As budget woes percolate in Oakland, the city’s unions are gearing up to defend against the worst-case scenario: layoffs.
City officials are going to great lengths to avoid mentioning them, but they have also not yet ruled out the possibility of cutting staff to combat a projected $177 million operating deficit by the end of the current fiscal year in June.
The shortfall — largely a consequence of tax revenue on home sales falling far short of the city’s lofty projections — has set off alarm bells at City Hall, prompting union officials to appear at a council meeting Tuesday and warn against slashing rank-and-file jobs or even furloughing workers.
“We matter in this city,” Shirnell Smith, an Oakland city worker and member of SEIU Local 1021, which represents a large share of the city’s employees across various departments, said at Tuesday’s meeting. “When you’re thinking about these cuts — as we’ve said many times before — chop from the top.”
Perhaps the most politically painful downsizing for the city’s leaders would be to the Oakland Police Department, the only division of the city that outspent its budget last year — by $28 million.
At least for now, it appears sworn officers in the department will be protected from those cuts as a result of an existing labor agreement with the city that lasts through June 2026.
But in a department where 911 dispatcher staffing fell to critical lows last year, layoffs to non-officer employees could present a whole new set of challenges for the brand-new police chief, Floyd Mitchell, whom city officials have said will start on the job sometime in mid-May.
Around that same time, Mayor Sheng Thao is expected to release a draft proposal of various adjustments necessary to achieve a balanced budget.
Mayor Sheng Thao introduces new Oakland police Chief Floyd Mitchell at City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, March 27, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
The police department, which just announced the hiring of the new chief after roughly a year-long vacancy, has not faced layoffs since 2010 when 80 officers lost their jobs after their union and the city couldn’t agree on what percent of officer salaries needed to go toward pensions.
“While the draft is being developed, the administration will not be commenting on any possible specific proposals,” city spokesperson Sean Maher said in a statement, responding to questions about whether layoffs were among the options on the table for dealing with the shortfall.
A city parking tax measure approved in 2014 requires there to be a minimum of 678 sworn officers in Oakland at all times — currently that number sits at 708.
Mitchell could not be reached for comment in the days after an introductory event last month at City Hall. His start date was pushed back from late this month to mid-May due to what sources with knowledge of the delay attributed to a personal family matter.
The mayor’s spokesperson, Francis Zamora, said this week that the chief’s contract was “on track to be finalized and presented to the Oakland City Council for approval.”
Concerns have circled in the public sphere and within OPD’s ranks about Mitchell’s delayed start, given that he has not yet formally signed a contract and that he very recently was a finalist for the police chief job in Flower Mound, Texas.
But that city already has hired a chief, and the Flower Mound city manager confirmed in an email that Mitchell took himself out of the candidate pool there last month after he was hired as Oakland’s new chief.
For now, all signs point to Mitchell starting the job as planned, which means that dealing with cuts to employees who aren’t officers could be the first issue on his plate.
Crime in Oakland, meanwhile, has receded through April per year-to-date statistics provided by OPD. As of this week, crimes investigated as homicides are down by 17% and reported burglaries by 47%, though robberies are up 28% compared to last year through the same date.
With the deficit looming, Oakland’s leaders in recent weeks have implemented a hiring freeze to keep things at bay in a city that is known to often be understaffed.
The freeze followed a hiring blitz launched by Thao in the fall to boost staffing in the public works and transportation departments where workers address critical road and infrastructure needs.
By the end of February, the blitz saw 82 public works jobs filled and 54 transportation positions filled, which represented 48% and 47% of the vacancies in those departments, respectively.