Oakland city officials continue struggle with budget shortfall as tensions rise
On Tuesday night, the Oakland City Council considered whether to reopen two fire stations closed in January for budget cuts.
Money was found within the workings of city government to reopen the stations, but those funds don't address the larger budget problem which is now starting to pit one group of city workers against another.
The numbers are daunting. The budget deficit reached $129 million in a city where the vast majority of money goes to paying workers, especially those who work in public safety jobs. After fire stations 25 and 28 went dark on January 6th, Councilmember Janani Ramachandran said the public reaction was immediate.
"When these brown-outs went into effect in January of this year, communities across Oakland were outraged," she said. "And we listened to that outrage."
Ramachandran and council members Rebecca Kaplan and Zac Unger began searching for money and found about $8 million in different places that could be put toward reopening the two fire stations, as well as a third in the Grand Lake area that was shuttered in 2022.
That is what the council was considering at Tuesday night's meeting. Ramachandran said another proposal by city staff to close four more stations has, for now, been scrapped.
"The Oakland community has been loud and clear," she said. "While there's a lot of competing interests for our limited dollars, nothing trumps public safety. And fire stations are the bread and butter of public safety.
But the money would only keep the stations open until June, when the new fiscal year begins. And the cuts that could be coming will likely be even deeper. In late January, the city announced layoffs for dozens of workers, including 26 from the Public Works Department and 19 employees who work with the police department, but are not sworn officers.
The various employee unions, including the firefighters, blame the city for mismanagement, but they also point to more than $50 million of overspending by the police department, much of it going to pay overtime to officers. Police union head Huy Nguyen argues that is only happening because the force has lost about 25% of its officers over the years, while the number of calls for help has grown.
"The issue of blaming us for the problem...the problem is city leadership needs to adequately staff the police department and also provide the number, the funding there should be, so we can provide service," said Nguyen. "Or make some really tough decisions to cut the service that we're providing. And I don't think anybody's willing to do that."
But does the city pursuing cuts to the fire department pit the two groups of public safety workers against each other?
"I mean, we look at the numbers and we look at the percentage of money that's spent, and you look at the fire department percentage, of how much they spent in overtime compared to how much we have spent, the overall number [for OPD] is bigger by numbers, but the percentage is greater in the fire department," said Nguyen.
Seth Olyer, the president of the firefighters' union IAFF Local 55, countered, saying their overtime is the result of more than 80,000 annual calls for service at a time when stations are being shut down.
"Oaklanders will die if they have to wait for emergency services. That is a fact. Houses will burn to the ground. That is not me being melodramatic. These are facts," said Olyer. "As far as pitting one group against one another, this is a zero-sum game. There's only so much money to go around. And yes, if it was up to me, I would keep every station fully staffed and open. That is my goal."
At this point, it's a problem with no solution in sight. All departments will likely take a hit when the budget ax finally falls. The employee unions accuse the city of mismanagement, but the sheer size of Oakland's fiscal hole comes from having more workers than it can afford, no matter how valuable they may be.
