On Friday the Oakland City Council voted on $72 million in amendments to the budget proposed by Mayor Barbara Lee. The majority of the council voted in favor of the budget with only two voting against.
Some items had popular support, including incentives for film making, replacing old fire engines, and adding $50 million from the Measure U bond sale to build affordable housing.
In her opening comments Councilmember Janani Ramachandran gave an overview of the council’s priorities when putting the budget together.
"We are using one-time revenues to fund one-time expenses that addresses our core issues of public safety, parks, reducing homelessness, um, among other things", said Ramachandran.
Disputes arose during the meeting notably around staffing issues.
The two dissenting votes, Noel Gallo and Charlene Wang, agreed on the need for Oakland to fill vacancies across departments such as transportation, police, and housing services.
"How many vacancies do we have," asked Gallo. "We have 839 vacancy positions that we budgeted the previous year. So if we budgeted the previous year, where are, where's the money for those 839 positions we never filled?", he continued.
Councilmember Carroll Fife pressed the council to allocate resources from the police department to cover a civilian police oversight staff position.
To get her “Yes” vote she demanded, "a commitment from everyone around this dais that we're going to dive deep into the Oakland Police Department budget to figure out what we need to do differently."
In a statement to KALW, Councilmember-at-Large Rowena Brown stated that “strong civilian oversight is essential to transparency, accountability, and public trust.”
In a win for Oakland's budding film industry, the council doubled the $250,000 funding for the Oakland film incentive program proposed by Mayor Barbara Lee Councilmember Brown stated that it is, "the kind of momentum we should build on."
Mayor Lee in a statement to KALW said she, "believes Oakland has tremendous potential as a filming destination."
Once adopted, this budget will determine the city’s funding from July 1, 2026 to the end of June 2027.
