You can influence Oakland's next budget
The Budget Advisory Commission seeks your input on the FY25-26 budget
Update January 10, 2025: If you would like to share more ideas on the budget than the survey allows, join our budget chat room. It’s open and free for Oakland Report subscribers.
Editors note: For the past year, Oakland Report sought to illuminate the deeper causes and prospective solutions to Oakland’s long-running fiscal issues so the community and city leaders can converge on informed and effective solutions. In that spirit, we are distributing this announcement from the City of Oakland Budget Advisory Commission.
As the the city soon enters the next budget cycle, Oakland’s Budget Advisory Commission (BAC) is gathering community feedback to understand current satisfaction with the state of the City, priorities, and input on options to shift spending.
The BAC is a citizen council chartered by the City of Oakland, that advises the City Council on budgetary challenges and solutions. We consider expenditures, revenues, and financial policies.
The findings will be made public and presented to City Council in the Spring. We encourage you to take the survey, it takes less than 10 minutes!
The survey is available in English, Spanish, and Mandarin:
If you are interested in joining the BAC you can contact Nate Bassett at nbassett@oaklandca.gov.
—Mike Forbes, BAC Commissioner
 | A guest post by
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The City of Oakland OBVIOUSLY should REDUCE their payroll expenses (no more prospective new city employee millionaires- there are at least five hundred of them millionaires there since 2023).
The property owners who carry the tax burden can NO LONGER accept a situation where there are CONSTANT annual added measures, fees, increased license fees, increased permit fees, "fake" or extorsion schemes in the format of ghost code enforcement penalties and other schemes from the city to drain dollars from the unsuspecting citizens and poor applicants to a city permit application.
I have little hope of significant changes. the city council ignores the vote for police funding with “guaranteed” staffing levels which were never met ( due to some ludicrous other “emergency” and they expect us to vote for more taxes!!!