City Government

Oakland Council Seeks to Safeguard Soda Tax Funds

Published

8 years ago

February 16, 2018

Council responds to mayor’s attempt to redirect funds for public health to close the city’s budget.

The City Council’s Life Enrichment Committee on Tuesday approved a proposal by Councilmembers Annie Campbell-Washington and Rebecca Kaplan to ensure funds from Oakland’s sweetened beverage tax are appropriately spent.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s budget proposal for 2017-19 was met with criticism when it attempted to allocate funds accumulated from the sweetened beverage tax to close the city’s budget deficit.

Measure HH, a penny-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, was passed by 61 percent of Oakland voters in the November 2016 election.

The measure was expected to generate $10 million annually in revenue, to be spent on health education and children’s health initiatives. Measure HH also created a nine-member advisory board tasked with reporting to the City Council their recommendations for spending.

This week’s proposal designates a sub-fund within the City’s general fund group for the sweetened beverage tax revenue, to be used only for the health-related purposes originally intended by the measure.

Campbell Washington, Kaplan, and Desley Brooks are united in wanting to keep faith with the voters when spending soda tax revenue.

“It’s important that we keep the faith with the voters as well as with the dedicated community volunteers who’ve stepped up to serve on the community advisory board,” Kaplan said at the Life Enrichment Meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 13. “I hope we will all vote yes on it so that it is totally clear to people that we are doing what we told the voters we would do.”

The proposal was approved by the committee, and will be heard at City Council in the coming weeks.

According to the recent proposal, Measure HH had clear expected impacts: to raise awareness, raise revenue, and reduce consumption. It aims to inform the public about how sugary drinks impact health.

It also clarifies that the health programs for which Measure HH was designed should specifically combat the impact of sugary drink marketing by educating families about healthy eating and drinking.

In the long term, these programs are expected to reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverage, thereby reducing or preventing deadly diseases and saving billions of dollars in health care costs.

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Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

Published

7 days ago

July 5, 2026

Oakland Post

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Inaugural Juneteenth Awards Ceremony Celebrates the Fillmore’s Black History, Leadership and Resilience

Addressing more than 100 Black and Asian attendees, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie stated “San Francisco is reliant on the Black community, and we must invest in this community.”

Published

2 weeks ago

June 26, 2026

Oakland Post

District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, Rev. Dr. Amos Brown, Pastor Emeritus of Third Baptist Church, SF Mayor Daniel Lurie. Photo by Linda Parker Pennington.

By Linda Parker Pennington

The Fillmore Community Ambassadors held its first annual Juneteenth Wesley Johnson White Horse Awards ceremony on June 19 inside the newly reopened Fillmore Heritage Center.

The event featured awards for former San Francisco mayors London Breed and Willie Brown, along with Third Baptist Church Pastor Emeritus, Rev. Dr. Amos Brown.

The Koret Heritage lobby at the newly reopened center at 1330 Fillmore St. held a standing-room-only, culturally diverse and multi-generational audience while the art gallery featured photos of Fillmore community members in action, red Japanese lanterns, art and calligraphy, and Chinese artwork, giving the space a multicultural feel.

Addressing more than 100 Black and Asian attendees, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie stated “San Francisco is reliant on the Black community, and we must invest in this community.”

District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood acknowledged that “the Fillmore community has had a difficult history. Thanks to Rev. Amos Brown’s continuous focus on accountability and resistance, you hold us accountable and continue to inspire us.”

Mahmoud is referring to the Fillmore’s Japanese residents who were forced from their homes and sent to concentration camps during World War II. Black people occupied those homes until the return of their Japanese neighbors and then gave them back, while homes that had been unoccupied were lost. The presence of the Asian community on Juneteenth is a testament to that shared history.

In receiving his honor, Amos Brown elicited a powerful spontaneous call-and-response, where members of San Francisco’s many Black churches proudly shouted out the names: “Bethel AME! Providence Baptist! Jones Memorial! Glide!”

Awards program Master of Ceremonies Shawn Richards of Brothers Against Guns warmly introduced Breed, highlighting her many accomplishments, particularly on “March 16, 2020, when she became the first mayor to shut down a major U.S. city due to COVID-19, saving thousands of lives.”

The audience was captivated by Breed’s emotional speech touching on past traumas, present conditions, and future hopes for the neighborhood where she grew up.

She recalled another trauma of the neighborhood during the City’s redevelopment era in the 1960s, where Black residents were forced to move with a promise of being able to return that was largely unfulfilled.

“We remember when this land was just a field because they bulldozed hundreds of Victorian homes that Black people owned. They built the Fillmore Center, where most Black people can’t afford to live or start their own business. But we are still here.”