Mar 24, 2026 - 06:30 PM

[SIDE CONVERSATION] Good evening. This is the regular joint meeting of the Oakland City Council. The Oakland City Council, Acting as successor agency for the Oakland Redevelopment Agency, and a special meeting of the Oakland Public Financing Authority. This meeting is called to order at 6:30 PM. Will the clerk please call roll? Council Member Fuller. Here. Council Member Shaw. Here. Council Member Williams. Here. Vice Mayor Meadows. Here. Mayor Henderson. Here. Item 1.2, Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me in welcoming the Webelos Pack 152. These scouts are in their final stages of Cub Scouting and are preparing to transition to scouting BSA. In doing so, they continue to uphold the core values of citizenship, respect, and responsibilities. We are honored to have them lead us tonight in the flag ceremony. Color Guard, Attention. Color Guard, Advance. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, indivisible, for liberty and justice for all. Color Guard, retire the colors. Well done in my perspective. Item 1.3, Recognition of the Medical Center of Birds. Dr. Brian Speer anatomy will do an introduction for us. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and council members and community members. My name is Harumi Murata, with City of Oakley Economic Development Division, and it's my truly my honor this evening to recognize an extraordinary organization right here in our community, the Medical Center for Birds, led by Dr. Brian Speer for being selected as a 2026 East Bay Innovation Award Honoree in life sciences. This prestigious recognition, often referred as a Academy Awards of East Bay, celebrates organizations that are shaping the future of our region through innovation, impact, and excellence. Hosted by East Bay EDA, Economic Development and Alliance, the award brings outstanding organizations from across Alameda and Contra Costa counties. This year's Honorees include respected institutions, such as John Muir Health, Concord Campus, Fremont Bank, and Ohlone College, alongside leaders in technology, manufacturing, and life sciences. To be recognized alongside with such an outstanding organization really speaks to the significance of this achievement and the impact of the work that happening here in Oakley. As you know, the Medical Center for Birds is truly one of the kind under Dr. Speer's leadership. The center has grown into a global, respected institution dedicated to rescue, rehabilitation, and medical care for birds. Their work is not only advances veterinary sciences, but also plays a vital role in environmental stewardship, wildlife conservation, and public education. From an economic development perspective, organizations like Medical Center for Birds are incredibly important. They contribute to more diverse and resilient local economy. Elevate Oakley's visibility across the region, and it reminds us that innovation comes in many forms. It's not only limited to technology or large scale industry, but it's also found in compassionate, mission-driven work that improves the quality of life and strengthen our connection to the environment and each other. On behalf of the city, I would like to extend our sincere congratulations to Dr. Speer and the entire team at Medical Center for Birds, and your compassion, expertise, and leadership makes lasting impact not only to the animals you care for, but on our community as a whole. At this time, it's my pleasure to invite Dr. Speer forward to be recognized by the City Council for this outstanding achievement. Dr. Speer, I think he would like to share a few words as well. God, you said everything. That was really good. Thank you. It really is a privilege and an honor to be recognized. I've lived here in Oakley since 1983, and I got the Bird bug, and that has been my life. And somehow, some way, when you're enjoying things that you get to do with your employment and you actually get to be good at it and people recognize it, then there you are. It wasn't a planned thing. I wanted to work with the cows on the Emerson Dairy when I came here to town. And that's not there. And my cows grew feathers, and that's the way it's been. So it's a honor to be recognized. And I'm glad to be here. Thank you. Oh, wow. Total certificates. Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. Well deserved. I mean that. Yeah, well deserved. Locally, I mean, I know why, but congratulations. Thank you. We'll move to item 2, public comment. At this time, the public will be heard on items that are not on the agenda. I have not received any public comment cards if somebody would like to speak in public comment for items not on the agenda. If they could fill out a blue card, the time limit will be three minutes. Please refrain from clapping, booing, or cheering during the public comments so everybody has the ability to be heard. Is there anybody wish to speak in public comment? Seeing none, we'll move to item 3, council members comments. Council Member Fuller. Yes, I want to thank Disabled American Veterans for putting up two parking spots in front of Studio 55. I'm glad the city let them, but they are very good. They're nationwide. I can't remember they have something over 1 million members and support disabled veterans. Myself, being a veteran and now disabled, I fall under that category. So I'm always glad to pull into the parking spot that they put there. Myself, it looks like I'll miss Memorial Day again being shoved out the censure I was in the Vietnam War era with the Marines and a couple other things. But having sworn to take a bullet for the protection of our Constitution in the United States, and the only one, I think, as far as city staff, except maybe our off officers have any military background. They just I've got to be punished for transgressions that Mr. McMurray says. But the bottom line is they won't release the results. So in violation of the Sixth Amendment without due process or confronting witnesses, which they refuse to release, I will be banned from the shell. So I'm going to be working on it. Anybody that would like to make a email to Mr. McMurray or the council members that haven't released the report, so they can see how bad I am and what evil things there were and who the witnesses are. There's only two besides Mr. McMurray-- Council Member Fuller this is their period. Yeah, Mr. Cole, you said I could talk about anything I wanted. And that's what I'm going to talk about. You're treading into personnel matters, and the report has been released. You know what? It's my personnel matter. So if you would have in my personnel matter, have them set up. Any behavior that would disclose-- You see what they like. They don't want to let you see. They just want to punish, punish, punish. They'll do the same for you. And I think that's why they were hiding things like Bridgehead was the main idea. Thank you. We'll move to Item 4, Consent Calendar. Staff has pulled 4.2 and 4.3. Is there any council members that wish to pull any items? 4.1, 4.4, 4.6, and 4.8. Can I confirm that's 4.1, 4.4, 4.6, and 4.8? Yes. Move the remainder. Second. We have a first and a second on the remainder. Roll call vote, please. Council Member Fuller. Aye. Council Member Shaw. Yes. Council Member Williams. Yes. Vice Mayor Meadows. Yes. Mayor Henderson. Yes. Item 4.1. Yes, I pulled that again. Again isn't, what can I say? There's a whole lot of people there, but nothing about what they talked about, which is their apprehension to either Bridgehead or the construction project, their construction loan. But there's a whole lot. But we don't know much about what they had to say. In addition, if I wasn't just going on the lack of clarity in the minutes, I would also, I will vote no. But I would also say they're incorrect, said I left the dais and walked out and came back. That is correct. But under the American Disabilities Act, I am entitled to do that. After 4.5 hours of my dog not having a break, my dog had needed a break, and the mayor was asked to take a break and didn't, but I needed to take the break. They have precedent, but it should. The minutes should reflect that they didn't just walk out. But in accordance with the American Disabilities Act, I took my dog for a walk, and that should be in there too. I move approval of 4.1. Second. I have a first and a second for 4.1. Roll call vote, please. Council Member Fuller. No. Council Member Shaw. Yes. Council Member Williams. Yes. Vice Mayor Meadows. Yes. Mayor Henderson. Aye. 4.2, Mr. McMurray. On 4.2. Staff has pulled this and-- Oh, I'm sorry. That's right, I heard. I thought you announced it. Sorry, Mr. McMurray. Go ahead. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, members of the City Council, and members of the public. I would like to address the error that was identified in the ordinance for item 4.2. So I'm going to read a statement. I would like to apologize to the residents of Oakley, especially those who took the time to send written public comments or provide in-person public comments to the City Council regarding the Bridgehead Industrial Project, and to those of you who attended the meeting in-person or watched from home, for the failure to remove data center from page 4 of ordinance 3-26 in the findings. This oversight was an unfortunate error. I firmly believe in accountability and transparency, as does the entire city leadership team. We as a team understand how mistakes like this erode the public's trust. At the March 10, 2026 City Council meeting after receiving public comments, the applicant requested that data center be removed from the planned unit development, and the City Council voted to waive the first reading and introduced the ordinance, with data centers removed from the permitted uses. Staff added a whereas clause to the original ordinance number 3-26 in the March 24, 2026 agenda packet reflecting this. The whereas during the March 10, 2026 City Council public hearing, the applicant stated they would remove the use classified as data center from the proposed planned unit development that accompanied this rezone application. Upon introduction of this ordinance, the City Council made a motion that included removing data center from the proposed PUD. As a result of the ordinance as introduced, the approved PUD has been amended to exclude data center from the list of uses allowed in the project, and however, the use was not removed from 2(b) of the findings in Section 1. Leaving data center in the written findings was an oversight that does not reflect the Council's direction. When we were notified of the error on March 18, staff immediately began correcting the mistake. In addition to removing data center from the findings in the ordinance and reposting ordinance number 3-26 on the city's website on March 18, staff also added the PUD, which does not contain data center as a use to the agenda packet for transparency. Staff also sent an email to agenda subscribers with a link to the updated agenda, and staff added a comment explaining the updates on the original social media post with a link to the updated agenda packet. Before the meeting today, staff reviewed the PUD and both ordinances again. Staff noted that ordinance 3-26, Section 1 findings, paragraph A says, in quotes, "The planning commission finds that instead of referencing the city council, the final corrected ordinance number 3-26, with data center removed and planning commission corrected to city council, has been placed at each council seat in the public viewing binder and in the hallway." And I'd like to close with saying I take full responsibility for that oversight. But, at the same time, I do want to let the Council and the public know I lead with setting expectations. I make sure the staff understands that mistakes are acceptable. We are human. Every organization, every business, every person makes mistakes. This one was magnified because of the importance of the project. But, at the end of the day, it has been corrected. And what is in front of you tonight and what we are recommending approval of meets the intent of what was discussed and ultimately directed by the City Council at the March 10 meeting. And I'm going to hand it over to City Attorney, Derek Cole, for some additional statements. Thanks. I want to apologize to the Council because I failed to catch this in my review of this ordinance. I am part of the team that the city manager referenced, and I do review the material that is presented to you in your agenda packets, and I especially pay attention to the legal instruments, the resolutions, the ordinances, the things that have legal significance. And so this is something I should have caught in my review because this is an ordinance, and ultimately I'm supposed to proofread and make sure the ordinances reflect truly the council's intention. And I didn't do that in this occasion, and it's just something that I should have done and I didn't. And I want to express my apology to the Council for failing to do that. In this instance, in many ways, I was the goalie. We all play defense. We have layers of defense, but I'm the one standing in front of the goal. And in this case, I let the ball go, sailing right by me. So I accept responsibility for that. I apologize to anyone who was misled. I know that there was significant public interest, and that this was a big concession that was made by the applicant, and it was something that was very material, as I recall, from the Council's vote. So I failed in this regard, and I just wanted to acknowledge and express my apology to the Council. Any questions of staff? Comment. We're not there yet. OK. Public comment? [INAUDIBLE] I'm sorry. Did you have a question for Shaf? Public comments, we received three online that wished to speak tonight, David Munson. City Council, thank you for adding me for the record. Anissa Williams at the January 29 Skipolini's town hall, hosted by Shannon Shaw, you told me directly to my face, "My district is heavily Union, and they want this project for jobs. So my vote is going to be yes." At least we knew your position ahead of time, and your demeanor and comments during the March 10 meeting clearly showed this was already the decided outcome. You, Aaron, George, and Shannon, you heard numerous concerns on decreased property values in vintage located next to a industrial development, from $200 million to $400 million, catastrophic generational income loss. Yet not one of you outside of George bothered to address this concern. You, with your negative view of the vineyards. Aaron, with your love of the Union and the Klein money. Neither of you looked or even questioned this possible loss for us homeowners. And I appreciate your candor. And Shannon, at our Skipolini's meeting, you said, "I will fight to the death for data centers," and I applaud you for standing up for that. As the District 4 rep, your job is to represent us. We told you vehemently at the Skipolini's meeting. No. We told you at the March 10 meeting. No. Yet your main concern was that $100,000 J6 deposit that declines would be paying. That's what we were for your yes vote, a $100,000 J6 deposit and sidewalks. I know you're up for reelection in November. I will not be voting for you. Thank you for your time. Abigail Lopez. Christopher Long. And I have one blue card for Jasper Willowbrook. The citizens of Oakley do not appreciate their concerns being taken lightly or completely overlooked, because y'all still today want to act like the data center was the deal breaker. We didn't want any of this. Those trucks are going to fucking, the wind's going to send all that pollutant right downwind into our freaking neighborhood to freaking Vintage Parkway. It's real convenient that none of y'all had the time today to respond to my email from last night. The plant schedule hasn't even been changed, even though I brought that up to you and you wanted to act all exacerbated at the Skip's meeting, and then turn around and write it, you still did bring it up at the March 10 meeting. Thanks for that. But where's the accountability and making sure that the plants were actually changed? Only one tree on that freaking plant schedule is native, and the rest of them come from areas of the world where other invasive plants have come from. Y'all are not doing your due diligence. That's why I showed up in gym shorts, because I decided to give y'all the same of seriousness that y'all have given us, which is fucking none. We told you we didn't want the traffic around. Y'all shouldn't be up there because you don't listen to your freaking constituents. I don't have much else to say. You need to not vote this in until they do it properly. They didn't change the freaking plans. I noticed y'all put little drain filters that'll probably never get properly taken care of for the runoff when I mentioned that. Good job, good job. But y'all still have decided that our health is a bargaining factor. Like y'all don't care about that. We asked you. George Fuller is not the only disabled veteran in this room. I may not look it, but I'm also one. And you specifically voted against my health because I live right there, downwind, less than a quarter mile from the project. And you decided that my health didn't matter because it doesn't affect you. And you voted that way, and you voted that way, and you voted that way. It's not just Shannon, but she's getting it from me because she's my council member, because I live there, because I'm District 4, because I did the work before you did it. And I told you what was wrong, and y'all still ignored me. It may be a part-time position, y'all may need another job, but that is not an excuse to take it lightly, to let shit like data centers slide and plants that have potential, incredible potential to be invasive. All the oleander that they planted around town a long time ago is now invasive, all the way past the Sierra Nevadas. When are you going to take our waterways seriously, our environment, and our health? What is wrong with you guys? Seriously, you're supposed to work for us, not the Klein family of Sonoma. We have one more speaker, and I'm having a hard time reading the name. No. [INAUDIBLE] No. It's OK. Hello. My name is Mushda Faiez. Hi, George. Anissa, we talked briefly. For the rest of you, I'm Mushda Faiez and I study health psychology and environmental humanities. And I see a lot of problems with this infrastructure that you guys have built. For the last two years, I've actually been talking to the economic developer here in Oakley about adding a city composting plan and a interactive community garden that also implements activity for the citizens, and I feel like we have so much rural area that we can utilize for community activity. And rather than continuously building infrastructure that only brings commuters and emissions into this land, we can uplift our native species and our communities. You have so many city members that are so passionate about our small little city in Oakley. Me personally, I've lived here for 20 years, and I made my whole major about environmental science because of our estuary, because of how important it is to have the Bay Area and fresh water, and going all the way down to the San Joaquin River. And I feel, as the Council has a very high responsibility in protecting these lands and speaking not only for the people, but for protecting and preserving what we have left here in the City of Oakley. In the last two years, I've seen decline of dragonflies and a lot more stinger bugs. I don't know if you guys have. There's a lot more emissions, there's a lot more traffic. And it just kind of sad when we have so much beautiful potential, especially down on Main Street. I grew up here. I went to Vintage, I went to Delta Vista, and then I went to Freedom. And something that I miss is the community events that we used to have are 4 of July weekends, being able to walk down and seeing the big break and utilizing our air. I actually have reoccurring pneumonia now. I actually talked to Anissa about this today. I was in the hospital last night because I have reoccurring pneumonia. I got pneumonia when I was six years old, and we live next to factories. We live next to-- we not only factories, but we live in a commuter city that invites more cars in emissions, when we can invite more eco-friendly and local businesses that uplifts our citizens. And I think you guys should have more responsibility in taking care of this people in the city, rather than building infrastructure that brings more people from in the Bay that also makes living here a little bit more difficult. I don't want to leave Oakley. I would love to see Oakley be built around our city, and I think there's so many good plans that we can implement. And maybe instead of going straight into an industrial infrastructure, we can talk more about different plans that can uplift citizens and local businesses for those lands. Because I think the Main Street is beautiful, and I think City of Oakley deserves that experience to see what the potential of the people are and the potential of this land. So I hope you hear this and give it good graces. Thank you. That was the last public speaker card I have. We'll move it back to the Council. Council Member Fuller. Yes. Thank you. First, I appreciate staff taking responsibility for what happened. I appreciate that. It was a eye-opener to see it the second time around, but I said, on the 10th that you need to look at this. And we found out they bring that up because I asked on the 10th the city attorney, if we were voting on a zoning change, and he said no. And then I asked him, what about the data center? And he said it wasn't there. I had to go back and look at the ordinance and point out the line and paragraph on page 4, 2, second to the last paragraph of that data center. And Mayor Meadows showed that we were changing the zoning, at least on the Southern part. So the bottom line was we've had a lot of confusion over a lot of time. And what's happened is people are just fed up, and we ought to kill this, kill what's going on. We're actually taxing them. If I remember right, Mr. Strelow said, oh, nobody will be harmed. Yet our own EIR that we put together says the air quality will be detrimental and cannot be corrected. Mayor or Council Member Williams said, oh, we've done about the asthma. I'm going to tell you, after a lifetime of having asthma, you don't just change the air quality and it goes away. So what we're doing is just shrugging our shoulders, saying, oh, we need the property tax. And we got to do this, and we got to do that, and everybody's confused. But we're going to let them go ahead and start digging and doing. So I just, I think it's creating an environmental cesspool. And I'll vote no. Council Member Shaw. So just a couple things I don't vote without explaining why, and that's just the way I do things. But I did want to point out that I think some misinformation here is no on the project, meaning no development. And the EIR from 2008 had more unmitigated impacts than the current project, and I'm happy to provide that to anybody that is interested in seeing it. But despite that, I do want to address one of the things that I've been reading online. And that's about battery energy storage systems, because it has been a concern. And at the town hall, data centers was 95% of the concern. And so, yes, that is what I decided to make sure that wasn't there. That's what, in my impression, heard the biggest problem. But having said that, battery energy storage systems and industrial battery storage are not all in the same. And today, I got a call from the city manager because I asked that question specifically, is this going to be a best system or an ancillary use to a project? And it was confirmed that as an ancillary use, just like a home with solar that adds Tesla battery walls to capture the energy for those opposed to using a generator. Again, to me, closer to zero emissions, having batteries that can power in a shut off, and also that if they produce too much energy, can put back onto the grid instead of pulling from the grid. So I just know there's been a lot of comments about battery storage. I decided to do a deeper dive myself. But until I got clarification that the developer confirmed that, I didn't want to put anything out there. But it is confirmed, and I just wanted the record to reflect that. I don't see any other council member's comments. I move approval of item 4.2. May I make clarify for the record. So this was on the consent calendar. So you're approving the item on a consent. The moving item 4.2, just to make clear on the record, I think you all know we'll be approving the two ordinances. Excuse me. It was, 4.2 was pulled. 4.2 was pulled, and we are now we're in discussion. And we have a first on-- I'm clarifying with Mr. Cole the way he's presenting it is we've already disposed. It's 4.2 and 4.3 that we approved it. I disagree. So I just want to be clear there are three items here-- Bridgehead industrial planned unit development, ordinance 3-26, and ordinance 4-26. So I just wanted to clarify for the record, it should be clear, but to the extent that it's not, that by approving item 4.2 by motion, as Council Member Meadows has made, you would be approving all three of those items that are included in your packet. And I just wanted to make sure that is reflected as what this vote, if it is seconded and approved, would do. So we have a motion on the floor. Do we have a second? I'll second the item. Call for roll call vote. Council Member Fuller. No. Council Member Shaw. Yes. Council Member Williams. Yes. Vice Mayor Meadows. Yes. Mayor Henderson. Yes. Item 4.3, Mr. McMurray. May I comment to you first. I'm not getting a closed captioning on mine. I don't know if it's working or not on my screen. I'm getting the last year, last meeting's caption. We don't provide closed captioning on Granicus, our live stream. So if it's a YouTube stream you're watching, that would be a YouTube issue that we have no control over. Well, I've been watching it for a few months now on closed captioning because it's just been disabled. You get used to being shoved aside. We'll move to 4.3, Mr. McMurray. Yeah, thank you again. I want to address a lot of misinformation that has been put out to the public about this particular item. And just wanted to provide some background. What is in front of the city council tonight is something that has been routine for the last 25 years. As long as I've been city manager, I've been taking this item to the City Council in the last four years. The item has never been pulled off of consent, and it's always had a 5-0 vote. And it really is a formality. And I just want to give some background on why it's a formality. In 1992, so well before the city incorporated, Contra Costa County worked to get some legislation approved that would allow counties and local governments, like ours, to collect assessments to help deal with funding stormwater requirements that were born prior to that time period, and stormwater monitoring and inspections and reporting is costly, was costly then is, and has become more costly over the years. In 1993, the county produced an engineer's report that outlined all of the stormwater utility areas and the rates that would be provided in those areas that could be collected on a tax bill for a property. When the city incorporated in 1999, we knew we had to comply with stormwater requirements and regulations. So we, in 2000, asked the county to take us out of area number 17, which was the unincorporated area, and they put us in a stormwater utility area number 18, which we have been in since the year 2000. And with that 2000 ask of the county, we also established a maximum rate Oakley, which would be $30 for the equivalent runoff unit. And that doesn't mean that every property pays $30. $30 is really the benchmark. And there are factors in which that rate is multiplied by anywhere from 0.7 to 12, some based on parcel size, and some based on acreage of a parcel. And that dictates the stormwater utility area rate and assessment that is assessed on the individual parcels. So what we are asking for you tonight is confirm firm, that rate of which has been in place since 2004. So this is nothing new to the city. Every parcel pays this, has paid it, and will continue to pay it in addition to every single parcel in the city. So I just wanted to correct that because we are not asking for a new tax. This assessment is authorized by both legislation and city ordinances and resolutions. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Questions for Shaf? Council Member Fuller. Yes, approximately two years ago, I attended a Zoom meeting with you, Mr. Rouhani, a couple of City staff. If I remember correctly, there was city managers from throughout the East Contra Costa County and also other councils in other areas that they were in the meeting. And you were talking at that time, as I remember, about storm runoff and the increase. Does this relate to that conversation? I'd say it only relates in the fact that both the county, the Public Managers Association, which is made up of all 19 city managers and the county administrator, and Contra Costa County, are trying to figure out ways to address the shortfalls the cities have for managing their stormwater compliance. And so the workshop that you mentioned was an attempt to get real feedback on potential solutions to solve that shortfall. But is it what we are talking about tonight? No. Like I just said, what we are talking about tonight has been in place for the last 25 years and has not changed. One more question. Was your solution to issue a bond issue for the public so that you could collect money on the bonds to pay for the flood runoff, rather than making it an assessment or? But bottom line is it was going to come out of our general fund, which I appreciate you protecting. But in the process, you mentioned the bond for the cities that they could go on regional so taxes could be collected and pay off the bond, pay on the bond so we could move on the flood control district. I want to be clear. I didn't mention a bond. It wasn't my workshop. I was part of the workshop as a representative of the Public Managers Association. So, no, there were concepts discussed, but nothing came to fruition. Yes, I know. I will discuss that in discussion. Thank you. Council Member Williams. Do you know how much it costs the city? How much do we contribute to that as from our general fund or from our budgeted dollars for it? Well, for this fiscal year, we're projecting, I'd say, in round dollars, about $100,000 from the general fund to make up the shortfall. But this stormwater utility area and this assessment that we are discussing tonight, comes to the city, the county collects it, they're authorized to collect it. And then they pass it on to the city. But they take out administration fees. There's also fees associated with the tax collector and how they have to collect. And there's also program fees at a programmatic level that are taken out that the county administers. So we do not get all of the money that is collected through these assessments. But, in general, we're probably subsidizing anywhere from $100,000 to $150,000 from either the general fund or CFDs that have a stormwater component in them. And that's not unique to Oakley. I know we talked about this at a mayor's conference maybe last year or year before that, and Oakley was definitely not the highest, hardest hit by that. Correct? It is not unique. Every city is dealing with this. The county is dealing with this. The requirements for stormwater compliance are only getting more strict. And it cost a lot of money to achieve compliance. Thank you. Council Member Shaw. So the max has been 30 for some time. How would it be increased if it needed to be? It would require a prop 218 vote of the people. And is that something we're proposing right now? Not at all. So this is not a new tax or an increased tax or any talk of a tax? This is just a formality for the county? Correct. And I can say with certainty, I've never discussed the potential of prop 218 vote to increase this assessment with any one of you. Thank you. I'll move approval of the item then. Second. Discussion. We don't have any public comment. We have a motion and a second. Yes, but I did mention discussion. If you let me finish, I will let you speak. Thank you. We do have a motion and a second. Go ahead with your discussion, Council Member Fuller. Yes, when I was in that conference, there was a unanimous decision, except Mr. McMurray, as my memory has it, if the tape has been destroyed here, I'm sure that other municipalities have it. There were several municipalities there, and I will reach out to them on the PRA for a copy. But I remember distinctly that at that point, they all said no. We ought to wait three years. The county is not ready to pass any more taxes, that we are being taxed too much. And at this point, no more taxes. And I'm just going to go off of that, and I'm just going to say, no new taxes, and I will vote no. We have enough taxes coming at us right now without approving this one. Vice Mayor Meadows. As discussed already, this is not a new tax. This is your tax bill for '25, '26. Under special taxes and assessments, the second line down is Oakley stormwater. Number 18 is $30. I got resolutions going back to 2001 when we first joined the City Council, and it's all to approve the $30 assessment that we have on our agenda tonight as Item 4.3. And all five of these resolutions were unanimous 5-0 votes. That means you voted for it. That's all I have. So we have a first and a second. Can I have a roll call vote, please? Council Member Fuller. No. Council Member Shaw. Yes. Council Member Williams. Yes. Vice Mayor Meadows. Yes. Mayor Henderson. Yes. The motion passes 4-1. Item 4.4, council member. Mayor, I'm sorry. Could we take a five-minute break to reboot the system to see if that addresses the issue that Council Member Fuller mentioned? Yes. OK, we'll call for a five-minute recess. It's longer than I expected, I guess. We'll call the meeting back to order. We appear to have been able to fix our technical difficulties. 4.4, Council Member Fuller, you pulled this? Yes, I did. Thank you. I will vote no. I don't know what to say. Mr. McMurray and I disagree. Perhaps Mr. Cole goes along with it, and the city clerk. But in my days of a detective, not only did we require very heavily on city records and what was going on, but that was not only defying guilt, but to also find innocence. There are great investigative one, and as we've seen tonight, there's been a mask of confusion concerning one of the bigger projects. And there are others. I'm just not in a position to approve the destruction of records, and especially after five years, they decide, well, we don't need it. It'll be gone. They're going to say, well no, no, yeah, yeah. But I'm just not going to vote for any destruction of records. We could have a workshop on it, but I won't vote for it no. Mr. Mayor. Oh, sorry. May I clarify. This is done with the guidance of the state, and this is standard. So I just, to the extent that there's any concern about legality, there's none. And we have every right to do this. And, in fact, this is the practice I've seen of every city, large and small, every county, every public agency. I do want to point out that the city retained a very capable consultant who works with cities, who worked extensively with our staff. But one thing I do want to mention to address Council Member Fuller's concerns is there is a record destruction process. And records are not just simply willy-nilly destroyed. Records are presented for destruction. Staff assembles those. And then, I do review those requests, and I actually do review the records. And there is a qualitative determination. But not only that, but many of the records remain available in our electronic system. So I just want to, for sake of the Council, make clear that what you're doing is standard practice, but not only standard practice, but based on what I've seen elsewhere, this goes well above and beyond what I see with many other public agencies. Council Member Shaw. One of the records that I specifically asked about was meeting videos, because it's been brought up a handful of times. And if I was reading this correctly, we're talking about 10 years. Is that correct? Correct. And what is it that we currently do today? What is-- For meeting videos? Mm-hmm. Current year plus 2 years. So that's adding additional seven years on top of our standards as of today? Correct. OK. I just wanted to clarify. Thank you. Council Member Williams. What would be the method that we could store records for past state law, like for an indefinite amount of time? Where would that be housed? Where would that go? Well, I think and you know in today's world, things are getting stored in the cloud. So I think if you're talking about storing things indefinitely, I really don't envision the storage being an issue. It's more, how much does that cost us? So there's a cost associated with that. And that's something to keep in mind. I wouldn't have any information on what that would be right now. But cost would be the factor that I think would play into a decision. And so, right now, I think Granicus kind of hosts our YouTube. Is that right? So this will apply to YouTube as well in the future, the 10 years, because that will be changed through that. Or can it live on in YouTube or no, because it's the Granicus that's keeping it? Right? Well, it's streamed from Granicus into YouTube, but YouTube, it's in the YouTube system, for lack of a better word. And those videos are pretty much there in perpetuity until we ask YouTube to remove them. OK. . That was exactly what I was trying to get to. Thank you. I do not have any public comment on this. Hold on. Council Member Shaw. One more question. So, Derek, you were saying digitally things are kept, but so as far as meeting minutes, if we're talking 10 years on video, how long are we keeping minutes? Minutes are never destroyed. Never? Correct. We have minutes going back to the very first city council meeting. Minutes are never destroyed. I mean, those are the official minutes. So those will always exist. Thank you. And just for reference, if you look at page CD-7 of the retention schedule, it identifies minutes as being permanent for the planning commission. And then, I'm trying to find the minutes for the City Council just so we have all that. That would be on page CC-5, also identified as permanent. Mayor Henderson, may I ask that Mr. McMurray repeat that. He came off very low, and I have very difficult time hearing him at this corner. The minutes for the city council are identified on page CC-5 as being permanent. And I got to find again, I'm searching. Page CD-7 for the planning commission, also identified as permanent. With that, that's all the questions. There's no public comment. I'll entertain a motion. Move approval of 4.4. I have discussion when you're ready. It's not a question but it's more discussion. We still have a motion. We can get a second. I'll bring it back for final discussion. I'll second then. Council Member Shaw. I appreciate that the minutes are kept forever, ever and always. And while this is not a popular opinion, and maybe I need to bring it up in future agenda item, please let me know. Is the potential of a hybrid version of what we have today and what we used to have, because they are forever on the record. And while we are adding 7 years to our video storage, I just think because entitlements for projects can go 20 years, I think it's important that we just have some clarification on some of that information, not just the action. So do you want me to bring that as a future agenda item, or is that something we can discuss now since we're talking about retention? Well, I don't think we're discussing how the minutes are taken. Then I'll bring it up. So that can be a separate action, and we would appreciate a future agenda item request. Thank you. Do we have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? I'll call for a roll call vote. Council Member Fuller. No. Council Member Shaw. Yes. Council Member Williams. Yes. Vice Mayor Meadows. Yes. Mayor Henderson. Yes. The motion passes 4-1. 4.6, Council Member Fuller. Mayor, I am sorry to apologize again. That reboot did not work, so closed captioning is only available on YouTube right now. We're not going to be able to fix that tonight. Thank you for the update on that. Thank you for acknowledging that. 4.6, Council Member Fuller. Yes. When I read this, all I could think about was, there was a young lady up here, maybe a year, year and a half ago. She, on her own, came in. Her mother was right behind her, took full responsibility for having a sparkler on the park on the 4th of July. And she happened to come about it, because her friends were using them. And they split. And of course, you being a nice, responsible person, stood there and got a citation. So I was highly impressed that she came in. She was going to pay for it herself. She worked at McDonald's. She went through. And I was for waiving it. I remember Mayor Henderson at the time, Council Member Henderson says, well, we gotta hold people accountable. And so we assessed a $500 fine against her and set up a payment plan for, I think, it's $45 a month that she was going to pay out of her McDonald's minimum wage. So if we're doing that, then I think we ought to go along and have everybody fall into line in accountability and our codes rather than putting them off for some and holding others that must be held accountable, at least, as some stated, assessing fines and such. I do not have any other council member's comments. I do not have any public comment on this. Council Member Shah. We're discussing the wrong agenda item. We're on 4.6. Deferring improvements. Oh, I don't know what that has to do with 4.6, but I move approval of 4.6. We have a first. I'll second 4.6. And a second for 4.6. Call for a roll call vote. Council Member Fuller. No. Council Member Shaw. Yes. Council Member Williams. Yes. Vice Mayor Meadows. Yes. Mayor Henderson. Yes. The motion passes, 4-1. 4.8, Council Member Fuller. Yes. This one is an extension. I appreciate for getting this project completed. But I asked last time on March 10 on another project, is that enough money? I ask often on these smaller projects. Is this going to be enough money? I said yes. And then we're back here again. I will qualify a yes vote, but I have to say, I don't like it. I like it to come over and have a motion or something on the agenda to return money to the general fund if it is too much. So I will leave it with that. Council Member Shaw. Again, discussing the wrong agenda item, but I move approval of 4.8. Second. We have a first and a second. Roll call vote, please. Council Member Fuller. Aye. Council Member Shaw. Yes. Council Member Williams. Yes. Vice Mayor Meadows. Yes. Mayor Henderson. Yes. The motion passes, 5-0. Item 5, public hearings. We have none tonight. We'll move to the regular calendar, 6.1. Waive the first reading and introduction of an ordinance amending the section 1.5.209 and 1.5.210 of the Oakley Municipal Court, concerning requests for administrative hearings and challenges of citation. And we'll hear from our chief building inspector. Mayor, city council members, this is a simple amendment to an existing ordinance, so there's not really much here. It's just, we contracted with a new company for collections when it comes to citation amounts. And that new company had a different way of holding appeal hearings. And so we're amending the existing ordinance to address that. It essentially is taking, before we were doing 10 business days that they had to appeal a citation. And we're giving them 20 calendar days because the new company didn't do business days. So essentially, that's what we're doing. We're amending the language to cover that. Any questions for the staff? May I make one additional clarification? We're also requiring the filing of the appeals to be through an online processing service that the city contracts with. So that was an additional change that is being made in addition to what our enforcement officer just mentioned. Questions of staff? Council Member Shah. Yes. So the appeals filing is different, but if they appeal that decision ultimately to the city council, we would still hear it. Correct. Thank you. And we're increasing the amount of time they have to file an appeal now, which is at the benefit of those receiving the citation. OK. Thank you. Council Member Williams. What was our old process? If now, we're doing an online process for appealing, what did we used before they would just come down? Yes. They could file a form in paper in the office. Or they could mail it in. And that would still actually be an option. If they did file it that way or came into the office, we would then upload it to this service for them. OK. Great. So we're just adding an additional access point, basically? Correct. OK, cool. And is it longer? Or are we trying to do the 10 business days versus 20 calendar days? Does it work out to the same, though? I'd have to look. It actually would give them a little bit more-- A couple more days? Yeah. If we did business days, if they worked in a couple of weekends and maybe a holiday, might be like 15 days. By going calendar days, at 20, they're going to get more time. OK. Perfect. Thank you so much. I do not see any further questions of staff. I do not have any public comments for this. I'll bring it back to council for discussion. If not, I'll take a motion. I move approval of item 6.1. Second. We have a first and a second. Roll call vote, please. Council Member Fuller. Aye. Council Member Shaw. Yes. Council Member Williams. Yes. Vice Mayor Meadows. Yes. Mayor Henderson. Yes. The motion passes, 5-0. Thank you. Item 7, city manager's report. Thank you again. We have a couple updates tonight-- one by our police chief, Paul Beard, and discussion item by our city attorney, Derek Cole. So I'll be relinquishing most of my time to them. But I would like to notify the public of our second annual day of service that is coming up. Saturday, April 25, from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM, we will be at our Oakley Recreation Center. And we have five amazing projects that people can participate in, happening all over the city. And you can sign up for those projects if you go to our city website and you go to the recreation division under the Administrative services department, and you click on the portion of the website that allows you to sign up for programs-- Events. --events through the rec program. And you would click on Events. And then there's day of service. And you have the five projects. And we are cleaning up the creek. We're doing some big break sand dune restoration. There's a Studio 55 Community Garden Project, Holly Creek Park Tree Planting, and Creekside Park Tree Preservation. So we look forward to community participation. On April 25. And with that said, I'm going to hand it over to our police chief, Paul Beard, who is going to give us our police department update. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, members of the Council. As stated, this is the evening for my annual Police Department update. As we go through this update, I would just like to remind the public that this police department is here to serve the public, serve the community of Oakley. And this is a police department that has largely been built by this council. And I appreciate all efforts that have been made in that respect. So the department is headed by me. I come to you with a 36 years of experience now. And I came from the Contra Costa Sheriff's Office. I'm responsible for the overall operation of the department, to include all major decisions, and field operations, and support services. This year, we have two new lieutenants. These are two new faces that the community maybe has not seen yet. I know all of you have, since going to the swearing ins. But our operations lieutenant is Lieutenant Kevin Morris. Lieutenant Morris comes to us with 18 years of experience from the Sheriff's Office and Oakley PD. He is our operations commander. He is responsible for all field-related activities. Lieutenant Dallas Collier also comes to us with 18 years of experience. He comes to us from Dallas, Texas PD, Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office, and Oakley PD. Lieutenant Collier is the support services commander, which means he is responsible for administrative matters, record staff, fleet, and property, and evidence. A partial reason for why we are making these changes and doing this reorganization is because Lieutenant Logan Cartwright is retiring from his admirable career of 24 years from law enforcement. So we are able to promote relatively early to let the new lieutenants spend some time with Lieutenant Cartwright, so that he could train them. And we do appreciate all of Lieutenant Cartwright's service. And we wish him well moving into the future. Basic mission of the PD-- enforce the law, protect others from harm, keep peace, restore order, maintain the upper hand on the criminal element, safeguard city interests, and build community relations. Last year, we saw three new officers come into our employ. Officer Alicia Martinez came to us from Pittsburgh PD. Officer Giuliana Caligari is actually our first successful academy graduate, meaning, she did graduate at the academy. She has passed her field training program. And she is well on her way to successfully completing her probationary period. We are very proud of her. Last year, we took into our employment Jorge Villasenor. We hired him as a police services assistant. And he wanted to be a police officer with us. He passed all the requirements. And he is now sitting in the academy to become our next police officer. I just met with him today. And he is doing well. We are staffed from 42 positions, for myself down to the most junior officer. We only have 37 officers currently employed with Mr. Villasenor in the Academy. We are actively recruiting entry-level and lateral officers. And that recruitment is occurring as of right now. We actually have one of our applicants doing a ride along with us tonight to see how this whole thing is going to fit and work out for him. Our regular deployment is, the city is broken up into three beats. Beat 1 covers the West portion of the city. Beat 2 covers the East. Beat 3 covers the central portion of the city. We try to make sure that the beats are aligned to have a fairly even number of calls for service. We have a total of five patrol teams to provide the 24/7 patrol coverage. Each patrol team is minimally staffed with one sergeant and three officers. Due to these hiring efforts that we're going through right now, we desire to staff our patrol teams up to four officers. That will allow for better patrol coverage. It will allow for built-in coverage when an officer has to be on vacation, or training, or something of that nature. We would not have to pay overtime, in theory, to cover that officer's vacancy. We'd like to track our calls for service. A PRIORITY 1 call, that is an emergency. That's a crime that's in progress. A PRIORITY 2 call is an urgent call that could be a medical call or an alarm call. A PRIORITY 3 call makes up the bulk of what we respond to. And typically, those are cold calls for crimes that have occurred in the middle of the night, no suspect information, no activity of that nature. We did see a slight increase in our PRIORITY 1s and our PRIORITY 3s, while our PRIORITY 2s did decrease. Our total calls for service, I've been tracking since '21-- 2021, I'm sorry. We have seen a steady decrease over the past three years. In 2025, we did see a 6% increase in total calls for service. I think that can be attributed to. You can fall for only so long before you hit the bottom. And you're going to start to flatten out and even rise up from time to time. I do like to track our key statistics. Most of our key statistics we saw decreases. We did see increases in rapes and domestic violence incidents. Unfortunately, these were also increases over last year's increases. And I'll be talking about these in just a minute. We did see decreases in all the other key crime categories, except for residential burglaries, where we saw an increase in those. There is a reason for that. And those cases are under active investigation. I may be at a point where I can explain why we saw an increase of 50% in those cases in the near future. The bottom step of DUI that shows an increase, which is not a bad thing. It simply means that our officers caught more DUIs this year than they did the year prior. Our key statistics actually dropped by 9%. And I do want to spend some time on domestic violence to explain those increases. I mentioned this at the midyear update a few months ago. Domestic violence is largely a closed doors crime. It doesn't happen in public. And when it does happen behind closed doors, it often leaves the victims wondering if they can or if they should call. It's not only the victims that are traumatized, but also the children that live in those homes. And sooner or later, nobody wants to call the police. That is why it is a very underreported crime. And the more closed doors that you have in a community, the more often that this type of crime is going to impact that community. And we are a growing community. So I want to say, it's no surprise that we have this increase, but that's not an excuse. Our community needs to do a better job of educating themselves and finding resources to assist in these types of matters. To that end, we work closely with the Family Justice Center, Contra Costa County Victim Witness Assistance Program, the organization called STAND!, and Community Violence Solutions. All of our detectives use these four resources to help them in their cases and to work with victims. And I think maybe next week, I can make this available on social media, so that our victims have some outreach resources for themselves. Traffic enforcement last year, we set a high water mark for the Oakland Police Department. This year, we did see a 19% reduction. Due to factors I'll speak about in just a minute, I did remove one traffic officer from the unit and placed him somewhere else that does account for some of that reduction. Our collisions actually did not decrease. It stayed the same. They did decrease, but not to a wide margin. So pretty even on the number of total collisions that we had. Last year, we received 43 separate firearms during our criminal investigations. Those 43 seizures resulted in 42 arrests. That was an increase of 20%. I do believe that last year sets a high water mark for firearms recovered in our patrol efforts. Officer Hernandez led the seizures by himself. He seized 19 firearms. And he made 20 arrests associated with those firearms. He accounted for 44% of all firearms seized last year. Our total number of arrests did increase by 15%. We made 532 last year versus 462 in 2024. We saw a decrease of 40% of recovered stolen vehicles, which directly corresponds with the total number of vehicle thefts that we took last year, which was negative 41%. So those are tracking right in line with one another. So our Investigations Unit comprised of, at the time, Sergeant Morris, Detective Dombrowski, Detective Gill, and Detective Pestello. We did end up wrapping up a homicide investigation from 2023. That was our last open homicide investigation. Our detectives worked very hard on that. And they did get formal charges filed in that case. In the last quarter of 2025, we had our first shootings in the city since December of 2023. It was at that point that we decided that we needed more resources and investigations than we did traffic. So we took one traffic officer out of traffic, put him into investigations. We had shootings on Macadamia lane, Norcross Lane, and Trenton Street. We have made arrests in all three of those shootings. Response times is something I started tracking starting in 2024. I'm trying to account for why this is, but we actually saw a 5% increase in the response times. The only response time stat that I track is the amount of time it takes us to get to a PRIORITY 1 call after receiving that information from the dispatcher. So by the time we receive the call to the time we are at the scene, that's the time that I track. And as you can see, it was 4 minutes, 19 seconds in 2024. And on average, last year, it was 4 minutes and 31 seconds. It is my desire to see that down to four minutes. We had some nice achievements last year. We put an SRO down into the intermediate schools for the very first time. We identified officer Garrett Wayne as the SRO. And he is doing a great job. I get nothing but praise from school staff and families. Detective Brandon Gill was honored by the Community Violence Solutions Organization as their champion honoree. That means that they identified Detective Gill as the detective in the county that spent the most time and effort on bringing resolve to domestic violence victims. And as I mentioned before, we did graduate our first recruits from the Police Academy. Officer Julianna Calegari is doing great. Not only is she doing great in patrol, but here, she is doing a community event. This was the Girls Empowerment Camp, where she was a keynote speaker. When our guys are not doing traditional police work, they're actually getting into the classrooms as often as they can. They are doing more and more book readings. Last year, in November, we started our CCW program. We started our CCW program, because the Sheriff's Office had been running that program for years. And the Sheriff's Office decided that the local agencies would need to start carrying their own load. So we picked that up in November. We have contracted our services out to an organization called Prometrium. Prometrium is a web-based service, where an applicant can navigate their way through the system. And it's actually working out pretty well for us. We issued our first permit in January of this year. Right now, we have a total of 45 applicants. We are gaining about three a week. And we have issued about 10 permits so far since going live. It does take a while to navigate the process. So it is a manpower issue for us. I want to talk about pursuits. Pursuit, we are governed by California Vehicle Code 17004.7 and our own Policy 307. We do acknowledge that pursuits are inherently dangerous. Our pursuits are reviewed at several levels. The first reviewer is the officer himself. We want the officer to be well-trained and have the ability to know when it's good to not pursue, when it's good to call off that pursuit. The sergeants are also encouraged to do the same thing. After the pursuit is over, the Sergeant writes a review. That review goes to the Lieutenant. The Lieutenant does his review. That review then makes it to my desk, where I lay eyes on that pursuit. And that goes for every pursuit that we are engaged in. In '23, we had 52 pursuits. We started to decline in '24. And last year in '25, we did see an 8% reduction. So I realized that one month ago today, we had a major pursuit here in town, and a very unfortunate situation for sure. That was a situation that no police chief wants to be involved in as an absolute tragedy. I do want to acknowledge that we did suffer a fatality to an innocent person. Because of the grand nature of that pursuit, there are some things I canno