Noteworthy Price-Recall linkages in these stories from EBT on a streak of Oakland residential deals. The first in December was purchased by Three Steps Properties, run by Phil Dreyfuss, recall founder, principal of Supporters of Recall Price mercurynews.com/2025/01/06/oak… The tower was way out of Three Steps/Dreyfuss' league, he'd dabbled only in mid-rise buildings to that date, nowhere near $100s MM towers. Three Steps took out a $92 MM loan for the purchase. The purchase was from Quarterra Properties/Lennar, the owner.

Now, DVP Chief Holly Joshi & Faith in Action East Bay speak out on historic violence reduction "Ceasefire is most impactful violence reduction strategy we have ever implemented in this city...this year's reduction is not a victory lap..." but gives us hope for greater reductions OPD Chief Mitchell celebrates the 34% decline in homicides, with commensurate 33% decline in shootings, & 25% reduction in robberies [not sure about the exact number on the robberies, missed it for a minute]. He says Ceasefire has his full confidence.

Haubert suggesting pushing submissions back one week to get out of holiday season impact.

https://twitter.com/hyphy_republic/status/1866588808428364133

Carson arguing for his part, that the schedule is soon for his successor on the BOS to be a functional part of the process. "implore people to deeply consider that"

Vote Update: Latter tranches of votes come in lower for Mayoral recall, but likely won't be enough. Latest batch itself 43% vs 57%. Total gap still large: on Friday was 63.8% vs 36.15%, now 61.59 vs 38.41. With 99K counted, this could be around half the votes with 70-80% turnout Relative newcomer Rowena Brown pulled ahead of Leronne Armstrong in straight votes, way ahead in RCV. The trend of Brown getting a huge number of Wang's votes, despite Empower Oakland recommending an LA/Wang slate continues: she gets half Wang's votes, double Armstrong's share

Sitting in on today's case conference where Chanin and Burris' report back to NSA will be heard. Chanin & Burris say current scandal, where Armstrong's IAD failed to hold a police officer who paid witnesses and perjured, shows the OPD should be put under more rigorous oversight. *accountable...at today's meeting, Chanin, Burris and also the Oakland Police Commission Chair, Marsha Peterson. It will be interesting to see where she and OPC land on this, as she and others have seemed resistant to holding Armstrong accountable

At Life Enrichment, a crowd came out to show support for Carroll Fife who has been under attack by right wing groups aligned with recalls, led by Dominique Walker, "thank you for all that you do for us", listed Fife's accomplishments and help for community with homeless families. Shereena Thomas recounting how Fife helped her through health problems and disability. "I don't know any other person who has been in the trenches...I don't know of any other Cm who has done for community as she has. The record speaks for itself and I have receipts"

🚨As I seem to be the only reporter interested in, and covering, the closure of this year's budget gap now that its confirmed the Coli sale won't cover FY 23-24s deficit, here's what the City Admin now suggests for closure, along with substantive changes from previous plan🧵 The CAO previously proposed 30 MM in cancelled carry forwards, transfers to other funds & etc to close about 20 MM of gap. That would have been 30 MM, but CAO left a 10 MM buffer contingency just in case. That left about 42 MM, which was meant to be covered by portion of Coli $$.

I'll revise this: in their ignorance of the politics, OPC got Chief Mitchell and a staffer to acknowledge what Council never will:
Mitchell: "the police dept is slowly shrinking..."
OPD budget staffer: "cola increases in staffing, that makes up the difference [in increase]"

https://twitter.com/hyphy_republic/status/1801435214356615517

Mitchell returned to the subject and made it completely clear: "the cola increases built into the OPOA contract" increase the costs of the police, while the OPD is shrinking.

@Mikey_G_93 @Chris_Moore4Sup @Kaplan4Oakland Ask Moore, not CMs what the source of this is, because I guarantee you as a reporter on these processes, it has absolutely nothing to do with reality @Mikey_G_93 @Chris_Moore4Sup @Kaplan4Oakland The Facts: Oakland police current strength is around 708 police. The last 3 academies produced a total of 52 officers. During that time, the OPD lost around 60 officers, with an attrition rate that is around 4-5 per month.

Here @ a Special Council Meeting , very budget focused, with focus on budget-closing solutions this FY, and the introduction of the Mayor's budget, with other budget-related stuff. 5 item agenda. There's some ceremonial items, but everything else will be on Non Consent, discussed First up, recognizing Oakland's High/Oakland Tech basketball

At Finance now, Director Erin Roseman: "reduced revenues and overspending in police department..."

City's revenues are trending downward from last year, the most significant being Real Estate Transfer, then Business License Tax...some are trending upward, but not enough to counteract the declines"

Despite never numbering more than twenty people on the ground, the finance/real estate backed Price Recall rallies always attract a large share of media, often more than 50K protesters taking over a freeway. Ask why, and you have the answer to many of Oakland's problems.

https://twitter.com/KTVU/status/1724633362235621468

These rallies are the only ones where I'm ever actually over on my head count. It's not even twenty, and I said two dozen earlier as a mocking joke, but they were just above one dozen.

There definitely is this weird cottage industry in sports where fans love to follow pundits that get everything wrong time n again, with Howard Terminal as the clearest example of that. None of these doofs ever knew what they were talking about, they still obviously don't. Case in point, I believe these grant numbers are inflated & City never provided an in-print total, Regardless, they reveal dishonesty of pundits & even Thao, who claimed Oakland is "88 MM" or "100 MM" away. Assuming these numbers aren't also invented--a big if--it's nearly 200 MM

The special meeting to introduce Council President Bas' amendments for the budget has begun. That's the first item. Not likely there'd be a vote today at all on the whole budget Bas is introducing the amendments, she says there've already been hard decisions made. Going through the list, I've already covered this in threads. Reversing the OFD brownouts, adding 2 MM in DVP; ambassadors for biz corridors; traffic safety 1 MM; 2 civ police investigators

Who is going to write the counter-memory hole article about the last 3 years of ugly negotiations? 🧵

https://twitter.com/MayorShengThao/status/1669009190021656578

Just after beginning serious negotiations, Kaval/Fisher broke them off to instead launch a pressure campaign with sports/mainstream media more than willing to help

At Public Safety, OPD recounting new IAD policy practices as a result of the Armstrong issues: It's an absolute fact that thanks to dumbing down by corporate media for decades, no one actually understands how police are made, how an academy is created and the actual fact that the number of people who want to be police AND CAN is extremely finite.

About to start this City of Oakland Mayor's Budget Study Session, start time is 1pm, will likely get zoom up in a minute The budget study session is the main thing on the agenda, two other symbolic items only. But I have a feeling that there will be a lot of public comment about the budget priorities, a coalition of groups want less money for OPD and more social and public services

Tong La another speaker, calls himself a "small housing provider", says tenant hasn't paid rent in a long time. Cesar Cruz of Homies Empowerment calling in on Town Nights, which has a budget increase and adding two new orgs to implement, East Oakland Boxing and Family Bridges, praises the program

City Council of 3/21 will start in a moment: on agenda, reupping the City's internal mask mandate to July; a very helter skelter rushed Measure U forward allocation; probably what will be a subtantial convo on Council District budget priorities. 🧵 The Zoom portion of the meeting hasn't started yet, although the KTOP has begun broadcasting. I assume they are waiting on the meeting to officially begin before Zoom.

I'm pretty concerned about the way Council/Mayor will go about things if this is any example. Fife and Kaplan actually rejected the proposal to do just this last week, forcing HCD to rush in their own legislation to appropriate the other Measure U monies. patreon.com/posts/80247975 It did not appear like some kind of joint process, but rather one in which council members literally rejected inserting in their own legislation what HCD proposed--giving additional monies to other NOFA participants.

The Rules Committee meeting is having issues. They couldn't get the Zoom stream up, and then just now, the KTOP feed cut. In retrospect, it was pretty obvious they'd have issues.