Episode Details

Editor’s note: Our thanks and appreciation to news anchor Andre Senior and KTVU for having us on their Take 2 in the Morning show on April 17, 2026. Video courtesy of KTVU.

Transcript

KTVU - “Take 2 in the Morning” April 17, 2026

ANDRE SENIOR:

We’ve all talked about it: Where is my tax money going?

People drive around their towns. They know they pay taxes. They’re not necessarily opposed to it because that is how your local government operates. But in Oakland, one Oakland resident has been tracking how your tax dollars are being spent. In other words, people are being asked to approve these measures that come up on the ballots, and they vote for them to improve roads or do whatever the case is. But then it seems as though an audit was done and some of the tax money, the promises that were made, where this money was going to be spent, is not necessarily ending up doing the job that it’s doing in the time that people would like to see it.

Sean Reinhart with Oakland Report, he joins me now. He is a resident of Oakland and, of course, a concerned citizen and a former city worker himself in another city. So, of course, he keeps track of all these things. Sean, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

SEAN REINHART:

Thank you for having me, Andre.

ANDRE SENIOR:

All right, so, Sean, we’re kind of getting to the bottom of this here. There’s some numbers that came out that looked at, hey, voters approved these measures to tax, to use that money to be spent on certain things. And a report came out that shows that there has been a shortfall. What did you find?

SEAN REINHART:

Yes, well, actually, this was the city’s own report. Back in February, the city administrator of Oakland issued a report called, “Multi-Year Plan to Meet Voter-Mandated Staffing and Service Levels.” And what that report basically confirmed was that the city of Oakland broke its promises in three out of the last four parcel tax measures, including the most recent one passed in 2024, Measure NN, which was passed on the promise of providing improved public safety, in particular police officers.

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Measure NN required the city to maintain a minimum number of 700 sworn police officers. However, the city immediately violated that minimum. The city currently only budgets 678 police officers. Because of administrative leaves and other things, currently the city’s down to an active force of about 500 officers. So the city broke its promise there. And actually, there’s a history of that going back around 20 years, and this is all according to the city’s own reports. We have it all on our website for folks to have a look at, to be informed about what is really happening with these tax dollars.

ANDRE SENIOR:

We were just showing a description. You listed out one, two, three, four, five, six, seven of the measures that were approved by voters. I want to make it a little bit bigger so our viewers can see it.

Measure NN, public safety measure approved by voters in 2024: minimum requirements, as you see right here, minimum requirements not met. The duration for this tax is nine years. It’s supposed to collect $47.4 million, and that would go to public safety. This is a list of all the other measures where the minimum requirements have not been met yet. So I guess the question is: Sean, do we know why those requirements have not been met yet? Now, granted, when you talk about Measure NN, the duration, it was only approved in 2024. The duration for it is nine years. The requirements are not met yet. So does the city have time to rectify this situation? What do the numbers show here?