Oakland Recap provides summaries of public meeting proceedings that catch our attention. In this installment, we review the comments made by Oakland city council members at yesterday’s special budget meeting.
Editor’s note
City Council special budget meeting, June 12, 2026.
Yesterday the Oakland city council voted to declare a “severe and unanticipated financial event,” ten days after voters rejected Measure E.1
Measure E was a $34-million-per-year parcel tax that was initially conceived and designed by city council members.2
It then dropped off the council’s agenda, and later reappeared as a ‘citizen-sponsored’ initiative — written and funded by the city’s public employee unions — that only required a simple majority vote instead of the two-thirds required by state law for council-sponsored special taxes.3
Oakland voters rejected the tax, with 54% opposed as of the latest tally.
Yesterday’s city council declaration of an “unanticipated financial event” suspended voter-approved protections on previous voter-approved tax measures in order to divert those promised tax funds to other purposes.
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The council also voted to make amendments to mayor Barbara Lee’s proposed budget and advance it to a final council vote for approval by June 30.
Notably, the budget amendments council approved yesterday included $2.4 million to purchase fire trucks with money from the General Purpose Fund. The Yes on Measure E campaign previously claimed that the Measure E parcel tax was needed to fund the purchase of fire trucks.
At various times during the Yes on E campaign, firefighters union representatives threatened that fire services would be decreased if the measure did not pass.4
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Another point of contention among council members was a recommended $250,000 gift to Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) to assist with lead abatement at schools where unsafe levels of lead were found in the drinking water.
After a series of public comments demanding that the council give more funding to senior centers, council member Kevin Jenkins proposed giving $200,000 of the money to the senior centers instead.
Also during the meeting, council member Zac Unger made clear that he intends to continue to pursue pay raises for city employees despite the city’s budget challenges, and falsely alluded that Oakland Report claimed that pay raises had already been given.
Council member Noel Gallo later noted that the city was in the midst of union contract negotiations, “and it’s gonna cost us millions.”
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Gallo also reminded the council that the city has around 800 fully funded but vacant positions (valued at an estimated $136 million) with no clear plan to fill them.
Gallo then stated that, “I just don’t want to make the mistakes that other cities do — they go bankrupt.”
The video at the top of this article compiles the council members’ remarks that caught our attention. Transcripts of their remarks are provided below.
‘Our babies are drinking lead and we wonder why they’re fighting at First Friday.’
CARROLL FIFE:
[…]
I don’t know what is happening with OUSD, but it is unconscionable that our babies are drinking lead and we wonder why they’re fighting at First Friday.
Right?
And at the same time, we need to hold OUSD accountable for what they’re doing with their budget. Council member Gallo talks about it all the time.
So while we’re in a budget crisis, I find it very difficult to support financially what other public agencies are doing if they’re if they’re mismanaging their budgets. I’m troubled by that.
And, I know, I heard our seniors. I have two senior centers here. I am the elected representative of the downtown Oakland Senior Center and the West Oakland Senior Center.
West Oakland [senior center] has not been opened. It’s so behind schedule, and they’re talking about not being able to feed seniors.
I’m concerned about the senior food program and hopefully the program I’m putting together today, the pilot program will be able to help assist with getting food out to the seniors. It’s the fastest growing population in the city of Oakland, and we are not serving them.
So even though $250,000, $200,000 is a drop in the bucket, it’s more than they anticipated getting today. And so, I want to see what we can do to support those seniors.
And then we need to go back to the school board. We might need to be going to some school board meetings, and meeting with our counterparts for District 3 and District 7, about how our our babies are being served.
[…]
‘Absolutely embarrassed that our seniors have to come here and do the song and dance’
KEVIN JENKINS
[…]
This is my fourth year on council. I’m [a] senior member of city council and just absolutely embarrassed that our seniors have to come here and do the song and dance every single year.
It’s absolutely imperative that we find a long-term funding source so that we can support our seniors in their golden years.
Council member Houston, I want to just absolutely applaud you for wanting to extend the hours every single year. They come here every single year, and we do this again, and again, and again.
I think it’s time for us to put our heads together and figure out how we can support our seniors going forward.
So with that, I want to change the allocation of the sugar-sweetened beverage [tax], from $250,000 to OUSD, to $50,000 going to OUSD and $200,000 going to support our seniors, and we need to continue to work to support our seniors.
[…]
‘I don’t want to make the mistake that other cities do — they go bankrupt’
NOEL GALLO:
[…]
Remember, I have six unions we got to settle with, and it’s gonna cost us millions.
Also, I have 800 and something vacancies that we approved last year, but we never filled them.
I can’t get my streets cleaned, man. I can’t buy my trucks. I can’t take care of law enforcement to help me on the street.
But we’re going to sit here and do a lot more talking.
I need to have a management budget that’s clear before I start approving all these other things. I’m going to do this, do that over here.
Then I wind up once again with the public, “Well, I can’t take care of your street because I don’t have the money.”
I just don’t want to make the mistake that other cities do — they go bankrupt.
We’re right now discussing making agreements, but you don’t know what you have in terms of money because we haven’t settled the biggest challenge, and that’s going to be settling our union contracts: fire department, police department and all the other unions that we got to settle.
That’s not going to be, you know, a 25-cents deal that we got to come up with.
We’re going to have to find out, what can I do additionally for a service, once I take care of my employees…
[Jenkins interrupts: Call the question.]
…and so anyways.
[…]
‘I love that new fire engine smell’
ZAC UNGER:
[…]
I sat here a year ago and talked about the “nobody’s happy budget.” You know, today, I think I’m happy to sit here and say that our council amendments constitute the “nobody’s crazy budget.”
Our amendments from the budget team are a model that is reasonable, accountable and sane.
And, you know, I’m not going to belabor the details here because I think my colleagues have done a great job with highlighting all of the all of the council amendments.
But a couple of things that I do want to focus on are the $2.5 million in safe parking and hotel vouchers for our our unhoused neighbors, which I think is an incredibly important thing.
The $50 million in already approved bond money that we accelerated towards affordable housing production.
And, of course, I also love that new fire engine smell. So adding two fire rigs is is crucial.
But I think that the values that we lead with as a council budget team are key here. We’re doing things in a way that we haven’t always done in the past.
We added no new employees to the general fund in our council amendments. We funded no recurring expenses out of one time revenues. We brought four voter approved measures out of fiscal emergency and into full compliance with voter mandates. And our single biggest line item expenditure in the council amendments was an investment in paying down our long term pension obligations.
While I am hopeful that we can pass a budget here today, I want to emphasize that we are by no means done.
Despite what you may have been told by some reports about Oakland, our non-sworn employees did not receive a raise last year. Zero percent. We are losing valuable, talented workers because of this.
And speaking for myself here, I commit to working to make sure that we can offer a compensation package to all of our employees, both sworn and non-sworn, that like our council budget amendments, is reasonable, accountable and sane.
So I thank you all for everybody’s work on this. I thank you for your participation.
[END OF TRANSCRIPT]
A video of the council members’ comments appears at the top of this article. A link to the full video of the city council special budget meeting is available in Endnote 1.
City of Oakland. “Special concurrent meeting of the Oakland Redevelopment Successor Agency and City Council.” Meeting video, Jun. 12, 2026. https://oakland.granicus.com/player/clip/7571
Oakland Report contributors. “‘Death and taxes’: Oakland City Council is the one who knocks. (Flashback).” Oakland Report, May 30, 2026. https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/death-and-taxes-oakland-city-council-d68
Reinhart, Sean S. “Oakland’s ‘unanticipated’ financial emergency set to enter its fourth year.” Oakland Report, Jun. 12, 2026. https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/oaklands-unanticipated-financial-fourth-year
Oakland Report contributors. “It’s legal to lie in campaigns – but that doesn’t make it right.” Oakland Report, May 24, 2026. https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/its-legal-to-lie-in-campaigns
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