Oakland (Special to ZennieReport.com) – Oakland Mayor-elect Barbara Lee made her first comments on the City’s proposed 2025-2027 budget today. Mayor-elect Lee has been in daily communication with City staff and Interim Mayor Kevin Jenkins’s office as she prepares for her late May transition into City Hall.
What follows are Mayor-Elect Lee’s Comments on the Proposed Oakland Budget of $4.2 million as submitted by Oakland Interim Mayor and District Six Councilmember Kevin Jenkins.
“Thank you to Interim Mayor Jenkins for his leadership, and the Oakland City Council and staff’s hard work for putting forward a balanced budget proposal during a period of significant fiscal challenge – a difficult task under any circumstances. Like many cities across the Bay Area and California, Oakland is projected to have a substantial budget shortfall over the next two years. These budget deficits didn’t happen overnight, and they will require both short-term and long-term structural solutions to solve Oakland’s budget challenges.
The 2025-2027 budget proposal of $4.2 billion is a step in the right direction towards a safer and cleaner city. Specific suggestions I provided included:
- Safeguarding public safety funding and keeping the police, fire, and violence prevention budgets intact with an eye towards full implementation of Measure NN and its requirements. Specifically, I requested maintaining police staffing with no reduction and programs and services under the Department of Violence Prevention to address public safety and crime prevention efforts.
- Ensuring that core services will remain intact, including maintenance and investments to address illegal dumping, abandoned autos, keeping our streets clean, and maintaining the community ambassadors program.
- Protecting our libraries and vital programs for summer and after-school programs. One of my priorities will be to bring a more robust summer jobs program back.
- Minimizing layoffs of direct service providers to ensure core delivery services are being met for the community
- Maintaining arts grants programming
When I am sworn in as Mayor later this month, I will be working with my team to review areas of concern including Oakland’s expenditures and obligations, the impact of rotating brown outs of two fire stations, a strategy to collect money owed to the city, making sure taxpayers’ dollars are being spent efficiently, and the impact of federal budget cuts on programs such as Oakland’s Safe Passages, a program serving Oakland’s children and youth which has received funding from AmeriCorp, a source of money currently under attack by Trump and DOGE.
As Oakland’s incoming mayor, my job is to lead our city out of a budget crisis and into a period of financial stability. As the budget process moves forward, I look forward to working with City Councilmembers and the City Administrator.
Oaklanders deserve transparency, accountability, and results. With the help of a broad-cross section of leaders and the community, that is what we will work together to deliver. I call on Oaklanders to share their input and priorities throughout the budget process. In the meantime, I am working daily and assembling a Transition Committee, Transition Working Groups, and a strong staff team to be able to hit the ground running when I take office.” (Read and hear all about the progress of those groups here at ZennieReport.com.)