Finance and Management Committee
April 9, 2025
AGENDA REPORT
TO: Jestin D. Johnson FROM: Monica Elise Davis
City Administrator Deputy City Administrator
SUBJECT: FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan DATE: March 20, 2025
City Administrator Approval Date:
RECOMMENDATION
Staff Recommends That The City Council Receive An Informational Report From The City Administrator On The FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
As Oakland faces financial challenges, it is committed to fostering a thriving and equitable community. The City emphasizes transparency, accountability, and a compassionate approach to public needs. While making tough decisions, Oakland aims to balance immediate demands with future growth, prioritizing fiscal responsibility and economic development to build resilience and lasting equity for all residents.
This FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan (“Strategic Plan”) is designed to guide the City through the complex process of fiscal recovery while ensuring that core services and programs remain aligned with the aspirations of our Community and workforce. The focus is on balancing the necessity of fiscal responsibility with the fundamental needs of Oakland residents, creating a path forward that is both responsive and inclusive.
BACKGROUND / LEGISLATIVE HISTORY
At the direction of City Administrator Jestin Johnson, in early March 2024, a strategic planning process commenced to facilitate a thoughtful and responsive process for the development of a Strategic Plan that addresses Oakland’s resource and budget constraints, challenges, and opportunities, ensuring short-term and long-term plans for its workforce and residents. The Strategic Plan development journey includes:
• Management-level Retreat: 1.5-day retreat with Agency Directors to build trust, encourage healthy conflict, foster commitment, and enhance citywide priorities. • Data and Document Review: A comprehensive review of 100+ data sources, including community findings, policies, budgets, and plans, to inform interviews and engagement activities.
Jestin Johnson (Mar 24, 2025 21:23 PDT)
Mar 24, 2025
Jestin D. Johnson, City Administrator
Subject: FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan
Date: March 20, 2025 Page 2
Finance and Management Committee
April 9, 2025
• Strategic Planning Design Team (SPDT) Application and Launch: A citywide survey selected 25 City of Oakland staff to serve as SPDT members, ensuring diverse representation based on identity, capacity, experience, collaboration, and public-facing roles.
• Interviews and Focus Groups: Conducted one-on-one discussions with 15 Agency Directors and five focus groups to explore their visions for Oakland, core services, challenges, and collaboration needs.
• City Data Gathering & Analysis: Interviews and research across 10 cities and counties identified best practices in strategic budgeting, crime prevention, economic development, and housing support.
• SPDT Workshops: Three SPDT workshops aligned on citywide priorities, cost-savings and revenue opportunities, and co-designed an implementation plan aligned with the City’s goals.
ANALYSIS AND POLICY ALTERNATIVES
A comprehensive review process involving data analysis, director-level interviews, and five focus groups with key stakeholders, revealed critical areas for improvement:
• Need for standardization in policies and practices in citywide operations and policies. • Importance of strategic cross-departmental collaboration. • Communication gaps between City Council and City Leadership staff. • Challenges due to staffing, including understaffing and inefficiencies, and overall employee performance.
• Budget alignment is needed between department priorities and citywide goals.
Therefore, the three-year Strategic Priorities spanning between FY 2025-2028 are:
1. Streamline Operations: Streamline and standardize citywide processes - policies, finance integration, communication, onboarding, procurement, payroll, and hiring – to enhance efficiency, transparency, and collaboration.
2. Foster Cross-Department Collaboration: Formalize cross-department collaboration through regular meetings, joint planning, and centralized project management.
3. Enhance Communication and Coordination: Enhance citywide communication to improve transparency, decision-making, and staff engagement.
4. Optimize Workforce Management: Enhance employee performance, HR coordination, and communication on equity goals through improved resources and intranet transparency.
5. Align Budget with Citywide Priorities: Leverage citywide evaluation criteria and aligned priorities to integrate into departmental work plans and streamline the budget process.
The FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan is available as Attachment A and articulates in further detail the process of developing the plan, the identified Strategic Priorities, and the associated Action Plan that will be executed over the course of the next three fiscal years during the Implementation Phase.
Implementation of the Strategic Plan advances the citywide priority of a responsive, trustworthy government.
An Implementation Team made up of City staff is identified to drive the action plan forward, facilitate communication back to various internal committees, and to support messaging needed Jestin D. Johnson, City Administrator
Subject: FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan
Date: March 20, 2025 Page 3
Finance and Management Committee
April 9, 2025
for external communication. The Implementation Team Charter is available as Attachment B and provides more details about the various roles and responsibilities for undertaking this work.
One of the first charges of the Implementation Team will be to develop performance metrics for the respective Priorities they are working on. The effort to identify and track performance measurements related to the Strategic Plan will also be a pilot effort to support a broader Citywide performance management dashboard.
FISCAL IMPACT
No fiscal impacts are associated with the production of this informational report; however, the implementation of the FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan endeavors to support the alignment of fiscal resources and improve the efficiency of work that can optimize and/or reduce future expenditures.
PUBLIC OUTREACH / INTEREST
No public outreach was conducted in preparing this information report beyond the required posting on the City of Oakland’s website. A comprehensive review of existing planning documents developed across the City were evaluated as a part of the development of the FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan. Further, the Community Engagement Working Group and the Department Leads for the Departmental Racial Equity Team lead were consulted in the development of the FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan.
COORDINATION
Production of the FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan was done in concert with consultants, Be Present Consult, LLC.
SUSTAINABLE OPPORTUNITIES
Economic: There are no known economic opportunities associated with the production of this informational report. However, there may be future work on the Strategic Priorities, which may have a direct or indirect impact on the economic activities of the City.
Environmental: There are no known environmental opportunities associated with the production of this informational report. However, there may be future work on the Strategic Priorities which may directly or indirectly impact the City’s environmental, resiliency, and sustainability activities.
Race & Equity: The role and advisement of the City of Oakland’s Department of Race & Equity, which assists all City Departments and Divisions in promoting equity, was integral in the development of this Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan includes data related to the established City equity indicators, and the intent is to refresh this data on an annual basis as we progress through the Strategic Plan Implementation Phase to measure movement in these equity indicators.
Jestin D. Johnson, City Administrator
Subject: FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan
Date: March 20, 2025 Page 4
Finance and Management Committee
April 9, 2025
ACTION REQUESTED OF THE CITY COUNCIL
Staff Recommends That The City Council Receive An Informational Report From The City Administrator On The FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan
For questions regarding this report, please contact Monica Elise Davis, Deputy City Administrator, at 510-238-7985
Respectfully submitted,
MONICA ELISE DAVIS
Deputy City Administrator,
City Administrator’s Office
Attachments (2):
A. Attachment A: FY 2025-2028 Citywide Strategic Plan
B. Attachment B: Strategic Plan Implementation Team Charter
Monica Davis (Mar 24, 2025 16:43 PDT)