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Brown. Oh.\nSorry. One moment.\nPresent.\nUngar. Here. One present and chair.\nRamachandran. Present. Thank you. We have four members present before we begin.\nChair, do you have any announcements at this time?\nYes. We are\nchanging the order of the items that will be heard.\nWe will be starting with item number seven, the Q2 report.\nMoving to item four,\nthe, citywide staffing report, then item five,\nthe informational report on the salary survey for job classes under 25 an hour.\nThen item three,\nwhich is amendment to the salary ordinance.\nAnd then finally item six, which is six, which is the P for\nhis portfolio. And I believe there is a change to item\nthree and I will pass it to staff\nto explain it.\nThank you. Chair on and around. And Brad Johnson, director of finance for item three, will be,\nremoving the listed item\none of parking administrator and delaying that to a future,\ndiscussion of the civil service and salary ordinance.\nSo staff expect during that item to pull that particular element of it.\nBut wanting to continue to move forward with the placing administrator,\nthe assistant director of Human Services, positions.\nThank.\nThank you. So, just to reiterate, we will be hearing the other two salary classifications,\nnot, that part one that's listed here.\nOf course, folks can still make public comment if they choose, but,\nthat's not going to be voted on today.\nAnd that's, okay.\nThank you. Just noting the changes made to the order of the agenda to hear item seven, four, five, three and then six.\nNow proceeding with item number one,\napproval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting held on March 10th, 2026.\nAnd there are no speakers on this item.\nI'll entertain a motion.\nMove. Approval. Second.\nThank you. We have a motion made by Council Member Brown, seconded by Council Member Ungar,\nto accept the draft minutes from the committee meeting held on March 10th, 2026.\nHonorable Council members. Brown I, Ungar I, Lang\nand Chair. Ramachandran I thank you.\nItem number four passes with four eyes to accept the draft minutes from March 10th, 2026.\nReading in item two determination of Schedule,\nnot standing Committee items and we have no speakers on this item.\nThank you. Is there anything from staff?\nOkay, I will move the item.\nThank you, thank you. We have a motion made by Chair Ramachandran\nand seconded by Council Member Brown to accept the determination of schedule\nabout Standing Committee items as is on roll Council members.\nBrown I, Ungar I, Wang I and chair.\nRamachandran I thank you.\nItem number two passes with four eyes to accept the determination of schedule about Standing Committee items.\nReading in item number seven.\nReceive an informational report on fiscal year 2025 to 26,\nsecond quarter revenues and exponentials\nresults and year end estimates for the general purpose\nfund and select funds. And we have two speakers that signed up to speak.\nThank you to staff at the presentation.\nThank you. And up. We do have a presentation.\nWe'll get it started up.\nStaff can come to the podium please. So I'll give you guys a little bit\nof background on this report. This is our second quarter revenue and expenditure report.\nAs you are all aware, the city provides\na quarterly revenue and expenditure reports throughout the course of the fiscal year to provide\nupdates on our revenues and expenditures.\nYou can click over to report background. Please. Would say.\nThe context of this report is it will is in alignment\nwith our consolidated fiscal policy and will inform you\non the status of our general purpose fund,\nalong with some other significant funds over.\nAnd we do this over the course of the year. The upshot of this report\nis the general purpose fund budget is holding steady.\nWhile we're a little bit under on revenues and expenditures,\nthe budget is in alignment within 1% of what we expected.\nOur expectation is that we will be able to in this fiscal\nyear, in roughly the same financial position\nwe started with, which, if I can recall you all back to the Q4 report,\nafter a lot of movement last fiscal year, we did end up\nin a positive position over the end of the Q4.\nAnd so I believe we will be able to maintain that position,\nwith plus or -1% through the end of this fiscal year.\nI handed over to Joseph Sagara to go over our revenue results.\nThank you, Director Johnson, through the chair.\nMy name is Joseph Segura, principal budget and management analyst in the Revenue Bureau.\nThrough the second quarter of fiscal year 20 2526,\nwe project that general purpose fund revenues will come in\nbelow the adjusted budget by about 59.9 million, or 7.1%.\nHowever, that comparison includes a planned use of fund\nbalance to cover prior year carryforwards.\nIf we set aside those One-Time Uses of Fund balance and focus\nonly on the actual revenues, the shortfall is projected\nat just under 1% below budget.\nThe shortfall is concentrated in a few major categories,\nwhich are property tax, sales tax and utility consumption tax.\nThese are three of the city's largest revenue sources,\nso even small percentage changes can have a noticeable impact on the overall budget.\nThis slide completes the GG revenue by category table, with the overall totals shown here\nexcluding the anticipated one. Use of fund balance revenues are projected\nto end the year about 7.4 million, or 0.94% below budget.\nAnd I'll go into each of the key drivers in more detail,\nstarting with property tax.\nProperty tax revenues projected at 312.3 million,\nwhich is about 10 million, or 3.1% below budget.\nHistorically, property tax revenue has grown around\n6% annually over the past 20 years.\nComing into this fiscal year, the city had already anticipated\nthat property tax growth would slow compared to recent trends.\nThe five year financial forecast in the budget assumes growth\nof about 3% for fiscal year 2526, assuming proportionally\nfewer property sales and corresponding reassessments.\nHowever, actual growth came in significantly\nlower than expected, with assessed taxable values\nincreasing by less than 1% this year in the city.\nThis was largely due to prop eight reductions,\nwhich temporarily allow for lower says values.\nWhen the market conditions decline,\ncommercial properties were affected the most.\nUtility consumption tax revenue was projected at 70.3 million,\nwhich is about 5.4 million, or 7.1% below budget.\nWhile the budget projected continued growth\nin utility rates through this fiscal year, rates have instead\nstabilized at a relatively high level\nfollowing several years of increases\nover the past decade, the revenue grew significantly, largely because of utility rates,\nespecially, Electricity rates have been rising quickly.\nThis year, however, rates have started to stabilize.\nAccording to the California Public Utility Commission 2025 Q4 report, the sharp increases\nin utility rates we saw in prior years have leveled off.\nAs a result, revenue growth has also slowed.\nIn fact, year to date collections for utility consumption tax\nis slightly below last year's level through the Q2,\nand the year end estimate now aligns with last year's totals.\nSales tax revenues projected at 81.2 million,\nwhich is about 3 million, or 3.6 below budget.\nThis includes an estimated 21.8 million in measure\nA revenue which took effect in October of 2025\nand will be in effect for three quarters of this fiscal year.\nThe most recent detailed data available through Q1\nshows that different sales tax categories were, on average,\nabout 4.5% lower,\nthan at the same time last year. In terms of gross receipts,\nwith the biggest declines projected in general, consumer\ngoods and fuel and service stations.\nAnd I will now hand it off to the budget team\nwho will present the expenditures.\nDaniel Mariano, a budget management analyst, for a job purpose fund expenditures.\nThey are currently projected to end the year $4.91 million over the adjusted budget.\nAnd over these next two slides, that number will be broken down by department.\nA majority of departments are projected to end at FY 26\nunder budget, with most of them having spent 50%\nor less of their adjusted budget through the second quarter,\nas shown on the right side of the slide,\nHR at the bottom, and a handful of other departments.\nAs you can see on the next slide,\nare projected to overspend. Unfortunately.\nNow, the primary reason for this projected overspending\nis due to the adjustment related to one time bonuses\nthat were paid out to employees earlier this year,\nalong with additional possible carryforwards.\nNow, however, without these adjustments, all departments in the general purpose fund,\nwhat are projected to come in under budget. So if restricted, looking at it on an operational basis,\ndepartments are still underspending with their budget.\nPass it back to Director Johnson and finish off the rest of the presentation.\nAbsolutely.\nI want to highlight before Daniel moves off of that slide that, the your two largest departments\nand the general purpose fund, police and fire are both\nprojected to be under budget. That's not something we traditionally see.\nSo I want to call that out. That's not a small feat of achievement.\nAnd as Daniel mentioned, the key driver of overspending\nis the fact that we did issue one time bonuses entirely out of the general purpose fund,\nand we did not budget those departments\nto have bonuses from the general purpose fund.\nSo you see, in some departments, like public works or human resources,\nwhich are mostly not general purpose fund funded,\nthey have this bonus expense, but no budget for it.\nThey're coming out of the general purpose\nfund that out of their budget. But we have the resources to cover that from last year's,\nfund balance. So that's kind of an artifact of this presentation, as Daniel mentioned.\nAside from that, everyone would be under budget.\nMoving on to our fund balance. And this is the takeaway slide.\nIf you guys can recall back to last fiscal year, we ended just above, just below\n$17 million to the positive and your general purpose fund.\nWe're expecting to close out this year roughly 20 to the positive, roughly a $3 million bettering\nit's halfway through the fiscal year. $3 million or $900 million is a very, very small margin.\nIt's less than half a percent of that margin.\nSo effectively, your biggest takeaway on your general purpose fund is\nwe are exactly where we thought we would be.\nYour budget is holding Pat again.\nYou're a little low on little low on your departmental expenditures.\nLittle low on revenues. Both are coming in. But that's lining out\nand in in you about $3 million to the positive.\nWe are maintaining compliance with our reserve policies.\nAs you know we ended last year with an intact emergency reserve.\nWe remain intact for that.\nAnd we do not have any money in our rainy day fund,\nbut we didn't have any last year. That has not changed.\nAnd we're in compliance with our Omers reserve policy as well.\nUse some other key funds that are notable here.\nWe have some positive projected balances across a number of fund sets,\nand we'll be addressing them as we come into our budget cycle and refine our projections.\nThis affordable housing number is probably the one mostly of concern to us.\nI do think that we will cure this over the course of a couple of years.\nAs we continue to generate revenue in the source.\nI'm not super overly concerned, but I do want to point this out\nto you in terms of its balances.\nAnd again, we're projected to be positive in your internal service funds\nmoving forward. The city does continue to face some key pressures.\nI want to know that we have,\ncontinued increases in our CalPERS and health care\nand insurance costs.\nFederal government remains a source of uncertainty\nfor us, both in terms of what they fund directly and the actions they take and how those affect the economy.\nWe have to consider that we need to, move into compliance\nwith the restoring about measure moves.\nWe have negative funds. We have a ballot measure on this June's ballot,\nand we have significant deferred costs for equipment, facilities and technology.\nWe have opportunities from last year to continue\nto build on revenue collection performance.\nOne of the things that was not underperforming this year was your business tax.\nAnd we continue to do well in terms of trying to drive in that resource.\nWe need to continue to focus on other resources\nwithin the general purpose Fund, where we can continue to drive revenue improvement.\nWe had a positive beginning position. We did have a successful, access to bond market.\nAnd we have been pretty good at maintaining spending discipline, as shown by\nif you remove out that sort of contribution\nof the one time bonuses, every department\nin the general purpose fund coming in under budget.\nWith that, I will pause,\nand note again these key takeaways,\nbut take any questions that you might have.\nThank you. Director Johnson and the entire finance team.\nI think this is a great indication that we're on our way\nto continue to be on stable footing.\nLess than half a percentage point plus or minus.\nAnd our general purpose fund is. Seems very good news.\nAnd, you know, a big thanks to our revenue division\nin particular for working very hard to collect\npreviously uncollected business taxes and to try to get as much revenues as possible.\nAnd I have just two questions.\nOne about what are the realities?\nThat's kind of outside the city of Oakland's control,\nwhich is primarily property taxes.\nOur other city is experiencing this as well in the region.\nYes, absolutely. So what Jose mentioned in terms of prop eight reductions\nis a factor that you're seeing throughout\nAlameda County and the Bay area in general.\nAs we all know, the office market has been\none of the places where it's been harder hit come pandemic.\nUnder California law, a taxpayer has the ability, if they feel like they're paying\nabove market value, to ask the assessor,\nwho's an elected official, to reassess their,\nproperty tax down. The assessor does key work,\nand makes that determination based on what they see.\nThe market at whenever possible. We do try to provide input whenever we can to mitigate that\nif it's going to be an impact to the city.\nBut that is something we're seeing across the county.\nAnd across our region. So it is not an Oakland specific factor.\nWe do have the biggest downtown in Alameda County.\nSo in terms of commercial properties, we tend to be affected a little bit more compared\nto our other, compatriot cities in the county.\nBut you would see a similar factor happening in San Francisco\nand in Santa Clara County with San Jose. That's not an unusual trend.\nThe nice thing about prop eight reassessment is\nshould the market take off again, instead of growing 2% per year to get back to where they were,\nthe assessor can reset them all in one go to that prior value.\nSo should the market come back, we can.\nThis can be a faster increase back to where we were to.\nSo it falls faster based on the market, but it can come back faster.\nSo we're continuing to watch and monitor for that.\nThank you. I think that's great news. And can you differentiate again how we're doing on\nthe residential assessments versus commercial.\nIt's clear that commercial property values are down in the region.\nBut how are we doing on the residential your as your residential market continues to be?\nI wouldn't say great gun strong but robust, stable.\nWe continue to get our 2% growth rates\nout of our normal residential properties.\nYour property market is fairly stable. The only thing that I would be concerned\nabout on the residential market side is\nand it's less to do with your property tax, more to do with your REIT.\nRight? Interest rates remain fairly high compared to our recent trends.\nThat high interest rate does, discourage a lot of people from getting into the market.\nAnd so when we have, better market going,\nyou get more property turnover, which means you get more reassessments\nto market rate value, which tends to drive your property tax number a little bit higher than it would normally.\nBut what you're seeing right now is a healthy continuing real estate market on the residential sector side.\nAnd hopefully as we get some development projects built, we will continue to see growth in that space.\nGreat. And just one more question.\nClarifying that the estimate at the end of that fiscal\nyear, we're anticipating to have a surplus of 20 million.\nIs that. That's right. So your bank account at the end of last year,\nif you think, the difference between your,\npaycheck, your expense bills and what's in your bank account,\nwhat you're seeing is your bank account growing from\njust under $17 million to just over $20 million.\nThat's what we're projecting. So that's, again, a very, very small marginal increase\non your general purpose fund. That's $800 million, right?\nThat's but marginal increase is good to go.\nThat's what we want to see. Less than half a percent again, meaning\nthat based on all the things we're seeing right now,\nwe are trending almost exactly where we were given.\nWe're half a year into the end of the fiscal year.\nSo this is very positive. There are lots of things that are unexpected\nand could happen. I should note when we did this report,\nat the time we were doing this data, we were not in the war in the Middle East.\nThat wasn't true at that time. There are things that can occur.\nBut, in terms of our internal management\nof both our revenues and expenditures were exactly where we thought we would be. Great.\nThank you. Councilmember Wong,\nthank you. Through the chair.\nSorry. Can you just explain? Because I'm seeing in table one a lot of numbers in the red\nand where the year end estimate is 77878 4 million\nfor revenues and 849 for expenditures.\nHow is it that we're not ending the the year and the deficit?\nI just absolutely yeah. So a key unbudgeted expense\nare the one time bonuses for civilian employees.\nSo while we agreed to that in labor agreements, we did not budget for that.\nIt came after budget.\nThose expenses come entirely out of your general purpose fund,\nregardless of where the department is\nfunded normally. So you'll find a department that has no general purpose fund\nwith potentially a general purpose fund expense,\nif that makes sense. And so they could actually be over in some space,\nbut that we all planned to cover that expenditure\nout of the unrealized resources at the end of\nor the excess resources from the Kaiser sale, Kaiser\nbuilding sale from last year. So we have those resources in there.\nAgain, Unbudgeted we have the expense Unbudgeted,\nwhich is why I'm going to call you to that fund balance table at the end,\nwhich shows that slight increase.\nWe're doing a little bit. We're in very, very marginal improvement on last year.\nIf you do a budget actuals comparison, which is the standard way, if you're doing this report,\nyou'll find these unbudgeted expenditures coming up.\nBut again, the performance of our departments, as if we had not had that bonus is such that everyone\nwould be under budget and that under budgeting, compared to our slightly lower\nthan slightly lower revenue connection\nwould actually be a slight positive number, a slight improvement about $3 million.\nOkay.\nGotcha. So it's these were unbudgeted, but\nthat we would see in the actuals is essentially exactly.\nOkay. Okay. Unbudgeted but anticipated we anticipated this.\nThis is not different than our and our trend.\nWe expected this.\nBut it is not formally budgeted.\nSo we have to show you a budget, actual comparison\nto your formerly adopted and adjusted budgets.\nOkay. Okay. Gotcha.\nAnd I was just curious, there were a couple of expenditures\nthat were, over budget.\nThey were the Nonpermanent report\nas well as the Human Services department. What was driving those? Sure. Yeah.\nSo on the non-departmental port side, that's primarily, again,\nsome of our sort of resources that were that are driven\nfrom the last fiscal coming forward,\nalong with non-departmental receives the recoveries from expenditures\nand other funds related to federal grants.\nWe are not doing as you might imagine.\nWe have some continuous issues with the federal government\nregarding our grant expenditures. One of the things that gets recovered for\nnon-departmental is actually the administrative side of those grants.\nAnd so you see, that is actually an offset\nin your non-departmental space. And if we're not getting those offsets\nbecause we're getting we're not getting some of those grants in, or we have issues in terms of the drawers on them,\nit's going to show, as a, as a problem expenditure space.\nWe are working to rectify that. Again, I don't expect it to be a problem\nat the end of the fiscal year. Okay. And the human services department,\nthat's primarily human services. It's mostly non general purpose fund funded,\nhas a lot of staff. You're the vast majority of\nif you look at I'm going to pick a program set.\nFor example, if I look at our homelessness services unit within Human services, a lot of that is in measure.\nQ A lot of that is in measure.\nVacancy tax, some of it is in federal and state\ngrants like Hap, and Cdbg and, hawala and whatnot.\nAnd so what you're seeing is those sources are not actually paying for the one time bonuses.\nThe general purpose fund is and the Human Services\nDepartment was again, not developed. A general purpose fund budget for those.\nBut we are charging them out of there because that's actually where the resource sat\nat the end of the last fiscal year, per hour, per what we saw.\nSo you'll see that a better example on that.\nAgain, if you look at human resources or planning and building,\nthose are over budget planning buildings, almost not almost entirely not in the general purpose fund,\nbut again has an expenditure now. And so that's what you're seeing in terms of that dynamic.\nOkay. Gotcha. Helpful. Thank you.\nBefore I move to Councilmember Brown, just one other positive\nI'd like to highlight and ask about is for the first time,\nI feel like since I've been on council, OPD seems to be under budget.\nIs this what is this a result of?\nThat's. Absolutely. So I want to commend former Chief Mitchell and current Chief\nBere for their active work in aggressively managing,\nthe overtime to deploy it primarily,\nI would say exclusively when necessary.\nI will note that,\nthey are doing a very, very active job of trying to manage that both on the PD\nand I should mention on the fire side as well.\nI do have to caveat we have,\nboth PD and fire could be required to respond\nto a major event,\nand we haven't had a really significant major event this fiscal year yet.\nSo should something come up\npotentially due to the federal level, potentially due to something else\nthat occurs, there might this might be a trend that changes.\nBut again, sort of good news on no major events.\nThus far.\nBut again, we're at war in the Middle East.\nIt's really, really warm outside right now, which will lovely for our weather\nis not super good for our fire season.\nThings could occur. We have to continue to monitor that,\nbut in sort of normal space, as both,\nchiefs are doing a very, very active job with managing their overtime budget\nand maintaining expenses within it.\nI will say some credit is also due to this body\nfor ensuring that the budgets that were adopted for PD\nand Fire are reasonable and are something\nthat actually sort of aligns with the resource,\nspending pool that they're going to have out through the year.\nWe do have from many,\nmany years ago an audit finding saying that one of the things that council needs to do is provide\na reasonable budget for police and fire\nthat they actually can live within. And that is something that we adopted in our biennial\nbudget of last year. So it's both good management, good budgeting practice.\nAnd hopefully it's something that we can continue through the end of this fiscal year.\nThank you, Councilmember Brown.\nExcellent. Thank you so much.\nThrough the chair to our finance director,\nyou know, thank you to you and the team for such a comprehensive report on my question.\nHas to do with slide number 14.\nIt's my understanding that, from the last time\nwe had this report presented to us, it appears\nthat fund 18, 1770, the negative balance continues to grow.\nAnd I know, you spoke,\nvery quickly about this item, but I wanted to ask\nmore specifically, what is the plan to bring this fund, into a positive balance?\nAnd I guess I'm also curious.\nI guess, you know, what is contributing to the net\nnegative fund balance? And then also, is this also a fund that\nactually, the dollars come from the general fund?\nI was trying to, recall the exact\nmethodology of, like, how we fund this.\nAnd then I guess my last question is, is,\nare there is there staff, that are paid out of this fund?\nI will answer all of those questions. I'll take the middle one first.\nSo the origin of the resource for 1870, 1870,\nis a city's as a city fund that is set up\nfrom 25% of the former redevelopment money\nthat came back to all taxing entities\nfollowing the dissolution of redevelopment.\nSo when we dissolved the redevelopment agencies,\nwhen the state did that back in January of 2012,\nresources were given back to the taxing entities\nof which the city was one. The city's elected to put 25% of that resource aside\nin an affordable housing trust fund.\nThe city also originally used this as the fund for receiving\nits affordable housing and jobs housing impact fees.\nThat was the original source that was happening here\nin over the course of the last sort of three years.\nThere are two major developments.\nOne, the council has an, policy to balance last year's budget,\nadopted a policy by which we could divert\nresources out of that on a temporary basis\nbecause it is general fund money to help balance the general purpose fund.\nAnd so that did drive you negative going into last year\nuntil we brought it down. So it came in a little bit under\nin terms of fund balance last year. And that's the majority of what\nwe're continuing to see this year. And a second practice that we moved is we created\ndesignated funds for 1870, and they're 1871 and 1872\nfor your affordable housing and jobs, housing impact fees.\nAnd so we did a reconciliation by which we removed the fund\nbalance attributed to those two\nand move them to their own separate funding sources. And so the upshot of all that is this fund,\nit ended up a little bit negative. The other two funds are actually positive.\nAnd so net together they're all positive.\nThis fund is so this is an active practice where we have to manage this.\nThe biggest thing you'll see here is our expected unit.\nExpenditure projections are almost $34 million\ncompared to a revenue number.\nOf about 14. This is mostly carry\nforward expenditure for existing projects.\nSo actually most of what you spent out on this is pre existing projects.\nThis $34 million may not actually all be spent this year\nbecause it takes a while to actually do these projects\non a cash basis. We actually have a balance in this fund that's positive.\nBut if we spent if we spent everything\nwe're authorized to spend, we were able to complete every single one of those projects this year,\nwe would go negative. And so that's what we're saying with this -5 million.\nIf you look at that 14 that you're beginning balance,\nthere's actually a positive balance. And to start it that's the dynamic.\nSo I don't actually expect to project\nto spend everything out of this fund in the current year.\nBut for conservative ness sake, we do forecast it that way\nand we can resolve this,\nsort of what we would call a negative appropriation balance\nwith careful budgeting over the course of the mid cycle.\nOne action you could take is you could reduce any reliance.\nThe general purpose fund hasn't moved back to the 25% allocation.\nThe other thing that we're likely to see is we do have vacancies in this fund.\nThis does fund a lot of affordable housing staff.\nAnd so we're going to see some natural result resolution of this with vacancy savings.\nThe other thing will be working with housing to do is\nsee if any of the projects that are funded out of 1870 or more properly moved to 1871\nor 1872, where we have positive balances,\nwe can shift where the project funding sources\nif it's eligible for affordable housing or drop impact\nfees, and sort of equalize across the funds\nto make sure that they're all in a positive position.\nSo again, I don't think this is a major concern in the long run.\nIt's not cash negative to start, and it probably\nwill not be cash that I give it at the end of this year. And we're actively trying to manage it.\nAny other comments?\nOkay. We can move to public comment.\nActually I'm sorry, I have one more question.\nAnd that's the positive balance on measure Q\nso the estimated, positive balance, about 14 million.\nIs this primarily due to hiring and not being able\nto hire for budgeted positions?\nThat's that's absolutely it's primarily driven\nby salary savings from prior from both the prior year\nand in forecast in the current fiscal year. That's exactly what you're saying.\nOkay. Thank you. Move to public comment,\ncalling in the names that signed up to speak on item\nnumber seven, David Boatwright and Kevin Dally.\nAnd David Boatwright, district four.\nI have a lot of confidence in our finance director.\nHe is so knowledgeable. It's unbelievable.\nBut there's something in this report that really confused me.\nAnd it was on page eight, first paragraph on that page.\nAnd it says that because of the energies\non revenues and the overages on expenses,\napproximately 64.84 million operating deficit will occur.\nI know y'all don't answer questions,\nbut it's in your report. So it ought to be something that that somebody can address.\nThank you.\nAll right. Kevin Daley, also from district four,\nI want to call out one part that I think\nis interesting, attachment A page eight.\nThe parking fines and penalties have come in 6.1 above budget.\nSo they are collecting more fines\nand penalties than what's budgeted.\nAnd this is with the current parking and mobility\nteam as it set up at present.\nThere will be increased enforcement in April, expanding to Sunday enforcement in depth.\nThat's also noted in this attachment.\nSo I think we'll see more increases.\nAnd I'm looking forward to more parking enforcement, including Sundays.\nI also want to thank again,\nthe bond sales have been wonderful.\nStreet paving. It's done a fantastic job.\nMy ride into City Council today,\none small, one more small street.\nIt's nice and smooth and no longer bumpy\nand I'm looking forward to more being done. Thanks.\nThanks for the bond sales.\nThank you for your comments. Sure. That concludes all speakers on this item.\nThank you. Is there any comments from the finance departments at all?\nSo I will just clarify\nfor the for the record that we are expecting\nto end slightly better in the general purpose fund\nat the end of this fiscal year than we ended last year.\nAnd that should be the key takeaway from everyone on this body.\nOkay. Thank you. Is there a motion to,\nreceive and file this report?\nSo moved. Second.\nThank you. We have a motion made by Council Member Brown, seconded by Council Member Wang, to receive and file\nthis informational report in Committee on Roll.\nCouncil members. Brown I Ungar I I'm sorry.\nWang I and chair. Ramachandran.\nThank you. Item number seven passes with four eyes to receive. And while this informational report and committee.\nNow reading in item number four.\nReceive an informational report on citywide staffing\nfrom the City Administrator regarding citywide vacancy rates\nand status of. As of February 1st, 2026.\nBudgeted vacancy rates for fiscal year 20 2526.\nThe vacancy rates for regional local public\nentities, recruitment, outreach and community engagement,\nand the the analysis of the city workforce\nand recruitment conditions. And we have three speakers that signed up.\nThank you. Please go ahead. I have a presentation.\nAll right. Hello, everyone. My name is Elaine Reyez.\nI'm a supervising personnel operations analyst in the recruitment classification operations\ndivision of the Human Resources Management Department.\nI'm here today to present an overview of the citywide staffing report.\nAs of February 1st, 2026.\nJust to give you a little background, over the past several years, Hfm has prepared a report assessing vacancy data\nfor city positions, analyzing several key staffing factors,\nincluding recruitment improvements, retention trends, and employee tenure.\nToday's presentation will highlight key data points and observations from the report,\nand we'll also include information as set forth by Assembly Bill 2561,\nwhich is a California state law requiring agencies to publicly report on job\nvacancies, recruitment, and retention efforts annually.\nBefore reviewing the data, I want to clarify how vacancies\nare defined for the purposes of this report.\nFor this report. Oops, sorry.\nDid it go for this report?\nVacancies are defined as non encumbered and unfrozen.\nNon encumbered positions are available to be filled\nand are not being held vacant for any other purpose.\nAnd positions on the other hand are tied to funding\nfor overtime, temporary staffing under filled positions or acting assignments.\nFrozen physicians are roles that exist in the budget\nbut are not currently available to be filled.\nPositions may be frozen due to budget constraints, strategy,\nor strategic or operational realignments,\nor pending decisions about the future of the role.\nBecause these positions are not available for recruitment or hiring,\nthey are generally excluded from the vacancy count.\nAs of February 1st, 2026,\nthe city had 4,264.17 full time equivalent positions.\nThis is includes full time and permanent part time\npositions, with some positions funded at less than one FTE.\nOf those positions, 839.75 positions were vacant,\nwhich calculates to 19.69% as our vacancy rate.\nSomething to note about the positions\nthat were included here. We did identify a few that don't fit the general description\nthat we normally include. We identified some positions that were authorized\nand frozen, as well as unfilled, unauthorized,\nand unfrozen positions. There were also a couple of encumbered positions\nthat were authorized but frozen.\nWe included these exceptions to provide an accurate\na more accurate snapshot of the city's staffing levels.\nNow, with that context, let's take a look at how this compares to historical data.\nThis chart here shows the historical vacancy rate\nsince 2020. Overall, the vacancy rate\nincreased significantly after 2021\nand have remained consistently high since then, generally hovering between 18 and 20%.\nThis suggests the city has been operating with a structurally higher\nvacancy level for the last several years.\nFor your reference, last year reported a vacancy rate of 17.94%.\nSo although vacancy levels have increased, the city's authorized positions have also gone up.\nThe vacancy information was analyzed in several ways,\none of which was by department.\nThis chart here highlights the top five departments\nwith the highest vacancy rate. Percentages.\nLooking at percentages helps to show the relative\nstaffing impact within each department.\nAs shown here, you can see that West has the highest vacancy rate at 55%, followed by HCM\nwith 45, Police Commission at 39% and DVP at 37.\nPublic ethics also made the top five. However, if you take a look at the data,\nit looks like they only have four vacant positions out of their relatively small total FTE of 12,\nwhich results in a higher percentage of 33%.\nAnd for that reason, we should also look at the data\nby the total number of vacant positions.\nAnd we look at this data this way. The total number of vacancy shows\nwhere the largest staffing gaps exist across the city.\nThe departments with the highest number of vacancies were fire,\nDepartment of Transportation, police,\nPublic Works and Human Services.\nNext, we can take a look at how the data was broken out by Union.\nThis shows the vacancy rate broken down by each of the six unions that the city has a memorandum\nof understanding with, or otherwise known as an MOU.\nYou can see here that local 21 holds the highest percentage at 24.62.\nLocal 21 also has the highest number with about 350 vacancies.\nNow, within each MOU for each union,\nthere are multiple bargaining unit.\nAnd this table here shows the top nine bargaining units\nwith the highest vacancy percentages.\nThese were identified as being subject to additional\nreporting as required by Assembly Bill 2561,\nbecause 20% or more of their positions\nin their bargaining unit are unfilled.\nThe Assembly bill requires agencies to provide\ndetailed information, such as the number of vacancies\nwhich you saw in the previous slide. The number of applicants for those vacancies.\nThe average number of days it takes to complete the hiring process from when it's posted,\nand opportunities for improvement.\nWe looked at data collected five years back,\nso from February 1st to 2021 through February 1st, 2026,\nwith the bargaining units identified that had at least one active vacancy.\nThis table shows the number of applications received\nand the time to hire,\nwhich considers the total average number of days from the hiring process took.\nBreaking it down into two stages, posting sorry job\nposting to eligible list and then referral to hire\nonly recruitments with complete data for both stages were included to ensure accurate time to hire.\nReporting.\nAs mentioned, the hiring timeline was measured in\ntwo stages. Is responsible for activities during stage one\nfrom when announcement is open to when an eligible list\nis established. Whereas hiring departments are responsible\nfor activities during stage two, for\nwhen a candidate is referred up until a hire is made.\nHere's a visual representation of the data from the previous slide.\nBroken down into the stages\nfor classifications represented by local 21.\nThe departmental hiring phase out averaged four weeks\nlonger than a recruitment phase.\nFor classifications represented by SEIU,\nthe timelines for both stages were nearly identical.\nH.R. has implemented several strategies\nto reduce time to hire, such as improved coordination\nwith departments to streamline hiring processes, including\ncreating an operations team to enhance departmental support.\nWe're also looking at strengthening recruitment, planning and leveraging digital tools\nto reduce administrative delays.\nNow we're going to take a look at each vacancy\nstatus on February 4th, 2026,\nto review the vacancy status of all 851 positions.\nEach vacant position was categorized into a status\nas shown here, including how it compares to last year's report.\nSome notable observations.\nOf the total vacancies, 426 do not have a requisition\nsubmitted by the department. Aid department.\nThis represents 50% of all vacancies, compared to 59% last year.\nWithout a requisition, no action can be taken to fill these positions.\nAdditionally, of these 426 vacancies, 116\nor 14% of the total vacancies have an eligible list available.\nThis means Hrn previously established an eligible list,\nwith qualified candidates available to be interviewed.\nHowever, the department has not yet submitted a requisition to begin their hiring process.\nThroughout this process, atrium also identified\na few instances where eligible lists were not utilized before expiration.\nTo support proactive workforce planning.\nWe implemented distributing a monthly report\nto departments to encourage timely use or extension of active eligible lists.\n23% of vacancies are currently in progress to be filled.\nDepartments are in either the interview process or have identified a candidate.\nThis has been increased from 19% last year.\nHR is currently assigned to work to fill 20% of the total vacancies.\n5% are pending. HR analyst assignments.\nThat's a jump from 10 to 40.\nWe're also actively working on 11%\nof the vacancies, compared to 6% last year.\nThat's an increase from 49 vacancies to 92 vacancies.\nAnd in addition, compared to last year, there's been a significant increase in vacancies\nresulting from class specification and title changes.\nThat number nearly tripled from last year from 11 to 40\nsince the last staffing report in 2025.\nWe strengthened on our classification\nand recruitment capacity through training and expanded\nresponsibilities amongst the team.\nAnother way we slice the data was to look at sworn versus\nnon sworn positions as compared to last year's report.\nNon sworn decrease from 23.5 to 22.11%.\nWhereas there was a large increase in sworn from 5.15\nto 13.55%.\nLooking at separations for the past ten years,\nin FY 2425, total separations increased by 45.6%.\nAnd then looking at that, you may think there should be more of a pressure on recruitment\nand the need to outpace operations with hiring.\nHowever, if you look at the reasons for the separations, there was a 55.8% in retirements.\nRetirements are more predictable than resignations\nand can result in the loss of institutional knowledge.\nTechnical expertise and supervisory capacity.\nThis increases the need for supporting internal advancement\nand enhancing workplace engagement.\nWith the hope that it will result in long term retention.\nPolice recorded the highest number of separations,\nrepresenting 30% of the city's total separations. Fire\nfollowed at 13%, with public works close behind with 12%.\nWhen looking at this data, police of plays are leaving\nwell before retirement eligibility, suggesting\nretention and engagement challenges and challenges.\nPolice may benefit from targeted retention efforts.\nIn contrast, fire and public works operations were largely retirement\nbased and more predictable. These departments would benefit from succession\nplanning and knowledge transfer initiatives.\nEmployee tenure has been slowly increasing,\nwith a 0.9% increase from 2023,\nI'm sorry, 23 to 20 4 to 2425.\nSo far, we've seen an increase of 14.5\nfor this fiscal year.\nAs far as data collected from our regional comparator\njurisdictions, this information has\nbeen collected since May of 2022.\nThe city is most in line with Hayward and Richmond in terms of our vacancy rate.\nIn summary, HCM is committed\nto not only strengthening hiring but also retention.\nWe're looking to continue to partner with departments\nto streamline hiring processes and reduce time to fill\nand support departments in attracting and retaining talent\nwhile adapting to evolving workforce needs.\nIn partnership with the Department of Race and Equity,\nwe are embedding equitable practices in recruitment and employment.\nAnd additionally, I do want to point out that recruitment classification does not\nis not alone in this effort. Our Organizational Development and Training division\nalso shares a strong commitment to strengthening retention through employee development,\ncareer growth and support for supervisors and managers\nand also equipping leaders with the tools and skills\nto foster engagement and a high performing workforce.\nThat's all I have for today. Any questions? Thank you.\nI appreciate the presentation and some of the slightly\npositive numbers that you made in comparison to last year.\nBut to be frank, I think that it's shameful\nthat we have 840 vacancies.\nBut when someone goes to the City of Oakland job websites, as of this morning, there's 40.\nAnd of those 40, only 20 are full time positions.\nA year ago, after this annual report came out,\nI talked to residents about this and the number one,\nthis is the way that the city is perceived with the public\nthat we are not trying to hire\nthat departments or HR have their own reasons why\nthey don't want to hire or they only hire their friends.\nThis is the very real perception of how we are treated.\nI appreciate that there are some minor improvements,\nbut these numbers are the worst in four years and other cities.\nWe cannot keep talking about. The pandemic has\nhindered progress because other cities have caught up.\nIt's understandable in 2020 and 2021, even 2022,\nif our numbers were down. But it is 2026 and we have a 20% vacancy\nrate for key public service delivery roles.\nI don't back in 2020 3rd June, my first budget cycle,\nwe had found money and passed the addition of two tree\nservices workers essential positions\nto keep our communities\nfree from trees falling on the ground, fire safety, a whole bunch of other things.\nIt's 2026 and they're not hired.\nThere are so many positions frontline service,\ndelivery positions, street sweepers, sign painters,\nengineers, things that affect every day public life\nthat all qualified Oakland residents want\nto have as a jobs, and they're not even on the website.\nSo I know that there's some modest increases being made,\nbut how can the HR department have 35 vacancies\nif we're trying to increase the speed of\ngetting these things out there? And there's only so much you can blame departments.\nI know that there's some numbers of requisitions that haven't been submitted, but\nwhat about all the ones that have been submitted?\nI think this is frankly disgraceful and I wouldn't\nI don't even have concrete questions because this is this was shocking to me\nto see the numbers increase from last year, that it's been the highest\nsince the pandemic, and I don't know what to do,\nbut the public see the public of those Oakland residents who want to work for the city,\nsee as us as an ivory tower that doesn't want to give jobs\nto Oakland residents. And I think that perception\ncan only be changed when there is proactive hiring,\nproactive outreach to the community,\ntelling Oakland residents the city has 800 jobs available to you, and you should apply.\nWith your colleagues. Councilmember Wong,\nI, I completely agree with the chair.\nI would just to start off on a good note, I will say this report is very thorough.\nSo thank you for putting it together.\nBut I think it just really it's concerning.\nAnd I think the thing that really sticks out to me is\nwhat is going on with the HR department itself,\nbecause the vacancy rate is really shocking,\nand it seems like filling the HR department would ensure\nbenefits across the city to fill all these vacancies.\nAnd it was noteworthy that for many of the vacancies\nthat there was no requisition.\nAnd so that's a department issue.\nBut for\nfor HR, I assume that you all need to fill your own requisition.\nSo why hasn't there been done? I don't see on the website\nany posting for the HR analysts that are needed to fill so\nmany of these other positions. And so that is just one that I,\nI read that and I'm just deeply concerned through the chair.\nAmber Lytle, human resources manager. So a couple points on her address.\nFirst, with the vacancies within. Those were added in January of this year.\nWe did just close the senior analyst posting two weeks\nago, the assistant analyst posting last week.\nSo we are in the process of filling those positions.\nBut some of those positions are newly added to the budget, so we haven't had\nthe opportunity to fill them. We are actively working on it, but that contributes to our\nvacancy rate. In the additional positions that were added this year\nregarding our postings, one announcement can cover multiple jobs.\nSo just because, you know, you only see 20 at a time,\nthat could fill 60, 80 jobs.\nSo it is a little bit deceptive when you look at it that way.\nIt doesn't indicate how many jobs per posting.\nHow long does it take? Once a budget.\nOnce a position has been budgete\nIt all depends on the department's participation.\nBut once they've submitted a requisition, our time to hire\nis less than three months. We've significantly decreased that time frame.\nAnd one of the things that Elaine had pointed out,\nour time, the time versus the department time, the department time\nshould be down to about 60 days.\nAnd they are far exceeding our timeline. So that's where we really need to partner with our department\nto submit those requisitions. And then once they get those names to act upon that.\nOkay. What about the HR analyst positions, since that's one that you don't need to\nthere is no dependency on the departments.\nThat's just an HR thing. How long the how long has that taken to to post after the.\nBut it was budgeted for.\nSo when they were added in January the postings went live in February.\nPart of the process. So we do have to get budget approval. So even though they are added into our budget,\nwe still have to submit the requisition and it goes through a level of approval.\nSo it starts with the department head, then it goes to budget to approve\nand then it goes to equal access.\nSo there's a few steps along the way. It's not just submit a requisition.\nIt's approved the next day. And some of them budget\ntakes a little bit of time to make sure. Yes, it's in the budget, but can we actually fill it?\nSo that contributes to the timeline as well.\nOkay. Thank you.\nCouncilmember Unger.\nDid you want to answer that question first?\nI'm sorry. Did you want to answer that question before?\nDid you have more to add? I. Well, I just have some actually a different comment to make.\nBut you go ahead, Councilmember.\nIf you if you're still on.\nGo ahead. Oh,\ngood morning, Mary Howe HR director.\nI think I just want to,\nmake sure that we are focusing in the right number of members\nof the finance and Management Committee.\nSo I think that we had a similar\nsituation last year where we reported a very stark high number of vacancies,\nbecause that's an actual count of positions that exist within the city.\nBut I think what we did this year in the report was to highlight for you that 51% of those positions\nare 431 of them actually have no activity.\nWe are not able to act on that because they're either no requisition\nor they're on hold for by the department for various reasons.\nWe have 197\nthat are an active recruitment process, but because they still are not encumbered,\nthey have their report as a vacancy. So they're in somewhere\nduring the interview process or backgrounds or other hiring processes.\nAnd so the the last four items in the chart\nthat Miss Reyes showed you, totals roughly 25%\nof those 851 classifications, excuse me,\npositions, that require some sort of action.\nSo I think I just want to make sure that the members of this committee,\nare focusing on the right sort of breakdown of the statistics\nrather than the big number, because that big number exists\nbecause they are not encumbered, but there\nbut half of them there is no activity.\nAnd we're not able to act without a requisition.\nThank you.\nThank you all for being here. And I understand how difficult this is. You know, I've worked for the city\nfor almost 30 years, and HR and hiring has been the choke point in the bottleneck\nand the department with the most difficulty\nfor as long as I remember. And so I think that, you know, we're all trying to be,\nas gentle as possible with, with everyone.\nYou know, I saw a lot in the report blaming some of the delays\non the departments, and that may be the case.\nI think we need to\nget a lot better at really calling out where the choke points are.\nAnd let's cut through the, the niceties.\nAnd I would hope that in future reports,\nyou really highlight where those bottlenecks are, because I still can't entirely tell where the bottlenecks are\nif it's the departments. And let's figure out how to make the departments better. If it's HR,\nif it's budget, if it's finance, like, I still can't tell where the bottlenecks are.\nAnd that is what I've been trying to cut through for for years.\nI mean, do you could you could you rank the three\nbottlenecks for me or the top three?\nI think if I had two off the top of my head, I think it really falls\nwhen the names are referred to the department.\nHow long it takes the department to fill.\nSo I can give you an example.\nThere was a position that was available. The department requested to use\nacting pay to fill the position and exempt position, and I.\nWhy don't you just fill it? You have the names.\nWell, it's going to take this like three weeks before we can assemble an interview panel.\nWe told you in advance where we were working on this process.\nWe told you we're going to establish that eligible is. Why aren't you ready?\nSo what we've done within him is we've created\na departmental personnel support team,\nand the team is really focused on\nhow can we enhance these processes for the department, and how can we better support the department.\nSo we can do the blame game, but we really need\nto step back and say, what resources can we provide to the department so that we can help them fill these positions?\nI'd like to see when we come back in future reports, how that's working.\nLike specifically like we we need to\nwe need to stop sort of lamenting the fact that it's a problem and actually getting at the\nat the nub of it.\nOne specific thing I noticed\nis that I think over the period you,\nassessed, which was five years, there were 87\nincidents, instances where people died on an active list.\nAnd so my understanding is that is a time when we had an open position,\nwe had a person on a list who was qualified and ready\nto take the job, and that list expired before we can fill it.\nWhy have we had 87 lists by the department since I met requisitions?\nSo it could be there's multiple instances, but let's say that\none department has a vacancy. They submit the requisition and we create the eligible list.\nBut a different department also has a position that same classification.\nIf they don't submit the requisition\nthey're not going to use the eligible. So one department might initiate the recruitment process.\nAnd there's a list available. But the other departments aren't somebody\nin the requisitions to utilize them.\nYou also have to remember we have restricted list and open list. So that's a combination of the fact you\nwe might have only used a restricted and never touched the open different instances.\nThis seems to me like the lowest hanging fruit. These are situations where we have\nsomebody who wants the job. We have the job that's open.\nLet's put those two together and make a beautiful marriage.\nAnd we do have our principal analyst. They meet with our departments either\nmonthly or biweekly, depending on the size of the department and their needs.\nBut we go through and say, here's your report, here's your available positions.\nWhen are you going to submit the requisition? Please submit the requisition.\nSo we do actively work with the departments,\nbut we can't submit it on their behalf. They have to prioritize what they want to hire for\nand submit those requisition so we can support them.\nWhat do you all need to make this better?\nBecause I think you can sense from everyone on this committee\nthat this is something we're all really concerned about. What what do you need to fix this problem?\nThe department heads need to authorize the submission of the requisitions\nand then the departmental sparks would submit those\nso that we can start that recruitment process.\nDo you feel like the department heads know what they need to do? Not necessarily.\nI don't know if all of the department heads are communicating with their\nsingle point of contact regularly\nto the city administrator, how can we help the department heads get to understand what\nthey need to do? You know, through the chair to, Councilmember Ungar, I think one of the things that we're talking about here, there is a lot of emphasis\nplaced on the human resources department, and I think they've own the areas in which\nthey need it to improve.\nThe other reality is your human resources department has also taken onus\nand responsibility of making sure that they're centralizing the spot duties to make sure\nthat there is some centralization in how we process a lot of this information.\nAnd with that being said,\nwe also have to factor in the fact that your department\nheads are also having to manage to a budget.\nAnd so they're trying to strategically hire\nand within a time frame to make sure they're staying within the budget.\nSo I'm not going to be one that to speak out both sides of my mouth to, to to elevate\nhow well we're doing fiscally.\nBut on the flip side, we're aggressively pushing hiring because that's our our highest cost.\nSo we gotta have an honest conversation here about\nwhat are we doing with respect to how and when we hire and prioritize that hiring.\nBut the human resources department is doing a very good job as quickly as possible\nto centralize a lot of duties. I think we all can attest\nto the fact that there have been some issues.\nThe even how we move forward administratively,\nyou know, in my office, in this body\nand trying to make sure we're cleaning a lot of that up.\nWith that being said, though, to answer your question more directly,\nI will actually seen you take some time and spend that time with,\nwith you, director, how to make sure we articulate\nwhat that process is and make it clear, because we do have quite a few new directors as well,\nthat may not be fully aware how the process works,\nor that they're trying to figure this thing out. And some folks may be,\nyou know, your director, Lester, he's new to this thing,\nand he probably realized there was a list\nthat was available with respect to certain positions that he may want to hire, but may not be fully aware of that.\nSo I think it's really,\nimportant for us to have this honest conversation.\nI think some of the questions that you all have asked\nare very spot on and very fair questions,\nand we certainly want to make sure we bring that information back.\nBut I also want to acknowledge the reality that you human\nresources department is doing a lot of work\nto address a lot of the issues and some of those new positions that,\nMiss Lytle mentioned,\nnow feeding into the human resources department\nto move these processes along a lot faster than we have.\nIt's going to bear a lot of fruit. But I just appreciate the fact that they realize\nthis is a choke point and an issue. But we're happy to bring something back to while\nso that you fully you all are fully aware on how the improvements are working\nand if it's not working, we'll pivot, adjust, and,\nyou know, make the requisite changes. We need to thank you for that.\nAnd I appreciate how hard you're all are working and I am\napologize for my frustration. I think that, you know, every email\nI get from a constituent or from somebody in the city,\nI could send the same answer, which is, we can't do that because we don't have the staff.\nAnd, you know, I could from everything from policing to potholes to\nanything like that could be my response.\nAnd we are just\ntrying to figure out how to crack this nut. So thank you for working with us on that.\nThank you. Before moving to Councilmember Brown, I just don't think it's fair to blame department heads\nbecause in the past, back early 2024,\nI did a deep dive on some of these non sworn positions and other civilian roles\nand when you changed your policies\non asking departments for a list of top five positions\nto rank, order where you can submit\nmany departments didn't know this box.\nDidn't know I was engaging with with these people.\nAnd there is miscommunication. So it's not just departments\nnot sending you the requirements one way. It's also communication back\nthe other, which seems to be broken.\nAnd I would love to see changes when it comes to that,\nbut also, yes, there for various reasons.\nMiscommunication, two sides not talking to each other in the same city.\nThere's 400 requisitions not submitted.\nWhat about the other 400? There's so much that can be do outside of that.\nSo I do hope to see that as well.\nAnd thank you, Chair Ramachandran for your comments.\nAnd so of the 851 431 have no activities,\n197 are in some active recruitment process,\nincluding interviews and backgrounds. And so that leaves us a net of two 223 that\nwe are focusing our efforts on. And I and I, and I believe that for the past couple times\nwe've been here, we've addressed your concerns about the top five that no longer exists.\nI don't know where the top five came from.\nMy staff and I've been here two years. My staff, has said that they understand\nthrough the folklore, the oral tradition that once upon a time, maybe there was some mutterings of the five top five.\nBut now we actually sit down. We meet regularly with our departments\nand we ask them, just give us your list and rank order\nof what your priorities are. If feeling, if the employees.\nIf you need employees to fill potholes, tell us you know\nwhat is it that you need? We do not limit them to anything.\nSo I do want to dispel that myth. I don't know, I do want to respectfully dispel\nthat myth because that does not exist. But we have different versions of the truth, which is fine.\nWe're not going to debate that right here. But it is very clear in conversation that I have had\nwith department heads, with staff, with sparks,\nthat that was certainly not the case two years ago, but we can move on.\nThank you. And so, yes,\nI think as the department actually does the work, I think that, we\nrespectfully disagree with that myth, but yes, let's move on.\nAll right. Councilmember Brown.\nRight. Well, thank you so much.\nTo to my colleagues and on the HR department\nfor this, comprehensive report.\nI am personally focused. I,\nyou know, I recognize everyone is extremely frustrated.\nAnd I think in this moment, I'm really focused in on,\nthe how we can innovate as a city and how technology comes into play here.\nAnd this conversation, even if we don't focus on the amount of,\nyou know, job, open positions that have not received the requisition.\nAnd even if we focus on the ones that have, I am curious.\nThe report states on page 18, there's a category under technology and process.\nAnd I guess I am curious, with the I guess\nwith the vacant positions that HR has,\nis there a specific position that is focused in on,\nactually meeting Aucklanders, like where they are?\nAnd this is outside of kind of what was listed in the report, where it states\nall of the various community engagement activities\nthat the departments went to job fairs, etc.,\nbut also recognizing that a lot of people look for jobs online.\nAnd so if, for example, all the job\nclassifications aren't listed on the website,\nand I think occasionally I'll see on the city of Oakland,\nmaybe like the LinkedIn, sometimes on social media,\nI'll see one offs where it's like, oh, we're hiring for\nyou know, a director position or something like that.\nBut I guess I'm more interested in, like, what is our actual like?\nI think I would love in this report to see something\nthat's like, hey, what is our social media plan?\nRight? Because there are all there are so many ways that,\ncommunity members and especially, you know, folks\nwho are kind of like up and coming, maybe just graduating from from college.\nThere's different ways that we should be engaging with them.\nAnd it may not necessarily be,\nyou know, at a random career fair that you may see the day of\nand honestly, you can't make it. And so I guess I am I'm interested in like what one\nhave we hired someone in a role that actually manages,\nhiring in the HR department for technology?\nLike, do we have that?\nNot specifically. No. And so I guess, like through the chair\nto the administration, maybe potentially\nthat could be something that we consider for the future\nthat so that we can, just really put a plan in place\nto make sure that we are engaging with Aucklanders so that there isn't this,\nthis, perception that we are trying.\nRight. I know that,\nthe second that, you know, I posted an open position\nwithin my office, you know, I received 54 shares\nwithin 30 minutes. Right?\nLike it was very quick. And so I imagine that that same type of engagement,\nwe will get that same type of engagement, even if we break it down where it's like,\nyou know, Oakland Fire Department hiring the following positions. Right?\nMaybe that's what we're posting about week one, week two hr, so on and so forth.\nAnd so I think that there are some tools at our disposal\nto actually help get the word out and actually do some, some,\nmaybe more innovative, recruitment,\nto help support departments in filling these positions.\nAnd then we can further,\nyou know, eliminate this,\nthis misconception that we aren't hiring.\nSo I will, I would love to, to have someone\nkind of speak to that.\nYeah. So we can absolutely work to partner with, PIOs to get things out.\nYou know, a little bit better. But I do want to say our numbers of applicants are not hurting.\nWe get lots of people that are applying to the jobs.\nIt's after the process.\nYou know, where does somebody want to ultimately work?\nBut we do get high numbers, so we are advertising\nas the jobs come available.\nWe've implemented a few different things. So one of the things I'm happy to report,\nwe actually have two our staff members, they're at a career fair right now.\nWe have, we've been doing, various events.\nOne of our, senior analyst, Harry Stanley,\ndid a great presentation last week at the library.\nI think we had 300 people attend,\nwhere he talked about how to apply for a job. Where are the pitfalls that we're seeing\nin the applicant application process?\nSo, you know, people aren't filling out their application correctly and they're falling off the how can we help the public?\nSo we are actively working on recruiting for our jobs.\nWe've also implemented a few different things that help us internally.\nSo we got new software in our applicant tracking system.\nSo additional modules that will help us to hire faster.\nSo we just implemented that. We're going through an implementation process\nwith Neil Gove or government jobs is what the public sees.\nAnd so that is supposed to be fully implemented\nand ready to go by June 5th. So our team is working on that.\nSo we have a lot of things that are happening on the back end.\nWe are a very small team, and so we are trying to not only\nfill our own positions, but to help fill positions citywide.\nAbsolutely. And that makes sense.\nAnd I hope that, you know, the open positions that you all have an HR,\nthose will be a priority to fill. And then also at the same time,\nI know that a lot of times the community feedback that we receive\nis that it takes so long to actually get hired\nwith the city. And so I hope that,\nI guess to the administration supporting the department\nthat we could help to really like set,\na very strong goal of like,\nyou know, by the time someone applies to the time\nwe actually fill the position, like what?\nWhat is that time frame that we are actually striving for so that, you know,\nif there was 30 applicants that applied for that one position,\nthen those those 29 who don't get the job can move on to\nmaybe something else that's posted as well,\nso that we are in general losing all 29.\nRight.\nAnd then potentially that would help to fill some of the, the vacancies\nand through the chair, we have several council members\nthat are actually working to fill their own positions.\nSo I've been able to work with several of you one on one.\nAnd I think you've seen some of the processes\nonce somebody selected and, and onboarding,\nthere's still the payroll paperwork\nthat has to be filled out. There's still the, you know, I-9 process, and the person has to come in.\nSo there's those other pieces that wanted transfers\nfrom the department back to HR, back to payroll.\nSo there's those things that we're working very closely,\nwith the payroll manager, to make sure that we're helping to streamline those processes so we can get people onboarded as quickly as possible.\nAnd just a comment. You're absolutely right, Amber.\nIt's been a delight working really closely with both of you and Anjali.\nWith onboarding. And so I'm really grateful for your support.\nThank you.\nOkay.\nThank you. And I did want to second my colleague's comments on using social media, and just I think we have to meet,\nyou know, 20 year olds and 30 year olds, the next generation of public\nservants, that's where they're at.\nI just really want to understand this whole requisition issue because I,\nit's a little jaw dropping in terms of the vacancies\nthat don't have a requisition submitted.\nCan you walk us through exactly what that looks like?\nAnd why so many department heads have not submitted it?\nIs that something that if we really focus on hiring up more HR analysts,\nthat the HR department could then support department\nheads in submitting it? Is it a highly technical or convoluted process?\nSo yeah. So I'll I'll start off and I'll hand it to Director Johnson.\nPart of those additional positions that were added to our budget\nwere to help with submission of the requisitions.\nOne of the key things, though, is we don't want to just submit requisitions for every position that there is.\nSo the department has to decide where are their priorities.\nYou know, we submit it for the office assistant, but they really needed to do the sweeps. Street sweeper.\nFirst. We want to make sure that they're prioritizing\nwhere their needs are. So we don't want to just submit every requisition without the department actually letting us know\nwhat are the priorities for our department?\nEspecially if, you know, you want to hire the supervisor\nbefore you fill the position that there will be supervising.\nYou can't hire the incumbent and then have no supervisor.\nSo it really is a strategic process on how the requisitions are submitted.\nBut the actual process of submitting a requisition is very easy.\nIt takes a couple of minutes. But it really is the whole thought\nprocess behind submitting the requisition\nto turn it over to the director. Thank you for that.\nI'd like to pass to see Administrator Johnson and just a friendly reminder. We have 45 minutes to finish three items, one\nthat has significant public comment. Thank you.\nThank you to the chair. Councilman Wang, I know you have probably have\na couple more, questions that you'll want to ask.\nBut but I want to be mindful of the other items that we have.\nIf it if it is helpful, happy to sit down and walk you through this.\nBut the process actually is, which is very consistent amongst\nyou Mississippi politicians across the country. So happy to make and carve out that time.\nBut I just want to be cognizant of the other items that we have.\nComing up. Okay. Yeah. That's fair.\nI'll just finish with this comment, which is like there are positions like\ncode enforcement position that have been highlighted as a priority, discussed\nwith the department had they agree it's a top priority.\nOther departments even say this position is needed.\nAnd then I look on the website and it's still not listed.\nAnd so this is the kind of stuff that I just really need\nfeel like we need to dig into.\nOkay, that's it.\nThank you. Public speakers\ncalling in the names that sign up to speak on item number four.\nIn no particular order. You can come up to the podium set earlier, David Boatwright\nand Kevin Daley, David Boatwright, district four.\nAfter this bloodbath that y'all have carried on here,\nI think it's obvious that there's been\na lack of communication, both by the council,\nhuman resources and all the departments.\nThere's no reason why there should be so many,\nrequisitioned.\nPositions. Now, my comments,\nunexplained in this report shows, four\nfrozen positions that were failed and 69 unauthorized positions that were filled,\nexcept in departments where there is a clear\nneed for hiring, for example, OPD, 911 street\nrepair, street paving, safety related infrastructure,\nand where significant revenue generation\nhas been proven, departments where significant non\ngeneral purpose fund bond spending is available\nand jobs where future experience loss can be predicted due\nto retirements and replacement, hiring is difficult.\nThe city should not be budgeting for new positions that do not meet these criteria.\nWe still have a budget problem.\nWhy are we hiring 800 people if we've got a budget problem?\nPositions where solid, factual, results driven, results\ndriven reasons cannot be proven, or jobs\nthis city cannot afford to fail, pure statistics\nshould not be the only justification for hiring.\nI'm not going to finish the rest of this, but,\nbasically we ought to look back at what happened since two,\n2019 when we started hiring like crazy through the,\npandemic. And, this city has grown in size so much.\nWe need to look at what happened then and reconsider those jobs.\nThere's just too many.\nSeth, all your president.\nOakland firefighters. I just want to say thank you for the report. That's incredibly, informative and for the entire council's\nwork to try and staff up Oakland.\nJust speaking for the OFT and open firefighters perspective, staffing levels\nfor my membership as of is approaching an all time low.\nCouncil Member Unger can attest to this. There were some times we were down in the high 300,\nso we're approaching 400 members at this point.\nAnd as far as we're aware of, we're the only department\nthat has a minimum staffing agreement that guarantees that there must be this many\nfire engines and trucks on the city every day\nwith as many people. So we have a set number of seats\nthat we have to fill contractually every day\nthat is set in order to guarantee safety levels for Oakland ers and for Oakland firefighters.\nThat's 141 per day.\nThere are three shifts. That's 423 butts that need to be in seats every day.\nAnd we're under 420 members total right now.\nWe're at 418, is my recollection.\nSo that doesn't account for any day off, any sick days, any vacation, any anything.\nMy membership is at the breaking point, and we're at the point\nnow where,\npeople are having to choose between their families and their oath,\nand they're going through divorces. They're going through and contemplating suicide.\nWe're we are in extremis, the the the time is now.\nActually, the time is passed to do something.\nSo I'm calling on this board\nand this body to do something, please, to help my membership in Oakland.\nWe need to do a lateral firefighter class. We need to do a lateral pay for,\nfirefighter paramedic class immediately.\nA 17% vacancy rate is just abysmal.\nAnd it's unsafe, and Aucklanders deserve better.\nYou know, the the last thing I want to say is just what I'm hearing from H.R.\nis that there, ready to work.\nAnd they need requisitions.\nThey're ready to hire. So let's do it.\nYou know, we're at 418 people plus or minus,\nand we're authorized for 500. I'd love 2026 to be the year that we hit that number.\nThank you.\nKevin Daley,\nI've also heard when I attend the Bicyclists\nand Pedestrian Advisory Commissions,\noften Odot mentions problems with hiring.\nAnd I think from various departments, I've heard versions of the top\nfive rule. If you give a chart too many positions to fill at once,\nsome of the some of the important positions\nwill be dropped. I'm hoping the city administrator can work with\nall of the departments who are having trouble hiring\nand with H.R, and figure out how we can move forward and\nimprove hiring. Thank you.\nThank you for your comments, chair. That concludes all speakers on this item.\nThank you. I will entertain a motion to, forward this to the,\nApril 14th City Council meeting as a public\nhearing.\nWill move approval second.\nThank you. We have a motion made by Council Member Brown, seconded by Council Member Wang, to approve the recommendations of staff\nand to receive and forward this item to the April\n14th Special City Council Agenda at 3:30 p.m.\nas a public hearing on roll, Council members Brown,\nUngar I, Wang I\nand chair Ramachandran I thank you.\nItem number four passes with four eyes\nto be forwarded to the April 14th Special City Council\nagenda at 3:30 p.m. as a public hearing\nreading in item five, receive an informational report\non the results of the salary survey for the\nport city job classifications earning less than $25 per hour.\nAnd we have one speaker that signed up to speak.\nThank you. In the interest of time, myself and coauthor Council Member\nBrown would like to postpone this item to be heard\nat the next kind of, finance committee\nmeeting on April 21st.\nBut we are open to taking,\npublic comment, and we'll have to vote on it. Been postponed as well,\ncalling in the name that signed up to speak on item number five, Kevin Dally,\nwho has just left the chamber.\nMr.. Dally, would you still like to speak on.\nOkay, chair, that concludes our names.\nThank you. I will make a motion to postpone this to the next FMC committee\non, April 21st.\nTo the second. Second.\nThank you. That was a motion made by Chair Ramachandran, seconded by Council Member\nWang to continue this item to the April 21st\nFinance and Management Committee. Agenda on roll.\nCouncil members. Brown I, Ungar I, Wang I and chair.\nRamachandran I thank you. Item number five passes with\nfour eyes to be forwarded to the April 21st\nFinance and Management Committee. Agenda reading in item number three,\nreading all pieces of legislation noting that portion one was withdrawn.\nAdopt the following pieces of legislation\nA resolution recommending to the Civil Service Board\nthe exemption of the classification of Parking\nAdministrator from the operation of civil service,\nnoting that one was withdrawn, and two a resolution\nrecommending to the Civil Service Board the\nexemption of the Classification of Constitutional policing,\nadministrative for the operation of civil service, and three\na resolution recommending to the Civil Service Board\nthe exemption of the classification of Assistant Director, Human Services, for the operation\nof civil Service, and for an ordinance\namending the salary Schedule of Ordinance Number 12187\nCMS and sorry to a at the full time\nclassification of parking Administrator and be,\nthe full time classification of Constitutional Policing\nAdministrator and c at the full time\nclassification of Assistant Director, Human Services,\nand amending the salary of the full time\nclassification of neighborhood law courts.\nAttorney. And we have a number of speakers on this item.\nMonica Davis, Deputy City Administrator\nI did want to clarify the administration's request\non amending the full component of this agenda item.\nSo for item three, withdrawing part one, as the clerk mentioned,\nbut also in part for updating the title of the ordinance to strike part A,\nthat says, add the full time classification\nof parking administrator and in the body of the ordinance\nto remove section two, the following classification\nis added an ordinance number 12187 cms in the unit\nUK 275 026 pay grade table to read as follows.\nClassification title. Class member step, salary, parking, administration details\nand then also updating the related attachment\nA to remove the parking administrator. On page 118.\nThank you. Thank you colleagues. Any questions? Councilor Unger,\njust so I'm clear that that removes all of the\nreferences to parking. Yes, I probably should have said that up front. Yes.\nFor removing that parking administrator component of this agenda item.\nThank you.\nOkay. We can move to public comment. Oh, sorry, I can't see.\nI did have just just one very quick thing. I just want to, highlight the salary increase\nfor the neighborhood law court attorneys here.\nI think that this is an an incredibly\nskilled group of folks who are working,\nat a level sort of way below they could of the money\nthat they could make in the private sector.\nAnd I just appreciate their work and say, this is well deserved.\nSo we agreed on the neighborhood law court\nposition, very well deserved increase.\nColleagues. Okay. Public comment.\nCalling in the names I signed up to speak on item number three.\nIn no particular order. You can come to the podium, state your name. For the record.\nIf you are ceding time to anyone, please be sure to,\nbe here in chamber to acknowledge that you are setting time to that person.\nKevin Dally, Keith Schultz,\nBen Benfica's Cyrus, Michael Ford\nI see people who have seated time to you, Douglas Mount\nand Tammy Bird.\nKirby Olson I see people have ceded time to you,\nPhillip Sweet,\nBen, Matt Law, Lakisha montalvo,\nChanel Smith,\nSarah Fine.\nCollins, Heath and\nMonica Lee.\nPlease state your name for the record before beginning your comment.\nGood morning Sarah. Fine, I have time seated to me by Colin Beatty and the mission.\nThank you. You will have an adjusted time of four minutes.\nYou can begin. Okay. Sarah. Fine. Department of Transportation and Local 21 member,\nI'm here to present a letter on behalf of nearly 1000 members citywide,\nvehemently opposing the creation of the parking administrator classification,\nopposing the transition of a protected\ncivil service position to LB will employment\nopposing the Finance Department's takeover of the parking Division\nand denouncing the administration's misuse of general purpose funds to facilitate the takeover,\ndespite historically low parking staffing levels due to budget\ncuts and delays in hiring, the city has seen increased parking revenues.\nJust as we are concerned about how revenues are collected,\nwe pay attention to how they're spent.\nWe oppose the creation of this position because it wastes taxpayer money.\nThe parking administrator would uplevel the existing manager,\nbut have less staff reporting to them,\nso your responsibilities and would do less work.\nWhy is the administration suddenly excited to give someone less work for more pay?\nHow will the administration pay for this person who does less work for more pay\nwith a general purpose fund? Of course, the same GPF\nthat was 12 months ago, so strapped for cash\nthat this administration felt it necessary to send layoff notices to more than 60 union members,\nthe same GPF that was so tapped out every city worker\nexcept sworn police was told there was not enough\nfor a guaranteed cost of living increase.\nThis year, we accepted maybe money in our contracts\nfor this administration to turn around and throw GG at a brand new corner office.\nThis is waste and we oppose it.\nAnd speaking of corner offices, the staff report fails to mention that this report this role\nwould be among the 30 highest paid positions in the entire city of Oakland.\nWhoever's selected for this role will make more\nthan the Assistant Director of Planning and Building, the assistant director of okay,\nthe assistant director of public works, but also the director of Public Ethics\nCommission and the director of Race and Equity.\nIf our budget is a statement of values,\nthe statement clearly says, we got it all wrong.\nFinally, we stand for protecting civil service\nbecause it is a bulwark against cronyism and nepotism,\nagainst corruption and compromise. Ethics from the federal government\nto local government, civil service means you must be hired through\na competitive, merit based, qualifications based system.\nIt means you cannot be fired because you refuse to do someone's bidding,\nand it means you don't\nget the corner office just because your friend has the other one.\nWe oppose the administration's proposal to replace an existing civil service\nprotected role with a new role exempt from civil service and at greater cost.\nAnd so should you join us in rejecting\nthe administration's meritless proposal to add a wasteful, exempt\nexecutive position to our top heavy tree?\nHi, I'm Keith Shaw, time with Oak Dot.\nI've worked for the city for 26 years this year,\nfor the last eight years with Odot.\nI'm basically coming to reiterate a very simple, simple question\nwhy are you paying more money\nfor less work,\nmore money for less work?\nThat makes no sense.\nAnd after listening to the reports today and having my jaw hit the floor\nmany times, I'm starting to see a pattern of nuttiness here.\nPlease, please say no to the insanity\nand start the process back to responsibility.\nI so want to point out that if you're concerned about revenue,\nplease come and talk to the staff\nabout increasing revenue and ideas for that.\nWe have plenty of ideas. All of the people here who work for Odot\nhave ideas about increasing revenue,\nand I would love to sit down with city council staff\nand go over ideas that we have batted around\nfor years to increase finance and revenue.\nThank you so much.\nFor the record, Kirby Olson, I have two people seeing their time.\nTo me, they are.\nTheir names are Philip Sweet and Ben Matlock.\nRight.\nSo for the record, my name is Kirby Olson. I'm here today speaking as a local 21\nunion member and concerned Oakland resident,\nthank you to the administration for removing\nthe parking administrator from today's item.\nBut I just want to generally speak,\nagainst that position,\nand urge the committee members to reject the creation\nof the parking administrator position, whenever it comes back to you,\ncreation of the parking administrator position\nwould all but ensure\nthat the finance Department's hostile takeover of OKC's parking division will happen.\nThat proposal was presented to the Public Works\nand Transportation Committee twice, where both times it faced deep skepticism\nfrom committee members and an overwhelming display of opposition from staff.\nThe local 21 and SEIU unions, business improvement districts,\ntransportation advocates, and the bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission.\nThe reorganization proposal has not been vetted by the full council,\nand is not currently scheduled to be vetted\nuntil such time as that proposal has been heard and approved\nby your colleagues on the full council. It is immature and irresponsible to approve the creation\nof this new position. We know that as soon as this position is created,\nfinance will use ad deletes and other financial trickery to fill it.\nCouncil members. The city administrator has told you that he has full authority to execute the reorg,\nand you are helpless to stop it. And yet, what he hasn't told you\nis that you have in your power the ability to reject the creation of this position,\nwhich is in fact the linchpin of the entire reorganization.\nHe also didn't tell you that creation of this new position will cost $550,000 fully loaded per year\nfrom the general fund, and be completely redundant\nto the award winning parking division manager that you are already employing at the Dot,\nand who will continue to be employed\nregardless of the reorg.\nThe stated rationale for this reorganization is that finance\ncan better handle collections and citation payment plans.\nCollections account for less than 1.5%\nof total parking revenues, and finance has not stated what they would do to improve them.\nBy their own admission, they have not identified\nany new revenues from the reorg, nor any salary savings.\nThe rationale is so flimsy\nand so baseless that we have no choice\nbut to assume that the real reason for the entire proposal\nis so that they can hand this very well-paying,\nappointed position to one of their friends.\nThat level of nepotism is sadly not surprising given\nthe track record of the people pushing pushing this proposal.\nBut we need to do better as a city. This isn't 2008, and we don't need\nto go back to those dark days.\nWe already have an award winning division manager\nin Michael Ford, who can lead the parking division once again\nas soon as the administration drops this terrible proposal.\nCommittee members, I ask you not to sit back and let this corruption unfold.\nAssert the authority that the people of this great city have given you.\nShow us that you are not a rubber stamp for this administration.\nReject this redundant and costly position until such\ntime as the full council has heard the parking reorg\nand given an opinion one way or the other. Thank you.\nGood morning. Michael Ford and I have two people, sitting me to me, Doug Mount and Tammy Byrd.\nSo thank you again. Michael Ford, local 21 member,\nresident of district two. And,\nfor for ten years, I had the honor of,\nleading the city's, parking and mobility\ndivision within the Department of Transportation.\nAnd, I'd like to,\njust share a little bit about,\njust get personal for a minute, and reflect on what,\nit's been like since October 3rd, when I was told on my birthday that,\nthe city was taking away my division\nand that I was instructed not to question it.\nAnd I want to thank,\ncouncil members Unger and Brown for bringing, the resolution\nor the, the request to the city administration to bring an information\nreport to the Public Works and Transportation Committee.\nIt's been very, very important.\nI am so proud of the employees,\nin the Department of Transportation, Parking\nand Mobility Division from SEIU and local 21 who have stuck together.\nWe've cried together, we've organized together.\nWe've come in to this chamber multiple times to express\nour concern about this parking takeover.\nAnd, I feel that\nthe, the actions today, by the city\nadministration to withdraw this item gives us more room.\nAs we've repeatedly said, we're not being confrontational.\nWe're trying to be constructive. We just want the best thing for the city of Oakland.\nWhich also means the best thing for our staff\nin 2016, members in this room,\nwent to council and asked to be part\nof the new Department of Transportation\nparking enforcement asked to be reworked from the police department\nto the new Department of Transportation.\nNow they're asking to stay in th\nYou've heard several times that this parking reorg would involve\nthe creation of a new parking administration position.\nThe administration has also said repeatedly\nthat the customer service center, our parking and mobility\nassistance center, deserves a dedicated supervisor.\nI couldn't agree more because I've been holding\nthat role for three and a half years.\nWhile it's been frozen.\nSo in effect,\nI have been doing two jobs for three and a half years,\nand I'm not complaining.\nBut this reorg would create two new positions,\none of which would be getting 20% more than me.\nThat's $45,000 a year more for doing 60%\nof what I've been doing for the last 4 or 5 years.\nThat's that's I, that's unconscionable.\nI just can't I can't understand why you would do it.\nSo the last thing I would like to say,\nand in support of the position that you're hearing from staff,\nand that is don't fix it if it ain't broken,\nis that if the city were very serious about\nwanting to ensure that we're maximizing revenue,\nthe proposal should be to staff the front line.\nNot not add expensive managers.\nSo that's that's my recommendation.\nLet's staff our front line. Let's keep our capacity to delivering essential services\nlike automated speed enforcement and the future red light camera programs.\nAnd let's, let's get back to business.\nAnd so I just want to thank you.\nLakisha montalvo. And I'm ceding my time to Chanel's mayor.\nI do want to take one minute, and I just want to say\nthanks for the withdrawal. Can you please put Michael back?\nAnd Dottie and Keith. Sorry.\nTo the member of the public. If you're stealing time, you're not allowed to\nuse your time anymore. Sorry.\nThank you. My name is Chanel Smith. I've been employed with the city for over 37 years.\nI wanted to thank you all for taking a moment,\na pause in this decision, and listen to what we have to say.\nWhat we're telling you is that we don't need reorg.\nWe need re staffing\nfor years. For years we've been understaffed.\nAnd the parking mobility division, they used to have 14\npeople there. Now they have two.\nWe don't need new org. We need re staffing.\nWe don't need reorg. We need this restocking\nand meter collections. They used to have ten people.\nNow they have to they don't need reorg.\nThey need re staffing. And this is how this happened.\nAnd parking enforcement. Our stats went down from 50 parking enforcement officer\nto about 20. So if I'm not out there patrolling the streets again\nthose citizens who won't pay won't pay.\nSo there's no need for a meter collector to come by\nbecause there's no one paying the meters.\nIf I'm not out there issuing citations,\nthere's no one to go to the P Maxx to pay a parking citation ticket.\nSo the system is sabotaged from the bottom from\nwhen we're out there. And like I said before,\nthis is the city from Embarcadero to Grand Avenue.\nThere's about ten sections where ten different officers should be out there.\nSince the pandemic, it's been like two.\nSo that's where our breakdown is.\nAnd parking control. We don't need reorg.\nWe need re staffing and the DLT.\nWe don't need any reorg.\nWe need restarting. And if any of you have taken a moment to look at this,\nwhere is OPD? Where is OPD saying that.\nOh no, we're going to welcome this group.\nWe're gonna encourage this group. We're going to do more with this group than they're doing.\nAnd Dot, we have not seen that.\nWe have not seen them say, come, welcome aboard.\nWhat we have seen as deal, the police department\nlay off officers and send them over to DLT.\nThis is the strongest unit we have going in the city.\nD.O.T. can bring money to the revenue.\nWe're asking you to not reorg us, restore us, restore\nour growth, and let us continue to produce for the city.\nLet us continue to produce for the residents of Oakland because they see us there\nwatching what you do in this process.\nWe don't need reorg. We just need to be restored.\nAnd we need someone like Michael Ford, who's been leading and guiding our group\nnot only for the expertise that he brings to our group,\nbut the boots on the ground that he brings to our group.\nLike you said, he's been doing the job and he's been doing the job and being you.\nHe's hanging signs. He's not only been the boss, he's been a coworker.\nHe's encouraging us to do more and to do better.\nAnd we're thriving under this leadership.\nIt's easy to have someone give you directions, but it's great.\nAll right. Kevin Daley,\nI'm also thanks to the city administrator for pulling\nthe parking administrator from today's agenda.\nI'm looking forward to having the item permanently removed.\nI appreciate Council Member Ungar\nand Brown for sponsoring the informational report\nfrom the city administrator. It's come to\ncome to public works and transportation\nover and over again without really getting\na sufficient explanation for why we need to do the reorg\nbefore we establish new positions.\nLet's decide whether the council is supportive of reorg.\nThe council does have the right to specify\nbureaus and divisions within a department.\nThis has been done before.\nMany years ago, the council decided to trust the city administrator to follow\ngood faith reorganization and allow the city administrator\nto organize departments without council requirements.\nBut the council can come back and require\nbureaus and divisions again if need be.\nI'm also looking forward. Yeah, it's Michael, Ford said.\nLet's get the parking mobility team back to issuing tickets,\nbringing up the new speed camera program,\nbringing back red light cameras, and one of my favorite new\nthings, having the AC transit bus\ncameras automatically ticket\npeople parked in bike lanes.\nThat's a potential revenue source.\nAC transit is probably going to be willing to go along with\nthis being it is now legal under state law.\nSacramento is already doing it.\nThanks. Let's get rid of this position.\nThank you.\nNico's Cross Local 21 member\nwork in the Department of Transportation in the Parking and Mobility Assistance Center.\nSo I just again want to speak to the fact that\nthe problems that we're facing is because we're severely understaffed, like we have four people right now.\nAnd the ability to I'm just impressed\nwith what we've been able to do with our current staff level.\nIf we had more people, we wouldn't have the constraints\nand the criticisms that have been leveled against this wouldn't be,\nwe need more people. And I find it very ironic that the criticisms\nthat have been leveled against us\nwhen we were part of the Revenue department, the same criticisms were leveled against us.\nThese are the complaints that have always been\nhistorically discussed about my group,\nand it really frustrates me that now all of a sudden\nfinance is saying, oh, we have the solution.\nWe can solve everything. But the problems in my staffing level started\nwhen we were part of the Revenue Bureau.\nThe ad deletes the number of positions that are on my team, shrank,\nbegan when we were part of the revenue. And so I don't understand how all the side now\nthat can be the solution. There's they have the solution to fix our problems.\nWhat we really need is staffing.\nThat's the fundamental thing we need to staffing.\nAnd under Michael Ford's leadership,\nwhat we have been able to accomplish again.\nWith our staffing, I am very impressed with what my team has done\nand what I and I don't think that this reorg is what we need.\nIt's it's equivalent to asking for a heart surgery to to remove splinters.\nIt's not what we need. We need staffing.\nAnd again, under Michael Ford's leadership,\nwe have done great things.\nAnd I and I believe we will continue to do great things\nand we will continue to innovate and continue\nto push things forward in a positive manner.\nI don't think that this regard is what we need.\nWhat we need is more people.\nThank you. Thank you for your comments. Share. That concludes our speakers on this item.\nAll right. I will entertain a motion to forward this\nto the next council meeting on consent.\nApril 14th. So moved. Second.\nThank you. We have a motion made by council members Ungar and Council member Brown to.\nSorry. Give me one moment.\nSorry to approve the recommendations of staff, as amended to forward\nthis to the April 14th special City Council agenda,\nwith the following amendments.\nSorry for item three, withdrawing part one, in part\nfor updating the title of the ordinance to strike part A\nthat says at the full time classification of Parking Administrator\nand in the body of the ordinance to remove section two, the following classifications\nin added in Ordinance number 1 to 1 eight\nseven cms in the unit K to seven.\nSorry 275026. Pay grade table to read as follows.\nClassifications. Title, class number, step, salary, parking, administration details\nand updating the related attachment eight to remove the parking administrator on page 118.\nOn the roll. Councilmember Brown I, Ungar\nI, Wang I and chair Ramachandran I thank you.\nItem number three passes with four eyes to forward\nthis item, as amended to the April\nsorry, April 14th Special City Council Agenda at 3:30 p.m.\non consent\nreading in item number six. Now.\nReceive an informational report on the Oakland\nPolice and Fire Retirement System investment\nportfolio as of December 31st, 2025, and actual\nvaluation report as of July 1st, 2025.\nAnd we have no speakers that signed up to speak.\nGood morning, committee chair and members of the committee.\nMy name is Taylor Jenkins.\nI am the investment and operations manager for the City of Oakland\nand the Police and Fire Retirement system,\nknown as papers. We'll keep our presentations short.\nJust the purpose of this report is to provide you an update\non papers, investments as well as actuary.\nYou guys should all have the package that was passed out earlier.\nTo assist me in presenting this information.\nI have the papers, investment consultant David Sands,\nwith some Makita investments, as well as a paper's actuary,\nGraham Schmidt of Kiron.\nJust a reminder, papers is a closed system.\nAt this, at that after after. In 1976, everyone was transferred to CalPERS.\nPapers currently has a membership about 577 individuals as of December 31st.\nAnd we have an investment portfolio of about 500 million,\nbased on the most recent valuation report, the plan was fully funded and,\njust a quick note that the funds are the 500\nmillion is specifically dedicated towards papers and\nis funded by a dedicated funding source to the PTO fund.\nWith that said, I will, pass it over to David Sands, which,\nto discuss a little bit more on the investment.\nThank you.\nAs usual, I will be short and to the point.\nYou've had a long meeting today, and at least you'll, hit a\nanother good point here, which is the portfolio continues\nto perform. Well, as of December 31st, it had over $500 million in assets.\nAs through the end of February, it was up to 512 million.\nThe assumed rate of return on this portfolio is 5%\nfor a fiscal year period to the end of February.\nThat fiscal year return was 10%. So we've more than doubled the portfolio's return expectation.\nWe've also de-risked this portfolio. About 60% of the assets are in fixed income,\nand everything continues to perform,\nas expected for the most part. There are any questions?\nI'll turn it over to Graham Schmidt, the actuary.\nThanks. Thank you. Banking on David's good news\nfrom an actual perspective, things are, really good.\nPlan, achieve full funding, year ahead of schedule.\nSo it's supposed to be funded by June 30th of this year.\nIf you looked at the market value of assets as of last year, June 30th, 2025,\nthe plan had already achieved that full funding target.\nNo contributions are expected to be required\nfor the fiscal year that begins July 1st.\nSo good news report.\nHappy to answer any questions. Thank you. Colleagues.\nAny questions? Any public speakers?\nOkay. We can,\nmake a motion to receive and file.\nSo moved. Second.\nThank you. We have a motion made by council members. Brown, seconded by Council member Ungar to receive and file this informational report\nin Committee on rule. Council members.\nBrown I, Ungar I1I and chair Ramachandran. Hi.\nThank you. Item number six passes with four eyes to receive and file this information and report in committee.\nNow moving on to open forum calling in the names\nthat signed up to speak, David Boatwright and Kevin Dally.\nA couple of newspaper articles from\nthis one from May 8th, 2019\nSan Francisco Chronicle film a tier.\nThough cranes are rising across the skyline and Oakland's\nrevenues are growing at a steady rate\ndue to the strong real estate market, the city's expenses\ncontinue to rise faster than revenues.\nEverybody was warned in 2019\nand August of 2020.\nAnother article, the Oakland City Council,\na unanimous unanimously agreed July 28th to form a task force\nthat will work on a plan to reconstruct public safety\nin Oakland with the goal of reducing the police department budget\nby 50% over the next two years.\nMission accomplished.\nThank you for your comments, Mr. Boatwright.\nLast call for Mr. Dali.\nChair. All names have been called. All right.\nGreat.\nOh, we don't have a, This meeting is adjourned.\nThank you. Everyone." }, "summary": null, "hindsight": null, "urls": { "meeting": "/oakland/meeting/oakland-2026-03-24-finance-and-management-committee", "raw": "/oakland/api/meeting/oakland-2026-03-24-finance-and-management-committee/raw.json", "sourceMeeting": "/oakland/api/source/meeting/oakland-2026-03-24-finance-and-management-committee.json" } }