Every first and third Tuesday, Oakland Local gives you top five to watch for the upcoming City Council meeting. However, Oakland has far more meetings than that.

Every second and fourth Tuesday, the city's public agencies participate in a bi-weekly marathon of discussion in the first floor of City Hall.

The schedule:

• Public Works Committee - 10:30 a.m.
• Finance Committee - Noon
• Agency and Council Community and Economic Development Committee - 2 p.m.
• Life Enrichment Committee - 4 p.m.
• Public Safety Committee - 5:30 p.m.

All meetings take place in the Sgt. Mark Dunakin Room on the first floor of Oakland's City Hall (just to the right of the main entrance).

This week, we bring you our top five picks for the day of April 26.

Mobile Food Vending Regulations Report (Community and Economic Development Committee)

Oakland's rules for food trucks and carts haven't kept up with the tremendous demand for mobile food. While Portland, Oregon, gained a national reputation for its oasis of food trucks, Oakland tied itself up in archaic rules. You should expect better of a city with these ingredients: high unemployment, creative culinary minds galore and a well documented problem getting healthy food to people.

On Tuesday, the Community and Economic Development Committee will hear comments on a preliminary report to cut some of that red tape. This report will be discussed once at City Council and then the report and its comments will direct Oakland city staff to come up with a better way to permit and regulate mobile food.

The plan makes several recommendations, including:

• Designate new areas that allow vendors to use the streamlined permit process that currently only serves the Fruitvale neighborhoods. These new areas could include downtown Oakland, Jack London Square, parts of West Oakland, near the Coliseum and others.
• Allow mobile vendors to sell food within 100 or 150 feet of a "brick and mortar" restaurant (reduced form 200 feet).
• Allow mobile vendors to sell food near parks and schools (eliminating a 500-foot separation requirement).
• Create special group permits and allow mobile vendors to congregate as they do in Portland and other cities.
• Eliminate the requirement that patrons leave the vendor's area within 15 minutes of receiving food.

What role do you think mobile food vendors should play in Oakland's gastronomic scene?

Coliseum BART Station Transit Village Infrastructure Project, (Community and Economic Development Committee)

When Gov. Jerry Brown announced his intention to dismantle Redevelopment Agencies, Oakland launched a spending spree to transfer its sieged redevelopment funds to more secure accounts.

On this week's agenda, the Oakland Redevelopment Agency will consider transferring more than $6.5 million to the Coliseum BART Station Transit Village. Oakland will empty its redevelopment agencies' coffers of more money in the first four months of 2011 than in all of 2010.

While no one is questioning the legality of these maneuvers, they suggest that our city and state legislators need to find a better way to work together.

Installation of Bike Lanes (Public Works Committee)

The Laurel Access to Mills, Maxwell Park and Seminary - LAMMPS - project is one step closer to bringing bike lanes to East Oakland. Once approved by the Public Works Committee and City Council, the city will install bike lanes on MacArthur Boulevard between High Street and Seminary Avenue, under I-580 and past Mills College.

The project started as a Mills student's graduate thesis. Alysha Nachtigall received a $257,000 transportation grant from Caltrans to find solutions to the problems caused by the I-580 entrance adjacent to the campus. From Mills College's website:

"Nachigall, who received her BA and MA in public policy at Mills College in 2007 and 2008 respectively, surveyed more than 500 residents in the surrounding neighborhoods of Maxwell Park and the Laurel. Her research pointed to several suggestions, including a bike lane that would improve and increase pedestrian and bicycle access from Maxwell Park and Mills to the Laurel around the freeway. She also proposed landscaping and beautification around the overpass."

Mayor's Salary Review (Finance and Management Committee)

Did you ever wonder how much the mayor of Oakland gets paid?

The Oakland City Charter (Article III, Section 300) ties the mayor's salary to the salaries of city managers in the three next largest and smallest California cities. Oakland's mayor's salary must be between 70 and 90 percent of the average of those six cities.

Those three immediately higher population California cities (and city manager salaries) are:

• Fresno ($189,000)
• Sacramento ($215,000)
• Long Beach ($235,096)

The three immediately smaller California cities are:

• Bakersfield ($222,144)
• Anaheim ($261,891)
• Santa Ana ($262,272)

The average of those cities is $230,901. Thus, Mayor Jean Quan's new salary must be somewhere between $161,630 and $207,810. Note that the mayor's salary is based on the salaries of city managers, which tend to have slightly lower salaries. Score one for fiscal restraint?

Summer Food Service Program (Life Enrichment Committee)

In this item, the city discusses the process through which it will select vendors for the Summer Food Service Program.

The Department of Human Services recommends two vendors: the San Lorenzo Unified School District and the Oakland-based Epicurean Group. San Lorenzo was the cheapest overall bidder, and Epicurean was the cheapest local bidder. Epicurean also won the all-important taste test.

The state of California gives Oakland $3.23 for each summer meal provided (estimated to be more than 80,000 this year). Oakland will give the vendors $2.15 to $2.22 per meal, and apply the rest to the costs of distribution and administration.

Both vendors are required to provide "Level B" quality meals: 50 percent California-grown, no trans fats, no high fructose corn syrup and 50 percent of meat and dairy must be certified antibiotic- and hormone-free.