0 Accomplishment Report
2020 – 2022
1 Department Information
Positions: 5
Staff: Darlene Flynn, Director
Ayanna Allen, Exec. Assistant
Jacque Larrainzar, Program
Analyst III
Amy Ferguson-Yep, Program
Analyst III
Vision: To create a city where racial diversity has been maintained, racial disparities have been eliminated, and racial equity has been achieved.
Mission: To intentionally integrate, on a Citywide basis, the principle of "fair and just" in all the City does, to achieve equitable opportunities for all people and communities.
Racial Equity Change Theory
In 2017, the Department of Race and Equity (DRE) adopted a Racial Equity Theory of Change to guide racial equity work in the City of Oakland. A Racial Equity Theory of Change is a logic model that helps define what needs to be changed in an institution to create outcomes that benefit those who have been harmed by structural racism. This approach is also helpful to establish a range of transformational change activities, targets, goals, and outcomes.
Based on more than 20 years of experience conducting similar work in government institutions and in community settings, we have found that there are key areas that need to be addressed within an institution to implement lasting change support for racial equity. We have also learned that to undo the impacts of policies that have harmed Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) we need to be intentional and strategic in our approach and be prepared to support staff and department leadership and elected officials working to advance changes that support racial equity, to manage change both at the citywide and department levels. With very limited resources and staffing, DRE decided to focus its efforts in three strategic areas of change, three strategic racial equity goals, and five strategies to benchmark progress toward achieving our goals.
2 Strategic Areas of Change and Change Strategies Timeline Strategy Timeline Progress
1. Increase awareness of racial inequity, its root
causes, and how it is perpetuated by institutions
and systems.
1-10 years Ongoing
2. Mobilize advocates to organize support for
furthering a shared vision of racial equity
through institutional leadership, equity teams,
and staff engagement in change efforts.
1-10 years Ongoing
3. Develop strategic approaches and tools for
analysis and resources for advancing racial
equity goals, including specific racial equity
outcomes.
2-10 years Ongoing
4. Train staff to apply pro-equity tools to change
structures, policies, practices, and procedures
to further institutional transformation.
2-10 years Ongoing
5. Establish baseline disparity data,
targets/benchmarks, and processes to track
and report outcomes.
3-10 Years Ongoing
Strategic Areas of Change
• Elimination of systemic causes of racial disparities in City Government. • Promotion of inclusion and full participation for all residents of the City. • Reduction of race-based disparities in our communities.
Strategic Racial Equity Goals
These goals set a strong foundation for sustained, long-term change and effectively increase the capacity of City staff to implement a racial equity approach in their lines of business.
1. Cultivate advocates and their capacity to focus on equity,
2. Build infrastructure and political will to support systemic change and,
3. Employ new skills/tools to make changes, and track and recognize progress. 3 DRE Accomplishments
CNN dubbed 2020 as “the year America confronted structural racism”. It was a year full of tragedy and loss, struggles, and civil unrest. In the face of tremendous tragedy and fear, the undeniable impacts of racial disparities became so clear that people all over the world came together to acknowledge that racial disparities exist and structural racism hurts everyone, and organized a fierce push toward racial justice and democracy everywhere.
After the murders of George
Floyd, Brianna Taylor, and
others in the Latino,
Indigenous and Asian Pacific
Islander Communities,
people
in more than 60 countries and
from more than 2,000 cities
and towns across the United
States took to the streets t o
express their support for the
Black Lives Matter movement.
The COVID-19 world pandemic came in April 2020, making us question our systems even more. The deep racial disparities in healthcare, testing, and vaccine access highlighted the need for change even further, making racism visible and undeniable for many non-people of color for the first time. The urgency to address racial equity in all our social systems became a priority for many corporations, businesses, and governments, forcing individuals in our society to face these challenges.
Then came the pushback. There were forces at work to create separation, further racial division, and undermine democracy and fairness. Asian Americans became the targets of hate crimes, and violence against Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people also increased. Yet, people came together to support each other, to reimagine a world with systems that put those most in need at its center, and to defend democracy. Oakland once more looked to these immense challenges and took the opportunity to advance racial equity and provide what is needed for its communities and residents not only to survive but thrive.
If 2020 was a year that will forever mark a historic worldwide moment for racial equity, 2021 and 2022 were the years where we challenged ourselves and the City of Oakland to go further in its racial equity work. Once again, Oakland’s community tradition of June 29, 2020, Downtown Oakland, CA, Jacque Larrainzar
4 standing up against injustice challenged us and led its local government in trying to do better, to go deeper, to imagine a better world for all of us.
Community advocacy set the stage for the City to work even harder during the pandemic. DRE’s work did not stop, and hundreds of city employees stepped up to further our work in their departments. During the pandemic years, DRE focused on strengthening internal structures to mobilize internal change and support departments to better serve communities impacted by racial disparities. Departments that did not have an equity team worked on getting one, and smaller departments focused on applying tools and skills to projects, processes, or procedures to advance racial equity in their lines of business. DRE continued to offer training for City employees and in 2021 doubled its training efforts to support departments and staff to understand the impacts of structural racism, apply racial equity tools, and go deeper in their journey to keep equity at the center of their work. The challenges raised by the shelter-in-place orders, fires, COVID-19, and the Great Resignation impacted most City facilities and services and moved most access to services online. We opened our training to other institutions and key stakeholders and supported their efforts to create systems with racial equity at the center.
The challenges we faced helped us to identify and address some new needs in our City departments: deeper skills and more technical support and assistance to create practices to combat burnout and stress. Based on the feedback of equity team members and leads, DRE created an equity team leadership cohort model to further support department staff in learning practical skills to manage the racial equity change process and prevent burnout.
By the end of 2022, almost every department in the City of Oakland had begun work to explicitly center racial equity in its work. From the City’s response to COVID-19 to how we design programs and services to reach the most vulnerable, Oakland led strong and collaborated with Alameda County, the State of California, Federal Agencies and community organizations to center and support residents impacted by racial disparities.
Although we have made progress in embedding the principles of fairness and justice in everything the City does, we recognize that the City continues to experience many missed opportunities to incorporate equity work in key City activities in departments.
Generally, there is a high level of commitment to implementing equity in Oakland.
Building it into day-to-day operations is, however, a heavy lift requiring specific changes in approach for any City, and Oakland is no exception.
Department staff resources and capacity, time, and funding scarcity are an ongoing challenge to launching a comprehensive rollout of equity practices throughout the City.
It is also a matter of time to work with Department Equity Teams, leadership, and key staff to build up the necessary level of internal advocacy and expertise across departments that will lead to embedding equity action into activities at the very beginning of processes to assure meaningful impacts.
Our third biannual report accounts for what City Departments have accomplished with our support and guidance starting in the last quarter of 2020 to the end of 2022. Many of the actions in this report were made possible by the seeds of change planted in previous years and by the commitment of City staff to advance racial equity and the 5 hard work of community members and organizations devoted to racial equity in Oakland. In the face of huge challenges, all kept doing their part to bring needed change.
DRE Accomplishments by Strategy
Strategy 1. Increase awareness of racial inequity, its root causes, and how it is perpetuated by institutions and systems:
In Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi argues that racism does not primarily stem from hate and ignorance, but that “racist policies have driven the history of racist ideas in America” (Bold Type Books, 2017, 9). Our 2018 Oakland Equity Indicators Report found racial disparities in 72 different indicators of well-being for Blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans living in the occupied territory of Huchin Ohlone people, known today as Oakland, California. The small size of the Ohlone population in our City reminds us that this is the result of racist policies that lead to the genocide of indigenous peoples all around the U.S. As Kendi argues, the differences in outcomes in these indicators of well-being resulted from public policy that ignored or overlooked the structures and systems that created and sustain inequality. Our theory of change emphasizes that improving the outcomes of public policy requires City staff to educate themselves and consider how this history of “race-neutral” policies affects the context, validity, and implications of the work they do in their department’s lines of business, and keeps disparities in place.
Making intentional changes in how we address the outcomes of systemic racism’s legacies is not an easy shift; structural racism has trained us to focus on the individual and to blame individual shortcomings and solutions rather than attending to systemic drivers of inequity. This approach, that in the end does not support the elimination of the root causes of racial disparities, causes government good intentions to be less successful than desired. Because of these tendencies, over time government has experienced only limited success in having meaningful impacts on the social inequities embedded in U.S. society. There are, however, bright spots of progress in our history that we can learn from and that the race and equity program is built on. An important element in bringing about the shifts that are needed to produce more equity and interrupt practices that deepen inequity is the cultivation of a critical mass of support both internally and externally for real systemic equity change.
DRE offered City employees opportunities to develop greater awareness and practice the application of tools and new skills to advance racial equity. From a lunch and learn series focused on policy and racial equity to workshops and training tailored to department needs, from sessions on the history of development in Oakland, its history of activism past and present, and how these actions created new ways of addressing community needs and change, as well as the impacts of redlining in planning and zoning, and mobility justice, to celebrating Juneteenth for the first time as a federal holiday and an art installation illustrating racial disparity data, the impacts of anti- 6 blackness in Oakland and ideas of author Heather McGhee, based on economic data, make the case that discriminatory laws and practices that target African Americans also negatively impact society at large.
In addition, department staff participated at national conferences and local events and offered presentations to community organizations on Oakland’s approach to racial equity implementation and its results. Some highlights of our activities include:
The City of Oakland COVID-19 Response: During the pandemic, DRE also had the opportunity to support the City to address racial disparities in access to resources to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in communities highly impacted by disparities in access to health care. Oakland was one of the first Cities in the country to start tracking COVID by race and ethnicity. When data began to show disparities in the impact of the pandemic on communities of color, community and government organizations needed to plan to provide services needed by these communities, but that started with reaching them effectively.
ESRI- 2020, 2021, 2022: Staff supported the Advancing Racial Equity in State and Local Government Webinar Series to identify inequities and operationalize racial equity best practices with GIS. As a result of our participation in 2020, ESRI, the provider of GIS services to most government agencies, adopted a racial equity approach in its platform to facilitate tracking racial and ethnic data in its platform. The changes now support racial equity efforts for government agencies nationwide. ESRI created a racial
equity hub t o track best practices in the field. In addition, Oakland’s equity work by our Department of Transportation and IT was included in ESRI’s GIS book for each year highlighting best practices and innovation and in the book Women of GIS in 2021.
Each conference session was attended by over 300 participants and created more than 50 follow-up contacts per year from other local governments and staff in other government agencies interested in our approach to racial equity.
In addition, the department worked with the City Attorney’s office to provide comments regarding data systems and funding needed to support the advancement of racial equity at the Federal, State, and local levels and participated in a Biden Administration workgroup to provide feedback to set up systems and processes for the federal government to implement racial equity in their operations.
As a result of our collective work with other racial equity advocates across the nation, on his first day in office, President Biden signed Executive Order 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.
The Order recognized that although the ideal of equal opportunity is the bedrock of American democracy, entrenched disparities in our laws, public policies, and institutions too often deny equal opportunity to individuals and communities. The President’s Order emphasized the enormous human costs of systemic racism, persistent poverty, and other disparities, and directed the Federal Government to advance an ambitious, whole- 7 -government equity agenda that matches the scale of the challenges we face as a country and the opportunities we have to build a more perfect union.
Over 90 federal agencies across the federal government, including all Cabinet-level agencies as well as over 50 independent agencies, mobilized quickly and effectively to implement the Executive Order. Agencies conducted equity assessments of three to five of their agency’s high-impact services for the American people to uncover where systemic barriers to access may exist.
During this reporting period the Director of DRE, Darlene Flynn, joined the Leadership Board of Oakland Thrives, a private/public/philanthropic effort to leverage resources to serve our most disinvested communities. She sits on the Equity Committee of the local Homelessness Continuum of Care Program and responds to requests to present to other Bay Area organizations and agencies about the Oakland Race & Equity program and progress. She also supported a community driven push for the establishment of a State Department of Equity by collaborating on a proposed design for the program in response to a request from Senator Skinner’s office. Darlene is a sought-out panel member and national presenter because of the trail-blazing work she and the DRE team have launched in the City of Oakland, and she accepts invitations as her time permits.
In 2019-2020, DRE participated in the pilot for the Cultural Strategist/Artist Program .
Oakland Black artist, entrepreneur, and activist Candice Wicks-Davis, who combines song, performance, and media as a catalyst for social transformation and believes the intersection of art, humility, strategy, and policy is an effective way to transform systems of inequality, was selected in a competitive process to lead the pilot for our department.
In the pilot phase of the program, the DRE
began a collaboration with Wicks-Davis to
create programming and inclusive
processes to further understand and
address anti-Black bias in the City of
Oakland. Interrupted by the pandemic
lockdown, DRE’s project was completed in
2022 in a new iteration of the CSIG
program. Wicks-Davis created a song cycle
performed and recorded by Oakland Black
artists that was based on themes that
emerged from DRE’s racial equity report
of
2018. The results were presented to the
community in the form of an art installation
centering information about anti-black bias
in Oakland using the 2018 Oakland Equity Indicators Report data to illustrate the impacts of anti-black bias in our City. “Exhibit A” was presented at Oakland’s Life is Living festival (this past October) where hundreds of people had a chance to interact with the virtual reality animated panels. Inspired by the infographics of W.E.B DuBois' "Visualizing Black America" installation presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition, the Picture by Jacque Larrainzar of Artwork by Visual Artist:
Hodari Davis
8 exhibit used local equity data from the Department of Race & Equity on anti-Blackness in Oakland to reimagine the city in 2042. Mrs. Wicks-Davis also recorded an album with data points and messaging about what anti-black bias looks and feels like and its impacts on marginalized communities in Oakland. The exhibit, artwork and music were possible thanks to the collaboration of many Oakland artists and organizations and the exhibition was funded by the Center for Cultural Power. Many thanks to:
Producers/curators:
• Hodari Davis (Artistic Director & Producer)
• Candice Wicks-Davis
• Edutainment for Equity
• Center for Cultural Power
• Alena Museum
Pictures by Jacque Larrainzar of Artwork by Visual Artists: Cava Menzies and Kufu (left) and Ajuan Mance (right) and Artificial Intelligence by Black Terminus.
DRE will create a discussion guide to accompany the exhibit so communities interested in having a dialogue about how anti-blackness manifest in their communities can do so.
In 2022, The City of Oakland
Declared Systemic Racism a
Public Health Emergency, capturing national attention for its approach to reaching millions of people across the country.
Overall, Oakland’s work raising awareness on racial equity has been exceptional, given our limited resources. Making the news at the local and national levels for the past three years has helped our department to bring a better understanding of the impacts of structural racism and increase hope and support for those working to make racial equity a reality in their institutions.
Strategy 2. Mobilize advocates to organize support for furthering a shared vision of racial equity through institutional leadership, equity teams, and staff engagement in change efforts:
9 At the beginning of 2020, Oakland was the only city in the U.S. with a Department with a cabinet-level Director and staff dedicated to the advancement and implementation of racial equity in government.
Two years later, Oakland is far from alone. Many Cities, Counties, and States have followed in Oakland’s footsteps. These include Federal Government efforts previously mentioned to more than two hundred offices or departments dedicated to racial equity at the state, county, and local levels of government. The many civil protests and the demands for change and action following the death of George Floyd increased racial equity commitments by governments and corporations between June 2020 and May 2021. According to a 2020 article by the McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility, across the corporate and philanthropic sectors, by some rough counts, it is estimated that financial commitments for support reached more than $215 billion, largely with plans to distribute the funds fully between 2023 and 2025.
Thanks to the approach set by DRE using disparity data and results-based accountability to set goals and outcomes, the City of Oakland was able to benefit from some of these new investments and commitments, bringing much-needed funding and
10 support for community programs and services to the benefit of those most impacted by racial disparities in our City.
At this point of the racial equity change process, continuing to build an internal structure to support change is more crucial than ever to successful outcomes. The pandemic and the Great Resignation strained the already limited staff resources in our City departments. However, hundreds of City employees have stood up to the challenge and continued to work in applying equity tools to projects and procedures.
City departments have been asked by the City Administrator and supported by DRE to create Racial Equity Teams (RETs) to build internal capacity. In this reporting period, our department supported the creation of seven new equity teams and maintained the teams that were already in place. During 2022, many departments have gone through staff changes that impacted the equity teams, including changes in leadership, staff resignations, transitions, and changes to workloads. However, we have been able to keep the work going.
City of Oakland Departments’ Racial Equity Teams
2017-2019 2019-2020 2021-2022
Economic and Workforce
Development
Planning and Building
Transportation
Library
Human Resources
Parks and Recreation
City Attorney’s Office
Oakland Fire Department
Finance Management Agency
Oakland Police Department
Ethics
Animal Services
Housing
Human Services
Civil Rights and
Employment
Compliance
City Auditor
City Attorney
Public Works
Violence
Prevention
Police
Accountability
Commission
During the pandemic, DRE continued to work with existing equity teams in City departments as well as to stand up new equity teams. DRE planned to add six new teams by end of Q4 2021 to work with staff and in response to requests from small departments to receive the support to apply racial equity tools to their work. During this reporting period, DRE supported 8 departments to start this process or work in applying racial equity tools to a project to advance racial equity in their lines of work. With the support of the City Administrator’s Office and Council, DRE added reporting on racial 11 equity efforts to Council agenda reports, creating not only more accountability but also more opportunities to further our work. DRE created additional training to support staff with these new requirements and worked closely with department’s Equity Teams to bring the training into their departments.
DRE staff assisted in the review of hundreds of policy briefs, plans, procedures, and RFPs to make sure decision-makers had the information needed to make informed decisions that centered on racial equity. At the same time, DRE staff supported building up the necessary level of internal advocacy and expertise across departments that will lead to embedding equity action into activities at the very beginning of processes to assure meaningful impacts.
Change is never easy, but the results and successes have started to encourage departments to focus on outcomes that address racial disparities.
In addition, DRE staff supported the creation of two citywide working groups to improve Citywide processes to drive equity deeper into two key areas/functions identified by equity team leads’ in their work.
Citywide Inclusive Engagement Workgroup
Leads: Joanna Winter, Planning and Building, Nicole Neditch, Communications, Jacque Larrainzar, DRE, and Ayanna Allen, DRE.
The workgroup came together in response to City employees’ concerns regarding access to COVID-19 prevention at the beginning of the pandemic and evolved into a space where City employees leading outreach and engagement efforts in their departments could come together to coordinate and support efforts, share resources, and offer training. The workgroup assessed the city’s engagement and outreach practices and made recommendations to create Citywide systems to improve how we engage and communicate with the communities we serve. This work centered meeting the needs of communities that were facing barriers to access to information and services due to lack of access to internet services and lack of devices. To date, more than 200 City employees have participated in the workgroup activities and assisted the City to create a virtual resource catalog, contact lists for community organizations, and training to actualize City staff skills to engage better with underserved communities. The workgroup has advocated for a position in the Communication Department to further this work Citywide and drafted an internal Administrative Instruction to institutionalize an inclusive approach to the City’s engagement efforts with a solid foundation in best equitable inclusion practices, data, and equitable results.
Over 500 City employees have participated in workgroup meetings and/or training offered by workgroup members. The training focused on serving non-English speakers, hard-to-reach populations, and people living with disabilities, working with interpreters and translators, using Language Access and ADA tools, facilitating online meetings and zoom tutorials, facilitating meetings centering racial equity, and more, using the expertise and skills of workgroup members. This year, other government agencies such as BART, The Port of Oakland, and several community organizations have requested to attend meetings to learn about how we function and to discuss how the City can better reach specific populations.
12 Citywide Racial Equity in Performance Workgroup
Leads: Sarah Herbelin, Teir Jenkins, Finance; Mahasin Aleem, Celia Davis, Public Libraries; Noel Pond-Danchik, Transportation; Joanna Winter, Planning and Building; Shawn Jones, Public Works; Andrea Mariano, HRM; Jacque Larrainzar, DRE.
Equity teams in six different departments identified the need to set some standards and metrics to evaluate employees’ performance around racial equity skills and implementation. The workgroup met for nine months to draft a rubric and design a process and systems for departments to start measuring employee performance and expectations for racial equity teams, managers, and supervisors. Many of the participants in the workgroup are proud members of our unions, and others were supervisors and managers. The collaboration resulted in a draft for adoption of Administrative Instruction-580 on Racial Equity which created standards for training and accountabilities for City leadership, managers, and supervisors across the City to make sure that employees can build the capacity to successfully implement racial equity in their processes and policies. During the next three years, departments will start implementing procedures to track performance metrics and training and create the support needed for managers and supervisors, who in turn will be better equipped to support workers interested in participating in equity teams or racial equity project implementation.
Equity Leadership Support and Capacity Building to Advance Racial Equity The hard work of embedding racial equity in our functions is just starting. As the work goes deeper, it also becomes harder. Generally, there is a high level of commitment to implementing equity into day-to-day operations, however, this is a heavy lift that requires specific changes in approach for any city, and Oakland is no exception. To better support our internal equity advocates, DRE designed an Equity Team cohort model, pairing departments in similar levels of implementation of the equity change process.
DRE identified strategies, tools, and benchmarks to help teams better understand how to lead equity change processes and develop the skills needed to keep moving equity forward in their department work. Team members and key staff attended training designed specifically for their cohort and received one-on-one coaching as needed.
During this reporting period, DRE also provided support and technical assistance to new directors and training for senior staff and elected officials, including a presentation to senior staff on the new cohort model and the role leadership plays in implementing racial equity Citywide at the department level.
A highlight of this work in 2022 was the celebration of Juneteenth as a national holiday.
To mark the occasion, DRE organized an event to highlight Black senior leadership in the City of Oakland and hosted a conversation where they shared their journey to become directors and what they have learned in that journey to advance racial equity.
In 2023, DRE will continue to sponsor work sessions, lunch & learns, book clubs, and speakers to further skill-build, share learnings, and share progress and strategies to 13 support our new mayor, council members, and their staff to successfully advance racial equity in Oakland.
Strategy 3. Development of action plans and tools for analysis and resources for advancing racial equity goals, including specific racial equity outcomes:
DRE has developed tools and training to support City leadership and staff to develop strategic approaches and policies that advance racial equity and have specific racial equity outcomes.
Two primary tools include the Racial Equity Analysis Work Sheet and the Inclusive Outreach and Engagement Guide. In addition, our department worked with the City Administrator’s Office to add sections about inclusive engagement and racial equity to the staff agenda reports and budget.
Some highlights of this work are the Economic Development, Transportation, Public Works, and Library plans which integrated equity frameworks and received support from DRE staff.
Building on the baseline data provided by the 2018 Oakland Equity Indicators Report, the OakDOT Equity team, with support from our department, created The Geographic Equity Toolbox. The toolbox helps City staff to prioritize neighborhoods based on concentrations of people with demographic factors determined to have experienced historic and current disparities. The Geographic Equity Toolbox is now being used by other City departments and has been featured in several GIS national publications and conferences.
DRE staff also provide ongoing support to the Environmental Services Division, now part of the CAO, in the implementation of the Equitable Climate Action Plan (ECAP) and
to Planning and Building in the design of a new incentive program that centers equity as part of the
Downtown Strategic Plan and the Environmental Justice Hub for the General Plan. The General Plan that is underway is centered on inclusive community outreach and engagement and seeks opportunities to reduce racial disparities related to land use through a planning approach that focuses on increasing opportunity, as well as health and safety, for communities historically marginalized by redlining and discriminatory zoning.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the DRE managed the design and contracting for a digital equity program to address the needs of children and families in underserved communities. This effort partnered the City with the non-profit Greenlining Institute to develop "The Town Link"
, a program to improve digital literacy, foster digital inclusion, and reduce the digital divide. Through the year-long contract with Greenlining, the program provided 10 grassroots organizations with $10,000 in City-funded grants and capacity-building support to increase internet adoption and digital literacy in priority communities, creating a public-private partnership to connect Oakland residents most in need of these services. The program has also become a model to address the digital divide i n communities facing historical barriers to digital access in other jurisdictions and 14 has brought additional funds to Oakland to address these needed services. Racial Equity is innovation.
DRE also provided technical assistance in applying a racial equity analysis framework to the production of the Alameda County-focused “Centering Racial Equity in Homeless System Design Report” and managed the production of a comprehensive analysis, “Abating Lead Paint Hazards Equitably”, that documented the inequitable impact of lead contamination in Oakland. The latter study resulted in a fair, data-driven distribution of a lead-based paint lawsuit settlement that brought meaningful funding to our city to address the lead poisoning crisis in Oakland. DRE assisted Planning staff to use equity tools in the design of an inclusive process for the Oakland General Plan and a racial equity analysis for all the options proposed by the Downtown Specific Plan.
Strategy 4. Train staff to apply pro-equity tools to change structures, policies, practices, and procedures to further institutional transformation:
DRE offers staff an array of opportunities to learn and engage with racial equity work that will transform the way the City does business. During this reporting period, DRE doubled training opportunities and created two new pieces of training to deepen City staff equity skills: Results Based Accountability training and the use of the Racial Equity Analysis Tool. In addition, DRE participated in staff agenda reports training to support the Equity and Engagement sections of the report.
1631 City employees participated in DRE
events and training
Advancing Racial Equity
Academy
4 sessions per year
1,137
employees have
completed all modules
Results Based
Accountability
1 session per year
starting in 2021
180
employees completed
training
Racial Equity Analysis 1 session per year
starting in 2022
74 employees completed
training
Lunch & Learns Interrupted in 2020 due to
the shelter in place orders.
DRE offered a limited
series in 2021 and 2022
focused on the well-being
of change agents.
240 participants
15 Advancing Racial Equity Academy (AREA): The goal is to train as many City staff as possible and to activate a critical mass, at least 30% (the tipping point of change) of the City's workforce, to begin applying racial equity principles and tools to their work.
City employees in all City departments and at all levels have attended the Racial Equity Academy, which increases internal department capacity to work on equity. By the end of 2019, 450 City employees had completed the Academy. Despite the challenges presented by the pandemic, the Academy continued remotely, and 680 additional city employees attended in 2020. Online training helped us to increase the number of individuals participating in the Academy, and DRE staff pushed itself to increase training sessions due to requests. By the end of 2020, 1,037 employees have completed the academy. Although we were not able to reach our goal of training 1,500 employees by the end of 2021, due to the pandemic, fires, and all the challenges we faced in the past three years as a city, we are closer to our goal to have trained 1,500. This, in combination with the uptick in equity tool applications in the City, is a meaningful benchmark for building adequate capacity to institutionalize changes that advance equitable outcomes for our communities impacted by racial disparities.
Results-Based Accountability Training: The establishment of meaningful measures to track impacts of Racial Equity Impact Analysis (REIA) recommendations is a critical element of the REIA tool. Results-Based Accountability (RBA) is an approach designed to guide governments to improve by focusing on meaningful measurements and outcomes that are aligned with their goals. We have incorporated RBA outcome concepts into the Racial Equity Impact Analysis Worksheet and offer this supplemental training on that framework as it applies to advancing racial equity. DRE offers this training as a refresher for those with some experience or an introduction to first timers.
The training highlights how departments can use the tool “Racial Equity: Getting to
Results” dev eloped by Erika Bernabei which connects racial equity to general Results- Based Accountability (RBA) methodology to set measurable goals to impact racial disparities in our communities over time.
Racial Equity Impact Analysis (REIA) Training:
The REIA approach drives specific data-driven, outcome-oriented, problem-solving actions. It educates about racial disparities, informs about root causes, engages impacted communities, and ultimately provides a set of specific recommendations to work with and a framework to evaluate the impacts of decisions on equity.
REIA Objectives:
• Explicitly address issues of social and economic injustice and systemic racism • Use data to identify groups impacted by racial disparities and racial equity outcomes
• Disrupt racial bias and assumptions embedded in policies, procedures, and systems
16 • Build in decision-making prompts that evoke consideration of equity and inclusion of community
• Foster focused engagement of underserved stakeholders • Systemically analyze potential impacts of City action or inaction on groups impacted by disparities
• Increase the institution’s capacity for and commitment to results-based accountability
Agenda Staff Reports: The goal of
this training is to support staff who
create City Council agenda reports
or the information that goes into the
reports to effectively analyze and
report on the racial equity impacts
of a particular project, process, or
issue. The reports are crucial pieces
of information that support the City
Council to make an informed
decision in a way that is in
alignment with the City’s policy to
imbed equity in everything it does.
Lunch and Learn Sessions: In 2020, due to the pandemic, lunch and learn sessions were curtailed. In 2021, due to demand by team members, staff advocated for and DRE responded with a limited series focused on supporting our change agents to start a practice to maintain their well-being. DRE convened a book group to explore the concepts presented in Heather Mc Gee’s book “The Sum of Us,” and to educate staff on the root of the civil unrest demonstrations calling for systemic change and racial equity nationwide. DRE plans to reactivate this programming in full in 2023.
One-on-one/team technical assistance and project support: DRE staff supports department staff in applying racial equity tools to projects and policies as needed. For this two-year reporting period, DRE staff provided over 6,020 hours of technical assistance to department staff, Equity Teams, Alameda County, other Bay Area Cities, State and Federal government agencies, and partners to help them implement racial equity in their work.
Strategy 5. Establish baseline disparity data, targets/benchmarks, and processes to track and report outcomes:
To establish a baseline level of disparity data, the DRE led the production of local Equity Indicators tools in partnership with the City University of New York’s Institute for State and Local Governance (CUNY ISLG) and with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.
The project resulted in a product focused on population-level disparities that have been useful across City departments in developing strategies that strive to address the root
17 causes of disparities and remove barriers to opportunity. The report is viewable via the DRE website in two formats, PDF and a web-based presentation.
The Equity Indicator Report anticipates and needs updating for refinements and to remain current and relevant. Due to a lack of internal expertise, the DRE is working with the support of a graduate student to update the report in Q1 2023, but this practice cannot provide the needed data resource breadth and continuity.
The next layer of technical and infrastructure data support required is beginning to emerge and will continue to grow as departments become more active in their equity practices. Most departments do not have the internal technical capacity to do this level of data analysis on their own, and this slows down efforts to advance the measurement of equity outcomes at the program and service level.
DRE requested and was granted one additional technical position with data and data management application expertise that will fill the current gaps in DRE and department capacity. This FTE will support departments with technical assistance and manage updates of the Equity Indicator Report and other tracking methods needed to develop this next increment of equity infrastructure. The requisition for hiring this position has been submitted, and the hiring process should be underway soon.
The publishing of the initial Equity Indicators report has been well received both nationally and locally. It provides a meaningful focal point for introducing an equity- focused approach to problem-solving and policymaking in the City. It also signals intentionality in addressing underserved communities in a concrete way that validates their day-to-day lived experiences, while raising consciousness among the broader public. The Equity Indicators report was an initial step toward being more connected to the communities that are most impacted by the disparities it illuminates, which is one step closer to making meaningful changes to reduce those disparities. The department is currently working on revising the indicators in the report to reflect the feedback received from five hundred Oakland residents impacted by racial disparities . The new
report will reflect their feedback and will highlight the issues most important to them and indicators of well-being that the City can impact in the long term.
You can see the first Oakland’s Equity Indicators Report and executive summary and read the notes for the community briefings on the department website.
The update to Equity Indicator Report is to be released in 2023.
City Departments Advancing Equity
The following are highlights of equity projects/activities that departments have accomplished using equity principles and tools, with technical support from DRE.
City Administrator's Office
The Cannabis Equity Program
keeps expanding. The City of Oakland has made great
strides in implementing its Equity Program by providing capital support, technical and legal assistance, fee exemptions, and access to real estate to equity applicants. In 18 2021, due to its growth, the program moved to be part of the Office of Economic & Workforce Development.
Since the launch of the revolving loan program in November 2018, the City has lent $4,508,000 to 68 unique borrowers, for an average of $66,294 per loan. Similarly, the City has funded $4,368,000 in grants to 59 unique grant recipients for an average of $74,034 per grant. Concerning demographics, over 80% of loan and grant recipients are African Americans.
Thanks to funding from the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development (Go-Biz), last year the City of Oakland funded a team of equity applicants to purchase a property with a commercial kitchen, that is now beginning to serve as an ongoing resource to equity operators.
In terms of outcomes, Oakland’s Equity Program has resulted in numerous equity operators obtaining City permits and state licenses, with 200 unique state-licensed equity applicants. All but one dispensary permitted by the City since 2017 have been equity-owned.
• The City Administrator’s Office and DRE have also worked together to coordinate annual report on the implementation of Measure Z programming with an equity framework.
• Worked with Oakland Unite, OPD, and the Fire Department with a racial equity framework to guide COVID response, outreach, and PPE distribution as well as violence prevention efforts.
• Updated the City Council Agenda Report Template to include specific changes requiring the inclusion of racial equity considerations and analysis for recommended actions.
• Coordinated an inclusive engagement approach to the 2020 Census to ensure a better count of communities of Oakland usually undercounted with great success.
Sustainability and Resiliency Division
• Secured $30,000 for building electrification community engagement in partnership with the Northern California Land Trust, Unity Council, Mycelium Youth Network, East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, and the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project.
• Won $1 million for equitable home electrification pilots with Habitat for Humanity, GRID Alternatives and the Cities of Berkeley, Fremont, and Hayward. Oakland will use the funds to enhance the capacity of the City's Residential Lending Services to offer no-cost solar and other electrification upgrades to low-income households.
• Hired two Cultural Strategists in Government to develop an Oakland-centric social media strategy on building electrification and better fundraising narratives for climate justice.
19 City Auditor
• Analyzed fire inspections conducted and not conducted by neighborhoods in the City to determine if the Fire Prevention Bureau is providing consistent levels of service equally throughout the City.
• The Police Commission audit, issued in June 2020, pointed out that the Commission should establish goals to address police response times, stops, and use of force disparities by race as pointed out in the City of Oakland’s Equity Indicators 2018 report.
• The Police Commission audit recommended the Police Commission use a more systematic approach for addressing racial profiling in law enforcement in Oakland, including monitoring progress to assess whether new policies are having a positive effect on reducing racial profiling.
• The homeless audit analyzed
the homeless population in Oakland and the
location of encampments throughout the City, finding that Black and brown populations experience much higher rates of homelessness and that homeless encampments are more likely to be in areas of the City impacted by cumulative racial equity.
City Attorney
• Ensured the Tenant Protection Ordinance and COVID Eviction Moratorium took into consideration racial equity to address the needs of communities most impacted by racial disparities.
• Launched their Race and Equity Team.
• Collaborated with DRE in declaring systemic racism a Public Health Crisis. The resolution states the City will take several steps, including allocating $350,000 to the Department of Race and Equity to support its effort to advance racial equity.
The funding will be spent on a race and equity data analyst and consulting services for “ongoing citywide data collection necessary to achieve a more equitable outcome for Oakland residents.”
• Collaborated with DRE to submit comments to the federal government regarding the use of data to advance racial equity and the infrastructure, system, staffing, and funding needed to support local governments in successfully tracking changes over time.
• Successfully upheld Oakland’s Uniform Residential Tenant Relocation Ordinance through the federal court system in Ballinger v. City of Oakland. • Secured a federal court ruling upholding the validity of Oakland’s and our Alameda County partners’ COVID-19 eviction moratoria in W illiams v. Alameda et al.
• Crafted and co-sponsored a resolution declaring racism a public health crisis that the Oakland City Council unanimously passed and which commits the City to take into account how the City can achieve equity in all aspects of City planning, policymaking, laws, contracting, and hiring and approves a roadmap of next steps the City will take to advance racial equity and reduce alarming health disparities in Oakland.
20 • Joined a coalition of cities and counties to urge three leading federal agencies to play no part in criminalizing those who seek or provide abortion care and joining the California Attorney General’s Reproductive Rights Task Force. • Began to bring millions of dollars of desperately needed funding to Oakland to abate the opioid epidemic through various national settlements of lawsuits Oakland and other sister governmental entities filed against various opioid manufacturers and other opioid industry actors.
Department of Transportation (OakDOT)
Flex Streets Program: Inclusive outreach and engagement efforts led by Equity Team members to engage residents in the zip codes most impacted by COVID-19 revealed that the needs and barriers faced by residents in these areas went beyond the needs of business districts impacted by racial disparities and the COVID economic downturn.
These inputs resulted in recommendations and actions to change the program and address issues of access to services like free testing, food banks, and other basic services. Through this work, the City supported using the public right of way for conducting business outdoors and also included improving walking access to community-based organizations providing services to residents.
Safe Oakland Streets- Safe Oakland Streets (SOS) is a Citywide initiative to prevent serious and fatal traffic crashes and eliminate crash inequities on Oakland's streets. We are working across departments and building partnerships with the community to implement the most effective and equitable strategies. Through 2021, SOS work focused on areas with the highest efficacy at preventing traffic fatalities and the lowest risk of creating new inequities, including the successful delivery of 238 new safety improvements and the successful passage of Assembly Bill 43 (Friedman),which allows cities to lower speed limits in certain cases. In addition, OakDOT worked to inform the development of Assembly Bill 550 (Chiu) to authorize speed safety systems in Oakland and educate Oakland stakeholders on the efficacy and equity provisions, however, that bill was ultimately unsuccessful.
OakDOT continued advancements in prioritizing safety improvements based on equity factors and crash concentrations and transparency regarding project delivery status in the face of demand that out-paced city resources, and OPD has drastically improved their focus of traffic stops on the most dangerous driving behaviors on high-injury streets. While the number of traffic stops and staffing to conduct high visibility enforcement has decreased substantially, and despite a reduction in the percentage of traffic stops conducted on African Americans, racial disparities in stops remain.
During this time, the same agencies working on SOS were also responding to increased community violence in Oakland, including violence on our streets. The SOS interagency partnerships to respond to severe and fatal traffic crashes were foundational to pilot efforts that were initiated in 2021 to prevent large sideshows accompanied by violent activity. Also, the Neighborhood Enhanced Service Team (NEST) initiative that kicked off in 2021 to focus city services, including transportation improvements, on the police beats most impacted by community violence prioritized traffic maintenance requests in 21 these communities. High priority equity communities in Oakland are disproportionately impacted by both severe and fatal crashes, and gun violence and homicides. Through this work, city agencies are working to prioritize resources to leverage synergies to address SOS/traffic safety and community violence prevention goals. Highlights from that work are also included here.
2019-21 CIP Budget Process led by OakDOT and Public Works Department: The process used racial equity principles to develop a methodology to rank projects using a range of criteria that included equity impacts and was informed with community input on the approach and project submission.
In 2020, they are also working with
relevant departments to train their top leadership and management levels and conduct the second round of community engagement sessions. And in 2022-23 the third round of engagement will occur. Because of this work, participation in Black and Latinx communities in the CIP process increased 100% during the pandemic.
Before and after results of using equity tools in the CIP Process.
Public requests from community before and after equity tools, from Capital Improvement Program Results of the Oakland Paving Plan before and after using equity tools, from OakDOT 22 Workforce Equity in Hiring Analysis Pilot- The DOT Equity Team launched an initiative to assess root causes of hiring inequity. Other departments asked for support to do a similar analysis, and it became the basis for work in several departments. As a result of this work, OakDOT has increased the diversity and retention of its employees and interns, and nine frontline staff working as Parking Control Technicians were able to access better jobs and benefits because of the advocacy of the RET to employ disproportionately BIPOC frontline staff fairly and abolish temporary, part-time, non- benefitted positions for permanent work. This advocacy led to the promotion of six Permanent Part-Time Parking Control Technicians to Permanent Full-Time Parking Control Technicians, and three Temporary Part-Time Parking Control Technicians became Permanent Part-Time Parking Control Technicians and will soon have the opportunity to become full-time Parking Control Technicians. No new people will be hired as Temporary Part-Time (unbenefited position).
In 2021, staff led a four-part Study and Action session on unpacking White fragility in the workplace for managers and supervisors. They also finished the update of the Geographic Equity Tool for citywide use and offered training to interested departments.
The equitable Community Engagement Standard Operating Procedure and the Equitable Hiring Standard Operating Procedure plus a review of interview questions through the Hiring Support and Accountability Team embedded inclusive engagement and equitable hiring practices in the department.
OakDOT Racial Equity Team webpage
Planning and Building
• Downtown Specific Plan Equity Assessment and options developed in partnership with Law, Housing, and OakDOT, building on the foundation for downtown development to support equitable outcomes for plan implementation. • Drafted Equity Standard Operating Procedure for the department and began the process to refine and socialize it (starting with w/deputy directors.) • Published a departmental (internal) equity newsletter to increase awareness in the department about racial equity issues impacting their work. • Piloted new strategies for the hiring process (using other best practices; implementing required anti-bias training for interviewers with support of HR RET); drafted a guide to equitable hiring and are working to put in a system of "equity Subject Matter Experts."
• Implemented a buddy system to support new Equity Team members in participating and feeling engaged.
• A ll managers and supervisors have attended AREA training. • Identified an additional equity project to take on in Building (code enforcement inspections.)
• Coordinated inclusive community engagement group to improve our engagement processes citywide.
• Started the implementation of the Oakland General Plan framework developed to
center racial equity in the General Plan and worked with community members 23 and organizations in the first Environmental Justice Element for the Oakland General Plan
Economic and Workforce Development
• Adopted department race and equity team charter establishing rotating members from each Department Division (Business, Workforce, Real Estate, Public-Private Development, Cultural Arts) and training requirements for all staff; • Drafted Department Race & Equity Analysis setting disparities and action items for each division. Incorporated Race & Equity analysis into Workforce Development RFP for service providers and CARES grant distribution for small businesses and nonprofits. In 2021, this work led the State of California to request racial equity training and is now working on adopting racial equity principles for the program at the state level.
• Engaged small business service providers and entrepreneurs in redesigning business support services centering on racial equity.
• Arranged for training specifically to build equity capacity in the Business and Workforce Development divisions.
• Added race/gender tracking to business services data collection. • Deployed additional engagement measures for Cultural Arts grant program resulting in two awards to artists who may have previously faced application barriers.
• Economic COVID -19 Recovery Advisory Group also included disparity analysis and recommendations, based on member input, to reduce disparities through the City’s COVID response.
• Thanks to the leadership of Ohlone Leader Corina Gould and support from City Official and staff in 2022, the City of Oakland will be the first City in California to return about 5 acres of Joaquin Miller Park to the East Bay Ohlone.
Sogorea Te' Land Trust co-founder
and Lisjan Ohlone Tribal Chair
Corrina Gould (standing next to the
sign, wearing a black face mask) and
family members pose for a photo
with Oakland officials alongside a
poster showing a mock-up of the
structure the trust hopes to build on
the Sequoia Point site. (
Annelise
Finney/KQED)
24 Human Management Resources
• Included Race and Equity in New Employee Orientation to get new staff launched
• Publicized and tracked staff participation in DRE Advancing Racial Equity Academy through the Citywide Training Calendar and training system • Provided hiring process data for OakDOT Workforce Equity in Hiring Analysis Pilot to support equity innovation.
• Working on revamping NEOGOV to better track performance evaluations and access to training and provide managers and supervisors with training to be able to successfully support employees to develop racial equity skills and learn to apply tools.
Housing and Community Development
In 2022, under new leadership, the department re-started their equity work. The newly formed equity team design the “Racial Equity Team onboarding curriculum” specifically developed for the Housing and Community Development Department and worked in setting internal structures to successfully do this work and recruit team members.
Staff started training sessions and working on the following goals as part of their action plan:
• Setting the foundation (What is racial equity? Why are we doing this work?) • Becoming data-driven (What does existing data say? How do we understand and measure impact?
• Action planning for racial equity (How do we prioritize our work, and what would make an impact?)
• Ongoing operation - everything that comes after! Which would be a series of report-back and strategizing sessions around baseline data, efforts to improve, discussions on roadblocks and best practices, speaker series, etc.
Parks, Recreation, and Youth Development
OPRYD Equity Team created, deployed, and analyzed its very first department-wide RET Survey. This survey will allow the Equity Team to get a better baseline understanding of where their department is with regards to racial equity implementation.
Finance Management
• Budget Team worked with DRE to design a budget equity tool and approach to collect equity budget outcomes and analysis of proposed budget changes • Race and Equity Team formation, Charter created and signed, established Team e-mail address
• Published first race and equity newsletter
• Surveyed department staff on ideas for Equity Action Plan. 25 • Collaborated with DRE and department representatives to design and launch a Budget Equity Tool, including training and roll-out for use in the development of the 2022/23 City budget.
• Equity Team members worked with Alameda County to clarify language sent out regarding property tax forms for Oakland. Previously, the County provided language that informed recipients of a "Possible Sr Exemption - Call Agency" and the phone number.” The team members found out that the Oakland exemptions are based on income, not age, although seniors have higher income limits for the exemptions, and asked the County for an update so that the tax bill indications would match the actual low-income exemptions that are available, so that low- income homeowners, in Oakland, who are not seniors, would know that they are eligible. For 2022 the language has been updated- there are now two options, and the team is currently working on making sure that the senior exemption is still listed for the Oakland measures benefiting community members impacted by income and racial disparities in our City.
Library
• A sub-group of the racial equity team participated in a statewide library cohort, out of which the Oakland team created a Racial Equity Plan, which was presented to staff in December.
• In June, released staff and public statements from the team on the crisis in black and brown communities.
• Sponsored anti-bias workshops for library staff.
• Created a racial equity staff resource list and updated it in 2022. • Worked on a Library strategic plan and action plan with equity goals and measurable deliverables.
Oakland Public Works Department (OPW)
• 2019-20 CIP Process Led by OakDOT and OPW Collaboration - The new process used racial equity principles to develop a methodology to rank projects using a range of criteria that included equity impacts and was informed with community input on the approach and project submission. • CIP prioritization Process Automation to track and score projects, saving thousands of dollars of staff time and will help staff across the city to more easily manage CIP projects
• Implemented a proactive approach to illegal dumping in two districts to address disparities in the impacts of trash on the streets.
• Arranged for staff training/clinic on the equity portion of Staff agenda report (Two Clinics)
• Produced Equitable Climate Action Plan and Tree Master Plan • Arranged for the Advancing Racial Equity Academy to field staff at Edgewater 26 • The team started the process of working with the new Public Works Director to set a racial equity vision for the department and developed a new OPW RET Action Plan.
• OPW added a feature to its principal maintenance management app that allows the department to plan and assign work equitably. The same app also allows staff to report out how equitable service delivery is. OPW is gearing up to begin meeting with its divisions to share these reports, especially with assistant directors, managers, and supervisors, so adjustments and improvements can be done in the future. Also, OPW will be offering training to its managers and supervisors on how to make equitable assignments.
• Tree Master Plan- Planning for the urban forest plan began in 2019 and a year later, the city published a comprehensive land cover assessment . Oakland’s
urban forest is made up of both publicly and privately owned trees and includes publicly owned trees such as those found in city parks, streets, and city-owned facilities. This plan is the first in the country to center racial equity a nd the first for Oakland. Staff presented the approach at the Western Chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture. The presentation received one of the highest marks for its content and was attended by over 400 professionals.
Police Department
• Launched Advancing Racial Equity Academy training in OPD. • Convened a Race and Equity team consisting of about 10 members. The group met 3 times in the fall of 2020. The Charter was written, presented to the Chief of Police, and finalized.
• Implementing recommendations from consultant disparity study to reduce racial disparities in internal discipline.
• OPD has agreed to look at transfer concerns within the organization and hiring of African American women.
Information Technology
• Prioritized project for neighborhoods and installations of the OAK Wi-Fi project to
extend free wireless internet through Oakland's high-need neighborhoods. All neighborhoods should be completed by end of January 2021. • During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department worked with DRE in the design of a digital equity program to address the needs of children and families in underserved communities. This effort partnered the City with the non-profit Greenlining Institute to develop "The Town Link", a program to improve digital literacy, foster digital inclusion, and reduce the digital divide. Through the year- long contract with Greenlining, the program provided 10 grassroots organizations with $10,000 in city-funded grants and capacity-building support to increase internet adoption and digital literacy in priority communities, creating a public- private partnership to connect Oakland residents most in need of these services.
This model has also become a model to address the digital divide in communities facing historical barriers to digital access in other jurisdictions. 27 Small Departments
The City of Oakland has several very small departments- two to four staff. In 2020, many small departments requested assistance to implement racial equity in their work.
Due to their size, creating an equity team was not the right approach, so DRE worked with them to support the use of equity tools and strategies in projects. Here are some highlights:
Animal Services
Access to Veterinary Care: Under state laws that govern Animal Control, the failure to provide necessary veterinary care is grounds for seizure of that animal. Before 2020, if a pet guardian was unable to afford the care, the animal would be seized. Today, if an Animal Control Officer believes the guardian loves their animal and needs support, they connect the animal with the necessary care without a seizure. Additionally, ACOs regularly provide food and other supplies to support low-income pet guardians. Animal Control Officers receive ongoing training and are now given the flexibility to offer support to keep animals with loving guardians. This can mean scheduling veterinary services at OAS, providing free food or other supplies, or offering supplies to keep dogs contained to limit public safety issues. Animal Control Officers focus on helping whenever possible and appropriate. As a result, animal seizure rates dropped from 32% in 2019 to 23% in 2022. To begin to address the need to increase access to veterinary care, the OAS personnel budget was restructured to eliminate a senior management position to hire a second full-time vet. In 2020 and 2021, OAS received two separate grants, totaling $110,000, to provide access to veterinary care for pets of people who are homeless and, separately, for residents of East Oakland, in neighborhoods that are the focus of the City’s violence prevention efforts. Through these grants, over 18 months, OAS provided free veterinary care to over 1,000 animals. OAS is working in collaboration with the Department of Human Services and service providers at Oakland’s Community Cabin and Safe RV Sites, as well as providing services to unsheltered people outside of the City sites, with a special focus on the large community along Wood Street, in West Oakland.
After completing use of the grant fund, in 2022, OAS has restructured its access to care program. Animal Control Officers now provide regular outreach to pet guardians experiencing homelessness, to provide vaccines and other wellness services. We anticipate this new model will allow OAS to reach at least as many people as through the clinics, in a far more efficient service delivery model. Additionally, OAS received a $75,000 grant in 2022 to provide vouchers to low-income guardians for urgent veterinary services through private clinics.
Change to Handling Barking Complaints: Responsibility for barking complaints was moved to OAS in late 2020. We initially followed the process we inherited, which included sending up to two warning letters to the dog owner, followed by notices to the property owner. If the barking issue was not resolved by the second notice to the property owner, the property owner would be responsible for fines. Recognizing that 28 dog barking complaints can lead to housing insecurity for renters, and can be used as a form of harassment, in 2022, OAS has shifted to a more holistic approach when handling these complaints. Understanding that many barking dog complaints are due to minor neglect, Animal Control Officers visit the property, evaluate the likely cause, and seek to educate the owner on how simple changes to the living conditions and available stimulation may reduce the nuisance and improve the life of the dog. If the ACO intervention isn’t enough to reduce the barking, at that point a citation is issued to the dog owner, which would potentially result in a much lower fee. Only after a citation fails to improve the situation, would OAS notify the property owner.
Accessibility: In 2020, OAS increased the hours it is open to the public from 20 hours, six days per week, to 44 hours, seven days per week. Phone hours were increased from 14 hours per week to 42 hours per week. We are now open 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM every day except Thursday; on Thursday, we are open from 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM. It is a primary goal for Animal Services to better serve people who are very low-income, with multiple jobs, to have more hours flexibility to get services.
Community Police Review Agency
• Provided direct feedback to help establish standard operating procedures for the commission’s operations.
• Improved complaint intake review process
• Improved complaint investigation process
• Reviewed hiring practices and participated in process • Made outreach a current practice in the agency
• Developed outreach materials in 4 languages
• Connected with and learned from community leaders and organizations • Over 50% of staff at CPRA has now completed the AREA training
In Closing
Making racial equity a reality in Oakland is not an easy task; however, these accomplishments demonstrate that when given the tools and skills needed to advance racial equity, City staff are stepping-up to meet the moment we are living in.
Many thanks to our colleagues serving on equity teams, staff leading projects that center racial equity, and to City employees across all levels of the organization who have willingly attended the Advancing Racial Equity Academy to improve their abilities to advance racial equity in their work.
It is also important to acknowledge that progress also relies on the support of Oakland BIPOC community advocates and organizers as well as white allies that share the vision of a City where racial equity has been achieved. We extend sincere appreciation to all of them for the years of advocacy that made this work a reality and for their continued efforts to keep us focused on what matters. Their commitment reminds us to 29 go beyond just imagining a transformed future, by acting on a day-to-day basis to address detrimental conditions and increasing opportunity in our communities most impacted by racial disparities.
Let’s keep working to make racial equity a reality and remember: