Ever wondered,
'What ARE they doing in City Council?'

Here's a good source for finding out

At Committees this Week, 4/21/2026 This week, the Finance Committee meeting was moved up to 9am, but the rest of the meetings are scheduled at their normal times. As usual, this guide is by no means an exhaustive list of what’s on the agendas, just some things that OO believes will be especially noteworthy

Every week, the Oakland Observer brings you a preview of what's happening at City Council meetings and committee meetings, something no other local news publication does.

It's been over a month since I reported the visible reality that the East Bay Polling Institute does not exist and that it's just two local operatives from a statewide anti-union center-right PAC pool. They still have no corp ID, no charity registration, or IRS non profit status

probably because it was a weekend desk story that wasn't well reported then their crime writer fixed it up on Monday if I had to guess

Three shot, two fatally, in Oakland Saturday night Officers arrived to the 6400 block of Foothill Boulevard Saturday evening after reports of multiple gunshots from the ShotSpotter Activation system.

The first homicides after March 7 shootout appears to be another shootout over a month later. Violence is decreasing, but local media prefer fearmongering. Meanwhile, we see that violence vectored by small beef that becomes lethal because so many are armed

Absolutely. Jenkins undermined the entire point of having a special meeting for the EAP, the time to hear the public and deliberate. Instead, a CM skipped it, and public had its time cut.

I haven't had time to pursue this story, but its pretty wild given how much ink has been expended on him how little interest there was in this

Oakland's landlords weren't paying their business taxes. Once the City started pursuing what was owed, rental business tax doubled from the previous year, over tripled the year before that. Pretty wild how they are constantly whining at city hall about deadbeat tenants

In the Details: happenings, findings, discoveries and observations at City Hall, Week Ending 4/19/2026 (2) 1) Four Months after Authorization, OPD Still Hasn't Executed a Contract with Flock, Has no Additional Video Surveillance Inquiries by the Oakland Observer confirmed this month that the City of Oakland has still not signed a contract with Flock, over four months after the City Council initially authorized the CAO

In the Details is back! 1) An OO exclusive: Despite December's Council authorization for a Flock contract to continue ALPR & add video surveillance, OPD confirms no contract was executed 2) Pyrrhic W for Houston as CMs pass unrecognizable version of "EAP"

It's a shame no reporting captured this comment by Carroll Fife Tuesday, because she said something that rarely gets any airplay or column inches

Long-time public safety & violence prevention activist Paula Hawthorn urged Council to agendize a report on OPOA MOU. As readers of the Observer will recall, City w/out notice dumped a contract approval for OPOA adding 2 years of raises on top of 5 contractual years of increases

OPD is asking to enter into a new no-bid contract w/Israeli cell cracking firm Cellebrite, even tho the contract is increasing by 55%. Cellebrite has been used against Palestinians in Israel's genocidal war, as well as dissidents in Jordan, Myanmar. etc
www.dropsitenews.com...

Houston posted this on FB, congratulating himself for passage of EAP, a video of his grandstanding waste of limited presentation time instead of explaining how EAP changed. When asked directly at mtg, Houston & Brooks were unable the edits because they didn't write them.

After all my diligent work as the Oakland Observer shedding light on policy processes & council deliberations, it would be wild if I became well-known as the "guy who reported that million dollar tree removal hearing". I'm ok with it, politics reportage is absurdity, it's ok.

Oakland mayor seeks to scale back homeless encampment sweeps as others push crackdown Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee wants to dial down homeless camp sweeps amid a budget shortfall and subpar results.

The same author a month or two ago reported the City had the most encampment evictions in years in 2025. And there's a mountain of first person evidence that it did so by ignoring its own policies on vehicles before the EAP, so I don't get the tone here

I never saw the risk of losing quorum to be honest. Regardless, if they were to lose quorum with one item, that could just be continued. Losing quorum on a full agenda is a big deal, not on a special mtg for one item with no deadline. It was bs to limit time

they only have about 610 cops, so it's a typo. They publish all kinds of mistakes regularly, but 9 to 10 percent is the consistent number for the past decade or so. It got up to 11% once, if I recall, but not for long.

I didn't write something about it specifically, altho I did report in the staffing piece I wrote that one of the recruiting officers thought that the fact that none of them lve in Oakland makes them easier targets for headhunting oakland.legistar.com/LegislationD...

Analysis: Despite Edits On Tone and Some Processes, Houston’s Newest EAP Version Would Still Institutionalize Harsher Official Policies Against the Homeless Ken Houston’s Encampment Abatement Policy [EAP] proposal is back on Tuesday—again at an unusual time, 9:30 am. Houston’s attempts to change the policy and polarity of the City’s current Encampment Management Plan[EMP] have been in free fall for months, as his bombastic soliloquies and

Here's the OO's analysis on the Encampment Abatement legislation, based on nearly a full year of minute to minute coverage of every single molecule in motion

At Council This Week, 4/14/2026 A note on publishing timelines. Over the past several weeks OO got a little behind keeping up with city happenings and did not publish an “In the Details”. The ITD will be back in the coming weeks, hopefully with some catch up. Two Back to Back Council Meetings In keeping

It will be a long day tomorrow at Council; first the EAP, which is a whole special council meeting in itself, likely with over 100 speakers. Then the actual regular meeting. IMO, this is not the way a transparent council operates, but OO has you covered

to be fair, also after getting groceries probably

Analysis: Despite Edits On Tone and Some Processes, Houston’s Newest EAP Version Would Still Institutionalize Harsher Official Policies Against the Homeless Ken Houston’s Encampment Abatement Policy [EAP] proposal is back on Tuesday—again at an unusual time, 9:30 am. Houston’s attempts to change the policy and polarity of the City’s current Encampment Management Plan[EMP] have been in free fall for months, as his bombastic soliloquies and

Houston's EAP has evolved over the past months, with changes to the most antagonistic prose and policy. The version Council will view on Tuesday is still an official shift towards harsher policies... amid the reality of de facto harsher policies since 2024

I can hardly believe it myself, but with 3 newspapers purporting to report on Oakland, and nearly half a dozen tv news stations, it looks the Oakland Observer will have the only report about the EAP ahead of Tuesday's 9:30 am special meeting dedicated to it. Publishing tomorrow

While the tone and some of the more obvious churlishness has been removed from Houston's EAP, one big thing remains, which appears to be a total prohibition on encampments adjacent to ANY park or BART track.

Some edits to EAP that will be seen Tuesday make it clear the map was a pretty big problem for the previous EMP, because the City rarely if ever used it or paid attention to it, and certainly didn't over the past year or so. Basically putting CAOs 'meh' attitude in writing

One month after its poll was taken at face value, the East Bay Polling Institute still has no corporate ID number, no Charity registry, and no IRS ID. It still does not exist, leaving questions as to why media and politicians used its polling data.

Oakland man released from jail as convenience store murder case falls apart Prosecutors dropped murder charges and agreed to let the defendant out of jail, but first he had to plead no contest to a less serious gun possession charge.

It's a news story that Oakland's newspaper NEVER mentions Jones Dickson by name in same kinds of stories it relentlessly reported as examples of failed DA leadership by Price. Plea deals, normal when its a weak case, were the entire case against Price

Just two weeks ago, OPD said that they will have over 30 recruits in the 197th academy. But with the academy start date just a little over 2 weeks from now, they still aren't giving a starting class size for the academy?

that would be worse, I guess.

IMO, the purpose of rewriting EMP was largely performative, because over the past 2 years, it's been proven to be largely symbolic anyway & in no way guiding the process for dealing with homeless, as ramped up evictions show. Nevertheless, it's clear Houston "got a memo" for EAP