Updated 10/31/2018:
The Oakland City Council recently adopted a major update to the City’s process to identify and select capital projects for funding, making the process more accessible to Oakland residents and codifying residents’ priorities into capital investment criteria. Capital projects improve and maintain Oakland’s public facilities and infrastructure. They can range from restoring aging fire stations to repaving broken streets to building new recreation centers. Which capital asset projects are funded, how much they cost, and when they are built, maintained or repaired -- that’s all part of the Capital Improvement Program, or CIP.
Throughout summer 2018, OakDOT and Oakland Public Works led outreach to gather community input to help the City build a process that produces a more equitable and transparent CIP. Staff asked: “We are building a new scorecard to transparently evaluate every potential project, and we need your input on what that scorecard should look like. What factors should be weighted most heavily – what issues matter to you the most?” More than 1,300 residents provided answers to those questions, through an online survey and participation in community meetings with OakDOT and OPW staff. In September and October, staff brought to the City Council a new draft potential project prioritization model – the scorecard – that gave the most weight to the factors residents said they cared most about: equity, health and safety, and asset condition. The Council adopted the model.
Staff also developed a request form for Oakland community members to request potential projects to be evaluated for funding under the new model. For the upcoming two-year FY2019/2021 CIP, community members participated in force, requesting the City consider almost 300 capital projects. Staff are working now to assign the work of reviewing all those requests and will be reporting out on those evaluations when the City produces its recommendations in the first half of 2019.
The online request form for potential projects to be considered will remain open -- so community members with an idea don't have to wait to submit them. However, please be aware that submissions the City receives after Oct. 28, 2018, will not be scheduled for evaluation until the following two-year CIP cycle -- most likely in spring 2021.
Updated 10/19/2018:
NOTE: The deadline to make a request for capital improvement projects has been extended to October 28th 11:59 PM. Please continue to make requests for capital projects at the online request form until Oct. 28. Thank you!
Updated 9/27/2018:
NOTE: The online request form issues reported below have been resolved. Please continue to make requests for capital projects at the online request form until Oct. 22. Thank you!
Updated 9/21/2018:
NOTE: Many residents have successfully requested that the City evaluate their capital project ideas using our online request form. However, please note that this is a new system the City is implementing and some requests are experiencing issues when submitting this form. If you were able to submit successfully, we have received your project idea(s). Thank you for participating in this important process! If you are encountering technical issues when trying to submit your request(s), please know we are aware of the problem and are working to resolve it. Some issues have had to do with the length of a project description -- if you receive a "failed to submit" message, please try shortening your project description and try again. You may also include longer description language in response to the "Any additional information about the importance of your project?" question. Please feel free to email with any questions or concerns to CIP@oaklandca.gov or contact Public Information Officer Sean Maher at SMaher@oaklandca.gov.
Updated 9/12/2018:
The City of Oakland is updating our process to identify and select capital projects for funding. Capital projects improve and maintain Oakland’s public facilities and infrastructure. They can range from restoring aging fire stations to repaving broken streets to building new recreation centers. Throughout summer 2018, the City conducted outreach to gather community input to help us build a process that produces a more equitable and transparent Capital Improvement Program, or CIP. Which capital asset projects are funded, how much they cost, and when they are built, maintained or repaired -- that’s all part of the CIP.
Our goal is a CIP process rooted in community values and priorities. Because the City has more demand for capital projects than it has money to pay for them, the CIP must make choices about how to prioritize potential projects. We asked for community input on the development of a “scorecard” that would be used to evaluate every potential project.
In that spirit, the City asked residents to rank these factors by which every potential project would be considered:
- Equity: Investment in underserved communities
- Health/Safety: Improve safety and encourage healthy living
- Economy: Benefit small Oakland businesses and create job opportunities for Oaklanders
- Environment: Improve the environment and address climate change
- Improvement: Build new and upgrade a city-owned property
- Existing Conditions: Renovate or replace broken or outdated city property
- Project Readiness: Ready-to-go projects without delay
- Collaboration: Combine city projects to save time and money
- Required Work: Address areas where the city may be held financially and legally responsible
What We Heard
To gather community input, in June and July the City hosted four community meetings in a town hall-style, attended and presented at several meetings hosted by community groups, and promoted an online survey available in four languages. In total, the City received input from about 750 people in meetings and workshops, and gathered more than 1300 survey responses – primarily in English, but also in Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese. Community members’ top three priorities were the same in all groups: equity, health & safety, and existing conditions of capital assets. Find a chart of our survey results in the link at the top of this page.
What We Did With What We Heard
The City made many efforts to ensure that participation in this process was equitable – for example, providing in-person interpreter services in community meetings, and doing focused outreach to groups in underserved communities.
We tracked our results and found that despite these efforts, Black/African-American and Hispanic/Latino Oaklanders were still underrepresented in our survey results. We have several lessons to learn about how to better connect with members of these ethnic groups, and we are committed to improving over time. For the task at hand, our decision was to reweight our results based on race to reflect the City’s population distribution from the 2016 Oakland American Community Survey – our most-recent available snapshot of Oakland’s ethnic makeup. Responses from underrepresented populations were given more weight and the responses from overrepresented populations were adjusted downward to proportionally reflect the makeup within the Oakland population.
Based on these results, the CIP team is proposing a project prioritization model – the scorecard referenced above – that balances the factors into a “perfect score” of 100 points, assigning the greatest weight to equity and health & safety. Find our draft prioritization model in the link at the top of this page.
What’s Next
Staff are bringing this proposal to the City Council’s Public Works Committee for consideration on Sept. 25. The meeting is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. in Hearing Room 1 on the first floor of City Hall at 1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, and we invite community participation.
Additionally, anyone who would like to suggest or request that a potential project is considered for the upcoming two-year CIP may submit a request online here. Project requests for the upcoming CIP (July 2019-June 2021) are due on Sunday, October 28, 2018, 11:59
For any additional questions, contact Public Information Officer Sean Maher at smaher@oaklandca.gov.