by unanimous consent don't leave yet um what I'd like to do because there are I think there are
many people here that are here for our um our ceremonial matters and so if it's okay with you
I'd like to move forward and do our ceremonial items so that way some folks can leave if they
don't want to stay so yay um so in that case I'm going to call to order the Berkeley City Council
meeting today is Tuesday may 19th 2026 it is 6 26 p.m. and if we could please
take the roll clerk yes calling the rule for the 6 p.m. regular meeting
councilmember kiss or wani here
here I'm here and Mary here okay we're having too much fun you guys calm down
all right so all right so let's moving on to our ceremonial matters we have a
a very exciting one. It is Public Works week. Woo! Yay! Give it up for Public Works. Don't
leave! Don't leave, Wahid. We're still here. Okay, all right. I have a proclamation. Well,
first of all, actually, Public Works folks, do you want to come up here? Yeah, come up
up here. We want to celebrate you. Yay. My thing came out. Come on up. Yeah. You can
come stand by the podium or there's more room over here. There you go. All right. Very nice.
As you shuffle up, I'm going to read the City of Berkeley Proclamation. Celebrating National
National Public Works Week 2026, whereas this year marks the 66th annual National Public
Works Week sponsored by the American Public Works Association, whereas public works professionals
provide a vital role in creating sustainable and resilient communities through a focus
on infrastructure, facilities, and services which maintain public health, high quality
of life, and the well-being of the people of the City of Berkeley, and whereas the City
City of Berkeley Public Works Department serves over 120,000 Berkeley residents by providing
integral services to 214 miles of streets, 400 miles of sanitary sewers, 78 miles of
store water piping.
Yes, okay, yes.
30 green infrastructure installation, 8,000 plus street lights, 3,750 parking meters,
54 public buildings and waste recycling and composting.
I think we need to give it up for that section first.
Okay, yeah.
And whereas recently the department oversaw
the implementation of red curb painting
to 1,700 intersections, a monumental stride for Berkeley
as one of the first cities to comply with the new state law
that prohibits parking directly next to intersections.
And whereas the city of Berkeley Public Works
department's contributions are instrumental
to everyday services,
thus civic leaders and community members of all ages
in the city are encouraged to maintain an ongoing interest
in all public works services provided.
Now, therefore be it resolved that I, Adina Ishii,
mayor of the city of Berkeley,
do hereby proclaim the week of May 17th to May 23rd,
2026, to be National Public Works Week
in the city of Berkeley.
I urge all to recognize public works
substantial contributions to protecting community health, safety, and advancing
the quality of life for everyone. Thank you all so much for your work.
Do you want to say anything? I'll just keep it brief. As you guys know, this
year's theme is very appropriate. It's rooted in service and powered by
community, and that says a lot. I just want to take a quick moment to recognize
dedicated professionals here tonight representing public works. These are the
people in the field and in the office who keep Berkeley running often behind
the scenes but always with a deep commitment to serving this community. So
thank you for what you do. You are appreciated and it's all about love.
Stand on this side. Sydney, you want to pop over? You want to pop over to this side and take it this way?
They're over here Sydney. There's a
thank you again to Public Works for being here and for all of the work that you do in
our city. Okay so our second ceremonial matter for this evening is the Willard Park Clubhouse
and restroom replacement project CPRS facility design ward of excellence.
Yay!
Is anyone here, is staff here also from, oh you're right here okay all right did you want
to stand or be up here yeah would like that.
Yay!
Okay.
Very good. Wonderful. Okay, so tonight we are proud to recognize the City of
Berkeley staff who brought the Willard Park Clubhouse, oh sorry, staff and also
designers who brought the Willard Park Clubhouse and restroom replacement
project to life. This measures T1 project is receiving the
California Parks and Recreation Society's Facility Design Award of
excellence for cities with a population between 50,000 and 125,000 people. This
award recognizes exceptional projects throughout California that exemplify
innovation, impact, and leadership in the field of parks and recreation. The Willard
Park Clubhouse and Restroom Replacement Project is being honored for
transforming an overcrowded, outdated facility into a safe, inclusive, and
climate-resilient community hub. Guided by years of public input and
collaboration the project expanded health childcare and recreational
opportunities creating new reservable community spaces improved park usability
and safety and delivered a LEED Gold net zero neighborhood resiliency center
yay to to formally present the award I'd like to invite Leah Martinez
representative from the California Park and Recreation Society to the podium to
share a few remarks and present the award of excellence to the city of
Berkeley. Thank you. Good evening honorable Mayor Ishi and
Berkeley City Council members. My name is Leah Martinez. I'm a
recreation supervisor with Hayward Area Recreation and Park District
but this evening I am here as the Secretary-Treasurer of the California
Park and Recreation Society State Board of Directors
as well as the Awards of Excellence Program.
The California Park and Recreation Society Annual Awards Program celebrates
outstanding examples of quality facility and park design,
programming accomplishments, effective communications,
community leadership, and professional successes that take place daily in our profession.
Through our five award categories, we highlight the people, places, spaces, programs, and stories
that make communities like the City of Berkeley special.
As one of five awardees in the mixed-use facility community center category, the City of Berkeley's
Willard Park Clubhouse and Restroom Replacement Project stood out from a total of 186 award
applicants. This project transformed an outdated 565 square-foot building into
a vibrant, inclusive, and climate smart hub for South Berkeley. Programmatically,
the after-school enrollment programming jumped a hundred percent from 45 to 80
participants and no longer split into the park with the added space. This
facility books up to eight months in advance and includes warm, well-ventilated
rooms, gender-neutral restrooms, and flexible spaces for quiet or active play,
while staff can provide hot meals, diverse programming,
and conduct confidential staff operations as needed.
Park visitor loves the centrally located public restroom
with ADA accessible stalls and baby changing stations,
dramatically improving usability for caregivers.
Guided by input from at least 200 community members
over a three year process that was challenged by COVID,
the lead gold, net zero solar powered clubhouse
also serves as a neighborhood resiliency hub
during climate and emergency events.
Congratulations, City of Berkeley,
on your award-winning Willard Park Clubhouse
and Restaurant Replacement Project
on winning the 2025 Mixed Use Facility
Community Center Award of Excellence.
Oh, it's so beautiful.
Yes.
That's really nice.
Let me take a photo, it's okay.
Oh, dude.
So proud.
We can't complain, though.
It's all right.
Sorry, did staff, did you all want to say anything?
Here we go now.
Other than, I just want to thank the perseverance
of my staff and council member Humbert,
but also council member Drossey.
So, a lot of public feedback on this project.
It took a long time to come to fruition
and a big thanks to the designer EOS,
many changes as we move forward.
And this is, I think, the most awarded project
in the state of California, not only this year,
but for the city of Berkeley in a long, long time.
Not only has been awarded the CPRS State Award,
CPRS District Awards.
We also, the American Public Works Association
Northern California Project of the Year,
and we're in the running for the APWA
national project of the year.
And we've just found out this afternoon that asked me
as awarded a technology award to the two other technology awards to that project.
So it's won five awards at this point and is still eligible for a couple more.
So it's pretty amazing project.
So that's so amazing. Thank you, Scott. Thank you.
Thank you to the designers, the city staff,
everyone. And I also have a note here that says this project would not have
been possible without the 2016 measure T1 bond measure. So that is so true. Thank you very much to
T1 and perfectly timed since we were just talking about our new measure that
we were just we were just discussing in our special meeting. So thank you very
much. Those are our two ceremonial items for this evening. So now we will take a
a 15 minute break between the section so that,
and we will be back in 15 minutes.
Thank you.
Recording stopped.
Recording in progress.
Hello everyone.
Good evening.
We're gonna start back up again.
Thank you so much for your patience.
For those of you who came in a little later,
we were finishing our special meeting,
so we were wrapping that up.
We started the regular meeting
and we did two ceremonial items
And now we're moving on to city manager comments.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Just one brief comment, which is that the bicycle plan,
as you'll notice, is removed from this agenda.
The reason for that is because we had to go
through a sequel process.
So we'll be doing that over the next couple weeks
with a plan to bring it back on June 9th, hopefully.
So June 9th is our target date for that.
I just wanted to say that, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Okay, folks, please take your conversations outside.
If you're having a side conversation,
please take it outside.
People in the first few rows, I can still hear you.
Thank you.
All right, so we are now moving on to public comment
on non-agenda matters.
Okay, so we will choose five cards for in-person speakers.
and then we'll go to the first five hands raised on the Zoom.
And again, this is for comments.
Oh, each speaker only have one minute to speak.
And this is for comments that are not,
for items that are not on the agenda.
So we have Steven Alpert, Abby Vieira.
We have Celeste Marks and Rohan Prasad and that's it.
We just have four cards for in-person speakers, Stephen Alpert, Abby Vieira, Rohan Prasad,
and Celeste Marks.
So you can come up in any order, and you'll have one minute.
So I have two minutes?
Yes.
Two minutes.
That's it.
Thank you.
We cannot accept any new cards at this time.
I am Dr. Stephen Alpert.
Early residents have reason to be profoundly disappointed
and disillusioned by the actions of this council,
its committees, and its commissions.
Council members proclaim their pro-housing.
It demonstrates clear pro-developer bias.
Local business owners were not consulted
about the plans to upzone North Shattuck, Solano,
or college avenues.
In fact, the council members met with developers first.
There was a special meeting on February 24.
This council overturned Berkeley's labor standards passed in 2023, which required developers
of large projects to provide contractors with fair pay, health insurance, and funds for
apprenticeship training.
During a planning commission meeting last September, over 40 individuals expressed concerns
about the proposed up-zoning building heights that they were excessive.
Every commission member then stated the higher heights were not a problem.
Formals this council needs to stop pushing the utterly false
Narrative that building market rate housing will readily produce affordable units real world data directly contradict this
As presented last week a recent study by buckholts demonstrate that even under overly optimistic
Don't smile even under overly optimistic conditions in our area takes over 20 years
For newly built house market rate housing to eventually filter down and become affordable
Whereas with historical data, it takes over 100 years.
Evidently, these findings were very troublesome to Councilmember Humbert, who deceptively
tried to...
Just a reminder not to refer to individual councilmembers, just refer to us as a body,
please.
This is of use to the community, when people try to just represent information that's false.
Okay.
These findings were troublesome to Councilmember Humbert, who tried to discredit buckles as
shown in this composite screenshot of markhumboldt.com.
Please note the highlighted portions.
Thank you for your comment.
A reminder that when you come and speak to us as a whole,
that you refer to us as a whole body, please, thank you.
Again, when people lie to community, it's a problem.
Thank you very much, you need to listen to the rules
that we have in this chamber, thank you.
Hey, how's it going?
Good evening, good evening, everyone.
My name is Rohan, I'd like to talk about
artificial intelligence.
Experts say that we are heading towards mass unemployment,
the empowerment of dictators and oligarchs,
and potentially the annihilation of the human race
because of developments across the Bay.
Our government has done nothing about this.
Governor Newsom has struck down AI legislation.
The state legislature has been lobbied
by corporations like OpenAI.
I'd like to call on Governor Newsom
to hold a citizen's assembly about AI policy
and govern AI like an existential threat
just like we've done for nuclear weapons.
Berkeley, I urge you to pass a resolution
calling on Governor Newsom to do these actions
and be a leader in free speech and democracy
like you have before.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, folks, please keep your side conversations outside.
Thank you.
Good evening, my name is Abby Vieira,
And on March 16, I had the great pride and great pleasure
of joining city of Berkeley with the Berkeley Rent Board.
I was so proud to take on the job
because the city of Berkeley has always demonstrated
the values that I truly believe in.
City of Berkeley has always led by example.
And after 18 years of working
with marginally housed communities,
I was so proud to advocate
for one of the most comprehensive rent stabilization ordinances
in the country, one that has led by example.
two and a half, three weeks into starting that new job,
I received impact notice that I was gonna be laid off.
Just left a job with stable hours,
just moved my family who was all here,
they're now looking for pizza elsewhere,
just moved them to Berkeley Care,
and here I am facing layoff.
I'm here to advocate that nobody walk out the door
right now in this job market.
I think with all of the intelligence that we have,
Creativity innovation with the values we say that we believe in nobody should be walking out the door in this job market. Thank you so much
Okay, so we'll go to online or
Again, this is comments that for items that are not on the agenda. I have one minute
First is a phone number ending in two one one
Hi, this is it first of all actually beautiful to hear Lonnie Hancock voice. She was a great mayor
Maybe she doesn't have women mayors. No
She was great. She was that mayor and I like to her. Okay, my assistant
Citroë handy, some people will file for my complaint with the state of California General Attorney
video Berkeley totally
Totally totally betrayed us and tens of thousands of our customers
So read that carefully and also request meeting with the mayor money per share time
the other part of it is
our business contributed more than million dollars to Berkeley City of Berkeley tax treasury our
Hired thousands employees our business are more women
Than men in our big great time than all of our competitors
We don't need help. We need action. Not action ever again. And the rest of them was criminal.
We need action. We need to be able not only our business suffering, but also tens of thousands.
Next is Cheryl Davila, former council member.
So, um, now you're taking 15 minutes after 45 minutes. That's kind of pathetic and sad.
you're really wasting people's time having them come to the meeting and then starting the meeting and taking a 15 minute break after a short period of time.
And side conversations of the council should also be outside. Actually, you shouldn't even be talking or on your cell phones, which you all do all the time during these meetings, which is also pathetic.
And since you've gotten the raise that I initiated by my legislation, you've lowered the amount of time that people are allowed to speak in a meeting, you limited the time for the flop cameras to 2 hours for public comment in the room and an hour online.
That's unfair and everything should be fair, which I know you're not free Palestine free us all free us from the fascism of this Berkeley City Council and they're pathetic. Thank you. Thanks for your comments next is a phone number ending in 0, 0, 0.
We left copies of our complaint on the table in the front of the council meeting, please.
Audience the copy of this. Sorry. I think you've already spoken during the public. Next is Dela Luna.
Yes, thank you. I want to talk today about Zoran Mamdani, a mayor who's only been in office for 4 months and has already.
Closed a 12 billion dollar deficit without cutting benefits from the people nor the workers 8 billion dollars and aid from the state.
An additional 2 billion and pension restructuring, and he has invested in childcare for the people, the housing.
As city infrastructure, so I wanted to highlight this is in only 4 months.
And I think that Zoran Mandani is showing what is possible.
That good governance is possible and that it is possible to care for your constituents and make the city actually work for people.
And I think you all have someone to look up to in that regards, but you cannot tell us that it's not possible. So I do expect you all to move in that direction.
Because it's possible. Thank you. Thank you.
Next is Kieran Slaughter.
Yeah. Good afternoon. Good evening. Kieran Slaughter here.
Look at to be able to make it as part of the public speaker.
Just wanted to give a quick announcement about the 21st annual Tommy Smith,
the youth track meet presented by the 100 black men of the Bay area.
Celebrating two decades promoting athletic.
Kieran, I'm sorry, but I think that's actually on our consent calendar.
Oh, it is?
Yeah.
Oh, man, okay. Well, let me just speak on how proud I am of the Willard Park renovation project as someone who actually played in that park and worked at Willard Park as my first city job.
I just wanted to say how beautiful that center came out and how proud all the staff should be and former Councilwoman Laurie Drossi should be. I didn't know that there weren't any opportunities to speak on the ceremonial items.
but I saw that and I just want to give you all kudos.
It's an amazing project.
It just really brings to life the rest of Willard Park
and also kudos all the hard work and public work staff
during public works week.
Whenever I see them servicing the trash cans
and recycling, they're always smiling
and they're always waving back at me in the morning.
So I'll hold the rest of my comments to the other item.
Thanks, Karen, good pivot.
Last speaker is Denise Jones.
Hi, good evening.
Good evening to the mayor.
This is Denise Jones again.
I'm the director at the Berkeley Drop-in Center.
And again, I am reaching out
for whatever monetary support we can get.
The Berkeley Drop-in Center was impacted
by Proposition number one and the BHSA funding changes
and effective July 1st of 2026, there will be no funding.
We are an entity that helps our community
with food, clothing, mailboxes, locker services.
And despite the major cuts that are coming,
I am currently running the drop-in center with three staff
and who will be gone by June the 30th,
but we still have over 300 clients.
That will be without food effective June 31st.
I'm reaching out for 500K for the next two years.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That's it, that's it for non-agenda public comment.
Okay, very good.
Thank you so much.
Thank you everyone for your public comments.
And we will now move on to the consent calendar.
Council members, do you have any comments
on the consent calendar?
I will start with council member Kaplan.
Thank you, Madam Mayor, and good evening, everybody.
On items 16, 17, these are my office's resolutions,
relinquishing funds for the Berkeley Humane's
12th Annual Pines for Paws fundraiser
and the 100 Black Bend of the Bay Area
as Tommy's youth track meet.
I want to thank my co-sponsors and my colleagues
for their support this evening,
and I encourage all to attend.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Council member, oh, Vice Mayor Traka.
Thank you so much.
I wanted to comment on a few items on this agenda.
First of all, items six and seven,
both are joined Home Key plus applications
and I'm very excited to see both of these
move forward tonight.
I would like to thank staff who made this possible.
I had the deep honor.
Thank you so much to the mayor for sending me
to a press conference today, where it was announced
that countywide, there is another major reduction,
over 10% for the unhoused population
and the unsheltered unhoused population.
And projects like these are in to grow
as we do everything possible towards a Bay Area
that we can all call home, including in Berkeley.
Item 14, recommendation to add three ceremonial
street name signs in honor of Daniel Ellsberg on Kittredge.
This is in my district and I am very grateful
to the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission
for taking this on and making this recommendation.
And it would be, and all the community members
who first reached out to us to do that
and very excited that this is moving forward tonight.
Thank you.
items, item 15, I would like to,
this is a referral to incorporate food insecurity
as a funded category in future community agency,
grant funding cycles.
I would like to thank council member, Kesirani for her work
and wanted to see if it would be possible
to be added as a co-sponsor.
Yes, council member Triggett,
we'd be delighted to have you.
Thank you so much.
Items 16 through 18,
I want to thank the authors of those items
and will contribute $100 out of my T-13 account
to each of those items.
And item 19, which is the Berkeley Rotary Endowment,
Education and Community Welfare Support.
This is going to help the Berkeley Rotary Endowment
to raise funds for the Rotary Care Health Clinic
for your collegiate scholarship program,
supportive housing and hygiene kit programs.
In previous years, these funds were raised together
with and through the taste of downtown Berkeley event.
This year, there was a decision made by W other way
to move it towards a bi-annual event.
So there will be a bigger and better event in 2027,
but the need for this funding still continues
and so I would like to thank the lottery
and I believe Tina is on the Zoom tonight
who can say a little more,
but thank you for continuing to move
this really important effort
and would welcome any D-13 allocations from my colleagues.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
I'm moving on to Council Member O'Keefe.
Thank you, Mayor.
I first want to comment about item 14, I think.
Yes, just wanna say Daniel Ellsberg is personal hero of mine
and I actually, even though I teach computer science,
it seems unrelated, I actually find a way to work him
into my curriculum every year
because the students do not know who he is.
And so I just wanted to say I'm really happy
to be supporting item 14
and thank you so much for bringing it.
And then for the D13 items,
I will contribute to all of them,
except the one I'm already on.
So that means $250.
I would love to contribute to the Pines for Paws,
item 16, to the track meet.
I recently became a track mom,
so I'm especially excited about that.
I'm $250 and the flea market,
absolutely would love to contribute to that.
And I'm already listed as a co-sponsor for item 19.
So thank you so much Council Member Tragu
for Vice Mayor Tragu for allowing me to do that.
Thank you. Thank you. Council member Humbert. Yes. Thank you, Madam Mayor.
And I first have a question about item 13, which is the disaster and fire
safety commission recommendation about the bike plan. I'm wondering if that
could be continued to the meeting where we take up the bike plan. I guess
that's in June.
You certainly could. I mean, I think the point of that item was to ask that
staff do certain things in the bike plan and we have considered and done most
those things. So I think it could come tonight as like a precursor to that item and say hey these are
things we want to make sure you include it in the plan or it could come on the night of the plan
either way. We just I decided to leave it there since it was it was before the plan and at least
not after. Okay yeah it sounds like there's no need to to move it at least to me. Number 14
Daniel Ellsberg is also one of my personal heroes. I read a lot of his writings before I turned 20.
My wife was at a writers retreat in Point Reyes Station and the writers are supposed to sign
their names in the closet. I walked in the closet where she was going to sign
and there was his name and it was really it was a moving experience for me. So thank you for
for doing this. Number 15, I appreciate which is the referral to incorporate food insecurity
is a funded category in future community agency grant funding cycles. I appreciate Councilmember
Casarwani adding me as a co-sponsor on this important item. Food insecurity is a fundamental
problem. It's gotten worse after prices have risen with the pandemic and since. The organizations
in Berkeley that address this are doing essential but often behind the scenes work and we must
be empowered to participate in our community agency grant funding process. That was an
an oversight and I'm glad it's being corrected. Thank you council member
Cassarwani as to item number 16 pints for pause I'm a co-sponsor thank you
councilmember Taplin such a wonderful organization Berkeley Humane and I'd
like to contribute $250 for my discretionary account on 16 17 18 and 19
would like to contribute $100 each from our discretionary D8 account. Thank you.
Thank you very much Councilmember Blackby. Thanks Mayor Ishii. Just a couple of
comments. Again I also wanted to appreciate Councilmember Castor-Juani and team for
item 15. The referral to incorporate food insecurity as a funded category in future
community grant funding cycles incredibly important and I'm proud to
to support that effort.
On item 16, would like to relinquish $250.
I was proud to co-sponsor item 17,
100 Black Men of the Bay Area's Tommy Smith Youth Track Meet.
I wanted to relinquish $500 for that.
And then item 18 and 19, the Berkeley Flea Market
and the Berkeley Rotary Endowment Education Support.
Also $250 for each of those.
And then I had a couple of questions I wanted to ask
on information item number 30 and 31.
I think Mr. Oyenkami is on the line.
I really appreciate getting these quarterly reports
on the performance of our investment portfolio
that leads in very directly to the conversation
we're gonna have about the budget later tonight.
I'm gonna share my screen really quick
just to highlight one piece.
And then ask Henry a quick question
because if there's any policy adjustments
that we should consider.
Just to note, again, there's huge clarity and transparency
in terms of the returns we're getting on the investment
portfolio.
We have about $600, $700 million of assets.
Previous councils, I know, have put very particular constraints
on what the finance team can do with this pool of money.
I also know there's kind of the vagaries of the market
and the length of time of various instruments that we have
and when they come to maturity.
And Henry and I have already had a back and forth
on this in email.
So I think my question for the finance team
and for Henry is, is there more that we can do
on the policy side to relax any of the constraints
that are inhibiting returns?
I'll just observe that, you know,
even if we got a half a point better and matched Burbank
or a point better than match San Francisco or San Jose,
that's worth several million dollars to the top line
on the revenue side.
So anyway, so question just to Henry is,
are there things that we could be doing
from policy side adjustments we could make
that would give you more of the flexibility
to aid on bumping that rate up?
So that's question number one.
And question number two is what the assumption is
in next year's budget for return
and what we're assuming in terms of revenue
from the portfolio, thank you.
Yeah, thank you, thank you for the question.
I just want to give you a little bit of context for this.
If you look at the reports that we had
about a year and a half ago,
we were very close to the top at that time.
There's a cycle.
We buy investments for three, four, five years
and we lock them in.
So when you lock them in,
if you look at the reports that we have,
because we locked them in at that rate,
where it was like 0.5 or 0.75, like just 775 business point.
But now if you look at the same report,
I think there's an exhibit E1 or something in there,
it tells you 10 of all the investments that we locked in
at 0.1 to 0.75 piece are all going to be mature,
maturing this year, within the next six months.
And the market is at about 3.5 to 4.2.
So we are going to buy those investments after the mature
and we are going to be at the top of it by the time,
maybe next or two years,
we're going to be like probably at the high high top
of that ladder.
So it's always technical because of the investment timing
and when we lock them in.
So that's number one.
And then from a bigger picture, yes,
we are trying to see if there's anything we can do.
I know the markets are very volatile now.
So this is probably not the time to be changing stuff.
so we're looking at it in terms of standardized.
And so if you look at the revenues projection
that we did for next year,
we are taking into this account that yeah,
we're going to have more revenues for next year
than we had this year.
And that's one of the reasons why
if you look at the investments,
the earnings that we are assuming we are going to get,
it's probably going to be about 10 to 11 million,
even though we have less money to invest,
because we have a budget deficit
so we don't have enough cash.
But even with that,
we're still going to have more revenues
and our rates are going to go up
because we're going to be able to lock in these higher rates
once these 10 or 11,
I think we have about 14 matures that are coming
within the next six months.
And once those matures are coming in,
we are going to be buying at a higher rate
of about three to four to five percent.
So we are going to be at the top of that cycle again,
while everybody else goes down.
And then once we start maturing again,
then everybody will come up again.
So that it's always been a cycle in terms of lock,
the way we lock those investments.
Great, thanks.
And at the same time, we're looking at,
we're going to cancel to do,
to see whether we should change our investment report.
Miriam, you are having this conversation.
So we've been talking about what can we do on the margins?
What are the things that we can do that can help us
unlock some of the things that we had?
Like you were right,
we couldn't do so many things we couldn't do.
So we are trying to see whether there's anything
we can, that council can help us,
that give us the permission to do a little bit of it,
broaden our investments to see whether we can make,
even if it's just a million dollars more,
that makes sense, but everybody's looking for revenues
and that would help with our budget deficit.
Thank you, thanks Henry.
And just folks, just a reminder, consent calendar,
you know, we shouldn't really be having much discussion
or inquiry at this time.
So I wanna ask if in the future,
you wanna have a conversation about this,
that we take it off the consent calendar.
Okay, I'll just close by saying thanks for this.
Million dollars here, million dollars there.
It's real money as we've heard in the past.
And so, again, I appreciate the effort here
and know you are doing everything you can
to maximize the return here.
We've rightfully so been focused on the cost side
of the equation on the budget
because that's the part that's in our most direct control.
But this does feel like a lever where, hey,
if we can figure out a few other things
do here and Paul you know we've all been talking about this so this is not you
know so I appreciate the conversation the ongoing work here and anything we
can do to support you please let us know thank you. Thank you Councilmember
Luna Parra. Thank you I'd like to donate $200 to item 16 17 18 and 19 from my
discretionary funds and I also briefly want to speak on item 6 the home key
the application for supportive housing in People's Park.
I did not support the development of People's Park
and I mourned the People's Park that was there.
And now our job is to make sure that there are as many
units and permanent supportive housing units
that as possible at that site
to support our unhoused neighbors.
And so I support that strongly.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Council Member Kesser-Wani.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
So I too wanted to just note and thank our staff for,
I believe it's items six and seven
for the support of housing at People's Park,
110 units for low income
and previously unhoused individuals.
And for North Berkeley Bard, that is in my district,
very proud to see our application
with the developer Insight Housing for 85 studio
and one bedroom units serving homeless individuals
and veterans.
These two projects are just a tremendous demonstration
of our city's commitment to housing people
at all income levels.
And I really hope that these two applications are successful
because when we do these affordable housing projects,
we have to have what's called a funding stack.
So it's the local affordable housing bond monies,
it's the state funding, we're trying to get some here,
it's the low income housing tax credits
and all of that comes together to help us create
these new units for people.
So thank you for that.
And then I also wanted to thank everyone
for their kind comments about the item
related to incorporating food insecurity
as a funded category in our community agency RFP process.
I want to add the mayor as my final co-sponsor,
I want to thank the co-sponsors
and everyone supporting that.
And I also wanted to note that we,
the reason why we're simply asking for the category
in the community agency RFP process
is because we were really lucky
and we were able to repurpose federal funds
through home ARP American Rescue Plan dollars
to the tune of 377,000 over two fiscal years.
So that RFP is out and we encourage our providers
of food assistance to respond to that RFP.
I think maybe it's still open for that purpose.
So, so that's that.
And then I did want to just make the donations.
I'm just pleasantly surprised
by all the opportunities to show my appreciation.
So $100 to the Berkeley Humane's 12th annual Pints
for Paws fundraiser, $100 to the black men
of the Bay areas, Tommy Smith Youth Track Meet,
$100 to the Berkeley Flea Market Art Walk event,
and finally $100 to the Berkeley Rotary Endowment Education
and community welfare support.
So thank you all for bringing those forward
and that's all.
Thank you very much.
Councilmember Bartlett.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
And I thank Councilor Cussewani
for bringing forward item 15, this food measure.
During the pandemic we saw the food shocks,
the first supply chain shocks where they hit us
and scarcity came into our consciousness.
We responded and created this food resilience measure
called FARM a while ago.
And so the war in Iran, we know is offset,
is taking fertilizer offline.
So crops are not being planted right now
over different parts of the world, including America.
And also, the fuel prices going up tremendously
will also raise the price of food.
So I think number 15, this food resilience
will be front and center in our conversations next year, sadly.
And I want to co-sponsor it, but of course you left me out again.
That's what we guess we're wanting.
After all of our years of doing together, I can't believe you always leave me off the
good ones.
Okay.
Whatever.
I'm still a fan though.
I'm still a fan.
So Pines for Paws, I want to give $250 to the Pines for Paws celebration, beautiful event
every year.
I love it.
I'm very, very thankful to Council Member Tapin for the Tommy Smith 100 Black Men track me
to donate $250 out as well.
And number 18, the flea market, Art Walk,
this came out of our office.
And so this came from a couple of years, more than a few years,
right, Paul?
I see you, of diligent effort to take this community
treasure and give it the tools to reinvigorate, to evolve,
to grow, to expand its mission.
his mission was set when BART displaced many black businesses in that little area there
to give some sort of economic conduit for people. And so this is a chance to kind of
reinvigorate, get it going again, as I said. So thank you again for all those who contribute.
And the Rotary Club, greater organization, donate $150 to that. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor.
Thank you Councilmember Taplin. Thank you. On item 18 I would like to be recorded as contributing $500. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. I also want to add my thanks and enthusiasm for items six and seven for the two home key projects.
Just another example of the City of Berkeley continuing to apply for funding to support
affordable housing and also access grants at the state level but also you know we're doing
at state, federal, county level. So I really want to thank staff for all of their work there.
That's for the People's Park Project and also North Berkeley Bart. Thank you for Councilmember
Cazramone for adding me to the food insecurity item. Grateful to be a part of that as it's an
issue that's very near and dear to my heart. And then for item 16, 17, 18, that's Pines for Paws,
100 Black Men Track Me, and the Berkeley Flea Market Art Walk. I'd like to donate $250 to each
of those items. Thank you very much. Can we move on to public comment, please? If
you have public comment on any consent calendar or information items only, please
come on up or raise your hand online. Karen, now's your time. Good evening, Madam
Mayor, City Council, City Manager and City staff. My name is Pam Gray and I'm the
Chair of the Board of Directors for the Berkeley Food Network and we are
are Berkeley's largest food assistance nonprofit.
First, I wanna say thank you to council member Kesserwani
and also council member Humbert
for authoring and co-sponsoring this item number 15
on the consent calendar, as well as the mayor
and also council member Trigrib in spirit,
council member Bartlett for also co-sponsoring.
I really wanna say thank you to the mayor
and to all council.
You have all, I know, been down to the Berkeley Food Network
to see our operation and you know exactly what it is
that we're doing and the importance of the work in town.
And I just want to say thank you so much for that support.
So really on behalf of all of the community members
in Berkeley who received this critical food assistance,
I just want to say thank you for all of your strong
and ongoing support for our work, thanks.
Thank you.
Good evening, honorable mayor, city council,
city manager, my name is Andrew Crispin,
I'm the executive director at Berkeley Food Network.
On behalf of Berkeley Food Network,
I want to acknowledge council members Casarwani,
Tragup, Humbert, and the mayor for supporting item 15
to make food security an addressable and fundable item
in an ongoing funding cycle.
Earlier this week, I was in Sacramento
meeting with staff from food banks
and policy and advocacy organizations
from across California to help prepare
for the impacts of HR1.
It doesn't look good.
April 1st, we had over 5,000 Alameda County residents
kicked off CalFresh.
Starting June 1st and every subsequent month on the 1st, an additional 55,000 Californians will be kicked off CalFresh.
And the governors may revise, funding for food banks cut in half.
We're approaching a food security cliff at the same time as economic pressures forcing more families to choose between rent and food.
Here in Berkeley, we are continuing to focus on building resiliency here, especially as we celebrate our 10th year of service.
And we're gratefully looking forward to partnering with the city.
Thank you.
Good evening, Council.
My name is Joe Lissner.
I've been in food not bombs feeding people
on the streets for 26 years,
so I know how important housing is for the homeless.
I also am for some reason indelibly a supporter
of People's Park, especially as our Constitution
is being supported as we breathe.
If only they could both come to fruition.
So what I want to tell you is University of California
threw RCD under the bus.
The very flippant legal brief that totally submerged them.
So what you've got to look out for is, what's the total price?
They are applying for project-based vouchers,
which means they're going to look for federal money, which
means they have to comply with the National Historic
Preservation Act. There's nothing in item six about who's going to pay for that or
how it's going to be brought about. Thank you. Thank you. Hi I'm Patricia Ellsberg
married to Dan for 53 loving years and I deeply want to thank you on his behalf
and that whole family. It means so much and he dedicated his life to peace and
and he loved living in this area.
He drove a little sports car
and I can just see him going around the street
so looking at his name.
Thank you so very much.
He's my personal hero too.
Thank you.
Hi, my name is Phyllis Olin
and I live in District 6 in Berkeley
where I've been for many years.
It has been my honor to shepherd getting the street signs
named after Ellsberg.
The process has been about two years now.
So I am so grateful that this is finally happening.
And I really appreciate the comments
from several council members supporting this.
I want to note also that the signs are
going to be on one side Milvia, this is on Kittredge,
which borders Berkeley High, and on the other side Fulton,
which borders the university.
So hopefully more and more young people
will become aware of Daniel Ellsberg
and what he has contributed to us.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi.
My name is Jackie Cabasso.
I'm the executive director of Western States Legal Foundation
in Oakland, a nuclear disarmament advocacy
organization founded in 1982 and it's been my pleasure and sometimes a little
bit for frustration working with Phyllis and our team over the last couple of
years to make this street renaming a reality. But we're really really very
pleased that it's happening. And I want to say something about why it's so
important in this world today. Dane Ellsberg was also personal hero of mine
but also a friend of mine, and a colleague.
And what he stood for, truth-telling,
whistle-blowing, peace, anti-war,
nuclear disarmament, and social justice.
And he was a giant.
And young people need to know about people like Dan,
and look, and for him to become their heroes as well.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hello. My name is John Burrows. I live in the greater East Bay,
but I was a graduate student at Berkeley. I too,
like Jackie, knew Dan Ellsberg fairly well.
He's pretty well known
for being a critic of the Vietnam War
and releasing the Pentagon Papers. What needs to be known
more is that he was
a critic of nuclearism and an activist
against reliance on nuclear weapons.
He wrote a book, which I recommend,
it's called The Doomsday Machine.
One of the memories of my life is being involved
in a protest at the Nevada test site in the 1980s with Dan.
So it's really terrific that the streets
are going to be named in his honor.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good evening.
My name's Judith Ehrlich.
I'm a filmmaker, and I've made three films
about Daniel Ellsberg.
One, it's The Most Dangerous Man in America, Daniel Ellsberg
and the Pentagon Papers, which was nominated for the Oscar,
and Emmy, and won the Peabody Award,
and brought some more attention to Dan.
And then The Boys Who Said No, which
was about draft resisters during the Vietnam War,
focused on Joan Baez, but Dan was
a major character in that.
And now a new film that we're just
going to release online, June 4th.
It's going to be free and available.
It's a half hour film about nuclear war,
and Dan speaking about nuclear war.
So we're really glad that we can put it out at no cost.
And a lot of groups are embedding it
on their websites as well.
So hope you all get to see it.
Thank you.
And I really, it's going to be wonderful to have.
I live a block from Kittredge,
and I get to see it every day.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good evening, Council members and Madam Mayor.
My name is Claire Greensfelder,
and I'm a 45 year or longer, I can't remember anymore,
resident of Berkeley and homeowner in District Six.
I'm also the executive director
of the California Institute for Community Art and Nature
that produces the annual California Native Ways Festival
in O'Lanee Park and the Berkeley Bird Festival downtown.
but I'm here tonight because Daniel Ellsberg
was also a personal friend and colleague of mine.
And I've been, I've knew him,
I met Dan Perst at a Patricia Booth at an event in Berkeley
about 1980 when I was working
on the nuclear weapons freeze campaign
that actually won in California
and made a difference globally.
Although I've worked many years on other issues,
climate change, indigenous rights and others
like our West Berkeley Shell Mound,
I am helping with the promotion.
I was one of the producers of The Most Dangerous Man
and I'm also helping with the promotion of this film.
June 4th, we'll have our online launch,
and when the street is dedicated,
we're very much hoping to have a big event
in downtown Berkeley to show all three of Judy's films,
and we hope you all will join us.
So I've got you all an invitation.
Yeah, feel free to pass it to the clerk
and we can pass around.
Thank you.
Hi, Kelly Hammagren.
I'm gonna talk about something
that no one else has mentioned,
and probably most of you don't care about a lot,
but it's the record retention schedule.
And of course, I would really like everything saved forever,
but I understand we can't do that
because of space and expense,
but I really wish that that was laid out for us
what the problems were.
And I just think in terms of the boards and commissions,
I know sometimes people feel that they don't contribute much,
but going to those meetings,
I see they contribute a lot.
And then the minutes really don't give us
a good documentation of what actually happened
in that meeting.
With the action minutes, so much is lost
and sometimes it will just say discussion held.
Well, what was that?
And only 90 days to retain records,
recordings of the meetings is way too short.
Thanks Kelly, appreciate it.
Carol Morassovic, first his former chair
of the Homeless Commission,
we did recommend maximizing the number of units
in the supportive housing in People's Park,
I believe we said 125 or 150.
So we're pleased to see this moving forward.
I also wanna address the records retention.
And first, legally, I understand that the city attorney
has advised that the correct records will be retained.
However, it could be that someone is unknown at the time
the issue, and a legal issue could emerge later,
and then you won't have the records.
I'm also concerned from the purpose of historical value.
It's really important to have records,
to be able to go back and research and find information
issues sometimes individuals and and I'm I hope that this is scrutinized
carefully. Thanks Carol. Thank you. Bless you.
Thank you. Good evening council. My name is Andrea Pritchard. I'm with Berkeley
Copwatch and I'd like to address pepper spray reporting. In 1997 when Copwatch
launched our campaign to ban pepper spray. We felt that it was potentially
lethal. There were many deaths that had been attributed to its use and we were
very against it. The pepper spray reporting requirement that was in that
1997 legislation was there because our fear was that the police would use it
against mentally ill people, against people who are marginalized, against
people who could never in this day and age be able to bring a complaint to the
Police Accountability Board.
That people who are falling on our sidewalks,
people who are disoriented, people for whatever reasons
don't do what the police say when the police say to do it.
They're the ones who are going to be suffering.
And the fact that that reporting requirement
was meant to have a unique, was it justified?
Because those folks will never, ever be able to complain.
We just suck it up.
I'm going to tell you also that now that the mobile crisis
team is gone, we have no non-police alternative.
So you're going to have untrained people
with compliance in a can.
And that's how we're going to govern.
And when the police chief tells us, well,
just look at the dashboard.
Look, if those statistics don't tell any story,
somebody's got to get their head in there
And look at how the police are using it.
And we all know dams keep it well, too.
That if the police are allowed to use pepper spray
for crowd control to go after that one person,
and all the rest is just collateral damage.
And I say that to you as somebody
who is a victim of police collateral damage
and their use of tear gas.
So I don't take this lightly, and I also say this.
Poor people deserve parks, too.
And I don't know how you're going
to spend $3 million on a triangle in Dwight and Telegraph.
Thanks, Andrea.
Hello, good evening, Honorable Mary Shee,
wonderful council members and city manager.
My name is Dr. Monique Allen,
I am here representing Community Services United
who operates as the Berkeley Flea Market,
which is under brand new leadership,
stewarded by all female energy,
and remains committed to providing
family-centered cultural activities,
seasonal celebrations, music, art,
and workforce opportunities through the flea market.
Also, I would really like to establish the fact
that we appreciate this investment from each of you
as it affirms Berkeley's continued commitment
to community unity, cultural preservation,
and inclusive public engagement.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Two minutes.
Anyone else?
Three minutes.
I do.
All right, thank you.
That's all I need.
I appreciate you all.
So that's total four minutes, great.
Good evening, mayor, council members, and staff,
residents of Berkeley, my friends, my neighbors.
My name is Aiden Hill.
I'm a candidate for Berkeley City Council District Number 7,
a Southside resident and a long-term renter here.
I'm asking you, please, pull consent calendar item six
on People's Park and refer it back
the Housing Advisory Commission. Now to be clear, Berkeley needs housing, Berkeley needs supportive
housing, but this item involves People's Park, public land, publicly accessible land,
Southside Density, and a $14,359,593 spending in public housing funding.
It also comes while Berkeley faces a structural deficit of nearly 30 million dollars.
A total amount, nearly half the deficit, should not move forward quietly on consent.
This item has not earned community consent.
Residents found out after the Housing Advisory Commission had already acted.
We wrote letters, we showed up, we asked for the item to return for public input.
We were told only a commission member could place it back on the agenda.
none did. Southside has 12,195 residents and a density of more than 63,000 people per square
mile. It is already carrying UC growth, housing pressure, service strain, and a severe shortage
of public open space. This is not opposition to housing. It is opposition to making Southside
absorb another major decision after the destruction of our urban ecology, our urban forest, the
2.8 acres of land that we had for climate change.
Students need housing, unhoused people need housing, long-term residents need better housing,
including myself.
And Southside needs stability.
But Southside isn't empty.
isn't here for corporate aka UC Berkeley aka a multi-billion dollar corporation
that sells nuclear weapons. You have a responsibility to your community not to
corporations. And so if you go forward with this item, if you pretend the
community, the ones that were tear gassed, the ones that were arrested, the ones
that were thrown onto the ground and their children had to watch them because
they wanted to protect a public park. They wanted to protect a place where they had swing sets,
where children blew bubbles in the wind, where we saw dragonflies.
We look outside at Strawberry Creek. You're welcome to protect that. We see San Pablo Park,
Ohlone Park. You all have those parks, but 12,000 people in this district can't have one open space
that doesn't belong to UC Berkeley,
that doesn't belong to people.
If I know what I know,
you will vote in favor of this tonight.
But I want you to know that we did not give the okay.
We did not agree to $14 million of our public's money
being used to destroy this urban space.
We believe in the future of our children,
and that means they need trees to breathe, that means they need community, that means they need
people's park. So I ask you, give us a fair hearing, a fair process, bring it back to
the Housing Advisory Commission. We deserve that much. Thank you. Thank you. Any other
public comments on consent or information items only. You have five hands raised online. First
speaker is Ruben Lazardo. I just want to thank and follow on Kiran Slaughter's expression of
gratefulness to Mr. Terry Taplin, his co-sponsors, the mayor and the council for your support of the
of Tommy Smith, you track me, we're really grateful.
I wanna also, I think there are other folks
from the 100 Black Men in Cal Athletics waiting to also
thank you, but also wanna let you know
that if you can make it to the track meet this Saturday
at eight, you can participate in the parade of champions,
or if you can make it at any other time,
just let us know so we can introduce you to folks.
also want to thank the mayor and the council and the staff for their leadership and helping
get behind the SAHA 110 units of affordable housing at People's Park. Really grateful
for that leadership and the historic investment of affordable housing in the south side.
Thank you.
Next is Cheryl Davila, former council member.
I want the records retention is problematic.
Specifically for legislation of previous council members when you converted your website,
you did not, all the links to legislation that were previously working are no longer working.
I hope you seems like you should have rectified that when you did it,
but you didn't,
so I hope all the legislation is available.
I agree with Aidan's remarks as well as Andrea Pritchard.
Pepper spray should not be on the freaking consent calendar.
It's, it's, it's terrible. It's, I wish someone would have the courage to pull that off the consent calendar. It should not be on there.
People probably don't even know this is at the meeting tonight, or else that room would be next is Karen slaughter.
Good evening honorable mayor council. I just want to once again, thank you for supporting item 17 Thomas with the track meet.
I'm joining you from home,
but I'm also proud member of the 100 Black Men as
well as a proud member of two student athletes at Berkeley High.
We're really excited to bring this signature event back home to Berkeley and Edwards Stadium.
Events like this create tremendous social and economic value for our community by bringing
families, athletes, and visitors to the city while
supporting local businesses and showcasing Berkeley as a destination for youth sports.
I also want to just highlight the work of the 100 Black Men of
the Bay area and the committee for the Hund and Berkman youth track meet and just want
to once again invite folks out there and thanks again for the partnership with UC Berkeley
and the city of Berkeley and the sponsors of this ad. Thank you.
Thanks Karen. We miss you. City of Berkeley.
his uh caller phone number ends in two one one. Daniel is very was a great man. He also
was a friend. I talked with him. He was just unique, was a beautiful man too. Very good
looking. And he actually we need him today more than ever because the big plan, the birth
that most dirty in the West House to start World War three doomsday clock right now was
closest effort in midnight. We are in horrible horrible shape. Meanwhile, just live in peace
while while we'll have life in in the world, Berkeley and everywhere. So let's work together.
May I give me a call? Have a beautiful and good night. Greatest city in the world. Good night.
Thank you. Next is Tina Echeverri. Okay, I'm unmuted. Well, first of all, thank you very much
for putting this on your agenda tonight. I am Tina Echeverri. I'm the treasurer of Berkeley
Rotary Endowment and we have organized as a major fundraiser every year the Taste of
Downtown Berkeley where we try to showcase the restaurants along Shattuck Avenue. However,
we've moved it to a biennial event so the next one is in 2027. However, we still have major
financial projects going service needs.
We have 14 scholarships that we give
to Berkeley High students,
and these are four-year college scholarships.
So there's, it's a major need financially
to support these students from Berkeley High School.
We give them to students that are low-income
in their family and usually first to college.
And not only is it a scholarship,
But we mentored them for the full four years.
We also have the Rotacare Free Clinic.
Thank you so much.
I'm sorry your time's up.
Next is DeMarcus Williams.
Hello, everyone.
My name is DeMarcus Williams.
And I run the risk of sounding redundant.
But I'm actually the chair of the Tommy Smith Youth Track
Meet.
And it's just wonderful to be in your presence on this evening.
I just really want to thank everyone
for their participation, all the council members
who are donating.
There's been a lot of talk about food, right?
And one element that is pretty unique to this track meet
is we actually feed all of the athletes.
So there's gonna be over 4,000 meals given out for free
to these young athletes.
This is a community event,
it's not the traditional track meet.
Tommy Smith, who is dedicated his life
to being a humanitarian will actually be present.
So I really want to stress the opportunity
for you to come out to that meet
and join he and the rest of the 100 black men
in that epic ceremonial parade
and really see where your funds and your efforts
are going to be able to make an impact over on so many people.
We had nearly 15 and over a thousand athletes
coming out to compete.
Thank you so much.
Thanks everyone for your public comments.
I think that's our final one.
That's all.
All right, is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?
So moved.
Second.
All right, is there any opposition
to approving the consent calendar?
Okay, we will approve that by unanimous consent.
Our consent calendar is approved.
Thank you all.
Okay, sorry?
Oh, yes, here.
All right, there it is.
Ceremonial bang of the gavel.
Okay, so we are now moving on to our action calendar.
We have a number of public hearings this evening,
and I'm going to start us off with number 20
to re-establishment of the downtown Berkeley property-based business
improvement district. Now this is kind of an unusual item in
the way in which we have to go about it, but I will explain to you all the
sort of process, and I will start it off, we're going to
start it off with Eleanor. Do you actually, I'm going to pass it over to
you and then I can talk more about the process after, thanks. Can you guys hear
me okay? Good evening Mayor and Council I'm Eleanor Hollander, I'm the manager of
the Office of Economic Development here at the City of Berkeley and tonight I
have the pleasure of introducing an item we've actually talked about two other
times before. This is our third meeting regarding the renewal of the downtown
property-based business improvement district. As many of you know, the
downtown pivot is managed by the DBA, the downtown Berkeley Association and it
provides cleaning and hospitality and marketing services
for Berkeley's downtown commercial district.
The downtown bid was first established in 2011
for a five-year term and renewed in 2016 for a 10-year term.
And the item before us tonight proposes to renew
the district for another 10-year period through 2036.
The authorizing legislation for renewing
a property-based business improvement district
in California requires council to conduct a public hearing.
And upon conclusion, if no majority protest exists
after the tabulation of the assessment ballots,
Then you have the privilege of considering the resolution
to reestablish the downtown PBID.
And if the district is adopted,
we'll also consider a contract with the DBA for 10 years
to administer the management district plan
of the, how many acronyms can I say, of the PBID.
I just wanted to say one thing,
speaking of the DBA and the Downtown Berkeley Association,
I wanted to extend a special thank you to John Caner,
the DBA CEO for his dedicated service
and partnership of this district since 2011.
Thank you.
Did I miss anything, Mr. Clerk, in the process
that I should make sure I mention?
That we're gonna go look at the ballots,
but I'll turn it back to you, Mayor.
That concludes my remarks.
Yes, thank you very much.
So we've already opened the public hearing.
We're gonna take council questions now on this item.
Then we'll take public comment.
Then council will vote to close the public hearing.
The ballots will be counted in the gym,
which is over by the parking lot.
The public may view the process,
and after the tabulation ends,
the city of Clerk prepares and signs the certification
and we will reconvene the item
to accept the certified results
and consider the rest of the item,
which includes adopting two resolutions,
one approving the potentially,
I guess it depends on what happens with the ballots,
but potentially approving the downtown property-based bid
for the next 10 years
and approving the contract with the DBA to implement the bid.
And so what is going to happen is they will go and count,
but we will move on to the next item.
So just so folks understand,
we're doing a little bit of crossover tonight.
Okay, so with that, are there any council questions?
Okay, is there any public comment on this item?
We are on item number 20,
which is re-establishment
of the downtown Berkeley property-based
business improvement district.
Yes, if you have public comment, come on up.
My name is Tim Southwick.
We've been a landowner and business operator
on Shattuck Avenue for over 50 years.
And 10 years ago, we signed up for this project.
And we have about $140,000 invested in this project.
And one of the main reason we like what they do,
they're trying very hard.
We like them.
We like what everything they're doing.
But we signed up for it for a graffiti.
And our main issue is the BART station, the BART tunnels
that go into the BART station.
They're filthy.
The graffiti is crazy.
They're not cleaning it up.
So I have an idea.
I'll opt out of the next 10 years.
Actually, I don't like 10 years, five years.
I'll opt out of it.
And our company will take it upon themselves.
To get rid of that graffiti, it's awful.
It's an expensive project.
They say BART's going to come by and do it.
Yeah, 10 years, they didn't come by and do it.
So the Downtown Association, if they had a chance to do it,
they didn't do it.
I drive by every day, and I see this.
I can't stand it.
I'm going to invest the money, our money,
to clean up the tunnels that go down, just
figure people that come from out of town that walk up
those stairs to go to the University of California,
And all they see is this damn graffiti.
You can't believe it.
And I'm going to clean it up, but I need your permission.
I need your permission to opt out,
because I think this ballot is going to pass, which is fine.
I don't have any problem with that.
But I want to opt out, because cleaning up this graffiti
is going to be a big project.
And so I hope the council will allow me to do it.
and you'll see a clean BART station
that you don't have to worry about.
Thank you, thanks for your comment.
Hello, my name's Tom Parrish.
I am the Vice Chair of the Board
of the Downtown Berkeley Association,
and I just wanted to speak to the value
of the Downtown PBID and the Downtown Berkeley Association
for what it does to keep downtown clean and safe,
and as the manager of four properties
for Berkeley Repertory Theater downtown,
I can attest to the value of those services.
Thank you.
Thanks, Tom.
Thanks for coming.
Any other public comment?
Oh, yes.
Good evening, council members.
I'm Tim Southwood Jr.
You've spoken to my, heard my father this evening.
And I just wanna tell you that I applaud with John Caner
and the Downtown Association has done since 2011.
However, as my father said, we're in support of the measure.
The term is too long.
10 years is too long.
I'm in favor of reducing the term to five years,
as we're committed to clean up all of the graffiti
and everything that the downtown association does.
But I implore you to look very carefully
at the term of the PBID.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Any other public comments online?
It looks like we have two hands raised.
First is phone number ending in 211.
I had a very good discussion with an Orlando a few years ago.
You know what the subject of the discussion was?
She left.
She really left reminding her of that.
But what we need to do, why in the hell
do we have all those empty vacant retail spaces all
Hotel photograph, Shatak, and Pablo, University Avenue,
when this could be thriving businesses.
Why don't the city do what they did years ago?
What fine is the law?
What is the hell are they doing using our own land,
our own city to drive business out of town?
Please consider that very carefully.
Again, Illinois High, perhaps we could meet sometime soon.
You can be a very good person to have a talk with.
Thank you, have a good night.
Thank you.
Next is Cheryl Davila, former council member.
Excuse me. This is a no bid contract.
It should not be for 10 years.
I see 33, 558, 899 million,
million dollars for this 10-year contract.
That is so ridiculous.
I'm sure you could do better when you're facing a $30 million deficit.
Come on now. This is ridiculous.
I don't even know if they do that great of a deal.
If they did, you're going to pay them that much,
they should pay them that much because that's a lot of money.
and it's a lot of money that really is not justifiable at this day and time.
Just like all the other actions that you do are not justifiable at this day and time.
You haven't done anything about the arms embargo.
You haven't said no to fascism, racism, Zionism, and the genocide continues.
But you guys aren't remorseful.
But hopefully, you won't be here for that long because it is an election year and please do vote, everyone.
Vote Pamela Price for D.A., Butch Ware for Governor.
His name wasn't on it because it was an orchestrated attack to keep his name off.
So write Ware in on the ballot and stop talking while I'm talking.
hey, at least try to pretend like you're paying attention.
It's really sad how you guys play games.
And you know what?
I noticed that also people have told me that when I speak,
you don't have me on camera
when I'm in the room at the podium.
What kind of shenanigans is that?
Everybody should be treated equally.
Thanks, Sharon.
Thanks for your comments.
Any other public comments?
That's it.
Okay, very good.
thank you all so much. So can we have a motion to close the public hearing? Wait
I'm sorry give me one second yeah I was gonna say we did council questions but
what's not on my list is comments on the bed itself so I think we should take
comments and then we'll close. Well we could close and then take comments
doesn't really matter. Is there a motion to close? Second. Is there any
opposition to closing the public hearing? Okay we will close the public hearing
then. That was for you. Okay go ahead do you want to speak? Yeah thank you so much
and thanks Director Hollander and everyone. I just want to say you know
this isn't my district but I have had the pleasure and honor of getting to know
the folks in the DBA and work with them and and you know some of us have
partnered on things over the years and John, I want to thank you so much and I
want to say thank you to Matt Dervis and everybody, Perdy, the ambassadors, Tom
from the rep and I mean you you all are more than welcome to do the whole city
if you could find a way to do that well we'd be happy to have you but I want to
just thank you all for what you do for the downtown and for your advocacy for
all of our commercial districts and just I you know it's it's your vote and
it's it's your these just for the record we're not spending any money
this is their mind that they're spending so thank you for doing that as well and
whatever you all decide I just hope we continue working together thank you
thank you yeah council member vice mayor Traeger thank you so much first of all
to the gentleman who spoke about concerns with the graffiti at the BART
station. My chief of staff is here. We're happy to connect you with the BART
director and our point staff point of contact there. I want to just echo
councilmember Taplin's comments. One, in in the 23 months that I have been in
office as the downtown representative. One of my most joyful and proudest parts
of the job was spending a lot of time with John and his entire team, whether
it's at Downtown Berkeley Association monthly meetings or one-on-ones and just
in general. The downtown Berkeley community is so fortunate to have you at
the helm John as well as all the members of the DBA team some of whom are
here tonight and just very excited to hopefully be able to move this forward
for ten more years. Thank you very much. Any other comments from council members?
I just want to add my thanks. John is just an incredible advocate for the
downtown. He's been an amazing partner on so many different projects and my
office has been really focused on supporting our business districts and
generally our local businesses and John's advocacy in making sure we have
vibrant storefronts, supported businesses, clean streets,
and also serving our own house population is just really,
it's admirable.
So John, just please know that I really see all the work
that you do and just totally based on my own experiences.
I was recently, I had guests visiting
and they saw a glass bottle that had broken
and a traffic light and literally we walked
around the block, came back and the glass had been picked up
and I just think that that really just illustrates
so beautifully how much work that people are doing
to keep our streets clean.
So thank you so much to your ambassadors
and all the work that's going into the work
that you're doing.
We wanna continue to make sure that our downtown businesses
and all of our business districts are being supported.
So thank you all very much.
Okay, so we've already closed the public hearing,
the ballots are gonna be counted in the gym,
and then we will return back to this item.
So in the meantime, thank you very much, Eleanor.
And in the meantime, we will move on to item 21,
which is the proposed FY2027 FY2028 biennial budget
and proposed biennial budget public hearing number one.
I sort of want to give us five minutes
just so you can have staff come in and get settled
and we can take a quick stretch break.
So we will be back in five.
recording stopped, recording in progress.
Okay, thank you everyone so much for your patience.
We're gonna open the public hearing for item number 21,
which is the proposed FY2027 and FY2028 biennial budget
and proposed biennial budget public hearing number one.
I will pass it over to our city manager
and ask that everyone quiet down, please.
Thank you.
Sorry.
Thank you, Mayor.
As you all know, we have a significant structural budget
deficit.
We've talked about it quite a number of times
with the Budget and Finance Committee.
We've talked about it with all the city staff a number of times.
You've seen the reports that are in front of you tonight.
So tonight, we will go through both the budget balancing
plan, which focuses mostly on the general fund part
the budget but we will also cover the full budget all funds and all positions
and so it's a fairly long presentation we'll try to not belabor it too much
but we do want to we do want to do it justice and speak about it in a fair
fairly high level of detail where this is our first budget hearing with you our
goal is that we would bring this back June 23rd for adoption and there would
be iterative steps between now and then with the budget and finance committee and coming
back here as well. And so presenting the budget tonight will be budget manager Marikar Dupaya
and our deputy city manager David White. We also have all of our department heads either here
in the room or online if there's more detailed questions about those budgets.
So with that I will pass it over to Marikar to start us off.
Good evening Mayor and Council Members.
Thank you.
So tonight we are going to present the proposed fiscal year 27 and 28
by annual budget to the full council.
First we're going to give you the big picture situational overview.
Then we're going to go and move on to the summary of our general fund.
Thank you.
After that we'll move on to all funds.
which is our overall budget for the city
for the next two years.
We're gonna talk about our proposed 2728 staffing,
next steps, and of course, discussion.
Fiscal context impacts and unknowns.
We've mentioned this several times,
but it's worth repeating that we are experiencing
a structural deficit, not only in the general fund,
but also in other funds, and some examples of that
are parking, marina, and our CIP.
There's rising costs in personnel, pension, healthcare, and liability insurance, and that's nothing new.
Others labor negotiations that are unknowns, inflation, which is coming back with a vengeance.
Reliance on one time sources.
We're also rating still on our year end results for fiscal year 26.
We have deferred maintenance and significant unfunded infrastructure needs, which we just talked about in our special meeting.
increased service demands and community expectations.
And the November 2026 ballot measures,
I wanna pause a little bit here and talk about
not just the two local ones that we discussed earlier today
at the special meeting, which is the go bond
for infrastructure, as well as the use tax and sales tax,
but there's also a state ballot
that has garnered enough signatures
and will be on the ballot this November.
And it's called the Local Taxpayer Protection.
And that has three components.
First one is, it's now going to require
two-thirds super majority vote
to pass any citizen initiative tax measures.
There's also going to be a really strict restriction
on property transfer taxes.
And it cannot go above state level rates.
And lastly, the third component is it will repeal
any property taxes that were passed two years prior.
And last but certainly not least on this list
is our state and federal revenue limitations
as well as our chaotic economic and political uncertainty.
So I've heard this asked before,
Have we faced deficits before
and how did we avoid large scale reductions?
This slide specifically to address that
and the short answer is yes, we have.
So from fiscal year 17 through 2026,
we took about a 10 year look back
and city costs grew faster than revenues.
So average growth of the last 10 years,
8% growth in expenses and 6.5% growth in revenue.
And that's actually skewing the average a little bit
because in fiscal year 2022,
we had the one large anomaly
of our property transfer taxes reaching $40 million.
So that was like a 24% increase
in our general fund revenue.
COVID-19 shifted our economic landscape for the city
and for the whole world globe actually.
The city balance our budgets
by using temporary one-time measures.
This is not an exhaustive list,
but some examples of those balancing measures
were using ARPA funds,
the property transfer taxes that I just spoke of,
hiring freezes, project deferrals,
use the fund balances reserves,
and transfer in from other funds.
Now, these approaches never address
the underlying structural deficit of the general fund.
And although budgets worked on paper technically balanced,
expenses continued to outpace revenues.
This slide goes into more details
of the type of balancing measure
that we did for those 10 years.
So for 2819, we had a deficit of about 10 million,
and that was resolved
by resetting property transfer tax baseline.
Originally at that time, it was $12.5 million.
We got reset to 10 million so that we could have $2.5 million more for operating.
Transfers from other funds, increased transfers to other funds decreased.
In 2021, $40 million was the estimated deficit, and that was addressed through hiring freezes,
no capital investments, and the use of our reserves, $11 million.
In 2022, $27 million and that was when we utilized $23 million of that, of the ARPA
funds, deferment of large capital projects, equipment purchases and new projects.
In 2023, $22 million we use fund balance and salary savings from vacancies.
2024, $12 million, the same balancing measures.
2025, 17 million.
We used the same balancing measures,
but we also added the use of the Section 115 Trusts
and taking a workers comp holiday,
meaning that the general fund did not contribute
into the workers comp fund.
Fiscal Year 2026, the most recent one
that we have addressed, $29 million.
There was an increase
in the general fund revenue projection.
There was a use of the Section 115 Trusts again,
a workers comp fund, IT cost allocation,
small sites reallocation and the freezing
of 45 vacant positions,
which will come into the conversation later on.
For the 27 and 28 budget development process,
we knew that we were going to have a structural deficit.
However, we wanted to approach developing
the general fund baseline a little bit differently
than in the past.
So what we've done, instead of just copying
prior adopted budgets, we actually looked
actual expenditures. Look back about four years and asset departments not just to
look at the four years actuals but look ahead to see what their actual needs are
and that's how we developed the baseline budget. Hopefully this will
eliminate inefficiencies and replace outdated budgets and this was based on
data-driven spending patterns and the real costs of services. The updated
general fund baseline for overtime, hourly, and nonpersonnel expenses reflects this
approach. For the baseline our personnel assumptions includes the following.
There is a cost of living increase for miscellaneous employees but for fiscal
year 2027 only because it reflects current MOU. There is no COLA in fiscal
year 2028 at all but this is subject to change depending on labor negotiations.
There's step and pay band increases for all eligible employees, all ad pays
associated with employees and specific classifications are there in the
projection, increases to all benefits and the majority of that is from health and
pension costs. A good example is our health costs increased 10% from 26 and
and 12% from 27 to 28.
Vacant positions are budgeted at step one,
and the frozen positions,
as part of the 2026 mid-baniel budget update,
are not budgeted also in 27 and 28,
and that's a total of 45 FTEs.
The budget process continues.
So after we developed the baseline,
we knew that we had a deficit
and we had a more revised deficit.
So our budget balancing framework was,
there was a city-wide effort
for a 10 to 12.5% general fund reduction.
And other funds that also had structural deficits
were asked to also come up with reduction plans.
And there were also revenue-generating ideas.
So the general fund deficit ranged from $31.3 million
in fiscal year 2027 to $29.5 million in fiscal year 28.
And this is after the revenue and expenditure adjustments
have been made.
And there's a separate slide to go into that in more detail.
This includes strategic cost shifts, non-departmental,
and other budget refinements,
required debt service support,
and parking fund stabilization.
Use of one-time resources.
Before I go into this, I want to explain
where we're getting this one-time resource from.
$4.17 million of that is coming from what we call operating reserves, but it's actually
came from an 8.01 excess equity calculation, and it's just a fiscal year 2025 unassigned
fund balance. We had the foresight to put that aside because we knew we had to balance
this deficit. About $7.8 million of that came from the dissolution of, excuse me, real development,
$7.8 million and that was came from the finance directors of projection for
fiscal year 2026 and that is being utilized for the following two point one
million dollars in one-time funds used to smooth out the deficit because we
have two very different deficit amounts to solve for in 27 and 28 9.4 million
dollars of that is used to sustain services for public safety and youth and
adult programs in fiscal year 2027 until the outcome of the potential sales and
use tax measure in November 2026. And about half a million dollars is
allocated to employees impacted by the budget balancing plan. The 2027 revenue
projection is also reflected the sales and use tax measure. Additional budget
reductions will be needed if it does not pass. So building the baseline, balancing
the budget, now we're on to the proposed budget and that's what we're gonna talk
about tonight and there'll be several other discussions after this. General
fund budget balancing phase, this is what happened really briefly. I'll just go
over 2027 because 2028 is very similar. So the initial estimate of general fund
deficit in 27 was about 32.3 million dollars.
The additional income from the revenue projection
that came from the finance department on February, 2026,
we netted about 5.1 million dollars.
So the revised deficit after the revenue projection,
our deficit came down to about 27.14 million.
We adjusted it to, there were some adjustments made
And so we looked at to see what are some of the things
organizationally that we needed to address.
And one of that was that we have a debt service payment
for 1947 Center Street that if we don't pay
could impact our ability to borrow in the future years.
And 1947 Center Street is one of those funds
that are stressed.
So we allocated $1.6 million towards that
of the general fund.
There's also the parking fund stabilization
about $1.05 million.
Those are also two funds that are stressed.
Other adjustments to that departmental
that happens to any regular budget cycle.
And with all of those adjustments,
the total deficit before using one-time resources
went up to $31.35 million in 2027.
And the use of one-time resources of $2.1 million
and that is to smooth out the two years,
it's hard to balance a budget when they're very different
in two years.
So we wanted to just kind of come up with
very similar plans for both.
So using the one-time resource, the general fund deficit
after revenue and expenditure adjustment
came down to 29.3 in 27 and 29.5 in 28.
So given all of this, what have we been focusing on
to come up with this balancing plan and this proposed budget.
So the goal has always been,
it's a recurring, sustainable, structurally balanced budget.
Prioritize core services, reduce reliance on one-time,
short-term budget balancing measures,
match one-time resources to one-time needs,
take proactive steps on the factors we can control,
ensure long term fiscal stability,
pursue revenue enhancements
and alternative funding sources whenever feasible,
and live within our values and live within our means.
Program service and staffing impacts.
So despite nearly $30 million in general fund reductions
each year, with reductions in several special funds,
the city relied on its values
and prioritized, minimizing impacts to the following.
Core and essential services,
including safety net services, community wellbeing,
service continuity, and workforce stability.
And at the same time,
the city also focused on strengthening
the city's long-term fiscal foundation,
achieving structurally balanced budget.
While the impacts of the balancing plan
and this proposed budget are significant.
The City conducted due diligence
to mitigate effects wherever possible.
Good evening, Mayor and Council,
and I'm gonna take a little bit of time
to talk about the impacts of our budget balancing plan,
and so we'll go through this in some detail,
but not too much detail.
But before I do that, I just wanna talk a little bit
about the work around addressing homelessness
our community and what we've done with this budget to help do our best to continue to
fund this work and prioritize this work.
So what I want to comment on in the context of this budget is that resources are allocated
for a very broad and comprehensive approach to addressing homelessness.
So this includes continuing to support outreach, shelters, our public works teams that's out
in the field addressing community impacts, all the work that is so very important to
Moving the needle on homelessness,
we continue to do our best to support and fund.
When we came to you last fall,
we brought forward a presentation
under the leadership of Peter Verdu
to talk about our comprehensive approach
to addressing homelessness.
And in that presentation,
one of the things that we talked about
was the fiscal cliff that we were confronting
in being able to support our motel programs,
a very vital component to providing shelter
to help people bridge into permanent supportive housing.
And we had brought forward and admitted
that we understood that we had two motels
of the three that we were supporting
that were gonna run out of funding in fiscal year 2027.
And the two that we were specifically worried about
were the Beyond Horizon program down on San Pablo
and the Campus Motel on University Avenue.
And one of the things that I think we can see
as a bright spot in this budget
is that we're able to preserve funding
for one of those two motels,
and that's the Beyond Horizon Motel.
However, because of our deficit,
there are reductions that are proposed
in our work to address homelessness,
and so I just wanna talk about those for a moment.
So we do propose eliminating the city share
for the outreach worker that is supported
and led by the Downtown Business Association.
The seasonal winter shelter program
is a resource we also proposed
not moving forward with in the coming fiscal years.
This is a program that has moved around over time
in the past most recent history.
It was a program that was operated out of Old City Hall,
Modell Shirek.
In this past fiscal year or past calendar year,
it was moved to a location in Emeryville.
And that was done so because Old City Hall
is not habitable and appropriate
for individuals to sleep in and live in.
Unfortunately, the Emmerville location
is no longer available to us,
and so we do not have another location for this program,
and so we are proposing to eliminate
the funding for this program.
However, we do have continued support
for the inclement weather shelter program,
and that will continue to operate
under the purview of our budget.
The social service specialist position
that funding was provided for in the last fiscal year budget,
that position is vacant.
Unfortunately, we are proposing to eliminate
position as well. Also, we're proposing to reduce funding for the Back Stair
Center. That's a program down on Second Street by about $200,000. We think that
reduction in funding matches the right sizing of the program. They went through
some extensive renovations over the past year and unfortunately have had to
reduce capacity and so we think that this reduction in funding does match
more with what their capacity currently is projected to be. In addition to that,
in order to keep programs funded we are proposing some strategic reallocations
of funding for the boss step up housing program on University Avenue we're
proposing to reallocate funding out of the general fund into another general
fund revenue stream that is accounted for as a separate fund and that's
measure u1 and also we are proposing to reallocate a portion of the funding for
the back stair program into a state revenue source permanent local housing
program, PLHA.
I do want to comment a little bit on Measure U1
and how we're proposing to allocate resources
under Measure U1.
And this chart summarizes a line item budget for that program.
So just to remind everyone, the revenue stream
that we get from that last year was budgeted about $6.5 million.
Those revenues have been reevaluated
under the leadership of our finance director.
And we now anticipate about 6.6 million
in annual revenue stream under measure U1.
You can see the personnel breakdown on the slide.
In addition to that from a programmatic perspective,
there are annual allocations attributed
to the housing trust fund.
We have a very robust affordable housing project portfolio,
about 1,500 units in the pipeline.
There are many different revenue streams
that support that robust pipeline.
However, we understand that, you know,
costs of construction, costs of labor go up.
And so this allocation is important to make sure
that there are resources to help support
the affordable housing pipeline
that this council has committed to.
There are resource allocations for two projects here as well.
These were actually resources that were allocated
in last year's budget, but were not spent.
So we're merely proposing to carry those forward,
both for 1740 San Pablo and Ephesians Court.
And then you can see some of the other categories
here as well.
I already mentioned boss step up housing.
There's capacity building for emerging developers
and our health, housing and community services department
issued an RFP for this program in this past fiscal year.
We continue to have resources allocated
to eviction defense center
and East Bay community law center,
all about doing all the work that possibly can be done
to assist people from becoming homeless.
We also propose the third motel
that I did not talk about before was the Capri Motel.
This motel is also on University Avenue.
And we previously were funding this with state ERF funds.
We also have a city match involved in those.
And so we proposed to use in fiscal year 27.
We were responsible for half a year of funding
for the lease.
We're proposing to use measure U1 resources
in fiscal year 27 and then continuing
to use general fund resources in fiscal year 28
for that motel program.
And there's a small amount of money as well
for flexible funds to assist people with various needs
to keep them housed, rental assistance,
utility payments, et cetera.
So that outlines the totality of Measure U1 as proposed
for fiscal year 27 and 28.
Now, I want to go through a number of different slides
to talk a bit about the budget balancing plan.
So this budget balancing plan was presented
to our workforce on April 15th.
our city manager led an all employee webinar.
We also then presented this to the Budget
and Finance Policy Committee on April 16th.
And I'm not gonna go through the totality
of that presentation, but I do wanna talk about
some of the impacts amongst the various departments
that are in front of you this evening.
So first I wanna talk about the police department.
And I think as everyone here knows,
the police department is a personnel driven organization
that not only works to proactively address public safety,
but they also respond to calls for service.
And over the past five years,
the police department has been very busy.
They've responded to nearly 62,000 calls for service.
And as you all know, when a call to 911 comes in,
we have an obligation to respond.
The proposed 10% reduction in the police department
requires significant personnel reductions
that materially reduces public safety service levels
and compromises the department's specialized units
to respond effectively to community needs.
This is because calls for service will continue.
For the communication center,
the proposed budget reductions will threaten
the department's ability to timely answer 911 calls
and reliably dispatch police and fire resources.
Patrol is the department's core function
and must be preserved to maintain emergency response.
The proposed reductions of 25 sworn personnel,
23 police officers, and two police sergeants
would require consolidation or elimination
of specialty units, including the traffic and motors division,
the community services bureau, the bicycle team,
and significant portions of the detectives bureau,
all of this in order to backfill the patrol division.
However, as part of the proposed budget balancing plan,
we have allocated one-time resources to bridge the gap
until the outcome of the sales and use tax measure
becomes more clear.
Those one-time resources will be used to help maintain
15 police officers, so a net reduction of 10,
as well as six of the 13 dispatchers.
Now I want to talk a little bit about the fire department.
So over the past 20 years,
Berkeley has experienced significant growth and is taller, denser and more
urban, which brings greater emergency response demands and a more complex
operating environment. At the same time, the fire department's call for
circle. Sorry. Call volume has increased 36% to over 17,500 calls for service
in 2025. The proposed cuts will leave the department less prepared to meet
urban fire, rescue, EMS, and wildfire risks that continue to grow. The fire
department's 12% budget reduction proposal is very impactful. Of all the
proposed reductions, the one I want to talk about first is the proposed closure
of Fire Station 4 that impacts a total of nine positions. Fire Station 4 is
very busy. The staff report that we published for the budget balancing plan
indicates that Engine 4 responded to 28 fires, 966 emergency medical incidents
including 17 cardiac arrests, and numerous other emergencies in 2025. Closing this
station will certainly degrade response times and first-alarm effectiveness in
its service area and adjacent districts. And that is why as part of the budget
balancing plan and proposed budget, we are also proposing to use one-time money
in fiscal year 2027 to keep Fire Station open, to preserve all of those nine positions until
we can understand better the outcome of the sales and use tax in November.
In addition to the closure of Fire Station 4, the Department's budget reduction plan
decreases the Department's ability to support development reviews for construction projects
and special events. It ends the Department's street trauma prevention work, limits the
ability to monitor and apply for grants and diminishes EMS oversight. Finally,
through cost shifting, the Department will significantly reduce its employee
health and wellness programming and education which is troublesome. Since the
pandemic, employee injury leave related to workers compensation for physical and
mental injury has remained about 6,000 hours 6,000 hours higher than
and pre-pandemic levels.
Certainly while the department will work
to reassign much of this work,
there's obviously no way that it can absorb all of it.
Health Housing and Community Services Department.
So the Health Housing and Community Services Department
budget reduction plan is inclusive
of not just the general fund,
but results from the loss of funding and special funds
managed by the department including mental health,
public health, aging, and housing.
As a result, in totality,
the department is eliminating 45 positions.
The department's budget reduction plan proposals
results in the transfer of our vector control program
to Alameda County,
eliminates our mobile crisis response team,
eliminates the heart-to-heart health community education
and promotion program,
as well as diminished emergency preparedness capacity
that will result in the department
not having the capacity to coordinate
comprehensive citywide emergency readiness
and response initiatives.
While the department worked hard to leverage
other funding sources to preserve programs
for people experiencing homelessness,
as I described before, and I won't get back into them,
the department did have to propose some difficult cuts
in our work to address homelessness.
I also want to comment on the significant reductions
proposed for the mental health division.
For this division, there are 32 proposed position reductions.
These reductions represent a right sizing in the division
that has been in the works for some time
due to the fact that anticipated revenues
never materialized and the loss of revenue
due to state law.
As a result of this right sizing
and changes in the funding landscape,
the mental health division will continue
to provide specific intensive services
and focus on navigating residents
toward county level alternatives
to ensure that residents have a clear pathway
to all other mandated psychiatric and emergency services.
Finally, due to state and federal funding cuts,
there are a number of different programs outlined
in the staff report associated with the budget balancing plan
that attribute program reductions that reduce health,
nutrition, equity, and mental health services.
For the Parks, Recreation, and Waterfront Department,
in addition to having to reduce expenditures
in the general fund, the department had to address
marina fund deficits and expiring t1 funding that will reduce capacity and
recreation maintenance and capital project delivery within the general fund
in addition to some cost-shifting the department is proposing to reduce after
school programs camps as well as operating hours for community centers
and pools these reductions to youth recreation and adult programs are
proposed to be maintained by using one-time resources with future year
funding assigned to the sales and use tax. For the Marina Fund, which has been
operating a deficit for many years, the department is proposing staffing and
reduction in non-personnel expenditures that will reduce capacity to oversee
Marina operations, leases, and secure grants. Finally, because of all the
funding generated by T1 has been allocated, the department has had to
recommend staffing reductions that will reduce capacity to deliver capital
projects. Not only did the Public Works Department have to address the general
fund deficit but their budget balancing plan proposals address challenges that
are being experienced in other funds such as the building maintenance fund,
off-street, non-street parking funds and the capital improvement program fund. In
total the department is proposing a five percent reduction in its workforce and
the department will prioritize their work to focus on essential public life
safety systems, legal compliance and preventing catastrophic infrastructure failure.
So what the department will continue to emphasize includes emergency response to storms, down
trees in the right of way and immediate hazard mitigation, regulatory and environmental compliance,
critical life safety infrastructure that includes items such as maintenance of traffic signals
at high volume intersections and structural integrity of public buildings with high occupancy.
And essential sanitation such as core trash collection and basic maintenance of public
health facilities to prevent and address disease vectors. Delays are anticipated in repairs
and facility work, non-emergency community concerns received through 311 such as standard
pothole repair, graffiti abatement, litter, and illegal dumping, and reduced support for
special events.
In addition to the service level impacts described, the Department is proposing a reduction in
security services for the corporation yard and project deferrals that ultimately increase
long-term maintenance issues and revenue risks and defer capital projects.
So now I'm going to touch on a variety of other departments, and there's more than I'll describe
that is actually on the slide. So for the city clerk's office there's proposed
elimination of resources for overtime and temporary staffing. There will be
delay planned software upgrades. There will be reduced captioning costs by
relying on zoom functionality and we're proposing to reallocate about 75% of our
rental costs for this boardroom to other special funding streams. For the city
manager's office the proposed plan represents expenditure reductions of
about 13 percent with nine positions that are impacted. However over the past
two budget cycles there are 13 positions impacted representing 20 percent of the
department's total staffing. In terms of service impacts I would like to
highlight the following. Between this fiscal year and last fiscal year all
of the staff in the office of DEI will be eliminated. We will do our best in
the city manager's office to pick up some of the priority projects but the
portfolio of work will be vastly less than what was envisioned when the office
was established and the level of community engagement that was
anticipated will not occur. In economic development there will be reduced
support for small businesses, loan fund management, business improvement
district and commission support, as well as marketing activities. Within civic
arts there will be a reduction in operational capacity, grant
opportunities and staff work will be prioritized to focus on the backlog of
public arts projects. For our communications division with the loss of
both communication specialists there will be delays in response times and
work will need to shift to departments to develop communications and respond to
the media. Also our ability to respond to crisis and emergency incidents will be
impacted. In addition there will be increased administrative workload
that will be spread throughout the department and as I mentioned their
proposed reductions to our work with DBA and the homeless outreach coordinator
and a reduction in animal services contracts. Within the finance department
there are four positions all of which are vacant that are proposed that are
part of the budget balancing plan. Eliminating these positions will have
the following impacts. Diminished capacity for system modernization and
and technology system upgrades,
loss of the only broad scope analyst,
which will limit the ability to perform internal analysis,
revenue monitoring and providing vital backup coverage,
and there'll be reduced staffing
for business tax audits and collections,
reducing revenue generation for the general fund
and zero waste fund.
In addition, there's a proposal to reduce training by 25%,
which we think will be manageable with online offerings.
For a human resources department,
as a result of the positions
that are part of the budget balancing plan,
the department's focus will shift from proactive
and strategic efforts to a compliance-driven baseline model.
Portions of multiple human resource employee roles
will be shifted to the workers' compensation fund,
and their responsibilities will limit
broader human resource services for the organization.
As a result, there will be slower response times
associated with ergonomic assessments,
site visits, and compliance support.
And in addition to the personnel impacts,
there are a number of non-personnel reductions proposed,
including the elimination of some consulting work,
software, and modeling tools that will increase manual work
and require that some work is redistributed
amongst existing staff.
In our information technology department,
with the reductions proposed,
there will be diminished capacity for system support
and modernization, project management,
infrastructure improvements, 311 customer service,
and slower response times to employee concerns.
Projects that will be deferred or delayed
include modernizing the city's phone system,
developing an integrated accounts receivable
and general billing platform,
and certain AI tools that could streamline city processes
and improve service delivery.
Within our planning department,
There's a reallocation of eligible staff costs
to the Permit Service Center Fund and other funds,
reducing general fund spending
with no immediate service changes.
There are also adjustments to internal service charges
to a properly aligned with workload
that will also generate additional general fund savings.
Onto the charter offices.
So we received proposals from the charter offices
and you can see what they are here
and we provided you with all the background
from the charter offices that we received.
I do wanna note, we did receive a proposal
from the city attorney's office late last week
with personnel and non personnel savings of about $250,000.
There's a non personnel savings of 52,456,
and then one position, a paralegal position
that is currently filled that generates
about $201,000 in savings.
The impact of these proposals have not been built
into this budget balancing plan in this budget
because they came in just last week,
but we certainly will work with our city manager
and city council to integrate them as we move forward.
And I'll turn it back over to Maricara
to talk about workforce impacts.
Thank you.
So all of those things that Dora talked about
leads to this very slide, workforce impacts.
The city of Berkeley has a very personnel-driven budget,
and this really limited our balancing options.
And this was probably the most difficult part
of the budget balancing exercise.
About 70% of the general fund baseline budget
is for personnel.
So this really limited our ability to close our deficit
through non personnel cuts alone.
And other funding sources face similar constraints.
During the budget balancing phase,
Departments really prioritized eliminating vacant positions
and looking at other appropriate funding sources
to reallocate positions whenever possible.
And they only identified field positions as a last resort
with focus on preserving core services
and to support long-term fiscal health.
The budget balancing plan, which David spoke about,
includes 183 FTEs.
However, this proposed budget includes 150 FTEs reduction.
45 of that is vacant
from the prior fiscal year 26 budget balancing measure,
and 85 vacant plus 20 filled in this biennium.
The remaining 33 FTEs from the 183 in total are preserved.
And what we mean by that is that 15 of those 33 FTEs
are vacant, and 18 are filled, and they are preserved
by using the one-time resources that I spoke about
in prior slides, ensuring that these positions
are funded in fiscal year 2027.
And we're allocating this cost to the sales and use tax.
For fiscal year 2028, the revenue is included
in the projection, but however, if the measure
does not pass in November, additional reduction
will be required in the mid-bannual budget update to balance.
The next three slides really just gives you a more detailed look at the cumulative reduction
in force in this broken down by position.
So this includes 183 positions that I spoke about earlier.
And this is cumulative for fiscal year 26 and 27 and 28.
is actually also included in the financial summaries
that was part of this item for tonight.
Mayor, did you want to pause here for questions?
Yeah, so because this presentation is so long,
I wanted to pause during certain parts of it
to allow us to ask some questions.
So we're not just asking 100 questions each
at the end of the night.
So do you have, does anyone have questions?
I'm gonna start with Council Member Tapplin.
Yes, thank you very much.
I have four questions for budget, fire PD and PRW.
So FY20 assumes the passage of the sales tax.
Do we have any draft projections
of what things look like if it doesn't?
It's okay if we don't have those,
but I just wanna know if we do.
Ask any projections of what?
If the sales tax doesn't pass,
do we have any like draft numbers of what deeper cuts
you might have to make?
Do we have any kind of scenarios that we might?
9.4, 9.4.
So we are currently allocating
in fiscal year $27.9.4 million of programs and services
between police, fire, park, recreation, and waterfront.
That goes up to about $9.6 million for fiscal year 2028.
So if the sales tax measure does not pass,
assuming all else remains unchanged,
we would have $9.6 million of proposed budget reductions
to address in fiscal year 20.
Thank you.
For PD, Chief Lewis, I'm wondering if you can describe
some of the work that the special units do
and how CSB interacts with the community.
And you said public works as well so.
PRW.
Oh, PRW, sorry.
Yeah, of course.
So maybe if you wanna start heading up this way.
So as you know, our patrol personnel
do the immediate response to calls for service.
All those other units that we mentioned,
the bike force, the community services bureau,
the detective division, they're the ones
that do the follow-on investigation
or relieve the immediate tension
the patrol officers would face if they had to handle those calls for service. It allows us to
engage with the business districts, the community, and ensure we have a proper follow-up of investigations.
Thank you. For Fire Chief Craig, can you talk about the street trauma prevention program
and the neighborhood utility of the CERT trainings?
Sorry, what was the second part of the question?
Second part was the neighborhood utility of the CERT trainings.
Yeah, so Street Trauma Prevention Program, I think everybody's somewhat familiar with.
It's a novel program started here, I think it's the first in the nation where we're trying
to integrate the fire department into the Vision Zero process for the city and look
at how we can achieve what are two righteous goals, both reducing street trauma and death
and also maintaining or improving response time so we don't see an increase in injury
and morbidity from on the emergency response side.
let's see cert so it's a long-standing community education program that helps
prepare individuals and drive neighborhood preparedness for all types
of disasters essentially operating under the idea that people are going to be on
their own for 72 96 hours following a major disaster so there should be a
personal preparedness plan and neighbors should come together to prepare for that
period of time. Thank you for Director Farris. Can you give us a sense of the
number of community center and pool hours that would be reduced and how many
families might be impacted by Camp and Ethel School reductions? I think we had
you know depends on how you divide it up but we had planned on one scenario means
that we closed the pool on weekends reducing after-school spots by I think
it was 35 or 45 and reducing a variety of summer kind of low-income camp spots
and a variety of other programmatic changes. Thank you all very much. Thank you.
Moving on to Councilmember Bakkeby. Thanks Madam Mayor and thanks everyone for being here.
Just to be really clear about the next fiscal year budget,
so station four and the nine fire department personnel
and the 15 police officers and six dispatchers
that had been considered to have been reduced
in the initial balancing plan, those are retained.
I just wanna be crystal clear about that in the process
so folks know.
That's correct, along with three positions
in the parks, recreation, and waterfront department
that will continue to maintain pool hours,
community centers, etc.
Yeah, so we know what's at stake
and we know this is an option that's been considered,
but for the next fiscal year,
those are all retained.
Okay.
One kind of global question,
maybe this for the city manager,
what we're seeing is certainly not unique to Berkeley.
We're seeing a lot of local jurisdictions,
we're seeing the county,
we're seeing city of San Francisco
that are struggling with these really big
structural deficits.
Is there anything, are there any other trends
things that are going on that we can look at there but apply and how does
that affect how we balance our budget here? I mean how much basically it's how
much is this is local to Berkeley and how much is our other effects that we're
trying to deal with? Well as you point out rightly this is a phenomenon that
we're seeing in a lot of other jurisdictions as you said ranging from
San Francisco to Oakland to Alameda County to Hayward San Leandro it's you
were seeing it happen all over and you know there's different reasons for the
deficits in different places. I think as the staff described here today, part of
it on our side is expenditures going up higher than revenues driven by a lot of
different forces whether that's inflation related to whatever is going
on COVID related or in this case we're anticipating more you know here on war
and in oil price related increases and so there are a lot of different reasons
But it's we're seeing similar deficits all over the Bay Area and in the private sector too. Yeah
Um on the homeless services side
It feels like one of the big elephants in the room when it comes to the budget is just
What if anything's happening with measure w from the county and when we can expect?
Funds or do we have any visibility? I just I find it incredibly difficult to budget when we don't really
Know what's happening there? Could you speak a little to that?
I can but not with a lot of comfort unfortunately we also don't have a lot of insight into when
the county's going to release various tranches and types of Measure W resources. You all have done a
collectively as a council a good job advocating to the county for Berkeley's needs. We also on the
staff side talk to staff in the county a lot and so we do have good and open lines of communication
I think partly they're just still figuring out on the county side also. Would we expect that when
the funds come that they are supplementary or could some of that actually replace city spending?
I'm just, is that free up city spending or how are we thinking about that? Well it's a good question
and we we have really tried to make the case to the county on both of those sides of that equation.
One you heard today that and you know that we have this fiscal cliff issue with the motels and that
has been something that we have really highlighted with the county to say you know we respect and
appreciate that we want to do more and create more programs and housing opportunities, but at the
same time we need to be thoughtful and cognizant of not adding to the problem by letting programs
that we already have established and no work cease to exist. And so we've made that case
quite clearly to them. You all have helped make that case also, so they're very aware of it and
I'm hopeful that they'll take that into account when they start figuring out how exactly they're
going to put forward the Measure W funds. Great, two more things and I'll be
done. On the fire side with Chief Sprague, some of the feedback we've gotten
certainly from residents in addition to obviously opposing the closing of the
fire station, which I share, I could not vote for a budget that closed
station for, but folks are asking about, you know, we passed Measure GG in 2008,
we passed Measure FF in 2020, but the fire department is also significantly
really supported by the General Fund.
It just helped us again understand the source of funding
and why we can't just rely on FF and GG
to fund kind of the overall fire department efforts
and why General Fund is an important part of that.
So the fire department I think fairly uniquely
is 30% funded by special funds.
So our General Fund budget has now,
about 90% of it pays for sworn staff
operating out of firehouses.
Whereas most of the administrative functions
have been shifted to these special funds over the years,
primarily because they've either stopped
and then been restarted when these special funds
were passed by the voters,
or services were expanded by the voters
that are paid for exclusively by these special funds.
So when we're talking about a general fund deficit
and reduction in the general fund,
there's not a lot of positions that are possible to cut
that don't directly impact service delivery.
Does that answer your question?
Yeah, it's like, so 30% of your budget
is from the special funds,
but 70% is still from the general fund.
Correct.
So that's part of what's happening is,
the majority of your funding
still comes from the general fund.
It does, but because all those administrative services
have been pushed to special funds,
90% of that general fund allocation
is paying for people that are in the firehouses
delivering service.
Got it, okay, last one.
A PRW question, it's actually a PRW
to fire connected question.
We've talked about this before.
I noticed one small bullet point in the PRW slide
was reduction in spending on fire fuel work.
Obviously, that's important to D6.
Can you talk about that, how sizable is that,
and is that something we could figure out a way
to at least restore some of?
The reduction, typically in the last couple budget cycles,
We've gotten $450,000 to do visitation management
and tree removal in the right-of-way in the hills.
And this year, we, with the cut,
will probably eliminate all the tree removal.
My city, our risk feels comfortable
that we have done a lot of good work
over the last eight to 10 years in the right-of-way.
I think that money started coming in in 2016.
and that we're in pretty good shape there.
And so the remaining, I think the reposing not to cut
the 223,000 will go into vegetation removal in the hills.
Okay.
And that might look different in fiscal 28 and 27?
It would be the same.
Maintain 27 and 28.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Council Member O'Keefe.
Thank you.
I think this question's for the WDC City Manager, or maybe Chief Sprague.
I was wondering if you could speak a little more about how the decision was made to target
Station 4 for potential closure.
Yeah, there's no good firehouse to close.
Each firehouse has a huge impact.
The way we landed on Station 4 was it's the second to second slowest station.
Station 7 on Shasta is the slowest station, but it's so isolated.
One, if we close that station, response times would be so much longer.
And also, I can only cover it from one side, from the west, from station 4.
Whereas station 4 is the second slowest station, I can cover it from three sides.
Seven can come down the hill.
Station 2 can come from downtown, and station 6 can come from the west.
So if there was a station to close,
you want to close the lower volume station
because all those calls don't go away.
They have to be redistributed to other companies.
And then you look at how can I fill that hole,
fill the gap that's left.
Do you have, have you done an analysis
or do you have an estimate on how long,
how much longer it would take the average response for it?
We'll work on it.
Unfortunately, we don't have that type of technology
like at our fingertips.
Yeah, I wasn't sure if that was mathematically modelable.
I was wondering if any alternatives, like did you consider perhaps trying to save the same amount
of money by distributing the staff reductions in a different way like a more like a brownout model
or like you know reductions sort of across the board rather than closing a station? Yeah I mean
closing a fire station to us is kind of a nuclear option. We looked at every other scenario. Brownouts
keep in mind that's savings via overtime so you're not saving full staff cost
there you're only saving the difference between what it costs per person to
staff full-time and what it cost to backfill that vacancy with overtime so
it's a much lower savings and in order to reach the three and a half million
dollar target we have to close upwards of two fire stations a day with the
the other one is from the
community.
We're going to put in the
community.
We're going to put in the
community.
We're going to put it in the
brown out model which just
isn't feasible.
Okay.
Second to last question.
How many residents in the high
fire zone are currently served
by station 4?
I don't need an exact number,
but do you have a sense?
I can get it.
I'm not sure.
Okay.
Some.
Many.
Okay, thank you for the answers. Yeah, this is very concerning and I didn't know you
shared the concern, but it's just good to for the public and for us to get an
understanding of how this decision was made. So thank you. I just would like to
clarify also for the record, this is a more of a procedural question. You know,
obviously we're not going to vote on this budget tonight. We're not, we're
far away from that, but let's say this was the proposal that we
voted on, it would, you know, the idea of closing the station is a, it's a projected
outcome for the next fiscal year. So is it true to say that if, if we did pass this proposal
or something like it, that we would have another chance to vote on actually closing the station
the following year? Like we, it comes back. If you could help us understand that process,
that I'm not sure.
Yeah, I mean, I can start it, yes.
So the short answer is that our hope
is that the sales and use tax in November passes
and we don't have to have that conversation.
That's the plan.
If that fails and we're back here having that conversation,
we would immediately start planning on,
well, what would that look like?
And so then we would be having another series
of budget and finance committee meetings
where we're talking about that, budget hearings here,
preparing for what's the fiscal year 28 budget
like and we'd have to decide that obviously between November and June and the council will
get another chance to weigh in on that correct okay thank you yeah because i think like i think
council member blackaby said i'm i'm not comfortable voting on a budget that would
actually close the fire station but i understand this is sort of this is a projection sort of a
loose plan for next year and we'll hopefully won't have to figure that out but that's that's
helpful to have that clarified that procedurally thank you so much and just to reinforce the city
Manager's point and the point Mayor Carmade about our budget projections, the fiscal year
28 revenues, assume the sales and use tax measure passes. Of course, yes, thank you.
Thank you very much. Vice Mayor Traig up. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I have five questions. Some of
these I've asked before in committee, but I thought it would be valuable for the public's benefit to
I asked them here, others are new.
Three of them are related to HHCS.
Specifically mental health and behavioral health.
So I don't know who the appropriate person would be
who's available to answer these,
but I will just step through these.
I wanted to ask about the impact of the outbreak
talks of moving certain funding for like mental health and public health to the county.
Specifically, I just need the percentage generally what percentage of the funding streams
from the general fund versus those that are passed through
through the county or other revenue sources.
I am certainly not advocating
closing any department just to be clear.
So that, but since we have received some questions what,
or I have received questions from constituents,
If we were to move all of our public health functions
to the county, would that even be possible
and would it save any money?
Could you speak to that?
The first part of your question,
are you asking specifically what percentage
General Fund supports public health and mental health?
I believe our fiscal manager is also online.
Ann Song.
Hi, I'm online and I'm.
Working on those calculations right now, and I can try to provide them.
Sometime during this meeting, and I can say at a high level council member that.
Part of your question was what would the process be? It would, it would be a complicated process where we'd have to get authority from the state and authority from.
work out an agreement with the county as you're alluding to there is general
fund subsidy in in public health mental health and environmental health and so
you know one of the questions that would be asked of all of us is okay if we were
to transition the public health division to the county what part of that what
part of that city subsidy would go along with it if any and and we would just
have to be clear-eyed that if the answer was none then we'd be understanding
here's here's what we're not funding anymore. And so the Budget and Finance
Manager can come can can speak a little bit to that later on in the meeting
about how much that is and if you want we could come back with more detail about
specifically what programs we're talking about. Yeah thank you for my
understanding based on past conversations is any any savings would be
somewhat minuscule as a proportion of the overall budget
to fund mental and behavioral health,
but I just wanted to confirm that.
Okay, my next question is around the operational impact
of discontinuing mobile crisis
and the county picking up that function.
If I am walking in the district as I do every day
and I see a mental health call and or a mental health
situation, do I have options available
to me around calls for service or other than PD
or do I call 911 or the non-emergency line
depending on what the issue is?
So yeah, mobile crisis services would go to the county. And my understanding is that the county would be your option there.
And this is probably a longer conversation, not to, but around how would the public be informed what number to call if they want a call to go to the county.
Um, okay. Um, moving on. Um, I wanted to ask what direct or indirect impacts to
behavioral and mental health services. Um, there might be, uh, as a result of
the governors may revise and specifically are there aspects that I
know it just came out so really this is a question of how to the extent you've
had a chance to look does it impact any of the projections positively or
negatively. Yeah the May revise budget just came out so we haven't taken that
into account and it's not finalized so especially as it pertains to behavioral
health monies. Thank you. This is my penultimate question. Can you speak
broadly? This might be for David. When it comes to revenue generating positions
that may be at risk of being caught, how are projections being made in terms of
the opportunity, the potential opportunity costs of then not having
staff available to apply for certain grants or to realize additional revenue
generating opportunities? I mean I'll start off with you know in developing
the budget balancing plan and looking at our revenue projections we did not
anticipate any impact to our revenue projections from the budget balancing
plan. However, there is reduced staffing that is proposed in the budget balancing
plan that will impact our ability to go after grants. We're trying to preserve
some resources to maintain our flexibility to do so but it won't be as
brought as it is today. In terms of other revenue opportunities, as we mentioned, there
are two positions in the finance department. They're vacant today. They've been vacant
for some time, but if they were filled, they certainly could enhance our ability to generate
revenue as well. So those are some of the things that we were looking at.
Thank you. My last question is around, you know, later on this agenda we will be voting
on potential fee increases. You're going to have some of my time.
Okay, thank you. Can you just confirm that the current budget assumptions does not factor
in those fee increases and what if that is the case,
what may be the impacts directly or indirectly
on the budget projections if we do not approve
the recommended fee increases tonight.
So the fiscal 2027 fees that we'll be discussing later
not included in our proposed budget. And therefore if they do pass and we start
receiving revenue we will then have a better idea and that will be implemented
in the 2028 new annual budget update. Thank you, those are all my questions.
Thank you. Excuse me, we have a few couple council members left. I want to
remind folks we're only a third of the way done with this presentation so if
you could keep your comments brief we will we will keep getting back to it.
All right council member Bartlett. Thank You madam mayor and thank you for this
Very sobering and of course very alarming budget
I have a question about the Mr. Sprague, are you here still? Yeah
This is regarding the the fire station closure
right
so
So how does the the budget training work because i'm thinking about
The measure FF's of the world and the things that we've worked hard to to provide what felt like direct funding to BFT
What's the interplay there?
To this budget reduction process. Yeah, so the budget reduction exercise was there's a general fund deficit. So cut
12 and 10 or 12 and a half percent from the general fund
We've looked at you know
The there is some cost shifting that we did do to you see funds measure GG and measure FF
but we were very careful to stay within the confines of how those measures were written.
Alternatively, we could have legally gone in and taken the full, you know, six million
out of those measures, but then our feeling was we were kind of going back on the promises
that we made to the voters when they passed those measures for expanded services if we
or use those funds in supplant general fund dollars,
if that makes sense?
OK, I think so.
I think that made sense, actually.
I'll have to watch it later and break it down again.
Yeah, very, very, very disturbing.
Is the HHS person here online?
Yes, I'm here.
Excellent, hey.
So regarding the sort of the significant cuts
to your department, I'm wondering if any of those cuts
are restored via the proposed bond measures
and tax, a sales tax measure that we are contemplating
putting forward voters.
I don't believe any of our, we'll defer to you on that.
I guess Mr. White, would you know that?
Can you repeat the question please?
regarding the the HCCS officers who are who are who are cutting of the plan does
the does the sales tax and the bond measure restore any of those or any of
the services perform therein no the sales and use tax measure only supports
within the police department the officers and dispatchers buyer station
for and then three position and parks recreation and waterfront to preserve
of community programs.
Okay, and I guess that's all for now, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Oh, was there another Council member Luebher did you, no?
Okay, thanks.
Okay, I wanna get back to the presentation
and I also am wondering if the tally's done
so that we can finish that off so folks can leave.
The tally is done, they just need to get over here
I can confirm it.
Yeah, they have to, you know,
put it all together.
And certification form and everything,
and they'll bring it over here for me to sign.
We also need to open the other public hearings
before 10 p.m.
Yeah.
Okay, so what I wanna do is I'm gonna say first,
I'm going to open all of the public hearings
for the remaining items.
That is item 20.
Do you need me to read them all or can I just?
22, the Animal Care Services fee schedule.
23 of the neighborhood services code
and forth and fee schedule.
24 changes to the environmental fee health fee schedule.
25 fees, health, housing and community services,
facility rental fees.
26 changes to select recreational recreation facilities
and program fees.
27 changes to planning and development fee schedule.
28 repeal and reenact Berkeley municipal code chapter 14.52
to adjust the Go Berkeley parking management program.
Change parking permit fees,
establish a new schedule for parking violations,
fines and late payment penalties,
and recent resolution number seven one comma six two seven
dash NS and 29 zero waste plan checks
and compliance inspections fees.
Those are now all opens before 10 o'clock.
So, and then I think we still haven't gotten that.
So what I'm gonna do is gonna go back to the presentation
and hopefully finish another third, go ahead.
So this next section is focusing on the general fund.
We wanted to show you the trajectory of the general fund
from the baseline development all the way to
what we're proposing right now as a proposed budget.
So for 2027, the baseline,
the revenue projection was 297.2 million.
Personnel expenditure at the time was 225.5 million.
The non personnel came in at 105 million,
a total expenditure of 329.5 million.
So we were looking at a deficit of 32.3 million dollars.
Do we need to stop through here?
The fiscal year 20, oh wait, yeah, go back, thank you.
One more.
Oh no, okay, that's fine.
And with the fiscal year 2027 proposed
what we are presenting to you today, tonight,
is a revenue of $314.9 million
and the total expenditure of $313.9 million.
We actually have a surplus of $981,000.
And the proposed surplus is subject to change,
obviously, as the budget is refined.
The current estimate reflects a combination
of the revised revenue projection from February, 2026,
a routine budget cleanup that occurs
working with departments.
We added a one-time general fund resources to the revenue
as well as an increase in indirect cost charges
and implementing the budget balancing items.
This slide talks about the same thing
but for fiscal year 2027,
the baseline revenue at the time was 302.3 million.
The total expenditure came in at 335.6 million
and we were looking at a deficit of 33.2 million dollars.
After the revised revenue, budget balancing,
and typical budget process cleanup,
the proposed includes a revenue of 320.3 million dollars,
total expenditure at 319.6 million
with a surplus of almost 700,000 dollars.
So this slide talks about what changed from 27 and 28 baseline versus 2027 and
2028 proposed. And it breaks it down a little bit more than the prior slides.
And what this really talks about is this is all personnel and it goes tells you
the decreases from those major cost drivers under the personnel category. So
health and retiree, other pension, salaries, workers compensation, and overtime.
and it really just highlights that the bulk of our reduction came from our
personnel cost. General fund revenue by category. So this is a
breakdown of the revenues that we receive. We receive, we have a lot of
revenue sources from the general fund so we categorize some of them but the
takeaway from this is that our number one revenue source that goes into the
general fund is property related taxes which comes in at about 45 percent. And
the other revenue are coming from business license tax, sales tax, utility
users tax, vehicle in lieu, and interest income which totals another 31 percent.
Those are our top revenue generating which is why I spent a little bit of
earlier talking about the state measure that might be on the ballot this November.
This slide shows a breakdown of our expenditure by department. So the city,
the city clerk's budget shows a million dollars more than what was in the budget
balancing plan that's because we kept that $1 million to preserve it for the
known increases in our property and liability insurance. The city manager
budget decreased more than what was in the budget balancing plan because we are
moving the whole budget for the animal services to its own fund from the 115
animal shelter fund and the non-departmental increased because we are
transferring out money from the general fund to fund 115 and also just a slight
note that the library does not get any typically does not get any general fund
allocation and the rent board gets an annual fixed amount of 370 thousand
dollars the proposed general fund expenditure by department and this
This truly just breaks down our biggest cost driver
for the general fund and it's no surprise
that it's public safety.
Then HACS, there's also general government,
which is administrative, our legal department.
So that's city manager, mayor, council, HR, IT,
city audit, all the charter offices, finance,
And non-departmental is also a big cost driver,
and that typically is transfer outs
from the general fund to other funds.
One of the example of that is the $13 million or so
that we transfer annually from to the CIP fund
for $4.1 million of annual baseline
and the $8 million plus CPI for the PCI improvement.
This is just another look of the proposed general fund expenditure, but it's broken down by category.
So I wanted to point out that the biggest driver again is salaries.
Can you guys hear me?
Is salaries.
And the next point is, I wanted to point out that the capital outlay
is significantly smaller than prior years.
And that's because this budget cycle,
we did not have any one-time allocation
to capital projects that stems from the general fund.
Some of you who's been here before
are familiar with the term tier one,
where we would have general funding available
and we would allocate those to one-time programs or projects.
This time around, we did not have that opportunity
in this proposed budget.
Thanks, this is another one of our like little pauses.
Does anyone have any questions?
Yep, go ahead.
Oh, sorry.
I think, yeah, Council Member Taplin.
Okay, Council Member Lenoppara.
Thank you, I just have a quick question
about the vacancy tax.
And if that's in the other tax section,
I just didn't see it on the list.
Yes, it's in the other taxes.
And did the vacancy tax underperform
or overperform this year?
Like, where is it on the.
Our finance director can speak more specifically.
I understand for this fiscal year,
we had, I think, $2 million budgeted.
And right now, we've collected about $400,000
was the last time I checked.
I haven't seen the most recent monthly numbers.
If Director Oya Kame has anything updated,
he can address that.
We have about half a million.
We've received about half a million dollars.
It's underperforming.
Is that because property owners aren't paying it,
that have vacant units or because there are less vacant units than previously?
A combination of both.
This is the first time where we're building it.
We are partnering with the rent board.
The rent board sends us the two departments that are working on it.
The rent board sends us who to build and we build them.
and so we've been having issues with maybe the building itself and the collection piece,
but this is the first time we're doing it and so we are in the middle of looking at one of the
reasons why are we not building enough or if the assumptions we had was wrong, whether the
information we had about how or whether the rental people are actually doing their renting,
We're not having enough vacancy as we thought they would have,
but we're looking at it to review why it's not performing as we proposed.
Thank you. Councilmember Taplan.
Thank you. For my edification,
can you clarify how slash why there would be a surplus if we have a structural deficit?
Clarify what again?
How there would be a surplus if we have a deficit.
Do you want me to answer that?
So, we started off with a general fund deficit, however, after we did the budget balancing
measure plus the application of the one-time use of the $12.045 billion one-time revenue
and the changes in indirect cost charges, among other things, we ended up with a very
small amount of the longer deficit, but a surplus.
Thank you. Had we considered using that to replenish some of the one-time borrowing that we did or
so-called one-time borrowing that we previously done from, let's say, the pension trust,
where the workers' comp funds? No. No, we didn't, Councillor. We, as budget manager Dupuy said,
were concerned about some expenses coming in higher than we thought. For example, the insurance came in,
I don't know, quite a lot higher than budgeted,
and we think there's gonna be some other ones
behind that one.
So we want that to account for volatility.
Exactly.
Yes, to address some of those issues,
the challenges and unknowns that we talked about earlier.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Council Member Bakabe.
Two questions.
First, around the sales tax.
So our fiscal 28 proposed revenue,
So that assumes a full year of the sales tax,
is that right?
Correct.
OK.
So without the sales tax, and again,
we think that's around $8 or $9 million.
I think that's?
$9.64.
OK.
So just looking at fiscal 27 versus 28 revenue,
without the sales tax, our fiscal 28 revenue
would actually be $311 and fiscal 27 revenue is $314.
So without the sales tax, we're actually
projecting a reduction in revenue year over year.
Do we know what's driving that?
Is that a Henry question if Henry's there?
I'm just curious, year over year,
what's happening to cause us to project a reduction
in revenue if there's any one or two particular things?
All the projections that we have for the next five years,
there's just an imaginary rate of revenues,
like about 2.33%, where there's no reduction in revenues
from for the next five years that we have.
The just marginal rate of return is what we have.
So for 27, I think we're projecting, we changed that.
And then it's like 310 for 28 or 311,
and then it's 318 for 29, and it's 325 for 2030.
So all our five-year projections
like about two to 3% increase in revenues.
Okay, I was just observing on that slide
between fiscal 27 and fiscal 28.
If you subtract out the sales tax in fiscal 28,
it looks like, anyway, just take a look at that.
That's a really good observation and yes,
because in 2027, we incorporated in the revenue
the one time, the 12.05 million dollar
for the one time use, correct?
And that's not included in 2028.
Thank you.
Last thing, non personal expenditures.
even after again we've gone through this exercise we're trying to reduce where we
can baseline to proposed in both 27-28 like non-personal expenditures or
forecast increase is that where we're seeing the things like increased
insurance and some of these like you know everything else is coming down you
know personal expenditures are down 7% total expenditures are down 4.7% but
non-personal expenditures are up a million dollars even after this sort of
budget balancing exercise just curious again what's driving you know what's
striving that if we know. Our non-departmental because we did move some,
we increased our general fund non-departmental again to offset some of
the animal services move. We also increased our non-departmental to
predict some UAL costs due to because UAL cost is a fixed cost no matter how
many staffing, how many FTEs we have. So we did a very, you know, rough estimate of how
much we would still need to pay even if we lose FTEs and there's other various things
that we added.
It did sound, and there's this unexpected insurance, I know there's other things that
we're seeing.
Yes, in 2027 and 28 even though we, in the baseline, we treated it up what we have budgeted
in the past for insurance then U.S. estimate we may receive this still about half a million
dollars more than the increase that we have already implemented in our 2027 budget and
this is for things like seismic fire you know just correct okay thank you thank you so much
I'm sorry I have in my rush to continue us on I didn't get to ask two questions for both
chiefs. One of the question is maybe Chief or David, can you clarify which of
the specialty units will shrink and which ones will end? I just wasn't clear
on that slide. Yeah, so most of our units are already working at reduced staffing
just from attrition we've had over the years. We would get to the place where
we'd have to make the assessment about whether we just continue to shrink them
and try to keep them all open,
but relatively ineffectual or close when together.
We haven't got to the point where we've really laid out
what that exact decision-making would be.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
And then for Chief Sprague, can you just speak
to just follow up on what Council Member Taffan
was asking about, the street trauma prevention position.
Like how has that been working?
Is there currently anyone in that seat?
Can you just talk a little bit about that, please?
Sure, yeah, it's a filled position.
Ron is here in the audience and it is,
it's an exciting program because it's new
because this is an issue across the country
where fire departments and Vision Zero employees
in public works and advocates in the community
are kind of coming into conflict often
when everybody's focused on saving lives,
but it's a difficult situation.
So we're trying to create a program
that can deconflict that, bring people together that find themselves at odds in this situation,
and the work that's coming out of STP and that Rania is doing is novel. It's from everything,
I'll put it this way, but until Rania came, I was the only one that had time to think
about the stuff in our department. So there's just nobody to do this work. So she's helping
move things forward that are as simple as adopting a modified speed hump that allows
us to pass that many other jurisdictions already have in place to as complex as having numerous
groups of Cal students work on a variety of different projects around technology, community
perception, so all kinds of interesting work is really starting to flow out of that program
and unfortunately all that would stop because there's,
it would go back to just me being able to focus on it
when I have time to answer your question.
Yeah, thank you, I appreciate that, that's helpful.
Okay, and in the theme of making this
an even more confusing meeting,
we are gonna pause this really quickly
so that we can take care of this item
that we had not finished earlier
now that we have gotten the tabulation of the votes
and was the city clerk were you able to prepare and sign the certification? Yes, so
the city received 175 ballots. The staff reviewed and tabulated those ballots, 170 of which were
valid. They are weighted by the proportional financial obligation of the affected property,
how much of the assessment that they'll pay and the weighted tabulation of the ballots is
yes 81.53 percent and no 18.47 percent so the bid can be renewed. So there's the two
actions on item 20 there's the resolution reestablishing the downtown
downtown bid for a 10-year period and then the second resolution authorize the
city manager to execute the contract with the DBA for the 10-year period as
well move the staff recommendations thank you did you have another comment
Councilmember was that it? That's it. Okay is there a second a second from
Councilmember Kesserwani? Did you were you gonna say something Councilmember
Barnes? All right very good. Can we please take take the role in this? Okay to
approve the recommendations to reestablish the downtown Berkeley
property-based business improvement district. Councilmember Kesserwani? Yes.
Yes.
Tapplin?
Aye.
Bartlett?
Yes.
Drago?
Aye.
Okeef?
Yes.
Blackaby?
Yes.
Unapara?
Yes.
Humber?
Yes.
And Mayor Ishi?
Yes.
Okay, motion carries.
Okay, thank you all so much, now you can leave.
All right, so, thanks everyone.
All right, back to the budget, sorry everyone,
I know this is very confusing.
All right, let's finish off the last third of this,
unless you have another question right now,
Are you?
Yeah, quick question.
Yeah, okay.
I know.
And this is something that's been on my mind for a while,
trying to just kind of quantitatively think about
the assessment of, you know, position cuts, right?
Position eliminations, et cetera,
versus the cost, I guess the medical,
kind of wear and tear on the body from over time
or early retirement or burnout.
I'm trying to just, have you thought about that?
Are there people that think about those numbers?
Well, it's an interesting point
because it's the same thing we discussed.
If we cut our staffing levels to a minimum,
just to fill minimum staffing,
then any absence requires overtime to fill it.
That's what we're experiencing
in our communication center right now.
And we do see a lot more,
and if career workers' comp-related injuries
stress-related injuries as a result of it. We see what we experience is some
degradation in the quality of service we can provide, you know, by the officers
because they're tired. The communication center is tired, the officers are tired.
So absolutely that's a real factor that we look at when we look at how
we address the budget deficit with the money we have to save, which is in
personnel. Is there some sort of Berkeley inspired smart ratio of sort of
over time balance with, you know, not adequate staffing, but some sort of
marginal, um, balance between available staff and amount over time that
functions kind of well. Well, we know a couple of things to be true. One is
that, um, even at a set staffing level, you have 10 to 15% that are gone for
injury, vacation, training time off and whatever. So that's that's one allowance
you have to consider. The other thing that we know is that the the balance of
the the cost for an FTE and the salary savings you might experience by not
hiring which then is has to be filled by a position doing minimum staffing for
overtime creates an automatic deficit a structural deficit in the way that our
system works. We know a couple other things too which is that we have been
able to work within our budget. So our patrol division, which is the largest financial
driver over time, that's our biggest division, the division that has the minimum staffing,
they are able to work year over year pretty close to at their budget. So we know that
there's just a certain cost of business of unexpected calls, needs for training, wellness
needs for the officers that cause you to have some amount of overtime, the unpredictability
of it. In other situations like our communication center, we are over 300 percent over our budget
because of how decimated we are in staffing in that unit. And those things are harder
to absorb. And so, as you're looking at how you can, like I said, look at salary savings
to cover or reduce your minimum staffing or the way you staff a unit. When you know you
have a bare minimum that is required to do the work, if you get too close to that margin,
then you force overtime, which has a negative health effect,
negative service effect, and also raises up
your overall cost.
Is that a similar sort of understanding
around the dispatch personnel?
Because they're stretched as well.
Do they do overtime, or how does that work?
We have a significant amount of overtime
that's mandated for our communication center.
They have been understaffed for a very long time,
working in very hard conditions.
That is, like I said, they're 300% over their normal budget
because of how narrow that margin is.
Thank you.
All right, let's finish off this last chunk, please.
So this next section is talking about all funds,
so not just general fund,
but it does include our general fund.
It's broken down by categories.
So capital project funds is at $34 million for 2027.
For 2028 is at 34.3.
Debt service is at 7.5 million for both enterprise funds
which is one of our biggest funding sources for the city
comes in at $137.2 million for 2027 and 140 for 2028.
and general funds is 327.7 in 27
and 333.2 at 2020, in 2028.
I wanna pause here to explain,
for those of you who can recall
that the general fund revenue,
we mentioned earlier, it was like 314 in 2027
and 320 in 2028.
This general fund, all funds,
includes the whole general fund family,
and so that includes funds anywhere from measure U1
as well as our payroll deduction trust.
So the whole General Fund family is included in here.
That's why there's a discrepancy in the number.
The grant funds is at 42.5 for 2027 and 42 for 2028.
Our ISF for internal service funds at 51.7 million in 27
and 51.7 in 2028.
Other funds at 15.4 and both in 27 and 28.
and special funds is a 155.8 in 2027 and 148 in 2028,
totaling 772 million in 2027
and 773 million in 2028.
This is just the same information but broken down
just to see the bulk of our all fund sources.
The number one source is coming from the general fund
and at 42%.
And coming in next is our special funds at 20%,
enterprise funds at 18%.
So those three funding sources alone
combined 80% of all of our funding sources
for the city of Berkeley.
We're now moving on to the expenditure side of all funds
and this is broken down by department.
So this is a little bit different.
I just wanted to show how vast the services we provide
in our funding sources instead of just focusing
on the general fund.
So in general fund, the number one expense source
was public safety in terms of department.
But now it's flipped a little bit.
Public works is 26%.
HHCS is at 18%.
Police is at 12%.
Non-departmentals at 11%.
and general government at 10%,
fire at 8% and PRW at 6%.
This slide shows a difference between baseline and proposed.
So for 27 baseline, it was $832.2 million.
And the proposed here is $905.2 million.
So that's a huge increase of about $73 million.
For fiscal year 2028,
the baseline all funds was at $848.1 million
and in the proposed budget it is $865.3.
So that's a difference of $17.2 million.
So I just want to address the examples of the increases
in the non personnel.
So we opened up the budget to the departments
after developing the baseline
because they know their funds that they manage best.
There's measure O, $27 million.
There's also a capital programs that have been budgeted.
That's where there's a huge increase in non-personnel.
For example, measure FF Street is a good example.
There's a $29 million addition from baseline to propose.
Another one is for another $14.5 million
just in overall capital projects.
Some of the decreases come from fiscal year 2728,
the CIP fund is about $2 million decrease.
We talked about their stressed fund.
So Public Works did a really good job cost shifting
that fund 501 personnel cost
to other appropriate funding sources.
Do we need to pause?
We're not gonna pause.
So this is, the next section is about staffing.
We kind of touched on this during the first part
of this presentation, but this breaks it down more
into detail of what we are looking at.
So the full-time equivalent total is 1,604
or 1,605 FTEs.
The largest departments are Public Works,
Police, HHCS, and Fire.
The general fund supports 663 FTEs or 41%
and all of the other funds support 941 FTEs, totaling 59%.
This total of 1,605 almost includes
the library and the rent board, excluding these two.
And we only talk about charter offices
and city manager managed departments.
The total goes down to about 1,445 FTEs.
This next slide shows historical, not just the proposed.
And as you can see, we had 1,504 FTEs in 2024.
And in 2027-28, with a proposed budget, we had 1,604.
I wanna point out that the highest increase in our FTE
came between from 2022 to 2023 where our workforce increased
by 8.7% or 127 or 128 FTEs.
The 2027 and 2028 proposed staffing level decreased
by 9.3% of or 164.3 FTEs compared to 2026.
This proposed budget, as mentioned earlier,
reflects a reduction of 150 FTEs
from the budget balancing plan,
and the 33 FTEs from the 183 total that we mentioned
is preserved for the meantime.
So that concludes our presentation.
So we're gonna talk about next steps and discussions.
So before we go into discussion,
we just wanted to briefly talk about
timeline and expectations.
So we're here today to talk about,
we presented the proposed budget.
On May 28th, we are going back
to Budget and Finance Policy Committee
to talk about the CIP, the five-year CIP,
and also the Mayor's budget recommendations.
On June 9th, we are going back to the full council
to present the five-year CIP.
June 16th is a potential discontinued discussion
in front of all of you regarding both the biannual budget
and the five-year CIP, because by that time,
you would have all seen and heard.
We would have presented them.
And then, hopefully, June 23rd, we
are going to adopt the 2720 biannual budget
and the five-year CIP.
And just looking ahead, July 1st, the fiscal year 2027 begins,
and the budget balancing plan that's adopted,
whatever form that is, will take into effect.
And July 2nd, employees being impacted
by the adopted budget receives notices.
So we're now ready for discussion of the proposed budget.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I think we actually have questions first.
So are there any other questions
for this last section of the budget?
I will start with Councilman, Vice Mayor Trago.
Thank you. This is just a request on slide 36. No, I'm sorry, whichever I guess slide
34 when you talked about the discrepancy between the general fund and the general fund plus
family of other funds, if it might be possible to share a breakdown of all of those funds,
I would be interested in seeing a tabulation of that.
It might have been in the budget book and if so, I apologize, I didn't see it there.
Also on slide 37, the accounting of how non-personnel expenditures increased from the baseline
to proposed, I would benefit from seeing a graphical representation of the cost shifting
to get there.
Thank you.
Sorry.
We'll get it.
Okay.
Yeah, for sure.
She wanted to address that.
All right, and was there another question?
Okay, anyone else?
Questions?
No.
Okay.
All right, we will go on to our public comment
on this item.
If you have public comments on item number 21,
which is the proposed FY2027 FY2028 biennial budget
and proposed by annual budget public hearing number one.
Please come on up.
Yeah, I think I have a couple of minutes over here.
Okay, one, two, is there a third minute please?
There's one online.
There's one online.
The last name is Nijelkowski.
Okay, Theodore.
Theodore, Theodore, are you okay with giving your minute?
I'm gonna assume yes, go ahead.
Good evening honorable mayor and members of the city council. For those
who don't know me my name is Justin Pitcher and I'm a recreation program
supervisor in the parks recreation and waterfront department. Here to speak
tonight in my capacity as president of Public Employees Union local one asked
me. Before unite is the first reading of the budget. It has been a long way to get
here but at the same time our work has just begun. My representational unit
stands to lose 20 positions, five of which are currently filled. Proposed cuts
include one in engineering, two in mental health, one in the waterfront and one in
the fire department, subject to bumping. Many of our team are here in staff
solidaries tonight. Earlier tonight you heard from one of our members, Abby from
the rent board, who stands to lose her position through the bumping process,
having received an impact notice just weeks after joining the city team. I want
to reiterate that the city decided to fill this position and Abby brought her
family to Berkeley giving up stable employment to serve our amazing
community with an implied insurance that the city intended to fill the
position it advertised for the long haul. Also in the audience tonight is Rania
who serves as the program manager and only staff member to the pilot project
for the street trauma prevention team. Through her work we are on the cutting
edge of making a difference across Berkeley. Her program will cease to
exist with the elimination of her position as Chief Sprague has indicated
that he has no other staffing to shift the program to. The city is in the
current process of applying for a grant that would fund this program over the
next four years starting in July of fiscal to era 22 calendar 2027
eliminating this program now is very short-sighted these are but two stories
of public service that will be lost in the budget elimination process all
budget reductions have an immediate impact on the services we provide across
the city as you can imagine this is a trying time to be a member of the city
of Berkeley team. Tensions are high. Uncertainty is next level. And express feelings make some
days at the office unbearable for those of us that continue to give our all to fulfill
the duties of our assignments and more. We're an amazing group of dedicated individuals
who serve our constituents day in and day out around the clock. As we progress over
the next six weeks and we work hand in hand with the council to ultimately adopt a budget
in time for the June 30th deadline.
We ask that the council acts with care for all of us,
especially those who provide the services
that are on the table for elimination.
Through the Budget and Finance Committee process,
the unions continue to uphold its commitment
to being a partner in balancing the budget.
Furthermore, we are grateful for the partnership forged
by the esteemed city manager
through his union leadership budget meetings
and are looking forward to continuing that partnership
with each of you.
Keep an eye out in your email for our meeting requests.
Where each of us is a civil servant,
we are also members of society,
members of families and upstanding citizens
who stand to lose a lot through these reductions.
Tonight, the council celebrated the work
that many of our members provide.
We are the managers and supervisors
that make public works happen.
We are the engineers that built Willard Clubhouse.
We are the analysts and admin and fiscal services managers
that have made the hard recommendations
to make these cuts that are impacting city services.
We all are the boots on the ground
that engage with our community every single day.
In closing, I urge the city council
to look at each of your employees as real people
and not a statistic on a budget spreadsheet.
Think of our families and those we support
in each hard decision ahead.
Plan to work within our means and work today
to protect services tomorrow.
We can't change the past,
but we can prepare for a more stable Berkeley tomorrow.
And on behalf of the hard-working members
of Public Employees Union, local one asked me,
I thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Good evening.
I'm Leah Simon Weissberg. I live in District 2.
I serve on the Housing Advisory Commission.
I'm here tonight because there are several projects in District 2
that are ready for funding from the small sites.
We don't have enough money for any of those sites
and so we have housing that is being put at risk.
Last year, last time we did the budget,
we have been able to do the
budget.
You know, when you look at the
coverage, we talked a lot about
small sites.
We didn't have the money was not
placed in that and now we've not
been able to have fun projects.
I think, I know you're balancing
a lot of different things, but I
think just to echo the situation
that the county is placing us in
and that they are not ensuring
that we can fund programs that
we know work and we're going to
lose them.
The same thing is happening on
small sites.
please protect what we have and if possible add so we actually have enough for the projects.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I have one moment here to cede her time to me.
Thank you.
Thanks.
I'm Rebecca Webb and I am the chapter president of the clerical chapter and I'm here representing
both the maintenance and clerical chapters today.
Can you talk into the mic?
Sorry.
Sure.
You can hold it up.
Yeah.
There you go.
the proposed budget in March, we breed the sigh of relief
because we saw that none of our people were going to be
out the door.
As you recently heard, that's not true for all of the units.
But that sigh of relief was kind of short lived
when we looked at the list and saw that what we were losing
is 55, zero positions in our unit alone.
That's about 10% of our workforce.
And that represents your laborers,
the city of Wisconsin. And I'm
going to be talking about the
your landscape gardeners your 9, 1, 1, dispatchers your 3, 1, 1,
customer service. One of my personal favorites your payroll
clerks. All a whole slew of boots on the ground employees. And.
And that's just a hard pill to swallow that we're going to be
losing those positions because that we know means that that
need to work. It's been a
long time now. And I hope you
understand that it is
understood that you cannot do
more with less. But that is
that that's easier said than
done because we're the ones
who are seeing people face to
face in the community expects
just as much out of us today
as they did yesterday the day
before and tomorrow. We're not
going to get any last 9 1 1
calls we're not going to get
any less 3 1 1 calls were got
can any less holes or any less
thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
I'm really excited to be here with a bunch of people.
As you saw, the majority of where we have to cut
is in the budget.
One of the things that I really want to touch on
that is important for you to make sense of
is that this really does the buck stops here.
We are all stewards.
Everyone who collects a paycheck,
is there someone who will cede a minute to me?
Thank you a minute over here.
it is stewards of our resources and our assets,
but really the buck stops with you all
on where those resources are led.
I oftentimes will see items on the agenda
that to your point, a million here, a million there,
there's a half a million here.
Where is that going?
And sometimes I see in the rationale,
not much more than, because we need it.
Really?
If I had said that to my mom in the 10th grade
when I wanted to go to great America,
can you give me 50 bucks?
Why? Because I need it.
That wouldn't have flown very far.
You really please pay attention to what is
before you and what you're spending on,
because that is your decision,
whether you approve or don't approve of
the actions that are brought before you. Thank you so much.
thank you. Good evening council my name is Christina Oakfield I serve on the
Planning Commission although I'm just here speaking on behalf of myself
tonight. Wow listening to the staff presentations and prior speakers I'm
appreciating how challenging the budget situation is and how the city is between
the city of Toronto. I'm not a
city council member. I'm not a
city council member. I'm not a
city council member. I'm not a
city council member. I'm not a
city council member. I'm not a
city council member. I'm not a
city council member. I'm not a
city council member. I'm not a
city council member. I'm not a
city council member. I'm not a
city council member. I'm not a
city council member. I'm not a
the city of Davis. I think we're
going to have a lot of money.
But we're going to have a lot of
money to use to leverage other
fundings acquire and reability.
Properties with vulnerable
tenants so I hope we can continue
to invest in that strategy. Thank
you. Thank you.
Council members I I I'm no expert on the budget but I can say this is really jarring to hear that there's not going to be a warming center.
That's just, it's just not, how much does it cost
to pick up the bodies?
Because that's what you're talking about.
It's a total abdication and I have to say
that it really chaffs to see three million dollars
allocated for the Dwight and Telegraph.
How can you possibly spend three million dollars
on that triangle and yet nothing, not a dollar
to people when it's freezing cold, when they're wet,
when they're hypothermic, when they're dying in the street.
And I don't understand because I heard the chief say
that there's a staffing crisis.
I've heard you guys worrying about money and so forth.
By eliminating all non-police responses,
I'm sorry, all by eliminating,
we have no non-police response to calls for service
that don't require police.
You've got the Community Services Bureau,
they're responding to non-criminal calls.
We taught, we did this through the reimagining process.
We said that what you have in your budget,
it says that the only response to mental health emergencies
and wellness checks will be police.
That's the absolute most expensive alternative
you could choose.
That is the, that's just a total waste of money.
You could have actual people actually trained
who actually are trained in this field to respond
with care and with thrift.
So please justify some of your choices
because it's making no sense to those of us
who live in this town and palace people in need every day.
What are you doing?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good evening, Mayor and Council.
My name is Matt Gustafson.
I'm a resident of District 2,
and I work with the Bay Area Community Land Trust.
I'm here to advocate for the Small Sites Program
to be adequately funded in the FY27-28 budget.
Berkeley's naturally affordable so-called housing stock
is rapidly shrinking according
to the California Housing Partnership since 2020.
Berkeley's lost around 1,000 homes affordable
to low-income households in this town, 1,000.
Berkeley's Small Sites Program was built
to preserve these homes and to transform them,
not just to preserve them as affordable,
to transform them into community-controlled social housing, really, and the program is working.
We're grateful that the Council has funded this important program in the past,
and I just want to say that the allocation that's currently coming from Housing Trust Fund this
year is just not really enough. The program is built for projects of five to 25 units. Right now,
it could support maybe a five to seven-unit project at most. There's residents of a 23-unit
property in District 2. Some of them were here earlier tonight, and they had to go home, but
There's not enough money to purchase that property right now.
So please fund small sites. Thank you.
Thanks, Pat.
Hello. Good evening.
My neighbor, Lisa, is ceding her time to me.
Good evening, Council and Mayor.
My name is Angela and I'm here to ask the Council to fund small sites,
a critical program to preserve and create naturally occurring affordable housing.
I'm part-time staff with City of Berkeley Recreation at the Adventure Playground.
I've loved working there for the last year.
I'm also a resident in District 2 at Addison Court Housing Cooperative,
which is just two blocks across the street.
A limited equity housing co-op that the city helped grant an initial loan 30 years ago.
We house income tiers from 50-80 percent AMI and
diverse ages from one to 83 years old,
and some of our elders have moved out,
allowing for new generation to come in with me.
We maintain affordability through collective decision-making,
real-life mutual aid and care for our neighbors through life changes.
resident labor to maintain our 100 year old garden departments which are really cute.
Thank you to Lisa standing over there who is our longest term resident and one of the
founders when the previous landlord needed to sell. She had our 80th birthday party around
the block at BK Studio and is a big reason our buildings are so beautiful and sustainably
maintained as a maintenance gardener by trade and former gardener teacher in town.
We also maintain affordability due to our 99 year ground lease with the Northern California Land
and trust. Recently, I've joined the staff with Matt at the Bay Area Community land trust
and the skills I've gained in living in cooperative living here and in Illinois. There's hundreds
of projects around the country maintaining affordable housing and caring for our neighbors
and for the communities we truly live in and we can invest in it because we have permanence
and love our neighbors and the people we live with. And now I can support other low-income
tenants in Berkeley to buy their property and learn how to collectively manage it and
stay in place. Please appropriately fund and support the small sites program before longtime
community members and naturally occurring affordable housing becomes displaced. Thank
you. I always have to go with the microphone here. I'm sorry? Oh, okay. Yes. Two minutes.
Thank you very much. My name is Michel Tuerti. I know a lot of you in some way or another.
I am one of the organizers for the Firewise groups as well as hellbookly.org. I am not
here to advocate for specific programs, but to talk maybe more about process. My corporate
career was in more than 30 years in startups. In startups, we typically have a runway of
approximately two years, sometimes less, sometimes more, we constantly have to make priority
decisions that involve people and involve money and when we hear the employees and the
union reps and everybody discuss the consequences of these decisions, it's always very difficult.
What we do, however, is we use a very different budget management system in those organizations.
that's priority-based, it's called priority-based budgeting.
And that's the only way that we're able to actually
manage the constant changes that we have to effect
to be able to reorient companies
that have a very short runway ahead of them.
Now, in 2013, the auditor of the city of Berkeley
commissioned a study by the Gelman School of Public Policy
that recommended the use of a hybrid version
of priority-based budgeting for the city of Berkeley.
When you look at what it would enable,
it would make a very significant difference.
You have time to adopt a system such as this one
over the next couple of years
because the decisions you're making today
over the next couple of months
are going to have to carry through.
But by using priority-based budgeting,
you can actually use strategy to be able to make changes
to our locations rather than looking at a 10 to 12% cut
across the budget.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Carol Morassovic, Chair of the Homeless Services
Panel of Experts, speaking to our unanimous
recommendations.
First, I want to state that there will be additional
revenue that will be coming in in late 2027
when City Measure W kicks in.
And if we can get past these hurdles.
We vigorously oppose the ending,
terminating the emergency shelter.
Staff's position is that there is no location.
However, the city manager has produced a list
of locations to you of city-owned properties
that can be used for a shelter.
And as far as the monies,
contracts can be renegotiated for the leases
at the various motels that are going on.
And we have calculated 10% reduction would result
in 370,000 to the 358, I have two minutes.
I have one from Ron Torrey.
Okay, one from Kelly and one from Kelly Hammergren.
Thank you.
We recommended continuing to fund the DBA social workers.
It's less than a half. It's $40,000. You see unhoused people lined up all over downtown
without outreach. We would like to see this to continue to be funded, but we want more
vigorous coordination with the city and better case management. We do believe that
the Community Services Bureau has performed an important function because they actually
respond a lot to the public and puts a human face on policing and they hear
complaints about the homeless and mitigate those concerns. And otherwise
they're just gonna go bombard the city manager with more complaints. Also B. F.
D. The mobile crisis team was already operating on a skeleton crew. This
investigation by the Federal Department of Justice and the federal litigation
is extremely important that holds the county responsible. We need to hold
their feet to the fire on these services. This investigation, which
included persons from Berkeley and mental high health crisis, showed that
they were people were being disproportionately, particularly black
males sent to Santa Rita jail and john George. And this requires community
based services and we need to be very aggressive to make sure that Berkeley
gets the services that is required under this under the settlement
agreement. We concurred with with the pathways reduction and we asked that the
city spend a little more money and consultants going back to the mobile
crisis. Again, this involves community based services, which is mobile crisis,
crisis, residential and um and peer respites. And we need to make sure that
we get our fair share at the county's dime. Thank you. Thanks Carol.
Let's move online to public comment on item number 21, which is the proposed FY
2027 and FY 2028 by annual budget and proposed by annual budget public hearing number one.
Okay, first speaker is Ben Nash. Yes, good evening. My name is Ben Nash. I represent
District 3 on the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission. I'd like to present some highlights
from the Commission's first annual State of the Parks report, which we hope you'll read in full.
First, we strongly encourage the Council not to cut the Parks Department budget.
Further reductions will worsen existing inequities and strain already limited
facilities and programs. We recognize the city's difficult fiscal situation,
which is why the Commission recommends several long-term strategies,
most importantly a parks impact fee. Berkeley is expected to add thousands of new residents
in the coming years, yet we already fall below state parkland standards and are considered
critically underserved under state law. Without new investment, population growth will place even
greater pressure on our parks facilities. A well-designed parks impact fee is fundamentally
pro-housing. It would ensure that new development contributes to the infrastructure needed to
support a dense livable city. These fees do not burden existing taxpayers and can include
exemptions for affordable housing. We encourage the council to fund Nexus study for future parks
impact fee, which would not commit the council to adopting the fee, but would provide the information
necessary to seriously evaluate. Ben, thank you for your comment. You're out of time. I appreciate
Your comment. Next is Andy Katz. Good evening, Andy Katz, Chair of the Community Health Commission,
speaking on behalf of our unanimous recommendations. We recognize the difficult fiscal constraints.
We ask for three things. First, retain the Heart to Heart program with at least one FTE,
or require a real transition plan to a community-based organization before any position is cut.
Heart to Heart is not duplicated by FQHCs. It is the community bridge that connects Black,
Latino, low-income, and uninsured residents in South and West Berkeley to care they would
otherwise never access. The health status report documents a 10-year life expectancy gap between
Flatland and Hills neighborhoods driven largely by cardiovascular disease. This program is how we
close it, but eliminating the program could disrupt the experience learned and continuity
with community partners. Second, retain at least one FTE for public health emergency preparedness.
And third, we express deep concern about the unhoused population and all who are served by
behavioral health programs. These cuts fall hardest on residents with nowhere else in turn. Thank you.
Next is John Caner. Hi, John Caner, Downtown Berkeley Association. As I spoke at the budget
committee, the homeless outreach position, specialist position that has been co-funded by the
city started off as a 50-50 match and over the last four or five years we now contribute 50,000
and the city 40,000. It's not clear at all that we can afford to continue that going forward
and I know there's a lot of pressure but this money is levered with the downtown Berkeley
Association and as Carol said,
this position is really important for the downtown.
Thank you for your consideration. Bye.
Thanks, John.
Next is Tom Parrish.
Hi. I'm Tom Parrish.
I'm a resident of District 6 and an arts leader in Berkeley.
I'm calling in to advocate for
maintaining funding for the Civic Arts Grant Program.
Cutting civic arts funding is a bad fiscal decision and
could cause the city to lose more revenue
than the amount of expense savings.
According to the Berkeley Creative Economy
Economic Impact Analysis from December of 2025
by CBL Economics,
Civic Arts funding has a high return on investment.
Every dollar of Civic Arts funding catalyzed $197
in total economic impact across the city.
The creative economy as a generator of property tax,
sales tax, transient occupancy tax,
and other forms of revenue.
And in 2024, Berkeley's creative economy
helped generate $10.7 million in tax revenue,
representing 3.9% of the city's tax base.
Maintaining or growing funding for the creative economy
is critical for both the recovery of the sector
and the fiscal growth of the city of Berkeley.
Thank you.
Thanks Tom.
Okay, that's all.
Okay, thank you very much.
We are gonna go to comments from my council colleagues,
starting with Council Member Taplin.
Thank you very much and thank you to everyone who spoke.
I especially want to thank our labor partners
and our city workers.
I want to thank the budget team and city admin
and the Budget and Finance Committee.
Madam Mayor, I think, I don't know if it was
at the last council meeting where I budgeted in finance,
but you did ask us to come prepared
to share our budget priorities.
Is that correct?
I did, yes.
Thank you.
Thanks for remembering.
Of course, of course.
I write down everything you say, just kidding.
I didn't want to I didn't want to preface what I'm gonna say by sharing I think
you know we all remember a time when the city could do all kinds of amazing
things and that was because we have amazing organizations and community
partners and staff and leaders and we were able to like you know subsidize
parking at the marina subsidize the kite festival, subsidize events, pick up
people's fees make generous contributions to people doing really
great work in the community and I think we did that because we believed in the
work they were all doing we wanted to make people happy we wanted to invest and
hold our public spaces in a way that could really flourish and resonate and
embody our values and I think we did that as long as we could in a way that
perhaps we are now being confronted with a need to reevaluate how to not just
keep what we have but get back to a place where we can do more and that is
going to be very difficult but I do think that we are all committed and
dedicated to do that if we can keep you know focus and and persevere through
these tough seas that we find ourselves on. To answer the priorities question I
have I'll just go through these first and foremost and to the extent possible
my priority is further minimizing or even if at all possibly preventing
reductions to the city workforce and disruptions of core city provided
services and critical city-run programs. And the capital improvement program, the
marina fund, waterfront projects and parks and recreation programs, sorry, slowly
sorry, capital group program, the marina fund and water front projects and parks
and recreation programs, keeping station four open, sustaining this
Retrial and Prevention Program and CERT trainings and retention of the fire
crew positions created by the SAFER grant and the maintenance of the
Community Services Bureau operations and special units like the Bike Force, the
FLEC teams, and community safety partner partnership programs like Live Free, and
that's that's my list and I have some more time left and I think that, you know,
I do want to call out what the person said about priority-based budgeting.
I that resonates with me. I think it's easier to have been done. There are nine of us. There are eight districts. We have a very
we have a very large
involved community that has a
vast array of economic needs and we have a lot of disparities
but I think that
we have to
keep the balance of
subsidy and investment with
physical viability because we can't fund programs that we don't have workforce or
revenue to sustain so
moving forward I
Want to offer my commitment to my colleagues and our city admin and and everyone to getting us out of this this mess
and you know, I'm proud of myself for not blaming everyone who came before us, but we're here now and I
I am cautiously optimistic that we will find ourselves in a place where we can
not just keep what we have but give even more than we have before. Thank you.
Thank you. Councilmember Bartlett. Thank you Madam Mayor and just to quickly
know my priorities here for you and there's sort of a more thematic on
there's a couple of specifics but essentially you know recognize we're
going into a turbulent time, this is,
there's really no way around this.
We have to go through it.
You know, the pension fund,
the pension funding formulas and the healthcare costs,
the president just took out a trillion dollars
out of healthcare in this country.
You know, so what we see is gonna get a lot worse.
And so my priorities are
the catch all is to defend the weak.
So that takes take care of seniors, small sites, mental health departments,
outreach people, um, a warming center. I can't really sign in there.
I can't believe I missed that one. A warming center. Okay. So good.
And a police and fire, obviously. Um, and so that, that sort of catch all.
Just making sure our quality of life does not degenerate.
So we have to step over people starving in the streets in front of us.
Thank you council member vice mayor, Trago. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. That was wrong.
Councilmember Humbert. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Um, I want to thank the city
manager, um, the deputy city manager, um, and their staff. And I also want to
thank staff from the finance department, especially budget manager. Dipaya. Um,
and I also want to thank everyone who spoke here tonight. Um, very moving
statements, particularly by our city employees. I found them very moving. We
have a difficult budget situation, to put it mildly, to deal with this year.
It's something that has been decades in the making, unfortunately, between me,
but between the economy, the federal, state and state pullbacks, which, as
Councilmember Bartlett said, are just going to get worse, at least on the
federal level and one-time fixes that have run out. We're having to look at
some devastating cuts. Tonight my personal goal has been mainly to listen
and hear everyone's concerns and suggestions and carry these forward with
me as we consider what adjustments we may want to make to the
budget proposed by staff. In terms of my personal priorities I would say public
safety and fire I would say preserving as many jobs as possible and and
particularly retaining positions or the proposed one position to be cut in OED
because I think long-term OED is going to help us grow our tax base they've
been doing it at heroic jobs so I want to put in a pitch for OED I want to make
sure that we still have adequate neighborhood services. And given what's happening just
globally, we need to focus on cybersecurity, frankly. I think we need to make sure to really
bear down on that in our budget. But that's all I have really at the moment. So thank
you everybody who spoke here tonight.
Thank you so much, Council Member. Vice Mayor Trago.
Thank you Madam Mayor, I want to echo what has already been said by my colleagues.
I want to thank the city manager and his team for working with us to propose a budget that
reflects these times. This is, in a way, this is a budget that meets the moment that we are in
that does not make it at all easy. And we can no longer afford to
continue to the status quo because doing so would just continue to backdate the pain and make it
the shared pain even harder in the future. That said, there's an enormous amount of shared
sacrifice that has already been made. Um, and when I, um, you know, um, this is, um,
the budget, um, is a reflection of our values. Uh, it is one of the most consequential, uh,
that we will take on the council.
I know that whatever this budget looks like
in the next month, this will by far be the most challenging
vote that I hope to ever have to take in my council career.
no one wants or wishes to serve to try to prioritize
which programs to cut that is quite inimical
to the reasons that we all ran and serve.
However, due to a variety of reasons,
we must exercise a kind of priority based budgeting.
And so I do appreciate the mayor asking us
to come up with priorities.
Broadly, I will name mine, I will say,
and this was ingrained in me on day one of my first job.
And I mentioned this, I think, on the first day
that I took office, the people are our greatest resource.
Anything we can do to protect the jobs
of as many people as we can,
because thank you for sharing who is behind
these 311 and 911 calls that I too have had to make
as I walk around the district.
Within that, and this is, again,
not to the exclusion or minimization
of many other worthy and worthwhile programs,
but these are my three go-to-the-mat priorities.
And I will move to extend time.
second to what time is it by 11 1130 1130 yeah is there any opposition to that's
my request we have a bunch of stuff still do are we gonna do all those no
we are not no we're gonna try to get through as many as we can I also you
know I don't want to get into it too much but I will just I do want to say
that I really don't want us going super late on these items because I just feel
like we're not in the right space to make good decisions and so I think it's
better if we end by 1130 so that's my my push for the 1130s okay is there any
opposition to approving an extension to 1130 no opposition all right we will
move to 1130 thank you very much councilmember you have 41 seconds go
ahead your priorities please all right priorities trying to retain the field
one FTE position within the Economic Development Department for the reasons
my colleague councilmember Humbert already said these are vital to the
downtown and all commercial districts and its revenue generating trying to
to find a way to finding the 40K match to the DBA
and then the street trauma prevention program
would be my third within the top three priorities.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, moving on to Council Member O'Keefe.
I want to start by thanking City Manager,
at BDC manager budget team.
All of the department heads who came and spoke
and also who worked hard to come up with.
I know each department came up with its own proposals
for cuts and I know that was very painful and hard work.
So I just want to thank everybody.
Everybody who is part of this fun process.
I really want to acknowledge that many of our city employees
will be losing their jobs.
and that is a deeply painful reality,
especially given inflation and the job market right now
and the rising cost of living.
And I just really want it.
I know we've all, we're all naming that
and I'm gonna name that too,
cause it's really important to just
give some space for that reality.
Unfortunately, it's our responsibility to make decisions
that preserve the longtime financial stability of the city.
It's a really heavy and profound responsibility
that I know we all feel.
I do want to say as a district five council member
and also from a perspective of citywide prepared,
emergency preparedness, I have really, really profound
concerns about the prospect of closing fire station four,
if the tax measure does not pass.
And I want to emphasize that is a hypothetical closing,
but it is something that's being discussed.
The Berkeley Hills, of which I represent part of,
the city of the city of the
This isn't really a matter of life and death.
So as we move forward, my main priority is
just to remain focused on protecting
all of the services that are most fundamental
to public safety, most specifically preserving
the fire and other public safety positions.
I would add the street trauma position.
That's, I would prioritize that.
And beyond that, I just, I wanna make sure
we get a permanently balanced budget
so we can move forward with protecting
the long-term stability and resilience of our city.
Thank you, Council Member.
Moving on to Council Member Blackaby.
Thanks, Madam Mayor.
I'll try and be quick.
I just wanna associate myself with the comments
on my colleagues, with our appreciation
for all the staff work that's gone into this
from the city manager on down.
I'll just say, Maricara, I don't know how you keep
all the facts and figures in your head.
It's amazing.
eyes look like they're glazing over but we appreciate everything you've done and
Dave as well for just walking us through this through countless budget
meetings as well as tonight so thank you. I'll say look I mean everything is
important we all we value so much the work that our city staff does I also know
that you know when I was elected I think I was elected with a knowledge that our
most important priority is keeping people safe people want to live in
Berkeley and they want to be in a place where they feel safe. That is still kind
of my North Star. Public safety is still for me the number one priority. As I
mentioned before, I mean there's just no way I could vote for a budget that
closed station four, along with Council Member O'Keefe. You know
the responsibility representing the Berkeley Hills. Station four is important
to that. Station seven so important to that given the wildfire safety that we
face. So I appreciate the fact that we're not being faced with that now. I know
know that's still hanging out as a future prospect, but I appreciate that
that's off the table for the next fiscal year at a minimum, and hopefully for
good. I also appreciate the fact that we're able to retain the 15 police
members and six dispatchers that were initially considered for reduction. I'd
also ask for the, you know, potential of maintaining some of the CERT funding and
some of the fuel reduction funding we talked about before. This all to me goes
that public safety bucket and to me that's preeminent. That's just the basic
expectation of a citizen in this city is that they pay taxes and they should be
safe in their city. Like that just I think that goes without saying. Second I
think is just the expectation that we have an infrastructure that works. You
know you count on the sewers the storm drains you count on the streets and the
sidewalks and we've got a big backlog and a lot of work to do on the street
and sidewalk side so we can't lose sight of that over the coming year. We've got
to make a huge amount of progress there. I know there's not much again that we're
proposing reduced reduction in that area which is good but again just in terms of
priorities it's safety and infrastructure to me or the the basics
that people just expect of their municipal government so we need to
deliver on that. Going forward and this has less to do with this budget and more
about years in the future you know we've talked and I continue to harp on and my
questions tonight around revenue around business stimulation and I agree with
with my colleagues, the OED function,
the mighty team that does so much work.
We've gotta do a better job of keeping
the innovation economy going.
All the companies that are starting on the campus
at UC Berkeley, making sure they have a place here in Berkeley,
that's gonna be critical to the future of our city,
is being a place where those people wanna create jobs,
hire people, bring people to live here,
bring people to work here.
Supporting our retail small business in commercial corridors,
we know that there have been folks that have been challenged
in those areas.
Just the business climate and being a hospitable place
where people want to do work and people
want to live to do those jobs.
That's so critical to the future of our tech space.
I'd also say unsticking some of the stalled housing projects
is part and parcel of that.
Again, none of these are going to affect this year's budget,
but they start to make things a little bit easier as we go,
if we can work on those priorities.
The other thing I'll say on the staff side,
and I appreciate and have been moved by the stories
and the, because you're right,
these are not just numbers,
these are people behind the numbers.
And we will miss folks who we lose,
and we will expect a lot from the people who stay.
And it's not fair to expect more from the same,
but it also though to me is a function
where technology also becomes important.
We have to, how do we provide our employees
with the tools that will make them more productive?
We'll help them get more done in the same amount of time.
We'll help maybe receive some of those service requests
that come from residents at all hours of the night,
but just how can technology again be a force multiplier
for the people that are continuing to work here
and provide excellent service, not customer service
to Cecile Luanpara's point but service to residents that they expect. So those
things I'm thinking about and I appreciate again the effort that's gotten
us here and look forward to helping to move this across the finish line and as
expeditious and effective as way as we can. Thank you. Thank you very much
councilmember. Councilmember Kesser-Wani. Thank you very much Madam Mayor. Thank
you Mr. White and Ms. Dupaya for your lengthy and detailed presentation and
thank you to my colleagues for your comments. Thank you to the members of the
public who gave public comment on their priorities. You know, I think it's already been said that
this has been a very difficult budget process and will continue to be and you know, I do
want to say that I'm really proud that we are looking at a combination of strategies
in a way that I think and I hope will continue to align with our values. You know, I asked
us to do the community survey on the sales tax because I knew that the level of reduction
and what it would feel like in our community to cut $30 million from our budget would not
be acceptable. You know, it's not acceptable to me to cut that deeply. And I want the community
to recognize that is why we have pulled for this sales tax to raise, you know, an approximately
9.4 million to save, if I have the numbers correct, 33 positions, some of which are filled.
And those are public safety positions.
That's the staffing for Fire Station 4 that we're hearing a lot of concern about.
That's the staffing for programs that serve low income and vulnerable populations.
And so to me that is making sure that what we are doing here aligns with our values to
take care of those populations to make sure that the response time when people call 911
and they need, you know, the types of services that we send out from Fire Station 4 that
that can be available.
And you know, I want to focus on the budget but we have a number of items here tonight
that will also raise fee levels to be in line with cost,
something that we have not been doing regularly.
We need to continue to do that,
and so I'm pleased to see that those are before us.
And of course, in addition to raising revenues,
we have this difficult decision.
You know, $9.4 million still leaves a substantial gap
that we have to find a way to close.
And so that is where I know you have proposed
eliminating a lot of vacant positions. I wanted to ask Mr. Wright, I don't know if
you have the answer right now, are there vacant positions that have not been
proposed for elimination? Okay so I want to look at that the next time we come to
budget and finance if you can have that available because the reason why I want
to know what those positions are is because you know we have folks here
tonight. We have folks who are worried about getting laid off, you know, 20
filled positions that are proposed for elimination. So I want to make sure
that that's the right call. I don't want to do that. If we can find vacant
positions
and save those folks because, you know, this is, you know, one city, one team.
And so that's my commitment that we have to look at that. And and I, you
And I think there's sort of this other category
that we haven't talked a lot about,
which is, you know, what can we do smarter?
I had mentioned at the last budget and finance committee
that I was at that I want to hear
how we are monitoring our contracts.
You know, we haven't heard in this budget process
which contracts are underperforming
that we should not continue.
And so I think we need to be thinking about that.
I also have a council item that's going to be heard at Budget and Finance to require
competitive procurement across all city departments to ensure that we are getting the best value
for all goods and services, including professional services, which our city auditor said we have
not been doing.
We need to do all of these things so that we are being as cost effective as we can.
I know a lot of effort has been put in,
but I think there's more we can be doing
around the contracts.
And so I wanna have those conversations.
And in terms of priority,
I would agree on preserving the filled position
in the Office of Economic Development.
This is the Community Development Project Coordinator.
But when we say that,
we'd like to be able to save things.
You have to cut something else.
have to find the funds to do that. So so you know respectfully to the folks
asking for more funding for small sites you know it's my understanding and I
think it is yours as well that we have put out a request for proposal for 2.5
million for small sites and and I'm really grateful that I I reduced the
allocation for small sites in the last budget because I understand that we have
had structural deficits for years and we have to make hard choices. We can't
always do the full amount that everybody is asking for all the time.
Sometimes being a leader means knowing when to say no. So I'm really
grateful we've had this hearing. I think we do, you know, really want to
emphasize we need to look at the vacant positions that are still in the budget
and know what those classifications are and what the fully loaded costs are. And
And if I can get the org charts of where they are
in each department, that will also be helpful.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you, Council Member Luna Parra.
Thank you.
I first wanna express my deep appreciation
for the immense amount of time and energy
and exhaustive effort that our city manager,
deputy city manager, budget team, and department heads
poured into developing this budget proposal. Facing a decades-long
structural deficit is incredibly daunting and I want to thank you for
addressing it with transparency and such deep care. I also really want to thank
the city workers who have stayed with us late into the night. It takes incredible
dedication to speak here after a long work day to advocate so fiercely for
your departments, your colleagues, and the services that our community relies on.
Your presence tonight matters and your work does not go unrecognized or
we know that you make the city what it is and we know that these numbers represent real lives, real families and the people who work alongside. We work alongside every day. As we move through this budget cycle, I am deeply committed to working alongside my colleagues and staff to ensure that we find a fiscally responsible path forward that protects the integrity of our workforce and minimizes the impact of the people who make the city run. So, in terms of my priorities, I want I think it's important that as we're.
as we are laying out the things that we want to save from this budget,
that we are also proposing things that we are willing to reduce or eliminate,
because that's the reality of how we're dealing with this budget right now.
In terms of the priorities that I put for me,
I want to make sure first that we are minimizing the impact to our workforce and minimizing layoffs.
I think that's the most important piece of this.
to make sure we have a long term
financial solvency plan.
And in terms of some things that I think
that we should look at reducing,
I think we should look at reducing
our non-police response to homelessness,
mental health, and addiction crises.
I support retaining the street trauma prevention program,
maintaining small sites funding,
and making sure we have a long term
financial solvency plan.
we should look at reducing or eliminating council policy committees, consolidating more
commissions and reducing council non-personnel budgets. I think we also really need to figure
out how to structurally reduce police overtime which consistently goes over its allocated
budget. We need to figure out how to address that in a structural way. Thank you and thank
you to everyone who has put so much work into this.
Thank you. Thank you so much to my council colleagues for your comments and also for
giving us your priorities. That's very helpful as I think about what my budget will look
like. I really want to thank, of course, all of the city staff who have been working on
this from the department heads to, of course, Mari Khan and your team to David White, to
city manager. I just I like to start I want to start by talking about just
people and the impacts on people. We have had people come already to council
and share their stories and tell us about the impact that these cuts are
gonna have on their lives and I'm somebody who does this work because I
care a lot about people and so I just want you all to know that that is
something that is is really kind of the focus of of the the work that we're
doing right now and thinking about you know the budget that we're gonna
propose from my office and I really want to thank the city manager for I feel
having a very people-first approach in in this and trying to be as
communicative as possible really considering everything that's going into
it I really do want the public to understand that it's it's having an
an immense impact on him and that he's losing sleep over it.
These are not easy decisions for any of us.
Believe me when I say that we are all suffering
and we really do feel for folks
as we're talking about these positions.
We're aware that these are individuals
that we're talking about,
not just the positions that are filled that are getting cut,
but also in thinking about the impacts on people
when we cut positions that aren't filled.
So I do wanna thank you all so much to everyone
who's come and shared their stories
and shared the impact that these cuts will have on them
and their lives and their families.
I really do appreciate you being here and sharing.
And to everyone who's also written in to us as well.
This is not something that any of us wanna do,
certainly in my first term as mayor
to make these kinds of cuts, it's really challenging.
And I also know that there are some things
that we need to be doing that we have very little option
of what else to do at this point.
We really can't afford to depend anymore
on these one-time measures to balance the budget
and we have to phase these one-time measures out
and that's really what the plan is for this
is to address the underlying structural deficit,
to make changes that are really tough
but hopefully will create the ability for us
to have a sustainable budget moving forward.
I think that's really key because if we fund things
a little bit here and there,
we throw in money for a position for one year,
that's not sustainable.
That means that the next time around,
we're gonna have to cut someone else somewhere else again.
And that also isn't fair,
so we really do need to consider that.
I also really appreciate the charter offices
for responding to my request to reduce their budgets.
On the city council, we all cut our budgets by 12.5%.
That's our average across the councils.
and I really do want to thank my colleagues for making those decisions.
Thank you, of course, also to our city attorney's office,
our director of police accountability,
and also our city auditor.
They also made cuts to their budgets as well.
We heard today how we got here in a situation.
One thing I did just want to mention as well,
is the impacts that have really been felt for generations by Prop 13 which has really taken a lot of funding from local government
and made us rely on special funds which really honestly I think are not the best way to be filling our budgets.
I am really hopeful that we will have state change on this matter so that we can have more funding come into local jurisdictions.
and then there are some specific things I want to mention that I think are
really important. If anyone's had a conversation with me about my priorities
as mayor you will have heard me say a million times my priorities are housing
and homelessness, public safety and infrastructure and these are really
things that I'm looking at when I'm thinking about this budget and of course
accountability and transparency are really key to me. I want to make some
comments about homelessness in particular so just so folks know the
inclement weather shelter is still going to be open that's not recommended
to be cut. I think that there was some some confusion about that versus the
winter shelter and in terms of the winter shelter it's true that there was
an alternative housing item that was brought forward by councilmember O'Keeffe
and a number of us and we are still working on that issue so when we think
about the winter shelter being closed,
our hope is that we have this alternative shelter open
so that it's not just winter time where it's open
that there's actually space for folks to,
I'm running this meeting so I'm gonna go over my time.
So that we will continue to do that work
and apply for Measure W funds on the county level.
And then around mental health,
something I just wanted to mention
is that the CAT team, which is the county's crisis response
team, that they are losing funding on a state level.
And so that is something that I will be advocating against.
So against cuts to that.
Because that is where we are relying on the county
to cover mental health.
And also advocating for that to be a non-police response.
Because we also know about the success
of a non-police response.
And then around the revenues piece,
I think that's something that the city staff
didn't get to talk about enough,
is also how much work they're doing around revenues.
I know we're focused really on cuts
because that's really where we're feeling the pain,
but I also want the public to understand
that the city manager's office
and all the different offices are also looking
for other sources of revenue.
So that's grant funding,
that's looking of course at fee increases,
we are looking at a sales tax and also an infrastructure bond
And I have also spoken to the city attorney's office
about recruiting more money with litigation
or writing letters to folks' legal letters
to bring in more funding for money that's owed to the city
because there's actually a lot of money,
millions of dollars that's owed to the city
that hasn't been brought in.
And I've also been working very closely in my office
and many of the other offices as well
to encourage tourism to bring in people into our city
because this is a source of funding
that doesn't require us to tax people more
and it doesn't require us,
it really just allows us to bring in more funding
from outside of the city.
And so we've been doing a lot more work around tourism.
So I wanna thank the Office of Economic Development
for being a really important partner in that work
and also the different business districts,
Chamber of Commerce, Visit Berkeley.
In the event that the sales tax doesn't move forward
or pass, although I've already said earlier in the evening
that I will be working personally very hard
on both both taxes together and and want to encourage my council colleagues to reach out if you have questions about that but I if the sales tax doesn't move forward I've also asked staff to cost out mandatory time off and and I think that what is variable time off as well options including non-sworn officers not
including, sorry, not including sworn officers
in fire and police.
And my understanding is that if we do an MTO,
it'll garner approximately $7.6 million,
which doesn't completely cover that money
from the sales tax.
And I understand also that this is a meet and confer issue
with our labor partners,
but this could be something that's worth exploring.
So I do wanna just throw that out there
because I know we're concerned about losing positions.
So this could potentially be something
that would help prevent us from losing positions.
So I want to throw that out there.
And then as was mentioned by some other folks,
one thing that I am particularly interested in
is saving this Office of Economic Development position,
as we've mentioned, bringing in more funds into the city
is really important to us.
And so if there are positions that can assist with that,
we really want to make sure we maintain those positions.
So as was mentioned, I will bring another budget in.
I'm working with my current Brown Act circle,
but I've also heard everyone's priorities as well.
So we will work to try and bring those priorities in
as much as possible.
And of course, understanding, as was commented on earlier,
that when we bring something back,
that means we have to cut somewhere else.
So this really is about trade-offs,
and those are really challenging.
And you have my word that I will do my absolute best
make sure that we are continuing to have this process that's transparent and accountable and
that is respectful of the people that not only work for the city but also live here. So thank
you all very much. It is 11 20. We have 10 minutes and I think that there's a request to try to go to
11 45 to try to finish a few more of these move to extend to 11 45 quick
second there's a second I'm gonna ask you to take the role on this one a second
from councilmember Casa wanting okay 10 to 11 45 councilmember kiss their
would like to thank you for
that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do you have a question.
Do I have a question.
Do I have a question.
Do I have a question.
Do I have a question.
Yes.
Do I have a question.
We have an order.
We're going to go as quickly as possible.
There are the position.
Sorry, we've already opened the, we've already opened all of them,
but I just realized we also need to close the previous item.
Is there a motion?
Motion to close.
Yeah, so can.
Is there any opposition to closing the public hearing
on the budget item?
OK, the public hearing is closed.
All right, so we're going to try to go 22, 23, 25,
26, 27, those are the ones that don't have presentations
and then go from there.
So we're going to, we've already opened the public hearing,
but we're gonna start with item number 22.
There's no presentation on that,
but are there any questions?
Oh, questions, yes.
I just have one comment before you start.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Thank you for, thank you all.
Really appreciate you extending this meeting to 1145
so that we can get through at least the ones
with no presentations for the staff
that have been sitting here all night.
That's much appreciated.
So for this item, one quick note is that we do have a fee
in here for the senior owned licenses for altered animals,
which means animals that have been spayed or neutered.
And it turns out that we don't have to actually charge
that fee per our broken municipal code.
So I want to strike that fee out for the three years
we have it in there for senior altered animal permits.
Any other questions?
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Any other questions?
Is there a public comment on this item, item number 22, Animal Care Services Fee Schedule?
Is there...
Oh.
This person online, are you making comment for item number 22, Animal Care Services Fee
Schedule?
We'll try them.
Just call our ending in 211.
This is for public comment only on the Animal Care Services Fee Schedule.
I want to wait until to make a public comment on agenda item.
So I will meet my okay.
So we're going to wait for that. Thank you. Okay.
Is there any, are there any comments on this item? Oh, council member,
black could be quick question. And just for first step,
I know that the total budget is about 2.5 million and we're generating about
300,000 revenue. Uh, is there anything else we can do to close the gap?
I mean, raising these fees is what we're doing. Um, is there any way that, I mean,
Is it appropriate to think about this ever revenues covering cost or is this
always going to be running a deficit out of this fund?
I think it's unlikely that we're going to be able to fully recover our costs
with fees. Okay. Um,
council vice mayor Traeger,
I moved the staff recommendation as amended by Paul second to close the public
hearing. Oh, and I also moved to close the public.
And I'll second that motion.
Is there any opposition to closing the public hearing? All right.
the public hearing is closed and you want to make a motion to move the
recommendation? Yes. Second again. Is there any opposition to approving the
Animal Care Services Fee Schedule item as recommended by the city manager? Nope.
All right. We will pass that then by unanimous consent. Thank you very much. We
are moving on to item 23 which is the Neighborhood Services Code enforcement
the public hearing. So we're
23. All right. We will pass that as well. Thank you very much. Thank you very
much, Peter. All right. Moving on to item 25, which is the fees, health, housing
and community services facility rental fees. Are there any questions? Nope. Is
there any public comment on this item? Carol, are you moving up here for public
comment? No. Okay. Any public comment online for fees, health, housing,
community services facility rental fees no hands raised no all right very good
I move to close the public hearing okay is there a second is there any
opposition of closing the public hearing public hearing is closed I move that
staff recommendation second is there any opposition to approving the staff
recommendation no all right staff recommendation recommendation is
approved thank you very much Tanya moving on to item number 26 changes to
to selected recreation facilities and program fees.
Is there, are there any questions for this item?
Okay, is there any public comment on this item?
This is item number 26 was changes
to selected recreation facilities and program fees.
Please raise your hand if you have any questions, comments.
Seeing none, I will see if there's a motion
to close the public hearing.
Oh wait, John Canner raised his hand.
Okay, apologies.
Okay. Thank you. John Keener.
Yeah. What happened to item 24?
We skip that item. We're not
on that item right now because
that one involves a
presentation. So we will likely
not have time this evening.
Okay. Thank you. All right. Is
there a motion to close the
public hearing? I move to close
the public hearing. Is there a
second second. Is there any
opposite opposition to closing
This item, the staff recommendation.
Staff recommendation, okay.
And there's a second from Councilmember Humbert.
Is there any opposition to approving
the staff recommendation?
This item, 20.
26, sorry, thank you, 26.
All right, we have approved the staff recommendation
for item number 26.
Moving on to thank you very much.
Item number 27, changes to the planning
and development fee schedule.
Hi folks, are there any questions?
Okay, question from council member Casarani.
Yes, Director Klein,
I just want to make sure I'm understanding correctly.
So is, we are increasing fees for appeals, correct?
I'm here with that Jim Bondi,
Associate Management Analyst,
I'll let Jim field this.
Okay.
Only for building official appeals,
which until about a year ago,
none of us could ever remember having received.
And then we've gotten about three of them
the last 18 months and we created a fee last year and it's not sufficient so
we're articulating it better but the rate is not increasing. Land use appeals
are not being increased. Okay how much are the land use appeal amounts? I think
they're in here. So there's a number of different appeals. So an appeal of a ZAB
decision by anyone other than the applicant is $3,000. That was
increased last May and an appeal I think it was was doubled I believe last May
from 1500 to 3000. Okay okay I saw those fee amounts so they have already been
increased to reflect cost. I would say we're not quite at cost recovery there
we considered proposing an increase again this year but felt like increases
in consecutive years, we just we weren't ready to propose an increase but it's
something that we're gonna look at for next year. Okay all right thank you. Any
other questions? Yeah I think he just wanted to conform under PV or that of a
storage install site. Are there any proposals to change that or does that
that's the end of the day. We
27 which is changing to the planning and development fee schedule. Anybody
online? No hands raised on that. Okay is there a motion to close the public hearing?
Close the public hearing. Second. Is there any opposition to closing the
public hearing? All right we've closed the public hearing for item number 27.
I'll move the item. Second. Is there any opposition to moving the recommendation?
Okay recommendation has been approved thank you very much. All right that was
actually our final one for the evening. So that by the way that left 24, 28 and
29 that we will not be able to finish for this evening. Since we've already
opened the public hearing what is the protocol? We can continue the public hearing on 24, 28
and 29 to the June 9th meeting or another date. Yes I think that makes
sense given our conversations about the upcoming meetings. All right. Is there a
motion? Okay, is there any opposition to the motion? Which is to continue these
items this is June 9th meeting. All right, motion is approved. All right, we
have moved those items to the June 9th meeting. Is there any public comment for
items not listed on the agenda, yes Carol. Yes, physical disabilities and
homeless services programs. I speak as Carol Morosovic, Chair of the Homeless
Services Panel of Experts. So when we were at Pathways, a stair doing a site
visit, I asked as I had other programs, how would you accommodate persons who were
blind slash visually impaired, deaf slash hearing impaired. And we were
told maybe they don't belong here, maybe they need to find another place. And this
is especially particularly concerning because the city has just spent all this
money hundreds of thousands of dollars making this pathway stair accessible.
Another question that I asked every provider was what would you cut if you
you had to cut 5%, 10% and they said Pathway Stairs,
FLEX funds and a service coordinator which is contrasted,
I really, Kelly, will you give me a minute, please?
Someone?
Okay, okay, come on.
Okay, let me collude this.
So this is particularly contrast this
with the other programs that we visited
that actually approached me afterwards
asking for accommodations and also the complaint
from other providers at the motel conversions
we visited providers inside housing during the day
was they were concerned that they didn't have
enough availability of flex funds.
And so this is something that's really important
for the clients, but that's the response
that we received at Stair.
Thank you.
Thanks, Carol.
Any other public comment online?
Non-agenda items.
Yes.
Caller, the phone number ending in 211.
Hi.
Okay, this is totally different topic.
I'm very concerned about that.
The Hunter virus in the Midwest.
The second is now it is in the ship
and it's coming to the United States.
Also, Poland, Africa, these are very dangerous.
COVID-19 is little baby compared
giant colors. So we have to be very careful perhaps really first. As far as
the business community all the shutdown places in Berkeley should be open, should
be staffed, should have businesses. It is Berkeley created Emory Vial by being
anti-business. Here's the policy. Mayor Ishii, you're a great woman, we need your
help. Let us fill all of these empty places with good thriving business that
that could bring tax money to the city and good service
and sales to residents of Berkeley and the whole Bay area.
We did over $200 million of business over the last 53 years.
Let us make example of eat to everybody else.
Thank you.
Have a good night.
Have a good night.
We have Chris Devere Kohler.
Hello, all.
I just wanted to add to Ms. Marisovich's remarks
that I happen to have completed the HUD training
in auditing recipients or subrecipients of federal funding,
and it's quite detailed.
I know that our commission goes into site visits,
but nowhere near the same kind of audit.
And I'm wondering if the city has any function of that kind
to audit their efficacy.
Thank you.
Any other public comment for non adjournment?
Nope no more. Okay thank you very much. Is there a motion to adjourn? Second.
Alright any opposition to adjournment? We are adjourned. Thank you all so much.