Oaklanders commit to advocate for contracting reform

About two dozen Oaklanders from across the city gathered this week to learn about the agonizingly slow process Oakland uses to approve safety infrastructure projects in the city, and award the contracts to do the work. What they learned surprised and frustrated them. Why do we care? Because traffic safety is a matter of life and death, not to mention injuries, fear, grief, and an eroded quality of life for us all.

Before we get to the recap, please put Tuesday, July 8th on your calendar! At 11AM, the Public Works and Transportation Committee will consider a set of targeted reforms of contracting rules, limited to the ADA lawsuit "Curran v. City of Oakland", wherein the City will likely to be obligated to make thousands of pedestrian right-of-way improvements over the next 2 - 3 decades. Just plan on showing up in person or virtually, and we'll get you more information!

What stuck out most to many attendees are the eight (yes, 8) trips any grant-funded project needs to make to Council for approval before construction begins. The current safety project on 14th St is a good example. The TIMELINE listed by OakDOT shows eight years before construction starts, but the project was already in preliminary stages for a few more years before that. In that time, we lost at least three neighbors to traffic violence there, and dozens were seriously injured.

PROJECT DELAY COSTS LIVES!

Another significant issue is who gets construction contracts and how much they cost. Oakland's rules for who qualifies to apply for contracts are much stricter than similar cities. These rules, and the fees and paperwork involved, often end up discouraging exactly those small, local businesses these policies are meant to assist. As a result, many contracts end up with two, or one, or zero qualified bidders. And those few bidders can confidently charge 25 - 35% more than the same companies charge neighboring cities for exactly the same work! (According to figures supplied by the City itself.)

Specifically, Oakland requires that all projects have 50% local business participation, with 25% required participation from small or very small local businesses, per contract (general contractor as well as their subcontractors). Supporting local businesses is a great goal, but those companies mostly don't exist for transportation work. And the path to help establish and grow such businesses really lies elsewhere. As a result, the few companies that qualify essentially have no competition.

When OakDOT can't get properly qualified bidders, they must seek exemptions from Council, adding even more delay to our multi-year processes! And once having proved that there are no qualified bidders for certain types of jobs, they must prove it again, seeking exemptions repeatedly.

WHAT'S HAPPENING TO OUR SAFETY PROJECTS WHILE WE WAIT?

For every year of delay, prices rise due to inflation of construction costs, from 3 - 7% per year. Over multiple years, that adds up! And meanwhile, the streets are still dangerous, and people keep dying. People just want to cross the street with their kids, or with their elders. The hard-working city staff who want to get these projects done are spending their valuable time and skills wading through city-imposed process.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The folks who gathered wrestled with how best to approach this problem: what to prioritize? And what strategy would be best? They had a lot of great ideas, which we distill below. But this is an open topic, the conversation is not over, and TVRR wants your ideas and energy in this effort!

Reduce and Simplify Trips to Council: For each of the eight Council approvals mentioned above, the process involves writing a report, getting a committee hearing, and then getting on the full Council agenda. This can take 4 - 6 months each time. (Pro tip: multiply that by 8!) Then, for all that effort, the item is often listed on the "Consent Calendar" and is voted on in bulk with many other items, with no guarantee of the attention we intended in the first place. Instead, go to Council only when Council input is truly needed, simplify and speed up the process, and provide meaningful input.

Raise the Limit on OakDOT's Contracting Authority: Right now, OakDOT can award contracts on their own, but only up to $250,000. It costs at least a million dollars to pave a single mile of neighborhood streets. So that authority doesn't really do much good. But how about raising that authority to $10 million? There could be annual oversight for accountability, and things could move much faster.

Consider In-sourcing More Work: OakDOT could run more crews itself, building up teams, and hiring labor through local union halls. This would shrink the timeline, reduce costs, and funnel work directly towards local union labor.

Improve Rules for Awarding Contracts: We all share the same goals of using City spending to bolster small, local businesses and workers. We also want Oaklanders to get the infrastructure they are paying for in a reasonable time frame. Council is going to have to re-envision a better way to select contractors. Advocates in attendance had many great suggestions, enough for another post about the details on this. But for example, we could shift from required percentages of small and local businesses, to using preference points for this in the ranking process. Many other cities do this, which gives them a larger bidding pool and makes the process more competitive. We could also shift towards local hiring requirements, rather than local ownership. This is also common elsewhere. The list goes on...

Pay Contractors On Time! Locally, Oakland is now notorious for late payment of its contractors. This discourages smaller businesses, who can't carry the cost of the job long enough to finally be paid, and it motivates those who bid again to raise their bids to make up for delayed payment. This one seems like low-hanging fruit...

The people who work for the City of Oakland, especially the professionals who staff OakDOT, are dedicated and want to do the work they signed up for. This is not about them. We need to support them, and clear the path, to do the work we are paying them to do. And that means removing procedural deadweight that may be well-intentioned, but in the end causes delay, extra cost, and lost lives and injuries on our streets.

Let's work together and fix this issue!

Talk to your neighbors, friends, and co-workers, forward them this email. The more awareness we create, the better the chance we have to create the conditions for change. Again, please plan the attend the Public Works and Transportation Committee on July 8th at 11AM, either in-person or virtually. OakDOT is bringing several agenda items related to this topic, and we need to come out in support! Look for further details before then...

Thanks for all the things you do. And feel free to comment below!