Alameda's city budget goes in cycles of two fiscal years at a time. On May 5, City Council is holding a workshop to focus on the operations part of the new budget.

While skimming the proposed "workforce changes," I was impressed with the range of public services for which the city is planning to staff up. From the libraries to parks to planning to public works to public safety, the budget proposal appeared to recommend adding many capabilities and skills. What a smart move, since the City of Alameda is in an enviable position: The city's main revenue streams of property tax, sales tax, and real-estate transfer tax have been sufficiently steady that the city retains a cushion of an additional 25% of operating funds for unexpected expenses, and beyond that will enter this new two-year cycle with over $20mm in "residual funds" available in the general fund. When looking at this spreadsheet, I was pleased to see that the city is proposing to put these funds to build capacity on behalf of the public and city stakeholders.... well, until I realized that I had read much too quickly and missed an important cutoff in the document.

The first two pages were staff positions that the City Manager is recommending for inclusion in the next two years' budget, while the following page-and-a-half were positions requested by departments but not recommended for funding. In actuality, the City Manager's recommendation for City Council adoption is quite targeted: Adding some positions over the next two years that can be funded from specific revenue streams or by upgrading existing roles, while making as little use of the general fund to add new staff positions as possible.

(The attached staff report describes this proposed strategy and it also notes — wisely — that retaining existing staff by preserving roles and budgeting for modest cost-of-living increases is most important.)

But for the purposes of this blog post, let's set aside the specifics of revenue streams and other internal factors that shaped the recommended positions — and return to my naive initial skim. This list of staffing requests is interesting as it represents department directors' exercise in thinking about what more their departments could potentially accomplish for the public. Ultimately, staffing decisions reflect more than just the mechanics of accounting, they signal what the city's leaders believe are essential and valuable services.

Here's a small sampling of some of the proposed roles:

Library - Social Worker

Position is being recommended in FY27 due to recent safety concerns and the increased scope/workload of the part time resources specialist who assists unhoused and vulnerable citizens. The Library is a resource for citizens to access a variety of program and services. Addition of this position will ensure citizen needs are being consistently met and reduce turnover, increasing consistency of help to Alameda's vulnerable population.

Public Works - Maintenance Workers

Public Works works closely with Health and Human Services to conduct regular encampment cleanups, which has taken staff away from
other primary tasks like potholes, sidewalk repair, street sweeping, etc. These two new positions will be dedicated to encampment cleanups
and a quicker response to graffiti on public property. They also will take the lead on the more manual cleaning that the newly designed
"complete streets" demand. Bulb outs and protected bike lanes do not allow for regular sweeping but require a smaller sweeper or mini vacuum. This new Clean Street crew will also dedicated to newly constructed street improvements, including the Cross Alameda Trail. We are requesting a maintenance worker I and a maintenance worker II. The II is needed to be able to drive heavy duty equipment, such as the leaf vacuum and street sweeper.

City Attorney - Housing Specialist II

This position will focus on annual requirements and investigation of potential invalid rent increases. The demands on staff resources have
changed significantly with the launch of a requirement for landlords to submit annual registration. During the initial registration dive from June
to August 2024, landlords submitted more than 2,500 new tenancies, a 147% increase compared to the previous year, and more than 2,300
updated rents a 51% increase. The influx of updated tenancy data led to the flagging of more than 700 potential invalid rent increases.
Investigating and resolving these cases is a time-intensive process that involves outreach to landlords, request for a detailed rent increase
history, and distinguishing registration errors from actual rent payments not in compliance with local law. Additional, the number of PRA
requests to the program has increased from average of 10 annually in 2020-2022 to an average of 17 annually in 2023-20245. PRA requests
are likewise time intensive, both in identifying responsive records and redacting sensitive personal information.

Planning, Building, and Transportation - Transportation Coordinator (2- year limited term)

Existing Transportation Planning staffing is insufficient to undertake a major planning project such as the bicycle/pedestrian Wooden Bridge
connection to Bay Farm Island and support other Transportation Planning efforst such as implementation of Vision Zero strategies, Safe
Routes to School initiatives, regional grant applications, and coordination with transit agencies on multimodal improvements. This time-limited
position would support existing staffing with these efforts and support public engagement required

I plucked out these four sets of positions since they all demonstrate — in different ways — how the city could hire additional staff to improve city services that are directly visible to the public in libraries, on streets, when renting, or when cycling over the rickety wooden bridge that's used by many students cycling from Bay Farm to Lincoln Middle School.

In an ideal world, all of these roles would be added and staffed (as well as many others listed in the spreadsheet). However, in the reality of this proposed budget, two are recommended and two are not:

• ✅ I'll definitely look forward to the addition of a social worker to the main library, and I'm glad to hear that the city will be supporting the needs of renters (although it's also unfortunate that the city has to dedicate even more resources to handling PRA requests, many of which are genuine but also some of which are likely filed intentionally as "fishing expeditions" to overwhelm city staff). Those two are recommended positions to include in the operating budget.
• ❌ However, it's unfortunate to read that the City Manager is not currently recommending expanding the city's staff capacity to plan transportation improvements, manage public engagement activities, or to further maintain existing infrastructure.

For all of the proposed roles and which are recommended, see this spreadsheet — but just make sure to watch more closely than I did for the transition!

City Council will be discussing this on May 5 — and taking public comment on how the city's next two years of operating budgeting will embody our civic priorities.