Alameda County reparations commission presents 12-priority action plan; board to hear full report June 30

The Alameda County reparations commission presented a draft action plan and recommendations during an April 8 ad hoc briefing, asking the Board of Supervisors to agendize the full report as a set item on June 30.

"We finally have our recommendations," the commission chair said as she opened a slide deck summarizing the commission’s process, a harms report and the recommended priorities. The commission said it conducted 22 listening and feedback sessions, collected hundreds of surveys and combined lived experience with secondary data and guidance from the state task force and the United Nations five pillars of reparations.

Informing Change, the commission’s data partner, said the project has received more than 400 survey responses and that respondents were predominantly Black or African American. "Roughly 83% identify as Black or African American," Michael Arnold, executive director of Informing Change, told the committee, adding that respondents skewed female and reported high incidences of policing interactions, housing hardship and displacement.

The commission presented 12 priority areas, ordered by the commissioners’ ranking: housing and economic opportunity; creation of a dedicated administrative office (an office of reparations); health equity; family and youth initiatives; education; justice and public safety; accountability and equity tracking; a harms report process; data transparency; culture and memory; civic power and representation; and climate and environmental investments in impacted communities. Commissioners grouped the first five as short-term actions (0–12 months), several as medium-term (1–3 years) and the rest as longer-term goals.

Vice Chair Larry McClendon detailed how the commission spent and planned to use county seed funding. "You all entrusted $500,000 of the county's money with us," he said, and described major spending categories — consultants and project management, communications and design, facilitation and community engagement, documentation and media, and wellness and participation support. He reported a remaining balance cited in the presentation as $192,247.48 and said staff would reconcile final invoices and make line-item adjustments at the commission’s next meeting.

Supervisors pressed commissioners on the representativeness of the outreach and the sampling approach. One supervisor asked whether the policing metric measured frequency; Informing Change clarified the question asked whether respondents had ever been stopped, searched or questioned by police in their life. Several supervisors and commissioners agreed the final report should explicitly state data limitations — notably the convenience-sample nature of the survey and uneven geographic response rates — and include lessons learned about timing and resourcing.

Commissioners asked for clarity on the June 30 schedule so the community could attend in force; supervisors agreed to place the full report on the Board agenda as a set item for June 30 and signaled they expected to receive the report rather than take immediate adoption that day. One supervisor asked the commission to recommend next steps — for example, whether the commission should sunset, be replaced by a smaller standing body, or whether the Board should fund an office to carry the work forward.

The motion to bring the full report to the Board on June 30 was moved and seconded by supervisors in the meeting and carried; the briefing closed with plans to finalize the draft and circulate materials to Board offices in advance of the June hearing.

What’s next: The commission will finish its draft report and recommendations, resolve outstanding invoices and design the public-facing documentation; the Board will receive the report as a set item on June 30 and determine any follow-up action, including whether to fund an ongoing office or other implementation body.