okay let's get started everyone are you ready okay i'm calling to order the berkeley city council
meeting today is tuesday march 10th 2026 it is 604 pm clerk can you please take the role
okay council member keserwani here taplin presents part of it here trade up pass it okay here
Blackaby? Here. Unapara? Here. Humber? Present? And Mary? Here. All present. Okay, I just realized it is
the first meeting of the month, and I did not warn one of you that it was your turn to say the land
acknowledgment statement, so I will do it this evening. So every beginning of the month, we read
the land acknowledgment statement, so I will read that to you all this evening. The City of Berkeley
recognizes that the community we live in
was built on the territory of Chuchun,
with ancestral and unceded lands
of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people,
the ancestors and descendants of the sovereign Verona
Band of Alameda County.
This land was and continues to be of great importance
to all of the Ohlone tribes and descendants of the Verona Band.
As we begin our meeting tonight, we
acknowledge and honor the original inhabitants
of Berkeley, the documented 5,000-year history
of a vibrant community at the West Berkeley Shell Mound
and the Ohlone people who continue to reside
in the East Bay.
We recognize that Berkeley's residents have
and continue to benefit from the use and occupation
of this unseated stolen land
since the city of Berkeley's incorporation in 1878.
As stewards of the laws regulating the city of Berkeley,
it is not only vital that we recognize
the history of this land,
but also recognize that the Ohlone people
are present members of Berkeley
and other East Bay communities today.
The City of Berkeley will continue to build relationships with the Lijand Tribe and to
create meaningful actions that uphold the intention of this land acknowledgement.
We are now moving on to ceremonial items, so I will call up our first recipients of
the ceremonial item for YouthWorks.
YouthWorks folks, you're welcome to come on up here.
Yay!
Yay!
Yes.
You can come right up to this podium over here.
Okay, so today is YouthWorks Day, whereas the overarching objective of Berkeley YouthWorks
program is to ensure that all youth and young adults in Berkeley have access to educational
resources and culturally responsive training, that they acquire essential life skills for
self-sufficiency and that they succeed in their professional endeavors, careers and
adult lives, and whereas the city of Berkeley recognizes that investing in
young people is vital to the ongoing health, vibrancy, and success of our
community, since 1970 YouthWorks has provided opportunities to Berkeley youth
who have experienced socio-economic and educational inequalities, including but
not limited to impacts by the justice system, experiencing foster care, or being
young parents, and whereas YouthWorks has empowered
generations of Berkeley youth by providing meaningful employment
mentorship and career development opportunities,
fostering skills that prepare participants
for lifelong success.
And whereas YouthWorks participants have contributed
thousands of service hours supporting local organizations,
businesses and city departments,
initiated projects that enhance the quality of life
throughout Berkeley,
and whereas YouthWorks has championed equity and inclusion
by offering employment opportunities
to youth from diverse backgrounds,
helping to bridge gaps and build a stronger,
more united Berkeley,
and whereas the City of Berkeley values
the ongoing partnerships between the community,
city departments, and YouthWorks
in shaping a brighter future for all.
Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Adina Ishii,
mayor of the city of Berkeley,
celebrate and honor the achievements
of YouthWorks participants, alumni, staff, and supporters.
I encourage all residents to recognize
the profound impact of youth employment
and to continue investing in programs
that empower the next generations of leaders in our city
and do hereby declare March 12th, 2026
to be YouthWorks Day.
YouthWorks Day.
Thank you.
Did you want to share a few words?
Yeah, I think three of us are gonna talk now.
Good evening, everyone.
My name is Kaylee Robinson, and I'm a YouthWorks employee.
I worked for two years at my elementary school, Rosa Parks.
Before every summer, YouthWorks held paid trainings
to help us learn professionalism and leadership skills.
Here, I learned how to do things like conflict resolution,
which I wouldn't have learned at school or hadn't learned yet.
This also took the burden off my parents at home
to prepare me for work.
Now I know that I want to be an educator in my future
and have money to put towards college.
YouthWorks has helped me and many other young people
find jobs when we otherwise would have struggled too.
It has provided a crucial stepping stone
between high school and employment.
Young people are our future, and work experience
is one of the most important steps
on the path to adulthood.
Yeah.
Good afternoon, City Council.
My name is Ayana Flores.
This past winter, I was a YouthWorks intern
working at La Pena Cultural Center.
Prior to working at La Pena,
I actually was couch surfing and homeless,
and I came here to attend UC Berkeley,
and YouthWorks was the first job
after applying to over 200, that I was able to succeed.
As a low-income student, it was through YouthWorks
that I was able to fully fund my first semester of college.
And it's now through YouthWorks and working at La Pena
that I've found a goal in working in law and activism.
And that wouldn't be possible without the chances
that this city and these programs offer.
So I would just like to say thank you to City Council,
to the employers that I had through YouthWorks and La Pena,
and to everyone who made my own dreams,
as well as the dreams of many young people possible.
My experience at YouthWorks has been great,
and it has impacted me in really positive ways,
because thanks to the experience that I have gained,
I have found ways to be ways in more professional,
how it's been working in more professional jobs.
And also thanks to youth works,
I have found ways of what type of jobs
I see myself doing in the future.
And I think youth works makes an impact in youth people
because they provide like internships in jobs
in like different work areas.
And I think this is like a really good opportunity
for young people.
So it seems they can set young people in places
that they might see themselves like doing in the future,
also like a great opportunity
to start like making connections and experience as well.
Have it, super proud of our young people.
Thank you for coming and sharing your stories.
Okay, so we have another,
did you wanna read this one, Council Member?
I'll read it, okay.
All right, so we also have a proclamation
for Devra Major.
Is Devra here?
Come on up, hello.
Recognizing Devra Major as the recipient
of the Berkeley Poetry Festival's
23rd Annual Lifetime Achievement Award.
Whoo, yeah.
Whereas Devra Major is an American poet,
spoken word performer, novelist, essayist,
editor, recording artist, actress, mother, grandmother,
aunt, niece, cousin, and friend,
as well as a grandchild of immigrants
documented and undocumented.
And whereas as the third poet laureate of San Francisco
from 2002 to 2004,
she initiated the program City Reflections,
War and Peace on our Streets,
received Italy's Regina Coppola
International Literary Award in 2022,
the California Arts Council Writing Fellowship,
Spoken Word Literary Arts Fellowship,
and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association's
First Novels Award for an Open Weave.
And whereas she's the author of eight poetry collections,
Word Time City Lights,
Kelfia's Daughter, Willow Books,
Bracchia Apertae, apologies if I'm mispronouncing it,
Multimedia, Edizione.
And then we became City Lights,
Where River Meets Oceans,
also City Lights with More Than Tongue, Creative Arts,
Street Smarts, Curbstone,
and Traveling Women with Opal Palmer Adisa,
jukebox press, and two novels, brown glass windows,
curbstone, and open weave seal press.
And where she was part of Daughters of Yam,
a poetry performance group with Opal Palmer Adisa
for over 20 years was a featured poet and actress
in First Voices, Soul of the City,
performed commissioned poems for Dimensions Dance Theater,
premiered her poetry play, Classic Black Voices
of 19th Century African Americans in San Francisco,
and wrote poetry for trade routes and symphony
with spoken word and chorus.
Now, therefore be it resolved that I, Adina Ishii,
mayor of the city of Berkeley,
do hereby recognize Deborah Major
as the recipient of the Berkeley Poetry Festival's
23rd Annual Lifetime Achievement Award.
Some day, I would like a really long proclamation like that.
But, today's not the day.
My name is MK Chavez,
And I'm here to accept the award on behalf of Devorah Major.
Good evening, Mayor Yishii and council members.
On behalf of the Berkeley Poetry Festival,
it's my honor to accept this proclamation,
recognizing the extraordinary work of Devorah Major.
Devorah Major spent decades reminding us
that poetry is not separate from the life of a city.
It is one of the ways a city learns to listen to itself.
Through her writing, teaching, and cultural leadership,
she has helped shape the literary and civic imagination
of the Bay Area and far beyond.
She was born and raised in Berkeley,
and I'll share that she's incredibly thrilled to be honored.
Her work carries the rhythms of history,
justice, and possibility.
She writes in a way that insists our stories matter
and that our language can be a tool for liberation
as much as it can be for beauty.
We are deeply grateful to the city of Berkeley
for recognizing a poet whose work reflects the values
that so many of us hold dear.
Community, creativity, and courage
to imagine a more just world.
Thank you for honoring Devorah Major,
and thank you for honoring poetry itself
as an essential part of our civic life,
we're thrilled that you continue
to support the Berkeley Poetry Festival
and we hope that you will come and celebrate with us
on March 22nd at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley.
There will be cake.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Council Member, thank you very much,
Council Member Taftland for bringing that forward
to our office too.
think that came from your office. Yes, which makes sense. He's a poet if you
didn't know, so. Okay, so we are now moving on to City Manager comments. Are
there any comments, Mr. City Manager? No comments, Madam Mayor. Thank you. Okay,
move on now. Take public comments on non, actually, you know, I'm gonna actually
have our auditor come up next and then we will move on to public comment on
non-agenda matters. I think our agenda should actually include that. I don't know
I don't know why it doesn't. Yeah. I just have to remember to put it in. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you so much and good evening. I'm here with Caitlin Palmer, audit manager and Katie Weisong, auditor is online. I'm here to present our audit on city contracts. On February 19th, we released an audit of the non-competitive contracts in the city of Berkeley.
We're going to go over why we
did this audit.
Sorry.
Accidentally pressed.
Okay.
Today we're going to go over why we did this audit.
Our findings and recommendations and management response.
We did this audit because competition among vendors helps
ensure that the city is getting the best value and the best fit
for the goods and services it purchases.
If the city doesn't address
this or does not address it
or appropriate, it is
especially in pro important to
pursue competition as much as
possible as the city currently
faces a budget deficit.
Competition can also help
prevent fraud and increase
fairness.
Although we found no evidence
of misconduct in Berkeley
during our audit contract
corruption cases in neighboring
jurisdictions show the
importance of having an open
of contracts. And secondly, why Berkeley used these contracts when competition was possible.
We mostly looked at the contracts executed in fiscal year 2024. We also looked at a sample
of the 100 largest contracts, the active largest contracts. We manually reviewed over 300 contract
PDFs and records online to determine if they were competitive because this information was not
contract in the city's financial system. We also manually reviewed every waiver
of competition because there was no automated reports available. Thank you to
Katie for doing that work. We defined competitive contracts to include those
with either informal or formal competition ranging from calling
vendors for quotes to formal invitation for bids. The city's purchasing manual
The state formal competition is required for service contracts over $50,000 goods over 100,000 in construction over 200,000.
Non competitive contracts are authorized by the city manager through waivers of competition those below that amount.
City Council can also authorize non competitive contracts. There are also a few other non competitive processes, such as releases and legal service contracts.
of the city's largest contracts
that did not go through
competition.
Caveat we did not assess whether
each contract should have gone
through competition.
Okay, what did we find?
Our first finding is that
Berkeley spent millions of
dollars on noncompetitive
contracts when competition was
likely possible.
When we review the city's
largest contracts, most of them
had evidence of competition or
met criteria for exceptions,
but two recycling contracts did not.
In fiscal year 2022, Berkeley executed contracts
with the Ecology Center and Community Conservation Centers.
Together, the contracts were 41 million
for the first five years with an optional five-year extension,
which would bring the total to almost 85 million.
Although competition is a best practice
and is required for service contracts over $50,000,
neither the city charter or the Berkeley Municipal Code
explicitly require service contracts
like these to be competitive.
In neighboring cities like Oakland and San Francisco,
their city codes explicitly require competition
for service contracts.
Let's now look at waivers.
During the audit, the purchasing manual allowed contracts
to waive competition when they were sole source,
competition was found to be inadequate
or there was an emergency.
However, the form that the staff uses
to request a waiver had different criteria
than the city's purchasing manual
for when waivers are justified.
This may have made it hard for staff to know
when it was appropriate to use a waiver.
Of the 53 waivers approved in fiscal year 2024,
38% did not clearly meet the criteria
in the purchasing manual.
This means the city likely could have pursued competition
in these contracts.
In our report, we highlight a few examples of waivers
that likely did not meet the purchasing manual criteria.
I'm just going to point out one example of a contract for classification and compensation
studies when which we found three waivers with three different vendors that all cited
a dire situation as the rationale for the waiver while there may be an urgent need for
these services is not there's no documented evidence that it was in emergency also having
three different vendors to me means that competition was likely possible.
City Council can also authorize non-competitive contracts for community-based organizations.
Last year, Council passed a resolution to establish a more open process to offer emergency
funding to community-based organizations.
We also found that Berkeley's process to prevent conflicts of interest is limited.
Some staff and officials are required by state law to disclose financial interests, but not
to disclose all relationships that may bias a decision.
In San Francisco, in addition to the Form 700, they require city officers and employees
to publicly disclose any personal, professional, or business relationships with anyone involved
in a government decision they make.
Although we found areas for improvement, we found no evidence of misconduct in Berkeley
during our audit.
The city can use amendments to increase the dollar amounts without new competition.
the city's contract. We also
identified 3 city attorney
contracts for legal services,
which grew by over 20% of the
original amount. The city
charge of the contract was
$1.2 million. The city charge of the contract was $1.2 million.
the city of the city of the
holding thresholds for formal competition.
So, we're finally to our second finding.
And that is that paper contracts,
unclear guidance, and short staffing
led to delays and overuse of non-competitive contracts.
During our audit period, most of Berkeley's contracts
were still reviewed and signed on paper
and hand-delivered for approvals.
This created delays and made it difficult
to track contracts, which led to some being misplaced.
Berkeley also did not have a comprehensive
And the city has to be able to
track digital contract
management system, able to
track competition and notify
staff of contract expirations.
While the city has begun using
docuSign for digital signatures,
there is no software to manage
the full contracting review
process.
We also found that the
purchasing manual was missing
procurement policy elements such
as definitions and a process for
The general services division has had repeated vacancies in key positions in the last 5 years making it difficult to improve the contract process. The general services manager position has been vacant since November of 2024. And the contract administrator position was vacant for almost a year until April 2025.
We have a number of recommendations for the city to address the risks we found including for the city to add explicit competition requirements to the municipal code for service contracts and pursue open competition for the recycling contracts. We recommend that the city update the purchasing manual and contract forms for consistency and expand training for staff. We also recommend the city adopt a comprehensive and integrated electronic contract management system.
city management agreed or partially agreed to our findings and
recommendations and provided an action plan to address our recommendations we
have still need to confirm to what extent the recommend any recommendations
have been implemented after our audit release date I just want to take a
moment to thank city management including the finance department for
their cooperation on this audit and in addition to city management public works
The city attorney's office and other city staff and my staff as well for their contributions on this audit. Thank you
Thank you so much
Madam auditor, there's lots to chew on here. Are there any questions from my council colleagues?
Comments sure
Yeah, I would ask actually if our city manager could speak to some of the changes that have been made
Sure, thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Madam Auditor and staff for this audit.
I won't read through them all, but if you go to the audit report on page 25,
you'll see all the management responses. And you can see in there that, as the
auditor said, we have agreed or partially agreed with them and, in fact, have
already implemented several of them, some in November and some June, July. So I
would just encourage people to read through that. You can see where we stand
on the management response, both in the where we agree and partially agree and
where we have implemented and have a date and plan to implement. So just
would point people there. Thank you. Did you have a question? Councilmember? Okay.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. And Madam Auditor, excellent work as usual. I'm curious if
you if you ran across this in your in your work. Is there any sort of
interplay with the the the Barris study recommendations the the Berkeley
inclusion and diversity index the the Bendex as some call it because we were
so much of this was about you know city contracting city contractors and allowing
new persons and new entities that are you know overlooked by the city to
apply for these contracts I'm wondering if there's any interplay with that at all
the city. So I think that's a
Um, Caitlin, did you have anything you wanted to add?
Yeah, I pressed this one of our final recommendations was to ensure that responsibility is assigned to implement the index recommendations to ensure that the city makes progress towards implementing those and promoting fairness and contract awards.
Okay. Thank you. Did anyone have any comments on this? Okay. Yep. Vice Mayor Luna Parra.
Thank you. Um, I just really wanted to thank the auditor and her staff for, for this work. Um,
and for everything that you put into it. So thank you so much. And, um, yeah, how comprehensive it
was. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to council member Humbert. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um,
want to thank Auditor Wong and your whole team for all the work that you put
into this report and I understand that it was a lot of meticulous work in
putting this together and I truly appreciate the dedication and care that
went into it given our dire budget situation digging into our contracts and
trying to find areas for efficiency and savings that competition would bring is
So, thank you so much for this really good work.
Thank you.
Councilmember Blackby.
Thanks, Madam Mayor.
And thank you again to the auditor and her team for this audit.
Thanks also to the city manager and staff for their responsiveness and already responding
to recommendations and starting to implement them, which we really appreciate.
I just like to offer as a member of the Budget and Finance Committee that it would be my
I hope and we'll talk to maybe a future budget meeting that once we get through this budget
process, which I know will be very time-consuming in terms of our meeting schedule, but I'd
love to add this to the agenda of kind of our next meeting after we kind of approve
the budget this year just to do a deeper dive and then figure out if there are other policy
changes we need to consider, you know, beyond what staff is already doing, that'd be a great
opportunity for us to spend more time with it, spend more time with you and then think
about it as a committee, so we'll have an opportunity to add future agenda items
at our next budget meeting, but it would be my hope we could consider this sometime
in July after we get through the June budget. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Councilmember Keefe. I just want to add my thanks to the auditor and her team.
This really important though audit, it's clearly a lot of work went into it and
and it's very important, so thank you.
And I just want to signal my personal interest
in looking at bidding out the recycling contracts.
I think that was a really important finding
and I'd like to, I hope we look at it more.
Thank you.
Council Member Tracup.
Thank you.
I wish to also echo my sincere gratitude
to the city auditor and your team.
and appreciate this report.
A number of very substantive items here
and some great recommendations that warrant a deeper look.
So I look forward to having a deeper dive on this
at a future council meeting or in committee or one-on-one.
I also wish to thank the city manager's office
as well as the city attorney
for already working diligently
to resolve a number of these recommendations.
I do wish to note that recommendation 1.2,
which is a recommendation to the city council
to work with city management and the city attorney
to propose updates to BMC Chapter 7.18.
That is a city council action item.
And I certainly would be interested in at a time
when it can be scheduled, likely post budget.
Very interested in continuing to dig into this.
I will note, I sincerely understand that a number of these recommendations to fully implement
them, it will require some significant budget adjustments at a challenging time for the
city budgetarily.
And I'm also thinking about the opportunities there around the possibility of not or the
reduced likelihood of potentially leaving money on the table.
And so when we have an opportunity to resolve some of these, I will call them sticky wickets,
You may actually then put ourselves in a better position, a more advantageous budgetary position
for the future.
Thank you so much for this report.
Thank you.
Councilmember Casarwani.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
I just want to echo the thanks, Madam City Auditor, and your team for this very important
audit.
really tried to make sure that when I'm putting budget referrals forward that we
try to use an RFP process because it's very important that we are open and
transparent in giving, especially when we're doing it from the city
council, as your report noted, right, giving all community-based organizations
who may be qualified the opportunity to compete and receive funding and I think
you know on these larger contracts like the recycling contract and other
contracts we have to make sure that we are just safeguarding the public's
resources especially in this budgetary environment but I think in any any kind
of fiscal environment it's very important that the procurement process is
the only way to ensure that we are being fair about how we are making these decisions in
terms of who wins these multi-million dollar contracts and without that, you know, I have
to be honest, there is the appearance of some kind of nefarious process.
That's why we have to be open and transparent about it.
If we just award a contract without a process,
do a sole source when we know that there is the option
to have an open and transparent process,
that's not good government in my opinion.
And so I think this audit is very important.
I appreciate that the city manager is gonna be,
has started implementing these recommendations
and I wanna make sure that we implement them all
so that we can have better processes.
I also wanna note some of these contracts
started below the threshold for an open process then had funds added and then
they went above the threshold so so we have to have controls I think in in all
cases and and and there could be instances you know when there's an
emergency situation I understand we need to move quickly and have a sole source
but you know that was that was really not the case in many of these instances
So thank you again, Auditor, for this report.
Thank you.
I also just want to add my thanks and say thank you.
I know it took a long time to go through this.
So thank you to your team and also to the city staff
who I know are working to implement those
and thank you to our city manager
for being so on top of it.
So, appreciate you.
Yeah, thank you.
I do want to allow folks,
if anyone wanted to give comment on this item,
I know it's not on consent
and it's not on action.
So I did just want to give some time for public comment.
So go ahead.
I'm gonna give you each a minute.
Thank you very much.
Again, I just want to commend the auditor for this report.
I think this is great.
As an average taxpayer, I care about this
because I'm worried about my taxes going up
to cover these deficits.
And so I'm also really heartened to hear about the comments
from the council members
and council member Keshavrani in particular.
And I'm glad that the city management has agreed
with most of these recommendations, it sounds like.
So that's really good.
I will say as a taxpayer,
I was a little disheartening
to hear about $85 million with no bid.
Hopefully that's the end that we'll see of that.
And I just hope all of you will stay on it
to make sure that we follow through
with these recommendations.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Madam Mayor, city council,
Martin Burke, executive director at the Ecology Center.
I just wanted to offer any additional information
you might have about the contracting process
with the Ecology Center in this last cycle
and the many cycles before that.
The Ecology Center has had open,
very transparent, long and in-depth contract negotiations
with Citi over and over and over.
Sometimes one-year contract extensions,
two-year contract extensions in an industry
where 10 and 20-year contracts are the norm
because of the amount of capital investment
and operational intensity of the contracts.
Each time that has come forward to council and to staff,
it's been thoroughly vetted with third party verification
of our proposals, a deep open book,
transparent negotiations,
and we feel that the city has gotten excellent results
for these contracts.
And I just wanna offer you, if anyone wants to,
they can reach out to you.
I'd be happy to give you more information.
Thank you.
Good evening, Council, and auditor of the world,
the best, you know, we have the best auditor in the world
in Jimmy Wong, seriously.
Amazing work.
I just wanted to speak briefly.
My name's Moni Law.
I'm speaking in my personal capacity
as an individual who has a note Berkeley Go Bears class of 82.
Firms owned by people of color and women
lost out on millions as contracts flowed disproportionately
to white men, quote, unquote, 2021 Berkeley side,
November 21, 2021.
I wanna thank also council member Ben Bartlett,
who worked fiercely on this issue.
2016 to 2019, the Mason Tillman Associates Report
covered four year process at that study showed
that business owned by white men were awarded
over 80% of all city contracts and black businesses
were underutilized with only 2.7% of the business.
So my heart aches when people say,
why is there such a low number of black people in Berkeley?
We don't feel as welcome and people
need their businesses supported.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, Moni.
I will take public comment online as well
if there's anyone else who wants to make public comment
on this report.
So this is for public comment on the auditor's report only.
If you're on Zoom, please raise your hand only
to speak on the auditor's report.
Okay, first is a phone number ending in 211.
Should be.
I called for public comments.
I'm going to meet myself, wait for public comments.
Okay.
Thank you.
Again, this is public comments only on the auditor's report.
So we have Della Luna is the next speaker.
Yes, I wanted to say that as a constituent,
I was saddened to hear how much of the auditor's work was done by hand and meticulously digging through records. I'm sad that that's the state of 2026 in the city of Berkeley.
There should be more. I feel like the, like, the, like.
Just what the auditor described, like, that type of record keeping kind of leads to this type of of.
Of a behavior amongst the departments are different parts of the city. So I'm really glad this work is being done, but it also feels like it could have been circumvented. And I guess I'm also just saying that you have to make the.
Uh, systems more robust and they're reporting, um, and then I also want to say that the same audit should be done with the, uh, housing developers and their contracts and their applications need to be vetted by 3rd parties and not just just accept everything they say, especially in the affordable housing developers.
Because it seems like the same issue isn't happening in other areas as well. Thanks. Thanks for your comment.
Next is Jeff Lomax.
Yes, thank you.
And again, big thanks to Jenny for her work here.
It's very important.
I want to second the previous comment
about the lack of public transparency
on these documents in general.
Council member Trevge, it's not,
I think what we need is you need the public posting
of the documents, the contracts, they should be available
And tied to a number of these contracts
are reporting requirements or deliverables,
which also are very difficult to connect the dots on.
So really essentially all these contracts
should contain a mini public docket.
This is not money, this is not a lot of resources.
It's just being organized and transparent
so that those of us who are interested in these issues
and interrogate them frequently
can get the information we're entitled to
without having to go to a public records mechanism,
which is often the mechanism we have to use unfortunately,
which wastes more time and resources.
So make it transparent, make it clear, make it public.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
And then we have Nina Wilson
to talk on the auditor's report.
Nina, you should be able to unmute.
Greetings to you all.
This is Nina Wilson from Healthy Black Families,
nonprofit located in the Adeline Corridor in Berkeley.
I think it's really imperative, and I thank Jenny for her report on this kind of rigor is necessary, especially if we're holding a banner for equity in our community, the displacement of black people from the city.
The lack of opportunity in the workforce contribute to that,
and these contracts could be a viable method for black folks to get grounded and economically stable in the city.
Um, not only should we be looking at these contracts with this kind of rigor, but we should also be setting equity priorities around these contracts in the city to ensure that equity is happening what gets measured gets accomplished. Thank you.
Thank you. That's the last speaker. Very good. Okay. Wow. Thank you all so much. I really appreciate it again. And we are going to move on in our agenda.
We are going to go to public comment on non agenda matters.
Okay, so we'll pick five cards for in person speakers and then the first five hands raised
online will be the, those will be our 10 non agenda speakers.
And the five in person speakers and you can come up in any order.
So please just come up line up when your name is called.
Steven Alpert, Kit Saginaw, Tim O'Brien, Andrea Pritchett, Steven Shuler.
Good evening, I'm Dr. Steven Alpert.
I have forwarded links of three recent publications
addressing housing affordability to all city officials.
The title of these publications is shown on this poster.
Using real-world data, these studies demonstrate it takes decades
for newly built market rate housing to eventually filter down to become affordable.
Council members have commented that the speaker has since failed to acknowledge the 15 to 30% of lower income units and
new projects mandated by state density bonus law.
At the March 2nd meeting of the land use housing and economic development committee,
Council Member Cassewani introduced a proposal that means providing affordable housing for
families, which advocates removing the small amount of onsite lower income units required
by state density burners, and instead allow developers to build solely market rate units.
This proposal supported by Mayor Ishi and Councilmember Trigga is based on faulty assumptions
and should be outright rejected.
Thank you.
Two weeks from now, you will be considering floc contracts, extending the one you have
and adding to them.
You really need to recognize that no matter what you put in contracts, you will not have
actual control over the data that Flock will have stored on their servers.
And there are many ways in which that data can go to ICE or other malign federal actors
who aren't signed by a judge, an individual outside Berkeley who's employed by an agency
that BBD trusts can get data and pass it along.
a mistake in a system setting controlled by Flock,
an individual Flock employee who has access
to the software and database.
And you really, really must not discount the possibility
of the secret FISA warrant, which a judge can issue,
a FISA judge can issue that will go directly to Flock
and you will not be told about it.
Thank you.
Thanks, Kit.
Hi, everyone.
My name is Steven Schuyler.
I live on Kitchard Street, downtown Berkeley area.
And about a year and a half ago, there was a big push by the zoning board to approve
a lot of high-rise buildings in my area.
I lived a block and a half from all of them.
And so now we find ourselves in an opposite problem.
We've all decided to either abandon their project or one of them on Center Street has
decided to put it on hold for three to five years because of the tariffs and maybe
ice is going to come in
arrest all their workers
and they've disconnected all the utilities
and all the businesses are gone
and if my research is correct maybe my numbers are a little off but
I looked online it's going to cost about two thousand dollars a foot
to reconnect the utilities
and if they just abandon that project too
it's going to leave it on the city's onus to hook it back up.
Hi, my name's Tim O'Brien.
This week we lost long-time Berkeley resident and Titan
of the 60s counterculture country Joe McDonald.
Though he was a hero of the anti-war movement,
which I realize is out of vogue with this current city council,
I'm hoping the city can find a way to commemorate his passing.
Such a move, I feel, is well within the wheelhouse
of this council as it's an entirely performative gesture
that requires no substantive action, political courage,
or personal sacrifice.
And so if your handlers from the JCRC and the real estate lobby
allow it, I hope you all can find your way
to honor the legacy of a great American,
a legacy of social justice so far in Berkeley's past
that like the anti-apartheid campaign for South Africa
and the free speech movement before it,
you can all safely pay lip service to it
without doing anything meaningful to advance it.
Thank you.
Good evening, council members.
My name's Andrea Pritche and I filed a complaint
with the Police Accountability Board last June
after having been manhandled by some police officers
because I was trying to video them
beating an unhoused man on the street.
I recently received this from the Chief.
I carefully reviewed the complaint,
including the complete investigation
conducted by the Internal Affairs Bureau,
the investigative findings provided by the opposite
of the director of police accountability,
which also included a report of the review
by the police accountability board.
Sadly, I didn't cooperate
with an internal affairs bureau investigation.
So I'm really curious to know what the chief used
to reach her conclusion that none of my allegations
were sustained or even considered founded.
But interestingly, I never got anything from the PAB.
I never got anything from the director.
Our accountability mechanism is inoperable, dysfunctional,
and for you to continue to give more weapons to the police
that are unaccountable is irresponsible.
Thanks, Andrea.
Thanks.
This is a non-agenda item, right?
Yeah, but I think we-
Your card has to be bought.
Yeah, we have to have a card now.
Sorry, I forgot.
So the first commenter online
is phone number ending in 211.
Hi, good evening.
My assistant, Roy, hand you some documents.
Please read them.
I respond to respond.
Our business here, IDSTV, have been in business for 52 years.
We did over $200 million worth of sales.
We contributed over $1 million to the city
of Berkeley finances, sales tax, and license fees.
And I wish, I hope, Elanor went into my call.
I called the State of New York Times.
We had very friendly talks a while ago,
but she never sent my call or email right now.
I do need to email, and by the way,
go down Telegraph, go down University,
go down San Pablo, go down Shaddak.
Blocks are closed, shut down.
Businesses, bad mega-learned roads,
destroyed these businesses.
we need to bring you the good life to Berkeley again.
Mayor, easy, please give me a call.
And this is work, bring Berkeley again again.
Thank you.
Next is
Eric, Eric, should be able to unmute.
Hello, my name is Eric Mearsboro.
I'm from the Project Streets of Equality here in Berkeley.
I wanted to talk to the council and the Madam Mayor about the horrible conditions of ProBag that we are allowing in this city. Not only has construction gotten just completely unrolling.
But we are allowing them now to not only block sidewalks, but block the bicycle lanes that we have paid for.
This is outrageous to me as a citizen of Berkeley and even more outrageous as
a disabled citizen of Berkeley. We are not coming up with the standards that
this city is known for. We are having in the disabled community to find different
ways around everything and it is almost every week. Adeline Street has been shut
down for months now. You can hardly get to the East Bay Center for the blind on
on certain roads and I just don't know where to go anymore.
I don't know what to do.
It's absolutely outrageous.
Thank you.
Thanks for your comment.
Okay, next is Delaluna.
Delaluna, you should be able to.
Yes, I wanna talk about a serious issue
on the Berkeley streets.
Right now it is incredibly dangerous
to walk as a pedestrian on the streets.
It's also really dangerous to drive.
I wanted to speak about the pedestrian lights that were put up. I think, in theory, they are good. Um, but right now, the way they work, when the pedestrian pushes the lights, the lights start blinking at 6 different spots across the intersection.
And that split second that actually distracts the driver and the lights need to start blinking from where the pedestrian pushes the button and then radiate out from there and then start blinking everywhere.
and I want to speak about the walkway,
the pedestrian crosswalk at the Ashby Bart.
That was under construction
and the improvements were being made
and there were signs and there was cones.
And then all of that went away.
And before the new crosswalk
and the new system had put reflectors and lights
and before it got finished.
So like one crew finished
and the next crew didn't come,
there was a lag there
and someone just got hit in that crosswalk.
So I think that this is something
that the public safety commission can work on to close those gaps.
Thank you very much for your comment.
Uh, next is, um, virtual meetings.
I'm sorry, this is Wendy Elston.
I just wanted to, um,
ask you in, well, you,
now that you have the city auditor's report in mind to look at all of those recommendations in light of the flock contract coming to you in two weeks is,
I think that they should be applied.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That's the last one.
That's nine.
We could pull one more card.
Moni, did you want to make, I don't know if Moni's still here.
Oh, well, we have Celeste Marks.
Okay. Oh.
Well, he didn't put a card in.
Oh, sorry.
She didn't do a card.
Oh, sorry.
But I'm going to let her go because she came up here.
Okay.
Thank you Celeste.
Thanks Celeste.
Last Monday I was with Marsha Poole
an hour before she had just passed away.
And I know that you're honoring her.
She's an icon of Berkeley.
She's one of the legends.
I'm doing a film called Legends of Berkeley
and I told her I'm gonna film her
about her busting a trafficking situation in Berkeley.
It's a pretty famous story.
If you don't know about it,
you'll learn about Marsha Poole
and I just want to give honor to her memory.
And the other thing was dangerous intersections.
Thank whoever in the city that put together
the sidewalk covering and clearing,
because a Cal student got hit by a car
and she had been complaining about how the street
had no marking of bright colors
so people couldn't see as they turned on college.
So we need to do that in more intersections
because too many people are getting hit
and I'm a pedestrian and I often run across the crosswalk.
So please drivers out there,
please be careful and don't hit anyone.
thank you thank you okay so we are now moving on to public comment by employee
unions are there any employee unions present there's anyone online it's one
online Berkeley's CSU PTRLA you should be able to unmute there hi good evening
This is Jocelyn Goldsmith DeSenna from the SEIU 1021 CSUPTRLA chapter.
Can you hear me okay?
Yes.
Okay, great.
I'm just going to apologize in advance if you all hear me coughing because I'm getting
over being sick.
I am a public health worker at the WIC office, and I'm also a board-certified lactation consultant,
and I'm the COPE coordinator for the CSUPTRLA chapter of SEIU 1021.
And I'm speaking tonight on behalf of our entire officer board.
We urge the Berkeley City Council to oppose the three proposed items
that would reduce police oversight and accountability in the city of Berkeley
and with particular attention to item 17 this evening.
The proposed amendments to reporting and permissive processes for the use of chemical agents,
helicopters, and police dogs are presented under the pretense of efficiency.
In reality, they would eliminate critical layers of oversight and transparency
by removing officer accounts in the report.
This is not a matter of efficiency.
It is a matter of public trust.
excuse me, weakening reporting and review requirements risks eroding the confidence
that residents and workers place in the Berkeley Police Department and in the city's commitment
to accountability. We are particularly alarmed by the proposal to lift the ban on the use of
pepper spray and smoke for crowd control as well as tear gas for special operations. Reauthorizing
the use of chemical agents that have been well documented to have harmful impact does not make
our communities safer. Such measures would roll back reforms that were adopted in response
to the over militarization of policing in cities across the country. Reversing these reforms sends
a troubling message at a time when many communities are calling for greater transparency in public
safety practices. As officers of a union representing members who work in the city of Berkeley,
we strongly oppose these items. We, like you, want our colleagues in public safety roles to be safe
and supported, as they carry out challenging and sometimes dangerous work. But safety cannot
come at the expense of accountability or community well-being. We believe our colleagues should be
equipped with tools and training that protect them and the public, not measures that risk causing
unnecessary harm to the very people we serve. As workers in the city of Berkeley, we are deeply
concerned about expanding access to these weapons and reducing oversight around their use.
We strongly urge you to consider the broader national context of rising mistrust in government
institutions and increasing concern about state violence. Now is the time to strengthen
transparency and community trust, not weaken it. So we, the Officer Board of CSU PTRLA chapter of
SEIU 10 to 1 respectfully ask you to vote no on item 17 tonight. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Are there any other unions on? Okay. All right. We will move on then. Thank you very much.
Okay, so we are moving on to our consent calendar.
I normally would give us a little stretch break,
but I think we've got a lot of things to cover.
So let's keep moving.
Are there any comments from my council member colleagues?
I imagine there are a bunch.
Yeah.
We need to accept this material.
So I was expecting, yeah.
Council member Tracob.
I would like to, can I make a motion
to accept both the urgency item and the supplemental?
Yes, they both require two thirds vote, so we can do it.
Okay, I move to accept the urgent item,
which is a resolution condemning the
illegal war on Iran and expressing support for
Berkelians impacted by this crisis,
as well as our supplemental number three
to agenda item 10, which is a resolution opposing
the Bureau of Land Management Oil and Gas Leasing
and Drilling on California Public Lands and Parks.
Second.
Is there any opposition to adding both of these items?
I think we need to take a roll call vote for the.
Sure.
Okay, to accept both items, Councilmember Kessner-Wani?
To accept the items, yes.
Yes.
Tapplin?
Yes.
Bartlett?
Yes.
Kragheb?
Yes.
Aye.
O'Keefe?
Yes.
Blackaby?
Yes.
Unapara?
Yes.
Humbert?
Yes.
And Marishi?
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
Those are accepted, and the urgent item is added to the consent calendar.
Thank you.
I did not expect to be first.
Actually, if you don't want to be first, I can also, I'd also like to move something
else to the side.
Let's do that.
Okay.
So one of our old business items, item 18 was the City of Berkeley's 2026 state and
federal legislative platform, which basically we took everything that you all said last
time and we put it onto this one document, but I wanted it to be public so that people
could see it.
And then there was a friendly amendment that's being proposed that we also add, support legislative
and budgetary efforts to create a not-for-profit utility service to replace investor-owned
utility programs, reduce the rate-payer burden imposed by investor-owned utilities, and support
community choice energy under the infrastructure policy priorities.
And so I'd like to add that as well and then ask that we move that over to the consent
calendar.
Is there a second?
Just need a second.
Sorry?
Yeah.
So, can we take the roll on that, please?
You could just move it to consent.
You don't have to vote on it.
Oh.
Okay.
Great.
Let me do that.
You can move it to consent if there's no objection.
Yeah.
There's no objection.
Is there an objection?
Okay.
So, that will save us a little bit of time.
Very good.
Okay.
Now, Council Member Keefe, thanks.
Yeah, I just have a bunch of disparate comments.
I wanna make sure I got them all.
I wanna start by thanking Council Member Tapplin
for adding North Shattuck to the entertainment zones.
I was gonna ask him for that,
but he put it in the supplemental.
So thank you so much.
Party in North Shattuck soon.
I would like to ask if I could co-sponsor item 10,
Council Member Trigoud.
the one we just.
I would be deeply honored.
Great, thank you.
Good item.
And then I would like to be recorded as donating $250
to item 12.
And then, okay, those are the smaller things.
And then the larger thing I wanna say
regarding the AI items, I did actually wanna go early
because I wanted to clear up any confusion there might be.
These, there's two AI items.
they are not in any way in opposition.
So I had a couple of people kind of speculating about that
and I just wanted to clear it up.
I wrote one, Council Members Bartlett and Trigoop
wrote another one, and what did I say?
I said the wrong names.
Anyway Bartlett and Trigoop wrote the other one
and it's all good.
I think what happened was all these offices
kind of saw a need for something to be done in this area
and we all kind of did it at the same time.
I see my item, I'll just speak about my item.
It's really designed to be much more kind of smaller
and more practical than I believe that item a little.
I'll let you guys describe it on your own.
I really felt like just from discussing the issue
with the city manager, it seemed like,
you know, this is a very new, pretty much lawless technology.
We don't understand it that well.
People are using it.
People should be using it in some context.
It can be a really powerful tool for a lot of jobs.
But we just, it seemed like it would be a good idea.
City Manager and I agreed that there should be
some sort of official city guidance
for how to use it properly
because a lot of people I think feel really lost.
Like what are the rules?
There's some very important issues of like
maintaining privacy.
People we don't really, you know,
I think it's important the city staff understands
don't just put a bunch of people's names into chat GPT,
right, like that's not, you know,
we don't really understand where it goes.
And that's certainly problematic.
So things like that, it just seemed prudent
to have a couple of clear guidelines
about how best to use this.
And so my item is just really trying to do that.
And I think, like I said,
I'll let the other council members speak to their item,
which is a little, I think it's just a little more,
more visionary than mine.
So I just wanna assure nobody has to choose between them.
I think I'm planning, I'm happy to support both.
thank you very much. Thank you very much. Councilmember Taplin. Thank you and good
evening. On item 7, the Entertainment Zones, I'd like to thank my co-sponsors
Vice-President of APARA, Councilmember Casaroni and Blackaby, the members of the Land Use
and Economic Development Committee, as well as my fellow members of the Knight
Council. And as Councilor O'Keefe mentioned in the sub 2, we have
included North Shattuck among the recommended stakeholders, thank you.
Thank you very much, Councilmember Blackaby. Thanks Madam Mayor, I'll just take
through a few of these items as well. Thanks to Councilmember Taplin for
authoring the Entertainment Zone ordinance allowing me to co-sponsor. I
support entertainment and nightlife even though I may not be the most avid
partaker of it, but I appreciate it and the importance to the city. Having a
couple of kids kind of limits your opportunities but I like I like the way
this is going. I want to support and thank Councilmember Bartlett and Tragov
and also Councilmember O'Keeffe for their AI items. Thanks to Councilmember O'Keeffe
for incorporating a few edits that I had suggested on her item. My main
takeaway is it is important to have guardrails, it is important to have a
framework but I also want to make sure that city staff feel encouraged to do a
little experimenting safely because I think there is a lot of opportunity as
long as we're responsible with it especially at a period of time where we
have real budgetary limitations and constraints we need to find some other
ways where we can scale and this may be one of those things as we move forward
carefully and responsibly. So a lot of stuff that I worked with Council Member
O'Keeffe on was making sure we're sharing best practices internally if one
department discovers some really interesting application of it we should
share that with other departments because there's probably a need for that
across the organization and then we just continue to revisit the framework
continue to revisit the rules on a regular basis because as we know this
is moving really quickly and so whatever we adopt tonight may look a lot
different in six months let alone six weeks or six days so again but I just
want to credit them for their leadership on this and I think it's really
important that we're taking this step on the on the micro mobility regulatory
framework thank you to Councilmember Trager for authoring it thank you for
allowing me to co-sponsor it this is a really important thing in many of our
districts just making sure that micro mobility devices are better regulated
that there is more safety but there's more onus on the providers of the
micro mobility devices as well as the riders to take responsibility we need to
figure this out because again it is an important transportation solution but in
in its current state.
It is causing real hazards on sidewalks and on streets.
A lot of us have constituents who find it very difficult
to navigate sidewalks on streets with the devices
and we need to figure this out as quickly as we can.
So I appreciate Councilmember Tragib's authorship of this
and allowing me to ride along as it were.
Also Councilmember Tragib, I believe I'm a co-sponsor
number 10, is that right?
You are.
I was gonna add you, but.
Thank you, I'm gonna be okay.
and then we'll get started.
Oh, you can add, but thank you for authoring this as well
on the opposing the oil and gas leasing
on California public lands.
On item 12, on the Berkeley Free Clinic,
I'd like to record our offices for languishing $250
towards the item.
Thank you to Council Member, Vice Mayor Luna Parra
for authoring this item.
And on item 13, thank you so much as we're thinking about
housing, zoning, questions, and concerns across the city
that we're making sure we're looking
at other high resource areas,
not just the corridors as we're moving forward.
And so council member Humbert's item to look at
what might be possible on Telegraph,
on Claremont, and other places around the city.
I just again appreciate your authoring that
and your leadership on that.
And that's it for now, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Trago.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
First of all, on item two,
which is the re-establishment of the downtown
Berkeley property and business improvement district,
would like to thank Eleanor
and the entire economic development team,
as well as the city manager
and deputy city manager, David White,
who attends the monthly downtown Berkeley district
Association meetings, and of course would be very remiss in not thanking
John Caner, who is sitting right here, excited to see this move forward.
Downtown Berkeley may have its challenges that we're working through,
but it is a downtown that is on the rise. Next, I would like to,
I would like to thank council member Kaplan
for his entertainment zone item.
It was a very popular item, so while I did not
get a chance to be a co-sponsor of this one,
I'm excited to support it and continue
to partner with your office on the next steps.
I'm very proud of Berkeley for taking
a thoughtful and proactive approach
to artificial intelligence.
AI is already here and evolving rapidly.
Whether we welcome it or not,
it is shaping how we live and work.
Our responsibility as a city is to educate ourselves,
protect our workers, and thoughtfully explore
how this technology can serve the public good.
Even when the path forward is complex,
it is important that we try to stay ahead
of these developments rather than simply react to them later.
And in that spirit, I'm proud to be respectively
an author and a co-sponsor of two AI items
Forest tonight. Item eight with Councilmember Bartlett, the Berkeley rule, the artificial
intelligence municipal framework, as well as item 11 by Councilmember O'Keeffe, city-wide
guidelines on artificial intelligence. On the referral item nine, strengthening Berkeley's
micro mobility regulatory framework to improve public safety, A.D. accessibility and operator
your accountability.
I would like to, in addition to thanking Fights
for their positive recommendation
and council member Blackaby for his thought partnership,
I'd like to express my deepest gratitude
to our public work staff, especially Wahid Amiri
for his tremendous help in developing
the micro mobility safety item before us tonight,
as well as his team that we worked with closely.
I know that this is only one step, and it is not lost on me that probably in the foreseeable
future I will still have to continue to move scooters out of the way if they're parked
illegally, but I'm prepared to do so whenever I see that in my district while also working
on meaningful policies such as this one.
And I would like to just briefly on item 10, make sure we are adding council members,
Blackaby and Okeef as co-sponsors.
And I think there was a question, if there was someone else interested, perhaps Vice
Mayor Luna Prada, I just couldn't remember if there was a conversation, but would be
happy to add you.
We do have a spot available.
And appreciate your support for admitting these amendments
into the item.
And lastly, item 12, Berkeley Free Clinic
Critical Renovations.
I would like to relinquish $150 from my G-13 account
with gratitude to the vice mayor for this item
and for co-sponsors.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Can I just respond quickly?
I would love to be added to item 10.
Thanks.
Consider it done.
OK.
Thank you.
All right.
Moving on.
Councilmember Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I'd like to, as on item number 12,
the Berkeley Free Clinic Critical Renovations
item brought by Councilmember Luna Parra,
I'd like to contribute $250 from our office account,
D8's office account.
And with respect to item number 13, which is pitch,
the project to increase telegraph and Claremont housing,
I'd like to add Council Member Kasarwani
as a co-sponsor with her permission.
And I want to say with respect to this item,
my proposal to increase the housing on telegraph
in certain places up in the Claremont.
I want to thank planning staff and the city attorney's office
for their assistance in preparing the item.
I also want to thank the land use committee
for their excellent input, which I was happy to incorporate,
and also thank my colleagues on the agenda committee
for being open to putting this on consent.
I just want to make a note of a couple of minor changes
to the item that were provided in the supplemental
that we filed.
The first is that I wanted to make sure
that staff had flexibility within the item's direction around base heights to make sure
we are studying what height options will enable us to optimize the provision of affordable
housing.
So we're not just automatically defaulting to a certain base height if it won't actually
result in more housing and might in fact reduce provision of inclusionary units.
And second, also to specify that the staff work would include any general plan amendments
and attendant work that may be necessary.
I think this was implied in the original item,
but with input from the city attorney's office,
I wanted to make it explicit, thank you.
Thank you, Vice Mayor Lunapara.
Thank you.
First, I was proud to author this urgency item
condemning the Trump administration's
illegal declaration of war in Iran,
and expressing the city council's support
for our constituents impacted by this crisis.
I'm also very excited to co-sponsor
the entertainment zone item.
I want to thank Council Member Tapplin
for developing this item and inviting me to co-sponsor.
Data shows that our communities are safest
and small businesses are the most profitable
with increased foot traffic.
So I look forward to seeing how these changes
increase the number of street events
on Telegraph and Durant and Southside.
I was also proud to author item 12,
the discretionary item supporting critical renovations
at the Berkeley Free Clinic's new location
in West Berkeley.
The Berkeley Free Clinic has served as a cornerstone
of community health for over five decades,
and I'm really happy that we're able to provide them
with some much needed financial support this evening.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much, and Councilmember Bartlett.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Just running through the packed agenda here.
Very excited about item three,
the Espy Bart Eastlot Transliterancy Development,
RFP framework.
So that's as wonderful, so at long last the city is poised to release its RFP to get people applying
to fulfill our dreams at the East Lott, Datsby Park.
Real excited about that for all these years. The entertainment zone ordinance. Thank you,
Councilor Taplin, for this. I understand that the Lauren District, the Southgate District,
could not be in due to the geographic spacing of our booze halls. So I do want to just flag this
for the staff, everyone's listening.
I see you over there, I see you over there.
When they look through this,
because they possibly find a way to get us in there too.
We used to have for years,
illegal street parties in South Berkeley.
It was wonderful on the sidewalk.
So we know how to do it, we can have a good time.
We know how to have a good time, trust us.
The Berkeley rule, and my item here,
we worked on it really hard.
Came out of conversations with the city manager.
It looks like there was some scatter shot approach evolving.
We're going to hit it by vendors.
And so we thought it'd be interesting to not let
AI happen to us, but let us happen AI.
And so essentially, this is an effort
to articulate community vision, community values,
and implant that into the industry.
And let's see what comes out of that.
And I also want to thank Councilmember Keefe
and the co-sponsor on your wonderful item with you
Mr. Blackaby on a more regulatory approach to the industry, thank you for that.
We are providing leadership in a must needed time, trust me.
$250 please to my office to the Berkeley Free Clinic, thank you Vice Mayor Lenipara for that.
You did great work over there, really do.
And then I want to thank Councillor Humbert for your excellent work on the pitch item.
This is a very delicate work here too, Madam Mayor.
Very delicate work here to increase housing equity
everywhere in Berkeley.
And thank you, I'm happy to help you in every single way.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Kessarwani.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
I also wanted to just chime in and recognize item three,
the Request for Proposal Framework for the Ashby East lot.
This is very exciting and, you know,
We look forward to both BART stations breaking ground soon.
Item number seven, I want to thank Council Member Taplin
for the entertainment zone item.
I was very pleased to co-sponsor that.
And item number 12, Council Member Luna Pada,
I'd like to be recorded as donating $100
for the Berkeley Free Clinic Critical Renovations.
And then finally, item 13,
I want to thank Council Member Humbert.
Well, I guess you're all authors.
Thank you all, and thank you
all of you, the mayor, and
councilmember Bartlett, for
this item to rezone telegraph
and Claremont and I'm very
pleased to be able to co-sponsor
that item.
That's it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
I'm just going to add my
excitement about the Ashby-Bart
E-slot RFP and applaud the
addition of the Universal
Design Standards and 25%
affordability going to units
that and I don't think it's clarified on there so for Berkeley free clinic I
know I'm listed as a co-sponsor but two hundred and fifty dollars from my office
okay very good we are now going to move on to public comment for consent
calendar items and information items only come on up good evening council
John Kaner downtown Berkeley Association want to think thank council and staff
for the work and the renewing of the downtown Berkeley P-bed, and particularly
Councilmember Chargob and his partnership and the city manager and all
the staff. This is a 10 year renewal. We did five for the first time in 2012 and
then 2017, another 10 years. It's about a 20 percent rate increase, about 8 to 9
percent is structural cost changes, and then about 12 percent we're doing a
safety ambassador program, which we rolled out in January, because that was a key
issue we talked over 500 stakeholders in the downtown. There's an ability within
five years for the board also to trigger perhaps another 10% for a larger
economic development and retail attraction role. I also just want to
thank you particularly Councilmember Taplin for the economic zone works. We
fully fully support that as I spoke earlier we need to support events joyous
events in the downtown. So thank you all very much. Thank you. I think it said for
two minutes it should be one right and I'm sorry in the back could you please
take your conversation outside. Thank you. Okay. Good evening Mayor Ishii, members of
the council. My name is Daniel Swofford. I'm the executive director of the
North Shattuck Association Business Improvement District. I just want to come
out in person and thank Council Member Taplin and other members of the
subcommittee on entertainment zones for the vision and for the effort and
and for the encouragement to get more people out,
to support our small business community.
The district is wholeheartedly behind the initiative
and we'll be there as a true partner with this.
So thank you for that.
And just incidentally in the spirit of entertainment zones,
I invite you to come to North Shattuck
and walk down the street.
New street banners just went up
showcasing 13 different Berkeley artists
from all over the city
to create a wonderful outdoor gallery.
So those are the kind of things you can do
and walking and getting into different restaurants and bars
and just really celebrating community in the way
that so many of us are excited to do this spring and summer.
So I appreciate you all.
Thank you.
My name is Cherie King, and I do tennis tournaments
at San Pablo Park.
Last year, I have had a contract with the park and rec
for over 10 years and have generated
a number of $400,000.
This year, I generated $66,000.
Because I am the officer of Operation Pride,
I also do tennis lessons and I also support
the park and rec goals and objectives.
What's important about doing tournaments
is that I represent the United States Tennis Association.
I am on the board, I have done tournaments,
I've received the Tournament of the Year twice,
and what happens is when you bring a tournament to town,
they spend money.
I did a tournament last weekend and I had 27 kids and 50 parents came to see their children
play.
I do one every year.
I have a small after school program and that after school program is a low income program
and I'll just say I changed that to fit your budget program because what it does is...
Thank you.
Thanks so much.
Was that related to the entertainment zones item?
You know, I need to practice the one minute.
No worries.
I know it's tough.
Thank you for coming.
I appreciate your public comment.
Thank you.
Good evening, all. My name is Tom Parrish. I'm the Managing Director of Berkeley Repertory Theater and a member of the Board of the Downtown Berkeley Association, and I'm here to voice my support for the renewal of the property-based improvement district downtown, as well as the entertainment zones, and thank you all for your efforts to increase the vitality of our city. Thanks.
Thanks, Tom.
Hello. I'm David Mayery. I'm the CEO of the UC Theater. I'm here to support item number two, as well as item number seven.
Both of them, I think, are very important for different reasons.
The watching John's work over the last 10 years in the downtown Peabid, it really has
brought a great sense of community, kept the streets clean, goodwill ambassadors there
to answer questions, and really helped to foster a great sense of community.
Regarding the entertainment zones, it's a great opportunity to revitalize different
areas of the city to create this outdoor activity.
It will generate revenue for small businesses,
create safer streets, and just generally,
I think, improve Berkeley as a place for people
to go out and enjoy and hang and have a good time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, shh, quiet in the line.
Okay.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Sahar Maliki, and I'm a resident.
So I wanted to comment on one of the resolutions
that I think was put on the consent table
as an Iranian American.
I just wanted to express my disappointment
as a voice of Iranian people.
I know that they are not for this consent table,
this resolution.
I think that the reasons that were expressed
was financial and peace.
I think that Iranian people want to be helped.
There were massacre occurred in Iran about two months ago,
and they look at it as help from outside.
They don't look at this as a war against them.
Also as an American, I think that this
may help to peace in the long run.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, Carol Merasvic speaking of my individual capacity because I'm not authorized by the
Peace and Justice Commission, but I'm unable to reach the author of the item who is Iranian.
Last night, we actually voted on a recommendation on Iran, and I will read that out.
Adopt a resolution reaffirming the commitment of the City of Berkeley to international peace,
the war in Iran, an unconstitutional war initiated unilaterally by the US
president without congressional authorization, and expressing solidarity
with the people of Iran and their right to self-determination. I did add the
friendly amendment about the unconstitutionality. So we did pass
this last night. I am going to add actually I was lobbied most of the day to
not vote for this and that council would never pass an item like this. So
it's going to be interesting when I share it with you. Thank you. Thank you.
About that urgency item, is it already passed? There was no opposition so it's
passed by consent already or you will be swayed by our... okay. Oh yeah. So I wrote
a resolution to end the war before it starts about Iran. Must have been 12 years
or so ago because it was in the crosshairs of the project for a new
American yes century and it was this is very mild compared to that one and yet
that one passed unanimously and look Berkeley did it Berkeley staved off the
war on Iran for all these years it's very important to take this stand and I
have many Iranian friends who live here who would be in favor of it, who are in
favor of stopping the war because of all the suffering that war causes and of
course it's more complicated than that. So you know that the 85 seconds to
midnight the doomsday clock, the war in Iran will affect all of us. Thank you.
Well I just wanted to offer my hearty support to anything that's going to the Berkeley Free
Clinic at his beloved institution. I think they do great work and you know it's still
my hope that we will have a special care unit, still my hope that one day we will find those
ambulances, those beautiful wheelchair accessible transport vans and I believe that we should
continue in whatever way we can to build out the philosophy of the Berkeley Free Clinic
which was about community collaboration,
which was about not calling the police,
but providing care.
And I continue to ride my bike
through the streets of this town.
I continue to see people who are in great distress
and have no idea what to call.
And if anybody on this council can advise me,
I'd love to hear it.
Because right now we have firetrucks and police,
but somebody to sit down with a cup of coffee
and talk to somebody.
Offer them some care, some transport, some love.
Thank you.
Thanks, Andrea.
Hello.
My name is Rithwick.
I just want to quickly express support for the AI items
and I guess I feel positive that Berkeley can lead
in terms of AI policy.
I'm also a recent graduate
from the University of California here
and I studied and researched both AI implementation
and policy making. Berkeley is internationally regarded as maybe the number one place to
study both of those topics. And so I also think looking at the economic dashboard packet
here, which encourages city university connections, I think having advice from staff, professors,
students from the university could mean a lot for the implementation and execution of
those two AI policies. Okay and mayor we have 12 speakers online so we'll go to
the first speaker that's Meryl Siegel. Is it possible to speak about AI too? No I'm sorry Phoebe you
at your time. Meryl Siegel. I saw your shirt though. I think your shirt says it.
Well, why don't we just call Paulie. I know. The narrow applications are okay. Thanks.
Meryl Siegel, you should be able to speak. Thank you. Regarding the entertainment zone
ordinance, it is really great, but there's a complication. And I was requesting that
the City Council remove the item from consent and put it to action.
And the reason why is that the city right now is in a $30 million budget deficit.
But because this item would require staff time, and
there is no real urgent need for this measure.
And because it's still not possible to understand the effects of this measure
on the San Pablo Avenue specific plan,
because the way it's written right now,
it's like maybe the part of San Pablo Avenue
that's south of University Avenue will be included,
but the rest of San Pablo won't,
but there will be a Gilman district.
I appreciate the thought that went into this measure,
but-
Can I just say one when your time's up? Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Your comment speaker is, um, speakers listed as Iran.
Good evening council members. I stand by earlier. I want to announce that I'm deeply oppose the Iran resolution item and request that it be pulled from the constant calendar and move to the action calendar.
for full public discussion. As an Iranian-American who lived under that regime for 27 years and has
first-degree and second-degree family members currently living in Iran, I'm telling you and
on behalf of all Iranian people, this is not peace. This is not war against Iran. Iranian people want
this help. This is war against a fascist theocracy that murdered brutally 40,000 people, innocent
people, unarmed people, and whoever voted for this standing by that fascist theocracy. I want
you to understand the gravity of this matter and don't just fall for any propaganda that you see.
Thank you, next is speaker is Mohsen Hushmand.
Oh, where'd he go.
There he is Mohsen.
Hi, hi everybody. So I want to confirm the Iran icons and Sahar speaking regarding the
It's not the war against Iran, it's a war against the faith of a fascist regime and
I oppose those resolution and I highly appreciate if I request it be pulled from the consent
calendar and move to the action calendar for full public discussion.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Marjan Hafezi.
Good evening.
taking my comment. I also want to oppose this resolution just because living inside the
Iran and living the conditions with execution, torture, political prisoners, systematic oppression
of women, thousands of young people have been killed. So why are we even suggesting this
humanitarian act to stop. If any of us live under those conditions, that is what we would
want people to do for us. 90 million people are asking for help. And here, 1,000 miles
away from Iran, we sit here and take the authority to speak for those 90 million people. So please
Know on this resolution. Thank you. Thank you.
Next is, uh.
Eric nears barrel oral.
Hello council members and madam mayor. Um, I wanted to talk about the, uh, agenda.
Number 9, um.
Igor Trega, and Blackaby's author of micro mobility accountability.
I'm legally blind.
My fiance is totally blind.
We work with guide dogs, the scooter epidemic.
And I'm going to call it an epidemic because it's a major issue here in this city.
We are literally falling over scooters every day.
If we don't bring our guide dogs with us and just choose to use our canes, we are
putting ourselves at risk for injury.
Not only us, but all of our fellow disabled people,
all of our fellow aging people.
This is a problem.
We need a solution.
And I believe that Igor and Blackaby have that solution.
We need to make sure that these companies
are held accountable.
Thank you.
Let's see, they spoke and they spoke.
Next is Katrin.
You're unmuted, you should be able to, Katrin, are you there?
Yes, can you hear me?
Yes, yes we can.
Okay.
I am also an Iranian and I'm here to share an Iranian perspective about the current crisis
in Iran.
I'm deeply opposed to the resolution that was done yesterday about Iran.
The people of Iran are in a war with the regime.
And that was happening for 47 years.
The regime of Iran has maintained a posture of hostility toward Western countries and
has supported destabilizing activities and terrorism in the region and beyond.
What we are witnessing today is the culmination of a long struggle between the Iranian people
and the ruling regime.
In the recent events, this situation has developed into a severe humanitarian crisis that requires
immediate international attention.
We urge observers to set aside partisan political biases and recognize this situation for what
it is, a humanitarian crisis that demands serious international concern and response.
I, as an Iranian, yes.
Thank you.
Sorry your time is up but thank you for your comment. Next is Sue Smith. Hi I actually
have a couple of friends that want to speak and they're not they're having trouble getting their
zoom hands recognized. What can they do? Well there's a long list so we have maybe we just
haven't got to them yet. Okay, okay. Then my comment is I too agree with the scooter issue.
I'm 75 years old and I am terrified that walking on the sidewalk in our dimly lit streets,
I'm going to bump into one and fall and break bones. We hope you can find a solution.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker is
Mojgan Madizadeh. You should be able to unmute. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, now we can hear you.
Hi, thank you for taking my call. I just want to share a perspective that is often missing
from discussion like the resolution being introduced tonight. The regime that rules Iran
is not reformable. For more than four decades it has survived by repression, violence and
deception. It doesn't respond to goodwill or appeasement. It responds only to strength.
I remain in close contact with family members in Iran. What they are describing is deeply
troubling. The regime has evacuated almost all of its bases and is placing missile launchers
in heavy populated areas, holding meetings in hospitals, and storing weapons in schools,
effectively using civilian as human shields.
This is the reality people inside Iran are living with.
Many of us have this agreement with the president of domestic policies.
What we must be honest about the stakes here.
The current confrontation is not simply about geopolitics.
It's also about protecting the Iranian people and defending your national security and the
security of allies.
your comments I'm sorry your time is up next is uh David David you should be on mute hi yes
I'm actually I went to Berkeley and lived in Berkeley and Berkeley is always known for human
rights from South Africa to Nicaragua and so forth but I think right now the council is in the wrong
side of the history and people especially the nipara as other representatives you got to live
on their sharee a lot to really understand us two months ago not only they killed 40,000 people
A few years ago, they killed on their woman life freedom that was all over.
They shoot people in their head, in their eyes, they executed people in the hospital.
This is a 9-11 moment for us. This is a bin Laden coming and he says,
anyone who comes out is going to get shot. Anyone who's arrested is going to get shot.
They call them saboteur. And no one in Iran, the 90 million people, they're unarmed.
It's like in North Korea. And the internet is blocked. If you want to do something right,
say how you can have internet because they're jamming the satellite signal.
You're in the wrong side of the history today and I send you guys ticket to go to
Taliban's in Afghanistan or in IRGC to see it how the Sharia law works as a
woman, as a sister, as a mother. Thank you very much for your comment. Your time is up.
Next is Megan Nasseri. Thank you council members. Me too. I would like to
Roger, all my fellow the country men and women out there, on January 8 and 9,
2026, millions of Iranians took it to the streets and the regime responded with extreme violence.
In less than 48 hours, more than 33,000 protesters were massacred and thousand more were imprisoned
and executed. Yet, the Secretary General of the United Nations remained silent and instead
congratulated the regime on its anniversary. This is very similar to what you're doing now.
Millions of Iranians protesting empty-handed under internet blackouts, they cannot defeat
a heavily armed regime alone. Targeted military action is not only a moral responsibility,
it's an opportunity to help Iranian people free themselves from the regime that threaten both
citizens and global security.
And while this suffering continues,
we see individuals in the Bay area mourning.
I appreciate your comment.
Next is Alana Auerbach.
Good evening, everyone.
I encourage you to donate more funds
to the Berkeley Free Clinic, please.
It is a treasure, a treasure in our community.
I wanna support, no surprise, your emergency item.
wherever anybody thinks about the horrors that are happening to so many people right now.
This war is illegal, and it is unconstitutional.
So no matter what you think, what your politics are, those are the facts.
So we must oppose it.
We must support our waning democracy.
Please know, Iranians are not a monolith.
I know people in Iran, I know people here in our community,
who are highly opposed to the thousands of people
who have been murdered and who are suffering right now
because of this war, because of the expansion
of basically the gazification of the world.
This is, you need to oppose this war.
Alana, thank you, your time's up.
Next to Jeff Lomax.
Thank you.
I must say, I feel like there's a real internal inconsistency
in terms of when we choose to speak out or not speak out
on issues of international affairs.
And in the case this evening,
I'm swayed by the comments of Iranians
who have constituted the majority of the views here.
So I would just like to understand more explicitly
why we sort of pick and choose our issues
on international affairs.
It's like I say, I see no consistency.
And I think that's in itself a problem
and needs to be addressed in terms of, you know,
why we're doing these types of statements
under certain conditions and not under others.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Zoom user.
Zoom user, you should be able to unmute.
Thank you, Councilman.
I agree with my country, Iranian.
I think the free and brave of this great land
have sacrificed so much that they should try
to do the right thing.
Iran has been in a war where occupying the regime,
whereas it pays foreign governments to come in
with the help of anti-air machine gun,
mow down a decent citizen and 40,000 plus.
It's easy to sit down in United States comfortably
and to be totally disconnected
with the emotional effect that is going on.
If this does not stop, then God help the Iranian
because there will be massive suicide due to the depression.
There's no way this can be tolerated.
this issue has been created by superpower
because Iran was doing so good,
then it is our jobs to make sure that it's ended.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is a phone number ending in 211.
As many of you know, I've been in Berkeley for 62 years.
Beautiful town, beautiful city, I miss that.
It's no longer the case.
The fact is, well, it's not a business in Berkeley
because the structure of the city,
marking meters or driving right away.
Our business was rated number three.
The iron mazes an important number of people
visiting our forest stores.
In Berkeley and one sub-physical.
As far as the Iran situation, no way in hell
does Trump or Netanyahu have any right.
Because the victims now are innocent civilians.
I don't care about the Iranian government.
Yes, they're horrible.
I don't care how they treat women.
In Egypt, University of Cairo, my friends, females,
were bikini in Cairo, Universal Park, were very different.
I think we should take a religion out of all societies.
Thank you very much and I will call you again.
I'll talk again, take care.
Thank you.
Next speaker is Sunny.
Sunny, you should be able to unmute.
Hi, I will wish everyone there Happy Women's Day. It's a great honor that you're all celebrating
the Women's Day and you have the freedom, but the same freedom is missing in Iran for the women.
If you have seen the recent Iranian soccer team where they were playing in Australia,
they got asylum there because they are scared to death. Once they go back to Iran, they might be
persecuted or they might be murdered. So this is a reality, guys. So let's not talk about politics
like Democrats or Republicans, right? The important is the regime is fanatic. They have been executing
lot of Iranians, it has been there and verified. So you need to understand and balance that,
where are all the few Palestinian people, you know, the Iranians are also humans. You know,
you need to show the support, forget about who... Thanks for your comment, your time's up.
Next is a caller with a number ending in 0-6-0. Should be able to unmute, star 6 to unmute.
Oh, they're, they're gone. Next is Megane. Hi, everyone. Thank you for having us tonight. Um, I'm also Iranian American, and I wanted to just make a couple points really quickly.
1 is that with all the horrific things that has been happening happening in Iran since December.
It's very troubling for the diaspora to see what the media coverage, lack of media coverage,
or if there is media coverage is completely skewed, the American people are confused.
And the other point that I wanted to make is the problems that are happening in Iran,
they're not 1,000 miles away.
They are very soon, if it's not stopped, they're going to reach here at home.
I grew up in Iran and many like myself, we know what kind of a mind frame and ideology
this regime has, and I think everyone in the United States, Republican and Democrat and
Independent, this should be a bipartisan goal to eliminate this regime, because their goal
and ideology is to eliminate us.
Thank you for your comments, Niki.
Thank you.
Next is Stephanie.
Stephanie, you should be able to unmute.
Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Apologies for the name. Actually, on Zoom, I didn't in the wrong way. My name is Bob Aksani. I'm actually a commissioner on the city of Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission.
I was the author of the resolution that we discussed last night at the commission meeting.
and was adopted to be recommended to the city council.
And what I wanted to say
that a lot of the comments you're hearing,
I was able to join for the last five minutes,
is really essentially, frankly, a trauma response.
A lot of the comments from the Iranian population
to what the Islamic Republic has done to the,
this war is illegal as stated in the resolution.
there was no congressional,
there was no congressional authorization obtained.
Therefore, it's an unconstitutional war.
And I think...
Thank you.
Thanks for your comment.
Next is Kelly Hammer.
Hello, I'll just make this quick.
Looking at history,
when has U.S. interference with another government
it better. I think that you know we're hearing comments thinking that our
interference is going to make things better for them but so many times the
U.S. interference has made things so much worse for the citizens of nations
over and over around the world.
And so other than World War II, I can't think of a time when we've actually made things
better.
Thank you.
Thanks, Kelly.
Okay.
That was the final speaker on Zoom.
Okay.
I see that Vice Mayor Leno Parra has her light on.
Thank you.
I just want to clear up some misconceptions about the resolution.
It opposes the Trump administration's elite circumvention of Congress and expresses support
for the freedom and sovereignty and self-determination of all people, and including specifically
the people of Iran.
It does not comment on the current government of Iran, and Trump's attacks on our Constitution
will do nothing but make the possibility of a democratic Iran more unlikely.
I'm grateful to the Iranian members of the community,
hope helped us draft this item.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
You know, I didn't vote for a resolution
in the Gaza conflict because the community
was not census on that matter.
And here, I'm hearing the same thing.
And census, I'm going to abstain.
Council member Humbert.
I'm thanking Madam Mayor, and I want to say that listening here tonight to the Iranian
Americans who've commented, you know, I have great sympathy for them, and I have no love
for the horrific regime in Iran that came to power in 1979, but our resolution does
does not support that horrific regime,
it very clearly and concisely condemns
the illegal nature of the war, which was not authorized
by the US Congress, which holds the power to declare war.
I mean, I think it's as clear as a glass of clear water
that Trump is acting unconstitutionally.
And that's the nature of the resolution,
that support, again, the horrific regime in Iran.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Councilman Rakeef.
Yeah, I'll just say briefly.
I'm also gonna stand on the resolution,
but I do just wanna make it clear
that I respect the resolution.
I agree with it, frankly.
I have a policy that I've stated publicly many times
of not voting on things have to do
with international relations.
That's just a personal preference,
but I wish everyone the best
and I wish for peace in Iran and the Middle East.
Thank you very much folks, please.
Okay, so we are now voting on the consent calendar.
So is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?
So moved.
A second?
Second.
Okay.
Let's take the role.
I think that's easier.
To approve the consent calendar with the abstentions noted.
Councilmember Kessarwani?
Yes.
Tapplin?
Yes.
Bartlett?
Yes.
Trega?
Aye.
O'Keefe?
Yes.
Blackaby?
Yes.
Lunapara?
Yes.
Humber?
Yes.
And Mary Ishii?
Yes.
OK.
Motion carries.
Motion carries.
We are going to take a brief break,
because it's been two hours, and we
need to stretch and then we will move on to the action calendar we've got some
public hearings coming up and it'll give some time for folks to set up as well so
thanks recording stopped recording in progress thanks everyone for your
patience a hungry council is a cranky council so I feel like it's good for all
of us okay so anyway we are moving on to the action calendar we've got some
public hearings coming up starting with item number 14 okay quiet in the back
please thank you amendments to BMC title 23 to update the regulation of
non-conforming law coverage for area ratio and density for residential uses
in selected zoning districts and I will pass it over thank you thank you mayor
good evening council members Jordan Klein director of planning development
I'm joined here at the staff table by Ann Hirsch the land use planning manager
Justin Horner, principal planner on the policy team, and Faye Mingham, assistant
planner who will be presenting on this item. Take it away. Faye, thanks. Thank you
Mayor Ishii and members of the City Council. My name is Faye Mingham, an
assistant planner with the Land Use Planning Division. Tonight I'll present
proposed amendments to Title 23 of the Berkeley Municipal Code to update the
regulation of non-conforming lot coverage, floor area ratio, residential
uses in the R1 R2 and MUR zoning districts. I'll begin with a summary of background followed
by the current effects, and then we'll present the proposed ordinance amendments and then
after that's recommendation. The middle housing zoning changes were adopted on July 8th, 2025.
Middle housing expanded the development potential in the affected zoning districts and established
new objective development standards that cannot be exceeded. Projects that meet these objective
development standards can be approved ministerially through a zoning certificate.
Since adoption, middle housing project applications have been submitted.
Upon review, staff identified minor inconsistencies in the zoning ordinance that require fixing.
The problem staff identified in section 23.324.0 for the pathway that requires a use permit for
for non-conforming structures
that otherwise conform with the standards.
BMC section 23.324.050 contains provisions
for the maintenance replacement, removal, expansion
and alteration of non-conforming structures and buildings.
Non-conforming buildings are preexisting
and do not conform with zoning.
A building may be non-conforming
if it projects into the setback
or exceeds maximum height or lot coverage for example.
This section requires a use permit for additions
alterations to buildings with non-conforming lot coverage, FAR, and density.
The section conflicts with the policy intent of middle housing by requiring a use permit for
residential additions and alterations that meet the objective standards but do not conform with
the new minimum density. This type of project is intended to be approved with a zoning certificate.
It also conflicts by allowing projects to exceed maximum FAR and lot coverage standards with use
permit. It was not the intention of middle housing to require existing
projects to meet minimum density when they proposed to add square footage, nor
was it intended to allow projects to exceed development standards in any case.
To correct these inconsistencies, the proposed amendment exempts residential
uses in the middle housing zoning districts from the provisions of this
section, thereby removing the use permit pathways for non-conforming lot coverage,
density. At its January 21st,
2026 meeting, the Planning
Commission agreed that this BMC
section conflicts with the policy
intent of middle housing. The
Planning Commission recommended
the amendments for adoption by
City Council and added language
intending to prevent non-conforming
projects from further
exacerbating committees. However,
this language inadvertently
preserves the discretionary
approval pathway by implying that
a project that does increase or
exacerbate a nonconformity could apply for a use permit to exceed maximum lot
coverage. Staff believes that this outcome was not the Planning Commission's
intent because it continues to provide discretionary approval pathways for
middle housing projects. For these reasons staff's recommendation excludes
the Planning Commission's language addition. Staff recommend that the City Council
conduct a public hearing and adopt the first reading of an ordinance to amend
and BMC section 23.324.050.
Thank you, I'm here for your questions.
Thank you very much.
We've opened the public hearing,
but are there any questions from my council colleagues?
Council member Kiserwani.
Yeah, so if I understand correctly,
are you saying that there is no pathway
to pursue middle housing with a non-conforming structure,
sort of non-conforming standards through a use permit?
that's not possible with the amendments you're proposing?
Correct.
If I understand correctly, yes.
Middle housing approved with a zoning certificate
if they meet the development standards.
Okay, so just so correctly,
so if it's existing structure that's non-conforming
and all of the additions are conforming
with the middle housing development standards,
you will still issue the zoning certificate
and that's what the cleanup is doing.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, any other questions?
Okay, are there any comments on this item?
We are on item number 14, amendments to BMC title 23
to update the regulation of nonconforming rock coverage
for area ratio and density for residential uses
in selected zoning districts.
Okay, anyone online?
Yes, okay, very good.
Is there a motion to close the public hearing?
Second.
Do we need to take roll?
No.
Any opposition?
Okay, we have closed the public hearing.
Very good.
Are there any comments from my council colleagues?
Move the item.
Is there any opposition to approving this item?
Okay.
No, I do have a question,
because I think where I'm hung up on is,
prior to the middle housing ordinance,
somebody could come and propose something nonconforming
and have the option to go to ZAB.
So we are, I just wanna be clear,
we are taking away that option for people.
They cannot do a nonconforming middle housing project now.
You can only do it with a middle housing
development standards, correct?
There's no option to go to ZAB in these zones
if you wanna do middle housing.
Yes. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. So did you have any other? Ready to vote? That's fine. Okay.
Vice Mayor Little, did you have a follow-up question? If a middle housing proposal uses the density bonus, however unlikely that may be, then would they go to ZAB for a non-conforming?
Okay. No. How would that work? It would just be approved through the planning department?
Yes, it would. Yes, correct. Thank you. Sometimes questions bring up questions. So it's good.
It's good. We asked that. Okay. Very good. Thanks, everyone. Is there any opposition
to approving this? Okay. Motion is approved. Thank you very much. Alright. We are now moving
Do I mean amendments to the Berkeley elections reform act regarding the return of unspent public matching funds release of campaign materials campaign expenditures and of living adjustments and I think Sam is online to present.
Is that correct? Yes, Madam Mayor, and I believe, uh, chair sagan or is present as well. Yes, kit is here.
Does she want to, oh, are you presenting, I'm sorry.
So Secretary Harvey had asked me to introduce the motion
and then he would give more detail.
Okay, sounds good, sorry about that.
That's fine.
So Kit Saginaw, I'm the outgoing chair
of the Fair Campaign Practices Commission
that was established by the Berkeley Election Reform Act
to ensure that municipal campaigns comply
with campaign finance regulations.
In using BARRA and applying it in real life,
We've encountered passages don't quite function as intended.
So we expanded and we impaneled an ad hoc committee
that worked intensively with our staff secretary,
Sam Harvey, Steven Hyles, and Lauren Packard
to craft language of the amendments
that the commission adopted by unanimous vote
and that we are presenting here to you.
Secretary Harvey will summarize the amendment
and answer any questions,
but I'd just like to point amendments
to section 530 were sparked by a candidate wanting
to know if he would be in compliance
if he used plastic long signs that he
had from an earlier campaign.
We had to tell him that it was not
permitted at Barra, which was an environmentally unfortunate
conclusion we had to come to because of the way Barra was
at the time.
So I think you will be pleased to see in these amendments
that we worked out a way to keep the process fair
without forcing a campaign to throw away materials
and replace them with new identical materials.
And there are some other amendments here
that Secretary Harvey will talk about with you.
And of course, any questions you have of me,
I'd be happy to answer them.
Thank you, Chair Saginaw,
and good evening, Madam Mayor and members of council.
There are four proposed amendments before you.
As a reminder, in order to amend Bara amendments
must first be approved by CPC by a two-thirds vote
and then subsequently approved by the council
by a two-thirds vote.
The First Amendment applies a rule
that already applies to city candidates in Berkeley
because it exists in state law,
but it would incorporate the Bureau
so that it could be directly enforced by the FCPC.
This is known as the one bank account rule.
It provides that all candidate campaigns,
must be made from the campaign account including the candidates own money with
some exception for initial filing fees and so by incorporating this into Vera
it's not a substantive change for city candidates but it would provide a more
direct explicit hook for FCPC enforcement. The second change is the
timeline by which candidates who participate in the city's public
financing program must return any unspent matching funds following the
election. Currently, participating candidates receive matching funds at a 6-to-1 ratio and then
must return any unspent funds by 60 days after election. So for the 2024 election, 60 days fell
on January 4th, 2025. Now the voting cycle immediately following the election ends on
December 31st. So candidates now have this sort of December 31st deadline and then a subsequent
deadline a couple days later. Importantly, the clerk is required to leave the meeting once he
determines that any candidate who participated in the public financing program has failed to return
any matching funds. The proposal here is to move that deadline to return matching funds to December
31st to sort of match the close of that ending campaign cycle. This means that whether or not
Matching funds were returned would be reported on the report for that cycle, which is due at the following month.
Sort of kind of clarify the timelines make it easier for city staff to more readily determine whether a campaign hasn't returned any matching funds.
And then the 3rd change here is the 1, the chair mentioned, which is the reuse of campaign materials. We had a candidate who was a participating candidate in the public matching funds program.
And we had to tell them that essentially
when a candidate wishes to reuse old materials,
those have to be treated as a contribution
from your old campaign to your new campaign.
And under the city's public financing rules,
campaign committees are prohibited
from making contributions to another committee.
And then there's also a $60 contribution limit.
So this amendment would carve out an exception
where a candidate could reuse old campaign signs,
mailers, posters, door hangers, and similar items.
Now, in order to not receive an unfair advantage, not be able to receive either double-dip basically
a double benefit of the public matching funds, the candidate would have to pay to be a fair
market value of those items to offset that unfair advantage.
And so this would apply both to a candidate who is currently participating in the public
matching program, as well as someone who had participated in the past or if they had participated
in the past as well as are currently participating.
And then the fourth change is cleanup.
It's intended to be a non-substantive cleanup
to some of the rounding language
regarding how certain numbers that are routinely adjusted
for cost of living are rounded
just to streamline that language.
So those are the four changes.
I'm happy to answer the questions that council may have.
Thank you.
A question from council member Humbert.
Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor.
And I do have one question, but I want to express my thanks
to Secretary Harvey, Chair Saginaw,
outgoing Chair Saginaw, and members of the FCPC
for their detailed work.
They always do good work, in my experience.
I sat for a short time on the commission.
I believe that these elections, of course, are obvious.
And so I'm really happy to report
These changes do have a question and that's, you know, sort of the rate campaigns work.
They, some affiliated those out as donuts.
Out of his or her pocket 1 bank account rule prohibit the campaign from ream.
That campaign worker.
That's just sample it's fairly typical that, you know.
That there might be expenditures by folks that are part of the campaign that then get reimbursed. Is that an issue?
Change change in the rule.
Change in the rule of subsidy, wait for for.
How the rules were did in a state law. So it applies to to a candidate.
Um, certainly, if the payment goes out and spends their own money and they're not, you know, they're not the candidate.
That any kind of contribution, uh, generally, I think reimbursements do have mindful bank account rule.
So, but I don't think this amendment before you would.
I guess then my question is.
Who would prohibit that sort of the, the campaign account.
Paid by someone who with the campaign.
I don't know exactly how that that would.
I have thought if I can.
and what you and that
came to that it already exists.
I think that the council members question is one that
we can still get answered given that this is already
in place, but I'm also curious about that
because my understanding is that
remember,
council member trigger.
Whether it's for today or not is probably an issue.
But since I want it to clarify if the FCPC action
on any living adjustments under last year
for the 2026 election? Yes, the PC updates every
the state court posting. So these have been updated for the 26th post to the state courts.
The we brought the item to the FCPC and it was, I think, January 25th.
So living in and of the odd year in between the election years.
And just to clarify, sort of reimbursements on the reimbursement question, you know, not permitted for for a candidate.
But for the, you burst.
Thank you that thank you for answering our questions so quickly. All right. Very good. So we have already open hearing. We just took counsel questions.
So I will now open for public comment.
Is there any public comment on this item?
Come on up.
So I think Sam already addressed most of this,
but my name is Smithwick, the commissioners on the FCPC.
I just wanted to help clarify a little bit
the intention behind the reuse section
covers anyone who was a participating candidate previously
and is now either a participating candidate or not,
as well as if someone was previously
not a participating candidate,
but now they're currently a part of the city
for re-imaging with matching funds.
That's implied in the way this is written,
but I just thought I'd clarify that.
Public comment on this item on item number 15.
Berkeley election reform act regarding their turn of unspent public matching funds for use of campaign materials, expenditures and cost of living adjustments.
Comment.
No, no hands raised on line. Okay, I will hear a motion. I wanted to motion to close the public hearing. So moved.
Actually, I.
Before we close. Okay. Actually the.
Prompted my question. So Sam.
Try to understand a candidate wanted to reuse campaign signs or other material.
That could only be done matching funds. So.
Does that mean that it has to first raise
or appropriate number of contributions to go up the TCM
and then wait for those matching funds
to transfer into their account
before they can have a fair market value?
We're not have to do that.
It's the practical effect
of actually paying the city directly is that it would essentially negate or deduct from
the disbursement of Madeline's, they do receive as a result of participating in the program,
regardless of whether they've received them or not, yet.
Okay, so they can do that. I'm in the campaign. Thank you.
I think it would be very hard to track that otherwise. Anyone online, any other public
coming we had there was a motion close the public hearing there was a second is
there any opposition to close in the public hearing okay the public hearing
is closed comment some of them move adoption the other you just want to say
much for your work on this I do appreciate that we're able to use old
materials because I think it's better than wasting them especially with some
of these materials are plastic and yeah we're trying to reduce our plastic and
and also paper.
So thank you very much for your work here.
And Sam, thank you also for your work as well.
Okay, so we have a motion and it's been seconded.
Any opposition to approving this item?
Okay, item is approved.
All right, we are moving on to item 16,
appeal of special assessment need for abatement action
at 2750 Cedar Street.
Thank you all so much for being here
for waiting for so long. So how this is going to go is I'm opening the public hearing right
now for item number 16. We will have a presentation from our staff and then hear from the appellant.
The appellant will have seven minutes to respond. We'll then go through like we did before,
council questions, public comment, closing the public hearing, having council comments
and then a vote so. Thank you. Thank you mayor. Good evening. Oh. And
Appellant if you would like to sit so you don't have to stand during the
presentation it's up but you'll have a little you're welcome to just sit back
there if you'd like or if you want to stay too. Okay. Thank you. Good evening
again council members. Jordan director of planning development. I'm joined here
the staff table by David Lopez, the city's building official, Jeff Jensen,
assistant building official, and David Montes, a building inspector. We also have
Deputy Fire Chief Colin Arnold on the Zoom available to help and answer any
questions related to fire code or their activities in response to this. So as the
mayor mentioned, uh, Stack staff are seeking to record with Alameda County
special assessment lean on the property at 27 50 cedar street to recover the
city's costs related to abatement activities that we conducted at that
property
and actions being appealed. So I'm going to start by giving you some background
about staff's recommendation.
In spring of 2024, the city began hearing
from neighbors of 2750 Cedar Street,
complaints of unpermitted and illegal construction.
The subject property is a parcel
with existing hazardous conditions.
Located in a geological survey landslide zone,
it's located in a high fire hazard severity zone.
The site has steep flow.
It has an existing failing retaining wall
with soil visibly eroding onto the building area,
and it's an L-shaped parcel with limited access.
Upon inspection, we did observe that construction work
was being undertaken without required permits.
In general, any unpermitted construction
is considered unsafe.
The primary purpose of the building permitting process,
including inspection and review of plans,
is to ensure, is to protect public health,
safety and welfare and to ensure buildings are constructed in a safe, durable and compliant
matter. In this case, legal construction was being performed on a parcel with hazardous conditions
in close proximity to neighboring properties at a time when destructive wildfires had been
experienced in other locations in California in an area which had experienced a serious
landslide just the year before, in 2023. The architect, Mr. Michael Tolison, was adamant
that the construction being performed was exempt from permit.
His interpretation of the code was incorrect,
and it was not accepted by the building official.
It is the building official's responsibility
to interpret the building code,
and the building official's interpretation
is supported by the International Code Council.
Their disagreement over the code interpretation
is very explicitly covered in a staff report.
I won't go over it here.
detail that Mr. Lopez and Mr. Jensen are available to speak to that point if you have any questions.
The architect applied for a building permit. In multiple rounds of correspondence, the
city very clearly communicated to the app that a used permit was required to demolish
the existing structure and to build a new structure and that the submitted drawings
were inadequate for issuance of a building permit. The architect refused to provide the
the proper plans and documents
in order to justify code compliance.
In fact, Peck repeatedly threatened verbally
and in writing that he would proceed to construction
without building permits.
And ultimately, he did just that.
The city notified multiple occasions
that the illegal construction work was being performed,
that the illegal construction work being performed
required permits, including used permit.
From April through October of 2024,
A city building inspector, primarily Mr. Montes,
performed 11 inspections of the property.
The planning development department
issued six stop-work orders,
six in orders to correct and two citations.
The fire department also had an inspector
conduct multiple inspections during that time
who also observed code violations.
The owners and architect ignored
all the orders and citations.
Need to build without permits.
When the architect was not going to halt construction,
The city requested an administrative warrant from Alameda County to protect the property
and abate the illegal construction.
It paid for abatement and granted us the warrant.
Subsequently, the city ordered the owner to remove all the legal construction by October
25th, 2024.
And we made it clear in that order that if they failed to do so, we would abate the illegal
construction ourselves.
we made it very clear that if we were forced to conduct the abatement
ourselves, it would ultimately be at the expense of the owner.
The owner did not meet the deadline, exercise the warrant that be the
illegal construction and store the removed material property. The
abatement was committed on October 31st, 2024. It was performed by a
licensed contractor with public works department in removing the
the city incurred costs of $2831.
And we now seek to place a lien on the property to recover these costs.
We have slides with additional information, including a timeline and
photographs upon request.
Of course, we're open to any questions you have regarding this matter.
We strongly recommend that you dismiss the appeal.
Thank you very much.
We will now hear from the appellant for seven minutes.
to take the whole set, just to clarify, it's you can have seven minutes to speak. Go ahead.
Thank you. Okay. For the record, the appeal, this is RE from the B2024-02077, March 10th,
2026. Would you mind speaking into the mic? You can address it. So, yeah, you can, so
so you can speak more directly to it.
Okay, I have to see what I'm reading,
so I'm trying to deal with it.
Okay, yeah, if you just tilt that top part up,
we'll be able to hear you better.
There you go, yeah, there you go.
That's better, thank you.
Okay, item one, I'm Michael Tollison, architect
in California, 35 years.
License C22075.
Documents provided by answer to this summary
include the 12 page lien appeal and the seven page response
as to all court declarations by staff.
The following summary and digital copies of all docs
are available upon request to michaelatmichaeltollison.com
where CRC 105.2 is used herein.
It is synonymous with R 105.2.
Through summary two, we believe our case has been made
in our written statements and expect that they have been
in detail.
These include supplements addressing staff errors
and fault statements in court declarations
recently received.
Period three, the clean appeals seeks to resolve
the body of misinformation currently infecting our efforts
to repair and improve an existing legally,
partially demolished family of residents
that has been in a deteriorating state
since previous owners passing more than a decade ago.
The city has allowed these conditions to continue to exist.
Period.
Four, the context of the dispute stems from staff failures
to allow CRC 105.2 exempt from permit,
or even possess an awareness of its existence in city code.
We inform staff of our intention to use CRC 105.2
prior to commencement of work without reply.
Given the delays caused by the city's plan checking
On the multiple departures of staff by resignation,
reassigned to missile and instructions
by the Capital to Impede Review,
we have chosen to use CRC 105-2
to begin temporary work to the allowed extent possible
and to prevent further deterioration.
Staff has failed to respond to CRC 105.2 in any way
and you will find from any staff reply.
Period five CRC 105.2 allows the construction
of accessory structures of 120 square feet
and decks of 200 square feet without permit,
which may be combined and places no limit
on the number of these modules.
We determined that we could construct
three temporary modules,
a feet each, which would become incorporated
into the completed of the proposed rehabilitated
single family residents
upon final permit approval period.
Six, to ensure safety and craftsmanship,
the architect provided continuous special inspection
on a full daily basis as cited in TRC chapter 17
for the entire duration of production.
As well, the architect and owner
who was a structural engineer were in daily communication
To be the construction was always safe and always compliant.
Period.
The professional discussion that should have accompanied
our approach has been undermined by staff,
inspectors, neighbors, and even council members.
We have documented and responded thoroughly
to the outlandish and hysterical misinformation
used to describe our professional positions
and physical implementation, period A,
we are requesting that the lien be removed
in addition to administrative fees already removed
and that reimbursed compensation be provided.
In lieu of requests for separate punitive damages
against the city, we are offering to construct
the original one bedroom, one bath residence
under the by right laws referenced
by council member Wengrath included in our written statement.
This would eliminate any rational position
to the two bedroom, two bath version
and the same footprint and the same volume
as we have proposed.
The council has the authority
to allow by right approval tonight
by our current permit,
but our current permit will be issued
regardless as an entitlement.
Note importantly that our plans for a future ADU
are not a subject of this appeal.
Period nine, we have made every effort
to provide creative solutions for the city,
including temporarily dismantling the roof and walls
and panels, and offering to cover all work
with fire-resistant tarps, only to have our cooperation
overrun by city subcontractors without allowing us
to complete our compromised commissions or secure bids.
Staff never informed the fire department of these solutions.
And fire has failed to respond,
has failed to reply to three separate queries, period 10,
as shown in photographic dating and court documents,
the court provided neither, excuse me,
the city provided neither a legal warrant,
nor for final inspired by law prior to demolition,
which we could easily argue makes the lina legal.
We have chosen to continue our professional efforts,
or including responding to all questions in writing
if requiring a technical review, period 11,
home act structural engineer and owner
is full of city endangerment, not ours.
The city weakened the concrete retaining walls
as the end result of the deck demolition.
The wood deck places the distress deck
acts as a structural diaphragm.
The structural diaphragm acts in combination
with the cripple walls and concrete retaining wall
to form a CBC slash BMC code recommended
structural lateral force system.
It serves as a rigid lateral force-resistant system
to withstand and resist any lateral loads
from the slope and any seismic or wind loads
acting on the structure.
The city's actions to remove the wood
that required structural system
being or degrading the performance of the retaining walls.
Period.
items 12-4, it's if needed, questions if additional.
Thank you.
Okay, so are there any council questions?
Is that a question council member Bakabe, go ahead.
Thanks, Madam Mayor, thanks to the staff.
Thanks to the appellant for being here.
First question to the appellant.
Was your intention from the beginning to rebuild a primary?
Couldn't you speak up just a little bit?
Sure.
I'm sorry.
Was it your intent from the beginning
to rebuild a primary structure on that existing footprint?
Yes, in both square footage and in volume,
we had made interior alterations in our proposal.
Okay, so it wasn't, you were not building an accessory unit.
You were building a primary unit.
No, we were building an accessory unit,
which cleverly could be combined
with the forthcoming framing,
the entire street.
The key thing was the structure,
which has just been deteriorating for 10 years or more.
And our concern was we're not gonna have anything to reuse
if we keep the structure in the way it is
with the delays caused by the city.
So our intention was to construct as much as we could,
legally, and then when we got our permits
or the, we could connect them effectively
into the total package.
Which would be then inspected in a normal way.
As soon as I read the CRC R 105.2 laid it out
and this step of laid it out.
This is about units like sheds, tool sheds,
playhouses, garden structures.
This isn't B for a primary residence
or a series of them to be combined.
It has an interim period in which it abides by 105.2.
And then the inspection for framing would be complete
once we had our permit in hand.
Importantly, it does not suffer additional damage.
Keep the key.
And we promise to use as much reuse material as possible.
Okay.
Do you have other projects in your history
where you've substituted your own amendment
for the building official and basically said,
My reading of this regulation is XYZ therefore go do it because that's my interpretation like we have building a reason right which is to interpret the code and how consistency in the city around safety and quality of action 104.1 of the code says that the building official needs to
incorporate the intent and purpose of the specific code, which I have done. I
have built the tallest legal single family residence in the state in Los
Angeles using every exception in the code to do it, all of which was legal.
I've done something kind of similar here, maybe a little more clever, but working
with the inspectors to show them what I had used
and working with Los Angeles Building Department
for the application of all of those.
I should say there were variances involved in those.
We don't see variances needed here.
As I'm going through the timeline that came again
in this report, it looks like, I mean,
there were multiple rounds of plan check and revision
that you participated in at least five initially
before construction began.
yes, because the responses wasn't getting responses and responded back and forth to those responses. Right. There was an active process with you in the process, but the city never sorry. I just want to prevent us from going back and forth too much. So did you have other questions? Okay, go ahead. Yeah, on the timeline. So you received the first stop work order on September 18th, right? And you received that stop work order.
I'd like to get that to you to make sure that I'm accurate.
I did receive them.
I don't, I don't believe it was six.
I believe it was four, but that's, that's a real.
All right.
So you got one on nine 18 and then what was your response to that stop work order?
Again, I'll give these to you in writing because I think they need to be read.
I've sent you, um, a lot of information.
The answer is, did you stop work or not?
No, but I informed the inspector that I was not going to stop work and that,
and he failed to address one of five points.
Did you get a second stop work order on the 19th of September?
That's correct with my same with my same response to him.
Okay.
Finally, I got frustrated by my,
by their failure to reply to my responses.
That I insisted that we have a meeting during the meeting,
only three of the attendees bothered to read my responses.
And that is part of the problem.
Okay.
You got a third, a fourth, a fifth
in the stop work order over a span of the following month.
At any point did you stop work in response to those orders?
No, because the reasons he cited
were that the structure was unsafe.
The structure's never been unsafe.
The structure was legal and safe according to 105.2.
And then you had the meeting with city officials
on the 16th of October where you were informed
that it was an unpermitted structure
after six stop work orders
and that the city was gonna seek abatement.
And we stopped and we started removing structure
and we penalized it and we laid it flat
and we offered to put tops over it,
which your fire resisted.
We got no response to that.
Fire tells me they never received that information.
And my actions were appropriate given those conditions.
We had a warrant, we weren't given a warrant
before the contractors came out and demolished everything.
as I understand it again,
just a couple of weeks notice
before that demolition occurred, right?
This was not like a size middle of the night, 24 hours.
I was surprised because we expected that.
We stopped work when the contractors got there.
Right, so you had six stop work orders
or you hadn't stopped.
We were using the structure ourselves,
removing wood, reusing as much as possible,
taking precautions for fire,
all these things we were doing
as we had been legally all along.
We did not receive a warrant until November 7th.
Check that date.
We stopped when the contractors arrived on October 3rd.
All right.
My read of the timeline is you had six stop work orders.
You got a meeting with the city.
I will double check the timeline and give it.
Sorry, can you let him finish his questions?
Go ahead.
We're repeating ourselves.
OK, I just I want to confirm that you
have multiple opportunities here.
not according to the code.
Well, again, that's your interpretation of the code.
The building inspector gave you an interpretation of the code.
Okay, I don't want to, sorry,
I really don't want to engage in this back and forth
in this way.
I think it's pretty clear that there were plenty of warnings
that were given and you chose to adhere to them.
And so I'd like to move forward if the,
unless there are any other substantive questions.
Did you ever consult with the property owner
during this process?
when you got in and so he was sort of also he's the owner he's my client he's
my owner by private agreement I mean basis we still do okay I have worked
with him for 40 years okay all right thank you okay is there any public item
come on up sir if you could make room for this public comment I think he's
going to sit in the reserve seating isn't he? He's going to speak here at the podium.
I'm, I'm, I'm curious as to how many of you council persons understood what he said.
I know you understand what he said, but did you understand what he was saying?
Just show of hands. One, two, three. Okay, well.
Yeah. Did you have a comment? Okay, you don't know. I want to start off by saying, having worked as a city planner before, the first thing I realized, first day on the job, or the first few months, was that the code, anyway, I memorized the code, basically.
You could ask me anything in the code and what I realize is that when people would come in.
When they would ask for something or be curious about things, I'm talking about local people, not developers, because they get all that stuff and they have their people to work it out.
And just bring the plans in and there.
But local folks don't really know, so I realized that.
The code covers what it covers.
But there's another code that's not a part of what's written, right, planners?
The code does not cover everything.
And so when I realized that there's two codes, and I said, wow, there's two codes.
There's the one that's stated, and then there's the one that's not.
And the one that's not, if you're clever, and he used the word clever,
that's what made me think and I need to come up here and say this is that
you're trying to get to a destination but there are ways to get the code covers
one but there are other ways to get to it and that's why I asked the question
one understand we may be talking about a different thing thanks for your to the
same place thank you okay is there anyone online who has public comment for
There's one hand raised online Maria soul oh, hi. This was a lot of fun. I've done construction for so many years excuse me. And what that public speaker just said is what I've experienced and I've been in for so long codes change and they change due to the creative experience of trying to make sure things are safe.
things are safe, but as he said, addressing it differently. And I understand that we are
taking responsibility as a city. But I know that there's been, I was holding an alternative
building, for instance, Ramd Earth and Strawbell and Cobb. And it took years for California
to accept straw bill, you know? But they do if it's done correctly. So I just want to
speak to the fact that, you know, many ways to address what an elephant is in terms of
where we're working and how we're looking. And not every code and or inspector have been
In my experience and sometimes just different creative possibilities deserve to be at least looked at otherwise, we're just following the letter of the law, rather than what the purpose is.
So, thank you for listening to me. I wish everyone well. Thank you.
Well, thank you. Thanks, Maria. Any other comments online? Okay. All right. So I would like to see if there's a motion to close the public hearing question. Okay. Go ahead.
Thank you first of all, in my 14 years,
hearing quasi judicial appeals on this body
and on owning adjustments, never once fired to this
have I been asked to provide my credit.
But for the record, I will.
May not be a licensed architect or planner,
but I spent 13 years conducting clear safety regulatory oversight functions.
So I'm quite familiar with understanding codes or asking questions that clarify the code if I don't understand something.
So, just a direct line in so far as a claim was made that there are two sets of codes to, can you speak to page nine of the report?
It says the Berkeley building code has an amendment
and to clarify, is this a local amendment?
It takes all applications,
it's subordinate applicable state and local code.
Yes, applications are applicable in local codes.
Thank you.
Okay, is there, so there was motion to hearing and there was a, is there any opposition to close hearing? Okay. The public hearing is closed. Are there any council comments?
Council member Humbert. Yes, thank you. Madam Mayor. I read carefully through the file in this map. I've listened carefully to the presentations here tonight.
And I believe that the appeal of the special assessment tax lien is utterly lacking and
that the lien is totally justified. The arguments made by appellant are our staff are enforcing
our building codes and taking profit in the interests of public. I will be voting to deny
the appeal.
Comments from council. Yes, councilmember black.
And I, I agree with council member humbert. I mean, I think this is pretty clear record. I think that staff went above and beyond in terms of the process communication in terms of noticing multiple multiple personnel.
I'll also note someone who represents this also happening in extreme fire weather.
I am when the building department's also asked construction to cease.
I haven't brought up yet, but that's another talk about health safety issue. That's a health and safety issue. So, I, you know, I, I, I, I appreciate everyone's, but I don't, I just don't see it for it.
So I move that we adopt the staff recommendation and deny the appeal.
Thank you. I do just want to say.
Thank you very much this it does take a.
And hours to go through all of this documentation and the appeals and quite frankly, I feel very frustrated at this.
Good use of our time so I do want to thank the staff very.
Of course, everyone has a heal and you have had your time to do.
if there's any opposition to the motion that's on to reject the appeal.
All right, the motion is passed and the appeal is rejected very much.
Okay, so we are now moving on to item number 17 resolution ending Berkeley police department's
Perry reporting. So I ask Councilmember Kesser wanting to present her. Thank you
very much Madam Mayor. I'm referencing the supplemental packet to report that I
submitted and I want my colleague also submitted supplementals and I expect
that we should be able to land on this. I want to thank the Public Safety Policy
committee for reviewing this item we had a lot of public comment there I want to
thank the police department for being available then and tonight to provide
more patient the purpose of this item the reason I brought it forward last
fall was us to seek to update our procedures and I have a couple of other
items that will be coming to the council that seek to do the same thing
practices given its parent C hub which provides information daily about use of
and so we felt that you know report that was 1997 was no longer needed but I
get the process and the discussion that we've had around this item because as a
As a result, we did add a referral to improve the transparency hub so that we have definitions
of the various use of force levels, and we can include better navigational guidelines.
That's something I heard in some community meetings that I held that people trying to
access the transparency hub, but if they're new to doing it or if they're looking for
this information for the first time, you know, we can do better to make it more
accessible. So we do want to do that. And then I also want to thank the police
accountability board because they did write us a letter. I think I've
included this as an attachment and they're
amending that we incorporate the reporting of the use for spray in the
military equipment report to maintain the narrative reports of pepper spray
utilization and I think that is a reasonable to that in an existing that
the department going. Um, so, so, you know, the fire here is not to reduce
the amount of public information that's available, but, uh, dreamline it so
that it makes more sense. There are other uses of force and get this sort
of pepper spray separate treatment. So it seemed like it didn't make a whole
a lot of sense to stick to that 97 resolution approach.
So in any case, I think that the mayor
has some amendments which I'm fine with.
I know we're going to discuss further,
maybe there'll be some further refinement,
but look forward to the discussion, thank you very much.
Yeah, thank you very much, council member.
Actually, did you want to present vice member?
Okay, all right, I will go first.
So I'm going to pull up on our screen.
So this is a supplemental that has been brought forward
by myself, Council Member Blackaby, Council Member Tragob
and Council Member O'Keefe.
And since then we've also made some adjustments as well.
So I'd like to, I just have a few talking
that I want to address, so, excuse me.
All right, so, well, first, of course,
thank you very much for your item.
And also to Vice-Mayor Luna Parra, thank you to the PAB.
I know we have both our interim, interim, Jose Murillo,
who's here.
And so thank you very much to PAB and ODPA
for your letters and suggestions.
And thank you so much to the Chief and to Arlo for works,
because we've had a number of different conversations
to get here.
Streamlining, of course, is really important.
We don't want to be duplicating efforts.
And of course, we didn't want to lose anything.
And so that's a really a big reason why
we needed some things through the tool.
And for me at a time like this,
when our federal government is doing everything
they can to prevent transparency
and put pressure on our communities,
ensuring transparency at the local level
just becomes more important.
So, and I am really grateful to everyone
who's been kind of putting in their thoughts here
because I think that that's what's going to make this better.
So our supplemental tonight is two main things.
First, we codified into the resolution
what should be reported on the transparency hub
so that the public can have the most up-to-date information
about how our police department is using pepper spray.
And second, we're requesting that our city manager
come back with an item to reincorporate pepper spray
into the annual military equipment report,
which was the recommendation from the PAB.
And both of these points really are intended
to promote transparency while still acknowledging
burden that unnecessary paperwork had apartments. So I have great. So we so one change that
was just to have this sent to the city manager. This is just different from what we already
submitted just to be clear. Yeah. And then after a conversation with our police department
there was concern about you know if there were some technological issues for the reason
why it might take longer for it to get onto the transparency hub. So we've adjusted it
to 14 days to allow for that. I think there was some confusion of the phrasing. The officer
involved it. It's the officer's role. So we just clarified that language, not the officer's
name specifically. That wasn't currently, that didn't currently exist in the report.
And then again, city manager. And then the bottom of this is the resolution. So in this
that we're going to be doing.
So we're going to be doing a
little bit more of a language
here it actually. More clearly
lays out. What would be
included on to the transparency
hub because we believe that this
will help to include the
information that was on the
report but put it on to the
transparency hub just to make
sure that it's accessible to
go on again that would be
within those 14 days. And so
this was done in collaboration
for your input and your feedback and conversation about this. So did you want to go next?
Yeah, thank you. I go to explain the differences so that we're not saying the same thing over and over
again. We also wanted to incorporate our account into the transparency hub. My office found
discrepancy both between the Council and PAB notification oh sorry I told people
talking to me so I'm sorry and I think my mic was on go ahead okay my office
founded between the council PAB notification and the hub data and
between the annual military equipment report and what is posted to the
transparency hub and so for that reason I think that the provision to report to
the transparency hub will be essential for maintaining accuracy and
accountability we also codify the referral that came out of the public
safeties recommending and section 2 is critical for council and the public to
understand what this means in quantifiable terms to know how much money
back into the police department budget or General Fund and then section
basically requires that the that this go into once the referral has been passed
So this includes an opt-in notification system for the transparency hub and the narratives
being uploaded into the military equipment ordinance.
Thanks.
Okay.
Very good.
Thank you for sharing that.
I want to do is actually just maybe we should just take public comment and we
can come back and discuss so let's take public comment on this item please this
is public comment comment for item number 17 resolution resending Berkeley
Police Department's pepper spray reporting requirement tongue twister go
ahead. Hi good evening it's been a long day. George can you speak in the mic
Okay, I have only one minute. So I have a minute from grace here
That's okay
We can store. Okay
My name is George Lippmann. I'm speaking on behalf of the peace and this Commission and
Chair pastor Dwayne Phillips. Can you hold this up?
Over here to the to the council maybe on this
So so yesterday the Peace and Justice Commission approved a report entitled
Social Justice implications of proposed use of controlled weapons and other policing tools
the Commission included in its recommendations that
Council retained the 1997 requirement for public reporting of each use of pepper spray
They endorsed the PAB letter calling for the continuation of their requirement
which demonstrates that while the proposed resolution
is predicated on the existence of redundant reporting,
the other reports cited in the resolution
lack narrative information and or are inaccessible.
Now, we appreciate the changes that have come through today
in the direction of increasing transparency.
But Peace and Justice adds that if the Berkeley Police
department, or even to expand pepper spray use.
It is to their benefit that the community under the context of its usage,
at least significant narrative sections in the current use report,
which is going around as an example of it, um,
are not reflected in some of the new resolution versions that have been
proposed. One is the nature of the incident and the summary and
justification of distributed to the council.
An excerpted version of a so you can judge for yourselves
how valuable these narrative elements could be,
especially for the PAB and ODP is understanding.
In fact, the narrative is the most important part
of the use report and submission is what causes
commissioners and committee members the most concerned.
It's not the use report and it's loss would make
the report useless to the oversight process.
Thank you.
Yeah, great job George.
Thank you.
This resolution is being put forward in the guise of streamlining, of making technical
adjustments to this.
But what it's really about is the normalization of pepper spraying.
That's what it's all about, is normalization, and you put that in the context of other things
being proposed about this, of tear gas, of flock cameras that are going to result in
more kidnappings of ice, of dogs, of aircraft.
And this is not about streamlining, this is about normalization of attacks on workers,
on immigrants and us, and it needs to be stopped.
Nice job, thank you.
Thank you.
Good evening, Madam Mayor and speaker.
My name is Jason Martins.
First, I just wanna say I support
the Nopara's amendments to the item.
Second, I just wanna say I find it somewhat problematic
to this as a burden on the police.
I feel like honoring the people who are subjected
to spray a dangerous chemical weapon.
And that should be some not very important amount of money
that is related to the reporting here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council members, sorry, two minutes, is that right?
Council members, I'm just noticing that we have the chief
here ready to answer questions,
but where's the police accountability board?
Constantly, our city has reminded
that police accountability does not exist in this town.
It has given no level of priority or respect.
Yeah, he's relegated back there as an afterthought.
You might think of bringing him up.
It's important to remember that Pepper spray
as an alternative to lethal force.
That was the conversation in 1997.
The ACLU was reporting that there were scores of deaths
associated with its use and it was also recognized
Pepper spray is a weapon that's very dynamic in situations.
Sometimes this pepper spray,
supposedly there's somebody who's attacking an officer.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Sometimes people have underlying mental health conditions,
respiratory problems that could be actually,
Donna Spring learned that it would be life through.
This is a potentially lethal weapon about.
So that is why the community is concerned
that it's casual use.
Yes, there are places in this country
that use it very, very casually,
that normalize as the man just said.
They want to just make it kind of casual every day.
What it calls in 97 were that if an officer did,
they had to report on, was it effective?
What was happening?
What motivated its use?
Did they provide medical attention?
And what was the outcome?
That information is crucial.
do we want this weapon?
We were this close to banning it in 97.
That's how the level of concern was.
We have to understand that police pepper spray
is not the same as what you buy in the store.
Pepper spray is as highly concentrated.
It is very dangerous stuff.
But police accountability is not functional at this time.
We don't have a quorum, we don't have a majority.
And even when we do,
complaints that extra minute with the couple of brothers,
that because we don't have effective oversight in this,
to give the police more weapons
and to make them less accountable for their use
is dangerous.
It's an assault on the community.
And I don't understand what's motivating it.
A cost saving measure for police?
Are we of so little value?
Is our health and well-being so uninteresting to you
compared to that our lives, our very lives are put up
and compared to a cost-saving,
but the whole point of the police was to keep us safe.
We need those narratives.
We need to be able to evaluate
if is an increase in pepper sprays use,
we need to be able to evaluate its impact on the community
and its impact on the people who are subject to it.
So yes, please, Luna Parr's,
I think it's the minimum we could do.
So thank you very much.
Thank you.
Good evening.
Over the last, over the next few weeks,
we're gonna just see a lot of police accountability measures
and as someone who has lived in this city,
dealt with the police in,
I guess racially biased ways, it is important to make sure that we understand something
like the transparency hub which is created by BPD and not by, let's say, the police accountability
board or other members of the public.
Something that we can't use as a baseline and that we have to make sure that we can
create against protections in order to support people not being enabled to use
any methods of work, regardless if they're lethal or not lethal. So yes, let's
let's support our constituents. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good evening, I'm
Lou Law again. And pepper spray, as you probably know, is a chemical. It's a weapon and it's
It's banned for use in war by article 1.5
of the chemical weapons convention.
It causes burning of the lungs, less lethal,
but in some cases it has been lethal.
Streamlining is a slippery slope.
Agree that we don't want to duplicate.
We don't want to lose accountability.
The transparency hub isn't transparent.
No, it is not.
And how is our department using pepper spray?
We want to have as much information as possible,
not limited, not narrow it.
I do believe that we could do much better
if we're concerned about true public safety of Berkeleyans.
We are at risk right now of being under attack
by ICE and others, the Proud Boys.
I've seen them in the park.
I've talked to them when they come to town
and they mean harm.
Thanks, Moni.
And we need to protect each other.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I know that this item is being talked about
in terms of efficiency,
but I know that I'm coming up
at the next city council meeting
that could lead to a lot more of these reports
and would probably be make it,
if you consider this a burden some.
I would ask the city council to remember
that OC, a chemical weapon,
it's very dangerous.
And while you might think that the benefits
of increased use of this weapon by police
will outweigh the risks it poses to the community,
you have heard all these community members
come up here today and that's not what they feel.
And that's not where our values lie.
And I know that you have different values.
The overwhelming consensus here is that members
of the public community care more about the transparency
and safety from these reports,
and about the marginal increase in public safety
you believe will come from the Senate.
Thank you.
Thanks for your comment.
Excuse me.
Hi, my name is Paul.
I live very close to here.
This is absolute foolishness.
I've gone to every single public safety meeting about this.
Everyone has spoken unanimously against this measure,
and this is just the first of the whole series
y'all are pushing through.
And the author of this legislation,
I want to, this is a question I hope you bring up,
sort of vaguely and very disingenuously referred to that this is a measure along with the smoke
and the tear gas that these measures are needed because yes, ice is a threat and maybe I guess
the police could use this against them as though that's how policing works. You guys
know nothing of accountability and you're moving so far away from it and it's happening
so fast and it's crazy. So cut it out. Thank you. I just want to generate is one minute,
one minute. One minute. Okay. I wanna say that, you know, um, there's a lot of good
police in, in, in police departments throughout the trip. And what we all, when
we do hear things, it's, you know, the bad things, it's not the good police are
doing the bad things, it's the bad ones. Right. And so, you know, there's probably
a lot of good police on the force. And so maybe some of this is, it's not being
said,
a concern about the ones who won't
for way. So I don't maybe maybe you all think some of you may think we're out
of the woods on some of this police stuff. But
we still have a long way to go. So just, you know, you may want to be concerned
about that kind of thing. And and what can you do to forestall some bad use?
So
Thank you, is there any public comment online for this item?
Okay, this is public comment on item 17 regarding pepper spare reporting.
If you'd like to speak on this item and you're on Zoom, please raise your hand now.
And it looks like we have 12, 13 speakers with raised hands.
First is Vanessa Cordova, you should be able to speak.
Thank you council members, the resolution before you absurdly suggest that by increasing police use with the chemical agent while decrease these accountability by limiting publicly available.
The police department will run more efficiently how much time or money will this intervention save the city. I can't say, because the resolution failed to include any meaningful regression analysis or commodification of time.
to ensure Berkeley taxpayers could understand
its true fiscal and social impact.
Folks, this is possible one.
The proposal suggests a sample size
of only three to four events per annum.
That's the first red flag highlighting the weakness
and pointlessness of this resolution.
It also tells me this council is still struggling
to shift away from legislating in a vacuum
of incident-based management and towards
a more resilient, transparent accountability
for police conduct and effectiveness.
Outside the old office, I am hard pressed to find any civilian who believes the use of chemical agents by law enforcement.
Vanessa, thanks for your comment.
Next is a speaker with a name listed as virtual meetings.
Hello, my name is.
With speaking on behalf of the Berkeley Friends meeting,
I'd like to speak in favor of passage of a combination
of Council Member Luna Parr's resolution
and the Mayor's resolution
supported, signed on by four of you as co-sponsors.
And in particular, the addition
of the narrative report access,
having the 14 days for the transparency
the utility hub to be the publicly accessible deadline,
not just when it's inputted in,
but when the public can see it.
And most importantly,
that any rescission of the 1997 reporting requirement does not take
place until council acts on the amendment of the police control ordinance,
which I think is the last part of your, thank you.
Next is Alana Auerbach.
Have any of y'all been pepper sprayed before?
Anybody?
Police level?
Yeah, so chief, you can probably attest
that it is a harmful and intense and it's a weapon.
And so we have all spent,
there's been a handful of incidents
where it's been used in the past several years, four, five, three times.
We have spent more time on this as a community than for the past three years that the police
would have had to spend on their quote duplicative reports.
So who are we censoring here?
You all, and I'm talking to the council here, are meant to be censoring the community.
The community does not want less.
Reporting on this, we don't want it. If the cops have to spend an extra 4 or 5 hours a year.
Reporting it's okay, please don't do this.
Thank you. Okay, next is Dela Luna.
Yes, I want to say thanks to the members of the board here that.
Made suggestions or amendments those amendments, because we don't need this ordinance. It doesn't need to be passed.
It's completely pointless and like the former caller said.
The amount of time we've already this is already surpassed what you're allegedly saving.
But I want to talk about the transparency hub and 1, the, the website for the transparency hub is a parody. It's like a joke. It needs to be more streamlined.
Can be purchased for 20 dollars and you can direct your website to that something simple and easy to find.
Furthermore, if you go to the city of Berkeley website, there is no link to the transparency board. You can go to the police department's website again. No link to the transparency hub.
If you're being so transparent, why is it so hard to find the transparency hub? There's even a link that says data about pullovers and calls for service. You click on that.
Does that see hub?
No, it's not.
Thanks Stella.
Next is Nathan Meisel.
Madam Mayor and Council, this is Nathan Meisel.
There is a full scale attack in the city on police oversight
and frankly on democracy itself.
But as a regard to this item,
I support the supplemental submitted by council member
blue in the para in the importance of the marriage supplemental as well, I
hope that this council can strike some reasonable compromise that keeps the
narrative effect of this. Um, really the question we're asking is not will the
police have less time to do whatever work they do, but whether on a handful
occasions a year, officers are willing to write two paragraphs about the use
of a chemical weapon upon potentially citizens in this city. So if that's not
important to us anymore in the city of Berkeley? Fine. If those things don't matter and how
we treat people, require officers to write two paragraphs and help us maintain some semblance
of oversight. Thank you. Thank you, Nathan. Next is Rayella. I'm Rayla. I live on the
south side, and I wanted to say that police officers, engineers, doctors, nurses, teachers
are some of the most important jobs that impact people's lives and that no one would agree
to lessen the requirements for being a teacher or being a doctor, so I don't understand why
anyone would consider doing that for a police force, which is historically and currently
Generally, um, has been used.
And has physical and system authority over civilians.
Um, yeah, and.
Also, I support council member is a supplemental.
Thank you next Christopher call.
Thank you. Yeah, at a time that the police accountability board is, is in some free fall. You all just, um.
Let go the director recently and I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but we also know that two of the senior members resigned recently. So at a time that the police accountability board is in free fall.
And the Berkeley voters, as we setting up that board indicated a strong interest in seeing accountability of the police department. This is not the time to be to be reducing the needed oversight.
especially over such horrific weapons
as these chemical sprays, canine units, helicopters.
I, sorry, supplementals that are turned in at the last minute,
it's very difficult for the members of the public
to really take that in.
Many people think, thankfully did, I thought.
I hope that what Parra proposed
is better than what Councilmember Kisarwani
put forward originally, but thank you.
comment. Next is Barb Atwell. Hi my name is Barb Atwell. I'm a resident of Berkeley District 1
and I represent the Berkeley Friends Meeting, also known as the Quakers. We urge the council to adopt
the the Police Accountability Board's recommendation to continue pepper spray reporting, including the
amendments that were shown today. Resending the report requirement does not make this more modern.
Transparency and police account matter. And we do not want to make the police.
Sorry, do not make the police use of pepper spray a secret. Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay. Next is Kelly.
Can you hear me okay?
Yes.
Okay. I agree with many of the comments that are made here tonight.
I wish we weren't doing this at all.
I think Luna Powers is the best. I'm looking at the city website and if you don't know what
you're looking for, or even if you do know what you're looking for, you can find the transparency
hub by even going to the search magnifying glass on the city website. So, you know, we're really
not getting the kind of information that we
we're going to get and when I do find the transparency hub
it doesn't give the kind of narrative that you would expect.
So you know I don't think we really have a good solution
to understand why we're making these changes when there's so
little pepper spray supposedly used. Thanks Kelly.
Next is Makayla.
Hi, I understand behind the supplement just now introduced, but I also agree with the previous commenter that it's not necessary because the resolution as a whole as also supported said by the police accountability board is necessary.
And like she said, it is only going to normalize violence against civilians and a lack of accountability and lack of oversight. And what you're saying that this is going to increase efficiency and modernization completely negates the weight of the burden that should be felt by the city of Berkeley and by its police department and the weight of its responsibility.
and what it owes to the people of Berkeley
as it should be held accountable to them
and as it currently is being held accountable
through these requirements.
And you have the chance here today
to show that you understand.
Michaela, thanks for your comment.
Next is Marilyn Cleveland.
Thank you, I appreciate the item.
I support having robust reporting of all uses of pepper spray
and I appreciate the work that's been done on this.
It appears that the mayor's proposed amended resolution
with the amendments proposed by council member Loonapara
best meets that need with the deadline
for pepper spray reporting to be publicly accessible
in the Transparency Hub and to include a narrative report.
Recision of the old report should not take effect
until the Council acts on the amendment
to the Controlled Equipment Ordinance
in order to include pepper spray
within that ordinance reporting requirement.
And this would prevent any gap
between the end of the current reporting
and the start of any replacement reporting requirement.
Thank you.
Thank you. Okay. Next is Sam.
Can you all hear me? Hi. I do not support or sending this the existing reporting requirements are already the bare minimum. And the transparency hub is insufficient, difficult to navigate and vague as several people have already said.
The reporting requirement is not redundant because it provides additional information where state law is insufficient. This is additionally coming at a time when the city.
Simply fired the head of Berkeley's civilian police oversight office and following the resignation of several police accountability board numbers setting an uncooperative and untransparent police force.
Hope you guys reconsider this. Thank you. Thank you.
Next is Julie Dickey.
Yeah. Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes. I can't hear you.
So I am not in favor of pepper spray at all.
It's a weapon and I think we don't need to be normalizing weapons.
We've got enough weapons going on across the world.
I think that if you have this thing in place,
you've got to keep the narrative and make the transparency transparent. Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay. Next is Maria Sol.
Yeah. I spent day to day mostly crying because we have
militarized in the name of safety and you know I want to so one way of making sure I can is to
kill everybody else it's like we've got to stop we have got to stop and look at what we're choosing
let's choose the escalation let's choose transparency and accountability
Let's choose peace. Let's choose peace. It's here we can have it if we quit picking up weapons
and making it the thing to do because it purports to keep me safe. It doesn't. It doesn't. If it
hurts someone else and this needs to stop please let there be peace. Please let's reimagine what
what the world can be and stop doing what the world's doing presently.
Thanks, Maria.
Last hand raised is Adam.
Hello. Can you hear me?
Yes.
I just want you guys to think about the timing of this resolution.
It's upsetting that this would be brought forward at all,
but especially it's upsetting right now given what's going on in the country.
I just urge you to listen to all of your constituents who are begging you to vote no.
We're your community and we're asking for this and I just.
I just urge you guys to listen to us. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. That's it.
Okay, there are a number of different supplementals here. One thing I do want to add is that on our supplemental I neglected to mention that.
We added on there that we wanted to include if first aid was administered
So I forgot to mention that and so thank you councilmember for for bringing that up
And counts can I answer a follow-up question? Yeah point madam mayor and and maybe if you're able to
repost those latest amendments because my understanding was we didn't have the ability to
Provide that information on the transparency hub. Is that correct?
Is that what you're requesting, Madam Mayor?
Okay, I'm gonna let the chief respond,
but we had a conversation about it.
Oh, okay, please go ahead.
Yeah, for sure.
And maybe just to set the stage a little bit,
you know, I'm very proud of the Transparency Hub.
I don't know of another jurisdiction that has a hub
of that kind that shares that kind of information
in real time to that level of detail.
However, comma, we're not gonna rest on that
and we know that there's a lot of things
we can continue to build into the Transparency Hub
and the whole goal is to be able to share
as much information as we can about the work that we do,
while also balancing privacy rights
and safety of the community as well.
So to answer the question specifically
about the capabilities of Transparency Hub,
the whole purpose is for it to be automated,
so that the human piece is taken out of it.
As calls come in and they're into our CAD system
and records are created and use of force reports
are documented that there is a direct link behind the scenes
to then upload that into the Transparency Hub.
Right now, the way the blue team
or the use of force reporting system works,
there's not a box that talks about first aid.
And some of the other suggestions
around more information in.
In the future, we wanna look about a lot of things,
putting more detail in a lot of the calls.
But specifically for the first aid piece,
we will have to check with the vendor
and ask them to rework the system
to allow us to have that space to do the first aid piece.
So certainly it's something we could explore.
but right now in our current existing system,
someone would have to manually enter
that first aid piece into the hub.
Okay, so Madam Mayor, could you just go back
to the wording that you are proposing for that then?
Sure, so-
I think it's in the resolution.
Yeah, I mean, keep in mind, this is a referral,
so the city manager would look into
and they have to come back to us and let us know,
you know, how this would all work.
So, oh, sorry, let me.
scroll and read. Because I think you had like a bulleted list, right, of what you are proposing.
Yes, so it's here. So, yeah, I'm sorry, it's, it's bleeding off of, if you just go back,
I just want to see the sentence. Okay, that's perfect. Just write just like that. Just give
me a moment. I just want to just take a look at what that says. Sure. And so while you're
are doing that I'm gonna actually ask a question about okay so the problem
actually can I can I just like finish my thought on this oh god thank you madam
mayor so so yeah I think the issue is if this is asking this resolution is
worded so that we have to include the administration of first aid I'm just
worried if we don't have the capability to do that so for for D if we could just
the administration of first aid, I feel like if that clause could just have some caveat there,
you know, to the extent practicable or something, it seems like everything else is fine. Everything
else can go in now, right? Yeah, and I would share that it would be my desire to have that included,
and certainly it seems like it could be something that the vendor could do, and that information
would appear or could very easily appear in the military equipment ordinance
report. I will also point out that our by policy officers who deploy OC are
required by policy to get first aid for the individual so it's a it's a piece of
the policy that requires it so it's the box should will always be checked yes and
that's I mean I still think that's important understood so so I'd like to
and I want to actually ask our city attorney if she can weigh in on the on the wording piece here what one of the conversations that we're having is if we can include something in here since it's a referral that may not be possible right this this moment because they need to check
in with the company to make sure it's possible.
I'm going to turn it over to Sam Harvey who is on zoom and he in address.
Thank you.
Sure.
I think you could put some language just caveatting, you know, maybe as its own number
bullet, you know, work with the vendor to determine whether administration of first
aid can be included as a check box or category.
That's fine.
That's fine with me.
Okay.
That's not good enough.
Okay, so madam mayor, are you
proposing to just add that into
D then and work with the vendor.
To ensure that the
administration of first aid can
be included or something like
that.
Yes, then I think I'm fine with
that and the 14 days seems
reasonable.
Did you have anything further?
No, I was just going to suggest
and as well as a transparency hub if the capabilities allow.
So if, sorry, say that one more time.
I'm sorry council members, can you please?
I'm sorry. Go ahead.
Can you say that one more time?
Yeah, to include the administration of first aid
in the military equipment ordinance
and the transparency hub if the capabilities allow.
So Madam Mayor, there's an,
I think you have a section above
about the controlled equipment, oh, it's below,
regards of the controlled equipment ordinance include,
you could just say including, comma,
including administration of first aid.
And then I think we've covered it.
Work with the vendor to determine
if the administration of first aid is,
chief, you had a nice phrase, feasible, no.
Capabilities?
Feasible or capable? Yeah, maybe just say it's feasible. Okay. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, um, okay.
So I was going to ask a question, which was not a matter. Yes.
I do recommend language in the resolution itself.
Clarify section 3 that those changes to the transfers you have are a referral.
As written right now, it simply says that those changes shall be made. And if the intent is just to refer to the same manager to make those changes.
I recommend that that's that be amended to say.
Um, you know, refer to the manager to ensure that the transparency hub can be.
You know, the following can be included in the transparency hub. Thank you. I'm sorry. Can you tell me where that is?
This would be under the 3rd now. Therefore.
Clause, um.
Uh, shall be it's it's not.
Yeah, I mean, I think, Sam, sorry.
Uh, maybe at the beginning of subsection of subsection 3.
to be able to do that. So I'm a
to say something. No, I concur with the city attorney. Like my reading of it is that it's not a referral, but that it's adopting a resolution effectuating these changes. So the to the attorney poses is.
I always read this to be not a referral, but the resolution to do these things. Yeah, I.
So I think that the way it's
written is how we intended it
too.
I'm a little confused.
So I think there may have been
some confusion because you used
the word referral.
So it doesn't sound like you're
intending it as a referral.
Yes.
Okay.
Number three is directive.
Except for D when you're saying
if feasible, D might not, if D
rest of number three in the Resolve class so is the so it would be cleaner
to remove it is that what we're saying it could be part of the motion a
referral could be part of the motion it doesn't have to be in the in the
resolution right so so technical so okay so we can we can set we could remove D
and then just say and also pass this resolution and also refer to the city
manager to work with the vendor determine if the administration of first
the transparency hub. So I'm
We need to work with the vendor on. Yes, so the transparency has built on like a web platform from a different vendor. And so we're, we're limited by the features that they offer. That's not one that I'm aware of, especially.
Be this dashboard element with the wider web page. So it would be, I think, unlikely that.
that feature is available, we could certainly reach out.
But, you know, we're not software engineers,
we're not web developers, we're kind of just limited
by the vendors that we're working with.
Okay, thank you very much.
And I'm sorry, go ahead, Council Member Blockaby.
Yeah, I just wanted to step back in one second
as we're kind of hashing all this out.
As we're making any of these changes to the hub
and to the annual report, can you just remind us
like all of this data, the process
that actually happens at the moment
or in the wake of an incident.
Nothing changes with respect to the information
the officer collects, the officer reports,
that goes up through the chain of command.
Like we're not, I just wanna be clear,
just again, I'm thinking through all of this.
So as we collect the documentation from the officer
and talk about the incident, nothing changes.
We're still collecting exactly the same data now
that we were before that we were before.
Like it's like we have, whether or not first aid
is rendered, the narrative,
and that goes up through the whole chain of command,
comes to you and ultimately comes to City Manager. Is that right? Yes, so just to be
clear, nothing in this resolution changes authorized uses of a pepper spray.
Right. They still have to, every use has to comply with policy 303. Every use that
occurs, it has to, has to be reported and recorded according to policy 300, which
requires that documentation, all that information that is on the OC report is
collected. There's by our camera footage and that then goes through the full
supervisory chain and is reviewed to make sure it's within policy all the way
through the process. Right and in the past when was the transparency hub when
these reports came and you notified counsel some of that could become public
it may become public but it didn't automatically become public in the same
way that it does is as it will as it once published on the transparency hub
it. I like there was always kind of intervening step when it came back to council. And yeah,
it was shared with the PRC at the time share with council and and there was that time to
write and if you happen to be at the meeting when it was discussed then you heard it or
at the council me if it was discussed. But now everyone is accessible to everyone via
the hub. Okay. Yes. I mean I like the spirit is what we're trying to make sure is much
of that what's documented in the same report that the officers filled out
before and that they are now being filled out now and it is going up to the
training command the intent and the spirit is let's try and get as much of
that into the hub as we can given whatever technical limitations we have
for the hub. In some ways it would be more real-time than it ever was because in the
past it would be filtered through the PRC or the PAB or you know and in this
case and it will still continue to be reported in the military equipment the
annual report, right? Okay. So I just want to be clear that like we're,
you know, we are trying to maintain and in some ways actually make more timely
this information than we've had previously because we didn't have a
transparency hub previously. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Bonapara.
Thank you. I have a couple of questions. First, I have, this is to the mayor. I'm
I'm still confused as to why the name of the officer
is being removed from the resolution
if the current report does have the name of the officer.
My understanding is that the current report
does not contain the name of the officer.
So the OC paper report from 1997
had a line for the officer filling out
that completed the report,
but the transparency hub intentionally
does not have officer names for all the uses of force.
That's not that information is not published
and was part of the meet and confer process
under policy 300 when it was established
that as a force data was released annually
and released to the public
that you would not be able to track back
exactly who the complaint process in place
for individual complaints about uses of force
but publicly available in that manner.
Thank you, did that answer your question?
Kind of, but it is currently publicly available.
That's correct, that 1997 report that came before
300 discussion, there probably should have been an edit
made to the OC report post that policy 300 update
because it's opposite to something that was met
with the bargaining unit as part of the implementation
of the updated policy 300.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, my next question for the police department
is around the transparency of OC spray.
The 2024 military equipment report says
that there was OC in 2024,
but the transparency hub says that there were four.
One of the incidents was listed as chemical agents
and listed as OC spray.
Can you explain this discrepancy?
Looking into that, it's not something that I'm prepared to.
Okay.
Yeah, no, I just would be hopeful if you shared that we took to look at the hub. We'd be happy to take a look at that and report back to council.
Yeah, so, I mean, there's certain things I know that was 1 occasion that your office raised where there was an OC report, but it wasn't on the hub.
That was a particular case where the OC was deployed against Internet so it's not a use of force. So it's not not in the use of force. But if you go to the call for service, you'll see the call for service for animal bite.
use of force. It was not a, it was not that kind of use of force, right? And so certainly,
you know, there's a lot of instances like that where an officer receives a threat in that manner
and may use Spanish Bay in that, and so that, you know, may be the exact instance that led to that
reporting. We'll have to look at that. Okay, thank you. I think this is showing exactly why we need
the city's. The city's. The
the state and why. Some of why
these would be right important
to for these to be duplicative.
Sometimes yeah, the military
equipment report one. We just
found more recently. The 1987
directive requires that the
pepper spray report be posted
Thank you for raising that. That's on me. So the first one I did when I became chief came as an off agenda memo. It was basically a memo form with the OC report following it the next time one came through. I just forwarded the OC report to both path into council. I didn't put it on the header of off agenda memo.
Okay thanks. I have a question for the interim ODPA director. Do you mind. Thank you. Might
want to sit on. Oh okay that's fine. Thank you. Do you mind briefly going over foundation
from the PAB. Yes. So the path of recommendation was
We also had a couple of
changes in the board.
I had a report to the
Federal.
The first time in the council
in February 23 correspondence
which is included in the material.
In terms of the recommendation
itself is to reintroduce into
the military equipment report
the reporting of the use of
pepper spray.
The reason for that is because
the recent BMC to 100 edits
the board does state that understands
that there's some things that we could streamline.
The spirit of that recommendation comes into
making sure that there's still the information
that certain details are still communicated,
but it doesn't necessarily have to be
across three different platforms.
So streamlining it into a single location
is what the board supports as long as we keep continuing
that same level of detail as it's being proposed today.
that I'm seeing a lot of
discussion about.
Thank you. Do you mind also
explaining what has been
useful about the notification
process and what may be lost.
If we remove it just talking a
little bit more about the
over us. Yeah, in terms of my
experience with the notification
process and I've been with the
city since 2022. So I've had a
good amount of receiving those
notifications for us. It's
just that it gives us good
context for the board in case
to have been misused prematurely or something like that.
Not the greatest of example, I acknowledge that.
But it helps us in terms of our policy and practices review
as mandated by the charter,
because it gives us that context to it.
I'm a fan of the transparency hub,
but sometimes the numbers themselves
don't always explain everything.
So having that context is useful to give us
that contextual, I guess, circumstances
as to something, why it was used.
Great. That's really helpful. Thank you. I have one more question for the Police Department.
Would NYXL be possible to send out kind of an alert to the public?
No, I wouldn't support that. The purpose of NYXL is very clear. It's for emergency responses,
street closures, dangerous situations. We're very intentional about not overusing NYXL so people
I think it's a good question.
I think that's a good question.
I think that's a good question.
But I think that's a good question.
I think that's a good question.
But I think that's a good question.
And I think that's a good question.
And I think that's a good question.
And I think that's a good question.
And I think that's a good question.
And I think that's a good question.
And I think that's a good question.
And I think that's a good question.
And I think that's a good question.
I think that's what I'm so confused now. I think that is what you said. I mean, I thought what I thought I heard was that this letter D to visit 3d.
The administration of first aid, because it's not clear that we can actually do that with the system for the city manager to analyze what the software company to seek. Is that something we can do? That's a referral to come back. The rest of this is a directive to do.
that you've done. So Madam
Mayor, I would just recommend
in your resolution to delete
the batter. Okay. Okay. I
couldn't see that you had done
that. And then we don't. I
don't think we need to type it
in. Of course, we can, but we
can just simply state that
that concept of of including
the first aid detail be
referred to the city manager.
that's helpful. Um, do to is this something that needs to have a second ring or would
it be in effect immediately once weeks in the resolutions take effect immediately? Okay,
so in this case we would just be replacing the there'd be no no time where night were
neither apply. Okay, those are my questions. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Bartlett. Thank
you Madam Mayor and those are the questions involved in a really really wonderfully answered.
by all the parties here.
I was curious, and this goes back to sort of the IT component,
right?
Because I'm still trying to wrap my head around the various
sort of points of conflict, right?
And there's legal, maybe some liability, there's policy,
and there's obviously use friction, right?
It's burdensome sometimes, right?
So I'm just kind of wondering, just for the chief here,
Do you feel that the current provider of either one,
your police reporting interface,
and then the transparency of interface
are the latest, the latest out there?
Yeah, I would say that our use of force reporting system
is one of the industry standards for that product.
And, you know, it's likely that they can fix this for us,
rate this checkbox for us.
I don't think that company hasn't been lacking,
and I don't know of a lot of other agencies
using other products that far surpass it.
The system that we use ArcGIS for the transparency hub,
again, is an industry-rendered emerging,
one of the cutting-edge technologies in this area,
and it can do a lot, and we ask a lot of that hub.
We're able to bring in all kinds of different data
from the background and display it in a way
that can be both downloaded as large files of complete data,
but also filtered, and really allow the user
to do their own analysis with it.
So I would say that both of those technologies
are producing what we need,
whether they can get into the weeds
around all the things we want
without a human intervention or change in structure,
I don't know, but we're certainly open to exploring those.
Okay, and the use and confer is interesting too,
as opposed to the boundaries, right.
Does any of this that we are discussing tonight
implicate, sorry, meet and confer?
If we were to make some change around
a more public producing an officer's name,
I would expect that the union would expect
to meet and confer as a change of conditions
and would suggest that that could cause them
some safety issues.
Okay, that's it, thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Traeger.
Thank you, I want to dig in more about
if we were to adjust the narrative.
So right now, the council receives an annual report,
right, and that does include the narrative.
And if we lost that, can you speak to what,
if any opportunities there may be
for individual members of the council
to request a narrative specific to if they go
on the transparency hub and get the,
like basically that line record.
Are there opportunities, if we lose the annual report,
to request detail-level information
consistent with what a narrative reporting would provide?
Yeah, just a couple points to that.
One, I really appreciated the PAB's perspective on this,
that, and they've shared with us a couple times,
that they find great oversight value
in the OC reporting that they got on the annual report
and that they felt that that was sufficient for them
as a launching point to determine whether or not
they wanted to do a policy review.
I will say the military equipment narrative report
would not go away unless the transparency hub
rose up to be qualified enough to give you
the same level of detail that we wanted to provide.
So the information is going to exist still in reporting.
That it was on the OC paper report
is either gonna be on the military equipment ordinance report
or the hub or both until we can raise them up to a level
that the sufficient information
for the council's information is available.
I think all of you have received notifications
from the city management and communication around.
I share as much as I can for the private sites
of the whole thing.
You know, and make some more public documents to do that.
No other question. I think that's enough for now. Thank you.
Okay, Councilman. Great. I have a follow up on that. I'm curious about this. I have the same.
in terms of
console and maybe access to this kind of
request.
I heard you were reluctant to give away
confidential information.
It is possible though that you could give it to us.
Let's say there's no confidential information.
Then the answer is yes, you could give it to us.
Yeah, for example,
I report, a general report, to account that OC was used.
or you see it on the transparency hub.
And you contacted us and said we want additional information.
Certainly everything that would appear
on the military equipment ordinance in the annual report,
we would absolutely be able to freely share.
If we started to get into other details
or infected an investigation or something like that,
that's where we wouldn't be able to provide that details.
Well certainly, there's some information
you could give us, it's whatever.
We could share everything that would be releasable
in the annual report, we could share in the immediate,
on a, you know, I'm trying to not overburden staff.
Not my original question, so my,
I'm
sort of just with council member Luna par think not exact
on in the two different label,
Level C. And one is level three, I believe there's also OC, because matched up with things we've gotten that were described as, can you explain, like, where can there be two things?
Yes, there could not be two things that, uh, on, um, all of, so we can update it to be more clear.
Like, that's and I just want to say, just in terms of, I'm supporting the.
So that when they're supporting that comes up a little part of a line about that consistency of labeling and I really would like to depart.
Yeah, whatever I want that catching that.
Sorry, I didn't mean to say, I was just looking through supplemental have pulled things out, but I think makes sense here.
I'm also interested in adding into our verbal referral that we're planning on making include all as.
Well, yes.
Force happens. There's a lot of detail in there that would be confidential. It talks about what high school they might go to. It talks about names and things like that.
So, this is in order for it.
Play the narrative into the transparent hub and have it stop.
level of
Team force me
Which want because it goes through the advisory chain and they're reading all those details
It's possible to create another box, but then hey, you know, so
I'm hesitant to say that we're just gonna roll cuz I know if they can create a box for administering first aid
I'm concerned about I mean they can I'm sure they can create a box for the narrative
But that's why we I have some hesitancy around that right?
I remember you saying that and I'm just trying to understand how we can kind of throw the needle here. So but I think a few but so she that.
In the team is the one that public. Yeah, the, the dairy contain information about what they were arrested for the gate.
Confidential pieces of information within that, as much information as a.
It's a, it's intended to be a thorough review the use of for.
Surround it, where I wanted for a robbery.
To call the description as in the report, it might have those pieces of information. And so it's, it's, it's, it's by nature a summarized version of.
In the narrative, that's what we would want to produce.
Enough information so, you know, the who what the right without defaulting somebody's name and, you know.
landing information right and I think that.
Interested in making sure we understand like what.
All or, you know, what, what was the situation that kind of like, to me, that doesn't need to be.
Extremely detail and I just don't really understand the problem.
Getting a public version based on that has all this confidential information to to whittle it down.
The public burden is what we produce.
the blue team report is intentionally an internal process that's accessible to
the PAB if they're doing force complaint they see they see the blue team it's
it's it's part of our review process know whether it's the internal processes
of reviewing the force it contains information often that has confidence
if the what would be on the military equipment ordinance can instead be put
on the transparency hub is that that's what we're discussing that's the ultimate
goal. But right. So that the. Some. Maybe. A. I.
Come. Right they can review it. Review. Published on their. It's
it to undo what we would. To satisfy. If I'd rather have
a good narrative in the military equipment report while we
figure out we can do on the transparency hub or not. But
That one remain intervention that I guess I guess I just I don't understand the answer, but with doing that human work, I, I do want us to take like a mini break. So we can just go so that I can just check in with our city attorney, but.
I want to ask a question.
As we try to wrap my mind around.
Did you do this example report from last year at Gilbert, George, Littman, too?
That's probably got my name at the bottom.
Is that a typical, was that a typical report to expect as we talk about these?
I'm just you talking about the part that you circled.
No, not that, not that part, uh,
just, just the, just the narrative in, in, in total.
Yeah. This is the, this is a, that doesn't contain any confidence.
It doesn't have the suspect pieces for an ongoing criminal
of us to what happened and where and what with de-escalation?
Uh, I have a question.
Okay, thank you. Um, just give us five minutes to hash out a couple of things.
I just want to make sure we're clear about the wording here and then we'll
come back. So take a bio break everyone. Take a stretch.
Recording stopped recording in progress.
Okay, sorry about that. Everyone has. So, I'm going to back on the screen. We're going to talk about this again.
So, the clarification was that the piece that is the referral.
Is this the, the city manager to.
to present an amendment to BMC Chapter 2.100 to this City Council. This is the controlled equipment ordinance piece. So that has to be a referral. That's why this is all extra confusing. So, and then the rest of this, this is an adjustment of your resolution. So it's still a resolution. But we change the language at the bottom.
to just, I just changed this just now.
So I think this is clear.
Refer to the city manager to present an amendment
to the BMC chapter, blah, blah, blah.
This is what I was just talking about,
the controlled equipment ordinance piece,
and then work with the vendor to determine
if reporting the administration of first days possible
to include in the transparency hub.
But the other two pieces that we were just talking about
was on the, yeah, was also to see if it's possible
Automate the opt-in notifications so that we can have folks like our Office of Director of Police Accountability to be alerted.
And also, if the narrative piece, if we can figure out how to include that as well. And we were talking about the details of that.
understand that that that's that we have to kind of figure out like again I
mean that's why it's written in here as like if it's to try to figure out how to
do that with the vendor okay and then and then the piece also that I think
needs to be added is the piece around consistency and labeling so I think that
but that also is important to include.
So I will take this from council,
from Vice Mayor Leno Parras as well.
Yeah, there was a section, I think,
in council member Casa-Rani's item
that talked about explaining the use of forced levels better
on the transparency hub.
Maybe if it just directed us to ensure, label it, you know,
The force levels are clearly labeled.
I think it already says that already.
That's how I would read that expectation
that that doubled labeling would be covered by that.
I think it's here, it's like this is the referral.
Oh, this one, enhance the definitions
for the various use of force levels
and clearly identify pepper spray uses level three.
Include clear navigational guidelines
so users can more easily access the open data portal
information on chemical agents used.
I guess why I want to make sure that in the resolution itself,
but the wording so I will add that try make it the new new for you can get the new day,
the new D that's your list of what's in the hub.
We need to move to extend to extend the meeting to.
11, 10, 20?
Second.
All right, is there any opposition to 11, 15?
Did you say?
11, 20?
20.
20.
Is that what you said?
Yeah, I did.
Okay, 11, 20.
I just wanted to make sure.
Okay, no opposition looks like.
All right, we will extend.
Thank you all.
All right, so okay, I think we've adjusted this.
let me just adjust this reporting administration first aid narrative report and opt in notifications
and then I'll say our okay notifications okay all right I think we've got it all right
Now, I'm going to actually just move my own item.
So I...
Second.
Oh, she didn't...
Yeah, I'm going to move my supplemental
with Council Members Blackaby, Tragob, and O'Keefe
and Council Member Kesserwani,
including this referral to the city manager,
to the control equipment
ordinance and also work with the
vendor to determine if reporting
the administration of a data
narrative report and opt in
notifications are possible to
include in the transparency hub.
Is there a second?
Second.
There are a number of hands raised.
Are you okay?
Did you have, yeah, vice mayor.
Yeah, I was wondering if we could
to the controlled equipment ordinance referral,
just so that we know exactly when that's gonna.
No, but I'll take it as a short term amendment,
which means we'll work on it over the next 90 days.
Okay, okay, thank you.
Sorry, just to clarify, that's before the next,
yeah, because it just,
the next controlled equipment ordinance.
Yeah, certainly, we can push past that
to include that information
in the controlled equipment ordinance report.
Okay, thank you.
we can commit to that even if the ordinance
hasn't caught up in time.
We're happy to include that in the report.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you all.
I appreciate it.
I know it's a sausage making,
but I feel like we're in a good place.
So thank you very much.
All right.
Oh yes, Council Member O'Keefe.
Thanks, yes.
Still supporting the motion.
No problem.
I just want to raise, you know,
I like, I'm glad that we have a plan
for getting the narrative report on the hub.
I am still bothered by the inconsistency
that would result in because there are other kinds
of use of force that are equal or more intense
than pepper spray that wouldn't be getting the narrative.
And so I'm not, don't worry, I'm not adding anything.
I think it would be beyond the scope of this,
what we're doing tonight to do any more than this,
but I just wanna name an intention.
I would like to work with maybe once we have a new permanent ODPA director to work with them to
look at maybe even bringing in more narrative, more narratives, not for everything, but for
some of the really rare and very intense uses of force in the spirit of transparency, of course,
and also consistency, because I'm bothered by the inconsistency here. I was bothered by it.
That's why I'm glad that Council Member Kesserwani bought this item. So as an ultimate goal, I would
that's the goal of the city. I
think that's the goal of the
city. I think that's the goal.
And I think that's the goal of
the city. I think that's the
goal of the city. I think that
the city would like us to have.
You know, lots of transparency
and have it be consistent makes
that's and so that's sort of a
goal. I just wanted to state
that goal and I'll be. You know,
to pick that up when the time
is right. Thank you. Appreciate
that. Yeah, absolutely. Hear
that. So, okay. Can we take a
role, please, clerk.
On the motion as stated by the
councilmember guess or wanting yes tap when yes Bartlett yes Trigga I O'Keeffe
yes Blackaby yes yes yes and Mary she yes okay okay thank you all really
appreciate appreciate you and your patience and everyone for their public
comments and for everyone who presented to us thank you all right now we
We are moving on to the public comment
for items not listed on the agenda.
Is there any other additional public comment
on items not listed on the agenda?
Isn't this two minutes at the end of the meeting?
No?
Okay.
Okay, generally, police tools,
because the police need tools to do their job.
So you've heard enough, in terms of flock,
you've heard all the concerns about privacy.
Yesterday, there was an article from the Business Insider
that addressed accuracy as to floc
and started out with the description of a man in Ohio
who there was a misread on floc
and so he was mauled by the police,
dog arrested and then they realized
that it was a different license.
Quoting from the article,
business in police records, lawsuits, and local news coverage across the
country and found that the Toledo episode is in isolated. Doesn't
incident misreads by
readers or a lack of verification
resulted in people who hadn't committed crimes being stopped at gunpoint sent to
jail or mauled by a police dog, among other. Thanks, Carol. Okay. There's love.
So, Councillors, as I heard your discussion, I'm really kind of concerned because what
I heard the police chief talking about is the need to kind of protect the identity of
officers. And I'm really kind of concerned about that because if we're not willing to
associate a police officer with the use of force, then they might as well be ice with
masks on their faces. That we need to statistically be able to identify which officers are more
prone to use violence another and now that's called early warning that's how
you get to them before they do something really bad isn't that right isn't it
doesn't that make sense so I think what's being sold here is a bill of goods
we should have public according to the California public records act we're
supposed to have access to police reports descriptions and we cannot be
What can I say, persuaded or just have this kind
of institutional drift is just that somebody
who has been the victim
of a pepper spraying should have their identity concealed
for their privacy?
That's like disappearing people.
So I really just want to ask you to advocate
for maximum transparency.
I also want to say that I went through,
I just really want to understand what it's like
to file a complaint with the PAB.
The PAB, the chief officers, they don't return form calls.
But there's not one shred of paper.
They had some kind of meeting or something
without the person who filed the complaint.
And I was giving no indication of what their findings were.
And on the basis of those findings,
apparently the chief made another finding on an allegation
that I never alleged, I never made.
I never said that their body-worn camera policy was a problem.
That wasn't a problem.
The problem is that they physically manhandled me
and prevented me from observing and from recording.
And if I can have that other minute,
I'd like to tell you about this, that we don't have a system
for holding the leadership, at least if it's accountable.
How do we do that?
You know, oh my gosh, it must be a personnel.
The officer who put their hands on me
must have done something wrong.
Or maybe we should look at the policy.
Maybe that's the problem.
But what about the cop who generated the operational plan
for that homeless encampment sweep
that included prevent people from observing?
What if those were just doing what they owed
and what if those cops were given an illegal order?
We don't have a mechanism for rooting that out
and exposing that and dealing with it.
And so as you pursue this military policy
with more and more surveillance,
what we're trying to tell you is that,
you know, you're gonna have more breaks.
Thank you. Thank you.
One minute.
Okay.
Houston, first thing, brief thing,
and then you have to get the report
and then that's where you see everything.
So maybe it's a little bit of a common practice
in some places, but you know,
I don't have the bandwidth to try to get into this,
but you guys have to deal with it.
About the order here, I think it was a little bit,
correct, to have the public speak
and then have you guys try to figure out
what they were saying, right?
You had to get the, you know,
city attorney to help you figure it out.
we should have heard all of that and then been taking notes
and then give some comments.
That's another thing.
I have a personal PR that I need to follow up
with the city manager.
If you can help me by setting up a time
where we can meet six dash four one eight.
Really would like to get your insight
and help me come up with, you know,
we can come up with a solution.
Thank you. Is there anyone online for off Jenna public?
Yes, we have a few. This is for an agenda of a comments phone number ending in two.
5 hands raised. Hi. Well, 1st of all.
Tuber spray caused permanent damage to the lung and eyes, especially the eyes.
How can you replace anybody's eyes?
It should be banned.
Second, Epstein filed, that is, he can't say have sex with a 13-year-old girl.
He was raping these 13-year-old girls, and that's why he went to Iran.
The Epstein filed above his head, as he milled him many times.
And that is criminal act against American laws, against international laws,
And believe me, I studied nuclear physics,
nuclear engineering for decades,
while in World War Three soon.
This meant crazy, just crazy.
It's mentally ill, it's totally unfit to be a president,
and look, what is the result?
Now Iran next to be here in America,
and that is really sad.
Innocent people are dying for what?
By the way, before you go to sleep tonight,
please listen to the song.
Imagine, imagine there's no religion.
I imagine no country, no religion too.
Thank you so much.
Next is Nathan Mizell.
Hi council, just quickly here.
I suspect that tomorrow,
I hope you're paying attention to the PAB's meeting
and the letter they intend to send you
in regards to the department's unilateral decision.
Like policy 300, the use of force policy in this city.
It is a sad reality that we now have a government that believes they can outright
ignore councils own mandated policy in this city.
But that is the result of the lax, if not non existent,
oversights that has taken place over the last year to 18 months in our city.
That letter details how,
despite the KAB informing them that the use of force policy was adopted by Council
June of 2020, they still unilaterally changed the policy and, to my knowledge, not reposted it publicly yet. So I'm going to be writing to you about this. The PAB is going to send you a letter.
This is the latest example of a breakdown in democracy in our city.
Thanks, Nathan. Next is caller ending in 2.
Wait, no, Daniel, Daniel brownson next is Daniel brownson already have the other car.
Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. So.
I think it's honestly ridiculous that.
The that we're acting like.
Writing a report for using pepper spray, which is actually a severe use of force.
Uh, is some sort of huge burden on on the police department.
Consum, it was only used 4 times and like.
Yeah, we kind of do want it to be at least a little.
You know, to do some work to justify it.
And then secondly, we should absolutely not.
We legalized the use of tear gas in Berkeley.
You know, what is it mainly used for.
Against what's the.
Slightly protest and becoming up when the text finally sick ice on us.
Thanks next is.
Hi, I also wanted to express concern about, um, not providing a police officer's name in the reports. The reports that are available to the public.
Did hear, um, I believe the the chief's note about, um, the, the union or something like that with the police. And I understand that could be her.
However, I still.
There has been a lot of evidence, particularly there's 1 incidence that I remember with, uh, it was a bike police officer who had many, many reports of misconduct.
And he kind of was allowed to go on doing that without any repercussions. And I think, like, that is evidence that this kind of a public record is really important for accountability in situations.
So, thank you.
Next is de la Luna.
Yes, I wanted to request that the transparency hub website be added to the city of Berkeley website, like, a direct link to it.
And the police website to the police departments website, there's currently a.
Chief, but there's no link to the transparency hub.
And I think that having that direct link, it should just be 1 required.
Here, I am the constituent asking for it. So.
I just that can happen really soon with given everyone that's in the room currently. Thank you.
And there's no reason to not have it connected, right? Since we're talking about transparency and as much as the police department like to talk at the hub, we need to actually have access to the hub.
And the URL just needs to be simple, and it needs to be linked directly to the city of Berkeley website. Thank you.
And then the last speaker is.
Hello, can you hear me? Yes.
Yeah, I just want to draw attention to the fact that this is all nice with the Transparency Hub,
but transparency doesn't really do anything when the cops continually violate the existing use-of-force guidelines.
Not only has the BPD issued their own revisions, not approved by you all,
to the use-of-force guidelines that are currently in use, Policy 300,
but they've also in the past flagrantly violated the very explicit use-of-force rules they have.
In 2014, they used illegal overhead baton strikes, they attacked crowds of protesters, they used tear gas against their own policy, which stated that it could only be controlled situations.
So it's nice to have this transparency hub, but it's better to not deal with the weapons who are using them with the weapons.
So pull the ordinance. There should be no resending of the reporting requirement and pepper spray. And yes, we have talked about that item. So, thank you.
Okay, that's it.
Okay, is there a motion to adjourn? Is there any option to adjournment?
We are adjourned. Thank you all very much.