City of Oakland faces $63 million in budget cuts; tough decisions to be made by November

OAKLAND, Calif (KGO) — At Oakland’s finance committee meeting on Tuesday, staff acknowledged that budget cuts are already underway – cuts estimated at $63 million.

“One thing that we learned today, in addition to that $63 million, we are going to have to reopen the budget to more cuts beyond that,” says Oakland City Council Member Janani Ramachandran.

Oakland finds itself where many cities do: A revenue shortfall and expenses are way up – mostly due to public safety expenditures.

In June, city council passed a contingency budget in case there were delays to the sale of the Oakland Coliseum. It was triggered October 1.

“For those $63 million cuts, $45 million of those cuts are police and fire. We heard today that those are the most impacted departments,” explains Oakland City Council Member Treva Reid.

Public safety makes up 75% of Oakland’s general public fund.

“As we heard today, conformation the contingency budget has been implemented. And cuts have begun. But we don’t know what cuts those are,” says Ramachandran.

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But city staff argues some of the cuts are known. And some having been implemented starting in March. Those include a hiring freeze and stop to staff travel.

“We made comments on the record, and we have been saying those on the record. Everyone on the city council has access to the same information,” says Nikki Fortunato Bas, Oakland City Council President.

President Fortunato Bas says at the November finance meeting, the city will have data from the first quarter revenues. Those numbers will help determine what specific cuts need to be made, such as to police and fire.

“The contingency requires that the administration come back to the council on the specifics,” say President Fortunato Bas.

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She adds there is potentially $55 million in carryforwards, money that has been earmarked for projects but not yet funded. That could include smaller items like money for grants, or bigger projects like money for the 911 system. The finance department will present the full list to staff to help determine if any of those expenses can be moved to the next fiscal year to offset budget cuts.

“And so we could reduce those commitments up to $55 million. Which means we could be dealing with a $16 million (deficit) versus $71 million,” says Fortunato Bas.

The deficit grew in large part due to the Oakland Police Department overspending on overtime.

“The mayor and I have been working with the leadership team at the Oakland Police Department to really start to address and level-set the management of overtime,” said City Administrator Jestin Johnson at the meeting.

Johnson remains optimistic about the budget, saying, “There is an opportunity for us to get this right.”

The next finance meeting will be November 19.