to align parking with revenue and collections. This directly contradicts the council's own direction when you created Oak Dot in 2016. That direction was to align parking with transportation where there is a much stronger nexus and where every other major city in America places their parking divisions.

The administration also wrote in their report that there are high rates of delinquent citations and some unnamed customer service issues that justify the reorg. Yet, they offered no data or evidence to back this up. In fact, they provided no data or evidence at all. They're basically saying, trust me, bro. The most misleading part of the report is about staff costs.

They want you to believe that the staff costs of this reorg include only the marginal cost between the current manager, Michael Ford, and the new manager they're going to hire. But Michael, who you ironically just honored for his parking innovator of the year award, still works for Oak Dot and will continue to do so after the reorg. Therefore, the full cost of the new manager to replace Michael must be included in any staff cost calculation, bringing the total new management cost to about $750,000 per year. The administration conveniently didn't mention at all in their report the two staff who would need to be moved out of DOT overhead and project funding and into the general fund at a cost of an additional $660,000 per year. When you add this cost to the two other net new management positions, you're looking at a general fund hit of 1,420,000.00 million per year in additional staff costs.

I'm sure you have better ideas for what to do with 1,420,000.00 per year than Game of Thrones style hostile takeovers between departments. So now the question becomes, if you agree with all of us speaking here today, with the 83 parking division staff who signed the petition opposing this, with your business improvement districts, with your bicyclists and pedestrian advisory commission, and with your transportation advocates that this is a bad idea, what can you do? We ask you three things. Number one, forward this informational item onto the full council on non consent so all council members can have a chance to make their opinions heard. Number two, use your power of the purse and publicly state that you will refuse to fund these unnecessary positions and budget transfers.

And number three, if necessary, reassert your charter authority under section 600 to provide the form of organization through which the functions of the city are to be administered. Under the charter, the council, not the city administrator, provides the form of organization, and you can pass an ordinance ordinance to define parking as an integral division within the Department of Transportation. We don't need to go back to the way things were in 2008. We don't need to go back to the days of cronyism and nepotism. We need to stop this reorganization now.

And to the public speakers, in order to see time, every member of the public must fill out a speaker's card. Thank you. Please proceed.

Hello. My name is Dante Hollowell. I'm the SEIU ten to one shop steward, and I'm and I'm also a parking control technician. I would actually like the opportunity to speak as both. I have fifty seconds.

SEIU is currently still in the bargaining the impact bargaining stage with the city. Yes. But I would also like to state that moving parking enforcement under finance raises the risk of increased pressure to generate revenue instead of prioritizing parking compliance, fairness, and safe interactions with the public. A lot of people don't know that we are literally under physical attack due to the strain that this department is perceived to produce money and punish citizens. And doing this, like council member Gallo stated, could be seen as intimidation or antagonization to the citizens and could put our members in real danger.

Yeah. And I would also yeah. That's it.

My name is Benikas Cross. I've been with the city for eight years. I'm a member of the parking mobility assistance center. I just wanna express my concerns about this reorganization. I don't understand the the the point of it.

We worked really hard to to get the work done. I wanna acknowledge my coworkers who definitely are are doing everything they can every day to accomplish and move mountains. It's really been the past five years have have what we've been able to accomplish in the midst of the pandemic with very little resources. I'm just very amazed and and impressed with what what we've been able to do. And so what we really need is additional resources.

When I first joined this team, there was ten ten people on the staff. We're now five people. A year ago, we had four people. And so, of course, if there are concerns with processing, we need more people. You know, we can't do we we can't do everything.

Thank you for your comment.

Rapid traffic violence rapid response. We stand with IFPTE in their report to counsel, analyzing the poor reasoning, higher costs, lower efficiency, and dubious legality of this proposed move, which ignores the recommendations of the reimagining public safety task force. And this is all from an annuitant employee who was fired at city administrator by mayor Ron Dellums in 2008 for mismanagement. And we underscore council's power through ordinance and resolution, as well as through the budget power to organize the departments of the city as it sees fit, and can grant or revoke permission to the CAO to make these changes independently. Given the demonstrably poor decision making of the CAO here, council has the power and the responsibility to step in and correct this error of government and potential malfeasance.

Parking is transportation, and the enforcement is an an intrinsic part of any policy. And the two must be kept together for their for their mutual coordination. Thank you.

Kevin Dally, Transport Oakland. I repeat, parking enforcement is policy. But mostly, I'll talk about process here. January 2016, the council created Oak Dot. Thank you council member Gayeo who who supported it, and at that time they decided the right time to move parking enforcement was at the end of the budget process.

It was delayed for a few months so they could make sure everything was in line. After that 2017 there was a report from the auditor that encouraged the change of combining combining enforcement along with policy. There were some problems the way it was in the police, the Public Safety Task Force, but let's jump ahead. January, the BPAC policy and legislative committee, city administrator refused to provide staff. I'm looking forward to seeing you talking

to people

at our next meeting. Thanks.

Calling in our next set of speakers. Once again, if you hear a name and you're participating via Zoom, please keep your hand raised so you're easily identified. Mister Al Marshall? Mister Newman, Robert Prince, Brian Culbertson, Craig Raffel, Charlotte Niles, Artesia Rose, Ben Matlaw, Colin Pife, Michael Ford, Enshante Denham, Lakeisha Montavolo, Monique Ussery. In no particular order, you may line up at the podium and you do have one minute. Thank you.

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of council. My name is Al Marshall. Just retired last year in July after thirty seven years. I've been through at least five or six reorgs. I want you guys to everybody's talking about everything else but this one very important thing I actually that you guys focus on is the women and men that's in parking enforcement.

Please ensure that they have a feeder class system from PC ones to PC twos so that they can elevate and continue to bring in greater incomes for their family. Please don't miss that boat because you guys are focused on everything else, but it's imperative that even if they go to OPD that they still be allowed to be the feeder class to go over there to so that they can continue improving their salaries and conditions for their families. Thank you for your time.

Good afternoon council president and members of the council. My name is Acacia Newman, and I am a Oakland I am a twenty seven year Oakland employee with the parking enforcement. I've been through reorgs. This makes no sense. Directly we are directly affected by the proposal, and I respectfully urge you to reject moving parking enforcement under budget and finance.

Parking enforcement is a field based operational service focused on safety, accessibility, and community mobility, not a revenue function. An organizational placement signals policy priorities. Moving enforcement into a finance structure risk enforcing the perception that our work is revenue driven, which undermines public trust and conflicts with Oakland's equity goals. Operationally, it removes us from aligned field functions and may weaken coordination and responsiveness. It also appears to add two new supervising positions at substantial salary levels during during serious budget constraints, increasing costs without clear organ operational benefit. Please align. I'm sorry.

Thank you for your comment.

Good morning, council members. My name is Artisha Rose, and I have been a proud member of parking enforcement for the last twenty nine years of my life. And I have also been out of the twenty nine. I've been a supervisor for three. So, yes, I have been boots on the ground, and I have been able to make sure that the new class, which I have eight people now, they are also being trained to be boots on the ground to bring in the money.

Again, before you guys decide to make that move, let's before we start thinking it's going to bring in money, you need to know that it's gonna bring the money in. And just because you move from one department to another, that does not mean you're going to bring in extra money. You have to have the boots on the ground. You have to have the information. So please, before you decide to make that move, look at everything. There should not be anything that you guys are not aware of, and we're hearing that you are not aware of certain things. So again, before you move, take a look. Thank you.

Hi. Good morning. My name is Craig Raphael. I'm speaking as the project manager of the automated speed camera program and as a representative employee of Local twenty one. As part of this reorganization, the finance department will assume responsibility of speed camera citation administration and management of associated staff.

I'm concerned that this transfer could undermine our ability to deliver the speed camera program from a management and customer service perspective. Right now, there are several related programs currently run by Oak Dot, parking citations, residential parking, automated speed enforcement and a potential future red light camera program. And there's customer service and project management benefits from these functions being contained within one department. When you remove some functions and place them in another department, you risk putting programs in jeopardy. There's also potential misalignment between finance and transportation since revenue revenues from speed camera citations must go into a dedicated fund for traffic calming and not the city's general fund.

And so I urge you to consider the impacts of this change as it relates to the speed camera program. It took years of lobbying for this from this body to get the program off the ground, and we really wanted to succeed. Thank you.

Hello, council members. My name is Colin Pithee. I am a proud local twenty one member and Oak Dot employee, co chair of the race and equity team with Ruth Mesa. You I wanna ask what so many folks have been saying here. What are we doing? We don't have a data driven rationale for this proposal. We're not considering the employees. Under Oakdot's leadership we saw a great share of those employees go from part time to full time. You know receiving much needed benefits and improved salaries. There's no guarantee that the finance department could deliver these improvements to our staff.

You know and I also wanna remind you, don't to my knowledge, I don't think there's any other city that does this within finance. Know, it makes sense for Oak to do this for the multiple reasons that people have already mentioned. You know, I really urge you to oppose this proposal and keep parking enforcement within Oak Dot. Thank you for your time.

Hello, council. I'd like to my name is Mel Pondancic and I'd like to cede my time to miss Charlotte Niles.

Hello, city council. Thank you for your time, Unger and Brown for bringing this up. Firstly, I'm asking you to please pause this as until we have the data, also to use your purse string in order to not fund those positions, and also to see who is in charge of making these decisions. It seems to we keep referring back to EDGERLY and I don't know if we've, when asking questions and I don't know if that budget has been even put down, how much that's gonna also cost the city. Under under transportation, we've become twenty four hour service.

We engage with the community. We also have have a way of going from parking control technicians one to parking control technicians two, and a lot of these things were done within the last eight years. Finances, they had us for twenty three years and none of the things that I've given you and sent to you have been done under that department. When a person comes to you, if there's a house that has a window that maybe needs to be fixed or has a little bit of hole in in their roof and a and a architect comes and says, hey, I can fix that for you. And they don't give you any blueprints.

They don't They say they have this person that's going to fix it and they keep telling you, it's gonna work out. We The house will be okay. Sometimes that might seem like a gift, but often time in my experience it winds up being a grift. So be careful, watch our purse, it's your responsibility to make wise decisions when it comes to moving departments around. They're undermining your ability that you have already voted these things in, and now they wanna go back to even bringing back boroughs and divisions.

That's with the power you had before and now that was taken away and now the administrator can make a unilateral. Please, please look into this before you make any decisions. Thank you. Good afternoon, counsels. Monique Ussery. I'm gonna give my time to Sharnell Smith.

Lakisha Montalvo, I'm also gonna give my time to Sharnell Smith, but I would like to say one thing. We are trying you're trying to make the VU go to OPD when OPD already sent one of their PCTs

to

our division. So how would they like take

board to go? Unfortunately, you ceded your time. Thank you. And please state your name for the record.

My name is Chanel Smith. I believe I was to be called in the next group, but these two ceded their time to me, so I wanted to be present.

Miss Smith, and you filled out a card, a speaker request?

Yes.

I have a card. Okay.

Okay. You do can proceed with your three minutes.

Thank you. My name is Chanel Smith. I'm a resident of the city of Oakland. I'm an SEIU member. I've worked for the city for over thirty five years in parking enforcement. And you guys say, oh, we're just gonna reorg. That doesn't make a difference. It makes a difference. It doesn't make a difference on paper. But let me tell you, we've been to OPD and we were just a kid in a closet.

They really never paid attention to us. True enough, we were under finance, but again, they really never paid attention to us. All we were are the people to go out and write tickets and come back. But under the last eight years, we've been housed under DOT where they paid attention to us. They've improved our work bill abilities. They've what brightened what we do for the city. City. We've created a whole new department where we're now a theater group for the PCTs where we have somewhere to go. We have momentum. We have somewhere to hope for to an a different position.

So we've had growth as a unit in DOT. We've had movement. We're better able to serve the citizens. I've heard it said that we don't tow stolen cars. My coworker who just ceded her time to me, Keisha Montavo, for the first time in over thirty years, someone in our department was recognized as employee of the year because she towed over 500 stolen cars out of the city of Oakland.

For the first time in over thirty years, our department head was recognized for the innovation that he does he does in our department where we're now able to drive down the street and have our vehicles read the license plates, where we're now able to get clock tickets on the screen and see that that new camera thing that I haven't even done. There's our improvement, better ways of the way we serve the community. And boots on the ground, that's parking enforcement. We were boots on the ground after that earthquake when we were monitored the city in '89 to see what were the damages that needed retention right away because our resources were widely spread. We monitored the ground when that freeway fell on Peralta, and we needed to go around to see what was safety and how that affected the neighborhood.

We monitored the grounds when the fire in the hills happened. We monitored the grounds when the riots were happening and the protests. We were always boots on the streets. We are here to serve the community. Our department has always been consistent in what we do for the city regardless of where we're at, but never have you put this much into the employees of that department.

Never have the city paid attention to the growth of me as an employee in the city of Oakland. And now in DOT, this is something we have. We're not only serving the community, but you're serving your employees. And this is something that has touched the morale of our department that we haven't had in over twenty years. So they say a happy life is a happy wife, a happy and rich city.

Thank you for your comment, miss Smith. Moving to our Zoom speakers. Brian Culbertson, please unmute yourself and begin your one minute comment.

Hi. Hi. My name is Brian Culbertson. I am, with, traffic violence rapid response, and I'm here to comment against, this change. You should put a pause.

And I'm gonna, tell you, about why this matters from a public safety and traffic safety perspective. The purpose of parking policy and enforcement should not be just a myopic revenue stream, but it is a useful tool for supporting our local businesses and and for ensuring traffic safety on our streets. Since parking in abandoned autos and abandoned autos had moved to Oak Dot, Oakland has been more accessible, productive, and and livable for the past eight years. You've heard from the workers. You've heard from the businesses.

You've heard from everyone that the program has been way more successful in its current incantation than what it was prior to that. Please put a pause to this change as and keep the current program. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Moving to our next Zoom speaker. East Bay Bike East Bay. Please state the name where you filled out your card under.

Hey. This is Robert Prince, advocacy director with Bike East Bay.

Thank you so much. Please proceed with your one minute comment.

Thank you. Bike East Bay was also part of the reimagining public safety task force in twenty twenty, twenty twenty one. The outcomes included recommendations for moving some responsibilities out of OPD, don't require a badge and a gun, allowing the p police to focus more fully on violent crime response. One of these actions include moving abandoned vehicle response from OPD to OkDOT. The result was faster response times at lower costs.

So this was a big success. But the main issue was that after that first year funding for Oak Dot to operate this program wasn't continued. The currently proposed reorganization takes us backwards. What we need is to find more opportunities to move responsibilities out of OPD and make sure that sustainable funding is also committed with these moves. And I just wanna note personally while I was waiting for public comment today, I got an email from an Oak Oak Dot staffer, promised expedite removal of an abandoned car that's just a few blocks away from City Hall right now on 14th Street blocking the protected bikeway. That's the type of customer service that people have come to expect from Oak Dot on these issues in which we want to see continue. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Chair Unger, that proceeds with all of your public speakers.

Okay. Any anything else from Council? Alright. I would like to make a motion that we forward this to the full counsel on non consent.

Councilmember Wong, did you want something more on this? Okay. Did you

want your supplemental did you ask for a supplement? Okay. So what is the timing for that through the to the city staff?

I'm not sure that I can get the list of Councilmember Wong supplemental questions. He had a number of data driven questions. And I would also request that you do email us those so we have them in writing too. I to write them down as you were talking. I don't think we could have that published to make the packet for Thursday supplemental which would trigger your next council meeting. I just think that that's probably not doable. So it would probably be the subsequent one.

So where does that leave us? Two two council meetings from now? I don't know the date off the top of my head. Alright. March 3 with the supplement. Are you okay with that? Alright. Let's do March 3 non consent with the supplemental. Say that again? Oh, can you state the supplemental on the record? The

supplemental information I'd like to see includes parking revenue and specifically I'd like to see it inclusive of prior to the reorg, just the the historic parking revenue generation that dates back to prior to 2012. I'd like to see it broken out by meters, garage as well as the parking tax and any and the fines. I'd also like to see along the same timeline the sales tax collected during that same period. I'd also like to see the abandoned vehicles that were towed. Any data that we have related to collections timing since that is part of the rationale for the move as well as parking fines that were not collected.

Okay. Council member Brown.

And and I guess through the chair to the administration, it's more than okay to submit the questions via email. Right? Okay. Excellent. I'll do that.

Council member Houston, did you have something?

Excuse me. Through the chair, I just wanted to see the supplementals. I wanted to hear about it. I want to see them. I want to see them in writing. That was all I was gonna say.

Okay. So we have a motion and a second, am I right? Council member Wong, did you second it? Okay.

Thank you. We have a motion made by chair Wong chair Unger, seconded by council member Wong to receive and forward this item to the March 3 city council agenda and through the body. Is that for consent or non consent?

Non consent, please.

Thank you. City council on non consent with the supplemental stated by council member Wong on the rec for the record. On roll council member Gaia. Aye. Council member Houston. Aye. Council member Wong. Aye. And chair Unger. Aye.

The motion passes with four ayes to receive and forward this item to the March 3 city council agenda on non consent with the supplemental included by council member Wong. That was stated on record. Moving to the regular schedule agenda, which is item three. Adopt the resolution to increase the change order limit for the contract with McGuire and Hester Hester for project one zero zero six three three seven citywide pavement rehabilitation from 25% to 27.5% of the original contract for their total contract amount not to exceed $19,000,237,232,418.75 dollars and waiving the competitive process for the extent necessary. And you do have one speaker for this item.

All right. I guess the crowds don't want to hear about the change order. That's right. Let's hear from staff here.

Yes. Mister chair. Josh Rowan, DOT director. This is really just a housekeeping item. There were there were a number of items that we experienced on this contract that were unforeseen that we had to address at the moment we discovered them. And as such, we needed we didn't need an additional about $300,000 to to close this contract out.

Got it. Questions from my colleagues. Council member Houston.

Yes, through the chair. Is this, this is for change orders, correct?

Through the chair, yes sir.

Okay. So when it comes to, SLBEs, when they do this, these change orders, how are they helping in building the because this is for McGuire and Hester, right? How are they building the SLBEs with these change orders? Because if they have a certain amount of money that they appropriated for their estimate and now you got this millions of dollars of change orders, I need to hold every contractor. I don't care who it is across the board. How are they are they helping with the SLBEs with this change order piece? That's what I want to know.

Through through the chair. So the the participation levels don't change with the change order. This specific item is actually we we exceeded the change order amount due to unforeseen conditions. So I don't know which SLBEs would have been helping with things like high ground water table and excess rails that we encountered on this project.

So to the chair, how can we talk to them, not force them, but suggest that that this is a certain, this is extra money, right? How can we suggest to them to say, you know, embrace small local businesses to come up with that skill set to to to to to work within those scopes of work? Not forcing them. Just say how can they making more money build some skill sets? How could we do that through the chair?

Through the chair, the council member. I'm I'm not prepared to say they haven't. I just don't know their numbers on this this contract. It was a it was a big paving job. Oftentimes we struggle with the paving because of the cost of the mix is so high. But we could we could easily give you a breakdown of the the total contract. But but I think we're we're agreeing with each other that we want to be promoting the program even when we experience change orders.

Okay. Thank you.

Council member Gayo.

Yes, sir. Thank you, Mayor.

You hear

me? Okay. There you go. Thank you for the information. And certainly, I know McGuire and Hester for many, many years. And certainly, he has included local vendors from the paving to other work they've done. And so with that, I appreciate their work they're doing, the inclusion of the neighborhood, and I'll make a motion to approve the item. Thank you.

Council member Houston. And I'll second that also, but I wanna just say I see my youngsters out there, the future of Oakland out there, they came to visit us to City Hall and I just wanna recognize you guys out there.

Council member Wong.

Oh, I do have some questions. It's noted that their performance of McGuire and Hester was evaluated as satisfactory? How are we measuring these contractors and their performance? I I think my concern is just of all the departments, this is the committee where I wind up voting on like multimillion dollar contracts. I don't always see like measurements associated with the the added money that's being asked for.

This one I do but I just wanna make sure that we're not just you know we're just giving more money to contractors and we're not as part of the original contract that they were held to specific accountability metrics to deliver on?

So through the chair, typically we're looking at fairly basic performance measurements. Are they meeting their schedule? Are they maintaining a safe work site, traffic control is a big thing. I would add that again these are items that were unforeseen. And so it's actually a benefit to the city to have an experienced contractor.

They jumped in and addressed these issues that needed to be dealt with immediately. And so we do have evaluation forms that we do on them. But Maguire and Hester typically is is acceptable. We we seldom have problems with them. The the only times we do maybe are when they're busy in other places, not in Oakland, and it might schedules might slide a little bit. But they've they've been a a good contractor for the city for quite some time.

Okay. Thank you.

Moving to our public speaker, miss Asada. And that concludes your public speakers for this item. We have a motion made by council member Gallo, seconded by council member Houston to approve the recommendations of staff and afford this to the February 17 city council agenda and would that be on consent or non consent. Thank you. On roll, council member Gallo. Aye. Council member Houston? Aye. Council member Wong? Aye.

And chair Unger? Aye. This motion passes with four ayes to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the 02/17/2026 city council agenda, and that is on consent. Moving to item four. Adopt a resolution awarding a grant of measure DD bond funds in an amount not to exceed $843,008.75 to the Segara t Land Trust and the purpose of acquiring the property for the conservation and restoration of the pro portions of of the Sausal Creek and CEQUA Act findings. And you do have five speakers for this item.

Alright. Let's hear from our staff first, please.

Good afternoon. My name is Mike Perlmutter. I work for the Watershed and Stormwater Management Division of Oakland Public Works. And, we brought this item. We're recommending that council make this award of $843,000 $875 to Segorte Land Trust to acquire and permanently protect approximately 16 acres of undeveloped forested beautiful Creekside Canyon at 2 Blatchford Court.

This property is near Joaquin Miller Park in the Piedmont Pines neighborhood. It's at the headwaters to Cobbledick Creek which is a tributary to Saucele Creek and which runs through the parcel. The funds we're talking about are designated specifically for the acquisition of watershed protection easements on Oakland's ecologically valuable lands and waterways. Oakland already has spent more than $2,200,000 of funds in this category to acquire other properties such as Butters Canyon, Beaconsfield Canyon, properties in Diamond Canyon, Diamond Park, Glenoco Park and also near the Dunsmuir House. We did a very thorough analysis to find the best use of these Measure DD acquisition funds.

We analyzed every property in Oakland for its natural resource conservation potential. We focused on undeveloped properties which typically have higher natural resource potential and lower purchase price. We considered presence of creeks, wetlands, rare plants and animal habitat, potential to expand existing protected lands and regional conservation targets. We also reviewed historical prioritizations, reviewed the county assessor tax defaulted property auction list and consulted with partners such as Friends of Saucele Creek, Butters Canyon Land Trust and the East Bay Regional Park District. From our priority properties, we needed to find a willing seller, someone who is willing to sell the property to the city at no more than the fair market value and at no more than the funds that we have available.

We found a match with the property owner at 2 Blatchford Court, the APN 48DDash7002 68 Dash 1 Dash 12. The landowners love the canyon and they have owned it and steered it for many years. They want to see its natural beauty and function preserved in perpetuity and have been coordinating with us permanently to permanently protect the canyon. The owners did a comparative market analysis to assess how much the land was worth. They did that in August 2024 and it was estimated to be worth 1,200,000.0 point $1,295,000.

The landowners value the protection of the land and are willing to sell under market to us for the $800,000 that we have available. Our next match that we made was with the Segorti Land Trust which is a local indigenous led non profit that facilitates the return of indigenous land to indigenous people. It includes members of the confederated villages of Lisjan, the Chochenyo speaking Lisjan Ohlone people have lived in the in this land in Huchin or what is now known as the East Bay for thousands of years and continue to live here today. In January 2023, the city returned stewardship over to a spot in Joaquin Miller Park known as Renu Nimu Pulte Ereknu. I'm not saying it right, but it's formally known as Sequoia Point.

That was through another city council ordinance. Funding the land trust purchase of the property offers both short and long term efficiencies to the city. In the short term, the land trust is going to assume the administrative logistics of the sale such as negotiations with the property owners conducting site investigations and other due diligence and they'll coordinate close of escrow. In the long term, the land trust will own and maintain and steward the land in perpetuity managing it for fire fuel maintenance, managing against encroachments and managing for natural resource value and habitat restoration. The long term maintenance of the land would be especially challenging for this city to do on its own because it eliminated its open space maintenance program in 2008.

At the closing of the sale, a restriction would be recorded against the title to ensure that the property can only be used for watershed conservation restoration. The restriction would ensure the city has the right to monitor the property and enforce the restriction which could include the right for the city to transfer the property to another qualified non profit or take title to the property in cases of unresolved violations. This would ensure consistency with Measure DD. This plan aligns with the intent of Measure DD acquisition funds. Also aligns with the open space conservation and recreation element of Oakland's 1996 general plan, the creek protection ordinance, Bay Area regional conservation initiatives, and general practices and principles to conserve and protect nature for wildlife and watershed health.

The plan also aligns with Oakland's race and equity goals by conveying land ownership back to indigenous Chochenyo speaking Lishtan Ohlone which have lived on this land for thousands of years. Sir, can

we Are you close to being able to wrap up?

We hope you approve the plan. That's it.

I got you right at the right time. Thank you. Questions from my colleagues. Councilmember Gayle.

Yes. Thank you. And I certainly know the Soweto Land Trust land trust from the very beginning. And when you make reference to Joaquin Miller Park, Salsa Creek and the other creeks along the area know them extremely well. And thank you for bringing this forward, and I'd be honored I'm honored to make a motion to support the item. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm sorry. Was there an amendment, did you say? Okay. Council member Houston. Yes.

So I understand that there's a clerical error on the first whereas clause, just like a typo that needs to be addressed. Would you mind providing some clarity and then the body can vote as amended?

Yes. Thank you. There is a typo in the first whereas clause. The amount that's referenced for measure DD should be corrected to $198,000,000.250000. It says 192. So it's just a historical correction.

Okay. So then the body would then vote as presented. I

will make a motion to make that amendment. Do we have a second?

Second.

Alright. Let's take that vote.

Calling in our public speakers. Miss Asada.

Oh, do we need to vote on the amendment first? No. Okay. Alright. Then let's let's hear from our our council members then. Council member Wong.

Thank you. Through the chair, I just wanted to commend you on this effort. I think this is a really exciting and beautiful project. I used to work American issues at the EPA and I think this is such an important process to rematriate the land back to our indigenous communities. So that's it.

Council member Houston. Due to chair, long time Michael. How you doing? Got that new look. I like it. I like it. This is in District 4. Right? And environmental justice looks a little bit different in my district in District 7. Just looks a little different. And I wanted to know, you know, we got creeks in District 7 too so I like to see if we can do some of the same things in my district that's been underserved for so so many years. And you know about the San Leandro Creek, you know about all that. So I just wanted to say think about my district that's been underserved for so many years, my children and my people. Just like all these young sters out here, I wanna say it again. Some of you guys weren't out in here.

I wanna thank you for coming because you are the future. Alright? So thank you.

For sure.

Okay. Anything else from counsel? Let's go to our public speakers then please.

Thank you so much. Miss Asada, Francis Rensted, Brady Moss, Ariel Lucky, Nikki Alexander, and Ben Metlaw. If you heard your name, please approach the podium. In no particular order, you do have one minute. If you are participating via Zoom, please raise your hand so you're easily identified. Thank you.

Good afternoon council members. My name is Frances Ranstead and I'm the land back coordinator for Segortay Land Trust. I'm also speaking on behalf of the Confederated Villages of Leshan Nation whose territory we are on today. Over the years, Sagorhet, the Land Trust, and the city of Oakland have built a positive working relationship, and we are committed to continuing this work together for future generations to come. I'm here to ask you to vote yes on the agenda item for Measure DD grant agreement, awarding Segortay Land Trust for the acquisition of property to conserve and restore portions of the Saliso Creek area.

Segortay is the first indigenous women led land trust in the country, and this funding supports real environmental restoration, long term conservation, and indigenous stewardship of this watershed through an easement with the city of Oakland. We appreciate the city's partnership, and we ask that you pass this item today so we continue this work in a good way for the land, the water, and future generations. Thank you.

Good afternoon council. My name is Ariel Lucky. I'm here with my coworker Francis. I'm the development director at Sagorate Land Trust. I've also born and raised in Oakland and lived here my entire life.

I'm here to urge you also to support this motion to allocate Measure DD funds to the acquisition of this land. Segore Te has existed here based in Oakland in the East Bay for ten years now. We have a number of different land sites that we're stewarding including the almost four acres that Michael referenced in Walking Miller Park, Renimu Pote Arikne. We've been working there with Cal Fire to do really important fire restoration work to reduce the fuel load. And we have a lot of experience taking care of land, planting native plants, restoring creek ecosystem and restoration projects.

This is what we do. And it's my understanding that this is what the money is for and so we encourage you to pass this motion and approve the process. Thank you so much.

Good afternoon council members. I'm Nikki Alexander, executive director of Friends of Saucele Creek. I'm hearing strong support of awarding Measure DD funds to the Segorete Land Trust for the acquisition of the referenced property. Protecting the headwaters of a creek is crucial to maintaining watershed health, safeguarding water quality, and supporting climate resilience downstream. The the potential acquisition represents one of the most important conservation actions ever taken on behalf of Sausal Creek.

Opportunities like this are rare and once lost, they are lost forever. We appreciate the opportunity to partner with the city in Segorete to help establish and steward a headwaters preserve that protects vital headwaters while honoring the land's cultural and spiritual importance. This proposal reflects the best of measure d d's intent, restoring ecosystems, honoring indigenous stewardship, and investing in land for long term public and environmental benefits. We strongly urge the council to adopt this resolution and move this pivotal conservation effort forward. Thank you for your leadership and your commitment to Oakland's watersheds.

Good afternoon chair and members of the committee. My name is Brady Moss. I'm a land conservation professional with twenty five years in the field, currently working part time with Trust for Public Land. And I'm here today as a consultant to, Sagorite Land Trust in support of the measured DD item before you regarding the acquisition of property at to Blatchford Court. From a land conservation standpoint, this property is highly significant.

It is a rare, intact, forested canyon containing the headwaters of Cobbledick Creek, a tributary to Sausal Creek, and protecting land like this safeguards water quality, wildlife habitat, and directly advances the original intent of Measure DD to preserve Oakland's most ecologically valuable lands. Sagorite Land Trust is an indigenous women led inter tribal and community centered urban land trust based here in the Bay Area. And this project fits within the broader land back movement. Oakland has already shown leadership through its prior transfer of land in Joaquin Miller Park to Sagorite.

Thank you for your comment.

Strongly support approval of the item. Thank you.

That concludes your public speakers for item four. We do have motion made by council member Unger, chair Unger, seconded by council member Wong to approve as amended recommendations to stop and afford this item to the 02/17/2026 city council agenda and through the body. Would that be on consent or consent or nonconsenters?

Consent.

Thank you. And that's on consent on roll. As amended with the amendments to the whereas clause, striking 192,000,000 and replacing with one ninety eight million. On roll, council member Gaia?

Aye.

Council member Houston? Aye. Council member Wong? Aye. And chair Unger? Aye. This motion passes with four ayes. To approve as amended the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the February 17 city council agenda and that is on consent. Moving to open forum. We do have two speakers, Kevin Daly and miss Asada.

Hi. Kevin Dalley, Transport Oakland. I do appreciate that the parking changes have been moved to the council meeting coming up on the coming up soon. What I would like is reassurance from the city administrator that these changes will not happen before the council meeting. As you know, this this item was originally on the agenda two weeks ago.

So the administrator suggested changing the parking reorg to today's meeting, and the staff got the announcement that the change would happen this last Saturday. It was great. The city administrator delayed it, but let's get a verbal guarantee that we won't have another change before this comes to counsel. Thank you.

That concludes your public speakers for open forum.

Alright. Anybody wanna hang around or should we?

Council member Houston.

A question. We got all these youngsters out here. I don't know. Are we gonna stop the session? We what did they come to say something? I mean, do you guys wanna say something at open forum or something? They came. They just didn't just sit in here to watch us talk.

I think I think they're gonna stay through to I think they're gonna stay through to the next committee.

Alright. I didn't know. I just I'm not I mean, if you can do yeah. Can they ask a question? We're already fifteen minutes over for the next committee. Alright.

A minute. Alright. Alright. Cool. Alright. Let's Let's let's let's adjourn adjourn here. Here.

Alright. Alright. Thank Thank

you. You. Thank Thank you. You.