Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) board president Jennifer Brouhard wrote a July 5 opinion column that said the school board would not solve its budget gap by closing schools.1

“In December, the board gave clear direction: bring forward a budget proposal that did not include a state loan and did not include school closures. [Interim superintendent Denise] Saddler and her team did exactly what the board asked them to do.”

— OUSD board president Jennifer Brouhard, Jul. 5, 2026

A few weeks later, EdSource reported that 73 public schools closed statewide in 2026, and noted that OUSD tied for second-most schools closed, at five.2

Oakland Report checked records on school closures, plus 27 years of statewide enrollment data. We counted six school closures in Oakland — the sixth was a school operated by the Alameda County Office of Education.

Our key takeaway: OUSD’s district-run enrollment has fallen by more than a third since 2000-01, yet 49 of its 78 schools have fewer students than the largest charter school that closed this year.3

Meanwhile, charter enrollment grew twelvefold over the same span — yet it is the charter sector, not the district-run sector, that closed schools in 2026.

Key findings

• All six schools closed in Oakland were charter schools. The six schools enrolled 1,451 students combined. Five of the closures were approved by OUSD, and one by the county office of education.

• Their students were poorer than average: 88 percent of students in the closed schools qualified for free or reduced-price meals, compared to 80 percent across Oakland’s public schools, 73 percent at California schools that closed in 2026, and 62 percent statewide.4

• District-run enrollment has fallen around 36 percent since 2000-01. Its enrollment has declined far more than the number of school-age children in Oakland has.5

• Charter enrollment grew significantly over the same time span, from about 1 percent of Oakland’s public school students to 22 percent — though it has fallen in more recent years.

• Oakland averages 430 students per school, compared to 628 students per school in San Jose Unified and 773 in Fremont Unified.

• OUSD’s schools are only 60% full. The district’s recent Facilities Master Plan confirms that enrollment fills only around 60% of the planned-use capacity the district was built for — an efficiency gap we estimate costs Oakland schools $11 to $21 million per year.

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OUSD’s enrollment decline was concentrated in district-run schools – not charters

OUSD’s total enrollment decline has accelerated over the past ten years — roughly nine percent since 2015-16, a figure that includes charter schools the district approved.

But when examining district-run and charter schools separately, the two school types’ enrollment totals moved in opposite directions.

Oakland’s total public enrollment fell about 21 percent between 2000-01 and 2025-26, but that single number obscures the more detailed enrollment trends beneath it: district-run schools lost more than a third of their students while charters grew more than twelvefold.6

The six schools that closed

All six of the Oakland schools were closed after their governing agencies refused to renew their charters, mostly over test scores. For example, on the 2025 state tests, only around seven percent of students at Aspire Golden State College Prep met the math standard.7

In July, the State Board of Education let the closures stand, faulting OUSD’s methods but citing a 2019 charter school law.8

The education code says cost findings against a new charter “shall not be used to deny a renewal of an existing charter school.” But another section of the code says a district “shall not renew” a charter scoring in the two lowest levels on every state measure two years running, unless it puts in writing that the school is fixing the problem.9

In other words, for the weakest schools, refusing charter renewal is what the law expects. So the governing agencies (OUSD and ACOE) were following the law.

The students at the closed schools were poorer than average

Studies have shown that school closures tend to fall hardest on low-income schools with low test scores.10

Oakland’s six closed schools fit that pattern, but most of the gap compared to the state average is because the district’s schools are already 80 percent low-income. Even compared to that baseline, the closed schools were 8 points poorer than Oakland’s public schools overall.

Note: six schools is a small dataset, so these data suggest a direction, not an absolute trend.

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Every dollar spent carrying empty buildings is a dollar not spent on students

Alameda County Office of Education (ACOE) superintendent Alysse Castro has said OUSD runs more schools than its enrollment can pay for.11

The district’s own 2026 Facilities Master Plan confirms: enrollment fills only about 60 percent of the space OUSD was built for, and 71 percent of the space it now schedules, leaving some 23,000 empty seats.12

At the fill rate of similar districts, Oakland’s students would fill around 43 to 53 schools. According to public records, OUSD currently operates 78 schools.

According to OUSD’s facilities master plan, its excess square footage “forces the district to divert funds into utilities, custodial services, and administrative staffing for underutilized buildings rather than direct student services.”

The district’s own reports estimated potential savings of $3 million if it merged 10 schools into five in 2024.

Based on those district-produced numbers, Oakland Report estimates that continuing to operate 25 to 35 more schools than its enrollment supports costs the district somewhere between $11 million to $21 million per year.

The district’s budget plan counts on raising about $10 million a year from better attendance (the state gives school districts funding based on attendance). In Oakland, running a school footprint the size of its peers’ students-per-school footproints would be worth one to two times that. By the board’s own math, where a percentage point of attendance is worth $5.25 million, it would result in budget savings equivalent to raising attendance by two to four points.13

The district’s 2026-27 budget shows $841.0 million coming in against $874.3 million going out, and a $37.2 million drop in fund balance — down 62.9 percent, from $100.2 million the year before.14

To be clear, closing more schools would not fix all of OUSD’s budget woes. Even the high end of the estimated savings would not close the OUSD’s structural budget deficit without additional budget changes.

But the public record suggests that the cost of not closing underenrolled schools is and will continue to be substantial.

As board president Brouhard herself stated, the board directed its staff not to consider school closures or mergers. As a result, the budget savings plans staff presented to the board in November found less than $22 million of the $100 million needed to close the gap. In February, the board cut 421 jobs while keeping schools open.15

Then in June, the board adopted a 2026-27 budget projecting an $8 million surplus — but only if it finds $30 million in cuts — this year and again the year after — but it still has not identified exactly what those cuts will be.16

Other considerations and caveats

• The board has valid reasons for caution. Closing schools is one of the most difficult, controversial, and emotionally charged steps a district can take.

• The six charter school closures in 2026 were real, potentially devastating losses for the 1,028 affected students and their families.

• The state attorney general warned in 2024 that OUSD’s 2022 closure plan would have fallen hardest on Black students, low-income students and students with disabilities.17

• The district has also made progress in some areas: for example, its attendance rose to 91.8 percent.

• The enrollment data does not flag charters separately in long-past years, so the 2000-01 split between charters and district-run schools is a range.

• The school counts exclude adult education, preschool and child development centers; counting them raises Oakland’s total number of schools to 86.

• The $11 million–$21 million savings figure is our estimate, built from the district’s past savings estimates rather than by direct study of the district’s individual buildings and enrollment patterns.

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Conclusion

Neither the data nor this analysis pass judgment on the value of charter schools versus district-run schools. Each type of school — public, charter, private, homeschool — has its benefits and drawbacks for parents to consider. Such an examination is beyond the scope of this report.

It is understandable, to a degree, that public school districts tend to be hostile to charters, as they draw resources away from district-run schools.

It also is reasonable to consider the possibility that when a public school district is underperforming, the added competition from charter and private schools is even less likely to be welcomed by the district nor by supporters of district-run public schools.

The above considerations raise another question: When district-run schools perform to high standards that compare well to both charter and private school options, does that result in stronger enrollment at district-run schools? Oakland Report may examine the data behind that question in a future analysis.

What this analysis does show: Six schools closed in Oakland this year, and all were charters. But for the district’s own schools, leaving closures off the table was a specific direction by its board, even as it implemented substantial cuts elsewhere and faces yet more cuts to be determined — and OUSD continues to operate far more schools per student than other large districts.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“Charlene Price” is an Oakland resident who has extensive interactions with OUSD. The author’s name has been changed to protect their privacy and prevent personal and professional retaliation. Oakland Report has verified the identity of the writer and the accuracy of the facts in this report.

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Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. If you value our work, please donate. We are a citizen-led nonprofit organization based in beautiful Oakland, California. Your contribution in any amount helps us continue to produce articles like this one.

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Editors’ note: This article was originally posted by Oakland resident Rajni Mandal on her Substack page. Oakland Report is republishing it with Mandal’s permission for our readers to consider. Subscribe to Rajni Mandal’s Public Safety Updates to receive her articles directly.

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Making reform permanent

Within weeks of taking office in 2025, mayor Barbara Lee told the federal court that she intended to end Oakland’s federal police oversight “under my watch.”1

In November 2025, she announced the creation of a new position within her administration: the constitutional policing administrator.23

The position was designed to serve as an “internal and embedded monitor and guidance role to improve accountability” within the Oakland Police Department (OPD).4

The position sits within city administration under the direct supervision of the city administrator, works closely with OPD leadership, and advises the mayor.

The city has begun a national search for a permanent constitutional policing administrator, a role that assistant city administrator Michelle Phillips has filled on an interim basis since last November. The city council approved the creation and funding of the permanent position earlier this year.5

Phillips has described her close working relationship with OPD leadership to the federal court.6 She has worked with OPD on streamlining intake and investigative processes for Internal Affairs. She has also worked with OPD, the mayor and city administration on staffing and recruitment, as well as interdepartmental public safety strategies for events such as First Fridays.7

Phillips explained this close coordination to the court as:

“… Continued communication, folks going from office to office, really engaged in talking about police reform efforts in a way that is ingrained in the fabric of the department, and not just a concept.”

— Michelle Phillips, Jan. 27, 2026

Although at first glance this may appear to be yet another layer of police oversight, the position instead appears designed to provide administrative guidance and coordination within city government after federal oversight ends.

A role separate from civilian oversight

The new position has also drawn the attention of the police commission, which is part of Oakland’s civilian oversight system for the police department.8

Created by voters in 2016 and expanded to include the Office of Inspector General in 2020, this system provides independent oversight of certain OPD policies, audits, and investigations of police misconduct; functions that can also relate to constitutional policing.

Civilian oversight provides an independent pathway of accountability, separate from the mayor and city administration’s responsibility for the management and operation of OPD.

Oakland’s civilian oversight structure is unusual in the degree of independence and authority granted to it by the city charter. Police commissioners are appointed volunteers, yet the commission has significant powers that include the authority to terminate the police chief for cause.

At the most recent police commission meeting, commissioner Angela Jackson-Castain proposed that the commission issue a formal statement regarding the constitutional policing administrator position.9

“I think this is undermining the role of the police commission, IG [Office of Inspector General] and CPRA [Community Police Review Agency],” Jackson-Castain said, describing the role as “a redundancy”:

“But when it’s to the point where our goals are being undermined, our charter mandate is being undermined, we’re being defunded actively, and the city administrator’s office has managerial influence on the work that we do in providing constitutional policing oversight — then I do believe it is our duty to stand up for not only the commission but for all the offices that fall under us.”

— Angela Jackson-Castain, Aug. 13, 2026

Commission chair Ricardo Garcia-Acosta disagreed. He described the benefit of “having a point person” who could “be the connective tissue between all the different city departments.” He cited efforts such as transferring misconduct investigations from Internal Affairs to CPRA, establishing a mediation program, and tracking deadlines for misconduct investigations.

The city’s recruitment announcement explicitly distinguishes the two functions: “While internal accountability and civilian oversight share many core priorities, their roles do not and cannot replace each other.”10

The police commission exercises independent oversight through the specific authorities granted to it by the city charter, but it does not direct or administer OPD’s operations.

The constitutional policing administrator serves a different function, working directly with OPD leadership, the city administrator and mayor to coordinate and implement reforms from within city government.

A position endorsed by the court

While some members of the police commission have questioned the role, Judge William Orrick, the federal judge overseeing the Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA), has emphasized its importance, stating:

“I would like to think that we’re on the threshold of the institutionalization of constitutional policing in Oakland for the first time since I’ve been involved in this case. And I suspect for the first time ever, the city has prioritized constitutional policing in word, deed and resources.”

— Judge William Orrick, Jan. 27, 2026

Orrick described the constitutional policing administrator role as “pivotal for the long-term success of constitutional policing in Oakland.” He also described the City’s approach as “probably the first recognition that the city and OPD succeed together and they fail by pointing fingers at each other.”

The federal monitor’s March report also recognized the mayor’s personal commitment and involvement in efforts to achieve compliance.11

Then, in May 2026, the monitor and court concluded that the city was in full compliance with the NSA for the first time.12

What’s next

The next case management conference is scheduled for September 29.13 The court ordered the city to provide a compliance update on all 51 tasks of the NSA, as well as a reflection on the lessons learned from the case, including “failures as well as successes.”

The September hearing could mark the next step in Oakland’s transition away from federal oversight. After more than two decades of oversight by the federal court and monitor, responsibility for maintaining these reforms would finally rest with the city.

The constitutional policing administrator is a key part of that plan, creating an internal structure to coordinate reform and maintain accountability after federal oversight ends.

As the mayor has emphasized, the city’s work does not end with NSA compliance:

“Constitutional policing is no longer an aspiration. It is a standard…compliance is a milestone, not a finish line.”

— Mayor Barbara Lee, May 27, 2026

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Video: Driving by the Laney College tower on Mar. 5, 2026. (Video: Oakland Report. Song excerpt: “Laney” by Healing Potpourri.)

Oakland Report examines the data behind the decision-making that affects Oaklanders’ lives. Today we look at the Peralta Community College District’s plan to downsize and relocate Laney College’s art gallery — and at the two pop-up galleries students opened to preserve spaces for student art.

The college stepped back — and students stepped up

Every Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m., the doors of the Werkshack Gallery at 481 25th Street give way to a bustling crowd, packed shoulder to shoulder, laughing, conversing, expressing themselves amongst the artworks that adorn the walls.12

From vividly colored paintings, to intricate sculptures, to lively woodworks and ceramics, students from across the Peralta Community College District gather to display their work as people from all over Oakland come together to experience it.

Raha Banoo, Kiki Reitano, and Finn Jordan, and a group of Laney College students who organized this exhibit, did so in reaction to the decommissioning of the June Steingart Art Gallery — also known as the Laney Gallery — which closed in May after nearly three decades.3

Mourning the loss of another art space in the Bay Area — and what they described as an administration that remained passive in the aftermath of such a decision — they founded their club, The Society of Artists and Makers, with the goal of continuing to display student creations.

Almost immediately, their cause gained traction: alongside a second exhibition at Golden Outside Cafe at 543 Athol Avenue, they received hundreds of submissions from student artists, the organizers said, and an enthusiastic, diverse reception at both venues.

The Werkshack show, which runs through Aug. 29, displays artwork by 23 students enrolled at Berkeley City College, College of Alameda, Laney College and Merritt College.

Key findings:

• The Peralta district’s relocation plan cuts the gallery from 922 assignable square feet to 200 — a 78% reduction. That is the deepest proportional cut of the 18 users in the campus’ landmark administration tower — and the gallery is the only space being moved off the Laney campus.4

• The gallery’s dedicated exhibition storage — 290 square feet — is eliminated entirely. Exhibition space itself falls from 632 square feet to 200, in an atrium the plan says will be set up “TBD based on exhibition.”

• The plan lists one benefit and one drawback for the move. Under “Pros” it records “Display of student art at District.” Under “Cons,” it reads in full: “Not on-campus.”

• Six of the tower’s 18 users gain space in the plan. The overall reduction across the building is 27%, from 26,476 assignable square feet to 19,383 — and the gallery’s 78% cut is the steepest on a percentage basis.

• The district’s facilities problem is real and documented. An independent consultant told the Peralta board in April that 38 of the district’s buildings (40%) are rated “deficient,” and that Laney has more of them than any other campus.

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The Society of Artists and Makers is not merely a story about individual artistic passion that has blossomed far beyond expectation.

Theirs also is a story of an energetic community’s initiative, anchored in a pursuit to continue to keep the arts alive and creators uplifted, while the district’s own plan assigns their gallery the smallest remaining footprint.

A history behind Laney Gallery, and why it is being shut down

Founded in 1998, Laney Gallery was named after June Steigart, one of the first female instructors of the college’s art department, who taught from 1966 until her death in 1991 and was described by the college as “the soul of the Laney Art Department.”5

Since then, it has been a center for professional development, artistic expression, and student culture on the Laney campus, with a wide range of exhibitions in various mediums: traditional painting, printmaking, woodworking, mixed media, and more. Some notable recent displays include their Spring 2025 Clay Paper Wood show,6 the Stoked wood-fired ceramics exhibition,7 and an Annual Juried Student Show.8

The gallery’s final exhibition, Here & Now, was on display from March 23 to May 14, displaying art from students across the Peralta district’s four community colleges. Artists, faculty, and community members gathered both in celebration of Laney Gallery’s almost 30-year existence, and in grief at its pending closure. The show was curated by gallery director Susanna Stromberg with support from student artists — among them Banoo and Jordan.9

The June Steingart Gallery’s retirement, however, wasn’t an event done in isolation. It was a part of a larger decommission of the Laney College Tower, which hosts not only the gallery space, but student services, administrative offices, and the campus’ counseling and wellness centers.10

The landmark Laney College tower is set to be decommissioned

The decision to shut down the tower was made by the Laney College interim leadership, including interim president Becky Opsata and the Peralta Community College District administration.

District administrators have cited the building’s unreliable facilities — specifically its elevators — its recurring need for servicing, and overall difficulty in maintenance as primary reasons for the tower’s closure.11

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At a March 11 presentation to faculty and classified staff, deputy chancellor and chief operating officer Greg Nelson described the tower as a financial “albatross” and said that during his tenure the district had “put probably $5 million into that building and it hasn’t helped it at all.”

The most recent relocation plan, dated April 16, 2026, continues this narrative, stating that “the building’s structural, mechanical, and building systems are original and have reached the end of their functional life cycle.”

The plan, which covers a nine-story building constructed in 1971 whose occupants use roughly 28,483 square feet, details the proposed changes of location for each service within the tower — most of them elsewhere on Laney’s campus.

The gallery takes the deepest cut of any use in the building

Oakland Report examined the plan’s four relocation summary tables and recomputed each user’s change in assignable square feet.

Across all 18 users, the tower’s occupied space falls 27%, from 26,476 assignable square feet to 19,383. But the reduction is not evenly distributed.

Six users — business and administrative services, counseling, mental health, social sciences faculty, part-time faculty, and career technical education staff — gain space. Twelve users lose space.

The June Steingart Gallery loses the most, proportionally, of any of them.

The gallery currently occupies 922 assignable square feet on the tower’s ground floor, split between 632 square feet of exhibition space and 290 square feet of dedicated exhibition storage.

The plan reduces exhibition space to 200 square feet and eliminates the storage entirely.

The gallery also is the only occupant leaving campus. The plan relocates the gallery to the atrium of the Peralta District Service Center at 333 E. 8th Street, several blocks away, with setup “TBD based on exhibition needs.”

Under the heading “Pros,” the plan lists a single line: “Display of student art at District.” Under “Cons,” also a single line: “Not on-campus.”

The move was scheduled for completion by the end of summer 2026. A separate phasing page directs that “Art Gallery supplies packed, labeled and moved to storage” at the end of May. The off-campus destination has been in the plan since at least its March 4 draft.

When asked about this relocation, Banoo, Reitano, and Jordan stated that they were given no formal updates on the Laney Gallery other than its decommissioning, which left the summer an empty node of artistic exhibition— and, to them, left the gallery’s future unknown. This, they said, was a common sentiment among staff members and students alike.

The plan itself was not secret. A draft was presented to the Laney Facilities Planning Committee on February 2. Opsata circulated a feedback form afterward, and successive versions have been posted publicly on the college’s website.

The feedback form, however, was open only to faculty and staff.

It is reasonable to consider the possibility that a document published as a facilities schedule, and consulted primarily through governance committees, would not reach the students whose exhibition space it reassigns.

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“The palpable feeling of love”: a want for humanity and connection

The driving force of The Society of Artists and Makers’ project was a sentiment of Oaklanders building something for themselves, by themselves, free from the constraints of bureaucratic limitations and reductions. The closure of the Laney Gallery came as a devastating shock to many, but the students felt that remaining passive was not an option.

Banoo, Reitano, and Jordan all said that they, along with many other students and faculty members, could no longer wait for updates that they didn’t know would come. The uncertainty only deepened their own commitment — and as they would later learn — the campus community’s commitment to band together and independently forge an artistic space of their own.

Above all else, Banoo, Reitano, and Jordan all commented on the “palpable feeling of love” that emanated from their pop-up galleries — not only from their friends and family, but also people from the other Peralta district colleges and the greater Bay Area who care about the arts. Banoo said that many visitors who only planned to stop by briefly to see the pieces lingered for hours, basking in the conversational and animated atmosphere.

The student organizers expressed that beyond appreciating the student artworks, the greatest outcome of their club was being able to feel the genuine human connection, both interpersonally between people who visited the galleries and even more so, between the people and the art.

Banoo emphasized that in a tumultuous era for creativity — including the evolving world of AI in the technological hub of the Bay Area — handmade artwork conveys lived experience that builds the groundwork for authenticity and real kinship: all things that a machine cannot do. To them, it was clear that this is what the community needed by how they showed up and stayed. Reitano described it as a statement on today’s isolating times where “we are craving nothing more than being around real people and something actually tangible.”

Other considerations and counterpoints

• The Peralta district’s plan is a proposal and a schedule, not a completed action; square footages describe assignable space, and a 200-square-foot allocation in a shared atrium is not directly comparable to a 632-square-foot dedicated room in either direction — an atrium may accommodate a larger reception than the floor plan suggests, or a smaller one.

• The plan’s four section totals sum to 26,476 assignable square feet, about 2,000 short of the 28,483 square feet the same document says tower users occupy; that gap is unexplained in the text and likely reflects a difference between assignable and gross measurement.

• The percentage cut is a measure of space, not of programming: nothing in the plan states how many exhibitions the gallery will mount at the district office.

• The district’s facilities problem is documented and expensive. An independent consultant told the Peralta board on April 28 that 38 buildings districtwide (40%) are classified “deficient” under Division of the State Architect assessments — the “strongest candidates” for renovation or replacement — and that Laney has 13 of them, more than any other campus.

• Chancellor Tammeil Gilkerson noted that the term “deficient” is a decision-making tool rather than a safety finding, and the consultant agreed the buildings currently are safe to use.

• The consultant also reported that Peralta’s building footprint exceeds what its enrollment and its shift toward online instruction require, and cautioned that “the District cannot approach every building as though long-term reinvestment is equally viable.”12

• Not everyone in the art department describes the move as a loss. Beth Maher, Laney’s dean of liberal arts, told The Citizen (the district’s student newspaper) that the district office is in some ways more public — “there’ll be eyes on it at every board meeting, every event” — and that it offers better air conditioning, more open hours, and room to “spill out and have 100 people for a reception if we wanted to.”

• Art department chair Mary Catherine Bassett, who said “it’s sort of like the rug’s being pulled a little,” told The Citizen the gallery’s name will not change: “It would be a disservice to the lineage, the heritage, the history and the community to rename it anything other [than after June Steingart].” Bassett also said she hopes the department can host exhibitions elsewhere on the Laney campus, including in the theater building now under construction.

A silver lining

The Werkshack exhibition runs through Aug. 29, with a closing reception that Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m.; the Golden Outside exhibition runs on the cafe’s morning hours through the same date.

Though The Society of Artists and Makers currently has no upcoming events planned after that date, they insist that this is only the beginning. With or without help from administrative officials, they say they will continue to pave the way for consistently recognizing student art, forging genuine connections, and uplifting Peralta and the greater Oakland community.

Even though the past few months have been a stressful roller coaster of ups and downs, Banoo, Reitano, and Jordan said they are proud of what they have accomplished.

“Initally, it was just wanting to keep having a place to showcase our art. But now, this has become the brightest silver lining possible of the gallery closing.”

— Raha Banoo, co-founder, Society of Artists and Makers

The district’s plan and the students’ response to it are answers to the same question, asked at different scales: what will happen to the June Steingart Gallery after the Laney administration tower is decommissioned?

Peralta’s answer, written into a facilities schedule, is that 922 square feet of dedicated gallery on a campus of 13 deficient buildings is a cost it can no longer carry, and that 200 square feet in a district atrium will have to do.

The students’ answer, worked out over a summer in a shared workspace on 25th Street and in a cafe on Athol Avenue, is that the space was never the point — but that someone has to keep providing one.

Do you have something to say about this topic? We want to hear from you!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Phoebe Vo is an incoming second year student at University of California, Berkeley, where she works as a reporter for the Daily Californian university newspaper. She has more than five years of experience in journalism. Her goal is to continue her career covering issues important to the Bay Area. Phoebe is a participant in Oakland Report’s inaugural summer internship program.

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Oakland Report examines the data behind the headlines. In this installment, we take a look at new national FBI data to again test Mayor Barbara Lee’s claim that crime in Oakland is down on her watch — and her inference that she deserves the credit.

Oaklanders have long suffered under one of the highest crime rates in the nation, even as crime has gone down overall in recent years — and trended downward nationwide.

Announcing the permanent appointment of police chief James Beere on July 29, mayor Barbara Lee celebrated the hire as an important continuation of the city’s crime reduction strategy — while seeming eager to frame Oaklanders’ concerns about crime as being as much about people’s feelings of safety as they are about the reality of crime on Oakland’s streets.1

“I am proud to appoint Chief James P. Beere to lead the Oakland Police Department. His appointment marks an important step as we continue building a safer Oakland where every resident feels secure and every neighborhood has the opportunity to thrive.”

— Mayor Barbara Lee, July 29, 2026

Yesterday the FBI published Crime in the United States, 2025, with new agency-level data that allow direct comparison between American cities.2

At the national level, the data was the best in decades: violent crime fell an estimated 9% nationwide, the largest single-year drop since the FBI began estimating in 1936, and property crime fell 12%.

Oakland’s own decline was steeper still. The city’s property crime rate fell 27% in a single year and 41% from its 2023 peak.

But even these laudable declines were not enough to dislodge Oakland from its standing as one of America’s most crime-impacted cities.

• Oaklanders continue to experience the highest property crime rate in America — and the highest violent crime rate in California.

To help our readers understand the larger picture of Oakland’s crime trends, Oakland Report updated our August 2 analysis with the FBI’s new national city-level crime data to again assess where Oakland stands among other cities on the stated crime declines — not over two good years, but over the past 16 years.

Using Department of Justice (DOJ) crime data for 2025, we compared Oakland with other cities — and against statewide and national averages, from 2010 through 2025.

We also again examined clearance rates, the share of reported crimes police report solving.

Oakland Report is a citizen-led nonprofit organization. We present the evidence for our readers to decide what to think about it. Subscribe for free to get every analysis in your inbox.

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Key findings

• Oakland still has the highest property crime rate of any large city in America. In the FBI’s latest national city data (2025), Oakland again ranked first among all reporting cities over 100,000 residents.

• Oakland also has the nation’s highest motor vehicle theft rate. Oakland’s rate was 1,448 per 100,000 residents in 2025 — 22% higher than second-place Kansas City and more than three times the national average of 459 per 100,000.

• Oakland still has the highest violent crime rate of any California city. Oakland’s rate remains highest at every population threshold we tested: highest among the 369 reporting cities above 10,000 residents, and highest among the 76 cities above 100,000. Its violent crime rate is 44% above Stockton’s, the next-largest city in the top tier.

• Three crime categories rose in Oakland between 2010 and 2025. Larceny-theft rose 70%, aggravated assault rose 37%, and motor vehicle theft rose 26%. Over the same period, California’s larceny rate fell 26% and its vehicle theft rate fell 23%.

• Some crime categories have fallen sharply in Oakland. Burglary is down 57%, robbery 46% and homicide 44% since 2010 — in each case a steeper decline than the state’s.

• Oakland reported clearing only one of the 6,431 vehicle thefts recorded in 2025. Oakland’s crime clearance rate (the share of reported crimes solved) was 0.02% — and its larceny-theft clearance rate was 0.1%. However, its homicide clearance rate (62%) was around average for large cities. The categories Oakland clears least are the categories that grew most.

• Six crime categories rose in 2025 — the year Barbara Lee took office. Rape, attempted rape, arson, assaults with a knife, thefts from buildings, and bicycle thefts all increased from 2024 to 2025.

Oakland still has the highest property crime rate in America

When we published our previous analysis on August 2, the most recent national city-level comparison was the FBI’s 2024 crime data, and we noted that whether Oakland kept the top ranking would depend on how far other high-rate cities fell when the FBI released its 2025 data.3

The newly released 2025 crime data answers it. Oakland’s property crime rate of 5,225 per 100,000 remains the highest in the nation among cities with more than 250,000 residents — and also remains the highest of all U.S. cities with populations above 100,000.

Oakland’s #1 ranking appears to have held because the cities with high crime rates, but still lower than Oakland’s, fell at a similar pace, not because Oakland stopped improving.

The FBI cautions against city rankings, and four large cities — Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville and New Orleans — did not report 2025 data.

Notably, New York and Atlanta, both of which did not report in 2024, did report in 2025 — with property crime rates of 2,273 and 3,100 per 100,000 residents, respectively. Neither approaches Oakland’s rate.

Oakland also has the nation’s highest vehicle theft rate

The crime category in which Oakland’s highest standing is most extreme is motor vehicle theft.

Oakland reported over 6,400 stolen vehicles in 2025 — a rate of 1,448 per 100,000 residents, according to the FBI’s population figure.

That is the highest of any large American city — 22% above second-place Kansas City and 3.2 times the average for cities over 250,000.

Vehicle theft in Oakland also rose over the long run. Oakland’s rate increased 26% since 2010, while California’s fell 23%.

Oakland now reports vehicle theft at about seven times the national rate and 4.6 times California’s rate.

Oakland still has the highest violent crime rate in California

Oakland’s violent crime rate of 1,475 per 100,000 residents is still the highest in California among cities with populations over 10,000 residents.

The California cities closest behind Oakland are far smaller. Barstow (population 24,800) reported 1,332 violent crimes per 100,000 residents and Commerce (11,800) reported 1,274 per 100,000.

Among cities of comparable size the spread is far greater: Stockton (population 326,000), reported 1,027 violent crimes per 100,000 residents — 44% below Oakland — and San Bernardino (population 225,400) reported 892 violent crimes per 100,000 residents.

The crime categories that rose are the categories Oakland isn’t clearing

A crime is “cleared” when police make an arrest and refer charges, or when an identified suspect cannot be charged for reasons outside police control.

Reading Oakland’s clearance rates alongside its crime trends produces a pattern that is difficult to ignore.

Oakland cleared 62% of its homicides in 2025 — below California’s 79% but close to the 69% average for U.S. cities over 250,000.

But in other categories, Oakland’s crime clearance rate lagged far behind other cities.

• Aggravated assaults in Oakland were cleared at a rate of 10%, compared to 52% statewide.

• Robbery clearances were at 8%, compared to 34% statewide.

• Burglary clearances were 0.3%.

• Larceny-theft clearances were 0.1% — 15 clearances against roughly 14,500 reported crimes.

• In motor vehicle theft, Oakland reported only one clearance against around 6,400 reported thefts — a rate of 0.02%.

The three crime categories that rose in Oakland over 16 years are larceny-theft, aggravated assault and motor vehicle theft. Those are also, along with burglary, the categories Oakland reports clearing least.

The categories that fell — homicide, robbery, burglary — include the two categories Oakland clears at rates closest to the average for large cities.

It is reasonable to consider the possibility that these facts are related. Crime deterrence research generally finds that the probability of being caught matters more to offending than the severity of punishment — and a category cleared at 0.02% offers close to no probability at all.

It also stands to reason that a department facing over 23,000 reported property offenses with only around 546 active-duty officers — well below the 700 officers Oakland voters approved new taxes in 2024 to fund4 — may clear so few of these crimes because the crime volume is so high and the police department’s capacity is so low.

Note: These data cannot separate the two, and we do not claim they can.

One should not take the near-zero clearance figures entirely at face value

As we noted in our August 2 analysis, clearance numbers this close to zero may reflect breakdowns in how clearances are recorded and transmitted as much as investigative outcomes.

Two features of the 2025 data reinforce that possibility. Oakland’s reported robbery clearance rate increased from 0.5% in 2024 to 8.4% in 2025 — a seventeenfold change in one year, which seems more consistent with a reporting change than with a change in investigative practice.

A single clearance in a category with over 6,400 offenses (motor vehicle theft) is a figure that invites further scrutiny into Oakland’s reporting capacity and practices.

Notably, the city’s information technology department told the council’s public safety committee in July 2024 that Oakland’s police records system was vulnerable to outages and relied on an outdated method of transmitting crime statistics to federal authorities; the committee voted to replace it.5

What the clearance data support without qualification is the comparison at the top of the scale. Oakland’s homicide clearance rate is within range of its peers, but every other crime clearance category is far below both the state and the large-city average, and the gap is widest where Oakland’s crime counts have grown.

Six crime categories rose in 2025 — the year Barbara Lee took office

The recently released 2025 data shows that 35 of the 43 crime categories and subcategories significantly fell in Oakland between 2024 and 2025 — a welcome change, even as Oakland continued to have the highest violent crime rate in California for the 16^th straight year.

Robbery with a firearm fell 50%, forcible-entry burglary fell 48%, street robbery fell 46%, and auto theft fell 35%.

But over the same period, six crime categories went up.

• Rape in Oakland increased 9.5% in 2025. (Rape includes three subcategories measured at different levels — rape, and its two components, forcible rape and attempted rape.)

• Arson rose 14.9%.

• Assaults committed with a knife rose 41.2%, even as assaults with a firearm fell.

• Thefts from buildings increased 35.7%.

• Bicycle thefts rose 8.3%.

• Attempted rape increased 40%

• Forcible rape rose 7.8%.

• Convenience-store robbery also increased but only slightly, from 116 to 118.

Barbara Lee was sworn in as mayor on May 20, 2025, and led the city for roughly seven and a half months of the year — a little over 60% of it.

Marking one year in office on May 20, 2026, mayor Barbara Lee told local television station KTVU that “crime rates are coming down in all categories.”6

Because a partial year invites unfair comparison in either direction, we compared crime data from the months of June through December in 2024 and 2025 — a timeframe when Lee held office in 2025 and her predecessors held office in 2024.

On that aligned comparison, the direction holds and in some cases sharpens: rape rose 13.7% , arson 19.4%, and knife assaults 8.0% in June-December 2025.

Two of the smaller increases reversed — thefts from buildings fell 3.7% and bicycle thefts were flat — indicating that those two were driven by the January-to-May period, before Lee took office.

However, over the same June-to-December window when Lee was in office, citywide violent crime fell 20.1% and property crime fell 22.1%.

We report the alignment because the timing is a fair question for readers to ask, not because these data can answer it. Nothing in this dataset establishes that a mayor’s tenure caused any of these movements, in either direction. As noted before, crime is declining overall nationwide.

Reported rape counts are influenced by victim reporting rates, advocacy, and investigative practice as much as by incidence. Arson counts turn partly on how fire investigators classify causes. The three smallest categories here involve raw count changes of 14 to 19 crimes, well within the range of ordinary year-to-year variation.

It seems unlikely that seven months of any administration could produce a measurable change in the underlying rate of these crimes at all. The same caution applies to the far larger declines Lee has cited in public statements.

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Other considerations and counterpoints

A fair reading includes the following.

• Oakland’s recent improvement is real, large, and faster than the nation’s — even as Oaklanders continue to suffer some of the highest crime rates in America. Its 27% single-year drop in property crime and a 22% drop in violent crime outpace the national declines of 12% and 9%.

• Oakland’s violent crime rank improved from second to third highest among large American cities, and its 55 reported homicides in 2025 were its fewest on record.

• Citywide rates also mask enormous neighborhood variation; a citywide average understates conditions in East and West Oakland flatland neighborhoods and overstates them in the hills.

• Oakland polices a dense freeway-and-port geography with concentrated poverty that most comparison cities do not share, and it attempts to do so with roughly three-quarters of its budgeted sworn force actually active.

• A ranking among reporting cities is not a ranking among all cities. Four large jurisdictions were absent from the 2025 federal data: Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville and New Orleans.

• None of that changes the math. In the most recent year for which national comparison is possible, after the steepest two-year improvement in its recent record, Oakland reported more property crime per resident than any other large city in the United States, and the highest violent crime rate in California for the 16^th straight year.

• This analysis uses the same methodology and has the same caveats as our August 2 article, updated with the new 2025 crime data the FBI released yesterday.

Read this related article:

Is Oakland succeeding against crime? It depends on how you look at the data.

As noted above, mayor Lee told KTVU on May 20 that “crime rates are coming down in all categories.”

Video montage 1: Oakland mayor Barbara Lee claims that “crime rates are coming down in all categories” in a television interview on May 20, 2026. (Video sources: Instagram @mayorbarbaralee; KTVU. Montage by Oakland Report.)

The overall decline in crime to which the mayor referred is real — but it also is part of a nationwide trend. Oakland’s violent crime fell 22% in 2025 and its homicides fell 32%.

However, crime went up in some categories, and the mayor’s comments also did not address how Oakland’s crime rate compares to everywhere else.

In addition to having the highest property crime rate in the nation and the highest violent crime rate in the state, Oakland now reports the highest vehicle theft rate of any large city in the United States: 1,448 per 100,000 residents, 22% above second-place Kansas City and more than three times the average for cities over 250,000.

The mayor’s statements are technically accurate as stated, but they describe a city in which crime has fallen in several categories while eliding the fact that crime is declining nationwide — and the data which show that Oakland still has among the highest crime rates in the country.

Oakland’s property crime rate fell 26% in 2025, roughly double the state and national declines — yet Oakland still has the highest property crime rate in America.

Oakland’s violent crime rate fell 22% in 2025 — yet Oakland still has the highest violent crime rate in California.

Oakland’s 55 homicides reported by the FBI in 2025 were its fewest on record in decades — yet its homicide rate remains nearly four times the state average.

Over the longer term, the picture is even less favorable. Larceny-theft is up 70% since 2010, aggravated assault up 37%, and vehicle theft up 26%, while California’s rates fell in two of those three categories over the same period.

Reported thefts from vehicles in Oakland are up 343% since 2010. In 2025, Oaklanders reported over 17,000 crimes against vehicles — one for every 25 residents.

In addition, Oaklanders continued to experience a reported 90% chance that a violent crime would go unsolved.

The recent declines in many crime categories are heartening, and we hope they continue to decline.

Whether these new data from the FBI support the broader claim that “crime is down” in Oakland is for the reader to decide.

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PART ONE OF A SERIES

Oakland Report examines the data behind the headlines. In this series, we will examine the “Cancel Piedmont” campaign — and its mirror image: what Oakland would look like if it was broken into seven smaller cities, one for each council district.

A thought experiment — not a political proposal

I hella love Oakland. The Town is a unique and intoxicating city, filled with nearly a half-million extraordinary people, and gifted with a wealth of culture, entrepreneurship and verve. There is no other city quite like it.

Oakland is my home of many years — my forever home, after growing up in nearby Hayward — and I doubt that I will ever willingly leave it.

I don’t have strong feelings about Piedmont one way or the other. I rarely go there, except to pass through it on my way from one Oakland destination to another, and to occasionally stop by a hardware store I like.

Although Piedmont is a nice place in many ways, I personally would not choose to live there, even if I had the means to do so — which I don’t. This is not to throw shade at Piedmont. It’s just that Piedmont’s vibe is not my vibe. To each their own.

[Editors’ note: Some readers may wonder whether Oakland Report receives financial support from Piedmonters — who are referred to in some circles by the mostly inaccurate pejorative, “Piedmont billionaires.” The short answer is: hardly at all. The vast majority of our donors reside in Oakland — over 85%, to be precise. Only 2.4% of our donors live in Piedmont, and Piedmonters have contributed only 1.5% of total donations received by this publication since its founding in late 2023.]

I personally would not want Oakland to be broken up into smaller cities.

I worked for local governments in San Mateo County, where there are many small cities and towns packed together, for nearly a decade. Some of those cities and towns are wealthier per capita than Piedmont, and some of them have less wealth and fewer resources per capita than Oakland.

From that experience, I came to the personal and professional conclusion that having many separate small cities and towns on the Peninsula (not to mention a multitude of overlapping school and special districts) is nowhere near as efficient as fewer, larger cities would be. But if you were to ask the people who live there, most of them almost certainly would say that they don’t want their cities and towns “cancelled” or annexed into other cities.

As for me, I love Oakland’s geography and scale as it stands now — warts and all. I neither want it broken up nor expanded further.

However, recent articles in the media about the “Cancel Piedmont” campaign led Oakland Report to look closer at the data behind the slogan.12

Oakland is a populous and geographically large city by most measures. In many ways, it’s more like several different cities mashed together than one cohesive place. This led us to the question:

• Rather than annexing Piedmont, what if Oakland were broken up into several smaller, but still fairly large cities — say, seven distinct cities, one for each of its council districts?

This series will look at the main points the Cancel Piedmont proponents raised in recent media coverage: racial demographics, housing, and historic segregation.

It also will look at other nuts-and-bolts aspects of local governance if Oakland were to annex Piedmont, and if Oakland itself were broken up into smaller cities — such as council representation, tax revenues, economic opportunity, crime, infrastructure, and service delivery.

This first installment in the series summarizes our initial findings on some of these aspects.

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Key findings

• Piedmont is a demographic outlier — but Oakland’s council districts differ from each other almost as much. For example, Piedmont is roughly 67% White and 4% Hispanic. By comparison, Oakland’s District 1 (Rockridge / North Oakland) is around 51% White and 13% Hispanic; while District 7 (Deep East Oakland) is around 8% White and 57% Hispanic.

• Piedmont has about 21 times more elected representation per resident than Oakland. Piedmonters have one elected city council member for roughly every 2,200 residents. Oaklanders have one elected official (there are eight city council members plus an elected mayor) for around every 48,800 residents. From the perspective of increasing representation, breaking up Oakland into seven separate cities would result in a sevenfold increase in representative power per resident.

• Both cities exceeded their last round of topline state housing goals. Oakland permitted 128% of its 14,765-unit housing goal — though it fell short in every affordable category. Piedmont permitted 160% of its housing goal — but its goal was a mere 60 units, and nearly everything it built was a backyard accessory dwelling unit (ADU).

• The wealth divides result, in part, from historic segregation in both cities. Piedmont’s 1907 incorporation to avoid annexation by Oakland, the 1924 expulsion of the Dearing family from Piedmont, racially discriminatory deed covenants in Oakland hills neighborhoods like Rockridge, and the 1937 federal redlining maps in Oakland largely trace today’s lines of wealth and racial disparity.

• Annexing Piedmont would barely move the needle on most measures. Because Piedmont is such a small city in comparison to Oakland, annexing it would shift Oakland’s demographics by less than one percentage point, add a mere 2.2% to its housing stock, increase its tax revenue by only 2.8%, and leave its state housing goal progress essentially unchanged.

Piedmont is a demographic outlier — but Oakland’s council districts differ from each other almost as much

Oakland’s districts demographically differ from each other nearly as much as Piedmont differs from Oakland.

According to the most recent available Census survey data, Piedmont is 67% non-Hispanic White, 20% Asian, 4% Hispanic, and 1% Black.

By comparison, Oakland overall has no majority group: 29% Hispanic, 28% non-Hispanic White, 20% Black, and 16% Asian.3

But individual districts’ demographics diverge significantly from one another.

• District 1 (North Oakland) is 50.6% non-Hispanic White — the closest thing Oakland has to a Piedmont.

• District 4 (the hills, Montclair, and the Laurel) is 47.2% White and just 9.1% Black — the smallest Black share of any district in the city.

• District 7 (Deep East Oakland) is 8.2% White and majority Hispanic at 56.6%.

• Districts 3 (West Oakland) and 6 (East Oakland) are the most heavily Black (31.2% and 29.5%).

• District 2 (Lake Merritt) is the most Asian (32.3%).

Annexation would barely move the demographic needle. Piedmont holds only 2.4% of the combined population of both cities. Adding it would shift Oakland’s citywide shares by less than one percentage point in every category.

Council representation per resident is more powerful in smaller cities

Annexing Piedmont into Oakland without significantly expanding the number of seats on Oakland’s current council would barely move the representation needle.

Oakland’s roughly 439,000 residents elect eight council members plus a mayor. That is one elected official for around every 48,800 residents.

Piedmont’s roughly 11,000 residents elect five council members — one for around every 2,200 residents.

Put another way, a Piedmont resident has about 21 times more representation on their city council than an Oakland resident has on theirs.

If Oakland was broken up into seven separate cities corresponding to the current council districts, and each new city had eight council members plus a mayor, Oakland’s representation ratio would be about one official per 7,000 residents.

In other words, breaking up Oakland into seven smaller cities would result in seven times as much representation per resident, though still three times thinner than Piedmont’s.

Housing: both cities exceeded their topline state goal — but with vastly different scales and means

California assigns every city housing goals, called the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA). In the 2015–2023 cycle, both cities exceeded their topline goals.456

Oakland permitted 128% of its 14,765-unit goal — though it fell short in every affordable category.

Piedmont permitted 160% of its goal. But its goal was just 60 units, and nearly everything it built was a backyard accessory dwelling unit (ADU).

The current cycle’s goals (2023–2031) will prove harder for both cities.

Per the city’s 2025 Housing Element progress report, Oakland has permitted 13.8% of its 26,251-unit goal — on par with San José and Fremont, but well behind pace.

Oakland would need about 4,528 permits a year for five years to catch up. Its 2025 permits equaled just 0.4% of its existing stock, though 84% were affordable, and city staff anticipated more than 1,000 affordable permits in the first half of 2026.78

Piedmont has permitted 9.5% of its 587-unit goal — all but three units of it ADUs or SB 9 units.910

Once more, annexation would barely move the needle: Piedmont would add 2.2% to Oakland’s housing stock, and the combined city’s progress toward its RHNA topline goal would remain virtually unchanged — from 13.8% to 13.7%.

Over 60% of Oakland’s land, including much of downtown, is classified “lower resource” — and that is where the zoned housing capacity sits. The high-resource hills carry little capacity as currently zoned, and about 70% of the highest-resource areas sit inside the Fire Hazard Severity Zone.

It is reasonable to consider the possibility that a hills district-city (for example if District 1 — Rockridge and North Oakland — were its own city), would build almost nothing, relatively speaking — while downtown district-cities (such as Oakland Districts 3 and 4) would carry the bulk of the region’s growth.

One notable contrast: Oakland largely eliminated single-family zoning in October 2023. Piedmont’s zoning remains roughly 95% single-family.

A history of segregation — in both cities

Piedmont incorporated as a city in 1907. Historic records indicate that the goal was to avoid rapid annexation by Oakland, which was gobbling up numerous nearby towns at the time.11

In 1924, Sidney Dearing — believed to be Piedmont’s first Black homeowner — bought a home in Piedmont. Within months, a mob of more than 500 people surrounded the home and terrorized its residents. The city then moved to condemn the property for a road it never built.

A 1924 Oakland Tribune account reportedly quoted Piedmont’s mayor saying the condemnation was “for the improvement of the city as well as to make the negro move from Piedmont.” A lawsuit filed by Dearing’s great-granddaughter this February is now testing that record in court.12

Around the same time, much of Oakland’s hill districts followed a similar path of restrictive deed covenants that prevented non-White people from buying homes.

For example, a circa-1906 advertisement for new homes in what is today’s Rockridge district promised: “No negroes, no Chinese, no Japanese can build or lease in Rock Ridge Park.”1314

In 1937, the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation gave the covenant-protected hills of Oakland an “A” grade (the infamous “redlining” map). One area was rated highly in part because it was “restricted by deed to Caucasian ownership.” The same maps redlined the flatlands for the “infiltration of Negroes and Orientals.”15

In Oakland, the impacts of those color-coded maps persist in today’s districts with striking continuity. The A-graded hills are today’s Districts 1 and 4. The redlined flatlands are primarily in Districts 3, 5, 6, and 7.

The data suggest that Oakland’s current vastly different district demographics are not a natural sorting, but rather, like Piedmont, are partly due to historic, legally enforced segregation.

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Other considerations and counterpoints

Piedmont’s defenders make fair points, which we present for readers to consider.

• The city is hardly unique among wealthy Bay Area suburbs like Hillsborough, Los Altos Hills, or Atherton — yet it is the only such city to be subject to a “cancel” campaign.

• Piedmont has formally apologized for its history and commissioned the Dearing memorial.

• It has met its topline state housing goals and adopted the controversial 132-home Moraga Canyon housing plan to meet its goals in the next round.

• Annexation would require Piedmont voters’ approval — a highly unlikely outcome — which makes the “Cancel Piedmont” campaign purely symbolic, by its own creator’s admission.

A look ahead

Future installments in this series may examine other aspects of the “Cancel Piedmont or break up Oakland?” thought experiment, including: incomes, home values, crime, economic opportunity, infrastructure, service delivery, and tax revenues.

(Here’s a preview of the tax revenues data: Piedmont collects $2,690 per resident, compared to Oakland’s $2,440 per resident. Annexation would add an estimated 2.8% to Oakland’s overall tax revenue — not accounting for the increased expenses that adding approximately 11,000 new residents would bring.)

The interesting question the data raises may not be whether Piedmont should exist, but what it reveals about both cities: The same forces that created a city surrounded by Oakland in 1907 also helped to create Oakland’s district map.

“Canceling” Piedmont through annexation into Oakland would barely move the needle on Oakland’s demographics, tax base, or housing capacity.

Conversely, breaking up Oakland potentially could multiply its residents’ representation power sevenfold — but only through the virtually impossible change of turning its district lines into municipal borders.

These data tell a story. The reader can decide for themselves what to think about it.

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Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. We present the facts and let the reader decide. Your donation toward our nonprofit work helps us continue to produce accurate, well-researched, deep-dive articles like this one.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sean S. Reinhart is a former library director, now retired after 26 years in local government. He served as library and community services director for the cities of Hayward and Menlo Park for a combined 16 years, where he helped build Hayward’s new main library and Menlo Park’s new multi-service community center. His post-retirement endeavors include serving as the managing editor of Oakland Report.

Sean and his family have lived in Oakland for 15 years. He grew up in nearby Hayward. Sean enjoys exploring California’s world-renowned coastline, valleys, deserts and mountains. His creative pursuits include writing, printmaking, carpentry, music and visual arts. He enjoys meeting new people, reading, hiking, gardening, and spending time with his family.

Editors’ note: This article was posted by Oakland resident M. Ballard on his Substack page. Oakland Report is republishing it with Ballard’s permission, with section headers and illustrations added, for our readers to consider.

BY M. BALLARD

What happened to city services after Measure E failed

Oakland voters rejected Measure E, and that much is settled. Certified Alameda County results show the parcel tax failed in the June 2, 2026 election, 54.07 percent against and 45.93 percent in favor.

The measure would have raised roughly $34 million a year for nine years, spread across 911 response, fire protection, police services, violence prevention, homelessness response, and illegal dumping cleanup.

What happened after the vote is harder to pin down, and it matters more.

What survived: Oakland’s budget held core services without Measure E

The easy read is that Oakland lost the money and therefore cut the services. The city’s own records tell a stranger story.

Oakland adopted its FY 2026-27 midcycle budget on June 12 and balanced it with no Measure E revenue assumed.

Baseline police, fire, dispatch, and violence-prevention operations survived. Twenty-five operational fire engine companies stayed in service.

Homelessness outreach, dumping cleanup, environmental enforcement, street sweeping, recreation centers, libraries, and housing staff all remained funded at some level.

For a resident who needs an ambulance, a shelter bed, a cleared lot, an open branch library, or a staffed rec center, that floor is worth something.

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Where the Oakland budget falls short: specialized policing, fire fleet replacement, and shelter beds

A funded floor is not a functioning city, though, and the records make the gap plain.

City staff flagged real limits on specialized and proactive policing: sideshow enforcement, Ceasefire investigations, targeted enforcement, human trafficking, burglary, vice, and commercial-corridor work.

Fire operations held at baseline, but staff warned that fleet replacement has no dedicated ongoing funding behind it.

Homelessness programs faced a $5 million state Continuum of Care gap, with roughly 190 shelter or housing beds at risk across six programs.

One-time money, fund balances, and waived voter mandates

Council patched where it could. Amendments restored money for two fire engines, illegal-dumping equipment, and emergency shelter.

Measure Q fund balance covered park bathrooms, tree and vegetation work, trash and litter and dumping, and more shelter restoration. Useful moves, all of them, and also a map of where the pressure sits.

What the city assembled reads less like a stable system than a set of scarce dollars shuffled from one weak point to the next.

That gap is what the “cuts versus no cuts” argument hides. Oakland avoided an outright collapse, but the fix it chose is fragile by design: one-time revenues, fund balances, and waivers from spending rules that voters themselves approved.

In a separate budget resolution, staff asked the council to declare a severe fiscal necessity, to budget below the 700-officer threshold tied to Measure NN, to suspend park-maintenance obligations under Measure Q, to pause Democracy Dollars set-asides under Measure W, to set aside advisory limits on sugar-sweetened beverage tax spending, and to redirect Affordable Housing Trust Fund revenue.

Fully honoring the relevant maintenance-of-effort and minimum-funding requirements, staff estimated, would have cost about $33.9 million in FY 2026-27.

Waiving that many voter commitments at once amounts to a public admission that Oakland’s promises now outrun what it can pay.

Why Oakland voters rejected the Measure E parcel tax

Voters had their reasons for the no vote. Property owners in Oakland already carry a heavy load. Residents have sat through budget emergencies before, watched officials pledge stability, then watched the next crisis arrive on schedule.

KQED reported that Mayor Barbara Lee, after the election, said the city could not carry out the Measure E spending plan, while describing the budget as built on reliable revenue, free of layoffs, and committed to core services.

Council President Kevin Jenkins read the result as a demand to deliver efficient service with what the city already has.

Both points hold up. No city can keep asking for more money without showing it manages what it has. But a rejected tax does not retire the underlying need.

The fire fleet keeps aging. Homelessness contracts are expiring, and outside funding stays uncertain. Illegal dumping still greets residents on their own blocks, less an accounting line than a daily signal that public order is slipping. And the police-staffing floor written into a voter measure remains, one the city now says it cannot meet without declaring an emergency.

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The service-by-service accounting Oakland residents deserve

“Services preserved” and “services cut” both flatten this. Residents deserve the version told service by service: what is funded, what is delayed, what is held together with one-time money, what is suspended by waiver, and what is already failing on the ground.

Take fire. The useful number is not whether 25 engine companies exist on a roster, but whether the yard holds enough working engines, ladder trucks, and ambulances.

For homelessness, residents should learn which of those 190 exposed beds were still open after July 31, which closed, and which got a temporary reprieve.

Dumping calls for published complaint volume, cleanup times, crew capacity, and the equipment that sits broken.

Policing calls for funded positions set against filled positions, and both set against what can actually be deployed once vacancies, academies, leave, and special assignments are subtracted from the authorized sworn count.

None of this means punishing city leaders for avoiding layoffs or holding basic services steady. Those were the right calls. It does mean refusing to let a patched budget be sold as a solved one.

A fiscal problem and a political problem on the same ledger

Measure E exposed a fiscal problem and a political one in the same stroke.

Oakland’s service demands outrun its reliable revenue, and, just as damaging, a majority of voters would not hand the city another parcel tax even when the money was pinned to services those same residents routinely say they want.

Neither problem cancels the other, and both now land on the same ledger.

The city’s next move cannot be to repackage the old ask and hope the mood has shifted. It has to show residents the arithmetic in plain terms: the real cost of one fire engine and one shelter bed, how much a crew can clear in a week, what a 700-officer requirement means once vacancies and academies and leave and special assignments are counted honestly, and which voter-approved promises are being waived right now to make the budget close.

Slogans will not cover it. Oakland needs a public balance sheet that ties dollars to outcomes.

The vote went one way and the budget went the other, and the crisis outlasted both. What remains to be seen is whether City Hall will level with residents before the next emergency takes the choice out of their hands.

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The views expressed in our Commentaries do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of Oakland Report or its contributing writers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

M. Ballard is a political writer whose work examines power, accountability, and the distance between public promises and real-world consequences.

His essays often begin with a local question and widen from there, connecting municipal politics to debates about democracy, economic power, racial inequality, public institutions, corporate influence, and emerging technology.

Rather than treating politics as a contest of personalities or party loyalty, Ballard is interested in who holds power, who benefits from it, who bears the cost, and whether the institutions involved are doing what they claim to do.

He is particularly drawn to subjects where political rhetoric obscures practical consequences, whether the issue is public spending, voting rights, corporate power, artificial intelligence, or civic responsibility. At the center of his work is a persistent belief that democracy requires more than participation. It requires scrutiny, historical memory, and a willingness to hold leaders and institutions accountable.

Born in New Zealand to expatriate parents, raised in Walnut Creek, California, and an Oakland resident since 1998, Ballard writes with a perspective shaped by both the Bay Area’s political culture and the lived realities of a city where policy decisions are rarely abstract.

M. Ballard

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References and further reading

Election result and Measure E terms

Alameda County Registrar of Voters, June 2, 2026 Direct Primary Election official results https://alamedacountyca.gov/rovresults/259/

City of Oakland parcel tax measure (Measure E) ballot text, Alameda County voter information guide https://acvote.alamedacountyca.gov/acvote-assets/02_election_information/PDFs/20260602/cityofoaklandparceltaxmeasure.pdf

Oakland primary election results: Measures E, C, and D (Oaklandside) https://oaklandside.org/2026/06/02/primary-election-results-oakland-ballot-measures/

Oakland voters will decide June parcel tax measure to fund police, fire and city services (Local News Matters) https://localnewsmatters.org/2026/03/05/oakland-voters-will-decide-june-parcel-tax-measure-to-fund-police-fire-and-city-services/

2026 election results for Oakland Measure E (KQED) https://www.kqed.org/elections/results/alameda/measure-e

Midcycle budget adoption, police reductions, and preserved services

City of Oakland, Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Midcycle Budget (official budget page and documents) https://www.oaklandca.gov/Government/Finance-Budget/Budget/Fiscal-Year-2026-2027-Midcycle-Budget

Oakland budget reduces police overtime after Measure E fails (East Bay Express) https://eastbayexpress.com/oakland-budget-reduces-police-overtime-after-measure-e-fails/

Oakland City Council approves mid-cycle budget after tense meeting (Local News Matters) https://localnewsmatters.org/2026/06/15/oakland-mid-cycle-budget-approved/

At vague preview of Oakland budget, officials pledge no layoffs or service cuts (Oaklandside) https://oaklandside.org/2026/05/14/barbara-lee-budget-proposal-oakland-measure-e/

Council amendments and one-time funding

Oakland City Council approves mid-cycle amendments to $4 billion budget without layoffs (ABC7) https://abc7news.com/post/oakland-city-council-approves-mid-cycle-amendments-4-billion-budget-layoffs-measure-failure/19292791/

Oakland council members propose one-time amendments to fund failed Measure E goals (Piedmont Exedra) https://piedmontexedra.com/2026/06/oakland-council-members-propose-one-time-amendments-to-fund-failed-measure-e-goals

Homelessness funding and statements from Mayor Lee and Council President Jenkins

Oakland’s Measure E tax is failing, threatening a push to boost ailing city services (KQED) https://www.kqed.org/news/12086350/oaklands-measure-e-tax-in-trouble-threatening-a-push-to-boost-ailing-city-services

Voter-approved spending rules and fiscal-necessity waivers

City of Oakland Budget Advisory Commission, FY 2026-27 agenda packet (compliance with Measure NN, Measure Q, Democracy Dollars, and other voter mandates) https://www.oaklandca.gov/files/assets/city/v/1/public-meetings/budget-advisory-commission/2026/bac-2026-27-05-agenda-packet_2.pdf

Oakland June ballot measures E and C explained, including the Measure NN 700-officer requirement and fiscal-necessity clause (Local News Matters) https://localnewsmatters.org/2026/05/01/oakland-june-ballot-measures-e-c-tax/

Oakland’s unanticipated financial emergency set to enter its fourth year (Oakland Report). https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/oaklands-unanticipated-financial-fourth-year

Oakland Report continues its coverage of the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) board as it works to close a long-term budget gap and avoid state receivership. Here we examine how much OUSD spends per student and how its students score in English and Math proficiency compared to other school districts.

OUSD compared to other school districts

Oakland Report compared Oakland Unified School District’s (OUSD’s) spending and test scores with its Bay Area neighbors and with large, high-need districts elsewhere in California.

Oakland Unified School District spent $28,286 per student in average daily attendance (ADA) in the 2024–25 school year — 31% above the statewide average for unified districts and the 41^st-highest figure among California's 345 unified districts.1

Among the 62 unified districts serving more than 15,000 students in ADA, only Los Angeles Unified and Newport-Mesa Unified spent more.2

Key findings

• OUSD is a high-spending district by any comparison. Its $28,286 per ADA exceeds the statewide unified average of $21,578 by $6,708 per student, and exceeds Fremont Unified's $16,597 by more than $11,000.

• The district that spends nearly as much as Oakland scores near the top of the state. Berkeley Unified, the second-highest per-pupil spender in this comparison, posted 72% proficiency in English and 66% in math.

• OUSD’s largest student groups lag by roughly 12 to 17 percentage points. Oakland’s Black students met the English standard at 21%, compared to 33% for Black students statewide; Oakland’s Hispanic students at 22%, compared to 39% statewide.

• Oakland’s overall test scores are below the state average, but not below comparable large, high-need districts. In 2024–25, only 34% of OUSD students met or exceeded the state standard in English language arts and only 27% did so in mathematics, against statewide figures of 49% and 37%. However, among the large, high-need districts we examined, Oakland ranks second in Math and mid-pack in English.

• The 2024–25 fiscal gap is not purely a governance issue. The final federal pandemic-relief dollars had to be obligated by Sept. 30, 2024, with liquidation running into January 2025 — squarely within the fiscal year under examination. Deficit spending was widespread among school districts that year.

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OUSD spent the most per student of any nearby district

Oakland Unified spent the most per student among nearby Bay Area school districts including Alameda, Berkeley, Fremont, Hayward, Piedmont, and Richmond (West Contra Costa Unified).3

OUSD sat at the top of the local spending scale — and well above the state average — with expenditures of $28,286 per student in average daily attendance (ADA).

Berkeley, Oakland’s smaller neighbor, wasn’t far behind proportionally, spending $26,397 per student.

Hayward spent $23,754 per student; San Leandro spent $21,588 per student; and Richmond (West Contra Costa Unified) spent $22,102 per student.

Alameda ($18,559) and Fremont ($15,656) spent considerably less per student.

Oakland isn’t an underfunded district on a per-pupil basis, nor does its funding relative to its neighbors explain its disparity in its students’ academic proficiency.

Oakland Report has previously reported that Oakland Unified spends more per student than it takes in and is at risk of again losing local control of its budget to the state.45

Among comparable large, high-need districts, Oakland’s academic results are mid-pack — not last

Oakland’s proficiency rates are far below the state average: 34% in English compared to 49% statewide, and 27% in Math compared to 37% statewide.67

But the comparable large, high need districts that spend far less than Oakland do not, as a group, outperform it.

Fontana Unified, Moreno Valley Unified, and Stockton Unified — large, high-need districts reasonably comparable to Oakland — posted Math proficiency of 26%, 19%, and 19% respectively. Santa Ana Unified posted 22%.891011

Each of these districts scored below Oakland in mathematics. These districts serve large, often under-resourced student populations, and appear to manage their finances more efficiently than several wealthier Bay Area peers — but budgeting has not produced better test results.

The same pattern holds closer to home. West Contra Costa Unified (33% English, 26% Math) and Hayward Unified (33% and 20%) sit essentially level with Oakland or below it, on smaller budgets.1213

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Berkeley spends nearly as much as Oakland — and scores near the top of the state

Berkeley Unified is the second-highest per-student spender in this comparison. Yet, data shows 72% of Berkeley Unified students met the English standard and 66% met the Math standard — far outperforming Oakland Unified.14

That places Berkeley within striking distance of Piedmont, San Ramon Valley and Fremont, the highest-proficiency districts in the analysis.

Berkeley and Oakland serve markedly different student populations, and the funding formula that produced their similar per-student spending is itself need-based: California’s Local Control Funding Formula pays districts supplemental and concentration grants for low-income students, English learners, and foster youth.

Districts with the highest concentrations of student need receive the most money per student and face the steepest academic headwinds. A raw comparison of dollars against scores runs those two effects together and doesn’t necessarily constitute a finding about management.

Oakland’s largest student groups lag their statewide counterparts

Statewide in 2024–25, 33% of Black students and 39% of Hispanic students met or exceeded the English standard, and 20% and 26% met the math standard, respectively.15

In Oakland, the same groups posted only 21% and 22% in English, and only 14% and 15% in math, respectively.

This aspect of Oakland Unified underperformance does not dissolve when demographics are accounted for.

Within Oakland, family income tracks outcomes more closely than any district-level comparison.

The largest single divide in economic advantage is not between Oakland and any other district. It is inside Oakland.

Economically disadvantaged OUSD students met the English standard at 24% and the Math standard at 17%; their non-disadvantaged classmates, at 75% and 67%, respectively.

Both groups attend the same district, under the same board, the same budget, and the same central administration — and yet, there exists a fifty-point gap in performance between two groups of students inside the same district.

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Methodology

• Oakland Report compared 2024–25 per-student expenditure figures for thirteen California unified school districts against those districts’ 2024–25 California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) Smarter Balanced results, reported as the percentage of students who met or exceeded standard in English language arts and mathematics.

• The neighboring set represents a sample of districts near Oakland. The statewide set (Fontana, Moreno Valley, Sacramento City, Santa Ana, Stockton) represents districts with comparable enrollment scale and student demographics.

• Fiscal figures are expressed per student in average daily attendance (ADA), the basis on which California funds districts — not per enrolled student. The two differ, and in a district with high chronic absenteeism the per-ADA figure runs higher than the per-enrollment figure.

• Test results are reported at the district level; readers should note that district-authorized charter schools report separately from district-run schools, and the fiscal and academic figures may not cover a precisely identical set of students.

Correlation is not causation

Pairing two numbers is not the same as establishing a relationship between them. This analysis pairs district-level fiscal data with district-level test results. Where the comparison holds, we say so; where it collapses under scrutiny, we say that too.

Thirteen districts is a small, but representative sample. The two variables move together only loosely, and the direction of any relationship is not established by a table. A district can spend more because its students need more.

Per-student dollars are not comparable across regions without adjustment. Roughly four-fifths of a district’s budget is compensation, and Bay Area salary costs run well above Central Valley and Inland Empire costs. In short, Oakland’s and Fontana’s spending do not buy the same quantity of teaching. This analysis makes no cost-of-living adjustment, and the raw gap therefore may overstate real differences in resources.

Declining enrollment inflates per-student spending unless a district implements cost reductions. Oakland Unified enrollment fell 12% between 2018–19 and 2024–25. Fixed costs — buildings, utilities, central administration — spread across fewer students raise the per-student figure.

This is a spending measure, not a budget-balance measure. The California Department of Education’s Current Expense of Education data show what a district spent, not whether it spent more than it collected. Oakland Report has separately reported that OUSD spends more per student than it takes in and has been operating under state fiscal scrutiny; the district held a negative budget certification for 2024–25.16 Those findings rest on the district's own budget filings, not on the figures charted here.

One year of test scores is a snapshot. Proficiency rates rose statewide in 2024–25 — 1.8 percentage points in each subject — and rose in Oakland too. A longitudinal analysis is beyond the scope of this article, and would likely reveal more than a single-year snapshot.

2024–25 was an unusual fiscal year. The final tranche of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds had to be obligated by Sept. 30, 2024.17 Widespread deficit spending in that year reflects a one-time federal cliff as much as any district’s decisions, and a single year is not a basis for a comprehensive judgment about management.

Read this related article:

Other considerations and counterpoints

Presented largely without rebuttal, for readers to consider:

• High-need districts genuinely cost more to run. Special education, newcomer and English-learner programs, mental health staffing, and nutrition services are real costs that a low-need district does not carry. A district serving them will spend more per student, understandably.

• Oakland’s scores are improving. English proficiency rose 0.57 points and Math 1.35 points over the prior year. The gains are small, but they are gains.

• Deficit spending can be deliberate. Drawing down a reserve to avoid mid-year cuts to classrooms potentially is a defensible choice, not automatically a failure — and one that a single-year revenue-versus-expenditure table cannot distinguish from a failure.

• Test scores are a narrow measure. CAASPP proficiency captures two subjects at seven grade levels. Graduation rates, chronic absenteeism, college and career readiness — factors which are beyond the scope of this analysis — also are part of what a district produces.

• The district’s own account. OUSD leadership has attributed enrollment decline to falling birth rates, families leaving Oakland, and competition from charter, private, and neighboring districts that accept transfers — factors that nonetheless drive the revenue side of the gap.18

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OUSD is not underfunded relative to its neighbors

High spending sits alongside poor outcomes for OUSD but not other districts.

For example, Berkeley is a big per-student spender while also being among the strongest performers in the state. Several of the lowest spenders run balanced books and post some of the weakest results in comparison.

OUSD is not underfunded relative to its neighbors. It spends more than it receives. And when its students are compared with demographically similar students elsewhere in California, Oakland trails by double digits in both English and Math proficiency.

The evidence indicates that OUSD suffers not from a funding gap, but more likely from the district’s priorities and decision-making.

From this conclusion, the following question perhaps is not how much funding is needed, but why the funding already in hand does not translate into either balanced budgets or better outcomes. This analysis doesn’t answer that, but establishes that the answer cannot be found in a per-student dollar figure alone.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tarini Kakkar is a student journalist majoring in Cognitive Science and English at the University of California, Berkeley. She is particularly interested in community and data-driven reporting across print, audio, and video platforms.

Growing up in Delhi NCR, India instilled her appreciation for arts and culture and an attunement for political multimedia. Attending Berkeley gave her an expanded platform to engage with various student media, and she now spends much of her time juggling meetings with academics and coffee runs.

Tarini is a steadfast advocate for transparency and fairness in journalism, aiming to build a career in reporting in confident defiance of the claim that news is “a dying industry.” She is participating in Oakland Report’s inaugural summer internship program.

Oakland Report examines the data behind the headlines. In this installment, we look at the field for Oakland’s upcoming mayoral election — and what election data and research on uncontested races suggest is at stake.

Oakland deserves a win by competition

On June 6, mayor Barbara Lee launched her campaign for a full four-year term as mayor.

Lee announcement came just over a year after winning the mayor’s seat in the April 2025 special election that followed the recall of former mayor Sheng Thao.

Lee was among those who opposed Thao’s recall, saying at the time, “I’ve always opposed recalls.”1

The city clerk’s candidate list, updated August 3, shows roughly fifteen other people who have filed intention statements or pulled nomination papers to run for mayor — this time for a full term — in November.2

One local media outlet’s assessment of the early field was blunt: “None of them have ever held elected office in Oakland.”3

The window to challenge Lee is nearly shut: prospective candidates have two days left, until 5:00 p.m. Friday, August 7, to qualify for the November ballot.4

Key findings

• Mayoral turnout has fallen — and reached a historic low (37.9%) in 2025. A study of 340 mayoral elections in 144 large U.S. cities found competition and challenger campaign efforts are among the strongest drivers of local turnout.

• Oakland’s 2022 mayor’s race was decided by only 682 votes. Oakland’s last election for a full term was won by a less-than-one-point margin in the final ranked-choice round. The 2025 special mayoral election for a partial term was decided by a 5.6 point margin — a close victory, not a mandate.

• The 2026 mayor’s race currently has no challenger who has previously held elected office, and only one who reported raising campaign money.

• One-horse races are not uncommon in American local government — an estimated 34% of local general elections drew no opposition in 2022, and in more than 50,000 school board races studied, incumbents who ran were re-elected over 80% of the time.

• A century of research on U.S. cities finds that entrenched, unchallenged governing coalitions grow measurably less responsive — and strong incumbents win many races before they begin, by deterring qualified challengers from entering at all.

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What is lost when elections go uncontested

One-horse races are fairly common in American local government.

One study estimated 34% of county, township, and municipal general elections for governing boards and top executives drew no opposition in 2022.5

A study of more than 50,000 school-board elections found nearly half uncontested, with incumbents re-elected more than 80% of the time when they ran.6

Research on American cities suggests what is lost when no one credible challenges the incumbent.

• Responsiveness and participation. A study of more than 240 U.S. cities across a century found that entrenched governing coalitions — machine and ‘reform’ regimes alike — build “political monopolies” that bias elections toward incumbents, restrict the entry of challengers, and grow measurably less responsive, with groups outside the coalition ceasing to participate.7

A prospective challenger weighing a run against such a coalition — its donors, endorsers, and allied organizations — faces exactly the entry costs that the political science literature finds deter otherwise qualified people from running.89

• Turnout and public debate. A study that analyzed 340 mayoral elections across 144 large U.S. cities found that competition and campaign effort — challenger spending in particular — are among the strongest drivers of local turnout.10

Another study of America’s municipal contests describes them as low-information affairs in which incumbents usually win.11

It stands to reason that when no serious challenger files, the campaign that would force a sustained public debate over crime, housing, and the budget simply never happens.

• The re-election incentive. Analyzing U.S. governors from 1950 to 1986, economists found that governors barred by term limits from facing voters again made systematically different tax and spending choices than those still seeking re-election — consistent with their model in which “the possibility of being re-elected may curtail opportunistic behavior” by incumbents.12

Oakland’s mayoral turnout has fallen — and reached a historic low (37.9%) in 2025

The numbers of people voting in any given election has swung with the electoral calendar.

The April 2025 special election won by Lee had the lowest mayoral turnout in 23 years — roughly 38% of the city’s 250,000 registered voters.

A local media outlet reported at the time that turnout in that election skewed toward the city’s wealthier hill neighborhoods relative to the flatlands.13

• Turnout in the March 2002 primary that re-elected Jerry Brown was 36.9%.

• The June 2006 primary when Ron Dellums was elected mayor saw 46.0% turnout.

• When the mayor’s race moved to November starting in 2010, turnout increased to 61.2%.

After peaking in 2018 when 69% of Oakland voters cast ballots, mayoral election turnouts experienced a steady decline: about 53% in 2022, and roughly 38% in 2025.

Two recent mayoral races were decided by narrow margins

Oakland’s electoral record shows what is at stake, because its recent mayoral history is notably competitive.

In 2014, Libby Schaaf unseated incumbent Jean Quan from a 15-candidate field — the first defeat of a sitting Oakland mayor since 1990 — winning roughly 62.8% after 15 rounds of ranked-choice tabulation.14

In 2018, Schaaf won re-election outright with 53.3% of first-choice votes against nine challengers.15

In other mayoral elections, the margins were far narrower.

• Jean Quan’s 2010 upset of Don Perata was a two-point race.16

• In 2022, council member Loren Taylor led council member Sheng Thao on first-choice votes, but Thao won the ninth and final ranked-choice round by a margin of just 682 (0.6%) votes out of 113,735 total.

• In 2024, voters recalled mayor Thao after an FBI raid on her home; she was indicted soon after on federal bribery and conspiracy charges and is set to stand trial in October.

• In the April 2025 special mayoral election to fill the partial term vacated by Thao’s recall, Lee defeated Taylor in the ninth ranked-choice round of a 10-candidate race, 52.7% to 47.3% .

Ranked-choice voting rounds have twice reversed the first-choice vote leader

Oakland has elected its mayor by ranked-choice voting (RCV) since 2010, and in two of the five RCV mayoral elections the candidate who led on first choices did not win.

In some races, the first-choice vote leader prevailed: Schaaf converted a 29.48% first-choice plurality into a 63.20% final-round win in 2014. She then won re-election outright on first-choice votes with 53.3% in 2018.

In 2025, Lee led from the first round (50.06%) through the finish (52.70%).

• In 2010, Don Perata led with 33.7% of first-choice votes but lost the tenth round of ranked-choice voting to Jean Quan, 51.09% to 48.91% — about a two-point margin.17

• In 2022, Taylor led in first-choice votes by a narrow 33.07% to 31.79%, but lost the ninth round of ranked-choice voting to Thao by 682 votes.

Both ranked-choice reversals produced the era’s closest margins, and both losing first-choice leaders publicly criticized RCV afterward.1819

Oakland’s mayoral field, two days before the filing deadline

Per the most recent list issued by the city clerk, 16 people have filed intention statements or pulled nomination papers for mayor.

Filing statuses vary, and not all will qualify for the ballot.

The most prominent names among the challengers are candidates who have run before but have not held elected office: Seneca Scott, a community activist who ran for mayor in 2022; Mindy Pechenuk, who ran for state assembly (2022), city council (2024), and mayor (2025); and perennial candidate Peter Liu.2021

Brenda Grisham, an anti-gun-violence advocate and a leader of the 2024 recall of former district attorney Pamela Price, announced her candidacy in July 2025.22

Loren Taylor, former Oakland city council member — and the mayoral runner-up in 2022 and 2025 — does not appear on the clerk’s list as of August 3.

Barbara Lee, who turned 80 in July, was the oldest person to become Oakland’s mayor when she was sworn in at 78, after a long career in Congress.2324

If re-elected, Lee will be 84 by the end of the full four-year term in January 2031.

By comparison, Oakland’s last congressional member-turned-mayor, Ron Dellums, was 71 years old when he was sworn in as mayor.

No challenger has significant campaign money in this race — so far

In each of the last four mayoral races, the top-funded rival collected six-figure sums — from $110,324 (Cat Brooks, 2018) to $618,527 (Loren Taylor, 2025).

In both 2022 and 2025, Taylor out-raised the eventual winner.2526

As of August 4, Lee's re-election committee reported roughly $279,000 in campaign funding. Pechenuk is the only challenger to report raising any campaign funding: around $12,000.27

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Counterpoints and caveats

• As the incumbent, Lee can point to results. For example, Oakland reported 67 homicides in 2025, down 22% from 2024, and violent crime down 25% — part of a nationwide trend.2829

• A thin field of challengers may partly reflect a popular and formidable incumbent.

• Challenger deterrence by the incumbent is common in politics, and is not necessarily a sign of dysfunction. The 2018 mayor’s race offers precedent: Schaaf also faced no sitting officeholders and won outright.

• Some research offers a benign reading of uncontested local races: incumbents are mostly re-elected by satisfied voters, and a small field is not automatically a captured one.30

• The clerk’s list is a snapshot; filings remain open until Aug. 7, and filing statuses vary by candidate.

There is no choice when there is no contest

Research suggests, but cannot prove, that a contested 2026 mayor’s race would produce better governance, higher turnout, or a different winner.

But the research does appear to point mostly in one direction:

• Unchallenged governing coalitions tend to grow less responsive.

• Competition and challenger efforts draw voters to the polls.

• Officials answerable to voters in the future tend to behave differently from those who are not.

• Strong incumbents win many races before they begin by deterring qualified challengers from running at all.

The record shows that twice in four years, Oaklanders chose their mayor by close margins — and once, by recall, removed a mayor later indicted for corruption.

The data suggests that competitive elections are among Oakland’s primary accountability mechanisms.

There is no doubt that Oakland — a city of nearly half-a-million extraordinary people — is home to thousands of talented, smart, ambitious, and accomplished leaders who could capably serve as mayor.

Some of these extraordinary people may even be more capable and better qualified for the job than the current incumbent.

It is reasonable to consider the possibility that a one-horse race with no major challengers leaves voters in November with a ratification, not a choice — and essentially circumvents the accountability mechanism of a contested election.

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media: reasoned, data-driven, well-sourced analysis focused on observable and verifiable evidence. We present the facts and let the reader decide.

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August 4, 2026 — The recent release of prosecutors’ witness list in the upcoming federal trial of former Oakland mayor Sheng Thao on bribery and corruption charges has raised a question in some Oaklanders’ minds: why is former city council member Rebecca Kaplan not on the list?

During her 16-year tenure on city council, Kaplan was integral to the city’s waste removal contracts, including the city’s award of the recycling contract to California Waste Solutions, whose top executives and co-owners, Andy and David Duong are on trial with Thao for bribery and corruption, along with Thao’s domestic partner Andre Jones.

Oakland Report in April published this overview of Kaplan’s city council tenure and her ongoing involvement in the city’s waste removal efforts, including her new $149,000-per-year-plus-benefits job with the city of Oakland.

We are republishing the article today for our readers to consider when wondering where Kaplan stands in the federal trial set to begin in October.

There’s something about Rebecca

OAKLAND REPORT ∙ APR. 27, 2026

Editors’ note

Shortly after former Oakland councilmember Rebecca Kaplan left elected office in 2025, Oakland city administrator Jestin D. Johnson awarded her a $149,000-per-year-plus-benefits job as an ‘illegal dumping project manager.’ Johnson hired Kaplan with no public recruitment, no job description, and no public announcement. Oakland Report first published the details of Kaplan’s employment contract and compensation in November.1

Illegal dumping has been a signature issue for Kaplan since the early days of her political career. City officials have lauded Kaplan for her expertise and work in this area. Yet Oakland’s illegal dumping problems became measurably worse during Kaplan’s 16-year tenure on city council, and today have escalated to become among the city’s most visible, vexing, and expensive crises.2

Now the city of Oakland is paying Kaplan handsomely to work as a city employee — out of the public’s view — to ‘project manage’ the consequences of the illegal dumping policies and waste removal contracts she played an outsized role in shaping during her time on the council.

Before she got her new city job, Kaplan frequently appeared and spoke about her achievements in public, having run for office a dozen times over the past two decades. But since she signed her new city employment contract in September 2025, she has remained remarkably silent in public, and the city has provided scant information about Kaplan’s new role and activities.

This report draws from public records, city documents, independent audits, and media reports to help Oakland Report readers piece together what Kaplan has been doing in her new job — and the path she took to land her new publicly funded employment.

Oakland Report provides accurate, unflinching, data-driven reporting and analysis that you will find nowhere else. If you value our nonprofit work, please subscribe, share, and donate.

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Kaplan’s $149,410-per-year-plus-benefits city job

The terms of Kaplan’s city employment offer do not include a detailed job description, required qualifications, or performance metrics. The available details are primarily focused on compensation:

• “The agreed-upon salary will be $12,450.81 Monthly.”

• “Salary, benefits, paid time off, and other terms of employment are covered in union Memorandum of Understanding (MOUs), policies, and regulations adopted by the Oakland City Council.”

• “This position works 37.5 hours a week.”

• “You will accrue 15 days of vacation per year.”

• “This classification is not represented by a Union.”

• “This is an at-will position.”

Kaplan’s over 16-year council tenure ended in May 2025, after two failed runs for Oakland mayor and a failed run for a seat on the Alameda County board of supervisors.

After her term as at-large councilmember ended in January 2025, the council appointed her to serve as District 2 interim councilmember from January to April 2025 to fill a vacant seat left by Nikki Bas’ election to the Alameda County board of supervisors.

Four months later in September, Kaplan was hired as an “Exempt Limited Duration Employee” (ELDE) in the City Administrator’s Office with an annual salary of $149,410, plus benefits. There was no public recruitment for the role, and no public announcement after the hire.

Kaplan’s hiring paperwork was signed by City Administrator Jestin D. Johnson, specifying that she would work out of the City Administrator’s Office at City Hall.

$2.3 million in compensation over 16 years

Kaplan was first sworn in to the at-large Oakland City Council seat on January 7, 2009, where she served for 16 years. The chart below shows the estimated compensation she received from the city during her council tenure, drawn from the Public Ethics Commission’s (PEC’s) published compensation data.3

Adding the PEC-authorized base rates from 2009–2024 and the 2025 contracted ELDE term through its September 2026 expiration, Kaplan’s base salary from the City of Oakland totaled approximately $1.59 million from January 2009 through September 2026.

Kaplan received an estimated 48% more in benefits compensation on top of her salary, based on the city’s documented benefits-to-base ratios, bringing her total compensation to roughly $2.36 million over 17 years and 9 months.

Now we turn to the city’s efforts at combating illegal dumping during Kaplan’s tenure, and her role in those efforts.

Twenty years of spending, twenty years of ever-growing trash

City Auditor Michael C. Houston’s recent Performance Audit of Illegal Dumping documents what residents pay for waste service, what the city collects in citation revenue, and what the city has done with roughly $12 million a year in spending.4

The audit does not mention Kaplan by name. Her work, however, runs through nearly every contract, settlement, and policy decision the audit documents.

City administrator Johnson’s response to the audit says that “most” of the city’s illegal dumping strategy goals have been met — however only 4 of the 17 have been marked “Complete.”

Johnson’s response to the audit’s findings indicates that at least one of the key aspects of the city’s illegal dumping work is being done by “a project manager in the City Administrator’s Office” whom the document does not name.5 That project manager most likely is Rebecca Kaplan.

“A project manager in the City Administrator’s Office is currently performing an interagency coordinating role, participating in Countywide, Regional, and Statewide Illegal Dumping coordination, strategy, and convenings. This work includes identifying funding, policies, and resources with State, County, and other partners, including to advance countywide enforcement strategies.”

–City administrator Jestin D. Johnson, Apr. 23, 2026

The audit’s data, combined with prior city reports and contemporaneous press accounts, provide a view of what Oakland has tried, what it has cost, and what changed.

Cleanup spending has increased substantially since 2020. Tonnage of trash removed increased over the same period, but has leveled off in recent years.

Resident reports of illegal dumping through 311 calls reached a pandemic-year peak of 35,860 in 2020, then dropped precipitously to 27,000 and steadily declined to 23,000 in 2025 — indicating a drop in calls that runs counter to the increasing scale of the problem.

The audit attributes the gap between the rising spending line and the declining 311 line partly to 311 being available only in English — which doesn’t entirely explain why 311 reporting went up sharply in previous years — and partly to Public Works more proactively hauling away dumping volume through ‘garbage blitz’ crews before residents file 311 reports.

The waste removal contract Oaklanders pay for — with trash fees 56% higher than average

The city’s contract with Waste Management emerged from a 2014 bidding process in which city staff recommended awarding a $1 billion trash, compost, and recycling contract to Waste Management. The contract was executed in 2015, and the current, amended version runs through 2030.

According to a 2016 Alameda County Grand Jury report,6 councilmembers Rebecca Kaplan, Lynette Gibson McElhaney, and Dan Kalb in 2014 moved to reopen the bidding process in favor of California Waste Solutions (CWS), a local recycler owned by the Duong family.

Waste Management filed a lawsuit, claiming that the contract was unlawfully steered to CWS at the last minute due to “personal and political connections” between CWS and elected officials. The case was ultimately settled: Waste Management received the trash and compost contracts, and CWS received the recycling contract.7

A few years later, the owners of CWS were federally indicted for corruption related to making improper political donations to several Oakland politicians, including Kaplan (more on that below).

The audit’s data show the cost of waste service in Oakland is substantially higher than the average in the region. The audit compares the minimum monthly curbside service rate for single-family households in five East Bay cities that contract with the same hauler, Waste Management of Alameda County, and use the same transfer station and landfill. Oakland’s rate is 56% above that average, second only to Albany.

While Oakland residents have paid those higher-than-average rates, the city has poured ever-larger sums of public money into cleanup. Tonnage of waste removed by the city has ramped up significantly since FY 2019–20, but illegal dumping remains, by the audit’s account, “the most-requested City service.”

The audit reports the city’s fiscal year 2024–25 expenditures of $11.9 million on cleanup. The expenditures included $2 million spent on enforcement, but only $16,000 in paid citation revenue was collected. Roughly $1.3 million in citations were issued during the period, but only an estimated 11% of issued citations were paid.

Notably, the audit shows that the city’s ‘encampment management team’ removed 5,428 tons of debris from encampment sites in 2025 — substantially more than the 3,617 tons of illegal dumping collected citywide.

See this related article:

The 2026 audit’s first recommendation asks the Public Works department and the City Attorney to renegotiate the Waste Management contract or rebid it “at the next renewal date, to reduce hauling rates per volume and promote transparency by detailing cost components of the rates.” City management agreed; the target completion date is June 30, 2027 — six months before the next scheduled at-large council election.

The city’s illegal dumping tactics

Across two decades, Oakland has tried multiple approaches to illegal dumping, yet the problem has only grown in scale and expense:

The Waste Management contract (2015, runs through 2030) provides trash pickup service to Oakland homes and businesses. The audit found that Oakland residents pay rates 56% higher than the average of four neighboring cities served by the same hauler. The audit recommends renegotiating the agreement.

Public Works reactive cleanup crews ($11.9 million in fiscal year 2024–25). The city’s 311-driven response efforts removed roughly 7 million pounds of waste from city streets in 2025, according to the audit’s headline figure. The city reports collecting 18 million pounds annually citywide when proactive dumping and encampment cleanups are included.

The ‘garbage blitz’ proactive crew (operating since 2021, with expanded weekend coverage approved October 2025) deployed to known hot spots to clear dumping before residents call 311. The audit asserts that this model suppresses 311 reports by removing piles before they are reported, but also shows that dumping volumes continue to increase.

The ‘encampment management team’ (a separate Public Works effort) removed 5,428 tons of debris from encampment sites in 2025, substantially more than the 3,617 tons of illegal dumping collected citywide in the same period. The audit identifies funding diversion from ‘garbage blitz’ proactive crews to the ‘encampment management team’ in 2024 as a contributing factor to slower 311 response times.

The ‘environmental enforcement unit’ ($2.0 million spent in fiscal year 2024–25, only $16,000 in fines collected) issued $1.3 million in citations during the period — but only an estimated 11% of that was collected.8

Surveillance cameras (36 units, operating since March 2022). The audit recommends that Public Works evaluate and adjust placement to raise citations per camera. City management “partially agrees,” responding that “citation numbers should not be the determinative criteria for camera placement — sometimes a camera is preventing citable behavior from occurring.”

The Aerbits AI drone pilot ($150,000 over six months, approved by city council in April 2026) involves drones flying 72 missions over 1,440 miles of streets to detect dumping piles and automatically file 311 reports. Aerbits’s prior 13-month self-funded San Francisco pilot reported 96% peak reduction in active dumpsites and 4,376 service requests filed. However, the same pilot showed that dumpsites returned within 14 days when monitoring stopped.9

California State Senate Bill 1218 (Arreguín, sponsored by Oakland) would direct the DMV to collect unpaid illegal-dumping citations alongside vehicle registration. The bill had cleared one Senate committee as of the April 23 audit release.10

Mayor and councilmember dumpster allocation. The Waste Management contract provides 12 large dumpsters per year to the Mayor and each councilmember, plus 30 reserved for city events. The audit reports that 71 to 87 dumpsters went unused in each year over the audit window.

Free residential bulky-item pickup (one per year per residential unit, including renters, under the Waste Management contract). In 2025, 72% of single-family households used at least one pickup, but only 2% of multi-family units used the service. The audit recommends that Public Works ‘expand outreach.’

Bulky block parties (residents bring items to a designated location for free disposal on the last Saturday of each month) was operated through 2024, but the city ended the program due to budget constraints.

Davis Street Transfer Station free annual drop-off. Residents may bring items once per year for free disposal. In 2025, 4,501 residential drop-offs were recorded — most were from single-family residents.

Higher fines (adopted by city council April 14, 2026) increased citation amounts to as high as $5,000 per violation, matching Alameda County’s draft scale.11

Across these tactics, the audit’s data point in the same direction: more dollars spent, more tons hauled — and a consistent, substantial increase in the severity of the problem.

The auditor’s first recommendation — to renegotiate the contract that fixes Oakland’s rate structure 56% above average — is the only intervention the auditor identifies as capable of altering the underlying economics. Management agreed to that recommendation; the target completion date is over two years from now.

Kaplan has said very little in public about her activities since getting her new city job

In the seven months between her Sept. 27, 2025 hire as a ‘project manager (illegal dumping)’ and the Apr. 23, 2026 audit, Kaplan appears to have made only a few, low-key documented public statements on illegal dumping policy.

On Jan. 12, 2026, Kaplan appeared as a confirmed panelist at a community forum titled, “Public Action on Illegal Dumping,” and organized by Faith in Action East Bay, the Block By Block Organizing Network, and the East Bay Asian Youth Center.12

The event was attended by hundreds of residents and other panelists including City Auditor Michael Houston, Public Works Interim Director Josh Rowan, At-Large Councilmember Rowena Brown, and Erin Armstrong of Supervisor Nate Miley’s office.

An event recap posted the next day attributed one quote to Kaplan: “A complaint-based system is inherently inequitable.”13 The remark appeared to refer to the city’s reliance on resident-initiated 311 service requests, which are in English only, as the primary trigger for cleanup response.

On Mar. 5, 2026, Kaplan appeared at the Privacy Advisory Commission to present a use policy for the Aerbits AI drone program to locate illegal dumping sites. In her brief comments introducing the program, Kaplan assured the commission that the drone data would be kept secure and does not use facial recognition technology or retain “any personally identifiable information,” and added that it would be used to “deploy for clean up and remediation in a more effective manner, a more rapid manner, and a more equitable manner.”14

These two appearances are the only direct public quotations from Kaplan that Oakland Report has been able to identify after she secured her new city job in September 2025. Other reports allude to Kaplan’s activities without naming her.

A local online news site published a Mar. 2, 2026 article on illegal dumping fines that named Kaplan as “involved” in drafting the new ordinance through a secondhand description offered by Faith in Action East Bay organizer Dr. Ida Oberman; however, Kaplan herself was not quoted.15

A follow-up Mar. 9, 2026 article in the same online publication about State Senate Bill 1218 listed Kaplan among “other officials” working on the Oakland ordinance; but again, it included no direct statement from Kaplan.16

Local television station KTVU’s coverage of a second Faith in Action East Bay forum on illegal dumping, three days before the audit release, named Mayor Lee, Councilmember Zac Unger, and others as panelists; but this time Kaplan was not listed as a panelist.17

Despite Kaplan holding what appears to be a pivotal role in one of the city’s most high-profile initiatives — illegal dumping — the city has been silent on her involvement:

• The city of Oakland’s news release webpage shows no press release issued by Kaplan or naming her since her September 2025 start of employment with the city.

• The City Council has held no public hearing on Kaplan’s employment.

• The council Public Works & Transportation Committee meeting record shows no item presented by Kaplan in her capacity as a city employee.

• No public report authored by Kaplan has been posted on the city’s website.

What the available public records show

Oakland Report reviewed the city’s online public records request log to gain insight into Kaplan’s activities since she landed her new city job. A keyword search for “Kaplan” on that portal returned 122 requests, including some from Kaplan’s council tenure and subsequent city job, and some that are unrelated to her.18

Together, the public records — which were only made available after multiple Public Records Act requests, and some of which were redacted — suggest that Kaplan’s recent work includes developing policy, writing reports, coordinating with Waste Management, seeking philanthropic donations, and coordinating with nonprofit organizations.

The available public records do not contain a detailed job description, scope of work, or performance metrics for Kaplan’s position.

Here’s what we found:

October 29, 2025 Regional Convening on Illegal Dumping. Kaplan attended a “Bay Area Regional Convening” hosted by Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley at the Alameda County Training and Conference Center in Oakland. The meeting’s stated goals were to “Release the Illegal Dumping Solutions Report,” “Unveil a Model Ordinance for Illegal Dumping Enforcement,” and hold a panel discussion on “Best Practices for Franchise Agreements” — the category covering Oakland’s Waste Management and California Waste Solutions contracts.

The day before the convening, Kaplan received the meeting information from Erin Armstrong, Supervisor Miley’s Director of Policy and Strategic Initiatives, and forwarded it to City Administrator Johnson and his deputy Aracely Garza. The afternoon of the convening (Oct. 29, 2025 at 3:32 PM), Kaplan emailed Johnson and Garza: “The Bay Area Regional Convening on illegal dumping today was great. I wanted to share the invitation they gave us, to participate in the Spring 2026 Statewide Illegal Dumping Conference. It will be on April 30 and May 1, 2026.” The email proposed a follow-up internal meeting for Nov. 6, 2025.

‘Strategies for Illegal Dumping’ memo. Kaplan authored a draft memo that Johnson distributed on Nov. 3, 2025 to a senior city group including Josh Rowan, Mayor Barbara Lee’s chief of staff Maya Saika Chen, City Attorney Ryan Richardson, communications director Sean Maher, and City Auditor Michael Houston. Johnson’s cover note: “I am sharing with you a copy of the initial illegal dumping strategies document that Rebecca Kaplan prepared. Recognizing that many of you have inquired about this work, I want to be sure that you all receive the same information.”

Three days later, Saika Chen forwarded the email to Erica Astrella in the Mayor’s office, writing: “Connecting you both so we can all be aligned on all the incredible work being done on illegal dumping. This is an amazing compilation and work plan Rebecca, thank you.” The memo includes an attached document with filename, “Strategies for Illegal Dumping Draft.pdf.”

Illegal Dumping Ordinance and accompanying staff report. On November 4, 2025, Kaplan emailed councilmember Unger’s aide Matthew Malsin a first-draft ordinance with a background research memo. The draft incorporated an administrative penalty scale of $2,500 for a first dumping violation, $5,000 for a second, and $10,000 for a third.

In the email, Kaplan flagged a recurring problem she had been “reviewing and discussing”: that fines “are then actually able to be collected, and that citations are issued in an efficient and effective manner.” She wrote that “a recommended best practice to help solve this” was to tie violations to vehicle ownership for citation purposes — the policy mechanism that became California State Senate Bill 1218.

On February 10, 2026, Kaplan circulated a draft staff report for the ordinance to a wider working group: Unger, Malsin, Patrick Bears (City Attorney’s office), Saika Chen and the mayor’s deputy chief of staff Preston Kilgore, Richardson, Hathaway, Garland, and Betsy Lake.

The Council adopted the ordinance on April 14, 2026. The published staff report makes no mention of Kaplan’s role in creating the ordinance.

The Aerbits AI drone pilot. Mayor Lee’s April 15 press release named Aerbits Inc. founder Brian Johnson as one of four named participants in the city’s legislative package rollout. Records indicate that Kaplan brokered the relationship. Assistant Public Works Director Kristin Hathaway wrote on February 4, 2026, in forwarding the formal proposal to City Administrator Johnson, Public Works Director Garland, and senior environmental staff: “In follow-up to our meeting last week with Brian Johnson, founder of Aerbits, he has submitted for our consideration a proposal for a pilot run of the services he offers… Thanks to Rebecca for coordinating his presentation and procuring the proposal.”

The Crankstart Foundation. On October 27, 2025, Gloria Bruce, Program Director for Housing Security and Public/Private Partnerships at the Crankstart Foundation — the philanthropy of investor Michael Moritz — emailed Kaplan: “So great to reconnect… would love to chat with you sometime soon to hear about your scope of work and if there is any opportunity for Crankstart to support. (FYI, I’ve also been in touch with Esther Morales in the Mayor’s Office about different philanthropic asks so will circle back with her on this as well). My colleague Eli Bildner would join us.”

Kaplan replied later the same afternoon: “Wonderful thanks and I’m excited to connect. I could do weds 10/29 at 2:30pm. Will you send a zoom link?” The October 29 meeting time ran concurrently with the close of Supervisor Miley’s convening. Eli Bildner is identified in the correspondence as Crankstart’s Vice President of Operations. The substance of the philanthropic ask appears to be redacted in the public records release.

Bulky-waste utilization analysis. On Dec. 8, 2025, Kaplan emailed then-Public Works Director Josh Rowan and Assistant Director Hathaway a written analysis of bulky-pickup utilization, with two screenshot exhibits drawn from a prior Public Works report.

Kaplan wrote: “While 24% of single-family homeowners used a free bulky pickup during the year, only 8% of multi-family (e.g. apartment) households used one. So there is substantial room for expansion of use of this program, especially for tenants/multi-family residential units. Also, see the free drop-offs at Davis St. Transfer station, only 9% of available drop-offs were used. Part of the impediment is the need to schedule an appointment ahead of time. As well as lack of knowledge of the program.”

Kaplan forwarded the same analysis to communications director Sean Maher the next day. The audit released four months later (Apr. 23, 2026) makes the same finding, recommending that Public Works ‘expand outreach.’

Coordination with Waste Management. On Jan. 9, 2026, Kaplan emailed Warren Chu, Public Sector Manager at Waste Management of Alameda County, with a screenshot showing the WM bulky waste online booking website was non-functional: “Since booking by using that website is promoted on the hand-outs, mailers, and other materials about the bulky waste program, I wanted to check back about timeline for fixing the web system, and to get clarification in terms of what we can give the public.” Chu replied that afternoon: “Our IT Business Solutions has been working on this since you informed us. They estimate it being fixed tonight.”

Partnership with Keep Oakland Beautiful. Christina Porter, Board Chair of Keep Oakland Beautiful (a nonprofit cleanup organization), emailed Kaplan on Nov. 24, 2025 to finalize two recycling-survey questions the two had discussed the previous week, asking Kaplan’s feedback before the survey distribution. The exchange suggests that Kaplan is a city point of contact for the cleanup nonprofit ecosystem.

Statewide conference participation. Kaplan’s Oct. 29, 2025 email to City Administrator Johnson and Garza forwarded an invitation from Supervisor Miley’s office to the Spring 2026 Statewide Conference on Illegal Dumping, held April 30 to May 1, 2026 in Sacramento (IDCON5). The conference is a recurring statewide gathering of jurisdictions, contractors, and policy advocates. Whether Oakland plans to send representatives, and if so whom, is not documented in the release.

Here we turn to Kaplan’s background as a councilmember, specifically her interactions with waste removal contractors, Oakland politicians, and ethics violations.

‘At least $3 million’ — the California Waste Solutions lawsuit and settlement

In 2017, the City of Oakland sued CWS, alleging that the recycling company whom Kaplan had advocated for the city to hire in 2015 (which itself resulted in a lawsuit from Waste Management) had overcharged multi-family property owners under a “premium backyard service” rate of up to $776.12 per month for cart-rolling service.

On July 30, 2021, the City Council met in closed session via Zoom to discuss a potential settlement in order to avoid costly litigation. Former District 6 Councilmember Loren Taylor, who attended the closed session, told a local online news outlet in 2024 that the city’s case “was stronger than the countersuit from CWS” and “would have been favorable to Oakland and Oakland residents” at trial.19

According to another unnamed source whom the news outlet reported was in the room during the discussion, then-City Attorney Barbara Parker recommended a “good faith” settlement offer “not to exceed $200,000.” According to the unnamed source, Kaplan surprised the group by moving an amendment that changed the authorized cash payment to CWS to “at least $3 million” — a 1,400% increase.

For his part, Taylor told the media outlet that he “does not recall if the city attorney office offered any direction on this case.”

On Dec. 7, 2021, the Council voted 8–0 in open session to authorize a settlement that included $3.2 million paid to CWS.20 Kaplan said at the meeting that she was happy to “get relief for a local business and relief for our public.”

In a separate component of the same settlement, CWS agreed to pay at least $6.2 million in refunds to overcharged multi-family customers. CWS also reduced its premium cart rate from $187.57 per month to $34.22.

‘Truly sorry’ — the 2022 ethics fine

In December 2013, Kaplan and her parents purchased a condominium on the Jack London waterfront. Kaplan made the unit her primary residence in 2018.

She did not list the property on her annual Form 700 financial disclosure for seven years. During that period, Kaplan voted at council meetings on Estuary Park, located within 500 feet of her condominium, in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2020. The 2016 vote allocated $27.5 million in bond proceeds for the project.

A well-known city conflict-of-interest rule prohibits councilmembers from participating in votes that could have a material financial impact on real property in which they have a financial interest within 500 feet of a council action.

Kaplan finally reported the property on her 2019 Form 700, filed in 2020. The Public Ethics Commission (PEC) opened an investigation.

On Dec. 14, 2022, the PEC voted unanimously to impose a $19,000 fine, the maximum allowable under city code on Kaplan for two conflict-of-interest violations and three failures to timely disclose a financial interest.21

PEC enforcement chief Simon Russell described the violations as “serious” and the conduct as “negligent rather than deliberate.” A representative for Kaplan told the commission she was “truly sorry.”22

Sheng Thao, Andre Jones, and the two Duongs: the federal indictments

Oaklanders are likely familiar with the ongoing saga of recalled Oakland mayor Sheng Thao.

On June 20, 2024, federal agents executed search warrants at the homes of then-Mayor Thao, her partner Andre Jones, CWS owners David and Andy Duong, and at CWS’s offices. Oakland voters subsequently recalled Thao on Nov. 5, 2024.

Thao and Jones had previously spent years working for councilmember Kaplan. Jones served as Kaplan’s chief of staff from 2008 to April 2016. Thao joined Kaplan’s office as a paid intern in 2012, and was promoted to her chief of staff in 2017, a role she retained until late 2018 when she won election to the District 4 council seat.

In 2022, Kaplan endorsed Thao’s run for mayor. Thao won by 677 votes.

On January 17, 2025, federal prosecutors indicted Thao, Jones, and the two Duongs on eight counts of conspiracy, bribery, mail fraud, and wire fraud. The indictment alleges that beginning in October 2022, the Duongs promised to commit roughly $375,000 in benefits to Thao and Jones in exchange for Thao’s commitment, if elected mayor, to extend the CWS recycling contract, purchase modular housing units from Duong-backed company Evolutionary Homes, and appoint city officials selected by the Duongs.

The Duongs allegedly made $95,000 in cash payments to Jones disguised as wages for a no-show job at Evolutionary Homes, with $300,000 promised in total. Both Thao and Jones took steps to conceal the scheme, according to federal prosecutors. Bribe payments were routed to Jones at Thao’s direction, the indictment states, “to avoid a paper trail” back to her. All four defendants pleaded not guilty.23

The federal case is the criminal extension of an earlier civil investigation by the California Fair Political Practices Commission and the Oakland Public Ethics Commission that found, “Andy Duong was the true source of at least 93 contributions to multiple local campaign committees when he created a campaign contribution laundering scheme to benefit his family-owned company.”

Court records identified approximately $67,000 the Duongs allegedly funneled across the 2016–2018 election cycles to seven Oakland councilmembers and council candidates: Dan Kalb, Lynette Gibson McElhaney, Larry Reid, Abel Guillen, Desley Brooks, Sheng Thao, and Rebecca Kaplan. The FPPC alleged that $3,500 was routed to Kaplan through seven straw donors.24

A 2022 court filing made public an Andy Duong email about his political beneficiaries: “All of the above people are strong and relationship well established in our hands.”25

Kaplan has not been charged with any crime. She told a local news outlet in 2020 that she was unaware of the investigation and would not have knowingly accepted contributions tied to a city contractor: “I would certainly find improper contributions to be unacceptable, and would not keep such funds.”26 It is unclear whether Kaplan returned the donations she received from Duong’s straw donors.

One week after the June 2024 FBI raids, Kaplan voted to defeat a proposed ballot measure that would have given the Public Ethics Commission additional resources, including for the open CWS straw-donor investigation.27

Kaplan’s electoral record

Kaplan’s political career, including her 2025 hire by the City Administrator, spans 25 years and twelve runs for elected office.

The city just can’t seem to quit Rebecca Kaplan

The record shows that Kaplan’s political career was marked by documented ethical lapses and close association with high-profile political players who are now under federal indictments for corruption, including alleged illegal campaign contributions to Kaplan. (She has denied any involvement or awareness of the alleged crimes.)

After two failed runs for mayor and a failed run for the board of supervisors, Kaplan appeared to have run out of options for continuing in public office — her primary livelihood for two decades.

It remains unclear why the city gave Rebecca Kaplan a lucrative city job after she left elected office. City insiders have justified Kaplan’s hire as warranted on the basis of her extensive knowledge of city operations and her work on illegal dumping in particular. But the record shows that the city’s illegal dumping problems grew significantly worse during Kaplan’s tenure on the council.

Kaplan unquestionably posted many positive achievements during her tenure on the council. An accounting of those achievements is not the focus and is beyond the scope of this analysis. We note that delivering positive results is a baseline expectation of public servants, especially elected officials.

However, it strains belief that Kaplan is the only individual qualified to fill the new city job she was given — in a city of nearly half a million people, a greater Bay Area region of over 7 million people, and a state of 39 million people. The city of Oakland itself already employs numerous people with deep qualifications and experience in the same areas.

In the absence of a public recruitment or a posted job description, there was no opportunity for others to compete for the job — nor for the public even to be made aware that Kaplan was under consideration — a job which is publicly funded, and ultimately works for and should be accountable to Oaklanders.

📖

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. Our nonprofit mission is to provide reasoned, fact-based, well-sourced reporting and analysis on local government issues, focused on observable and verifiable evidence free from implicit bias.

Our guiding principles are to present the facts and evidence and let the reader decide for themselves what to think. We achieve this by focusing on what people and organizations do, not what they say.

In that spirit — and because Kaplan has shown no inclination to respond to other news outlets’ requests for comment — we did not contact Kaplan for this story. We instead chose to simply relay what the public record states, and let our readers decide for themselves.

Another of our guiding principles is to always remain open to examining and questioning our own biases, and to keep an open forum for new information that may advance our understanding — and help Oaklanders better grasp the decision-making that affects our lives.

In that spirit, we invite Kaplan to present her perspective on this article and report on her activities in her new city job. If offered, we will publish her counterpoint as presented.

Oakland Report provides accurate, unflinching, data-driven reporting and analysis that you will find nowhere else. If you value our work, please donate. All contributions go directly to sustaining and growing our nonprofit work:

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Note: This article was revised to include Kaplan’s comments at the Mar. 5, 2026 Privacy Advisory Commission meeting, which an alert reader brought to our attention. Our thanks to the reader for the tip.

Video montage 1: Oakland mayor Barbara Lee claims that “crime rates are coming down in all categories” in a television interview on May 20, 2026. (Video sources: Instagram @mayorbarbaralee; KTVU. Montage by Oakland Report)

Oakland Report examines the data behind the headlines. In this installment, we take a closer look at the data behind mayor Barbara Lee’s claim that crime is down on her watch — and her inference that she deserves the credit.

“Crime rates are coming down in all categories”

Marking one year in office in May, mayor Barbara Lee told local television station KTVU that “crime rates are coming down in all categories.”1

That same day, Lee told television station KRON that Oakland’s public safety turnaround has become a model for other cities.

“Oakland is seen as one of the top cities in terms of what we’re doing here so be proud of what we’re doing even though we know we haven’t accomplished everything and we still have crime and we still have fear. But everyone is working on it every day.”

— Mayor Barbara Lee, May 20, 20262

Lee’s claim is supported primarily by the most recent year of crime data: violent crime in Oakland is down more than 20% since Lee took office just over one year ago — consistent with a nationwide trend.

Despite these impressive statistics, Oaklanders continue to experience the highest violent crime rate of any California city — and the second-highest in the nation.

To help our readers understand the larger picture of Oakland’s crime trends, Oakland Report examined where Oakland stands among other cities on crime trends — not over one good year, but over the past 15 years.

Using Department of Justice (DOJ) crime data, we compared Oakland with 12 comparable and neighboring California cities — Alameda, Berkeley, Fremont, Hayward, Long Beach, Richmond, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, San Jose, San Leandro, and Santa Clara — and against statewide and national averages, from 2010 through 2025.

We also examined clearance rates, the share of reported crimes police report solving.3

Oakland Report is a citizen-led nonprofit organization. We present the evidence for our readers to decide what to think about it. Subscribe for free to get every analysis in your inbox.

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Key findings

• Oakland has the highest property crime rate of any large city in America. In the FBI’s most recent national city data (2024), Oakland ranked first among all reporting cities over 100,000 residents.

• Oakland’s property crime rate has gone up, not down. Oakland’s property crime rate rose 22% from 2010 to 2025. Meanwhile, California’s property crime rate fell 32% over the same period, and the nation’s fell 40% (through 2024).

• Oakland has the highest violent crime rate in California. No city in the state with a meaningful residential population comes close to Oakland’s violent crime rate. Also, Oakland had the second-highest violent crime rate in the nation among cities over 250,000, exceeded only by Memphis.

• Oakland’s violent crime rate has remained higher than every other city in California for 16 straight years. Among our 13 comparison cities, Oakland ranked highest in violent crime in all 16 years — and is 3.5 times the statewide rate.

• Oakland reports solving a smaller share of its crimes than any major U.S. city for which figures could be found. Its violent crime clearance rate fell from 28% in 2010 to 10% in 2025 — far less than the statewide rate — and its combined clearance rate across all Part I crimes was 2% in 2024. The national average was far higher, around 20%.

Oakland has the highest property crime rate in America

Sitting down with CBS News Bay Area in May to mark her first year as mayor, Lee said she was not overstating the city’s progress.

“Believe you me, I am not looking at this through rose-colored glasses. I mean, we are being tough on enforcement, investigations are being conducted by OPD in a timely way, we have people out preventing crimes … people need to know, we are not missing in action on this. We’re all hands on deck.”

— Mayor Barbara Lee, May 20, 2026.4

“All hands on deck” is a statement deserving a moment’s scrutiny.

The Oakland police department’s operational strength is currently only around 546 active-duty sworn officers — far below its total number of 678 budgeted sworn officers. Only around 618 of those budgeted sworn positions are filled, and of those that are filled, approximately 72 are on various forms of leave or other non-active duty status.5

Crime data offer some insight into the practical effects of Oakland’s chronically understaffed police force.

Oakland has the #1 highest property crime rate in America among cities over 100,000 population, according to the FBI’s most recent national city-level crime data (2024).6

Oakland’s remarkably high rate of crime, even with its recent decline, is not a one-year anomaly.

Oakland’s property crime rate rose 22% from 2010 to 2025. Meanwhile California’s rate fell 32% over the same period — and the national rate fell 40% through 2024.789

In raw counts, Oakland’s reported property crimes increased 34%, compared to only 10% population growth over the same period.1011

Explore the interactive data

Oakland’s property crime rate has gone up, not down

Among the 13 comparison cities, Oakland had the highest property crime rate in 15 of the 16 years we studied (Berkeley’s was highest, back in 2010).

Only neighboring Alameda — population 80,000 — rose faster than Oakland (+31%). San Jose was essentially flat (+3%).

The other ten comparison cities declined, several dramatically: Richmond −54%, Sacramento −47%, San Diego −35%, Riverside −33%.

Meanwhile, California’s property crime rate fell 32% over the same period, and the nation’s fell 40% (through 2024).

Oakland’s property rate has fallen in more recent years — from a peak of 9,155 per 100,000 people in 2023, to 5,402 per 100,000 in 2025, representing a 41% two-year drop.

Whether Oakland retains its title of the #1 highest property crime rate in America — and the #1 highest violent crime rate in California — after the FBI publishes 2025 crime data, likely will depend on how far other high-rate cities fell in the same period.

Oakland has the highest violent crime rate in California — for the 16^th straight year

At a January press conference, mayor Lee credited the city’s violence-prevention strategies like the Ceasefire program for the previous year’s decline in violence.

“The results show that when we invest in proven strategies and work together, lives will and can be saved.”

— Mayor Barbara Lee, Jan. 28, 202612

[Editors’ note: Oakland Report will examine the claim that the Ceasefire program reduced violent crime in a future analysis.]

Oakland’s 2025 homicide rate of 12.8 per 100,000 residents was 3.7 times the California statewide rate of 3.5 per 100,000 residents — and about 2.6 times the national rate.

In every year from 2010 through 2025, Oakland’s violent crime rate exceeded that of all 13 California comparison cities we studied — usually by a wide margin.

Oakland’s violent crime rate peaked at 2,387 per 100,000 people in 2023 before falling to 1,525 in 2025 — a substantial decrease, but still far higher than the state and national averages.

Oakland recorded 55 homicides in 2025 by the state’s count — down from 81 in 2024 and 127 in 2021.

The city’s own tally, which uses a broader definition, puts the homicide figure at 67, down 22% from 86 the previous year, with 57 classified as murder.13

Either way, the direction is the same — and the magnitude of the homicide decline is significant and most welcome — when only looking at Oakland in isolation from other cities.

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No city with a meaningful residential population comes close to Oakland’s violent crime rate — the nearest are Compton and Emeryville at roughly 1,200 per 100,000 in 2024, followed by Stockton (about 1,135).14

Nationwide, Oakland’s 2024 violent crime rate ranked #2 among all American cities with populations over 250,000, behind only Memphis, Tennessee.15

Over the full 15-year window, Oakland’s violent crime rate fell 4.9% — a slightly larger decline than the state’s — however, Oakland was starting from a much higher baseline.

The nationwide violent crime rate fell much more — about 11% from 2010 to 2024 — though an FBI definition change in 2013 means the national series is not strictly continuous.

Notably, the median violent crime rate of the 13 California comparison cities rose over the period, from 442 to 502 per 100,000, driven by increases in San Jose (+50%), Alameda (+46%), and Berkeley (+28%), all of which began at much lower starting points.

On the most reliable measure of serious violence, Oakland improved similarly to other cities

The FBI changed its criminal definition of rape in 2013, and California implemented the change in 2014. Aggravated assault counts are sensitive to recording practices. Thus, criminologists often check trends against robbery and homicide, the definitions of which have remained consistent over time.

On that measure, Oakland’s combined robbery-homicide rate fell 46% from 2010 to 2025 — comparable to declines in Sacramento (−47%), San Diego (−53%), Richmond (−56%), Hayward (−54%), and Berkeley (−63%), and steeper than the statewide decline of 39%.

The 55 homicides Oakland recorded in 2025 — down from 81 in 2024 and 127 in 2021 — are its fewest in the DOJ’s historic crime dataset, which extends back to 1985.

It stands to reason that if the “record low” claim applies anywhere in the state, it applies to Oakland’s homicide count — a genuine achievement to celebrate.

However, Oakland started from a homicide level so much higher that even its recent remarkable decline leaves it far above every neighbor.

Additionally, Oakland’s consistently high violent crime rate over 16 years also suggests that Oakland’s struggles to stem crime run deeper and more intractable than in other cities.

No major American city reports solving so few of its crimes as Oakland

A crime is “cleared” when police make an arrest and refer charges, or when an identified suspect cannot be charged for various reasons.

• In 2010, Oakland police reported clearing 1,741 violent crimes against 6,267 reported — meaning that 28% of violent crimes were cleared, already well below the statewide 43%.

• By 2024, Oakland’s reported data showed a substantial decline in its violent crime clearance rate: only 801 violent crimes cleared against 8,376 reported, or 9.6%.

• One year later in 2025, Oakland’s violent crime clearance rate was 9.8% — the lowest clearance rate of the 13 comparison cities — and far lower than the statewide rate of 46%.

The DOJ’s national data show that local police agencies nationwide cleared 43.8% of violent crimes in 2024.

Oakland’s combined clearance rate across all Part I crimes16 was 2.1% in 2024 and 2.2% in 2025, against a national average around 20%.

We could find no major U.S. city with crime clearance rates in Oakland’s remarkably low range — potentially due to Oakland’s struggles with reporting crime data, as explained below.

Oakland’s crime investigations appear to be in triage mode

The overall crime clearance reduction in Oakland is not uniform across specific crime types — and the pattern is telling.

Oakland’s homicide clearance rate (a subset of its violent crime clearance rate) has held up — 51% in 2024 and 62% in 2025, almost exactly matching the national homicide clearance average of 61%.17

What fell in Oakland is essentially everything else: investigations of robberies, aggravated assaults, and, most dramatically, property crimes, where Oakland reported clearing only 481 cases in 2010 (2.8%) and just 17 in all of 2024 (0.05%). That’s one clearance per 1,850 reported property crimes, compared to roughly 1 in 10 statewide.

The data suggests that Oakland’s approach to solving crime is something akin to a medical triage: a department that focuses on resolving its most serious crimes — homicides — while lacking capacity to investigate much else.

Oakland’s property crime clearance data, however, are so low that they cannot be taken entirely at face value.

Numbers this close to zero — reported continuously, month after month — may reflect breakdowns in how clearances are recorded and transmitted as much as investigative outcomes.

This itself suggests a serious problem with Oakland policing that could be at least partly attributed to a severely understaffed police force.

It also could be attributed in part to the city’s poor performance in service delivery overall, as Oakland Report has previously studied.

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Oakland’s crime reporting has documented recent problems: the DOJ notes that Oakland identified inaccuracies in its 2023 statistical submissions after publication and later filed revised data.

The city's information technology department told the council's public safety committee in July 2024 that Oakland’s police records system was vulnerable to outages and relied on an outdated method of transmitting crime statistics to federal authorities; the committee voted to replace it.18

Separately, the city declared a local state of emergency in February 2023 after a ransomware attack took much of its network offline, though officials said at the time that emergency and financial systems were unaffected, and we found no record connecting that attack to Oakland's crime-reporting systems.19

As noted above, Oakland budgeted 678 sworn police officers in FY 2024-25 but had only around 546 sworn officers on active duty as of July 2026.

Nonetheless, Oakland spends more per resident on policing — and less per crime — than any of 14 cities we compared.20

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Methodology

• We used the California DOJ’s Crimes & Clearances dataset (June 2026 release, covering 1985–2025), aggregating monthly agency-level records to calendar years for each city’s municipal police department.

• Figures therefore exclude crimes reported to other agencies operating within city limits (BART, university, county, and state agencies) — a limitation applied consistently across all 13 cities.

• Rates use California Department of Finance E-4 population estimates: the April 1, 2010 census benchmark for 2010, and January 1 estimates otherwise, drawn from the 2011–2020 American Community Survey series and the 2021–2026 series.

• Statewide and national rates come from the DOJ’s Crime in California 2024 and 2025 reports and the FBI’s national summary.

• National city rankings use the FBI’s 2024 Crime in the United States city tables as compiled by USAFacts and Stateline.

• Clearance rates divide clearances reported in a year by crimes reported that year, per DOJ convention; clearances can involve crimes reported in earlier years.

• Our statewide computations from the raw dataset reproduce the DOJ’s published 2024 figures exactly (violent clearance 43.6%, property 9.8%), and our city rates reproduce all six 2024 rates cited in our July 1 analysis.

• The statewide-highest-violent-rate check covered every municipal agency in the DOJ file for 2024 and 2025.

Explore the interactive data

Correlation is not causation — and other caveats

Oakland’s “#1” property crime rate is based on the most recent national data, which is 2024. The FBI has not yet published 2025 city-level data. Oakland’s property crime rate fell 27% in 2025; whether it retains the top ranking will depend on other cities’ 2025 declines. Several large cities — New York, Atlanta, New Orleans, Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville — did not report to the FBI’s 2024 tables, though none historically approaches Oakland’s rates, and the FBI formally discourages city rankings.

These are reported crimes — not necessarily all crimes. UCR-style data count crimes reported to police, not crimes committed. Victimization surveys consistently find large shares of crime go unreported — and it stands to reason that when a city clears 0.05% of property crimes, residents’ incentive to report declines, which would make Oakland’s property counts an undercount of unknown size. The direction of that bias works against the trend we describe being an artifact of increased reporting.

Crime definitions changed in 2013. The FBI’s 2013 rape redefinition (implemented in California in 2014) raised violent counts everywhere; the 2011 felony-theft threshold change led the DOJ to adjust 2002–2010 property data to include all larceny; and beginning in 2021, DOJ data mix legacy summary reporting with the new CIBRS incident-based system. Our robbery-plus-homicide measure is the check against the first issue.

Oakland’s 2023 data were revised. After the DOJ published its 2023 reports, OPD identified reporting inaccuracies and submitted corrections, which the DOJ applied in its 2025 publication and current dataset — the aggravated assault count, for instance, fell from 11,169 to 5,943. All figures here use the revised data; Oakland’s 2023 remains its worst recent year even after revision.

Some city-years are incomplete. San Jose PD did not report November–December 2023, and Richmond is missing one month of 2015, understating those cities’ counts for those years. The DOJ also cautions that not all agencies submitted a full year of 2025 data; all 13 cities here reported all 12 months of 2025.

Correlation is not causation.

These data cannot tell us whether Oakland’s trends reflect police staffing, enforcement policies, Propositions 47 and 57, pandemic disruptions, violence-intervention programs, economic conditions, or reporting behavior — only what was reported, where, and when.

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Other considerations and counterpoints

A fair reading includes the following considerations:

• Oakland’s 2024–25 improvement outpaced the state’s in both years, and city and state officials attribute part of the decline to community violence intervention investments — a claim these data can neither confirm nor refute.

• Citywide rates also mask enormous neighborhood variation; a citywide average understates conditions in East and West Oakland flatland neighborhoods and overstates them in the hills.

• Oakland polices a dense freeway-and-port geography with concentrated poverty that most comparison cities do not share, and it attempts to do so with roughly three-quarters of its budgeted sworn force actually active.

• Finally, a clearance is not a conviction — it measures police output, not case outcomes — and rising clearance rates elsewhere partly reflect improved reporting infrastructure, not only better investigation.

Is Oakland succeeding against crime? It depends on how you look at the data.

Addressing fellow Democrats at the party’s summer session in Minnesota in August 2025, Lee made her case that Oakland is succeeding against crime in three numbers.

“Violent crime is down 29%, homicides are down 21%, vehicle thefts are down 45%.”

— Mayor Barbara Lee, Aug. 28, 2025.21

Each of those figures is defensible on its own terms, and the direction they describe is real.

What they leave out is how Oakland compares to everywhere else.

After the best two years in Oakland’s recent record — including a welcome decrease in homicides — its residents in 2025 still experienced violent crime at 3.5 times the state rate, and the nation’s highest big-city property crime rate as of the latest national data.

Oaklanders also experienced a reported 90% chance that a violent crime would go unsolved.

Whether these data support the broader claim that “crime is down” in Oakland, is for the reader to decide for themselves.

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Our video montage missed the mark

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. As part of this experiment, we have expanded into video production to accompany and illustrate our work.

But our most recent video, a montage of clips from Oakland city council member Janani Ramachandran’s Instagram account, fell short of our standards.

The video appeared with a guest commentary written by Chris Urkofsky, “Oakland coliseum: An open letter to Oakland council member Janani Ramachandran,” published July 27. The video montage was produced by Oakland Report staff to accompany the article.

We have removed it from the article and replaced it with a static image and a correction.

The video was intended to show examples of council member Ramachandran promoting her music career on the same social media account she uses for council business. The video juxtaposed multiple separate video clips from Ramachandran’s Instagram page in an attempt to illustrate this.

But as presented on July 27, the video was misleading for many readers. Some described it as “rage bait,” while others thought Ramachandran had edited and posted the entire video montage herself.

Our nonprofit mission is to provide reasoned, fact-based, well-sourced reporting and analysis on local government issues, focused on observable and verifiable evidence free from implicit bias. But our video fell short of that standard, and our readers held us to account for that misstep.

Below we detail their concerns.

Readers respond and suggest revisions to the video

Mr. Urkofsky’s open letter to council member Ramachandran — a thoughtful request for his council member to reconcile her vote for the Oakland Coliseum sale with the ‘culture of enforcement’ she has publicly championed — was overwhelmingly well-received by readers.

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However, the video montage that originally appeared at the top of the article drew confusion, concern, and criticism.

Some commenters described the video as “sensationalism and rage-bait.” One wrote that “it makes me question the quality of everything they include on their website.”

Another comment: “I always believed OR would stay as an objective, unbiased platform… However, this video distorts that objective, and appears to be better suited to the polarizing social media space.”

One reader offered these extended remarks:

“Yes, the council member may be promoting her own music career on her Instagram page that covers council business, and this should be called out.

“But the edit needs to properly represent the fact that it’s not a single video but multiple videos. On a Reddit thread many people thought she added a promo for her own singing career to the end of the video, even the moderator of that community.

“Such sensationalist edits actually makes me lose faith in Oakland Report’s unbiased reporting. It’s ‘rage-bait’ rather than informing and calling things that are wrong (such as mixing singing career and council business) in a more factual, unbiased way.

“I hope you take this feedback and adopt it in future reporting. Even updating the video to be less biased by perhaps putting more gaps between each segment and not overlapping it. Maybe include the Instagram video URL or post date as a source text at the bottom of the video, to make it more clear they’re different videos.”

Corrections and commitments

One of Oakland Report’s guiding principles is to always remain open to examining and questioning our own biases.

In that spirit, we’re grateful for the direct and incisive feedback we received from our readers, and the suggestions for improving the video to better meet our own standards.

We plan to continue producing videos to help illustrate our work for diverse audiences across multiple platforms. Going forward, we will exercise more care to present documentation and evidence — and avoid implicit bias — in the context of the videos themselves, as we do with our written articles.

This will include the use of onscreen captions, transitions, citations, narration, and other video techniques to make clear to viewers the sources and facts behind the videos.

We want to hear from you

We strive to keep an open forum for new information that may advance our understanding — and help Oaklanders better grasp the decision-making that affects our lives.

In that spirit, we invite our readers to present your perspective in our comments or by sending us an email at letters@citizensoakland.org.

Thank you.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Sean S. Reinhart is a former library director, now retired after 26 years in local government. He served as library and community services director for the cities of Hayward and Menlo Park for a combined 16 years, where he helped build Hayward’s new main library and Menlo Park’s new multi-service community center. His post-retirement endeavors include serving as the managing editor of Oakland Report.

Sean and his family have lived in Oakland for 15 years. He grew up in nearby Hayward. Sean enjoys exploring California’s world-renowned coastline, valleys, deserts and mountains. His creative pursuits include writing, printmaking, carpentry, music and visual arts. He enjoys meeting new people, reading, hiking, gardening, and spending time with his family.

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Editors’ note: This open letter was posted by Oakland resident and retired Caltrans manager Chris Urkofsky on Nextdoor, objecting to the terms of the city’s sale of the Oakland Coliseum Complex to a group led by first-time developer Ray Bobbitt.1 We are republishing it here with Urkofsky’s permission, with citations added, for our readers to consider.

BY CHRIS URKOFSKY

Can’t support the process that produced the Coliseum deal

I voted for council member Janani Ramachandran because she promised a new standard of transparency, accountability and fiscal discipline.

This letter explains why I believe the revised Coliseum transaction falls short of those principles.

Council member Ramachandran, I am writing as one of your constituents—not as someone opposed to redevelopment of the Coliseum, but as someone who believes Oakland deserves transparent government and prudent stewardship of its public assets.

I support redeveloping the Coliseum. I support affordable housing. I support community benefits. I support transforming this long-neglected property into something that benefits East Oakland.

What I cannot support is the process that produced this deal.

The revised agreement asks Oakland taxpayers to accept seller financing, deferred payments extending years into the future, and substantial financial risk.23

Those terms may ultimately prove justified—but only if the city can demonstrate that they represent the best reasonably available outcome for Oakland.

To date, I have not seen that demonstrated.

Instead, I have watched the city repeatedly restructure this transaction to preserve the participation of the same purchaser after the original purchase and sale agreement failed to close under its negotiated terms.4

That agreement established payment deadlines, default provisions, and expressly stated that “time is of the essence.”5

When those obligations were not met, the City did not enforce the agreement or return the property to the marketplace.67

Instead, it renegotiated the transaction, granted additional opportunities to perform, and ultimately approved a substantially revised agreement.8

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That raises obvious questions:

• Why was preserving this particular purchaser considered preferable to reopening the process and inviting competitive bids?

• What financial analysis demonstrated that continued negotiations with Oakland Acquisition Company represented a better outcome than testing the market?

Those questions have never been adequately answered.

Councilmember Noel Gallo raised additional concerns during the Council’s deliberations regarding the City’s limited visibility into negotiations involving Alameda County’s interest and questioned whether Oakland negotiated an adequate share of future ticket revenues.9

Those concerns deserve substantive answers—not assurances.

Troubled by “handshake deal”

Equally troubling has been the lack of transparency.

Major revisions to the agreement appeared only after negotiations had concluded. Public explanations followed rather than preceded significant changes.

Taxpayers should not have to reconstruct the economics of a nine-figure public transaction by comparing multiple versions of contracts and staff reports.

Good government requires more than eventual disclosure. It requires transparency while decisions are still being made.

I was also troubled by Councilmember Ken Houston’s description of aspects of this transaction as a “handshake deal,” followed by Mr. Irving Azoff’s assurance that “my word is my bond.”

While personal trust has its place, public transactions involving more than $100 million in taxpayer-owned assets must rest on enforceable agreements, documented financial analysis, rigorous due diligence and transparent public oversight—not personal assurances or informal understandings.

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Standards should not change depending on who is sitting across the negotiating table

Perhaps most disappointing is how difficult I find it to reconcile your vote with the principles you have publicly championed.1011

You have written about fiscal responsibility, transparency, accountability and the need for Oakland to develop “a culture of enforcement.”12

You have criticized fiscal recklessness and argued that government must consistently enforce the standards it establishes.13

Those are principles with which I wholeheartedly agree. That is why I find your support for this transaction so difficult to understand.

If Oakland truly needs a culture of enforcement, shouldn’t that principle apply when the City is disposing of one of its largest public assets?

Oakland residents are expected to comply with deadlines. Contractors doing business with the City are expected to comply with deadlines. Developers seeking permits are expected to comply with deadlines.

It is reasonable to ask why those same expectations did not apply when the purchaser of one of Oakland’s largest public assets failed to close under the negotiated terms of the agreement. The standards should not change depending on who is sitting across the negotiating table.

Constituents deserve acknowledgment and engagement

I am equally disappointed by your office’s lack of responsiveness. Over the past several weeks I have contacted your constituent representative multiple times regarding this transaction and left several messages requesting a return call. None has been returned.

Whether you ultimately agree with my concerns or not, constituents deserve acknowledgment and engagement—particularly on one of the largest public real estate transactions in Oakland’s history.

Reasonable people can disagree about the future of the Coliseum. They should not disagree about the standards that govern the disposition of public property.

The burden is not on critics to propose an alternative redevelopment plan.

The burden is on the City to demonstrate that this transaction represents the best risk-adjusted outcome reasonably available to Oakland after a transparent process supported by sound financial analysis and full public accountability.

I do not believe that burden has been met.

If I have misunderstood the facts or overlooked analyses supporting this transaction, I invite you to respond publicly.

Oakland residents deserve to hear directly why you believe this was the best available deal for the City. I intend this letter to begin, not end, that discussion.

Respectfully,
Chris Urkofsky
Oakland resident
District 4

Editors’ note

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. Our nonprofit mission is to provide reasoned, fact-based, well-sourced reporting and analysis on local government issues, focused on observable and verifiable evidence free from implicit bias.

Our guiding principles are to present the facts and evidence and let the reader decide for themselves what to think. We achieve this by focusing on what people and organizations do, not what they say.

Another of our guiding principles is to always remain open to examining and questioning our own biases, and to keep an open forum for new information that may advance our understanding — and help Oaklanders better grasp the decision-making that affects our lives.

In that spirit, we invite Ramachandran to present her perspective on this article and report on her thought process behind her support for the Coliseum deal. If offered, we will publish her counterpoint as presented.

CORRECTION: This article was originally published with a video montage of clips from council member Ramachandran’s social media account (Instagram). The video was prepared by Oakland Report staff, and not by the author of this commentary. The video compilation fell short of our own standard of “no implicit bias,” and we have replaced it with the static image at the top of this article. Learn more.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Urkofsky is a 35-year Oakland resident who recently retired after a 33-year career with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), where he served as a licensed land surveyor and manager overseeing the development of regional Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

Throughout his career, Chris worked at the intersection of land records, mapping, information technology, public infrastructure and government administration—experience that reinforced his belief in transparency, accountability and the rule of law in public decision-making.

A lifelong student of political science, public policy and history, Chris has been active in California Democratic Party affairs, served as a public sector union officer, and written on governance, fiscal responsibility and the stewardship of public assets.

While he strongly supports redevelopment of the Coliseum property, Chris believes major public transactions must be conducted through transparent processes that protect taxpayers and preserve public trust. He and his wife have called Oakland home for more than three decades.

The views expressed in our Commentaries do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of Oakland Report or its contributing writers.

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Video clip 1. Mayor Barbara Lee promotes a “bulky trash block party”; a walk through West Oakland. July 2026. (Video sources: Instagram / @mayorbarbaralee; X / @senecaspeaks21)

Editors’ note: This essay was released by city of Oakland transportation director Josh Rowan on his personal Substack page with the subtitle, “A personal journey through Oakland’s illegal dumping crisis — from instinct to discovery to a four-step plan the city already has the tools to execute.” Oakland Report is republishing it with Rowan’s permission for our readers to consider.

BY JOSH ROWAN

Built to keep the garbage flowing

Oakland has a garbage problem. Everyone knows it. Almost everyone has the wrong solution.

This is the story of how I got it wrong, what the trash itself taught me, what history explains, what the math proves, and what four steps would end this — if anyone in authority has the will to take them.

Three independent oversight bodies — the Oakland City Auditor,1 the Alameda County Civil Grand Jury,2 and Oakland’s own employee survey3 — examined this problem separately in 2026 and reached identical conclusions.

They confirmed what I had been saying for over a year and what got me attacked for saying.

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The garbage is on the ground because of failed policy and because the trash is now a commodity that has value.

Not because Oakland residents are uniquely dirty. Not because enforcement is too weak. Because the system was built to keep the garbage coming — and keep the money flowing.

Trash is cash. Garbage is gold. Until Oakland dismantles the economics that make it profitable, the before-and-after photos will never stop.

Act 1

Oakland Scavenger — when it worked

Before Waste Management took over in 1986, Oakland’s trash was collected by the Oakland Scavenger Company — a worker-owned business founded by Italian immigrants more than a century ago.4

The scavengers knew their routes. They knew their customers. They had a direct ownership stake in the quality of their work. Retired third-generation garbage men remember a city that worked differently — a personal relationship between collector and community that corporate consolidation erased overnight.

When long-term Oakland residents say it wasn’t like this ten or fifteen years ago, they are not misremembering. They are describing a system that existed and functioned.

Two decisions destroyed it.

First: In 1986, Waste Management acquired the Oakland Scavenger Company. The worker-owned model ended. National corporate waste management began.

The personal accountability of ownership gave way to the efficiency calculations of a publicly traded company.

Waste Management is not a villain in this story. They just behave the way they behave.

We need them for now as a partner.

Second: In 2006, Oakland adopted a Zero Waste Strategic Plan. The intent was noble. Smaller cans would push residents to generate less waste.

In practice, it failed catastrophically. The plan pushed customers toward smaller garbage containers on the assumption that they would recycle more and need less trash can space.

Americans were entering an era of increasing packaging and disposable goods. Oakland imposed smaller trash cans on residents at exactly the moment residents were generating more waste.

The garbage had nowhere legal to go. It went to the street.

The Grand Jury named this directly as a cause of illegal dumping: the rate structure that resulted from the Zero Waste plan’s assumptions made larger containers cost nearly double, pushing residents toward the smallest can available.

The Davis Street Transfer Station in San Leandro — not even in Oakland — became the city’s primary legal drop-off option. One free visit per year. Residents had to drive to another city to use it.

The city ran popular bulky block parties — free neighborhood drop-off events that worked, drawing thousands of vehicles and hundreds of tons of waste — then ended them in 2024 due to budget constraints.

The policy hole grew. The trash filled it.5

This is why the long-term residents are right. It wasn’t like this before. Corporate consolidation coupled with a failed zero waste policy created a problem Oakland has been cleaning up ever since — and has never once addressed at its root.

Video clip 2. Encampment on 26th and Wood Street on May 15, 2026. (Source: Oakland Report)

Act 2

The flywheel — how I got it wrong and what the trash taught me

It was the fall of 2024. I drove into Oakland for the first time since the 1990s — the last time Chuck Cotter and I had come here together.

I spent a day behind the wheel. I ended up on East 14th headed east, turned left into the hills.

I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico. We had a hill and a valley. The hill meant wealth, privilege, and whiteness. The valley did not.

Oakland had the same dynamic. I had found it without anyone telling me where to look.

As I came into West Oakland, I could not soften what I thought. What the hell is all this trash?

In February 2025, my family visited. Mrs. Rowan saw it immediately. What’s with all this trash on the ground?

Around that time I interviewed with Mayor [Sheng] Thao on Zoom. She asked what I thought of Oakland. I said it was a beautiful city with enormous potential.

Then I put my foot in my mouth. What’s with all the garbage on the ground? I knew I had struck a nerve. Better out than in.

For most of 2024, I was Oakland’s DOT [Department of Transportation] Director. I created office hours — every Thursday in East Oakland, meeting with residents.

I found suppressed frustration and trauma. The complaints were consistent: the city ignores us, the sideshows are ruining our quality of life, the illegal dumping is out of control.

I was relieved illegal dumping belonged to Public Works. How hard could it be? Just pick up the garbage.

Then it happened at Charlie May Coffee and Tea House

A woman I had met once before at office hours came back. Furious. The kind of furious that makes you wonder whether the table or you is about to get hit.

She had visited another city — not known for greatness — and found no trash. Oakland sits beside water and hills and is covered in garbage. She challenged me. Then she recruited friends. They challenged me too. Do something about it.

I agreed. I had no authority. I spent my Fridays standing next to piles of trash. I stared at what was in them. Diapers. Food containers. Furniture. Clothing. Somebody’s house. Not construction debris. Not industrial waste. Somebody’s house.

The dominant narrative was that Oakland was a helpless victim — nefarious actors driving in from other cities with truckloads of construction debris.

That happens. It is not the primary driver.

City officials involved in cleanup told the Grand Jury the same thing: based on examinations of the debris, a majority appears to be residential. Anecdotally, several officials told the Grand Jury that most waste appears to come from within Oakland.

I was looking at residential garbage. I was wrong about where it came from. I changed my mind.

At the end of 2024, I became Acting Public Works Director. The trash was mine. I assembled my managers with the largest crews and most equipment. All hands. Clean the city.

My managers spoke truth without softening it. Fine plan. What happens when the trash comes back?

Video clip 3. Oakland has long struggled to reduce the volume of trash dumped in its streets. (Sources: Instagram @KTVU2; X @senecaspeaks21; Oakland Report)

I spent time with the crews who pick it up — KOCB [Keep Oakland Clean and Beautiful]. Remarkable people. Their equipment is inadequate.

There is no clearer signal that a workforce’s work does not matter than providing poor tools to do it.

The Grand Jury confirmed this independently: KOCB crews frequently encounter broken vehicles and equipment, with repairs delayed — and the resulting slowdowns are a documented drag on the city’s cleanup capacity.

That became priority one: better staff, better equipment. Current capacity is approximately 20 million pounds per year — or 47 pounds for every Oakland resident. We needed 30 million.6

Then I ran an experiment. I picked specific locations and kept them clean. I believed visible effort would discourage dumping.

The opposite happened. The cleaner we kept a location, the more trash appeared. Hot spots became de facto transfer facilities. Cleaner meant more trash. And the new trash was residential and commercial.

The flywheel was spinning and I had just made it spin faster.

The New York Times called it Trashland

The New York Times reached out to cover Oakland’s trash. They called it Trashland.

I notified the PIO and City Administrator. They approved the interview. I followed every proper channel. Some high-profile trash advocates were unhappy I did the interview, that my photo ran in the Times, and that I said picking up the trash is not the solution.7

The most controversial thing I said was this: we are doing this to ourselves.

The trash is residential. It is commercial. It is not imported. Oaklanders dump in Oakland. No one agreed. Some took offense — an outsider blaming Oakland for its own problem. We are victims, I was told.

I kept staring at the piles. The piles kept telling the same story.

The zero waste failure and the equity hidden inside it

During office hours, roughly half the residents who came to see me said the same thing: it wasn’t like this ten or fifteen years ago.

That is when the Zero Waste Strategic Plan took effect and the solid waste market consolidated. Both decisions compounded on each other and produced the streets you see today.

The Grand Jury confirmed it: Oakland’s standard residential garbage container holds 32 gallons. A 64-gallon container costs $110.31 per month — nearly double the $62.83 charged for the 32-gallon standard.

Rates rise steeply with larger containers, exactly as the Zero Waste plan’s assumptions intended.

The result: to keep costs low, residents choose cans that are too small for their actual waste generation. The overflow goes to the street.

This is not speculation. This is Finding 26-4 of the Grand Jury report.

2025-2026 Alameda County Grand Jury Final Report

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The City of Oakland faces a massive illegal dumping problem. What was once a mere littering problem has become, as one city official told the Grand Jury, “Piles of dumped material on street corners.” These piles total about 20 million pounds of debris collected by the city, or about 47 pounds per resident! Given this overwhelming and persistent problem, the Grand Jury investigated illegal dumping in Oakland and the city’s response.

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Here is the equity dimension that nobody talks about. It costs more to collect trash in the Oakland hills.

The terrain requires smaller trucks and two-person crews. Under Oakland’s current flat rate structure, flatlands residents pay the same rate as hills residents — even though hills collection costs more to deliver.

The flatlands subsidize the hills. The people with the least financial resources pay more than their share of the city’s collection costs. So they choose the smallest can to cut their monthly bill.

The overflow goes to the street. The flatlands bear both the subsidy and the dumping.

Berkeley already prices collection by actual cost of service — a structure mandated under California’s Proposition 218. When Berkeley realigned its rates to actual costs in 2023, it acknowledged years of cross-subsidy. 89

Oakland has the same legal framework available. It has not used it. The flatlands pay for the hills. That is institutional inequity hiding inside a garbage bill.

The math

Oakland has roughly 80,000 single-family homes. The standard residential trash container holds 32 gallons. Public Works removes approximately 20 million pounds per year — 47 pounds per resident.

At a conservative density of half a pound per gallon for residential household waste, that is 40 million gallons annually — roughly 61 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of illegal dumping removed from Oakland streets every year.10

Move the can to 64 gallons. The gap between the current 32-gallon standard and a 64-gallon standard — from single-family homes alone — adds 166 million gallons of legal annual capacity. That is more than four times the volume currently removed from the streets.

Instead of circling the block looking for a median, a commercial dumpster, or one of the city’s public street bins — the green cans placed throughout neighborhoods that attract bags of overflow trash the night before collection, and that some neighborhoods have actually petitioned to have removed for this reason — residents could ask a neighbor if they have extra space.

That is not a policy failure. That is a neighborhood functioning. The Waste Management pilot showed exactly that dynamic — when capacity exists, people use it.

This is fifth-grade arithmetic. Multiply two numbers. Subtract. Compare. The answer has been here since 2006.

Oakland collects more than $30 million per year in franchise fees from Waste Management for the exclusive right to collect garbage from Oakland residents. Those fees are baked into the rates residents pay.

Oakland’s rates run 23 to 40 percent above neighboring cities served by the same hauler. The franchise fee may be a direct driver of the high prices that push residents toward smaller cans and overflow onto streets.

That connection deserves scrutiny. A forensic audit of the Waste Management franchise fee is not a fishing expedition. It is due diligence on a $30 million annual revenue stream that may represent another layer of failed policy.

What this actually costs

The Grand Jury found that the Public Works Department budget includes approximately $28.2 million for the divisions directly responsible for abating and enforcing illegal dumping — including:

• $10 million directly for dumping cleanup

• $2.6 million for environmental enforcement

• $750,000 for stewardship and volunteer coordination

• $11.1 million for street sweeping, which the department views as a first line of defense.

Meanwhile, the city collected just over $16,000 in citation revenue in FY 2024-25, against $2 million in enforcement spending.

The Environmental Enforcement Unit issued citations consistently in the six figures annually — and collected a fraction. Of 3,293 citations issued since 2020, the city conducted 588 internal reviews and dismissed 566 of them.

Only 14 proceeded to appeal hearings.

Act 3

Trash is cash — no one in charge and everyone getting paid

In 2014, a city council member announced a candidacy for mayor at an illegal dumping site in East Oakland. She posed for photos. She left the trash where it was.

That was the moment garbage became a political platform in Oakland.

More than a decade later, the same politician is still in the middle of the action, still proposing solutions, still collecting a city paycheck to address a problem she has never solved.

Picking up garbage became a social media platform. Before-and-after photos built audiences. Community cleanup events built political brands.

Cameras showed up. Politicians showed up. Nonprofits showed up. For-profits showed up. Everyone wanted a piece of the action. The before photo is worth more than the after photo. The before photo is the fundraiser. As long as there are before photos, the money flows.

Read this related article:

One nonprofit led the way — securing no-bid contracts and change orders, receiving waivers of the small and local business ordinance, and operating without competitive procurement for years after the emergency justification that created the arrangement had ended.

The result was predictable.

Other organizations, both nonprofit and for-profit, saw the model and lined up for the same treatment. I could not go anywhere in public without someone seeking a no-bid contract to pick up trash. Everyone wanted to get paid without competition, without small business requirements, without accountability for results.

I have done a financial analysis of that nonprofit’s contracts, change orders, and invoice records. The findings are significant and will be released separately.

A special thanks to @pengweather— not an Oakland resident, but someone who genuinely cared about this city’s garbage problem and sought to make a difference without seeking anything in return. He represents what civic engagement is supposed to look like.

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Nobody is in charge — the Grand Jury said so directly

The Grand Jury documented a city where officials gave conflicting accounts of their own programs, were unaware of Council actions taken months earlier, and could not agree on basic facts about their approach.

The report described officials who ‘seemed unaware of recent developments or what other parts of the city government were doing.’ They provided ‘different descriptions of Oakland’s current approach to illegal dumping.’

They ‘either could not explain or provided unclear information about the status of Oaktown PROUD.’ [Prevent and Report Our Unlawful Dumping program.]

Officials were unaware that the city council had authorized the use of Community Safety camera footage for illegal dumping enforcement — an action taken months before the Grand Jury’s investigation.

The Grand Jury’s conclusion: ‘Oakland’s efforts have suffered from a lack of clarity and consistency, with many officials involved, conflicting descriptions of the city’s current approach, limited awareness of current developments, and no one clearly in charge.’

Finding 26-24 states it plainly: the City of Oakland does not have a single point person responsible for overseeing and coordinating its illegal dumping efforts. Recommendation 26-7 calls for designating one within 90 days.

In the past several years, Oakland has not referred a single case to the Alameda County District Attorney for criminal prosecution of illegal dumping. It has filed one civil action. 11

The Grand Jury asked the Finance Department for basic citation collection data. It asked multiple times. People promised to deliver the information. It never came. A county oversight body asked a city for its own math and the city could not produce it.

The Acting City Administrator’s official response to the Grand Jury report said the city was ‘pleased to be in alignment with the recommendations’ and that they ‘have already been authorized, funded, and launched.’ The response mentioned cameras, drones, handheld technology for enforcement officers, overtime funding, and cleanup events.

It did not mention the Waste Management contract renegotiation — the City Auditor’s top recommendation — once.12

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The enforcement collapse

The Grand Jury called illegal dumping enforcement in Oakland ‘inadequate and abysmal.’ The numbers back that up. The Environmental Enforcement Unit — seven budgeted positions, one still frozen — issued a few hundred citations per year against roughly 24,000 to 25,000 cleanup requests annually.

Of citations issued since 2020, the city dismissed 566 of 588 that received internal administrative review. Only 14 reached appeal hearings.

Cameras captured dumping incidents and yielded 17.9 percent of citations over several years — while violators routinely covered or removed license plates to avoid identification.

The District Attorney has been direct: she cannot prosecute a license plate. She needs a positive identification of the person committing the crime.

We are flying drones over East Oakland searching for piles of garbage after the fact. East Oakland is already one of the most surveilled communities in the region.

Read this related article:

The idea that the answer is more surveillance of Black and immigrant communities — communities that bear the brunt of the zero waste policy failure — while the policy itself goes unchanged is not an equity position. It is the opposite.

Most people dumping illegally are not criminals. They are struggling to survive in a city that jammed them up with a failed policy. If we believe what we say about equity, we stop talking and fix the policy.

A message to every candidate running this year

It is an election year. Candidates are making promises. Some do not understand the problem they are promising to solve.

Here is my message to all of them: the first one of you who poses for a photo in front of a pile of garbage loses my support. I encourage you to join a neighborhood adopt-a-spot cleanup. I will personally take you on a citywide trash tour — after hours, when the cameras are off.

Go educate yourself before you make another promise.

And if you skip that step and come into office waving your arms demanding all-hands solutions — I understand. I know exactly how that feels. That is what I did.

The trash always comes back, often more.

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The mayor has a ten-point plan. Two of those points speak directly to this crisis — investing in illegal dumping solutions and auditing city finances.

We are watching. Honor those commitments.

Start the financial audit with the Waste Management franchise fee. Oakland residents deserve to know where that $30 million goes annually and whether it is contributing to the rates that drive residents toward undersized cans and streets full of overflow.

Act 4

Stop the flywheel — the four-step plan

Stop with the before-and-after photos of garbage piles. The before photo goes away through prevention. Stop providing cover for policy failure by spending your own weekend picking up the garbage of others. This is a map problem — the garbage lands where policy failure meets economic incentive. Fix the map.

Four steps. All achievable within twelve months. All supported by the data, the math, and three independent oversight reports. All focused on prevention, not cleanup.

Step 1: Better staff and better equip public works

The crews who pick up trash are remarkable people doing difficult work with inadequate equipment.

Invest in them. Current capacity is approximately 20 million pounds per year. We need 30 million. The only way to get there is to staff and equip the teams who do the actual work.

City crews and Waste Management are the only two groups that should be paid to pick up Oakland’s trash. Every dollar spent on no-bid nonprofit contracts is a dollar not invested in the people and equipment that will still be here in ten years.

Step 2: Get back to the negotiating table with Waste Management

We had a deal. Then we did not have a deal. Oakland residents pay 23 to 40 percent more than neighboring cities served by the same hauler.

The City Auditor named contract renegotiation as the top recommendation. The Grand Jury’s Recommendation 26-8 called for completing amendments to the franchise agreement that will change the rate structure to make larger containers more affordable, enable increased use of free bulky waste services, and reduce scheduling delays.

Waste Management has already piloted larger bins and documented immediate reductions in street overflow. More gallons at the curb. Lower prices.

Finish the negotiation. And while at the table, conduct a forensic audit of the franchise fee to determine whether that fee structure is itself a driver of the rates pushing residents toward illegal dumping.

Step 3: Collapse the private junk hauler economy

Stop paying cash up front for results you cannot verify. Require proof of legal disposal — a receipt or photo from a licensed transfer station — before electronic payment releases.

The Grand Jury’s own report noted that KOCB’s website already urges customers to ‘Request dump receipts from haulers before paying’ — then acknowledged that this almost never happens because it is not practical for a customer to withhold payment until the hauler returns with a receipt.

Flip that dynamic. Pay after proof, via a digital app. The hauler who dumps illegally does not get paid. The hauler who disposes properly gets paid within seconds. No permits required. No new regulations required.

One payment rule change ends the economic incentive for illegal dumping by unlicensed haulers.

Step 4: Pass the commercial special assessment

It is already written. The Grand Jury estimated thousands of Oakland businesses operate without mandatory trash service — with some estimates as high as one in six.

When commercial customers stop paying, service stops and the trash goes to the street.

Oakland’s ordinance currently does not allow the city to take the same property lien actions against delinquent businesses that it can take against residential owners. The commercial special assessment closes this gap. Pass it now.

The bottom line

The City Auditor issued 17 recommendations in April 2026. Only four were marked complete as of the Grand Jury’s report in June. The city approved the IDEA Plan in May 2026 — $1.1 million in new contracts, drones, and equipment — without the auditor’s primary recommendation to renegotiate the Waste Management contract.

Performance Audit of Illegal Dumping

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Illegal dumping has long been a problem in Oakland, negatively affecting health, safety, the environment, property, and economic well-being. We completed this audit of illegal dumping based in part on concerns of Oakland residents.

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The Acting City Administrator’s response to the Grand Jury praised the IDEA Plan and made no mention of the contract renegotiation the auditor and Grand Jury both called for.

One city employee, responding to the 2026 Ethical Climate Survey, wrote that the City Council is blatantly corrupt. The Auditor’s office printed it without comment.

Employees with ten or more years of service rated their elected officials 62 out of 100. The longest-serving employees trust their leaders least.

I have been attacked for eighteen months for saying what three independent bodies have now confirmed. I know what I am. I am the biggest threat to the trash grift. I promised my East Oakland friends I would play every card I have. I am playing them.

I cannot live in this garbage. I will not raise my son in filth. I have the resources to leave Oakland. That solves my family’s problem. It does not solve Oakland’s problem. Oakland has two years to show me it means what it says about equity, about services, about being a city that works for everyone who lives in it.

Change the policy. Fix the zero waste failure. Audit the franchise fee. Staff and equip public works. Collapse the private hauler economics. Pass the commercial assessment. Get back to the table with Waste Management and close the deal.

Read this related article:

Even dogs don’t soil where they eat. Oakland can do better. It has to.

I’m from the flats, I walk these streets
Every morning, just to reach
School ain’t far, but the walk’s a mess
Stepping over your couch, your old mattress

We walk with pride, heads held high
Don’t trash the Town, that’s my reply
One day we’ll walk these streets and see
The Town for me, the Town for me

— from Josh Rowan, “I Walk This Town” [12]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Josh Rowan is the director of transportation for the city of Oakland. A resident of Oakland, he joined the city of Oakland in that role in April 2024, then also served as the city of Oakland’s public works director for several months in 2025.

Josh served as interim oversight director of Oakland public works during the period covered by the city auditor’s April 2026 performance audit, which acknowledged his cooperation in its cover letter and cited his November 2025 memorandum to the privacy advisory commission as a source.

Prior to working for Oakland, he served as commissioner of the city of Atlanta’s department of transportation. His career in the public sector includes work as a program manager for transportation, transit, education, healthcare, and law enforcement capital construction. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.

The views expressed in our Commentaries do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of Oakland Report or its contributing writers.

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BY EMMET GARDNER

OUSD’s district-run schools lost more enrollment than other nearby school districts

Over the past two-and-a-half decades, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) has lost more students than any nearby district.

OUSD enrolled around 43,500 public school students in 2025-26 — approximately 11,400 fewer than in 2000-01.

Most of that 25-year loss happened in Oakland’s district-run (non-charter) public schools. Excluding charter schools, enrollment at OUSD-run schools fell 35%.

OUSD officials blame falling birth rates, families moving away, and competition from charter and private schools.12

To test the effects of falling birth rates — a nationwide trend — Oakland Report examined 25 years of California Department of Education (CDE) enrollment records.3

We also examined U.S. Census Bureau population data for OUSD and six nearby districts: Alameda, Berkeley, Castro Valley, Emery, Piedmont City and San Leandro.45

The bottom line: District-run enrollment in Oakland fell far more than the number of school-age children living here — pointing to forces beyond demographics.

Key findings

• OUSD’s district-run schools lost over 35% of their students since 2000.

• Oakland’s population of school-aged children fell only an estimated 23%.

• Statewide, California’s kids ages 5-17 fell just 2.8% (2000-2020).

• Charter schools now enroll 22% of Oakland’s public school students.

• Roughly 1 in 5 school-age Oakland kids do not attend Oakland public schools.

• No nearby district lost more students than OUSD.

Oakland’s school-age population fell an estimated 23% from 2000 to 2024 — far more than the statewide decline

Birth rates and population are not the same: population also changes as families move in or out, so we compared enrollment against both.

The population measure we used for school-age children is residents ages 5 to 17 — the closest Census age range to K-12 school age.

Birth rate: Statewide, California recorded 531,285 live births in 2000. After a peak in the late 2000s, the annual total has fallen to under 420,000 — a drop of more than 111,000 births, or about 21%.67

School-age population: California’s ages 5-17 population fell just 2.8% between the 2000 and 2020 Censuses (6,762,848 to 6,573,679).

Even with continued statewide decline since, Oakland’s decline in ages 5-17 population was far greater: an estimated 23% from 2000 (73,030) to the 2024 estimate of 56,350.89

The 2000 figure is a Census-derived estimate using OUSD’s 2001-02 boundaries; 2010 and 2020 are direct counts, so the 2000 number is a benchmark rather than an exact match.

Since 2020, annual estimates suggest the school-age population is falling again: 61,503 (2021), 55,464 (2022), 54,187 (2023), 56,350 (2024), each with a margin of about ±4,000. The margins are wide, but the three most recent estimates — including the top of each range — all fall below the 2020 count of 60,884.

Oakland lost school-age population at a faster rate than neighboring districts

Comparing the 2000 benchmarks with the newest five-year estimates (ACS 2020-24), Oakland’s child population fell furthest: down 19.3% (73,030 to 58,941).

Piedmont fell 16.6% and Castro Valley and Emery each fell about 10% — though estimates for these small districts carry wide margins.

Berkeley (+6.0%), Alameda (+4.5%) and San Leandro (+2.4%) all ended above their 2000 levels.

Charter and district-run public school enrollment moved in opposite directions

OUSD’s total public school enrollment fell 21% — from 54,863 in 2000-01 to 43,484 in 2025-26.

Within that total, charter and district-run public school enrollment moved in opposite directions.

• District-run (non-charter) enrollment fell 35% — from 52,372 to 33,891.

• Charters were 1.4% of Oakland’s public enrollment in 2000-01; today they are 22%.

Of the 11,379-student total decline, district-run schools account for 18,481 lost students, partly offset by 8,811 added charter seats, with the balance in unmatched historical records.

OUSD’s enrollment decline is even steeper when excluding transitional kindergarten

California created transitional kindergarten (TK) in 2012-13, bringing new cohorts of younger, pre-kindergarten aged students into the public school system.

Recent enrollment data includes TK students while earlier data covers K-12 only. This article uses CDE’s official TK/K-12 totals, the conservative measure.

Oakland’s 2025-26 enrollment figures include 1,723 TK students.

Excluding TK students, OUSD’s enrollment decline is even steeper: a 24% decline in total enrollment and a 38% decline for district-run schools since 2000-01.

Oakland lost the most students of any nearby district; only much smaller Emery declined more proportionally

Comparing 2000-01 with 2025-26, the most recent school year: OUSD’s 21% decline (11,379 students) was the largest in absolute terms, and second-largest in percentage terms behind Emery’s 37%.

Piedmont fell 7.5% and Berkeley 2.2%.

Alameda (+1.3%), San Leandro (+8.2%) and Castro Valley (+22%) ended above their 2000-01 levels.

One in five school-age Oaklanders is outside local public schools

To see how many school-age children are not in their district’s public schools, we compared each district’s Census population estimate with its average public enrollment for the same years — the difference is the gap.

Oakland’s gap was the largest in every period measured: 14% to 22% of its school-age population.

A large gap fits with more children in private schools, homeschooling, other districts, or not enrolled at all.

But this is a net estimate, not a head count: OUSD also enrolls students from outside its boundaries, which shrinks the gap. A few districts enroll more students than the estimated children living there.

These are survey-based estimates whose ranges cover only survey error; read them as broad indicators.

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Other considerations and counterpoints

Points for readers to consider, largely without rebuttal:

• In percentage terms, much smaller Emery declined more than OUSD (37% versus 21%).

• OUSD enrollment grew 4.6% in the 2010s while Berkeley, Piedmont and Emery declined.

• The population and enrollment series end in different years and use different methods, so headline percentages are not perfectly synchronized.

• The gap estimate’s ranges overlap with several neighbors’, and nonresident enrollment would shrink Oakland’s gap.

• Part of the district-run decline is classification, not departure: converted schools count as charters throughout (see methodology notes).

• Charter schools are public schools too: charter growth stays within Oakland’s public system, so the district-run decline does not mean those students left public education.

• Additional methodology notes are presented in the endnotes.10

A compounding loss

Oakland’s school-age population fell sharply in the 2000s, partly rebounded by 2020, and appears to be falling again — an estimated 23% below its 2000 benchmark.

Total enrollment followed a similar arc, ending 21% down — now roughly comparable to the population’s decline.

The sharpest split is within the total: district-run enrollment fell 35% — far beyond both the total decline and the population decline — while charter enrollment grew more than twelvefold before peaking in 2019-20.

The comprehensive reading: Oakland’s district-run schools lost more than a third of their students to three forces — a shrinking school-age population, a net shift of children out of local public schools, and a shift within public enrollment toward charters.

What the data does not explain is why any family left, or where each student went.

Read these related articles:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emmet Gardner is a student-leader at Bishop O’Dowd High School with a strong focus on youth STEM education and peer mentorship. Over the past three years, he has worked closely with Kids Teach Tech, an organization dedicated to providing technology and engineering education to underserved youth, and is a teacher at their UC Berkeley Programming Summer Camps. Emmet is a participant in Oakland Report’s inaugural summer internship program.

WE ARE 100% SUPPORTED BY YOU

Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. Our mission is to provide accurate, deep-dive, data-driven reporting and analysis that you will find nowhere else. If you value our work, please donate. All contributions go directly to sustaining and growing our 501(c)(3) nonprofit work.

Donate to Oakland Report

Learn more

Editors’ note: The original version of this article displayed Figure 2 with population figures only through the year 2020. The figure has been updated to also include population estimates from 2024 to align with the article narrative. Our thanks to an alert reader for bringing the missing data to our attention.

10

FLASHBACK 2024 — Former mayor Sheng Thao, former city administrator Jestin Johnson, and developer Ray Bobbitt hold a signing ceremony and press conference heralding the first iteration of the Oakland Coliseum Complex sale agreement on July 30, 2024. Bobbitt’s company ultimately missed scheduled payments on the original deal, triggering a multimillion-dollar city budget shortfall and contingency cuts. (Video sources: Instagram / @mayorshengthao; Adobe Stock; Oakland Report)

Oakland Agenda Watch provides summaries of key items on upcoming public meeting agendas that catch our attention. In this installment, we examine today’s Oakland city council meeting to vote on final passage of the restructured Oakland Coliseum sale. Also: a refined estimate of the avoided interest for the buyer and foregone potential revenue to the city; and a response to city officials’ claims that the deal is not a loan.

A loan by any other word would smell as sweet

Today the Oakland city council takes up its final vote on the sale and “seller financing” of the city’s share of the Oakland Coliseum Complex property to a group led by Ray Bobbitt’s company — a developer with no prior large-scale projects under his belt.

Up for votes are the second reading and council approval of a new sale agreement, and a resolution directing $50 million of sale proceeds toward the city’s roughly $2 billion in pension debt.12

The city is set to convey its 50 percent share to a group led by Bobbitt’s company, Oakland Acquisition Company (OAC), while financing roughly half the price with a deferred payment schedule at a below-market interest rate — in other words, a loan.

Notably, Bobbitt’s company intends to immediately resell the Oakland Arena portion of the complex to another buyer — apparently to raise needed cash that OAC has not secured, and has not shown it can secure, from other lenders.34

Additionally, according to eyewitness accounts shared with Oakland Report, some Oakland officials have been telling constituents the proposed deal is not a “loan.”

When is a loan not a “loan”? We checked the city’s own documents to examine the question — and will leave it to our readers to decide for themselves.

Why the Coliseum deal is being voted on again

The latest iteration of the deal requires two public readings at city council meetings. City council held the first reading at a special meeting on July 13, and voted 6-1 to approve it. Council member Noel Gallo opposed it and council president Kevin Jenkins was absent from the vote.5

In 2024, then-mayor Sheng Thao’s administration struck the original deal to sell the city’s half of the Coliseum to Bobbitt’s company, then known primarily as the African American Sports and Entertainment Group (AASEG) for $105 million.6

The city then built that money into its budget before the payments had been secured — counting on roughly $63 million in sale revenue to avoid cuts.

Bobbitt’s company missed its scheduled payments that fall, the promised money never came, and the city imposed contingency budget cuts to close the gap.7 The city then revised the deal to give Bobbitt’s company more time to pay.

Today’s vote comes three weeks after the revised agreement’s own closing deadline — June 30, 2026 — passed without a closing.8 OAC never made the payments scheduled under the prior versions of the deal; the initial $5 million deposit remains its only payment made to date. The council removed the interim payment deadline entirely in May 2025.9

The proposed new deal has moved on an expedited track because officials want to close the deal by January. The deal was reviewed in closed session July 7, forwarded to the council’s scheduling committee July 9, and heard at the full council four days later.10

At a celebratory pre-vote press conference on July 13, mayor Barbara Lee called the proposed new deal “a step forward,” and Oak View Group co-founder Irving Azoff — whose company is reported to be set to buy the Oakland Arena portion of the property from Bobbitt’s company after the deal is signed — appeared alongside council members celebrating the deal.11

When a loan is not a ‘loan’: city officials offer bespoke definitions

According to eyewitness accounts shared with Oakland Report, council member Charlene Wang (District 2) told a recent neighborhood meeting that the proposed new Coliseum deal is not a loan.

At the same meeting, council member Zac Unger (District 1) reportedly offered an explanation to the effect that “loan” was not the right term to describe the city’s seller financing of the sale.

Similar arguments by supporters of the deal have circulated in some venues, describing the arrangement instead as an “installment sale” or a “land write-down.”

We stand behind our reporting — and our accurate use of the common English word “loan” to describe the deal — and the city’s own documents show why.

A loan, in the simplest terms, is an arrangement in which one party (lender) provides money or an asset to another party (borrower), to be repaid over time, usually with interest.

In this case, the asset being loaned is the Oakland Coliseum Complex.

“Seller financing” — the terminology used by the city to describe the deal — refers to a type of loan in which the seller also acts as the lender, extending credit to the buyer/borrower instead of receiving the price up front.12

The ordinance before the council today authorizes the sale of the stadium parcel “for $60 million with seller financing from the City.” The city’s own staff report calls it “a seller financed sale of the City’s interest in the stadium parcel.”

An “installment sale” is the tax law term — Internal Revenue Code section 453 — for precisely the arrangement currently proposed: a sale in which the seller receives payments over time (in this case, the payments would be deferred up to five years) and reports interest on the deferred balance.13

Calling the deal an installment sale concedes that it is seller financed.

Similarly, a “land write-down” describes how a property is valued, not how it is paid for. A city can discount a price for public benefit conditions and still finance the discounted price. One is valuation; the other is lending. Both can be true at once.

To be clear, this is not a criticism of this form of loan as a financial practice. It is, however, an observation — supported by the public record — that city officials appear to be using deceptive wordplay to elide the truth about the Coliseum deal and their financial decision-making around it.

Then there is the city’s arithmetic. The staff report projects $125 million in total receipts from the sale: $5 million already received, $50 million at closing, and “the remaining balance of $70 million... in future years.”

The city’s own term sheet and staff report define what “future years” means: a $55 million “stadium parcel closing purchase price” repaid in three installments — the first due on “the first anniversary of issuance of planned development approval” or five years from closing, whichever comes first.

In other words, the first payment could be deferred to as late as 2032.

The remaining $15 million consists of “additional payments” if OAC secures building permits for future development — these are conditional payments, memorialized as deed covenants, that arrive only if development advances.

The city’s stated $125 million total leaves out the interest itself: roughly $18 million per the new payment schedule.

The sale ordinance’s operative text authorizes the city administrator to “negotiate and execute a loan agreement, promissory note, and deed of trust for the seller financing from the City of the Stadium Parcel sale, with five percent (5%) interest.”

This backstop is weaker than some summaries suggest: the term sheet requires only “best efforts” to obtain a guaranty or payment bond, due by the later of January 1, 2027, or four months after closing — after the deal closes, not as a condition of it.

If the assurance doesn’t materialize, the city retains the outstanding half of the prorated subsidy payment, and the stadium price rises $100,000 for each month it remains outstanding.

The city’s own celebratory materials assert that payments will arrive “on a prescribed schedule without lending any funds to OAC.”14

The city’s statement relies on an unusually narrow definition under which a “loan” means only wiring cash to the borrower.

In fact, the proposed new “seller financed” sale advances the asset to the buyer/borrower before full payment is completed — and what the city ends up holding is the buyer’s debt.

A loan agreement, deferred payments, stated interest rate, a deed of trust, a promissory note, a foreclosure right: whatever officials prefer to call it, the city’s own documents describe a loan.

The facts of the Coliseum Complex deal, according to the city’s own documents

The latest version of the Coliseum transaction has confused many Oaklanders — including, it appears, some of its supporters. City officials have repeatedly stated that the deal is extraordinarily complicated, and it is.

We agree that the documents — and the deal itself — are difficult to understand, which may have contributed to the differing interpretations. To help unwind the confusion, here is each step of the deal, grounded in the language of the public record.

The estimated public subsidy to Ray Bobbitt’s OAC, revised

Earlier this month, we estimated how much OAC saves by borrowing from the city and county at 5 percent instead of paying higher interest rates on the commercial lending market. Our first estimate was $45 million to $114 million.15 New documents and information enabled us to refine those numbers downward.

The city’s loan is about $55 million, not $60 million, because OAC’s $5 million deposit counts toward the price.

The county’s loan is about $65 million, not $115 million, because the county gets at least $50 million from the Arena sale right away and credits it against OAC’s bill. The county, in turn, pays the Athletics sports team affiliate that bought the county’s share of the property $115 million plus accrued interest to buy back its half.

The two governments also protect themselves differently. The county keeps its deed until it is fully paid — a protection stronger than collateral — and collects half of any operating profits toward the balance.

The city does the opposite: it hands over its deed at closing and takes back a promissory note, secured by a deed of trust that lets the city foreclose if OAC defaults on the payments.

Both loans work the same way. Interest builds at 5 percent per year until the first payment, which can wait until as late as year five. The last payment can come as late as year seven.

Running the numbers on those terms: if a bank would charge 8 percent for a loan like this, OAC saves about $27 million in interest. If a private lender would charge 12 percent, OAC saves about $67 million.

In today’s dollars — what the discount is worth on the day the deal closes — the total public subsidy comes to roughly $18 million to $37 million, with the city’s share about $8 million to $17 million.

One more payment sits outside the interest math: the city pays OAC about $1.5 million of its stadium operating subsidy — half at closing, and half only after OAC provides a third-party payment guarantee.

The financial realities of the proposed Coliseum deal

Stripped of labels, Tuesday’s two votes, if affirmative, would produce the following:

• The city receives $50 million at closing and uses it to pay against a roughly $2 billion unfunded pension liability, per the city’s fiscal policy for the use of one-time revenue.

• The city then waits, up to five to seven years, for $70 million more from a buyer whose only payment in the past two years was the $5 million deposit.

• The 5 percent the city will earn on that waiting is less than CalPERS’ own assumed rate of return of 6.8 percent — meaning that even by the city’s investment benchmark, every year of deferral loses ground.16

• The city also pays the buyer roughly $1.5 million at closing, sheds an annualized $6 million stadium operating subsidy, and gains a 6 percent share of ticket sales that the city estimates at about $3 million per year.

• The risk that the $70 million never fully arrives — the risk every lender carries — rests with the city, which is why the word “loan” matters.

There was also an alternative buyer on the table. As we previously reported, Legends Global — the Arena’s longtime operator — made an offer of roughly $102 million for the Arena, which officials turned down. Interested parties were referred to OAC under the city’s exclusive negotiating arrangement with Bobbitt’s company.17

The structure leaves questions the council, as a public agency selling a public asset, ideally will answer before the final vote.

The county term sheet entitles the county to the greater of $50 million or half the Arena sale’s net proceeds, and provides for equal city-county sharing of component sales — yet the city’s staff report describes Oakland’s Arena proceeds as exactly $50 million.

If Bobbitt’s company flips (resells) the Arena to another buyer (reportedly Azoff’s Oak View Group) for more than the $100 million floor, who keeps the difference? The Arena passes through OAC’s hands in a back-to-back escrow on its way to the new buyer. The public documents appear not to commit to what the Arena buyer is actually paying, what expenses come off the top, or whether OAC or its affiliates receive any fee or spread on that leg.

Caveats

The terms reported here are drawn from the ordinance text and the city term sheet attached to the July 13 agenda report.

The term sheet is expressly non-binding, and the final executed version of the agreement may differ — we will update this analysis if they do.

We report the subsidy both as nominal avoided interest and as present value at closing; the former answers how many future dollars the buyer avoids, the latter what the concession is worth today.

Per the city term sheet, the $70 million balance consists of the $55 million note principal and the $15 million in conditional permit milestone payments; the note’s 5 percent interest is in addition to — and not counted in — the $125 million total.

Our estimate remains illustrative: market-rate ranges are national; and the closing payment depends on the closing date.

Our estimate also assumes the county’s Arena share is exactly $50 million (a higher Arena price would shrink the financed balance further) and the latest installment timing (an earlier Planned Development Approval would start payments sooner and shrink the subsidy on both sides).

None of this measures OAC’s ultimate profit for the deal, which by one estimate is potentially in the “billions of dollars.”18

Words matter because the risks matter

The council may well conclude on Tuesday that this deal, loans and all, beats the alternatives and is in the best interest of the city and the public it serves. That is the council’s judgment to make — and ideally the council’s deliberations today will lay out the council’s judgment for the public to hear.

But it is not accurate for city officials to deny that the proposed deal is a loan.

The city’s own ordinance says “seller financing” — by definition, a form of loan. The city’s own staff report counts the interest — the financial hallmark of a loan.

Words matter because financial risks do: Oaklanders cannot weigh a risk their elected officials will not name.

Read these related articles:

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BY JOSH ROWAN

Editors’ note: This statement was released by city of Oakland transportation director Josh Rowan on his Substack page in response to a July 8 article published in local media outlet The Oaklandside.1

The article, which appears to have been written based on records the city provided through a Public Records Act request, named Rowan as a city whistleblower who has “filed several complaints about new City Administrator Betsy Lake and other officials.”

In his statement, Rowan alludes to “two media hit pieces,” possibly also referring to an earlier article in The Oaklandside about an ethics complaint Rowan filed against council member Ken Houston.2

Rowan provided Oakland Report with emails he sent to The Oaklandside requesting corrections to the July 8 article. His emails also alleged that the records the city provided the media outlet violated the city’s whistleblower protection rules and state law.

Rowan also claimed that he searched past articles and “could not find another example where Oaklandside named a whistleblower.” (We could not independently verify this claim.)

We offer Rowan’s statement and emails here, with citations to relevant research added, for our readers to consider.

Response to Oaklandside ‘hit piece’

STATEMENT OF JOSH ROWAN

Director, Oakland Department of Transportation (OakDOT)

A Resident of Oakland

The facts are not in dispute.

In 2025, deadly crashes in Oakland fell to 23 — down from a high of 36. That is a 36 percent reduction.3 OakDOT paved more miles and delivered more capital infrastructure than this city has seen in years. When other city officials were publicly stating that Oakland could not sell Measure U bonds,4 OakDOT stood firm. The bonds were sold. We are paving again in 2026. The Civil Grand Jury and the City Auditor independently validated concerns about illegal dumping that I raised and reported through proper channels.56 I did not write those reports. Two independent bodies with subpoena power did.

I have filed formal complaints through every channel the law provides. I did so because public employees are required to report misconduct. Those complaints say exactly what I intended them to say. It is now up to the City Administrator to investigate.

The complaints do not fully capture what preceded them. I was pressured to change parking meter repair vendors. I was pressured to change the outcome of a $45 million building security contract procurement. I was pressured to award a construction contract under the false premise of a vendor being most responsive. I refused every time. These are not isolated events — they reflect a pattern that began in early 2025 and has not stopped.

The former city administrator gave me a glowing performance review when he removed me from Public Works. Council President Jenkins has stated publicly that I am the best director at the city and OakDOT is the best run department. I was the subject of a fraudulent ethics complaint that was dismissed for lack of evidence, and I have now been the subject of two media “hit pieces.”

In June 2026, the City Auditor published an Ethical Climate Survey of 555 Oakland city employees.7 The single lowest-scoring indicator in the entire survey was whether employees feel encouraged to report questionable ethical behavior. Whistleblower protection and fear of retaliation were among the most common themes in written responses. The survey was not about me. It describes the institution I have been working inside for the past 18 months.

A former mayor of Oakland has been indicted. A federal investigation is active. The Civil Grand Jury has documented a decade of failed illegal dumping contracts that cost millions and solved nothing. The people who benefited from that arrangement have a clear interest in discrediting the person who reported it, conducted his own investigation, and submitted his report to the city administrator and mayor’s chief of staff over the weekend.

I have not resigned. I will not resign. I have not compromised my professional ethics under 18 months of sustained pressure to do so. I do not intend to start.

OakDOT will continue to deliver. The record will continue to speak.

Josh Rowan

Director, Oakland Department of Transportation

Emails: Formal Demand for Correction — Josh Rowan Coverage, July 8, 2026

1.05MB ∙ PDF file

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I submitted my complaints through confidential official channels pursuant to the Oakland Whistleblower Protection Ordinance, which states explicitly that retaliation reports are confidential and not subject to disclosure. California Government Code Section 7927.700 exempts personnel records from Public Records Act disclosure. Your reporter Darwin BondGraham confirmed in writing — in an email copied to my attorney — that the documents were provided by the City of Oakland in response to a Public Records Act request. The City chose not to invoke the personnel records exemption. That was a deliberate choice.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Josh Rowan is the director of transportation for the city of Oakland. A resident of Oakland, he joined the city as transportation director in April 2024 during the tenure of former mayor Sheng Thao. He then served as the city of Oakland’s public works director for several months before returning to the transportation director role in 2025.

Prior to working for Oakland, Rowan served as commissioner of the city of Atlanta’s department of transportation. His career in the public sector includes work as a program manager for transportation, transit, education, healthcare, and law enforcement capital construction. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Oakland Report provides accurate, deep-dive, data-driven reporting and analysis that you will find nowhere else. If you value our work, please donate. All contributions go directly to sustaining and growing our 501(c)(3) nonprofit work:

Donate to Oakland Report

Learn more

Oakland Report continues its coverage of the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) board as it works to close a long-term budget gap and avoid returning to state receivership only one year after exiting it. In this installment, we examine how OUSD handled one-time pandemic relief and attendance-based funding reductions, compared with Hayward Unified and Berkeley Unified.

‘Those funds are now gone’

The basic reason for Oakland Unified School District’s (OUSD’s) financial distress is no enigma. Like virtually all other public budget deficits, OUSD’s basic problem stems from spending more than comes in.

Many factors created the over $100 million structural budget gap OUSD has struggled to fix.1 But the board’s promise of a “transparent” budgeting process for closing that gap is not supported by its actual record of poor financial disclosure and lack of follow-through.

In this article, we examine two specific factors which illustrate the overall problem at OUSD: poor financial management practices, combined with lack of transparency to the public about how the district is handling the public money with which it has been entrusted to educate Oakland’s children.

We also compare Oakland’s financial management of these two factors with that of other nearby school districts in Berkeley and Hayward.

On its budget webpage about the COVID-19 grants it received during the pandemic, OUSD tells families to “think of one-time funds like an inheritance. Money that was always going to run out.”

While that may be true in some cases, in other cases an “inheritance” — especially a large one like the pandemic relief grants — can be managed in a way that stabilizes or even elevates one’s financial position.

On its webpage about the COVID-19 relief grants, the district states flatly: “Those funds are now gone.”2 Yet the webpage offers no detailed accounting of where the “inheritance” went.

When journalists and state reviewers asked where the money went, the district’s answers were incomplete at best.

Similarly, OUSD’s budget woes are driven in part by steadily declining enrollment, which results in less funding from the state of California, which distributes school funding based on school attendance.

Yet the enrollment decline was neither sudden nor unforeseeable. Statewide enrollment has fallen for a decade, and OUSD’s superintendent’s reports have warned against budgeting on hoped-for attendance gains.

Sound financial management dictates that when income is expected to go down — especially due to a significant, long-term income reduction like a pay cut or job loss — then expenses should be reduced to stay within budget.

Yet OUSD has not made or sustained the difficult decisions needed to reduce its long-term spending — instead repeatedly choosing short-term cuts while increasing its ongoing regular expenses like payroll.

Key findings

• OUSD was allocated $129.9 million in final-round federal COVID-19 pandemic relief funding — nearly four times Hayward Unified’s $33.5 million and about 25 times Berkeley Unified’s $5.3 million, in part because the money followed federal poverty formulas.34

• OUSD refused public records requests about its COVID-19 grant expenses, and ended up having to repay nearly $1 million in relief money spending the state flagged as questionable.5678

• The money appears to have been spent, not forfeited — largely on staffing and one-time pay the district could not sustain once the funds expired.910

• Many districts have lost enrollment, but not all have gone broke. California funds districts on average daily attendance (ADA), so when enrollment goes down, so does a major source of school funding. Yet as of March 2025, Oakland and Hayward held “negative” budget certifications, the state’s most severe warning, while Berkeley reports itself solvent. (Oakland more recently self-certified its budget as “positive” based on $30 million in budget cuts it has yet to specify.)11121314