The city of Oakland has a new balanced budget. But drastic public safety cuts are on the horizon if the city doesn’t receive millions from a one-time infusion of cash by September 1.
The Oakland City Council voted 5-3 to approve a $2.2 billion budget for fiscal year 2024-2025, which technically started on Monday. Councilmembers Nikki Fortunato Bas, Dan Kalb, Carroll Fife, Kevin Jenkins, and Rebecca Kaplan voted in favor.
The budget, which was proposed by Mayor Sheng Thao, balances a $177 million projected deficit in the city’s general-purpose fund. Oakland will have money for 678 budgeted sworn police positions. This is a decrease from the 696 the city was originally planning for last year. The department’s current manpower is already in the low 600s because scores of officers are on long-term leave and OPD has trouble recruiting enough trainees through its academies to become officers.
OPD’s budget will include $39.1 million for overtime and three police academies. The budget also fully funds all fire engines and adds new positions to the Department of Violence Prevention for the Ceasefire gun violence reduction program.
“We believe that among very difficult choices this option preserves our public safety services,” said Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas, who teleconferenced into the meeting because she has Covid.
The approved budget hinges on the successful sale of Oakland’s stake in the Coliseum site to the African American Sports and Entertainment Group. The city is banking on $63 million from this transaction to use for city services in this fiscal year. But a deal hasn’t been reached yet. While officials are optimistic the sale will go through, the city has prepared a backup plan in case it fails.
The contingency plan—which will be triggered September 1 if the city doesn’t receive some proceeds from the sale—will require immediate budget cuts. Oakland’s budgeted police force would drop to 600 and there would only be one police academy. The city would also have to freeze five fire engine companies for nearly a year. The backup plan would freeze vital positions in other departments, remove funding for the mayor’s new film attraction initiative, and cut subsidy funding for the Scotlan Convention Center.
The council was also given a second budget alternative contemplating no sale of the Coliseum. Under this alternative, there would be a $13 million reduction to police services over the year and OPD would be budgeted for 610 sworn officers. The department would have $35.8 million in overtime and one police academy. This option would have cut the Ceasefire strategy and frozen Ceasefire positions in DVP. This proposal would have started making severe cuts immediately, but city officials would retain the option of restoring funding for public safety services if the Coliseum sale happened at a later date.
None of the proposed budgets lay off city workers.
Budget Administrator Bradley Johnson emphasized that the mayor’s proposed budget, which banks on the land deal, carries significant risks for the city. However, Johnson also said that neither budget resolves the structural problems in the city’s general-purpose fund, which is the pot of money city leaders have the most flexibility to use. According to Johnson, the adopted budget will leave the city facing another major deficit next year unless elected officials consider reductions to police and fire.
“This is our fiscal reality as an organization,” Johnson said. “It is this severe, it is this dire. Regardless of how we move forward at this time, we have major decisions to make this time next year.”
To fix the deeper problems in Oakland’s financial system, the city is starting its budget discussions much earlier this year, likely around September.
Councilmembers Janani Ramachandran, Noel Gallo, and Treva Reid voted against the mayor’s proposed budget. All expressed concerns with the possibility that the Coliseum sale wouldn’t go through and feared how this would affect the city’s credit rating and ability to get money from the bond market to finance big infrastructure projects like affordable housing.
“This budget process has been an insult to the people of Oakland,” Ramachandran said. “We are using the illusion of funds that haven’t arrived yet to balance a budget.”
Ramachandran said the mayor and City Administrator should have proposed the second, more austere option, because “painful cuts are inevitable” down the road. Reid also condemned the budget as irresponsible because it will apply an emergency brake on services instead of a slower wind-down, as outlined in the second option.
“To jeopardize our public safety services and those departments and those leaders and our staff with having to halt immediately and shut down all these services, with greater impacts to our workforce, that is absolutely unbelievable,” Reid said.
Despite their objections to the budget, Reid and Ramachandran both demanded that the council restore funding for community safety ambassadors. Councilmember Kalb spearheaded a proposal to ensure $900,000 in funding for ambassadors for business corridors in Fruitvale, Hegenberger, Dimond, and Laurel. After securing this funding, Reid, Ramachandran, and Gallo still rejected the budget.
Councilmember Jenkins, who supported the budget, successfully rallied support for an amendment to cut some startup funds for the Democracy Dollars initiative. This program—which was approved by Oakland voters as a ballot measure in 2022—will give residents small sums of money to spend in future elections to level the political playing field. The council previously delayed the rollout of Democracy Dollars because of last year’s budget crisis. Jenkins indicated that he doesn’t see a future for the program.
“Democracy Dollars is not going to be fully funded,” Jenkins said. “We’re putting a down payment on a house and we can’t afford the mortgage.”
The meeting had several tense moments as councilmembers debated the merits of each budget proposal. Several councilmembers were upset that the budget process was delayed. At one point, Reid seemed to imply that members of the budget team had access to more budget information due to “relational access” to the mayor.
Fife, who voted for the budget, said Reid had been asked to serve on the budget team but didn’t.
“I’m really struggling to understand some of the comments that are being made here,” Fife said.
The budget discussion drew hundreds of speakers last week, including many representatives of unions who were alarmed that councilmembers might contemplate deep cuts to departments. The Anti Police-Terror Project issued a statement after today’s meeting criticizing the mayor and council’s decision to approve a budget that continues to invest in the police department.
“Our city’s financial woes are a direct result of prioritizing the police budget over critical public services,” said Cat Brooks, executive director of APTP. “The continual increase in police funding, without addressing the underlying economic issues, is a short-sighted solution that places our city’s future in jeopardy.”
The Oakland Police Officers Association also issued a press release and held a press conference, demanding that the council reject Thao’s proposed budget as well as all council alternatives. OPOA Vice President Tim Dolan argued that the city needs an outside budget expert to “right the sinking ship.”
