Janani Ramachandran, Oakland City Councilmember, District 4

Responsible Budgeting

The people deserve to know where our money is going, and have it spent more efficiently and transparently.

Ramachandran is Chair of Oakland Finance Committee, and led the FY 2025-2027 Council budget process which closed Oakland’s largest structural deficit of $265 million in a fiscally responsible manner. She and her team accomplished this without relying on one-time revenue to fund recurring expenses, which was a past practice of previous city budgets that contributed to the budget deficit. Ramachandran was a strong voice of caution against the disastrous, fiscally irresponsible 2024 decision that a majority of the City Council voted for, which used anticipated revenues from the sale of the Oakland Coliseum. It was this decision that led to the temporary closure of fire stations, the halting of countless city contracts, and staff layoffs. In the most recent budget, Ramachandran worked to steer Council away from the misguided choices of the past, and instead prioritized the funding of core city services, including fire and police, illegal dumping and sideshow prevention efforts, park and tree maintenance, economic incentive programs for businesses, traffic calming tools, evidence-based homelessness solutions, and improving our city’s permitting process - all while avoiding staff layoffs.

Public Safety

Every Oakland resident deserves to feel safe in their streets and their homes.

Emergency Response

In her first year, Ramachandran took on tackling Oakland’s horrendous 911 response times. She led an important inquiry that revealed the city’s HR Department’s “mistake” in not responding to over 1000 applications for 911 dispatcher positions over the course of a year, which led to understaffing of the dispatcher unit. Ramachandran’s whistleblowing of this situation - for which she faced many internal political consequences - led to the speedy hiring of dispatcher positions and a notable improvement in response times.

Fire Stations

Every fire station closed increases the response time of life-saving fire abatement and emergency medical services. In 2025, Ramachandran led an effort to re-open the shuttered fire stations (that were closed due to a majority of Councilmembers voting to incorporate anticipated Coliseum revenue into the budget, and then those revenues not being realized in time), by creatively identifying previously undiscovered funding sources. Now, all 25 fire stations are fully operational for the first time in 20 years.

Public Safety Grants

Soon after entering Council, Ramachandran realized Oakland was not getting its fair share of state and federal funding that was available to support public safety initiatives. In 2023, she identified funding to hire a public safety grant writer that was veto-ed by Councilmembers and former Mayor. Just weeks after this vote, it was revealed that the City missed out on a large retail theft prevention grant that comparable municipalities received.

In 2025, Ramachandran successfully won the votes to instate three public safety grant writers for the City, who are now working to increase the share of funding Oakland receives for public safety. Additionally, Ramachandran has been a strong advocate for Oakland, and has built strong relationships with county, state, and federal elected officials to highlight our city’s needs that have successfully led to the funding of public safety initiatives.

Efficient and Equitable Policing

Ramachandran has been a proponent of ensuring that Oakland has more sworn OPD officers who are effectively spending their time responding to real emergencies and investigating crime. In order to achieve this, she has funded efforts to increase OPD recruitment that hires our local, diverse Oakland population, as well as efforts that direct non-emergency tasks away from sworn officers and to civilian professional staff.

Economic Revitalization

Oakland needs an environment where businesses can thrive.

Safe Commercial Corridors

Ramachandran has been a consistent voice in connecting the importance of public safety to Oakland’s economic revitalization. She successfully advocated for pilot safety ambassador program in District 4 commercial corridors - which led to a 36% reduction in violent crime during the holiday shopping seasons - and identified funding for ambassador programs to continue citywide.

Business Incentives

Ramachandran has worked on developing a business incentives program to attract and retain businesses of all sizes that can contribute to our cultural fabric, provide job opportunities for Oaklanders, and stimulate our economy.

Cultural Growth

As a lifelong performing artist, Ramachandran is passionate about uplifting Oakland’s unique and renowned arts scene, and getting Oakland back on the map for the right reasons. She has engaged in initiatives to attract more patrons to Oakland for the arts, including an initiative to convert a longtime abandoned city property in District 4 into a thriving performing arts center.

She has also worked on efforts to revitalize and restore Woodminster Theater (where Ramachandarn has also performed in summer musicals), a business attraction program to eliminate permit fees for festivals to take place, and more.

Wildfire Prevention

Oakland must do everything to prevent another 1991 Firestorm.

Oakland is a uniquely dangerous context for wildfires given that we are the most densely populated urban wildfire severity zone in California, and have a rapidly expanding population of dead and dying trees that are fuel for fire. As Vice Chair and founding member of the East Bay Wildfire Coalition of Governments, Ramachandran has led efforts to increase collaboration around wildfire prevention initiatives. She has been a vocal advocate to gain state and federal funding for vegetation management, and works closely with Fire Department leadership to increase education about prevention measures. Ramachandran also led out on placing Measure MM on the ballot which generates millions of dollars for fuel reduction effort, and advocacy with the state insurance market to incentivize home hardening efforts.

Paving and Street Safety

Oaklanders deserve pothole-free streets that are safe to walk, bike, and drive on.

One of the reasons Oakland streets are so littered with potholes is because Oakland streets had not been paved in over 60 years. While the city authored a five-year paving plan a few years ago, leaders did not invest the money or staffing resources to adequately support this plan, nor did they invest resources to mitigating high-risk driving behavior that has led to escalating traffic accidents. As Chair of the Finance Committee, Ramachandran led the effort to ensure that bond sales were executed in order to fund the paving plan, and has applied to pressure with our Human Resources department to staff to execute this plan are quickly hired. She also continues to advocate for the expansion of low-cost, quick build traffic safety solutions with proven success in pilot programs.

Housing and Homelessness

Oakland needs evidence-based solutions to our escalating homelessness crisis.

Ramachandran has repeatedly stressed that we cannot continue to invest in the same housing interventions that do not lead to results in getting our unhoused neighbors off the streets and supported by services. She has called out wastage and misuse of spending of housing dollars, and advocated for evidence-based approaches where overheads do not exceed the value of services provided. She regularly collaborates with County leaders to gain their support in providing a fair share of services to Oakland. Ramachandran is also a proponent of building more affordable housing, and has supported initiatives to streamline construction, rehabilitation, and state fund matching programs.

Revenue Collection

Oakland’s can’t afford to leave money already owed to the city on the table.

In her second year in office, Ramachandran did a deep-dive into why Oakland failed to collect over $50 million business taxes owed to the city. She discovered inefficiencies and major gaffes in our city’s revenue collection processes post-pandemic in a number of departments, and publicly advocated for a change of processes and leadership decisions. The proper collection of taxes and fees already owed to the city will help re-build the city’s ability to adequately fund essential city services, while creating a culture of enforcement of our civil laws.

Ramachandran is also always looking for ways for the city to reduce waste of resources and more efficient spending of taxpayer dollars. For example, she successfully protested a $75,000 raise for the Oakland mayor (which would have set that salary substantially higher that California Governor) and called out the Finance Department’s reluctance to take action on the findings of a City Auditor report that revealed overpayments of certain categories of city workers.

Policy Priorities