Oakland OKs $35 million to repave streets
Oakland City Council voted Tuesday to begin spending the first $35 million of a $100 million project to repave city streets — a compromise reached after city leaders clashed over whether to include more city workers and delay completion by four years.
The resolution, authored by Councilman Dan Kalb, requires the city administrator’s office to report back to the council within 90 days about how much of the work can be done by city staff.
Prior to Kalb’s resolution, council President Rebecca Kaplan introduced her own resolution that would have set a goal of allocating 50% of the labor to city staff.
City Administrator Sabrina Landreth cautioned that setting a goal of 50% for in-house staff could result in the work being done in seven years rather than the three years that was proposed. Any additional delays for a program that’s already fallen behind schedule were opposed by Mayor Libby Schaaf, who sent an email on Monday to Oaklanders encouraging them to contact council members and “tell them we don’t want to waste another minute on inside politics — these roads can’t wait!!”
Schaaf ’s email also said that Councilwoman Nikki Fortunato Bas delayed approving the contracts to start the repavement plan. At the council meeting on May 7, Bas asked whether any of the repavement work could be done in-house. Her question resulted in a two-week delay on voting for the contracts.
“The action that I took two weeks ago was to clarify whether we were going to be continue to use our in-house paving crew to use this work,” Bas said Tuesday. “We have two inhouse paving crews. I thought it was important to clarify that.”
Moments before the council discussion, Kaplan’s staff was negotiating with city unions, which were present at the meeting. Peter Masiak, a field director with SEIU Local 1021, and Felipe Cuevas, the SEIU 1021 chapter president, were talking to Kaplan’s staff and reviewing the language of the resolution before it was introduced.
The final version of Kaplan’s resolution wasn’t printed until minutes before the item was up for discussion and caused tensions to mount among council members over how much of the work should be allocated to in-house staff.
“It’s not going to get 50/50 in this 3½-year period,” Kalb said. “Let’s be true and honest about it. That is misleading the public, it’s not fair.”
Masiak spoke at public comment and said it was “ridiculous” that the city can’t commit to an “ambitious goal” of trying to use 50% of city staff for the labor.
“I don’t like that this is being done on the back end,” Masiak said. “We were never included on the front end. We found out about this proposal the same way that the public found out about this proposal. What’s wrong with a goal unless you have no intention of hitting it?”
Councilwoman Sheng Thao and Bas supported Kaplan’s resolution and said the 50% was just a goal and not a requirement.
“It is just a goal, it’s not saying that this is what we are going to do,” Thao said.
Council Vice President Larry Reid criticized the council for not working together on the resolution.
“I hate that we can’t all be on the same page at the same time,” Reid said. “I really do. It’s getting really frustrating.”
Ryan Russo, the city’s director of transportation, said the split between in-house labor and outside contractors has not been determined yet. The city is using an “all-of-the-above” approach when it comes to getting the paving done to prevent any more delays, he said.
The transportation department is currently beefing up staffing for two in-house crews. In January 2018, the Council approved the budget for 20 new positions. Thirteen of those have been filled, including maintenance workers. The department is currently recruiting heavy equipment operators, Russo said.
Kaplan’s resolution was ultimately rejected. Kaplan, Thao and Bas voted in favor of it. Loren Taylor abstained and the remaining council members voted against the resolution.
Kalb’s resolution, which was passed unanimously, requires the city administrator’s office to give a report in 90 days about how much of the work can be allocated to city labor workers.
Moving forward, Russo said the department will work with city staff to determine how much work can be done inhouse and what the constraints are, and the department will give recommendations to the council.
The $100 million paving plan sets aside $25 million to maintain Oakland’s main thoroughfares while dividing the remaining $75 million among nine zones. Each council member — except Kaplan — will receive $1 million in discretionary funds to determine which streets should be paved. Kaplan will receive $500,000 in discretionary funds.