Oakland's City Council is back in session on Jan. 5. Since some meetings in December were canceled, there will be a lot to cover.

In Oakland, City Council agendas, minutes, and videos--are posted to an online calendar from the city clerk's office. The trouble is, few Oaklanders know where to find them.

Even worse, this information is fairly daunting and impenetrable -- unless you're already a local political insider with deep knowledge of local bureaucracies and the context of local issues.

Oakland Local is trying an experiment to make our local government easier to understand...

In the spirit of improving communication and supporting government transparency, OL will publish a series of "City Translator" articles.

In these, we'll explain in plain English what's inside some of these City of Oakland documents. We'll do our best to highlight the key issues, processes, and decisions in ways that might make sense to most Oaklanders -- even people who haven't been following local news or government very closely.

We know we can't do all of this alone. We hope that you will leave comments on these articles to ask questions, make clarifications and updates, suggest resources, nominate other city documents for "translation," and help us fix errors.

We'll also post these city documents on our Scribd account, and we'll embed the documents in our articles about them.

So to kick off this series, here's the agenda for the next City Council meeting:

AT 6 PM on Tuesday January 5, the Oakland Redevelopment Agency and the City Council are meeting at Oakland City Hall.
 
WHAT'S HOT
The three big items of the night are likely to be:

1. Parking: Increase the cost of residential parking permits from $20 to $35. This has been discussed as a way to offset the street parking debacle. Predictably, many are unhappy about it.
2. High-tech: Authorize the City Administrator to contract for automatic vehicle location (AVL) and global positioning system (GPS) technology implementations without a competitive bidding process, and at the cost of up to $250,000 (Sounds like more high-tech surveillance technology, possibly for the Oakland Police Dept.)
3. Redesigning local elections. At 7 PM Council will hear a report on and discuss Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) and Ranked Choice Voting. (See articles here and here.) They will also decide whether to make June 8, 2010 the date of Oakland's Municipal Nomination Election, to align with the statewide primary. (Susan's translation: This would mean holding the mayoral primary election in June as has happened before. But with Instant Runoff Voting in place, we'd still have campaigning until November and a chance to discuss issues -- unlike the last election.)

Here's the official agenda. Below that is OL's translation of the rest of what's on it...

1 5 2010 Concurrent Meeting of the Oakland Redevelopment Agency City Council 10-01-05 Meeting Agenda

CEREMONIAL MATTERS

• Honorarium to Congresswoman Barbara Lee, sponsored by Rebecca Kaplan to acknowledge her leadership in the fight against AIDS/HIV
• Proclaim January National Blood donor month and have a city blood drive on Jan 28, 10-3pm.
• AIDS as a local emergency. Renew and continue the City's declaration on this.
• Cannabis resolution. Adopt a resolution declaring a local public health emergency with respect to safe, affordable cannabis in the city of Oakland (Susan asks: What, the City Council is moving closer to letting citizens purchase dispensary pot without a medical card?)

LAWSUIT SETTLEMENTS

City governments get sued regularly, and Oakland is no exception. Most of these cases get settled out of court. Here are the latest settlements before Oakland City Council:

• Ernest White will receive $9,200 for the city's responsibility for his fall in front of 826 58th Street.
• Elizabeth Clark will receive $15,000 to settle her claim that she experienced disability discrimination and an invasion of her privacy while at the Oakland Police Department Training Academy.
• Kaitlin Limrite will receive $36,000 for a claim not disclosed but connected to Oakland Police Department.

PLANS AND PROPOSALS

These are the more substantive issues that City Council must discuss and make some decisions on. These items are placed on the agenda by City Council committees during their earlier meetings.

Census. On Dec. 15, 2009, the Life Enrichment Committee approved a plan to form a "Complete Count Committee" to encourage full participation in the 2010 census in Oakland. Council will discuss this plan and decide on next steps.

Repairs and upgrades to city property. On Dec. 3, the Rules & Legislation Committee scheduled these agenda items:

1. Awarding a $283,000 job to Ray's Electric (the lowest bidder) to install a traffic signal and guardrails at the intersection of 50th Avenue and International Boulevard.
2. Resolution to use redevelopment funds to resurface McArthur Blvd. from 90th to Foothill at a cost of up to $600,000.

Public works. On Dec. 15, the Public Works Committee approved the following agenda items:

1. Lion Creek Restoration Project: Start negotiating to have the work done.
2. Melrose Library: Award a construction contract for rehabilitation of the window.
3. Award a series of Auditing services contracts.

Transit. The Finance & Management Committee is asking City Council to pay for the Oakland Waterfront-Uptown shuttle via various fund allocations and grants. They'd also like to have AC Transit operate the shuttle under contract.

Economic Development. The Community & Economic Development Committee submitted these agenda items related to the Macarthur Transit Village Redevelopment Project:

1. Adopt legislation relating to the first phase, and approving a replacement housing plan. (Susan wonders: What kind of replacement housing, and for whom?)
2. $159,000 to complete the design for the BART entry plaza remodel for the project

Neighborhood projects. The Redevelopment Agency also seeks approval under the Neighborhood Projects Initiative program to fund several items (all costing under $227,000), including:

1. Lights on Telegraph Avenue between 40th and 42nd.
2. New street trees on Telegraph from 27th to 34th.
3. Upgrading the Koreatown/Northgate banners.
4. Resurfacing the Golden Gate Recreation Center playground and basketball courts.
5. New signs for Golden Gate District.
6. Improving the playground at Mosswood park

Library: The City Council is being asked to approve the Oakland Public Library applying for grants to support their early childhood literary programs, as the committee recommended.

OTHER DOCKET ITEMS:

1. Fox Theater. Discussion of a request to lend the Fox Theatre $2 million to complete their renovations.
2. Foreclosure accountability. A proposed ordinance would require foreclosed and vacant residential buildings to be registered by their owners with the city. Owners would pay fees for this registration. This is the first reading of the proposal; discussion on January 29, 2010 could pass it into law. (Susan sez: This sounds very interesting, more to come o this one.)

...The Jan 5 City Council meeting is supposed to end by 10:30 pm. Apparently the KTOP streaming video is not currently working, so you can't watch it at home.