Oakland Agenda Watch
Oakland City Council standing committee meetings, Oct. 14 and 16 — Police chief's resignation; defending city employees in criminal proceedings; trash controversy; paying renters and tenants to sue
Author’s note: The City of Oakland routinely cranks out an overwhelming quantity of official documents and proceedings material. This high-capacity assembly line is sometimes productive, often mind-numbing, and it occasionally runs off track. But it never stops rolling, and it generates vastly more “product” than any one person can reasonably consume. Some might say that this is the only realistic way to operate the machinery of a large and complex city that is home to nearly half a million people. But realistically, most of the people governed by that machine — good people who have busy lives in a tough-to-survive-in world — simply can’t keep up. As a result, many good people soon stop trying to engage with their local government, if they ever start at all. Perhaps this, too, says something about the way the machinery of Oakland politics and governance operates.
Standing council committees
This week, we take a look at the October 14 and 16 agendas of Oakland City Council’s standing committees. The standing committees are preparatory, in that they are subsets of the city council who vet, revise, and recommend items to the full city council, which then makes the official decisions. But the committees’ efforts are far from perfunctory. In a very real sense, the committees are critical priming mechanisms of the Oakland government machinery and the product it churns out at the end of the line.
Police Chief resignation
Public Safety Committee special meeting, Oct. 14
The only business item on this agenda is to review a resolution to accept a $107,000 grant from California Firesafe Council for wildfire fuel mitigation, i.e., “goat grazing services.” But perhaps the more interesting business to watch is whether there will be any commentary about Police Chief Floyd Mitchell’s recent announcement that he is resigning. (Oakland has had 10 police chiefs in as many years1.) Also notable is that the regularly scheduled Public Safety Committee meeting at 6:00 p.m. was cancelled and replaced with this special meeting at 9:30 a.m. Perhaps this was to resolve scheduling conflicts for the committee members, but it also happened to move the meeting to a Tuesday morning when many people are at work and thus aren’t able to attend or offer public comments during the meeting.
Appointments to the Oakland Police Commission
Rules & Legislation Committee, Oct. 16
The Rules & Legislation Committee has three noteworthy items on its Oct. 16 agenda. First up is to review two proposed appointments to fill seats on the Oakland Police Commission. (As we reported last week, the City of Oakland has a whopping 39 different boards and commissions, some of which appear to have redundant or conflicting duties. For example, there are four different commissions and bodies with authority over aspects of public safety, including the powerful new Oakland Public Safety Planning and Oversight Commission that was created when Oakland voters passed Measure NN this past November.)
The Oakland Police Commission was established in 2016 when Oakland voters approved Measure LL, then amended in 2020 though yet another ballot measure, Measure S1. The commission is charged with “overseeing the Oakland Police Department (OPD) to ensure that its policies, practices, and customs meet national standards of constitutional policing.” Police commission appointees have substantial and far-reaching duties that give them considerable influence over policing in Oakland, including:
Overseeing the Community Police Review Agency (CPRA), which conducts investigations into allegations of officer misconduct;
Overseeing the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which performs independent audits of OPD;
Proposing changes to, approving, or rejecting current or proposed OPD policies; and perhaps most significantly for the present appointments,
Hiring and removing the Chief of Police.
City Attorney proposes to use public resources to defend city officials in criminal proceedings
Rules & Legislation Committee, Oct. 16
The committee also will consider a proposal to empower the City Attorney to facilitate (and presumably the city to pay for) the legal defense of City officers and employees in criminal proceedings “for acts or omissions within the scope of their official duties.” Furthermore, the proposal would allow the City Attorney to unilaterally initiate such criminal defense work without prior authorization by the city council, provided that authorization is sought after the fact “as soon as practicable.”
The proposal would be subject to California Government Code Section 995.8, which allows a “public entity” to determine whether such defense “would be in the best interests of the public entity and that the employee or former employee acted, or failed to act, in good faith, without actual malice and in the apparent interests of the public entity.” In this case, the “public entity” is a majority of the politicians on the Oakland City Council, with legal advice from the politician in the position of City Attorney, who is also the one who would be requesting approval of the council. One needs not stretch their perception far to start seeing some potential conflict-of-interest issues in this arrangement.
On the surface, the proposal’s stated intent is to rapidly mount and support legal defenses for City of Oakland “officers” (i.e., its elected politicians and appointed executives) and other city employees who decline to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement actions that conflict with state and local sanctuary city laws, and who may be exposed to potential federal criminal indictments as a result. This seems like a reasonable, proactive defense mechanism in some ways, but it’s worth noting that politicians and government in general are notoriously susceptible to mission creep. Legislation enacted on the premise of being merely a targeted response to a momentary crisis can and occasionally does come to be applied more widely again later, sometimes for wildly different purposes than originally intended. Some of the language in Government Code Section 995.8 is broadly stated and seems fairly open to creative interpretation by current and future elected officials, some of whom may have vastly different political views on questions such as:
What constitutes “acts or omissions within the scope of their official duties”?
What is meant by “acting or failing to act in good faith, without actual malice”?
How much time can pass after the fact and before obtaining formal authorization, yet still be considered “as soon as practicable”?
Beyond the hypothetical, it’s worth noting that there exists right now a real-world example of a former city official facing criminal charges. Former Oakland mayor Sheng Thao was federally indicted for corruption before she was recalled by Oakland voters last year. While there may not be sufficient political appetite to assist Thao in her legal travails at present, it is not difficult to imagine a scenario in which this proposal could be creatively applied to mount a defense of Thao (or other city officials who find themselves in similar situations) at taxpayer expense in the future.
City pays landlords and tenants to sue each other
Community & Economic Development Committee meeting, Oct. 14
This committee has three items of interest on its Oct. 14 agenda. Two of them are potential contract awards of up to $1 million to Centro Legal de la Raza for tenant legal services, and up to $600,000 to East Bay Rental Housing Association for “small” property owner legal services at rental housing proceedings. All justifications aside, these two contracts together essentially equate to the city paying landlords and tenants (or more precisely, their attorneys) to litigate with each other.
Spotlight on Oakland’s trash problem
Public Works and Transportation Committee, Oct. 14
There’s just one business item here: a potential contract award of up to $3.75 million to W.W. Williams Company, LLC, for parts and repairs to specialized fleet vehicles. But perhaps more interesting is the fact that the Oakland Public Works Department has been operating under an interim director, Josh Rowan, for the past 18 months. It remains to be seen whether the role will become permanent, and what effect the recent New York Times profile of Rowan and Oakland’s illegal dumping woes2 may have on his tenure. Rowan came to Oakland from the City of Atlanta in April 2024 during a tumultuous period of former Mayor Sheng Thao’s administration.
(After the New York Times article was published, Oakland Report received a press release from Urban Compassion Project, an Oakland nonprofit focused on “clearing illegally dumped waste, providing mutual aid, and linking homeless individuals to critical services,” about a press conference on Thursday, Oct. 16 at Frank Ogawa Plaza to, “shed light on the truth about illegal dumping and the lack of accountability surrounding it.”)
Allowing council meetings to address non-consent items during work hours
Rules & Legislation Committee, October 16
The third noteworthy item the Rules & Legislation committee will review Oct. 16 is a proposal to amend the Council’s Rules of Procedure for meetings, most notably by allowing non-consent agenda items to start earlier than 5:00 p.m., i.e., during many people’s work hours. Non-consent agenda items are more likely to involve issues or decisions that are controversial, or that require in-depth discussion, or that may attract significant public interest and commentary at the meeting. (The highest-profile agenda items often have all of the above elements, and more.) Sometimes the voluminous public commentary, combined with the extended rhetoric of city council members and staff, stretches the proceedings long into the wee hours of the night, demonstrating in a visceral way that the Oakland government machine truly is an exhausting, nonstop, 24/7 operation.
Will cuts by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services put Oakland preschools at risk?
Life Enrichment Committee, Oct. 14
There are two business items on this agenda. The first is a potential contract award of up to $1.25 million to Childcare Careers, LLC, for substitute teacher services in city preschools. The second is to potentially accept a $13.75 million Head Start grant from the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency now famously headed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.. (Earlier this year, Kennedy oversaw the closure of five of Head Start’s 10 regional offices, including the San Francisco and Seattle regional offices.) The Head Start grant award requires the City of Oakland to commit local match funding of at least $6.71 million, which the staff report recommends drawing from the city’s General Purpose fund.
Rent control and evictions report
Community & Economic Development Committee meeting, Oct. 14
The third item for the Community & Economic Development Committee on Oct. 14 is to review the annual report of Oakland’s Rent Adjustment Program, which primarily deals with matters pertaining to rent control and “just cause” evictions. The report includes a review of the activities of the Rent Board, statistics on evictions, and updates on the city’s rental registry, among other information. The report has a fair amount of data that may be of interest to people concerned about housing affordability. For example, according to the report, there are approximately 104,000 rental housing units citywide, and the city’s rent control ordinance applies to approximately 43,000 of them.
Cancelled committee meeting
The Oct. 14 regular meeting of the Finance and Management Committee was cancelled. [Correction: The original version of this post also stated, “It appears that the Education Partnership Committee has not held a meeting in 15 years.” However, the committee has met on occasion, most recently on Sept. 22.]
This column is by no means a comprehensive list of upcoming agenda items. The volume of public meetings is more than we can presently cover. You can review the complete agendas of all the standing committee meetings, including staff reports, attachments, and proposed legislation here.
Do you have a tip about an Oakland agenda item that you think should get a closer look? We want to hear about it! Contact us at oaklandreport@substack.com.
Harry Harris, “Oakland Police Chief Floyd Mitchell to resign, leaving top cop job vacant once again.” East Bay Times. Oct. 8, 2025. https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2025/10/08/oakland-police-chief-resigns-floyd-mitchell
Soumya Karlamangla, “How a City Awash in Garbage Is Trying to Take Out the Trash.” New York Times, Oct. 8, 2025. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/us/oakland-california-trash-garbage.html
On behalf of all honestly-interested-in-this-town Oaklanders, thank you for Agenda Watch. 'Cause no-one else sees to be, well, watching.