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The Oakland City Council moved forward this week with a plan to tackle its roughly $130 million budget deficit with major cuts to several departments, including police and fire services.
With a vote of five in favor versus one “no” vote by Councilmember Noell Gallo, the council accepted a bevy of adjustments to the fiscal year 2024-2025 budget.
“We find ourselves in an incredibly difficult budget situation and with this projected deficit there are no easy answers here and most of what’s before us is really hard to swallow and nonetheless we are here because as a council we are committed to making sure the city is on solid financial ground,” said City Council president Nikki Fortunato Bas.
The “adjustments” are divided into two phases, with the first featuring a little more than $104 million in cuts to city staff and police overtime spending, along with postponing one police academy, temporarily closing two fire stations and transferring money into the general fund from other city sources, including almost $6 million from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and almost $15 million from the Self Insurance Liability Fund.
It also includes nearly $10 million in an excess balance from the city’s Emergency Reserve fund.
The second phase of the plan would cut nearly $16 million by laying off 92 people and could close more fire stations, among other things.
Prior to the council’s vote, dozens of people pleaded for less painful cuts to services, including Seth Olyer, vice president of the city’s firefighters’ union.
“I’m at a loss for words,” Olyer said. “I don’t understand the fiscal decision to close one-third of the fire department and the idea that that will be a sustainable city.”
City union members from other departments said the council isn’t doing enough to rein in police spending, to vigorously collect the business taxes owed to the city and to cut bloated management salaries.
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While the council’s decision Tuesday was intended to dig Oakland out of its immediate $130 million hole, the city is still facing projected ongoing “structural” deficits of between $130 million and $150 million.
Some long-term solutions include potentially merging some departments, like the Department of Transportation with Public Works, and making more drastic cuts to spending.
On Monday, the council took a step to at least partially address future fiscal quagmires by placing a half-cent sales tax on the April special election ballot.
If approved by a majority of voters, the measure would hike the city’s sales tax from 10.25 percent to 10.75 percent in order to raise from between $20 million and $30 million annually for the next ten years.
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