Thread by @hyphy_republic

Oakland City Council meeting 1/19/2021 has begun. #oakmtg This is the thread:

CM President Bas announces that CMs will get a two minute clock during the meeting [though not strictly held at two minutes. There's a max in Council rules of 10 minutes]

Kaplan talks about Coliseum JPA meeting [she's a recent appointee]. Coliseum will potentially be used as a large scale vaccination site. She also says JPA identified $10 mil of dollars that can be returned to City of Oakland. She says it can be used to bridge budget deficit

Kaplan makes a motion to schedule a legislative item accepting the funds and disbursing it to OFD, so that they don't have be cut. Kalb asks if the item needs to be bifurcated as two separate items. Thao says that this can also be scheduled at Rules Thursday.

Kaplan's motion to accept 10 mil, disburse it would be scheduled to Finance 1/25. It may be divided into 2 items, 1) accepting funds, 2) disbursing specifically to OFD. As the "brownouts" save 5 mil, this rebate would be more than enough to avoid them

The bottom line, if this item passes Finance and then subsequent Council meeting, there would be no OFD brownout. Likely, an unsatisfying way to avoid the brownouts to many, angry that OFD had to be cut for OPD overages in the first place.

Bas says that there will a 2:30 moment of silence to observe lives lost to Covid.

City Admin is pulling item accepting a CA grant to OPD as leading agency for a youth cannabis ed program. Bas expresses her concern and gratitude that its being pulled. She says the appropriate agency for a grant like that is either Human Services or Dept of Violence Prevention

CM Fife also asked for two other items to be pulled from non-consent and put on consent, one of these is a no bid contract to a landscaping contractor, the other is a free "virtual reality" POST shooting training rig that OPD wants to accept.

A speaker from Centro Legal de La Raza is urging council to vote yes on emergency sick leave under covid protections. It will extend the sick leave regulations. @emily_wherever expressed similar support. Council is extremely likely to pass this.

Several speakers have also expressed concern about the OFD "brownouts"

Even the Chamber of Commerce supports the emergency sick leave extension

Asata wonders if CARES Act money has been managed appropriately. According to this reporter's calculations, the City only spent 20, of the 36, million on what the Council/City intended to, cycling the rest back into the GPF. We'll see what the report says

https://twitter.com/hyphy_republic/status/1350253955058569218

CM Carroll Fife apologizes for being "spoiler", but she says that questions need to be asked about the Consent calendar. She has a fiduciary responsibility to City of Oakland.

Fife's first question is about the sewer contract and the exact process to find out if there's proper evaluation on such contracts.

DPW reps respond to Fife's question: they say there's always a robust outreach program to diversify hiring of contractors. He says City always use local companies, this year received more bidders than usual [3]. He says that the bidder met all the local participation requirements

They say also that the City tries to break the projects down to components so that they can encourage more local contractors to participate.

Fife wonders if the contractors the city is hiring have the necessary degree of specialty, given that the City is still under a consent decree for poor sewer maintenance. She says its helpful for residents to hear how things work and why she asked the question.

Fife's next question is about what timeline for appeal is, and if its not successful, how will the City pay for it.

So far, the City has been in disarray in responding to questions for Consent Calendar items. Pretty troubling in that they don't expect the City to ask questions for the items on Consent.

I'll count myself in here two, ORSA stuff is not my bag and I'm struggling to keep up.

Fife's next question is about this City parking garage management contract that hasn't gone out to bid, she says, in 11 years

City response says that the system was purchased for a period envisioned to be 10 years. He says they're now actively looking for alternatives, and that the current contract will allow the city to withdraw garages in case they can find a most cost-efficient alternative.

On this item, Fife asks who authorized the use of OPD officers for mutual aid for Santa Cruz fire response. She asked who authorized the potential overtime for 92 sworn officers to fight fire in SC [and wonders if that can even be right]

Chief Manheimer responds: mutual aid requests are according to agreements. She says the decision is first made by OPD. She says city admin signs off on the decisions, and she says they made decision knowing they'd get reserved. They sent "motor" division.

She says they'd possibly make a different decision today, because of budget issues and because of difficulty and time in getting reimbursed.

Manheimer also says the 92 is the number of officers multiplied over three days--but then Reiskin must admit that the math is still off [66]...what?

The Chief acknowledges that it's the Chief and City Admin who make the final decision about discretionary overtime. The issue of how difficult it is to get compensation on discretionary overtime keeps coming up in these discussions--issue of repayment has not been transparent

On this issue, Fife asks if these consultants are being hired to address short staffing for to complete NOFA work. Director Shola Oyatole responds, basically yes, and also the Homekey requirements.

I noted elsewhere that despite no one being laid off due to this consultant work, the HCD has one of the highest vacancy rates of any department in the City

https://twitter.com/hyphy_republic/status/1350251524480352257

Fife responds that during a housing crisis, Housing and Community Development shouldn't be understaffed [12 roles understaffed, as I observed in the previous tweet]

Fife voted no on 2.6 and 2.8 on the Consent Calendar. A first for me, I have never seen a CM vote no on anything on consent.

This really shows how untransparent Consent calendar idea is. City reps unprepared to answer questions about items, and, apparently, CMs never consider each item, but simply vote yes on all. I actually thought they were required to do that, because it's never happened otherwise.

Fife again wonders about the under staffing and the waiving of competitive bids.

Fife's made a motion to make the contract a month to month so that the City is able to consider better options

Fife has also pointed out that the agenda item amounts for the contract are incorrect, but correct in the legislation [seems they'd have to pull it to agendize it correctly, but I' not sure]

Bas just concurred that with the title on the agenda incorrect, it may simply have to be re-scheduled. As to Fife's questions about why the contract is no-bid, he says they only got one bidder when they put the contract out

Again, the issue on this contract is that the contractor is replacing what would normally be City work that the City can't do due to under-staffing. It brings up issues of how the City is spending it's money, staffing vs contracting to appear to be holding down certain costs

The next item that Fife pulled was OPD's request to be given permission to accept a free "virtual reality" shooting simulator. Bas wonders why the item never came before the city's subject matter bodies.

CPRA Director Alden says this is the first he's heard of this item, but says he knows that other agencies use similar systems, even though he can't speak to this one specifically. To issues of whether VR helps to reduce bias and de-escalate, he says he can't answer those.

Alden says that he can make inquiries to other agencies that have used the particular system if that is useful.

In her response to questions, Manheimer says POST has committed to bias & de-escalation training in their systems. She says the system aligns with the goals of the city, she says that CA Commission On Police
Officer Standards And Training [POST] requires this type of training.

Kaplan moves to hold the item for the next meeting while Alden conducts his informal review of the system. Reid seconded the motion.

Alden says he will work with OPD to touch back with CA POST and the agencies that are currently using the VR system.

Screenshot from the POST VR system. Just kidding, this is from my favorite early Washington b-films, Virtuosity, but I don't think anyone feels comfortable with jumping to VR without investigating all the wrinkles.

the emergency paid sick leave ordinance extension passed. The ordinance now requires larger [+500 employee] companies to give the leave and it's tied to the official end of the city state of emergency

Finance O'Brien says even tho fed has extended expenditure deadline til end of '21, they've regardless expended all the CARES Act. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but what that means is the City rushed to stuff the money back into GPF instead of intended projects, like Wi Fi

On Wi Fi, Kaplan asks what further decisions would have to be made to continue to project with the recouped funds. O'Brien says none.

Kalb wonders if money can be redirected after initial expenditure. Reiskin says $$ have been expended and can't be repurposed for other. But what they're not answering is, what happens if money can't be expended [example wifi where its not clear when they'll be able to continue]

Bas asks about 15 mil of CARES Act funds that didn't go to intended projects but were funneled back to GPF payroll. Out of about 36 mil, almost half wasn't directed to the envisioned Covid response projects. But that was the Council's decision to make sure money wasn't lost

Bas discussing the 50k funds that went into a Lake Merritt vending pilot program, with Oakland Black Vendors Association. She says the City is working on a survey process to get feedback on the success of the pilot

Digging thru the CAO crates, the voice of Joe Devries, barely heard at Council meetings these days, says 97% of LM vendors were able to get a biz licenses and now they can do businesses anywhere.

No CM has ever been elected based in any part of having a good sense of humor. The legislative portion of the meeting is done. Now its announcements, in memoriams and open forum, which I may cover sporadically

I didn't cover open forum or any of the district events or memoriams, sorry. Meeting adjourned at 4:45, one of the shortest meetings in years.

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