The City of Oakland is seeking to quickly move most of its parking division staff from the Department of Transportation to the Finance Department, despite concern from business leaders, road safety advocates and city employees.
In a report released last Friday, Bradley Johnson, the city’s new finance director, said the move would “better align the parking operations of the City with revenue and collections processes housed in the Department of Finance, and abandoned automobile abatement functions housed in the Oakland Police Department.”
“[It will] streamline and improve the citations collection process,” he said in the report. “Delays or inaccurate data in citations result in high rates of delinquency and decreased collectability revenue.” He also said the move would facilitate traffic ticket payment plans, improve customer service, and strengthen financial management.
Even though Mayor Barbara Lee has said the police department is understaffed — and an Oaklandside investigation exposed the department’s massive spending on overtime — Johnson recommended that abandoned vehicle removal be moved over to OPD.
According to Johnson, there will be a “minimal” increase in costs associated with the move.
Finance Department personnel are expected to take over most parking enforcement duties, including meter collection, abandoned auto tagging, and processing. According to a communication sent by city employee relations officials to OakDOT staff, which the Oaklandside has reviewed, OakDOT will continue to manage bus shelters and city-owned garages.
In December, OakDOT parking chief Michael Ford wrote a letter to Mayor Lee and members of the City Council arguing that the decision to move his department over to finance did not go through “proper review” and was not based on a thorough analysis of “the potential impacts of a reorg on such things as grants and vendor relationships.”
Ford also noted that his workers, under OakDOT supervision, had increased citations despite being understaffed.
The reshuffle follows several other parking reorganizations. For a long time, the Finance Department ran parking. But in 2013, when the Oakland Redevelopment Agency shuttered, the city divided up parking functions among its Public Works department, OPD, and the Revenue Management Bureau, a department inside Finance. A few years later, in 2016, the city created its first Department of Transportation, and parking functions were slowly consolidated under OakDOT in an effort to make city parking administration better and more efficient — and more integrated with road planning. Where parking spots and meters are located has far-reaching impacts on pedestrians, cyclists, and small business owners, and OakDOT can incorporate models of those impacts years in advance during the road-design planning process.
The Oaklandside has reached out to Jean Walsh, a communications officer for the city, to request comment from the finance and transportation departments and from the city administrator, but did not immediately receive a response.
The city’s Department of Finance released its proposed new organizational chart of parking tasks, which cuts out the Department of Transportation and hands duties to an overstretched Police Department. Source: City of Oakland
A city official with knowledge of the situation said that parking staff have been angered by the lack of a detailed explanation for the decision and the secrecy surrounding it.
The source said the transportation department had been on a roll, finally getting new hires they’ve wanted for years, including 20 new parking control technicians and 10 new staff in the vehicle enforcement unit charged with towing away abandoned autos.
A separate source said that an employee relations official told staff the effective date of the reorganization was Feb. 7. That date lands before a scheduled meeting of the City Council’s Public Works Committee, on Feb. 10, where the city is expected to explain its reasoning for the move to the public for the first time.
The city official with knowledge of the internal conversations told The Oaklandside that the city has pushed back the restructure for at least a week. The source said the takeover of abandoned vehicles by the OPD may be delayed even longer, because conversations with law enforcement have only recently begun and the change would likely involve the reclassification of job titles, which would require union negotiations.
Walsh has not yet responded to queries about whether the move has been pushed back to accommodate public comment on Feb. 10.
Kevin Dalley, who co-chairs the Bicyclist and Pedestrian Advisory Commission’s Policy and Legislative Committee, spoke up about the decision at a meeting of the council’s Finance Committee on Jan. 27, saying he was concerned about “the dismantling” of one of OakDOT’s core tasks.
“Removing parts of parking over to finance will affect the strategic plan, will no longer have the ability to fully control transportation decisions,” he said. “Finance does not have the expertise in parking that OakDOT has.”
In his remarks, Dalley said he has attempted to initiate public discussions of this change with Finance Department leaders, including at a Jan. 26 BPAC meeting, but that officials backed out at the last minute. In a separate conversation with The Oaklandside, Dalley said he heard the city administrator “placed a gag order on employees,” forbidding them from reporting on the decision at the BPAC meeting.
“The city refused to show up to this,” Dalley told the Finance Committee, sounding exasperated. “They refuse to reply. They refuse to provide information. This seems to be a violation of MTC 4108, which requires the city to provide administrative and technical support to BPAC, and if that’s not provided, the MTC” — Metropolitan Transportation Commission — “could pull funding from Oakland.”
George Spies, a volunteer from Traffic Violence Rapid Response, the road safety organization, said he wrote a letter to the City Council, which he shared with The Oaklandside, arguing that the city charter only allows the city council itself to make this type of structural change.
“Indeed, the structure of the Charter makes clear that Council has the preeminent power to organize the functions of government by ordinance, and that the City Administrator’s power here is strictly subsidiary,” Spies wrote.
He said that revenue should not be the primary objective of a city’s parking policies, arguing that “managing parking for the optimal operation of our many demands on our curbs and wider transportation systems” was more important.
“The reorganization moves Oakland in the wrong direction,” he wrote.
Other Oakland stakeholders are upset about the change.
The Oakland Business Improvement District Alliance, which represents 3,000 businesses citywide, sent a letter to Mayor Lee, the city administrator, the City Council, and the Financial Department on Jan. 23, criticizing the change. Some businesses owners have told The Oaklandside that they have seen improved parking decisions, such as those related to infrastructure development, since OakDOT took over parking functions from the OPD.
“This would have significant implications on the utilization of our curbs and streets as key transportation and mobility infrastructure, the development of policy to support safety, turnover, and successful business operations, the improvement of street design and public spaces, and in maintaining public trust,” the BID group wrote.
The business organization also expressed frustration at the rapid nature of the change, which was made without a public explanation.
“Oakland’s curbs and streets are public assets that serve the entire community — not solely revenue-generating instruments — we believe this decision must be evaluated through an open and transparent process,” the alliance wrote. “We respectfully but urgently request that the report be brought to a public forum to committee and council well in advance of the budget approval in June to allow stakeholders the opportunity to provide feedback.”
According to Luke Thiebalt, the communications officer for the union representing many of the impacted OakDOT’s staffers, IFPTE Local 21, some of their members will speak out against the move at next Tuesday’s Public Works Committee meeting. That meeting, open to all Oakland residents, is scheduled for Feb. 10, 11:30 a.m., at City Hall.
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