Oakland voters are being asked to approve a charter amendment on the June 2 ballot that would change the way the city’s old police and fire retirement system is managed.
Measure D was placed on the ballot by the City Council to increase the pool of potential board members for the Police and Fire Retirement System Board and to change the board meeting frequency from monthly to no less than quarterly.
“Right now the membership of the board is limited to folks who are members of the pension fund and the average age of the folks in that fund is 82, so the number of people who are available to serve gets smaller and smaller every year,” said City Councilmember Zac Unger.
The fund is a “closed single employer pension plan” that provides retirement, disability and death benefits for police and fire personnel hired before July 1976.
As of Aug. 31, 2025, there were 588 people still receiving benefits from the fund, according to a report from City Auditor Michael Houston.
Currently the seven-member board that oversees the system includes three people who can only be selected from among PFRS retirees, including a police representative elected by PFRS police members, a fire representative elected by PFRS fire members and an alternating police or fire representative elected by the PFRS members from the respective department, according to an analysis written by City Attorney Ryan Richardson.
Measure D, which requires a simple majority to pass, would expand eligibility for the PFRS Board by allowing members to elect any qualified person to serve as a police or fire representative if no PFRS retiree were able to serve in the seat.
In addition, currently two of the board seats are reserved for a local life insurance executive and a senior officer of a local bank, which are selected by the mayor and appointed by the City Council.
The measure would allow those seats to be taken by an insurance executive and a senior banker who have prior experience in those roles, thus expanding the pool of potential board members to include retirees.
Unger said the PFRS is now fully funded and the city’s Pension Override Tax, which supported the system for decades, is expiring this year.
According to an analysis published by the nonprofit San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, better known as SPUR, Oakland’s Pension Override ad valorem tax rate has already been cut and “is expected to fall by as much as 94%, dropping the average single-family cost from $437 to roughly $27 annually.”
