Mission Statement

To make Oakland an easy, efficient, prosperous, and resilient place to do business, and to reduce racial disparities and help all Oaklanders achieve economic security so that everyone has an opportunity to thrive.

Learn more about who we are and what we do here.

SERVICE IMPACTS & EQUITY CONSIDERATIONS

Enhancements

Good jobs and vibrant economy

1. Adds 1.0 FTE Program Analyst III. This position will be funded via state cannabis grants to manage state grants for cannabis and equity programs. This position will administer grants, administer contracts for consultants, lead stakeholder meetings, and draft reports; all of which are critical ongoing functions needed to implement the City’s cannabis and equity programs.
   • Equity Consideration: Adding a permanent position will ensure stability and staffing to process funding and other programming for the cannabis equity program, which provides equitable business ownership and employment opportunities for Oakland’s Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities.

Reductions

Good jobs and vibrant economy

1. Reduces GPF Cultural Grants budget by 20%. The Cultural Grants provides grant funding to Oakland-based art and cultural activities that reflect the diversity of the city.
   • Equity Consideration: Services to Oakland’s historically underserved communities of color will be impacted by the diminished grantmaking capacity of the division.
2. Eliminates the $500,000 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza activation budget, which will reduce the City’s ability to subsidize activities taking place in the plaza.
   • Equity Consideration: This reduction in the budget may reduce activity in Frank Ogawa Plaza and may discourage people from working or visiting downtown, which in turn reduces the amount of tax revenues received by the City to fund programs for Oakland’s BIPOC residents.
3. Reduces the Special Events Subsidy by approximately $300,000 per year. The Special Events Subsidy is used to subsidize fire inspection and application fee discounts for community events that are free and organized by non-profit or small organizations which take place in under-resourced areas or at least half of the vendors are from under-resourced areas.
   • Equity Consideration: Permitting fees, particularly hourly fire inspector fees upwards of $600 an hour, present a barrier to lower income communities holding permitting events. In the FY 2022-2023 Midcycle Budget, the City Council introduced a $500,000 subsidy to cover the reduced $100 fire inspector fee for community events. In July 2022, City Council also approved a 50% discount on special event application fees for community events. However, for the FY 2023-25 Biennial budget, the subsidy was reduced to support unfreezing personnel in EWDD. Without having access to this subsidy, it may be more difficult for BIPOC residents and BIPOC-led small organizations to run community events in Oakland.
4. Freezes vacant 0.60 FTE Urban Economic Analyst IV PPT and freezes vacant 1.0 FTE Development/Redevelopment Program Manager in the Public Private Development Division starting Jan 2024. Freezing these positions will decrease personnel available to work on disposing City-owned land for development of affordable housing, as well as other priority projects, such as development of a mixed-use project at 2100 Telegraph Avenue or the rehabilitation of the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, which creates jobs for Oaklanders and support local businesses.
   • Equity Consideration: The City’s 2018 Equity Indicators Report and its HCD 2021-2023 Strategic Action Plan identify housing affordability as a central issue in Oakland. Oakland’s lowest income households are experiencing the highest rent burden with approximately 60% of Black renter households being rent burdened and about one-third severely rent burdened — the highest rate of any racial/ethnic group in the city. Homelessness also disproportionately affects Black residents, which represent 68% of Oakland's unhoused population. Freezing these positions will slow down the production of affordable housing on City-owned land serving Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) residents.
5. Freezes vacant 1.0 FTE Program Analyst ll in Cultural Affairs. The frozen position will severely impact the division’s outreach efforts to Oakland’s underserved BIPOC communities that this position is charged to serve. As a result, the freeze will impact Oakland’s cultural sector across the board and the division’s work to foreground equity in its grantmaking services. Currently, Cultural Affairs offer 4 grant opportunities to the community which are: 1) General Assistance, 2) Festivals, 3) Neighborhood Voices: Programs, and 4) Neighborhood Voices: Individuals. The division will examine how to right size these grant opportunities with the resources available and existing staffing capacity.
   • Equity Consideration: Freezing this position will reduce services to Oakland’s historically underserved BIPOC communities. These are the groups the division targets for its Cultural Grant application outreach, and so they may continue to be underserved without a Program Analyst II to do this type of outreach.
6. Reduces one-time workforce grant funding by 50% in the General Purpose Fund. This funding provides programs and services that address disparities in access to employment and related services in Oakland’s historically underserved populations.
   • Equity Consideration: Oakland’s Workforce Development system prioritize services to targeted populations (Black and Latinx) and geographic areas of Oakland (East and West) that have the highest numbers of residents who face disproportionately high levels of unemployment. Less available funding means that less services can be provided to Oakland’s BIPOC communities.
7. Freezes vacant 1.0 FTE Urban Economic Analyst II who has bilingual capacity in languages other than English. This position provides resources for small business support programs, particularly impacting the ability of EWDD to serve business owners with language barriers.
   • Equity Consideration: Freezing this position will limit staff’s ability to serve business owners speaking languages other than English. Furthermore, it will disproportionately impact business owners in underserved BIPOC neighborhoods. The NBA locations were selected based on equitable access for previously underserved neighborhoods. The FTIP equity scoring criteria, new in the past year, prioritizes businesses located in Priority Neighborhoods as defined by OakDOT Equity Toolbox.
8. Freezes vacant 1.0 FTE Marketing Program Coordinator and reduces the Marketing Program budget by $95,000. The workload related to the marketing program and communication services will be absorbed by existing EWDD staff, diverting resources from other core EWDD program support for small businesses and economic development.
   • Equity Consideration: Freezing the Marketing Program Coordinator and reducing the marketing budget will limit resources for effectively communicating with and promoting all of Oakland’s commercial neighborhoods and businesses, including the time and budget previously devoted to printed materials and translation, which are valuable particularly for limited English speakers and Oaklanders that lack ease with or access to digital/online doe resources, and those that lack visibility and access to promotional opportunities.
9. Freezes vacant 1.0 FTE Special Event Coordinator. This will reduce the capacity of the EWDD unit that oversees special event permitting, which in turn reduces the unit’s capacity to administer other programs, including Oakland’s cannabis, mobile food and other programs. Freezing this position also limits the unit’s ability to develop new programs around nightlife.
   • Equity Consideration: This freeze will impact staff and lower their bandwidth to support and ensure a smooth roll out of the community events discount that prioritizes events that are either located in under-resourced BIPOC areas of Oakland or have half of the vendors from under-resourced areas.
10. Freezes vacant 1.0 FTE Special Activities Permit Inspector. This freeze will reduce City’s ability to monitor and conduct outreach for special activities, such as special events and mobile food, in the field.
    • Equity consideration: This freeze will reduce the Special Activities Division’s capacity to conduct outreach with mobile food vendors, who disproportionately come from historically marginalized BIPOC communities.
11. Continues to freeze vacant 0.60 FTE Urban Economic Analyst (UEA) IV PPT in Business Development to support Business Improvement Districts (BIDs). This position was frozen in the FY 2022-23 MidCycle Budget. Continuing to freeze this position will require that staffing of the BID program continue to be absorbed by existing EWDD staff, diverting resources from core EWDD program support for small businesses and economic development. The BID program is a Council authorized contractual obligation that supports 11 BID Districts and successfully leverages over $6.5 million in private funding supporting safety, marketing, cleaning services, and community event programming that is above City baseline services in BID districts.
    • Equity Consideration: The freezing of this position would remove staffing resource to a critical commercial neighborhood support program that improves neighborhood conditions. Freezing this position will restrict resources from being allocated to business and development support programming in East and West Oakland, where the majority of Oakland’s BIPOC residents live.
12. Reduces Measure C TOT Cultural Grants contingencies by $17,048, online database by $12,000, and professional services by $5,000 in FY2023-24. The Cultural Grants budget provides grant funding to Oakland-based Art and cultural activities while the online database and professional services support the grant’s application process.
    • Equity Consideration: The services to Oakland’s historically underserved BIPOC communities will be impacted by the diminished grantmaking capacity of the division.
13. Continues to freeze vacant 0.50 FTE Student Trainee. This position was frozen in the FY 2022-23 MidCycle Budget. This position would provide support to small business development programs including the Neighborhood Business Assistance program (NBA), which provides counseling services to business owners in locations throughout Oakland’s neighborhoods, and the Façade and Tenant Improvement Program (FTIP), which recently relaunched and will award an unprecedented volume of grants in the next year for small business owners and property owners to improve their ground floor commercial spaces.
    • Equity Consideration: This position was frozen in the FY 2022-23 MidCycle Budget. Continuing to freeze the Student Trainee position will disproportionately impact business owners in underserved BIPOC neighborhoods that won’t receive additional support. The NBA locations were selected based on equitable access for previously underserved neighborhoods. The FTIP equity scoring criteria, new in the past year, prioritizes businesses located in Priority Neighborhoods as defined by OakDOT Equity Toolbox.
14. Continues to freeze vacant 0.50 FTE Student Trainee. This position was frozen in the FY 2022-23 MidCycle Budget. Not having this position decreases EWDD personnel available to work on disposing City-owned land for development of affordable housing, as well as other priority projects, such as development of a mixed-use project at 2100 Telegraph Avenue or the rehabilitation of the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, which creates jobs for Oaklanders and supports local businesses.
    • Equity Consideration: The City’s 2018 Equity Indicators Report and its HCD 2021-2023 Strategic Action Plan identify housing affordability as a central issue in Oakland. Oakland’s lowest income households are experiencing the highest rent burden with approximately 60% of Black renter households being rent burdened and about one-third severely rent burdened — the highest rate of any racial/ethnic group in the city. Homelessness also disproportionately affects Black residents, which represent 68% of Oakland's unhoused population. Freezing the Student Trainee position may slow down the production of affordable housing on City-owned land serving BIPOC residents.
15. Freezes vacant 1.0 FTE Administrative Analyst I. This change will preserve a greatly needed Program Analyst II position that is focused on providing technical assistance to partner organizations, process contractor invoices, and ensure partner organizations are serving communities in most need. Freezing the Administrative Analyst I will impact EWDD’s ability to review and process contracts and payment requests in a timely manner.
    • Equity Consideration: Retaining the Program Analyst II will allow EWDD to continue to advance its efforts to serve communities of East Oakland, Fruitvale and West Oakland, where a high number of Black and Latinx residents live, are unemployed at higher rates than the general population. This will provide access to workforce services and improving the employment outcomes for BIPOC residents in zip codes (94621, 94603, 94605, 94601, 94607) with the highest unemployment rates.

SIGNIFICANT BUDGETARY CHANGES

FINANCIAL INFORMATION

POSITION INFORMATION