The clock is ticking for the city of Oakland to pass a budget by the end of June.
One group of city council members during a press conference on Monday expressed a different vision than what Mayor Libby Schaaf has proposed.
The city council will be meeting on Thursday, with the final steps in approving the more than $3.8 billion budget for the next two years. Exactly how that money will be allocated is still being debated, especially around police spending.
“Forty-five percent of our general purpose funds—our most flexible funding— is allocated to our police department, and only 2% is towards violence prevention, to parks, to libraries and other key services,” said council president Nikki Fortunato Bas during the conference.
She said she hopes to change that, releasing a proposed budget amendment that shifts more than $18 million per year from the police department to fund the department of violence prevention. The money would also go toward a program called Macro, which will dispatch non-police resources to mental health emergencies and some non-violent crimes, as well.
Councilmember Dan Kalb said he supports the amended budget.
“Nobody would know, in any city, when you move a lot of money away from one place like police to something else what the impacts are gonna be, we don’t know that yet.” Kalb said. “We’re hoping and believing that we’re going to have a positive impact in the long-term, maybe in the medium term.”
The special council meeting to deliberate the proposed amendments is Thursday, June 17 at 10:30 a.m.
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