Nearly 40 Calif. Police Cruisers Sit at Dealership over Pay Dispute

Thirty-seven 2025 Ford vehicles intended to be used as Oakland Police Department patrol cars are instead sitting idle on a San Leandro dealership lot — and the city may be unable to pay for them.

The city apparently has money allocated to buy the vehicles, despite its well publicized budget problems. The holdup revolves around a disagreement among city officials over whether the funds can be spent on the purchases.

About a year ago, the city set aside money to buy a fleet of new cars for the Oakland police department, but finance staff said Tuesday they were unsure how the city will pay for the vehicles. It's unclear how much money was set aside for the cars.

Erin Roseman, the city's finance director since 2021, said Oakland could not tap into the equipment services fund, which pays for the maintenance and servicing of city vehicles, to buy the cars due to federal regulations. Council members said the city had previously used that fund to buy new cars.

"This federal regulation has been in place for many decades," Roseman said at the meeting, adding that if the city has been using the equipment services fund for vehicle acquisition then "that is a practice we should not have engaged in or continue with whether it was purposeful or accidental."

But Council Member Rebecca Kaplan said the city isn't using federal grant money to purchase the cars, so the regulations should not apply in this case. Kaplan said the cars are sitting at a San Leandro dealership, and she's spoken with the dealer and the mayor's office to get the cars as soon as possible.

"The regulation that (the finance director) mentioned is a regulation about how governments can use federal grant funds," Kaplan told the Chronicle on Friday. "It should not apply in this situation, since we are not talking about federal grant funds. Oakland has our own money in our own equipment services fund that should be able to be used for this."

The equipment services fund had about $32 million — roughly $1 million of which is federal grant money, according to city staff. At the meeting on Tuesday, Kaplan expressed concern that the city was no longer using the fund for procurement of vehicles as it had "for a very long time" and urged city attorneys to analyze the federal requirement.

"We have pending vehicles that we need to pay for and take in and that it is impeding our functioning to not have these vehicles," Kaplan said at the meeting, adding that the city is spending more money to maintain old vehicles instead of acquiring new ones.

The delay in picking up the patrol cars comes as the city grapples with a budget crisis that has eviscerated some basic services. City officials are working to address an $89 million budget deficit in its general purpose fund, which pays for police and fire services. The city has tried to address the deficit by instituting a hiring freeze, layoffs and the temporary closure of three fire stations.

"We understand the financial restraints of the city," Sgt. Tim Dolan of the Oakland police department told the Chronicle. "This is something we need to serve the public (and) to have a working, functional police (force)."

Jestin Johnson, the city administrator, said at Tuesday's meeting that his staff is meeting with the finance department next week to determine the status of the vehicle acquisitions.

The city's equipment services fund is used for contract work, purchasing car parts and other maintenance work, Roseman said. But the purchase of vehicles, Roseman said, must be done by the city department that needs them — in this case, the police department.

Kaplan said the city's budget set aside money in the equipment services fund to purchase vehicles and if the city is now unable to use that money then it needs to reevaluate how it uses that fund.

_________________

Visit www.sfchronicle.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.