Oakland Leaders Propose Plan to Reopen Fire Stations as Budget Crisis Threatens More Closures

Oakland representatives promised to look under “every couch cushion” for firefighting funds after station closures last month. Now, three say they’ve found the money and are proposing a plan to prevent more shutdowns.

In January, Oakland’s city administrator shuttered two firehouses to cut costs, warning that four more would follow this month without new funding. The city faces a $130 million budget deficit, worsened by the stalled Coliseum sale, a key piece of its budget plan.

“Council members have asked finance in the past, help us find every last penny, but ultimately, it’s up to us to really do the digging and find every penny, which has been the case here,” said Councilmember Janani Ramachandran, who represents part of the fire-prone Oakland Hills.

Ramachandran, along with Councilmembers Rebecca Kaplan and Zac Unger, are asking the whole council to redirect $8.75 million to the fire department. “That would be enough to prevent the closure of four stations and be able to hopefully reopen two more at some point before the end of the fiscal year,” said Ramachandran, noting that there wasn’t a timeline for reopening the stations in Grass Valley and Woodminster yet.

She was one of the harshest critics of Oakland’s July budget, which included a controversial provision that would drastically slash spending and shift most fiscal powers to budget staff if the city’s deal to sell its 50% stake in the Coliseum didn’t go according to plan.

After the budget passed, the Coliseum deal quickly — and quietly — shifted. Initially, the local developers, the African American Sports and Entertainment Group, and former Mayor Sheng Thao revised the contract to delay payments and shorten the closing time. But last fall, AASEG fell behind on payments while negotiating a second deal with the Oakland A’s for its stake in the property. That agreement requires a complicated county approval process, which has been slow and unstable.

The delay triggered the contingency budget, and Budget Administrator Bradley Johnson announced in November that without immediate and drastic changes, the city could run out of money. Since public safety accounts for the bulk of the city’s overspending, police and fire departments had to be part of the budget cuts.

“We have a significant pre-existing structural issue as an organization,” Johnson said at a council meeting. “To maintain our solvency, now is the time that we have to take action to solve it.”

Residents in the Oakland Hills, near the two shuttered stations, spent January watching the destructive Los Angeles blazes and worrying about their own city’s ability to respond if a fast-moving fire started in their neighborhoods, which have been ravaged by fire before.

Fire union president Seth Olyer said that without the two stations operating, response times have been longer and resources spread thin. In January, a house fire near a closed station took crews more than 10 minutes to respond to.

He called the loss of four more stations unsustainable and unprecedented.

“This would take us from a fire department that prides itself on being able to keep small incidents small and prevent the spread of fire to really almost being spectators as we do our absolute best to try and keep fires contained to the city block they originated,” Olyer told KQED.

“I am definitely singing the praises of Councilmembers Kaplan and Ramachandran for their efforts to try and come together and find these funds,” he continued.

He previously said that thanks to Kaplan, the city had identified revenue from events at the Oakland Arena and Coliseum to stave off the additional closures for another month. “But, again, the fact remains that there are still miles and miles of the Oakland Hills where Oaklanders are unprotected from fire and [emergency services] needs.”

The councilmembers’ resolution would pull more than $2.5 million in unexpected revenue from events at the Coliseum and Oakland Arena and about the same amount from the city’s self-insurance liability fund. It also proposes using about $1 million in transportation dollars, and some revenue from increased parking enforcement and a toll contract, according to Ramachandran.

The resolution was approved by the Rules and Legislation committee on Thursday morning, though a key aspect — rescinding the city administrator’s expanded fiscal powers — was removed.

“That power we’re expressly trying to take back to council because our powers are budget and legislation,” Ramachandran told KQED before the vote. Some of the staff’s budget decisions, especially around public safety, have been unpopular with public and council representatives. “What we’re seeing is a whole lot of cut, cut, cut to different programs and services.”

The amended resolution, which Ramachandran feels confident will have strong support, is slated to go before the whole board on March 4.

If it doesn’t pass, the four additional closures could take effect as soon as next month.

“The number one thing that we have been hearing from the public every single day since the closure of these fire stations has been, ‘Save our stations, reopen and keep open some of the bread and butter of public safety,’” she told KQED. “It’s been an issue that’s united Oaklanders perhaps more than any other that I’ve seen during my time as a council member so far, and the message is extremely loud and clear that we cannot afford to lose homes, lose lives, lose businesses, lose anything due to fires.”