FY 2026-27 Proposed Midcycle Budget

The following service restorations and reductions are included in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2026-27 Midcycle Proposed Policy Budget.  Mayor Reductions         City Council   Restorations Freezes 1.0 FTE Special Assistant to the Mayor III, which may reduce administrative and policy support capacity within the Mayor’s Office, reducing the full staff compliment from 12 to 11 positions.  Equity Consideration: Reduced staffing capacity may affect responsiveness to constituent concerns and interdepartmental coordination.   1. Strengthens constituent service and community engagement capacity across all Council district offices through the support of $50,000 in personnel funding for each district office.  Equity Consideration: Restoring personnel capacity across all Council district offices may support more consistent constituent responsiveness, community engagement and access to local government services across Oakland’s neighborhoods.  Dedicated staffing resources may also help districts respond to community- specific needs and priorities in a more timely and equitable manner.  1. City Administrator Restorations Deletes 1.0 FTE vacant Assistant to the City Administrator and Add 1.0 FTE Constitutional Policing Administrator to serve in an internal, embedded monitoring and guidance role to improve accountability within the Oakland Police Department (OPD). This position will provide regular updates to the Mayor and City Administrator about OPD operations with an emphasis on the Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA), and will be responsible for enhancing internal accountability, updating the Mayor and City Administrator on a wide range of OPD operations, ensuring compliance with the principles of constitutional policing as guided by the NSA and national best practices, providing expert guidance to the Police Chief and executive command team to improve operations and community trust, making recommendations to change internal procedures and policies, and fostering and maintaining effective and collaborative relationships with a variety of stakeholders, including City departments, internal governing bodies, regional and state partners, community organizations and leaders, and other public and private agencies.   Equity Consideration: This position will be responsible for monitoring policing data and ongoing compliance with the Negotiated Settlement Agreement, which includes identifying and addressing racial disparities in policing and improving community trust, particularly among areas of the city which have been impacted by chronic disinvestment, over- or under-policing, and other systemic issues. 1. Maintains the ability for the Communications & Engagement Division to provide critical ongoing support for the City’s Oaklandca.gov website through the support of 1.0 FTE Web Specialist position within Communications. Currently only one staff member can reliably provide administrative support; adding this position will enable other division staff to focus on larger strategic Citywide initiatives.  Equity Consideration: With over 2 million visits per year, Oaklandca.gov is the digital front door to 600+ critical government services. There is currently only one staff member who can reliably provide administrative support to residents and staff, and this request is to add a Web Specialist position to primarily support this work in the Communications & Engagement division and enable existing staff to focus on larger Citywide initiatives. Support for the website includes: 1) Onboarding and training of over 200 members of the staff who must keep the City’s digital services functioning, accessible, and up to date. 2) Supporting Board & Commission staff liaisons post public meeting agendas (required by law). 3) Responding to a backlog of website request from both employees and members of the public. 4) Auditing the website for WCAG (accessibility) compliance, reading level, incoming (404 errors) and outgoing broken links. Adding a dedicated staff member to perform this work will help improve overall accessibility of the City website, particularly for non-English speakers or individuals who use screen readers or other assistive technology, as well as help to standardize written and visual content across all webpages - enabling website users to more quickly access services and information. 2. Maintain access to continued professional guidance related to the long-term fiscal health of the City and support the implementation of policy and programmatic changes with $782,730 in O&M. This includes miscellaneous professional contract services in Administration unit, including 1) a one-time extension of Ben Rosenfield financial consulting contract to provide guidance and advice regarding specific financial decision points or issues as it pertains to the long-term fiscal health of the City of 3. Service Impacts Service Impacts F Y 2 0 2 6 - 2 7 P R O P O S E D P O L I C Y B U D G E T F Y 2 0 2 6 - 2 7 P R O P O S E D P O L I C Y B U D G E T 30