FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 20, 2021
Contact: Kimberly Jones, Chief of Staff to Vice Mayor Kaplan
(510) 681-8641 | Kjones3@oaklandca.gov
Oakland, CA -- Yesterday, Oakland City Council unanimously voted to approve the October 12th Public Safety Committee’s recommendations for the Mobile Assistance Crisis Responders of Oakland (“MACRO”). Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan sided with community activists giving the City Administration a timeline to implement directives that will aid the success of MACRO. The council unanimously approved higher pay for the frontline responders to help ensure they will be sustainable jobs. The council directed the administration to return with options for a 24/7 MACRO service within 6 months, and to create a community MACRO Advisory Board and Grant Writing support to continue funding the program by the November 16, 2021, City Council meeting.
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Yesterday’s immense wins for the MACRO program included provisions that will remove educational barriers and provide a higher salary. Vice Mayor Kaplan has been a strong advocate of prioritizing the hiring of Oakland community members with lived experience. In her May 4, 2021, letter to Senator Nancy Skinner, who successfully advocated $10 million for MACRO, Kaplan wrote,
“We are working towards ensuring that this program is set up to uplift lives in our city, providing an effective civilian response option. MACRO is being launched as an internal program within the Oakland Fire Department, the personnel would be non-sworn and from our city’s most impacted communities.”
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Kaplan has continuously championed creating a trained civilian emergency response program in the City of Oakland. She successfully included the funding for the study of MACRO in her FY 2019-20 Budget Amendments. In March, she called on the city to launch MACRO as an in- house program through the Oakland Fire Department (“OFD”).
Links for more information on MACRO:
