The working group\u2019s proposal would also strengthen the City Council, creating a new legislative analysis office. This office would help councilmembers research and propose policies without relying on work done by the city administration and mayor, who could be in conflict. The measure would also create a mechanism to review and increase officials\u2019 salaries, and give the council the ability to override the mayor\u2019s veto.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The at-large seat on the City Council would also be eliminated to make the mayor the sole citywide leader and to return the council to an odd-numbered body to avoid tie votes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need someone to lead decisively; that is what people were telling us over and over again,\u201d said League of Women Voters of Oakland<\/a> board member Gail Wallace, one of the facilitators of Lee\u2019s task force, at a city meeting Thursday. She said the proposal would create \u201ca balance of an executive and legislative branch within the government.\u201d<\/p>\n If not the strong mayor model, the mayor\u2019s working group offered a runner-up idea: a true \u201ccouncil-manager\u201d system, where the mayor would become a regular voting member of the City Council. The council would then hire a city manager to oversee daily operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n The group\u2019s overall point: pick one system or another, and get rid of the in-between.<\/p>\n Many people in Oakland think the city\u2019s current structure of government, where neither the mayor nor the City Council has ultimate authority, creates confusion, inefficiencies, and a lack of accountability.<\/p>\n Some councilmembers raise concerns about the \u2018strong mayor\u2019 model Councilmembers Kevin Jenkins and Janani Ramachandran set aside time at Thursday\u2019s meeting of the council\u2019s Rules and Legislation Committee<\/a> to discuss the working group\u2019s plan. No vote was held, and not all councilmembers were present.<\/p>\n Because it would change Oakland\u2019s city charter, voters would have the final say on the \u201cstrong mayor\u201d proposal. But first, the City Council has to vote to put it \u2014 or a different measure of their choosing \u2014 on the November ballot. Alternatively, a group of citizens could launch an initiative to place it there, but that\u2019s a costly and challenging process.<\/p>\n At-large Councilmember Rowena Brown would be most affected by the proposal, which suggests eliminating her job entirely, not in the middle of her term.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think that in our day and age, in this moment, we should be at all reducing overall representation,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIt is the whole reason why I ran for the at-large seat. It had to do with the glaring observation of how communities, both in East and West Oakland, have been underrepresented for decades.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n She challenged the working group\u2019s \u201ctalking points,\u201d saying she\u2019d never encountered any confusion between her role and the mayor\u2019s. Instead of eliminating a seat to get an odd number of representatives, she suggested, items with tie votes could simply fail.<\/p>\n Councilmember Ken Houston said he will ultimately defer to his constituents, but he personally doesn\u2019t like the strong mayor model.<\/p>\n Under the current structure, councilmembers can\u2019t direct city staff to do things, and the proposed reform would reinforce this prohibition. Houston said this has frustrated him.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m tired of going outside of my scope, of doing things I should be doing because we\u2019re not able to do it because I\u2019m a councilmember,\u201d Houston said Thursday. \u201cI\u2019m tired of going to remove a car myself. I\u2019m tired of relocating an encampment myself, and that the city administrator reports to the mayor but doesn\u2019t report to us a council.\u201d<\/p>\n Jenkins and Ramachandran, the other officials present at Thursday\u2019s meeting, did not indicate where they stand.<\/p>\n In his district newsletter in February, Councilmember Zac Unger wrote there\u2019s \u201creal merit\u201d in switching to a system that either strengthens the mayor\u2019s power or the council\u2019s power, rather than sticking with a messy hybrid model.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI lean towards a stronger city council,\u201d he wrote. \u201cShocking, huh? I\u2019m being a little glib, but it\u2019s hard not to think of the old maxim that \u2018where you stand depends on where you sit.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n If the city goes in the strong mayor direction, Unger said, there would need to be clearer checks on the mayor\u2019s power, like giving the council an independent legislative analysis staff and retaining an elected city attorney, rather than a lawyer hired by the mayor.<\/p>\n Another group is pushing a \u2018third option\u2019<\/p>\n Independent of Lee\u2019s task force, a group<\/a> led by former City Administrator Steve Falk has also been exploring charter reform and came to entirely different conclusions.\u00a0<\/p>\n They\u2019ve proposed a \u201cthird option,\u201d where the mayor would serve as the chair of the City Council but hold veto power. The council would hire a city manager, who\u2019d lead the administration.<\/p>\n Speaking to the committee on Thursday, Falk noted that the vast majority of California cities have council-manager structures and that it\u2019s not in vogue to vest more power with the mayor these days.<\/p>\n \u201cStudy after study after study has proven that professionally managed cities with a powerful city council are more transparent, more responsive, more effective and more efficient, and far less corrupt,\u201d Falk said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Around 20 public speakers told the committee they oppose a strong mayor system, with a number promoting the hybrid third option.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brown and Houston expressed interest in the third option, too.<\/p>\n Former Mayor Libby Schaaf came to support the working group\u2019s strong mayor proposal. The envisioned system is similar to what existed briefly under Mayor Jerry Brown, she noted.<\/p>\n \u201cYou might not remember Jerry Brown had veto power because he hardly ever used it,\u201d Schaaf said. \u201cThe council had a lot of power. In my experience, it is actually when the council and the mayor had the best collaboration, and the council office\u2019s constituent work, which was my passion when I worked in the council offices, actually got done. There was more responsiveness from the administration.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201coption three\u201d presented by Falk\u2019s group is just another \u201cfuzzy\u201d hybrid system, she said.<\/p>\n A poll commissioned by Lee\u2019s working group found broad support for its strong mayor proposal. The March poll<\/a> of 600 likely voters, conducted by David Binder Research, found that 58% to 63% of respondents supported the proposal, depending on what information they received about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThese numbers send a clear message: Oaklanders want accountability, and they want a city government that can actually get things done,\u201d said Lee in a press release about the findings.<\/p>\n Other recent surveys have found similar support. A new group called the East Bay Polling Institute<\/a> found that 64% of respondents supported a strong mayor system. Another poll by Oakland\u2019s Chamber of Commerce<\/a> found 61% in support of a strong mayor system.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, there are discrepancies among these polls on other topics. For example, the new poll commissioned by the working group found that 62% of likely voters ranked Lee\u2019s job performance high, whereas the East Bay Polling Institute found that 37% of voters rated her job performance positively.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ramachandran said the full City Council will soon get a chance to hear the working group\u2019s proposal and weigh in, along with more members of the public, but no date has been selected yet.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Falk said in a newsletter that his group is now working to find a councilmember to pitch the \u201cthird option\u201d to their colleagues.<\/p>\n “*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The City Council got its first chance on Thursday to review a plan that would bring about sweeping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2351,92072,19547,58652,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-240737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-barbara-lee","tag-charter-reform","tag-league-of-women-voters","tag-libby-schaaf","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"20260226_100yearCentennial_15\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260226_100yearCentennial_15.jpg\")
The proposal would eliminate the at-large seat on City Council. The current occupant, Rowena Brown, is not in favor. Credit: Estefany Gonzalez for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n