Yes. Good evening, everyone. I'm calling the meeting to order today's Tuesday, June 16th,
2026, and it is 6 0 3 p.m. Clerk. Can you please start us off? Okay. Calling the role.
Council member Kesser Wani here. Taplan. President Bartlett. Here.
Sregab. Present. O.B. here. Blackaby. Here. Little Para. Here. Humber. Present. And Mayor
Ishi. Here. Okay all present and council member Kesserwani is participating
remotely for this meeting under the Just Cause Exemption and the Brown Act a
quorum of the council's participating in person at the noticed physical meeting
location and Councilmember Kesserani please provide a general
circumstances related to need to appear remotely but do not disclose any medical
diagnosis diagnosis or other confidential medical information. Yes I
have a child care need. Okay and please disclose if there is any
individuals 18 years of age or older present with you and their relationship
to you. Nobody over 18 is here. Okay and council member Kesirani will
participate through both audio and visual technology so we can proceed.
Thank you so much. Okay so we will move on to our ceremonial matters and for this
evening we are honoring the life of Bertha Brown. I believe her family is
here. Yes come on up and feel free I know there might be some other folks here
from Parks and Rec or other city staff feel free if you'd also like to come
towards the front. Hi, welcome. So this evening, first of all I want to say I'm sorry for your loss and this
evening we have both a proclamation and we will also be adjourning in memory on
behalf of Bertha Brown. Honoring the life of Bertha Brown, whereas for over 30
years Bertha Brown served as a dedicated City of Berkeley employee
working with youth and teens in the parks, recreation and waterfront
department and whereas in 1989 Bertha started with the city as a recreation
activities leader for the Young Adult Project cultivating dance programs,
talent shows and positive messaging for teens throughout Berkeley. From 2008
until her retirement in 2019 she served as the recreation coordinator at the
Francis Albune community center where she initiated the talks around town and
and pre-kindergarten classes,
and successfully expanded the program with grant funding
to several other parks and recreation sites in Berkeley.
She also oversaw the long fellow summer playground program,
the Latino Parenting Program, and the Young Mothers Program.
Whereas she further served her community
as a member of the city's Human Welfare
and Community Action Commission,
and whereas through her integrity, compassion,
dependability, and strong work ethic,
birth earned the respect and appreciation
of colleagues, leaders, community members, and teens
throughout the South Berkeley community.
She will be remembered for her incredible creativity,
off-the-chart dance moves, end-of-summer performances
with staff, and pure love for the arts.
And whereas Bertha Brown had a tremendous impact
on the success, stability, and positive spirit
of the Young Adult Project and Francis Albright Community
Center, impacting multiple generations of Berkeley teens.
Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Adina Ishii,
mayor of the city of Berkeley
hereby recognize and honor Bertha Brown
for her years of dedicated service to our city
and express sincere gratitude
for her outstanding contributions, loyalty,
and commitment to the Berkeley community.
If you'd like to say a few words.
I just wanna say thank you to everyone
for their warm wishes, their prayers,
and just continue to keep us, the family,
and thank you for your time.
with us, and thank you to Scott, who also was the one who requested this as well.
We have it during our ceremonial matters.
We actually have a brief training from Chris Lynch, I believe, who's here.
Oh, there you are.
Feel free whenever you're ready.
Okay. Well, we're going to put the presentation up, but I know you have handouts,
so why don't I start?
Mark, do you think you'll be able to get it or?
Okay.
Don't know if we do have handouts.
Thank you. Madam Mayor, members of the City Council, my name is Chris Lynch. I work at
a law firm called Jones Hall. We regularly work with the City as Bond Council and Disclosure
Council when the City undertakes bond financings. In anticipation of the June 30 council meeting
at which you'll be asked to consider and approve two bond issuances, the City Attorney asked
me to come and provide some disclosure training. We have done this regularly over the years
in anticipation of similar events.
So my message in a nutshell is first,
federal securities laws apply to the city
when they issue bonds and also when they provide
continuing disclosure related to those bonds.
They also apply to other information or disclosures
that are intended to reach investors,
so I'll describe some of those other disclosures.
Second, city staff and elected officials
are expected to take reasonable steps
to ensure that the city's disclosure includes all material facts which are facts that a
reasonable investor would take into consideration. And then third, the city has adopted written
policies and procedures that should ensure that the city complies with federal securities
laws in these contexts. Next slide, please. I'll describe briefly the key federal securities
laws and then your policies and procedures. The Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities
Act of 1934 were adopted after the Great Depression when widespread fraud adversely affected investors.
The 1934 Act created the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is the federal agency that
enforces federal securities laws, and so the 33 Act, the 34 Act, and two SEC rules, 10B5
15C2-12 regulate your behavior when you issue bonds.
Most importantly, they prohibit fraud in the offer or sale
of securities.
Rule 10B-5 requires that communications to investors
contain all material facts and not mistake material facts.
And a material fact is any fact that a reasonable investor,
given the circumstances, would actually
impact their decision to buy or sell your bonds.
Next slide.
So, SEC Rule 15C212 requires an issuer of bonds to prepare a disclosure document at
the time it issues the bonds.
That document is called an official statement and it is prepared by the issuer's staff
with the assistance of municipal advisors and bond counsel and disclosure counsel like
us.
It has to include all material facts which are the terms of the bonds and the financial
information and operating data that are relevant to that particular series of bonds.
Next slide.
Rule 15 C to 12 also requires continuing disclosure and that continued disclosure includes
updates on an annual basis of the financial information and operating data that were in the original disclosure document and
timely notice of certain events such as rating changes bankruptcies
defaults draws on credit enhancement
next slide
So as I mentioned on June 30, the City Council will be asked to approve two official statements one
Related to the issuance of general obligation bonds those bonds will be payable from taxes paid by taxable properties in the city and one
For an issue of bond for bonnet or tax and revenue anticipation notes now those notes are paid
They have a one-year maturity date and they're paid from any
Unrestricted funds that the city receives in fiscal year 26 27 in the official statement for each of those bonds
the city will have an appendix A that describes the city's general fund. Now
the city has given the, sorry, the Securities and Exchange Commission has
given clear guidance to what it expects elected officials and employees of the
city involved in a bond issuance should do when they are faced with a decision
of approving of an official statement related to bonds. In 1994 Orange County
declared bankruptcy. They declared bankruptcy because they had pursued an
an investment strategy of issuing short term notes
and investing in risky investments
to achieve high above market rate of returns.
They were relying on those above market turns
to balance their budget.
The County Board of Supervisors approved official statements
for those notes and never disclosed the risks associated
with those risky investments.
It also didn't disclose the risks associated
with the county's dangerously underfunded budget.
In the wake of the bankruptcy,
the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a report that described what it expects elected
officials to do. The report highlighted that the supervisors were aware of the risky investment
scheme and the county's reliance on it to balance its budget, but did not do anything
to ensure that that risk was disclosed to investors. And then the SEC said what elected
officials should do. The SEC wrote that officials are expected to take steps appropriate under
the circumstances to ensure that the disclosure includes all material facts.
Now, that could mean when you get the official statement for the bonds and the notes next
week that you could read it word for word. But I'm not sure the SEC thinks that's realistic.
They do think that if you are aware of some fact that could adversely affect the city's
ability to repay those bonds or notes, that you would make sure it was disclosed in the
disclosure document.
The bottom line was that the SEC wrote
that public officials may not authorize disclosure
while recklessly disregarding facts
that indicate there's a risk
that the disclosure may be misleading.
Next slide.
So in training sessions like this,
I like to include this slide
because it highlights what the SEC thinks
cities and other local agencies should do
in order to comply with federal securities laws.
First, they should adopt
written disclosure policies and procedures.
In 2017, the City of Berkeley adopted written policies
and procedures.
It established a disclosure working group
that consists of the city's finance director,
the accounting manager and other members of staff
that are relevant to the appropriate,
to the particular financing.
The disclosure group also will consult with officials
like the city's outside municipal advisors
and a law firm like ours.
At the time the bond is issued,
the disclosure group will make sure
that the official statement complies with Federal Security's laws before it sends it
to the City Council for approval.
The staff report will describe your responsibilities under Federal Security's laws
and highlight key sections of the official statement so you know where to look if you'd like to.
The disclosure working group also looks at continuing disclosure reports.
However, I want to point out that your disclosure policies also highlight
that there may be other information distributed by the City in addition
to its official statements and its audited financial statements and its
continued disclosure that may be subject to federal securities laws. In 2013, the
city of Harrisburg had failed to file its continued disclosure filings and the
SEC concluded that misleading information on the city's website and a
misleading state of the state of the city speech by the mayor were subject to
federal securities law and had violated it. Next slide. Sorry state. Sorry I apologize.
The second issuer should provide appropriate training to elected officials and employees
involved in the bond training.
So the city does that in three ways.
First, I'm here tonight to give you this brief training.
Second, you received a memorandum from the city attorney that included the Orange County
report that I mentioned earlier.
And then third, the staff report for each of the financing will summarize this information
for a third time.
Third, local agencies should disclose the big picture issues.
The city of San Diego had an enforcement action for violations of federal securities laws
brought against it by the SEC.
In it, the SEC noted that the city had approved official statements that included misleading
audited financial statements.
The city had not disclosed its underfunded pension liabilities that was adversely affecting
the city's ability to operate its various services.
Fourth, local agencies should disclose good facts with bad facts.
It's tempting to treat your official statement for bonds, like a marketing piece, and focusing
on your strengths, but it's really important to focus on the good facts and the bad facts.
Finally, the SEC thinks you should work with competent auditors and other consultants to
make sure you comply with these rules.
Next slide.
For many issuers, the big picture that the SEC thinks you should disclose has something
to do with pensions and OPEPS, but it could also be litigation.
It could be the impending departure of a large employer and a rate payer.
It could be a deferred public infrastructure work.
It could be a structural imbalance in your budget.
So when you get the official statement
for the notes and the bonds
for your consideration on June 30,
you'll see an appendix A that we spend a fair amount of time
talking about the city's reserve policies
and where they are in their funding levels.
You'll see a substantial amount of disclosure about pension
and other post-employment benefits or OPEB.
You'll also see a discussion of the auditor's recent report
the unfunded liabilities and unfunded infrastructure needs, and then the structural imbalance
in the general fund. Next slide. All right, I guess you're ahead of me now. Go back one,
if you don't mind. Finally, you should know that the SEC has punished individuals when
they acted with an intent to defraud or recklessly disregarded information that should have been
disclosed to investors. In Orange County, the two individuals' responsibility for their
scheme, which were the treasurer and assistant treasurer, the SEC concluded they knowingly
committed fraud and they received fines in a jail sentence. In San Diego the SEC
brought securities law charges against a broad array of city staff and again
the SEC alleged that they had reviewed misleading financial statements and
allowed them to be published when they when they were sent out to investors. So
hopefully it's clear that city staff and elected officials should take reasonable
steps to ensure that the city's disclosure documents include all
material facts. If you have questions about whether there are facts you're
aware of that have been included in the disclosure you can either read the
document or you can reach out to members of staff or outside consultants to make
sure they've been adequately disclosed. That's all I have but I'm happy to
answer questions. Thank you very much Chris I appreciate you being here and
for the brief training and also thank you to our city attorney for bringing
that in the memo. Thank you. Okay. Very good. And folks all have his contact
information at the back of the presentation so feel free to reach out
if you have any additional questions or you know of course you can also speak to
our city attorney. All right moving on to our city manager comments. Mr. City
manager do you have any comments this evening? Thank you. Thank you. Okay public
on non-agenda matters. You have to wait to see if your card is chosen although
there's not very many so probably. I think there's one or two. So now it's time for public comment on
non-agenda matters if you're on the zoom and you would like to provide public
comments on non-agenda matters now is the time to raise your hand. Do the
in-person speakers first and then we'll go to the online commenters. Okay, the
in-person commenters are Angela Jernigan, Tony Wilkinson, VOP, Thomas Gregory, and
and I'm going to go ahead and.
Thank you. We have Sloan. Hello. My name is Reverend Angela Jernigan. I serve ministry
in West Berkeley and I'm here speaking tonight about the topic you'll be voting on next week
in terms of the community violence intervention live free funding. This is a program that
was built on a highly effective national model model and it has actually is also on the agenda
for later tonight because we're going to be presenting information about it. Oh, okay. So the vote is next week. Yeah, but the agenda item is tonight. It's on the agenda. Sorry. Okay. So yeah, so folks that the this public comment period is for items that are not on the agenda this evening. Okay. Come on up. We saw that the agenda. I know we didn't see it as an agenda item immediately, but we just wanted to echo the importance of live free work. Yes, it's too late.
you can still speak to it later I just not right now that's all okay just want
to make sure hi I'm assuming the reduction in force plans are not on the
agenda specifically enough to warrant later comment I mean it's on the budget
presentation wait till then if that's yeah thank you thank you all right are
there other non-agenda public comments this evening all right good speakers on
on Zoom first is Celeste Marks.
Good evening.
This is Dr. Steven Alpert.
During the May 19 council meeting,
Mayor Esh interrupted my public comment remarks.
Information provided by the First Amendment Coalition
indicated this was a clear violation of the First Amendment
right to free speech.
The Ninth Circuit has ruled that prohibiting criticism
of Pacific members of a governing body
violates the First Amendment.
Mayor Ishii's interview was, quote,
just a reminder not to refer to individual council members
for addressing the body, please.
Moreover, I was not addressing Council Member Humbert,
but instead clearly referring to misinformation
on his website displayed on a poster.
For government codes 54960,
I forward a formal cease and desist letter
demanding that the council acknowledge the violations,
make an unconditional commitment henceforth,
not to interrupt any speaker addressing statements
or positions publicly made by an individual council members
or by other city officials.
For code 54960.1 and five,
the council has 30 days to comply with
during an open session of a regular meeting
or special meeting, or I can find the legal action.
Your minute is over, thank you.
Next is Martin.
Martin should be able to unmute.
Last call for Martin.
Good evening. Yes, I certainly hope that the extended parking meters is not on the agenda this evening. I am Martin Kirkwood. I used to run a chamber of commerce in San Francisco.
I have was quite concerned about the extended parking meter times. I have certainly seen a variety of cities doing this and seeing reduced economic activity.
I certainly have seen turnover rates increase.
Also people avoiding areas where extended parking times have been extended.
I was wondering out loud here if the city has looked into evening occupancy rates,
turn away rates, merchant support,
and what the true economic benefit is for the emergence
and for the residents and people that want to shop in the area.
If it's actually going to harm or if it's going to
benefit the city in reaching its 5.3 million dollar deficit that's my comment and have a nice evening. Thank you. Okay. Next is a caller with a phone number ending in 0, 0, 0.
We're not able to give you pay per se because Roy is out of town for a couple of weeks.
The second point about the parking,
Berkeley lost a lot of businesses over the decades
because of parking meter.
When I came to Berkeley first, tickets were $3.
Now they are 60 plus, or 49, whatever it is.
That was a mistake.
You're reducing your income from businesses.
As you walk around, see how many vacant spaces in Berkeley.
And it is disgusting.
It's really disgusting.
You're trying to make money.
You're trying to make more money from a different place,
but actually losing money.
I mean from a different place, you're losing money.
I will call it home.
Have a good night.
I will call you in the next section.
Okay.
Thank you.
Next is Dela Luna.
Hi.
I wanted to say that the Zoom maneuvering,
the camera control, the audio has really been excellent
were the online users, and I really wanted to just comment on that because I know it
was the issue before, but it's so good now. So every speaker, we're hearing them clearly,
the camera's right there. And so whoever's controlling that, great work. Keep it up.
Thank you. We appreciate you. So we can hear and see everything as needed. That's it.
Thank you. Thank you to our excellent partners at Berkeley Community Media.
Yes. Thank you for Berkeley Community Media.
is Makai Freeman.
Give two minutes, okay.
Good afternoon.
On each lecture,
fine, do somebody, see different.
I'm calling to get in place on the increased fine for parking.
Many of us rely on
our accessible gear and
Then we cannot move our bands and get a fine financially negatively impacted.
I'm wondering if you will use an equity lens and staff here at
It's important to handle these issues where a disabled person that owns an accessible dam,
but doesn't like block, make her a system that could impact on the registration.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Mackay.
Thank you.
that's the last speaker okay thank you very much everyone for your public
comments now I think that many of you were waiting for the consent calendar so
we will move on to the consent calendar starting off with comments from any of
my council colleagues and please keep in mind we have a very full agenda this
evening so if you could keep your comments brief it would be much
appreciated councilmember Humbert thank you madam mayor yeah I will try to
speed through these comments I just have a few as to item number 20 the
memorandum of understanding with the Berkeley Police Association I just want
to say that I'm very pleased that we've reached a chord with the Berkeley Police
Association on a labor MOU we have the best police department in the state at
minimum and I'm thrilled that we got this done so expeditiously. Thank you to
the leadership and membership of the BPA and thank you to the city's negotiating
team led by HR director Janelle Rodriguez. Okay, thank you. I know I
still have a couple. The bicycle plan update which is item number 29 on
consent after a lot of hard work and very good work by the members of our
Transportation and the Infrastructure Commission, our City Manager Paul
Budehagan, our Fire Chief David Sprague, our Public Works Interim Director,
Wahid Amiri and his team with input by neighbors and our treasured advocacy
group, Walk Bike Berkeley. The bike plan is in very good shape and ready to be
put into effect. This is consistent with our climate and street safety goals and
I couldn't be more pleased. We will be designing and building bike
infrastructure that will serve all users, including our disabled community. We have
a very large percentage of Berkeleyans who would ride bikes more if we had
safer streets, and this is a big step in that direction. Thank you for that,
everybody, and item 31, which is resource-free orgs, mural, reveal, and food
driver relinquishment I want to sponsored by or authored by council member
Bartlett who is offered to make me a co-sponsor which I'm would be very
privileged to be two hundred and fifty dollars I'd like to contribute from my
discretionary DA account and then item number 33 from councilmember Luna Parra
United for health's Moffitt Library Clinic. I'd like to contribute a hundred
and fifty dollars. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. And council member
Leno Parra. Thank you. I on item 29, I'm very excited to support the bike plan. I
want really want to thank the city manager's office, public works advocates,
the fire department for all the work that went into this. It's I know it's a
product of immense and critical work and I'm so grateful to everyone who
participated and provided feedback. On item 31 I'd like to give $200 and I am
grateful for my colleagues for supporting item 33 for the Moffitt
library clinic, which provides necessary harm reduction in Southside. Thanks.
Thank you very much. I'm going to go online to Councilmember Blackaby.
Thanks, Madam Mayor. We received a number of comments from the public and questions
from the public on items 3 through 17. I was wondering, to the city manager and finance staff,
If we took, for example, just the measure, GG, sorry, FF increase, which was item.
10, take a second, maybe just to address that 1 is kind of an illustrative of the group of, like, how we set that rate. Just the process there just to kind of make that a little more transparent. Why we chose a particular tax increase?
Because I think it's kind of uniform, but I just, we had just 1 minute just to kind of talk about that. I really appreciate it.
Sure council member we have acting deputy director Greg Selegraves is on the
line too I can just say at a high level that all of those taxes all those items
three through sixteen are taxes that were approved by the voters and all of
the inflators are based on the language that's in the measure that was approved
by the voters so it kind of depends on which you know which one the one you
pointed out Greg can speak a little bit more to he's on the yeah that'd be great
I think one of the questions is like, why the PIG versus which inflator we choose and all that kind of stuff. Greg, that would be great.
Hi, customer, black, a V. So, yeah, as Paul said, the.
The specific language of each individual tax measure determines how we set the inflator. I actually don't have the language. I'm sorry. I'm part of me specifically for G. G. but it is whatever the voters passed.
Um, and that's for the special, the special assessments that fund services directly. Obviously the debt service for the bond measures operate a different way. We have, you know, amounts we need to pay to cover the debt service for those bonds.
And those are based on the total valuation estimates we get from the county and we assign a percentage base that gets added as the line item on those taxes to cover the debt service for each 1 of those bonds.
Great. I noticed on some of these that there was a choice of either using the personal income growth rate, or kind of a more standard CPI, and again, for each of those measures, it's pretty specific, like you can either choose 1, or 1 of 2, but it's kind of each of the measures has a particular method where each year you reset that rate based on the inflator, and again, that's just sort of in the measure itself.
Right? Yeah, so we would look at if there's specific language which identifies the specific inflator. We should use, of course, we use that if there's a choice or just a generic reference to inflation.
We often pick the higher 1, because it tends to be a leading indicator of the other. So you can kind of if incomes go up, then prices won't be far behind. And likewise, you know, incomes tend to follow the prices if there's inflation or environment.
Okay, great. Okay, I appreciate that. I guess. And the point is, this is sort of.
This is done annually sort of standard practice. We're required to do this annual as part of each measure. And it's sort of like, kind of just locking in the particular inflator. That's that's indicated in each provision and we're just sort of codifying that.
Each year, yeah, I mean, they tend to be fairly close those measures if they're both measures of inflation, but yeah, obviously we want the funding that was intended by the voters to keep up with.
Current economic conditions. Okay. Thank you. That's all I had on that. I just appreciate a little bit explanation of what's happening there.
Um, um, a couple last things and I'm done on the discretionary items for item 31.
On customer Bartlett's item, the district 6 office would like to relinquish $250.
And on item 33 council, we're going to parse item on the Moffitt library clinic.
we'd also like to relinquish $250 and that's all I've got.
Thank you very much.
Moving on to Vice Mayor Tragop.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I would like to thank the Health Housing
and Community Services leadership and team
for working and bringing up for approval item 19,
which is the Behavioral Health Services Act,
F I 27 to 29 three year integrated plan this came before me as the council designate to
the behavioral health commission and while this is a very challenging time budget terribly
between prop one and other ways in which the federal and state budget and county all kind
of interface with city.
This is an important plan that to approve it it would provide uninterrupted
service delivery and ensure state compliance for most vulnerable
populations and stabilizing and at least stabilizing the city's safety net
services on item 20, which is the MOU with the Berkeley Police Association.
I just wanna state my appreciation
that we were able to reach this memorandum of understanding.
Item 23, which is the declaration of intent
for the FY27 street lighting assessment.
Thank you to the city staff for,
I know this is also an annual routine process,
but want to appreciate staff's work on it
Just last week we had a meeting with some of my constituents
and the importance of street lighting came up
and this makes sure we have the funding to do that.
On item 29, which is the bicycle plan update,
I would like to just echo my gratitude
that already expressed by my colleagues.
I know that city staff and members of the public
did a lot of work on this for a number of years.
We did receive comments from members
of the disability community.
And I just want to say, you know,
this issue is near and dear to my heart
and conferred with staff and my understanding.
This is a plan and staff is committed as is the council
to ensuring that going forward implementation is done
consistent with the plan.
So there will be further conversations.
This is not the end all be all.
I want to think on item 32,
my co-sponsors, council members Luna Parra and Bartlett
for adopting, this is our support item
to adopt a support position for SB 954
to address non-housing CEQA exemptions
for industrial manufacturing
and environmental health protections.
And finally, I would like to contribute $150 each
to from my G-13 account to items 31 and 23.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Councilmember Bartlett. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'd like
to stop here. That's okay. While you're looking, I'm just gonna say on deck is
Councilmember Taplin, then Councilmember Keith, then Councilmember Kesserwani.
Great, thank you. Item 30, 33. This is the Moffitt Library event clinic. I want to
Thank you, I just want to thank the department for donating $200 to this and I'm really pleased to be a part of Item 32, this further rationalizing the CEQA rules to make it make life easier to do things we need to need this in the state.
And lastly, 31, our item, this is resourcery.org.
They are a wonderful food pantry.
And as we know, due to the budget cuts
in federal government and increased need,
food is at an all-time need.
Food banks are going empty.
People are selling food in the streets now.
Hunger has hit home in Alameda County in California.
And so groups like resource.org, resource.org,
resource.org, they really go a long way.
It's a community building place.
They're gonna be a mural, an event, it's a food drive.
Please come, there'll be prizes.
There'll be kids and smiles.
There'll be happy people.
You can come to your civic duty.
Just come to the event.
And I thank my colleagues for donating.
All right, thank you very much, Councilmember Taplin.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Good evening, everyone.
On item 29, I echo the remarks of my colleagues.
on items 31, 33, I would like to relinquish 250 to each.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Council member O'Keefe.
I'll be brief like Council member Tappan.
Yes, thank you to everyone who did everything.
Lots of great stuff on here.
Trying to save time.
And I'd like to be recorded as donating $200
for items 31 and 33.
And thank you to the sponsors for bringing those.
Thank you very much.
All right, moving on to Council member Casalani.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
I'd like to be recorded as donating $100 each to item 31
for Resorcery Org's Mural Reveal and Food Drive
and item 33, United for Health's Moffitt Library Clinic.
And thank you to the authors of those two items.
And I also wanted to express my gratitude
for seeing the bike plan on the consent calendar tonight.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And to add to that from my office for items 31 and 33,
$250 for each. Thank you both for bringing those forward and thank you so
much to city staff for all the work that's going on with the bike plan. It
can be very challenging to meet with all the constituents and work with city
staff and make sure folks are on board. So thank you all so much for that work
and I just wanted to clarify for folks that were concerned about fire danger
with the bike plan that the fire department will still need to review any
complete street plans. So I know that that was a concern. I wanted to bring that
up and that's it from me and is there any public comment on consent calendar
or information items only I think good evening Berkeley City Council a morning
mo president of the Berkeley Firefighters Association local 12 27
behind me there are 30 firefighters here on their own free time because the
current biannual budget proposes the elimination of 20 positions even if the
sales tax passes 11 of the sorry are you talking about the budget yes because
that's not on the consent calendar it's an action item that's later this evening
so if you can wait until we have that item come up all right thank you so much
all right I'm okay hi I'm tail Purcell thank you
all so much for all your kind words about the bike plan I'm very much in
support of it and I would basically just encourage you all to think about and
work with staff on to what degree can it be relatively automatically implemented
with a minimum of, you know, disruption, turmoil,
you know, revisiting to the council, multi-year debates,
things like that.
So thank you all for your support of it
and hopefully we will see you go through.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hey, good evening.
Jeff Lomax.
So after this evening, the sales tax rate in Berkeley
will probably be approximately on track to hit 11.5%,
which is really gonna hit our small businesses.
Most of those small businesses.
Sorry, the sales taxes.
I'm getting there. Okay. Thank you. Can I have my time back, please? Thanks. So small businesses are really struggling. A lot of business owners actually work day jobs or multiple jobs.
So one thing you could do, and this would probably improve revenues on your sales tax, is why not give them a pass this year on the inflators? You already taxed them at 30 percent higher.
I'm sorry. What item are you referring to on the agenda? Because if you're talking about the sales tax, it's actually an action item.
May I finish? So let me explain. Yes, go ahead and tell me which item that you're referring to.
You are voting on a set of inflators that are going to and for all those
parcel taxes small businesses are already taxed at a 30% higher rate for
reasons that are I don't even understand because they're certainly not piling
into the libraries. So as a gesture and probably an economically rational choice
why not give a pass on those inflators at least for the businesses on the
commercial side. They're already paying tremendously higher parcel taxes and
you're later going to pass a sales tax increase based on the premise that
they're going to be generating the revenue for you. So a rational economic
approach would be give them a break on the back end because at 11.25% you
will see a serious decline in revenues from sales tax because that's how
and I'm happy to share with us
how economics works.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Coming up, Tom.
Tom Yamaguchi, consent calendar.
Item 29, the bike plan.
Once again, yes, thank you very much.
I was able to participate in a number of public workshops.
And I'm just really happy with what we've accomplished.
Carol Morassovic. Speaking to item 19, there's been a lot of misunderstanding about this
transition from the Mental Health Services Act through the Behavior Health Services Act.
I want to clarify a couple of things. For example, the excellent options in Camp McWellness
team, which has been great, is actually part of the plan that will be going forward and
and after we move forward through input from review
from UN resources and also meet and confer
with the unions, presuming this is passed tonight,
options will be getting actually an extended contract
through June 30, 2029.
And this refers to the AB 339 process.
Also, the mental health trauma monies,
they will continue these are monies
to the underserved populations
such as African American, LGBTQ.
Thank you.
Thanks Carol.
Anyone else online have public comment
for consent calendar and information items only please.
Yes, we currently have eight hands raised.
First is Charles Siegel.
Hello, I'm speaking on behalf of walks
of the fourth week, to pass item 29, the bike plan division. It's a good bike plan. And I want to
thank staff for all the work that I'm listening to public input. Just listening is a lot of work
in itself, but also accommodating all the public input. Staff did a great job. And of course,
there'll be more public input as each project is implemented. So we still have a lot of work to do
with implementing these projects. But council, and I also want to thank all the council members
who spoke in favor of the bike plan. So council could take a step in the right direction by
approving bike plan on consent tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next is Makai Freeman.
Oh where'd she go? Oh this is Missouri. Yeah will you put me first? That's okay.
I'm committing consent item 20. I like to bring a memory.
August Berkeley had one of the greatest police departments in the country.
I like to bring a memory of a great breakfast exclusive chief Dutch Butler who in 1980s
who had an embezzlement in our San Francisco store over one million dollars was embezzled
by the store manager Robert Friedman, not only Robert excuse me, the chief popular
helped me find a detective to trigger the guy to court. He also appointed two policemen in front
of our house in Euclid for over two years. I did pay them $6,000 a month. That was great
Because the, the bad person that in my life, my family's life, my life again, it made me work to please achieve the sponsor was one of the best.
Please chief have ever had. Thank you and we'll talk to you.
Thank you, and I'll go to Maki Freeman.
I have no doubt that public works did start.
So I am concerned and I have a blind death, but I listen to music that and the thought
line starts to endanger.
The plan did not talk about meeting the current hazard.
Again, I'm sure that infrastructure will not repeat it.
And going on Libya, I was only hit twice and I cannot get out of my car going on Bangkok.
Because of it from in on contract, we did not know how many individuals have been injured and harmed.
The plan is that they can incentivize one athlete over another.
This is a great definition of discrimination and marginalization.
All of us deserve to say and count this in our singing.
Not just psychos, not just new work.
We, we, we, we, we, we, we, we.
Thank you, my friend, the Akron College.
Thank you, Mackay.
Okay, next is Kelly.
Yes, can you hear me okay?
Yes.
Okay, on the bike plan.
What I don't see happening with the $85 million
that it looks like you're gonna spend on this bike plan
is an assessment of before and after.
We really need to do bicycle counts
before we do the infrastructure
And we need to follow up with bicycle counts afterwards
to see if we are successful
in increasing the number of bicycle riders.
Because the last bicycle counts that were done
by the community show no significant increase
in bicycle riders.
So we really need to follow up with this.
And also figure out which configuration
is really the most utilized and the most successful,
and we can't do that unless we do continue
to do bicycle counts on a regular basis.
Thank you.
Next is Jenny King.
Thank you, Mayor and council people,
especially for your support tonight for resource reward.
We're item number 31 on the consent calendar.
Food security and Berkeley is a big issue right now.
We started a pantry out front of our house a while ago.
It's rolled into the need of starting a nonprofit.
And so we're having our first fundraiser coming up.
I hope everybody comes.
But I just want to put this out to the people at Berkeley.
We know how to do Berkeley.
We know how to feed people and take care of each other.
And I really want to challenge everybody
To find a way to make a difference right now, we're having incredibly difficult food access problems and we can all.
All do something about it. So, thank you very much for everybody who's contributing and please come and have a piratey good time with us on the 27th.
Thank you so much and I hope you get a chance to collaborate with Berkeley Food Network as well with your work.
Okay, next is Steven Copeland.
Good evening, everyone. I'm assuming you can hear me. I am here on consent item 26, and I'm here on behalf of the 2nd low bidder base cities.
Bring the council up to speed. This is a public works project where, uh, radius is the apparent low bidder, but when they turned in their bid.
They turned in 2 pages of the 1st page of the bid with 2 different pricings.
And then city staff obtained our bid protest.
We've gone back and forth in letter writing,
but essentially what I wanted to brief you all on this.
This, when there is a mathematical mistake according to case law,
and the case law is the Valleycrest case,
you can see it within the letters that have been written.
It's black letter law.
If there's a mathematical mistake in a bid,
and here there is one because there are
are two different numbers for the same bid item.
There is no discretion to waive that mistake
and that is what staff is recommending that you do
by awarding this job to RADIUS.
Thank you, thanks for your comment.
Next is Helen Walsh.
Good evening, Mayor Ishi and council members.
I am commenting on consent item number 29.
My name is Helen Walsh and I'm speaking
as a Berkeley resident who has been engaged
and issues related to accessibility of public right-of-way.
I support safe mobility of everyone,
including people who bike, walk, roll, and drive.
My concern tonight is not about opposing bikeways.
My concern is that the bicycle plan update
is a planning document that will guide
how the city allocates space in the public right-of-way
and it is being adapted on consent without discussion.
Residents with disabilities and seniors have repeatedly shared new changes in the public
right of way, can unintentionally create new barriers.
These are real lived experiences in Berkeley.
The plan acknowledges disability concerns, but it does not yet include a defined framework
of evaluating accessibility.
Okay.
I sent a letter to...
Thank you.
Thanks, Helen.
We'll look at your letter.
Nancy Rayder.
Good evening.
Yes.
Nancy Rayder representing the Berkeley Fire Safe Council.
The Fire Safe Council urges you to move item 29 the bike plan to the actions calendar to
enable discussion of an important issue which is that the final plan removes language from
the draft plan that major street infrastructure projects will be evaluated for their impact
on emergency response times.
Instead the final bike plan states a goal of quote balancing the need for new bikeways
with the need to preserve and improve emergency personnel response times.
This hoarding suggests that the City could sacrifice emergency response times if necessary
to install bike lanes on major thoroughfares without considering how many residents benefit
from emergency response versus bike lanes or whether adequate alternative bike routes exist.
Therefore, we urge Council to move this item to action to reinstate the language from the
final bike plan to assure Berkeley residents that the City's emergency response services
will not be compromised without good evidence that street infrastructure projects will deliver greater public benefits. Thank you. Thank you, Nancy. All right. I think that's it for our public comments for my council colleagues. Is there? Oh, 1, 2, sorry. I just thought we lost for a second. Did we? Is there a motion?
second. Can we take the role on that please? Okay. Okay. To approve the consent calendar,
council member Kessarwani? Yes. Taplin? Yes. Bartlett? Yes. Tragedev? Aye. O'Keeffe? Yes.
Flackaby? Yes. Lunapara is to approve the consent calendar. Yes. Okay. Humber? Yes.
and Mayor Ichi yes okay motion carries all right thank you everyone okay so i just want to go over
what's going to be on the agenda for the rest of this evening as we move on to the action calendar
so folks just have a sense of what's going on and i know there are a lot of you here who are
here to speak about the budget which is later this evening um so um 34 is about uh residential
preferential parking program. We've got an item that's coming up 35 as well
which is policy for disruption of remote participation during council
meetings. Both of these items we expect to be relatively quick. Affirming all
electric standards for the 2026 infrastructure bond similarly not a long
presentation. 37 and through 39 are all about measures for the potentially
for the November 3rd ballot.
This is about language, et cetera.
And so we expect that those will move forward
unless there's a lot of public comment on them.
And then we have a public hearing about the budget.
And so because last time we didn't get a chance
to talk about the CIP,
there will be a presentation on the CIP.
And then the city manager will present his budget
with staff.
I will present my amendments to that budget.
We will take council questions, public comment,
and then finally comments.
We will not be voting on the budget this evening,
just so folks make sure to know that.
Okay, so we should move forward then
to our action item number 34,
implement residential preferential parking program
on the 1500 block of Delaware Street.
I'll pass it over to Interim Director Amiri.
Thank you, good evening Madam Mayor, council members,
Wahita Amiri, Interim Director of Public Works.
This item is the standard RPP opt-in request
for the south side of the 1500 block
of Delaware Street tonight.
I have with me Joshua Brett,
who is one of our public works assistant
in transportation planners with the Go Berkeley program.
He'll share a few slides with you guys
and then we'll open up for any questions
or comments you might have.
Okay.
Wait, no, I want this.
That's fine.
Yeah.
Good evening, Mayor Ishii, city council member.
Yeah, speak right into the mic.
Yeah, good evening, Mayor Ishii, city council members, the city clerk.
As Interim Director Rohita Miri just said, it is a standard residential preferential
parking opt-in program.
So this is for the south side of the 1500 block of Delaware Street and what we did,
we took initially did a parking service, we initially received the signatures of residents
of this block.
There are 11 residential addresses in total and we obtained 9 signatures, the minimum
of 51% of residents have to sign the petition for opt-in, so this is 82% in favor, so it's
well above that, that after that in on February 4th of this year went twice to check occupancy
levels on that block of the street at 11 a.m., 10 out of 12 spaces were occupied, or 83%,
the same at 2.30 p.m. 10 out of 12 spaces were also occupied and 75% is the
minimum parking occupancy percentage to be eligible for an RPP opt-in so that is
also above the minimum. And here at attachment 2 you can see highlighted is
the block face that is opting in. We included in addition to the 1500 block
we included 1800 California on that because their property directly abuts
the block face where there will be RPP enforcement if this motion passes. And
notices were mailed to affected residents and are posted on the block 14
days prior to this hearing as well as posted out in front of the Modelle
surek building on MLK. Here's the timeline of implementation. We received the completed
petition on February 3rd. The next day I went and performed the parking occupancy survey.
Because this block is on Ohlone Park, we did outreach to stakeholders in Ohlone Park informing
them that this would be coming before council. That includes the Friends of Ohlone Park as
well as the several soccer clubs that use the field there and the only
response we got we was positive and so here we are tonight on June 16th the
City Council report and if this move if this measure passes we will be in
the installation will install three RPP signs between June 30th and July 14th
and after those signs are installed parking permit enforcement will begin.
Thank you mayor and council this concludes the report. Thank you very much.
You did great. Any questions from staff or sorry from council? No no questions.
All right is there any public comments on this matter? Anyone online? I didn't see anyone. Okay very good. Is there any comment from council?
to move the item. Someone like to move the item. And to close the public hearing. Sorry,
make the motion to close. Can you take the roll on that please? Okay, to close the public
hearing Councilmember Kesser-Wani. Yes. Kaplan. Aye. Bartlett. Yes. Tragem. Aye. O'Keefe. Yes.
all those in favor in favor,
I say aye.
Seconded by Madam Chair.
Seconded by Mr.
Lecobee.
Yes.
Anupara.
Yes.
Humbert.
Yes.
And Mary.
Yes.
All right.
Motion is passed.
Public hearing is closed.
Public hearing is closed.
Thank you.
Yes.
All right.
Does anyone want to make the actual motion?
So moved.
Okay.
Second from council member Parley.
Can we take the role of that, please?
Okay.
To adopt the, uh, to implement the residential, uh, preferential parking program on the 1500
block of Delaware street.
councilmember Kester Wani yes Tapplin by Bartlett yes tregga by O'Keeffe yes
blackaby yes unipara yes Humber yes and Mary she yes motion carries motion carries
item has been passed thank you all so much for your presentation for the work
that you put in appreciate all the outreach you did to the community so
alright moving on to item number 35 policy for disruption or remote
participation during council meetings. Would you like to say anything about
this? Sure so just as a brief introduction the SB 707 which was
adopted last year made several new amendments and changes and added new
provisions to the Brown Act. One of which is for legislative bodies that meet
remotely they must adopt a policy for how they will proceed if there is a
disruption of the telephonic or internet service that allows for the remote
participation by the public and this item brings forward that policy to the
council for approval. It just sort of runs down the process if there is an
outage. We announce the disruption, we call for a recess, we engage in good
faith efforts to diagnose and restore the disrupted service. If we cannot
restore the service after one hour, we have to try for at least one hour. The
law says then we can reconvene the meeting by action of the council or we
could adjourn the meeting. So this just sort of codifies what the new state
legislation requires and it's before the council for approval tonight. Thank you
so much. Are there any questions about this item? Councilmember Trago or Vice
Mayor Trago, is that a question? It is, thank you. At the bottom of page 1, there's
a 5-1 subpart 4. I was just, I was hoping you could clarify what this means. The
meeting shall remain in recess for at least one hour or until service is
restored whichever is sooner the at least one hour I was hoping you could
clarify yes so if there is an outage and it's not restored we have to try for at
least an hour and if it's still not able to be restored then we can engage
in the process to reconvene even if we do not have remote access restored so
you have to try for at least one hour before moving on to the reconvening
portion however if it is restored before one hour then you can just proceed with
the meeting. Okay. Thank you very much. Other questions. No. All right. Does
there any public comment on this item? Again, we're on item number 35 policy for
disruption or remote participation during council meetings. I see nobody
online or in person. All right. Are there any comments from my council member
colleagues? Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Okay. Second. Second. Okay. Can
to the councilmember. Thank you.
And I'm going to move on to the
motion to approve the motion.
If you can take the role please,
clerk. Okay to approve the policy for disruption of remote participation during council meetings councilmember Kessarwani yes.
the city of downtown. And the
And there was a supplemental also submitted,
so is there any public comment on this item?
Any public comment on item number 36,
affirming all electric standards
for the 2026 infrastructure bond measure
and city capital projects?
And I see a hand on line.
Oh, Council Member Blackaby, I'm sorry, was that a question?
I do have a quick question and comment,
but I can do it during my comment.
Oh, I see no other hands for public comment on this one.
So, let's move to council member comments and you can start council member back. Okay, great. Thanks. Thanks. Madam Mayor really quickly and to the city manager. I mean, I think, again, the spirit of this.
Item is wherever possible, and hopefully in every case, we do sort of an all electric implementation, but I know that the committee had suggested and then in your sub 2.
You and Director Klein have implemented this idea that there may be there may be rare exceptions where it's not economically feasible or practical to do that in a particular case. I just wanted to you to kind of, can you talk us through how that might work and then what the process would be to come to council in those cases?
Sure, thank you for the question council member. I just want to emphasize your earlier part of that point, which is that it is our intention that.
the infrastructure would be all electric and we agree with the Commission on that and as we put
in the supplemental there may be rare instances in which that's just really difficult to do
either from a feasibility perspective a cost perspective or some other perspective and in
those cases we would have to get council approval for that sort of a treatment and we would then
You know, we would bring a formal council item before you in which that was all explained.
Prior to anything happening, okay, that's helpful. So it's the intent in the spirit is we're going for electric in as many cases as we can unless there's a kind of a rare exception and you come to us and we have a discussion and then we either approve it or don't approve it.
but we at least have a conversation about the feasibility
and weigh the trade-offs between.
Maybe it's gonna be more expensive,
but we think we should do it anyway.
Or in this case, hey, we'll do this other alternative
because it's just not feasible.
Yes, that's exactly right.
Okay, with that change, I support this,
and I appreciate the effort to kind of try and find a way
of keeping the spirit of this in the clear direction,
which is just what we wanna do.
But then we do have an escape valve
and those rare occasions where we might need
to look at other options.
So thank you for making that addition.
And that's all I have.
Thank you very much, Council Member Blackaby.
Council Member Humbert.
Yes, excuse me, yes, thank you, Madam Mayor.
And I thank you, Council Member Blackaby,
for your questions.
They sort of dovetail with mine.
I don't have questions, but I have comments.
And I want to thank our Environment and Climate Commission
for bringing this item to us.
I'm strongly in favor of the measure
with the supplemental language supplied by our city manager
and planning director, whom I thank for engaging
with this important item.
We absolutely want to use low-carbon emitting
infrastructure, but we need the flexibility
in very limited and exceptional circumstances
to repair or install, say, gas infrastructure.
I hope we'll not have to do this and use this exception.
And as time passes and technology improves,
the chances of having to do so will lessen.
confident. I would like to make a friendly amendment if this is
appropriate and add the following language both as as a new therefore be
it resolved clause and it would read as follows. The City Council's authority to
grant exceptions to the all-electric construction and electrification
requirements is a legislative discretionary act and neither the
granting nor the denial of any such exception shall give rise to any claim
or cause of action in any court. And the reason I think this should be added is
to ensure that if we have a priority project, for example, pool improvements,
that heaven forbid require an exception, we don't want to create a situation where
Council decision and the subsequent project can be tied up for years in
litigation perhaps even due to motivations that have nothing to do with
natural gas use I just want to make sure that you know that that things can can
work efficiently so I guess I would ask the city attorney did you listen to the
language that I that I read is that something that you think is appropriate
from your perspective as our Council.
I did listen, it doesn't seem to raise a red flag for us.
Okay, so I'd like to, I'd like to,
I'd like to move the item with the supplemental
and my friendly amendment.
Second.
Thank you, those are my comments.
Thank you.
Council Member, Vice Mayor Traga, please.
Thank you, I would also like to thank the environment
and climate commission for bringing this forward
and to staff for all your work over the last few days.
My office has been discussing possible language
and the city manager supplemental pretty much captures it.
and I think the amendment we just heard is reasonable.
I would just like to confirm with the city manager,
would it be your intention to make every feasible effort
to pursue grants, to help offset any costs associated
with electrification, be it the Bay Area Air District
or other regional state and maybe one day again,
federal entities?
Yes, council member, it absolutely would be.
As I said, we are also very committed
to the objective of all electrification
and that would include us seeking grant funding
to bridge a gap if need be.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Any other comments from my council colleagues
Is there, uh, there was already a motion and a second, so can we take the role in that please?
Okay, to approve the, uh, resolution from the environment and climate commission, um,
as revised in the, uh, with the changes from the staff supplemental and the new resolve clause
added by council member Humber on the motion. Council member kiss our wanting. Yes. Yes. Uh,
the commission. Yes. Yes. And
administrative provisions. Mr. City Clerk. Yes, so this is a charter amendment that
primarily covers various topics related to elections, candidates, recall,
initiative, referendum, a sort of whole slate of electoral reforms for the and
and language amendments for the charter.
There was a sort of comprehensive supplemental number one
where each of the proposed wording changes
have a description and comments,
sort of an annotated comments for each proposed amendment.
If you have any questions
about any particular proposed changes,
I'm happy to review them
or if you'd like me to sorta run down a quick summary
of the proposed changes, I'm happy to do that as well.
I just wanna thank you for the changes
and I appreciate you bringing this forward,
cleaning up this language, and also the fact
that they consider also protections
for our elected officials, I think is important
because unfortunately, we're in a time
where our elected officials are being threatened
with violence, stalked and harassed.
So thank you very much for that.
Do my council colleagues have any questions?
Okay, is there any public comment on this item?
This is item number 37,
placing a charter amendment measure
on the November 3rd, 2026 ballot
to amend multiple administrative provisions.
Anyone online?
No, no hands raised.
Okay, so for our council comment period,
I'm curious if any folks are interested
in being involved with filing the ballot measure arguments
on this measure as provided for
in the elections code section 9282.
I know I am interested in being involved with this,
but would love to have at least one or two more folks join me.
Yes, council member Taplin is interested.
Any other council members interested
in writing arguments with me?
Don't worry, there's plenty more for us to work on later.
So, okay, all right, very good.
Well, councilmember Tappen will be joining us.
Are you sure councilmember Lunapara?
Yeah, sure.
All right, she's gonna join us, very good.
We call that volunteering someone.
So all right, very good.
Any other comments this evening?
Otherwise, I'd like to make a motion
that we adopt this resolution and then designate by motion
that councilmember Tappen, Mayor Ishii,
and councilmember Lunapara work
on the ballot measure arguments.
Second.
Yeah.
All right, very good.
Can we take the roll on that, please?
And just to clarify Mayor that this also includes those minor formatting corrections that were in the Sub 2 packet. Yes. Thank you on the motion council member Kessarwani.
Yes.
Chaplain.
Bartlett.
Yes.
Dragon.
I.
O'Keeffe.
Yes.
Blackaby.
Yes.
Unipara.
Yes.
Humber.
Yes.
And Mayor Ishii.
Yes.
Okay.
Motion carries.
Very good.
Thank you very much.
Moving on to item number 38,
placing a general obligation bond measure
in the November 3rd, 2026 ballot
for the acquisition or improvement of real property
for public infrastructure and facilities.
I'm gonna pass it over to city manager, thank you.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I don't have a lot of comments.
Our team has presented on this before,
so you all have seen this.
I wanna thank our city attorney Brown
and deputy city attorney, Sam Parley,
for their work putting the language together.
I will note that we did also submit some redline
subs on this item that mirror the language in item 36
around the electrification.
So that's also part of this bond measure,
very similar language to what you just heard on item 36.
We have folks here who are available to answer questions
if you have any, but we don't have any presentation.
Thank you very much.
Are there any questions for my council member colleagues?
Okay.
Is there any public comment on this item?
We're on item number 38,
placing a general obligation bond measure
on the November 3rd, 2026 ballot
for the acquisition or improvement of real property
or public infrastructure and facilities.
Anybody online?
I do not see anybody online.
Based for this item.
All right, let's have Council Member Humbert
start us off with comments.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I wanna thank staff and the city manager's office,
the finance department, public works, parks and others
for all their work preparing this bond measure,
it was an herculean task.
Consistent with my friendly amendment above on item 36,
I'd like to please add the following language,
both as a new whereas clause in section one findings
and a new bullet in section two object and purpose of bonds.
And it's essentially the same language.
The City Council's authority to grant exceptions
to the all-electric construction
and electrification requirements
is a legislative discretionary act,
and neither the granting nor the denial
of any such exception shall give rise
to any claim or cause of action in any court.
So I move that as a friendly amendment.
Move the item too.
Second.
Hold on a minute.
I want to get a chance to hear from our council
on this. I mean of course feel free to make the motion and all that but would
like to hear from our council. We're just checking one thing. While our
council and when I say council I don't mean the council I mean our council our
attorneys are discussing this just focus if you can be thinking about if you'd
like to be involved with the ballot measure arguments on this item and also
So the next just think about it if we can take like a two-minute recess to discuss one thing
Would you like to see that a copy of the language?
You have it. All right, we're gonna take a brief recess so that we can review language. Thank you
recording stopped
Okay
Don't worry, I won't say anything else
recording in progress.
Okay, thanks everyone.
We are back.
So again, we are on item number 38,
which is about the general obligation bond.
And we just heard back from council.
So if you wouldn't mind summarizing
for us your recommendation, please.
Yes, Madam Mayor.
So our recommendation is to just strike the word legislative.
So it says the city council authority to grant exceptions
to the all electric construction
and electrification requirement is discretionary.
And then it goes on to say,
and neither the granting nor the denial
of any such exception shall give rise to any claim
or cause of action in any court.
And then in addition to that,
we think that it would be advisable to add a severability,
severability clause to the bond measure language itself.
And we're gonna read that into the record.
Great, so this will be added as new section seven.
If any word, phrase, sentence, part, section, subsection,
or other portion of this measure,
or any application thereof to any person or circumstances
declared void, unconstitutional, or invalid for any reason,
then such word, phrase, sentence, part, section, subsection,
or other portion, or the prescribed application thereof
shall be severable, and the remaining provisions
of this measure and all applications thereof,
not having been declared void, unconstitutional,
or invalid, shall remain in full force and effect.
People of the city of Berkeley hereby declare
that they would have passed this measure
and each section, subsection, sentence, clause
and phrase thereof, irrespective of the fact
that any one or more sections,
subsections, sentences, clauses or phrases
have been declared invalid or unconstitutional.
Thank you, Sam, for reading that in, and thank you.
I would add those to my motion.
Okay, you're not gonna repeat them?
I'm just kidding, sorry.
All right, are there any other, oh yes, comments now,
and Council Member Taplin, would you like to start?
Yes, thank you very much. I want to thank city admin and the department as well as the mayor's
Vision 2050 refresh task force. I wanted to volunteer to
help draft the ballot argument. Very good, thank you so much. Would anyone else like to join me?
I think council member Tracob, you had mentioned vice mayor Tracob. And oh, oh, also, oh, oh my gosh.
All right, I think we can have one to, we can have up to four, right?
Okay. Can I put you on the sales tax then? Because I know that Councilmember Blackaby
is also interested. So, okay. So, there will be Councilmember Blackaby, Vice Mayor Trabeb,
and Councilmember Taplin and myself. Yes, there's a word with it. Okay. Thank you very
very much. Would someone like to make that, will you have that motion? We had a second.
We're adding on those four people. So can we take the roll please? Oh sorry, thank you.
Public comment. Is there any public comment on item number 38, placing a general obligation
the bond measure on the November 3rd ballot. There's someone online. Speaker online, Steve.
Augustine, District 6 calling because I wanted to remind you that when you started working
on projects for the bond,
the inflation was 2.4 percent.
Inflation is now 4.2 percent.
Now, that means that inflation has increased over 50 percent.
That means it's going to be really tough for you guys to do all these projects.
Because when inflation is high,
construction costs escalate.
This is going to stall all these projects,
lead to budget overruns,
and require even higher tax revenues or debt to complete.
When you vote on this tonight,
you are voting knowing that inflation has gone up 50 percent,
it could go up from 4.2 percent,
it could go up to 6 percent.
city council. It's not
possible. You have to take this
into consideration.
Mayor and City Council. Thank
you. Thank you very much are
there any other public comments?
That's it. Okay. Thank you very
much. All right. Can we take
the role, please? Okay So this
is on the motion placing the.
General obligation bond on the
the city attorney and also the severability clause with the authors
designated being Mayor Ishi, council members Blackaby, Tregob, and Tapplin. On
the motion councilmember Kesserwani. Yes. Tapplin. Aye. Bartlett. Yes. Tregob. Aye.
O'Keeffe. Yes. Blackaby. Yes. Lunapara. Yes. Humber. Yes. And Mayor Ishi. Yes. Okay
motion carries. All right thank you all so much we're moving on to item number
39 and then we will take a brief break we're doing great on timing thank you
everyone item number 39 is placing a transactions and use sales general tax
measure on the November 3rd 2026 ballot and yes did you have anything you wanted
to say on this one mr. city manager? No just that again thanking city attorney
Brown deputy city attorney Harvey for the bond playing for the language of the
measure, and also thanking staff for working on it, the leadership of Deputy
City Manager White, and I'll just also give a shout out to Council Member
Castor Wani, who was really pushing on this very early on when we were all
thinking about it, so thank you Council Member for generating the idea and staff
for putting it together. Thank you very much. Are there any questions from my
Council colleagues? Is there any public comments on this item? Item number 39,
to be a public service.
I do not see any hands
online.
I do not see any hands online.
I do not see any hands online.
Isabella, who is listed as
Isabella, who is listed as
Isabella, who is listed as
Isabella, who is listed as
Steve.
Steve.
Hi, it's Steve here again.
Hi, it's Steve here again.
Isabelle Gaston, district 6.
Isabelle Gaston, district 6.
Isabelle Gaston, district 6.
I commented on this once
I commented on this once
before at the budget and
before at the budget and
finance committee and I just
finance committee and I just
wanted to reiterate that this
wanted to reiterate that this
that, you know, this is really going to be hard for low income folks.
And, you know, Ben, Ben Bartlett, council member Bartlett, sorry, I know I'm not supposed to mention people's names, you know, he already mentioned how people are hurting food wise.
My husband actually works at the food bank too and there's been an enormous uptick and a sales tax is regressive.
We all know that and I really think you should think long and hard. This this is not a good time to do this. In fact, I think it's actually quite cruel.
And it's really pushing people to places that really it's just, you're going to make people leave businesses and residents. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Isabelle. Oh, one more speaker. We have Michael Katz.
Good evening. Respectfully, I just want to reiterate what the last speaker said. The outlook for this does not look good.
If you look at other East Bay sales tax measures this month, people are really squeezed by inflation.
They're questioning what they're getting from all levels of government. And I know you folks try really hard and the city's in a bad way, but.
This is a regressive tax in combination with the region-wide sales tax.
It would give us one of the highest regressive sales tax rates in the country,
and regressive taxes hit the poor the worst.
As a university city,
we have a substantial population that has negative income.
Students don't earn,
they pay tuition and fees.
Again, I would urge you to consider alternatives to this. Thank you.
Thank you, Michael. We have a speaker here in person.
Yeah, Jeff again. So, yeah, so we've got an economic downturn in high inflation.
That's, I think, really challenges the assumptions that you're going to realize the revenue here.
Back to the small businesses, they're now effectively on track for an 11.25% sales tax rate
on top of the 5% plus inflators you've just approved.
So we're creating conditions where really the ability
to conduct retail business in Berkeley
is going to be extremely challenging.
It's probably going to be no growth to low growth,
with the exception of any growth we get from population
increase, let's hope.
And again, the overhead costs for businesses
are already challenging.
they've just gone up.
And so what you're really gonna end up with,
and perhaps we'll get some added sales tax from this,
is we're gonna have the most Amazon-friendly city
in America because trying to cover overhead costs
in this city, and I've talked to a lot of business people,
I'm not making this up, I hope you have,
it is really challenging.
And again, adding another regressive measure,
another regressive tax, and assuming that's gonna result
and $10 million is, I would say, extremely optimistic
given the current economic conditions.
And people can go outside of Berkeley
to find lower sales tax rates on big ticket items.
So what you're left with is people
that are gonna pay 11.25% on things
like the smaller purchases,
and they're just gonna leave Berkeley
for the things that really make a difference.
they're going to leave Alameda County as well because that's where this overall
increase is coming from but it's going to be worthwhile because under these
conditions that's what economics does it causes people to make rational economic
choices and go to where is in their economic interest. Thank You Mr. Lomax.
Alright let's move on to my council members comments sorry one more sorry
there's one more online. Yeah. Oh, apologies. Last speaker online is Cheryl Daval, a former
council member. Yeah, I agree with the last speaker and I also feel like all these things,
the bond measure, um, I don't, I mean, how do we know what that money's really going to go to?
because all the things that $100 million, I mean, a lot of the benchmarks didn't get met. So it's
interesting. And, you know, with 47, the fascism, and all these other things, people are leaving
Berkeley. Black and brown people are barely here anymore. And you're making it very, very,
very difficult. So I don't think this is a great idea. And I know people aren't. Well,
I don't know. We'll see what happens. But Berkeley is so expensive as it is already.
You have all these vacant properties.
I don't think this is a wise choice on a lot of the decisions that you are making this evening.
And I miss the consent calendar.
But and I know that not that bike plan probably went through.
I don't know what happened,
but that doesn't look out for a lot of the other people that are disabled.
I understand. I'm not. I'm not finished. Do I still have time because I can't see the freaking clock.
You have 17 seconds left. Free Palestine and the genocide. Free your minds from the evil
and disrespectful rude behaviors that you demonstrate all the time.
Okay, that's it. Thank you very much. Moving on to our council member, my council member colleagues comments starting with council member black would be online.
Thanks, Madam Mayor. And thanks to council member cast wanting staff for putting this together. I also want to acknowledge and thank the commenters that we heard on this item. I agree that this is a sales tax increases a difficult kind of measure to consider.
Um, I will say that, you know, I, and I've said this a lot over the past 18, 20 months. I've been on the council that my preference over the long term is that our revenue growth should be driven by business activity and housing growth and more productivity.
That's coming through the system as opposed to raising taxes where we can. Um, but I will say that 1 thing that gives me some satisfaction here that this is the right consideration is that we're matching and coming into parity with neighboring jurisdictions.
Uh, and, and the sales, we're not moving out of whack, but we're actually meeting and sort of closing the gap with other jurisdictions. So I think the distortionary effects are somewhat mitigated by that fact.
Because we're not going to have a sales tax that's out of line with neighbors. We're basically meeting where neighbors are at, but I do have concerns over time. I think we're going to be generating much more revenue.
When we focus on economic output and growing the economy and adding more productive people who can afford to live here, that's going to drive drive revenues in the long term, but in the short term in terms of helping us close the deficit and adjusting a sales tax rate to be a parody.
That's what's going to allow me to support this particular measure. And so I think that's where I am and I appreciate my colleagues for bringing forward. So, thank you.
Thank you very much. Um, next is council member Humbert and then on deck is
council member Kessarwani.
Thank you, madam mayor. And I'd like to associate myself with the comments of,
um, council member Blackby.
I want to thank the city manager to the finance department and all other city
city staff who worked on this and particularly thank council member Kessarwani
who really championed it. I support placing this measure on the ballot.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Council member Kessarwani.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor. I actually just wanted to echo the appreciation of staff for this,
and I know Council Member Blackaby already said this. You know, the reason why
when we came up with this concept, it was actually something I talked about with our SEIU folks
early on, because we knew how devastating this budget would be and how deep the cuts would be.
And so, this is our proposal to the voters to try to mitigate some of the worst of those reductions.
And this would put us in line with Albany and Oakland, you know, our neighboring jurisdictions.
And I do want to acknowledge, however, that it is a tough time for a lot of folks,
And inflation is up, and grocery prices are up.
And it is really hard to, for a lot of people,
I know a lot of people are struggling
just to be able to afford the basics in our community.
It does give me some comfort
that groceries are exempt from the sales tax.
I do understand, any sales tax by its nature is regressive.
However, you know, given the, the importance of the services that we're trying to fund and the.
The reality that this is simply going to put us on parody with our neighboring cities. You know, I think this is.
Very much the right approach.
As we look to balance and, and I, I look forward to taking the vote and, and, and, you know, thanks staff again for putting this together for us.
councilmember kiss or wanting would you like to join and be part of the ballot
argument writing sure sure I could do that I'm also interested and I know that
councilmember O'Keeffe is as well so and councilmember it's your turn to speak
anyway so great I just want to say briefly how much in support I am of this
and I really I didn't know councilmember kiss or want I didn't know this was this
is your brainchild so or at least you're advocating for it so thank you so much
I think this is a really key measure we really need new sources of revenue this
We've had many of these
conversations over the last
couple of years.
This is a no-brainer one to me.
I do acknowledge that it is a
tax increase and that has
effects, but honestly, I watch
my dollars very carefully.
And I did not know that we were
half a percent under the
neighboring jurisdictions.
And I've been asking a lot of
people.
This is not scientific, but I've
been asking a lot of people.
I haven't met a single person
who was aware of that.
Jurisdig is already mentioned several times. I think this is just a really smart move and I'm
happy to be putting out a ballot and I hope it passes. Thank you very much. Anybody else
interested in joining and writing the ballot arguments for this? We've got three so it's okay.
Okay very good. All right is there a motion for this one? Oh okay Councilmember O'Keefe is moving.
to approve it. Okay can we take the role on this one please. Okay on the...
So due to sort of the nuances of the revenue and taxation code we also make
sure that the motion is to adopt the ordinance proposing the transactions in
use tax and adopt the resolution placing the tax on the ballot. The ordinance
would then appear on a subsequent consent counter
consistent with ordinary second reading practice,
but of course would not go into effect
until approved by the voters.
That was exactly my motion.
As you know, thank you so much.
Hold on a second.
Okay, very good.
Thank you very much, Sam, for the clarification.
All right, go ahead.
Okay, so to adopt the resolution,
placing the measure on the ballot,
and also the first reading of the ordinance
with the authors designated as Mayor Ishii,
county members kesserwani and o'kieffe councilmember kesserwani yes
chaplain Bartlett yes tregga I O'Keeffe yes Lackey yes unipara yes Humbert yes
and Mary yes okay motion carries thank you very much and thank you very much
the staff all right so we are moving on to item 40 but we're gonna take a break
before then we're gonna take a 15-minute break and then we will move on to item
40 a we will start with the CIP and we will have the presentation of the budget my budget amendments and then on from there. So just so folks know where we're at. Thank you very much. We'll be back in 15 minutes.
Recording stopped. Recording in progress. Okay. Thanks everyone. We are moving so fast. We had to get the staff set up. So I think we're good. All right. Folks. Can I have quiet please? Thank you.
All right, so we are moving on to item number 40.
I know this is a bit confusing,
but we're gonna start with the CIP.
And then as I said before the break,
we will move on to our actual budget presentation
and I will present my amendments
and then we will hear from the public.
So I'm gonna pass it over to our city staff.
Whoever's gonna start us off.
Thank you mayor and council members.
My staff, Mark Collier is actually going to share screen.
It's actually the CIP presentation.
We move the order of things.
Thank you very much.
Next slide please.
So we're going to have a very robust presentation to you
regarding our five year CIP.
We're going to go over, I'll be going over the overview, our inventory and different
program categories, funding highlights, infrastructure funding by category, then by funding source.
And then my colleagues will take over PRWCIP with Director Ferris, PWCIP with Interim Director
Juanita Muri and IT will be an attack team with Director Fong and Deputy Barry Jennings.
And then I will take it back with unfunded and next steps.
Next slide, please.
So what is a capital improvement program?
We here in the city develop a five-year CIP and essentially it identifies anticipated
capital projects and projected funding.
Also serves as a guide to long-term infrastructure.
I know.
Claire, you want some?
Sorry, Council Member Blackaby.
I have a few things to ask.
Council Member Blackaby, you've gone off.
Thank you.
It also serves as our long-term infrastructure planning
and budget decisions.
And the reason we're presenting it here today as well
is because it's developed as part of our city's
bi-annual budget process.
Year one and year two is capital budget.
It represents our new funding appropriation
for the fiscal year's projects
and is adopted with annual operating budget
which is gonna be part of our fiscal year 27
annual appropriation and also functions
as the most actionable portion of the CIP.
Year three and five is more of a plan.
It serves as a budgetary management tool and it's reevaluated and updated regularly
to reflect evolving community needs, council priorities, and fiscal conditions.
It's a list of projects and funding that are used for planning purposes.
Our five-year CIP includes 149 projects.
Next slide, please.
This is, I think I can speak for the whole team, one of our favorite slides.
because it's very visual and it represents all of the infrastructure inventory that we do have
and I'm not going to go over all of them but I do want to highlight that as you can see here the
city of Berkeley maintains an extensive portfolio of capital assets. We have about some of the
highlights is 213 miles of streets, 61 miles of bicycle infrastructure, 56 parks, 38 public
restrooms, five community centers, and three resident camps, and of course the
behind-the-scenes all technology to support departments serving the public.
Next slide please. Within our CIP we group them into 12 different categories.
I'm not going to go through all of them, but there are, I want to do say that the
other infrastructure that typically will include EV charging stations, street
lights, traffic signals, and other projects that cannot be categorized under
the more obvious 11 other categories before it. Next slide please. The next
few slides we'll talk about funding highlights. So the majority, the more, not
the majority of but the more reliable funding source for infrastructure comes
from our city's annual baseline allocation in the CIP fund and that is
actually transferred from the general fund. Historically the baseline has been
about four million dollars annually with an additional eight million dollars
dedicated specifically to improving the streets paving condition index in recent
years. Other funding sources are restricted such as sewer fund for sewer
system improvements, storm water fund for related drainage work, street light
fund for street light upgrades and maintenance. So speaking of T1, in 2016
this was a voter approved a 100 million dollar T bond to improve the city's
aging infrastructure. T1 has provided the funds needed to fix our city's
failing infrastructure and made many of our communities buildings safe, accessible, we
paved a lot of our neglected streets, built green infrastructure, and replaced outdated
and non-compliant play structures.
Phase one has been completed, 39 projects total, $40 million spent, and something that
this team is really proud of, $23 million of that was leveraged funds.
Phase two is still in progress.
37 projects.
We're using the remaining $60 million,
plus an additional $4.1 million earned in interest.
And $43 million of that is used to leverage funds,
other funds.
We rely on voter approved funding such as measure T1,
which has significantly advanced our capital project delivery.
Next slide please.
Other funding highlights for our CIP program are grants.
We have effectively leveraged measure T1 and other funding sources to secure significant grant awards for capital projects.
We currently have $65.4 million in active grant funding, reflecting our readiness and competitiveness.
Without measures like T1 and other funding sources providing essential matching funds.
Our ability to qualify for many grants would have been very limited.
A detailed list of the $65.4 million in capital grants is included in the agenda packet.
Next slide, please.
This slide talks about the most recent voter-approved measure FF, approved in 2024.
Measure FF is a long-term investment strategy focused on maintaining and improving Berkeley's
transportation infrastructure with emphasis on street sidewalk safety and environmental performance.
The table to the top right my right is our budget for the next two years. For 2027 we are proposing
to spend 24.1 million dollars in Measure FF and fiscal year 28 about 14.5 million dollars.
What that two years will hope to improve
is over four center line miles of roadway rehab,
over 15 transportation safety projects,
and green infrastructure compliance projects.
Staff intends to leverage Measure FF funds
to strengthen our CIP by pursuing additional capital grants
using the same successful strategy employed
with Measure T1.
Later in this presentation,
and we'll walk through what Measure FF is funding
and how it fits into the city's long-term CIP.
Next slide, please.
This slide will give you the overall funding picture
for our five-year CIP.
The key takeaway here is that within the next five years,
our total for five-year CIP is $410.6 million.
The first year in 2027, we have a total funding
of $100.1 million in fiscal year 2028,
it is of $83.7 million.
I just do wanna highlight that the zero budget for IT
the out years of 29, 30 and 31 is because
they do not have a baseline CIP fund allocation.
And there is an insufficient fund balance
in their IT cost allocation.
The street decline as you can see in funding from 27 to 28
can be explained by measure FF funding received in 27
equals 18 months worth versus 28,
it's only the full 12 months.
Measure FF funding can be found in streets,
category, sidewalks, and transportation.
The top three program categories in our five-year CIP
are streets at 34%,
sewer at 29% and transportation at 10.6%.
This reading includes 67.4 million dollars,
42.1 million dollars in Measure FF.
Side wealth include 11.8 million dollars in Measure FF
and transportation includes 20.4 million dollars
in Measure FF.
Next slide please.
This slide is telling the same story,
but instead of broken down by categories,
it's broken down by funding source.
Our general fund slash CIP fund hovers around $12 million
for the next two years in 27 and 28.
And again, that is our most reliable funding source
for the time being and the most discretionary.
PRW Special Funds and Parks Tax
with increased one-time funding in fiscal year 27,
$6.125 million, and in 2028, it refers back to a more baseline
recurring funding at $2.75 million with total PRW
special funds of $3.53 million in 28 and $7 million in 27.
IT is currently funding their biannual capital budget
with their IT cost allocation, which
is an internal service fund.
Public Works Special Funds total $75.6 million in 27
and $61.4 million in 28.
The two highest contributor of the PW Public Works CIP budget
are the Sewer Fund and again Measure FF.
The grants total in 27 is $5.1 million
and in 28, it's $5.9 million.
And I wanna highlight that the $65.4 million grant slide
that we just talked about earlier
are the majority of those current grants
have already been appropriated in prior fiscal years.
Next slide please.
So the next few slides I'm gonna hand it over
to my colleagues, they are going to highlight
their recent capital improvement project accomplishments
as well as go over their biannual 27 and 28 CIP budget.
We will hand it over to Scott Ferris first
and then Wahidah Meri and then Kevin Fong
and Barry Jennings, thank you.
Okay. Sorry, when you turn off one,
sometimes you turn off both.
Is it on now? Test.
Okay. Testing.
Testing one, two, three.
All right. I've been told I'm too passionate about my projects,
so I speak too long.
So I'm going to try and be
passionate here and just get through them,
so that we're not here all night.
Yeah.
So I'm going to start with Willard here.
This is a T1 funded project.
It's the most awarded CIP project the city has ever had.
We've won five significant awards and our finals for sixth.
So this is what we can do with funding.
It's an amazing project,
has been an amazing amenity for that community.
Next slide, Mark.
So we're going to talk briefly about our accomplishments, the Willards up there.
We finished a project at Ohlone and Civic Center.
Next slide.
Here we're looking at some of the South Adeline projects and which we're going to cut a ribbon
for like three or four smaller projects on Saturday at 1215.
for anybody who wants to come on out.
The Milwaukee Forest is complete,
the landscaping project in front of the here,
there is complete, and the dog park
should be complete tomorrow.
And we've got a few other little amenities
we've added in South Berkeley,
so the community's really excited.
Ribbon cutting, 1215, somewhere in the landscaping area
on Saturday.
Next slide.
Oh, and I wanna, just really quick,
another T1 funded project so a lot of capital improvements up at camps, thank you, the big
one was the Casadero storm damage so we did a lot of repair, a lot of rebuilding of cabins
and you see there the stage got rebuilt and a variety of other things that combination
contractors and my staff dealt with. We've had sports courts improvement at
Echo Lake and at both Echo and Tuolumne we installed generators and a switch
that allows us to essentially operate when the electricity goes down. We've had
a lot of brownouts in both in both areas in the last several years and so now
when we lose electricity we'll have the dining hall and the main hall will be
able to operate. Next slide. Lots of accomplishments at the
waterfront, F&D redecking. It looks beautiful Terry, thank you very much for
that referral. Southco West parking lot is finished and looks great along with
the East and the middle docks. So all that work has been completed this year.
next slide. So projects near completion MLK YAP Martin Luther King Jr. Youth Services
Facility is on its way and a lot of the shell is complete now they're working
inside and that project should be done in January of 2027 so we're not far
that's a 15 million dollar T1 project, the Santa Fe right away, that's largely a grant funded
project. We have five and a half million dollars worth of state grants on that project and that
project has started construction. We've started the remediation of the soil about two weeks ago
and we're hoping to get bids back on the above ground improvements in the next week or two and
award that and start that construction late summer early fall. So D&EDoc is
almost done. We've been waiting on PG&E and the East Bay mud and that we have
dates for hookups for both of those and so we so hope to be cutting a ribbon in
the marina for the dredging and the D&EDoc projects sometime in July. Next
Next slide Mark.
So here you see a kind of a breakdown by funding source for 27 and 28.
We have a fair amount more money in 27 largely because we've we're using parks tax fund balance
to finish a couple of large projects, the MLK youth services center, the Tom Bates complex
and Santa Fe right away.
Oh, you go back to that. Go back one side, Mark. And what you see this year in fiscal
27 and 28, you see an allocation from the camps fund. That hasn't happened since 2013.
So we've won, the Berkeley-Talmy camp burnt down, which was the main fund driver for that
camps fund. We were operating in the red, and so we did no capital projects funded by
by the Camps Fund, and it's just now
that the fund is recovering.
Now the Tuolumne campus, since its fourth year of operation,
we're very close to selling out this summer,
and so we're gonna spend about a million dollars
and do camp improvements out of the Camps Fund,
which is new.
Go ahead, Mark, next slide.
So what are we gonna do in 27 and 28?
In the waterfront, we're gonna replace some finger docks,
and we're gonna try and start to move
the garbage containers off the sea wall
and back into the parking lot,
so away from the ocean.
We're gonna start the designed ODOC parking lot.
We're gonna finish O and K electrical.
The state's parking lot,
which construction will start probably in the next month,
will be redone.
And we will do a kind of a maintenance project
at the South Cove East parking lot,
we just finished the South Cove West,
we did the South Cove East about eight years ago,
and in order to keep it properly maintained,
we're gonna seal and re-stripe.
And we're gonna redo the landscaping along the Bay Trail
on the southern portion from University to Emeryville.
And that $700,000 was funded in FY26,
But the project will happen in in 27 next slide.
So in parks, we've got several projects here.
We're working on the Cedar Rose playgrounds.
The five to 12 is out to bid.
Actually, it's about to be awarded.
I think we're coming into the next meeting and awarding it.
And then we're gonna finish the two to five.
We've got some money in here for design and construction
for James Kenny Sports fields.
That project is sorely needed.
There is no ADA access to that facility
and it is one of the only facilities
that hasn't been touched in the last 15 to 20 years.
Additionally, we've got some funding in here
for our MLK YAP facility.
I'm not sure you all are aware,
but we lost a part of a FEMA grant on.
And so we went ahead and did phase one and phase two.
We kind of split it into two projects.
We will add the solar and the storage in phase two.
So that is largely what you see funded there in fiscal 27.
Next slide.
Also in parks, we've got, we're gonna do a park restroom.
I think that's gonna be the Cedar Rose or Cordonices.
And we're going to finish that Santa Fe right away project
that was funding I talked about earlier, along with Tom Bates
and the sports complex there.
We're going to fix a leak at King Pool.
And we've got a project at Aquatic Park
that's going to be several phases, the Dreamland Area
Project.
And the first phase is a combination
of a work between public works and parks.
There's going to be a bioswell where the Dreamland parking lot is,
and we're going to create some parking out on
Boulevard in order to allow parking for Dreamland while we complete phase one,
and while we wait for the funding for phase two,
which will be the Dreamland area plan that we put together.
Next slide. At camps,
I talked about that a million dollars and here's how we're going to spend it.
We're going to replace the water line at Echo Lake.
We draw from three water sources up at Echo Lake.
We have a small cistern, a well, and we draw water out of the lake.
And so the lake line, what you see featured here in the right-hand photo, is a line that
goes from camp to about a quarter mile all the way down to Echo Lake and draws water
out of the lake.
and that lake line has deteriorated,
it needs full replacement.
So we're gonna do the design
and the design of that in fiscal 28
and hopefully the construction soon after.
And next slide.
Okay, now I'm gonna pass it off to Wahid.
All right.
Thanks, Scott.
Good evening, Madam Mayor, council members,
Wahida Miriam, director of public works.
Over the past two fiscal years,
public works transportation has delivered
major capital projects that put adopted
city plans into action.
These projects support climate goals,
vision zero, equity, and save the travel
for people walking, biking, rolling,
taking transit, and driving.
Examples in front of you include the MLK Vision Zero
hybrid quick build safety improvements.
Our famous Southside Complete Streets project
was the intersection improvements,
the park radisson bikeway,
Sacramento pedestrian safety improvements,
and the recently construction initiation
of the Looney Greeny safety improvements projects.
The important point is that these are not isolated projects.
These come from adopted plans and community direction,
and they're being delivered
through a coordinated capital effort.
Next slide please.
Public works engineering also delivered critical work
that residents may not always see directly,
but that supports the city's core infrastructure
every single day.
And the fiscal year 24 and 25,
street maintenance and rehabilitation projects,
we completed work at citywide locations identified
in our five year paving plan,
totaling about 30 lane miles of street paving,
And about 14 and a half lane miles of service ceiling.
That's quite a bit.
Kudos to our team members.
From July 2024 to approximately June of 2026,
the 50 feet sidewalk repair program
completed an estimated 350 repairs,
reducing trip hazards and improving access.
The team also completed structural rehabilitation
of approximately 1,600 linear feet
of Strawberry Creek culvert,
protecting important underground infrastructure.
While those accomplishments in mind,
let's look at the proposed fiscal year 27 and 28
public works CIP budget in the next slide, please.
So public works is proposing a significant
two-year capital investment,
approximately $92 million in fiscal year 27,
and about 79 million in fiscal year 28.
So combined together, that's about $171 million
over the next two years of the capital budget cycle.
The largest funding source that you might have picked up
already, the category is sanitary sewer, Measure FF,
the CIP fund, stormwater, and equipment replacement.
Measure FF is especially important
because it expands transportation, sidewalk, pavement,
and very importantly, safety investments citywide.
One important note is that the fiscal year 27
includes measure FF revenue collected
since the measure went into effect
in January of this year, 2025.
So that's why the fiscal year 27 measure FF amount
is higher than your normal standard 12 month year,
but it'll pan out, level out at the 14th year.
I'll walk through the Public Works program areas,
starting with Sanitary Sew in the next slide, please.
Sanitary Sew is one of the largest
public works capital investments,
with approximately $48 million proposed
over the next two fiscal years.
This work supports public health,
environmental protection, system reliability,
and compliance with the 2014 Consent Decree.
The city is required to rehabilitate sewer infrastructure
at a rate of approximately 4.2 miles per year,
based on a three-year rolling average.
In fiscal years 27 and 28,
the sewer rehabilitation project includes
a little over $24 million in the fiscal year 27
and a little over $22 million in fiscal year 28.
This continues a long running program
that has rehabilitated much of the city's
sewer infrastructure system since 1980s.
The urgent sewer project funds priority repairs
identified through conditions assessment.
The city inspects roughly 20 to 25 miles of sewer mains
and associated maintenance holes each year
to identify infiltration, inflows,
and obviously structural deficiencies
that deteriorate the system.
In fiscal year 27, we'll also complete
the sanitary sewer master plan, we're very excited,
which includes hydraulic modeling,
CIP recommendations, and a few study
to actually evaluate whether our current rates
sustain the program long range.
The next slide will cover facilities
which supports the buildings and structures
that allow city services to operate.
The facilities program includes
approximately 20 proposed projects.
These investments keep city buildings
and structures safe, functional, resilient,
and in a state of good repair.
Key areas including planning for modernization
of the zero waste transfer station,
public safety building, server room, redundancy,
and IT resilience upgrades.
Roof replacements, so no more leaking on the fifth floor
or in the men's bathroom when you're sitting down.
And building envelope repairs and other deferred maintenance.
The common theme is operational continuity, right?
Operational continuity, not luxury.
These projects are not only about buildings,
they're about making sure the city services
can continue during normal operations,
emergencies, and future climate or seismic events.
Next slide, please.
Sidewalks, obviously, are a major accessibility
and safety priority for public works in the city.
The proposed Public Works Sidewalk Program
includes 19 projects with a strong emphasis
on 80 improvements, curb ramps, pathways,
and public right-of-way access.
The city is planning approximately 200 sidewalk repairs
located, locations for the fiscal year 26
sidewalk repair project.
At the same time, the 50-50 sidewalk repair program
has a wait list of approximately 1,400 location.
Again, 1,400 locations, and roughly over 200 more gets added every single year.
So it's a chasing game, as you can tell.
Cleaning that backlog by 2031 would require more than $7 million in additional funding.
Measure FF obviously is critical here.
Without Measure FF, the Safe Streets Initiative, sidewalk investments would be roughly 30 percent
of the proposed funding levels.
With MeasureFF, we can make more meaningful progress on accessibility, tripping hazards,
pathways and the ADA transition plan as a whole.
The principle here is simple.
When we make Berkeley safer and more accessible for at-risk people or users, we make it safer
and more accessible for everyone in Berkeley.
Next please.
Water. Storm Water includes about nine proposed projects and approximately ten
point six million dollars over fiscal year 27 and 28. This program is driven
largely by regulatory compliance, water quality, obviously flood resilience, and
climate adaptation. Under the municipal regional storm water permit, some street
rehabilitation projects trigger what we call GI and means green infrastructure
requirements. The fiscal year 26 green infrastructure project will design and
construct LIDs short for low impact development improvements triggered by
the recent street rehabilitation work. The permit also requires the city to
reach a hundred percent reduction in trash discharges to the bay compared to
the 2009 baseline. The city has achieved about or approximately 94 percent. That's
That's a great accomplishment for our team members.
Again, 94% reduction, huge.
But additional trash capture facilities
are needed to reach the full goal.
Major efforts include the Berkeley Aquatic Park
Stone Water Improvement Project,
Cordonesis Creek Restoration at 9th Street,
storm drain and trash capture work,
stone water quality improvements,
the Clean Water Program,
and completion of the Stone Water Master Plan,
which we're excited about.
My master plan will help identify deficiencies,
prioritize future capital projects,
and incorporate climate adaptation strategies.
Next, please.
The streets program includes the city's annual
street rehabilitation program,
the bridge preventative maintenance
and coordination between the measure of a program.
So together, these investments total more than $58 million
in fiscal year 27 and 28 to improve safety,
accessibility, and pavement conditions citywide.
I'll keep it there, next slide.
With the Core Street Rehabilitation Program
and Measure of Fev Road Rehab funding combined,
we are proposing more than $58 million
for streets in fiscal year 27 and 28.
That includes close to $38 million
in the Street Rehab Program and about $20 million
in additional Measure of Fev Road Rehab funding.
The combined program is expected to improve
about 25 center lines of streets over the next two years.
The work is spread across all eight council districts
and is aligned with, again, policy priorities,
including equity zone, bikeways, bus routes,
high-injury streets, and the city's Dig Once policy approach.
Council's 2022 commitment of an additional $8 million
annually for paving made a huge difference.
Before that, the city was averaging
roughly about two to three centimeters of paving per year.
Since that investment, we have increased output
to nearly 10 centimeters per year
over fiscal year 24 through 26.
And for a pavement engineer,
they will be jumping up backwards,
and that's a great accomplishment.
So it's in the right direction.
So obviously the data is moving in the right direction,
as I mentioned, citywide PCI improved from 55 in 2023
to about 57 at the end of 2025,
but PCI 57 unfortunately is still at risk category,
and the city has more than $300 million
in deferred pavement maintenance.
So we are making progress,
but the work is still far from complete.
Next, please.
Our ever-famous transportation projects
where many of the city's adopted safety and mobility plans
become real improvements on the ground.
The proposed transportation CIP is approximately
25, 26 million dollars over fiscal year 27 and 28,
and includes both regular transportation projects
and the measure FF safety projects.
These investments prioritize making it safer
for people of all ages and abilities to walk,
roll, bike, take transit,
and move around Berkeley in general.
They include safe routes to school, bicycle boulevards,
pedestrian safety improvements,
traffic and immunization, transit access,
and corridor projects.
The funding sources include Measure FF, obviously,
the state, we have a lot of local grants,
state transportation tax, MTC funding,
the UC Berkeley settlement, Measure BB,
and other regional and local resources.
The next slide highlights examples
of our transportation projects that we're proposing into CIP.
This slide highlights several projects
within the proposed transportation CIP.
Adeline transportation improvement
will deliver quick build improvements
and advance permanent design including safety,
accessibility, protected bike facilities,
signal improvements, and AC transit bus stop improvements.
The Cedar Street median crossing
and Cedar Street pedestrian safety crossing improvements
support safer crossings along an important corridor and connect with the
bike plan and the pedestrian plan priorities. Citywide traffic calming
program provides stable funding to expand neighborhood traffic calming as a
whole. We were at Claremont last night and the Claremont Avenue complete streets
corridor project will support the public process and design work from major
safety corridor. A lonely Greenway improvements will widen and repave the
Greenway, add lighting, and improve crossing. Oxford For All will obviously advance complete
streets design between Hearst and Bancroft. The telegraph multi-molar project will continue
complete streets design from Dwight to the Oakland border, including protected bike lanes,
transit improvements, pedestrian safety, and ADA upgrades. We also continue safe routes
to school work for Washington Elementary, Berkeley High, along with the Vision Zero
quick build and action plan work that's ahead of us.
Next slide, please.
All right, the final slide before I stop talking.
So the final public works category is equipment replacement
and other infrastructure that Merck
touched upon a little bit at the beginning.
So equipment replacement includes five proposed equipment
replacement projects and six other infrastructure projects.
So in fiscal year 27, the vehicle replacement program
proposed at about $9.6 million and in fiscal year 28 that goes down to about 4.9 close to 5 million.
The equipment replacement fund is supported by monthly charges to departments for vehicles
and equipment replacement. Departments are responsible for covering shortfalls when
replacement costs exceed available balances. So the fiscal year 27 plan is to replace approximately
66 vehicles or pieces of equipment and add one new all-electric rear loader
truck for zero waste for 28. The numbers are about 61 replacements including some
mowers so and as a general rule the city public works whenever the marketing
operation allows us we will move towards electrical electric vehicles. With that
That concludes the public work slides.
I'm going to hand it over to my colleague to take over the IT slides.
Thanks,
of slides, but it does not mean we're not passionate. I mean I'm so passionate I
brought help along. So tonight I'm pleased to present some of the key IT
milestones and accomplishments from the past year. So the IT team significantly
strengthens the stability and security of city operations by accelerating our
cloud migrations, ensuring full regulatory compliance, and replacing
outdated inefficient systems, which we're still doing. Our achievements are built
on four strategic pillars, and I'll start with the first one, better online services.
To build a more resilient infrastructure, we transitioned to a cloud-first architecture.
Central to this effort was the Excella cloud migration in October 2025, an achievement
that eliminated on-site server failure risk and delivered an immediate 40 percent increase
in portal performance.
For context, this platform securely processes about $15 million in annual permitting and
another 30 million dollars in business licenses. For our city workforce, we
collaborated with HR, payroll, audit, and the city manager's office to launch the
employee access portal on March 23rd of this year. This secure
self-service module allows over 1,500 city employees to manage their pay stubs
and W-2s independently, which has already reduced HR administrative tickets by 30%.
Our second pillar is stronger security and reliability driven by rigorous multilayered
protection strategy.
First, on identity verification, we achieved a 100 percent citywide compliance with our
hardware-based multi-factor authentication.
We kind of dubbed that as the Berkeley two-step, if any of you remember that.
But I won't do the dance here.
Second, for endpoint security, we completed a full hardware and software refresh.
recently deploying Windows 11 Enterprise across all our city workstations to meet modern
security standards.
And third, for some employee safety, we accelerated the launch of BeWarned.
This is a multi-platform internal emergency system designed specifically to notify staff
of critical health and safety issues by pushing alerts instantly to all city-issued devices.
Our third pillar is more reliable infrastructure focusing on facility builds and connectivity.
A major milestone was reaching 95% citywide facility Wi-Fi coverage, which included overcoming
the complex challenges and engineering challenges of deploying on the open waters at the marina.
We also successfully delivered the core technology infrastructure for the fire headquarters
relocation.
Despite utility permitting delays, our team engineered a temporary connection solution
to ensure the department moved in completely on schedule.
Additionally, we standardized our meeting room audiovisual hardware, replacing legacy
systems unify the user experience and we directly achieve the $68,000 annual savings.
Finally, Pillar 4, financial improvement or operational improvements, targeted the elimination
of inefficient obsolete systems. To achieve regulatory compliance, we launched new technology
that lets 311 securely handle credit card payments by phone in full compliance with
PCI standards. It makes payments easier, improves revenue collection times, and eliminates the
the city's liability. For context, during a single week in May 2026, our 311 Center
securely processed over $37,000 in credit card payments by phone.
To accelerate the monetization of our financial infrastructure, we restructured our approach
to accounts receivables. We removed general billing from the scope, allowing specialized
end systems to handle direct invoicing. As a result, revenue data now bypasses our legacy
funds system entirely, protecting data integrity and accelerating the sunsetting of our aging
mainframe infrastructure.
So in summary, we established a new baseline for IT excellence by modernizing our environment
and eliminating operational risk, we've successfully cleared the path to our future roadmap, including
the final decommissioning of legacy systems and upcoming public safety cloud upgrades.
Next slide, please.
So I'm going to pass this on to Deputy Director Berry, who's going to talk about infrastructure,
security, and applications.
Thank you, Kevin.
So this slide that we're looking at summarizes information technologies proposed capital
investments for FY27 and 28.
These projects focus on three core areas, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and business
applications that support city operations and services delivered to
the community. Just as the city invests in roads, facilities, and other critical
public act assets, we must also invest in the information technology
infrastructure that supports virtually every city service today. The largest
investment is in cybersecurity and infrastructure. These funds support the
technology that keeps city operations running, protects sensitive information,
and reduces the risk of service disruptions caused by cyber threats or
equipment failures. The asset management project improves our ability to track
and manage city technology assets, helping us plan replacements before
equipment fails, ensuring public funds are used efficiently. On the application
side, the clarity project is a planning department-led initiative for a new
permitting system with IT supporting integration efforts into Irma to improve connectivity
between systems. As Berkeley transitions to a new permitting platform, this investment
ensures information can flow seamlessly between systems, reducing manual work, improving data
accuracy, and helping staff process permits more efficiently. Since technical requirements
are still being finalized, the current $150,000 estimate is preliminary. The remote site redundancy
project improves resiliency at city facilities by providing backup connectivity options,
helping critical operations remain available even when a primary network connection is
disruptive. Overall, these investments represent a relatively modest capital commitment, $485,000
in FY27 and $685,000 in FY28, but they help protect millions of dollars in existing technology
investments and support the reliable delivery of city services. The key
takeaway is that these investments help protect the city's ability to deliver
services by maintaining secure systems, reliable infrastructure, and resilient
technology, we can continue supporting city operations and serving the community
effectively. With this I'll hand it back to Marikar to talk about unfunded
capital needs.
Thank you colleagues.
Now, you guys understand why this was a 40 slide presentation.
There's been a tremendous amount of work that's happened, is currently happening and is planned
to happen.
However, even with this remarkable progress and strong pipeline of projects already scheduled
for the next annual budget and plan through 2031,
we still face a significant challenge,
which is our unfunded capital needs remain substantial.
Oh, Mark, can you please go to the next slide?
Thank you.
I reloaded the five-year CIP budget just to show again
that the proposed five-year CIP investment
is $4.6 million in the next five years.
However, even after that five year investment,
we project an estimated $2.12 billion
in unfunded capital needs
at the end of the five year period.
What does that mean?
That means that our annual capital allocation
are insufficient to address infrastructure needs
at the scale and pace required,
resulting in increased risk of facility failure,
escalating repair costs, service disruptions,
and inequitable conditions across neighborhoods.
To put this into perspective,
information technology faces approximately $22.6 million
in unfunded capital needs.
Our beloved Parks, Rec, and Waterfront Department
has an estimated $281.5 million gap,
And of course, Public Works carries the largest portion
at approximately $1.8 billion.
In a moment, each department director
will briefly highlight their most pressing unfunded needs,
beginning with IT, followed by Parks, Recs and Waterfront,
and concluding with Public Works.
Might be faster just to switch seats.
So thank you, Marco.
So you may have heard the term funds.
I mentioned it earlier.
For those that don't know, funds is a city's 1980s era
custom-built software system that
manages our day-to-day financial operations.
It's old.
It's outdated.
And it needs to be replaced immediately.
I want to be completely transparent
about our fiscal reality.
Right now, the funding required to fully retire funds
is entirely unavailable within our internal IT budget.
We're forecasting at least two years of intense dedicated effort to finally get
off this legacy system at a total estimated cost between 3.2 and 3.7
million dollars in today's dollars. Our continued reliance on this system
carries a massive operational risk as well. The outside contractors who custom
built funds 40 years ago are nearing retirement or discontinuing service.
Because of their unique specialized knowledge an unplanned departure would
leave the city stranded with a critical support deficit. If it breaks, we won't
have anyone to fix it. Sun setting the system is therefore our highest priority
to ensure long-term business continuity. The largest and most complex remaining
pieces, the land management and parcel tax data modules, are simply too high
risk to leave unaddressed. Consequently, for the upcoming budget cycle beginning
in FY29, we'll be working directly with the Budget Office to try to secure
baseline CIP funding. Dedicated capital is the only way we can mitigate this risk and
officially shut this system down. I will close and say that the good news is that we aren't
waiting around to take action. Our focus for this upcoming fiscal year is aggressively
moving our accounts receivable, general billing, and customer master modules currently in funds
over to our modern platforms such as Tyler Technology. So we do have a clear path forward.
just need the capital resources to finish the job. So thank you. I'll pass this, I guess, to Scott.
Thanks, Kevin. Next slide, Mark.
Next slide. Keep going. Keep going. Oh, we did. Yes, okay.
We have a fair amount unfunded in parks, recreation and waterfront. We've made a lot of progress
with T1. About $50 million of T1 was allocated to fix up our parks and our waterfronts.
our camps are in relatively good shape but we still have a significant amount of unfunded
and as Maricara pointed out even though we're doing a tremendous amount of capital over the
next five years we're not making any progress on that unfunded list and the same thing is true in
parks. We have as we things break things wear and tear and so as we complete
projects other ones become issues or break. We had just yesterday or just
Saturday we had a slight a small sinkhole appear in the South Cove which
we're really worried about and hoping that the bond measure passes in November
and we'll have the funds to replace the seawall,
which was the genesis of that sinkhole.
And but throughout parks we have a variety of unfunded needs
that need to be funded so that we're not closing facilities.
And I think in 2015, we closed the Berkeley Pier,
we closed the Berkeley, the Trellis at the Rose Garden,
And shortly after, and fortunately with T1 funds, we were able to reestablish that, working
on the peer.
But as things get older, they need to be fixed.
And so we've got a community center that's not seismically safe and very small that needs
to be fixed.
And so our unfunded needs keep growing and we're excited for the potential bond measure.
That'll make a lot of progress.
Walid?
Thanks, Pat.
For Public Works, I'll keep it pretty simple.
The key takeaway is that on the Public Works side,
unfunded capital needs is approximately 1.8 billion.
Yes, 1.8 billion.
That reflects the scale of infrastructure
we're responsible for maintaining,
which is obviously streets, sidewalks, sewer,
stormwater, transportation, facilities, fleet, and many other core assets that
residents rely on every single day. So the CIP obviously is not a full
solution. It's the city's best efforts to prioritize limited resources, protect
essential services, prioritization, and leverage outside funding wherever we can
feasible. So with that said I'll hand it over back to Maricar. Okay I need to
eat more spinach. Can't even press that. We don't want to end this amazing
presentation with the 2.2 billion dollar unfunded need. We did just want to
highlight that that is something that we need to work towards addressing. What we
do as we wrap up, it is important to highlight that there's been some
progress made despite the significant unfunded capital needs. We expect to see
materialized in the sidewalk and pathways, streets and roads and sewers. If
you guys can read that the bottom table, the streets, the sidewalks and pathways
started off the first the five-year CIP with about sixty six million dollars of
unfunded need at the end of the five-year period. It's going to be about
We're expecting to see that a
$72.7 million unfunded need.
This improvement is not done.
It will not happen by accident.
It is the result of targeted strategic solutions.
We have increased our CIP fund funding for streets and roads,
measure FF revenue supporting sidewalks and pathways,
streets and roads, and a completed sewer study,
rate study that led to phased rate adjustments
beginning in fiscal year 2016.
These steps show that when we invest intentionally,
we close gaps and strengthen our infrastructure.
That concludes our presentation of the five year
proposed CIP, and we can now move on
to discussion and questions.
Thank you.
Oh, next steps.
So for next steps, we're here now June 16th.
We're gonna go over, we went over the CIP
as well as the biannual budget.
It's the next, I believe the next item
or third item in the agenda item 40.
Or June 23rd, we're hopeful that we're back here
in front of you to adopt a 20, 27, 28 budget
and a five year CIP.
July 1st is the beginning of fiscal year 27.
The adopted budget and balancing measure
will take into effect and the fiscal year 27
capital budget is available. Thank you, thank you very much. I know that was a
lot to present and to gather and to work on so thank you all very much for
presenting it. Last time they presented this there was some argument about which
department was most important it was very amusing but I say that just to say
that you all are very passionate about the work you do and you've accomplished
so much it's just really it's really incredible really amazing to see all the work that you've
done i really am very grateful um so i want to take questions from my council colleagues on the
cip starting with council member tablin okay um council member backeby do you have a question
i do have a couple quick questions uh i don't know how quick actually but they'll relatively
quick slide. 37 if you could just pop that back up again. Marty Carr and 38. So I know that the bottom of 37 again, we're going to invest, you know, 400Million dollars over 5 years on capital projects and our total unfunded capital needs are basically kind of flat.
We still, you know, so basically we're replenishing capital, but then capital needs are accumulating at the same time. And we're doing some replenishment. So we're kind of saying steady state on the other hand on the next slide.
As you indicated, like, we're making significant investments in streets and sewers, such that.
The backlog for streets and the backlog for sewers are significantly reduced. Like, we're making good progress there. So I think my question is so given that overall we're sort of keeping.
We're kind of treading water, but we are making real progress in a couple areas.
Do we have a sense of where the areas where we're getting worse? Because a few areas are getting better than some areas are getting worse. And do we have a sense of what areas those are.
Getting worse, that makes sense.
I'll give a big picture answer and then for specific program categories, I'll rely on my colleagues to answer.
So some of them will probably be facilities
because they have a very, their funding source
is really just the General Fund or the CIP Fund,
which is there at the mercy of what's available.
And the annual baseline, which is not very much
for facilities, I believe it is $900,000 annually
for our 95 buildings that we manage,
which is getting older as I sit here and talk.
And do you guys want to answer specifically?
Well, I'll talk regarding IT.
So one of our primary responsibilities is security.
And as you know, everyone owns a computer.
You've got to buy a new computer every few years.
So we're impacted by that, our firewalls and everything.
They need to continue to be upgraded.
Just the rising cost of subscription software.
There's an annual escalator every year.
That gets a little bit out of hand.
And then we have this little thing called AI coming up,
which, as more of us are going to start to use it,
that consumes a lot of server power and things like that.
So there's going to be additional costs in that,
just in the licensing, and then how much we're going to use it.
So those are the things that come to mind.
Then you get the other stuff, just like sewers.
You don't think about it, but we have fiber
that's underground that deteriorates.
And so we need just like, we need to keep the sewers running. We need to keep those fibers in good shape.
So, great.
Um, it's something over time, I'd love to see.
Again, understand more of this and if it's in the full report, I was kind of flipping through it in the in the full document may not be in the, in the presentation. Maybe if offline, someone could point me at those numbers. I, I am really curious. Like, you know, this is 1 of the things I've kind of I've been curious about for a while that, like, because I know, like.
Conceptually, it makes sense. We're investing, but things are atrophy at the same time. And so it's this question of how much do we actually need to be investing to be moving the needle overall and not just treading water.
And so I'm really heartened to see that, like, we're investing enough in streets and we're investing enough in sewers that, like, we're like, as you on the next slide, like, we're making a big dent in those.
But I would just love not for now necessarily, but offline to know.
Where things are really getting worse, because those are going to be the next attention areas in the next 5 year. See, I see potentially. So that's 1 question. 2nd question is.
If the infrastructure bond does pass.
What does that do to the 5 year plan? Would we re update the plan base question to the city manager? Would we update the plan? What happens in the middle of the 5 year if the infrastructure bond passes? And how do we.
Make decisions about that. Well, we.
the project list for the 5 year plan. So that 5 year plan project list would be incorporated into the part of the CIP and we would be looking at how do we how do we bring those new revenues in and obviously we have to hire new staff create new contracts with people to do a lot of that work and build that into this. So it would be a process.
Okay, but we do this every 5 years. We wouldn't necessarily re-update the plan in year 2 or year 3. I mean, we'll have the project list and we'll know what we're doing and we'll come back and look at this again. And, you know, in the next budget cycle to set the next 5 year plan from there. Basically.
Right. Okay, got a comment on that. It'll generally reduce. I mean, if the bond measure passes, we're talking about the 1st, 5 years, probably spending 100Million. So it's generally going to reduce.
I would venture to say somewhere our unfunded lists
between $100 and $150 million.
And I think that increase over $100
is because we know that that funding we could use
to leverage for a variety of grants
and other funding sources that are out there.
So you saw earlier with Mericar's graph
around 66 million dollars of current grants
that public works and parks is operating out of.
But total in T1 we were able to leverage out 100 million
for another 83 million.
So we anticipate being able to do the same thing
with additional funds.
There are many of our grant sources out there require
10, 20, 25, 50% leverage.
so we'll be able to make a significant debt in the next 5 years in our unfunded list.
Last point, then I'm sorry. I wanted to also say that to point out that the attachment this capital improvement program overview, the last 2 pages has detailed a breakdown of the unfunded capital needs by category in the last in the next 5 years.
Hopefully that will answer your question. If not, we can definitely provide something more granular for you if you need to. And also I'll dive into that. That's helpful. Thank you last thing. I think I mentioned this budget. I am concerned that, like, in the out years, we have no new investment in. I don't know what our options are there. What we can do, because again, you know, we invest money in it also helps us save money in operations down the line. So.
Do we have, is it just an allocation decision, kind of a council priority kind of policy thing if we wanted to move more money into it, or is that is there some restriction in terms of the balance of that fund?
No, it is, it'd be a council prerogative on that. And looking at the needs and some of the out years on this plan is something that we definitely need to sit down with the department and get more dig into that a little bit more and be able to come back to you all with some concrete proposals.
Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor. Thanks. Did you have comments as well? Because I, I just realized if you have some brief comments just on specifically on the CIP. Okay. I'm going to come back to council member to happen then. Thank you.
Thank you very much. And thanks to the team here. I've always felt that the CIP never got the attention it deserves. I actually begin every year by reviewing the CIP as I've ever, my work plan for the year.
I want to commend PRW, PW and IT for your work on T1 and systems modernization as well
as the grants and awards received.
I'm glad the CAMP's fund is back online and grateful for the capital improvements on the
waterfront and at Dreamland, the stormwater improvements at Aquatic Park and elsewhere
in the city, the Vision Zero update, the citywide traffic calling program, and the Strawberry
Creek culvert repairs.
I know we have a long road ahead of us with some tough choices that may call for some
and de-brestructuring, but I wanted you to know
that you have my support and commitment
to ensure that you have the capital resources necessary.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember, Vice Mayor Traeger.
Sorry, so just to clarify,
so folks, you can ask your questions
and give some brief comments on CIP now,
and then what I wanna do is give us
like a five minute stretch break,
because I think we've been sitting a long time here,
so go ahead.
Okay, thank you.
I have six questions, and the rest I'll submit in writing.
Council Member, you may not have time
for all of those questions,
so I would prioritize, recommend prioritizing,
and keeping anything that you can keep
for a follow-up briefing.
Absolutely, that's my prioritized list.
I had 12, otherwise.
On slide 27, can you,
the North Berkeley senior center wall collision damage repair.
Could you, um,
edify me on what that is or what precipitated the damage?
Uh, what was the North Berkeley senior center damage repair or collision damage
repair?
Yeah, I don't have the immediate numbers in front of me,
but we had two phases.
one an emergency just to patch things up with temporary infrastructure and we're
going through the contract now with b-bros to be able to do the permanent
repairs but the good news is that's not coming out of our funds. We have our
operations team that are also working and I believe also City Attorney's
Office for insurance claims so whatever the cost is they'll be reimbursed through
the insurance claim. Okay I'll follow up offline on that. Still not clear
what the collision was, but I wanted to dig into, I had a broad question around, I think
this in the past there was alignment between the CIP and the five-year paving plan, and
I know you spoke a little bit about this in fights, why it's broken out, but can you speak
to the alignment or the difference between the two?
So the alignment is that the five year
pavement rehabilitation is part of the overall CIP,
which again also includes Measure FF right now as well, too.
It includes all of the pavement rehabilitation,
safety initiatives, safety projects,
sidewalks, and so forth, all inclusive.
Okay.
Moving to IT, I had a, could you speak broadly around,
I mean, we had a referral from the council,
I understand there is a draft guidance
and then there's a resolution around responsible use of AI.
Could you speak to how you're thinking
about the integration of AI,
and also talk about which aspects of the work flow
right now that are public facing,
like when you go pay your bills,
still are in need of having automation
or being able to have online payment functionality.
Let me start with the AI. We are in the final steps of publishing an AI administrative regulation.
That should be coming out shortly, I hope, and that provides some good guidance in terms of
how we use AI. We purposely designed it so it doesn't specifically guide you to a particular
AI solution. It guides you in how to properly and responsibly use it. We are, internally right now,
prototyping or proof-of-concepting on a limited basis,
Microsoft's co-pilot because we are already licensed for that
under a government cloud license,
which by the way means that unlike other AIs,
anything that we do within the co-pilot AI within
the government cloud keeps it within our bubble,
so it doesn't share that information.
That's very important because if you go to
a general public AI and you prompt it with something,
you effectively discuss that topic with somebody else?
The litmus test that we basically follow by is,
would you talk to somebody in the streets
about what you want to talk about?
If the answer is no, you shouldn't use AI.
So we're getting close to that.
We have to move on that because many employees are going off on their own and
we get constant bombardment about what do you recommend and honestly,
we don't have a recommendation right now.
We're working on it ourselves.
So hopefully that addresses the AI concern.
In terms of, I think your last question was more self-service functionality, right?
So I don't know if you were, so we had credit card payments by phone processed by 311 about
two years ago.
That wasn't PCI compliant, so we had to stop doing that.
And the impact on the community was bad because people were complaining, hey, you know, now
you're forcing me to either mail in a payment or come in person.
So it took a little while, but we managed to implement that credit card payment by phone
solution.
We made it universal, so right now 311 is using it, but we're in a position where we
might be able to expand it in the next year to any department, because it's tied in tightly
to our phone system.
So other departments, like maybe finance, for example, if they want to start processing,
it's a matter of configuring the phone system to direct it to that solution.
Is that seamlessly integrated to online payment capability?
Like, I know RPP parking, you can now do that online, but I understand from constituents
that not all, that functionality is limited to certain types of things.
Yes, so the solution we have is a universal solution.
It's just where we apply it to.
So when we decide to go that direction, we can apply this solution to RPP payments or
or whatever, right?
Okay, we'd love to dig in a little more at a later time.
But moving on, right now I believe you're using two systems.
There's clarity for planning, or for planning,
it's being migrated to clarity,
but then a seller is still being used.
So what is the longer term plan,
And I guess, what are the costs that we are holding
while we're using two separate systems?
So that is a concern of ours.
So yes, the answer is we are using Excela.
Excela supports the finance department, planning,
who else?
Public works, right.
And I think some fire permitting.
And environmental health, right.
So Excela supports those three departments.
planning is looking at a replacement for Excela
to just replace their permitting solution.
So that's that $150,000 that we alluded to that,
because we don't know.
There's gonna be some integration effort.
But either way, we are gonna have two systems
because if clarity goes live,
that's just for the planning department.
We still need to maintain Excela
for the finance department and the other departments, right?
So until we come up with a better master plan,
we're gonna actually end up with two parallel systems.
Okay, thank you.
And my last question, I have some brief comments,
but funds, did I hear correctly?
Funds migration is beginning in FY29?
No, no, no, no.
Funds migration has been going on and it's going on now,
but we have two major modules,
which is parcel tax and land management.
Those are the two behemoths that we still need
to migrate off of funds.
So right now we have sufficient funding
in the IT cost allocation to address
some of the smaller modules,
like accounts receivable and general billing
and customer master.
But when those are completed,
then that's gonna be around FY 28, 29.
We still need to address those last two big modules,
which currently is unfunded.
And our 680 cost allocation
doesn't have the money to pay for that right now.
So that's why I raised in the unfunded CIP issue.
Okay, thank you.
And I know there's more opportunity to dig in.
I'll just say that IT needs a dedicated funding stream
and I'm looking forward to if I have the opportunity
to continue this work on the council,
that my intention is to work with you,
kind of focus some of my future efforts in that direction.
I firmly believe that all city departments, including
semi-autonomous departments, I will leave it at that,
need to budget for and pay their fair share in terms of IT
expenditures.
On the CIP, I really appreciate the call out
to Council Member Tapland's point around sometimes CIP
not always getting the visibility that it deserves.
I really appreciated the comprehensive nature
of this presentation.
And we have to continue to prioritize
essential infrastructure investments
that keep Berkeley safe, accessible, and resilient.
Repairing and improving streets and sidewalks,
upgrading sewer and stormwater systems,
and enhancing ADA accessibility throughout public spaces
is immensely important.
And we, of course, live in an earthquake country
and so this plan also advances seismic retrofits
and ongoing maintenance of city facilities
along with upgrades to park and recreation amenities.
As someone who has dedicated the better part
of my adult life to working on climate protection
and climate justice, I'm really proud
that the city is also expanding its commitment
to climate action through projects focused
on building electrification and energy efficiency.
And I appreciate how integrated that is
along with resiliency into the plan.
So thank you so much.
Councillor if I can, your inquiry
about the North Berkeley Senior Centre Wall Project,
the contract was awarded at $61,168
to as I mentioned earlier, B-Bros Construction.
And again, the main point of issue there
was a vehicle ran into the wall.
So while we are making the repairs to the location is open,
but I believe that regarding hot food,
there's still an issue,
but once we repair everything that's fully operational,
as I mentioned earlier,
the city is going for reimbursement
through the reinsurance from that resident
who ran into it, unfortunately.
Hope that answers your questions and inquiries.
It answers part of my question, thank you.
Thank you.
Council Member Humbert.
Madam Mayor, I don't have any questions.
I just have comments so I can save those for later.
if you would like on the CIP though you're welcome to. Oh sure yeah okay
thank you. I want to thank all of you sitting up there are spectacular
directors and the staff that works with you for this incredible report and all
the work that you know that you do and all the work that went into it. I just
want to kind of rhapsodize a little bit I really appreciate the photos of the
great projects that have been completed in your presentation.
The beautiful stormwater swale facilities that preserve and filter our stormwater include
beautiful native grasses and plants.
The photo of the recently completed Willard Clubhouse, which I just, I mean, I'm just
so, still so thrilled about it, a facility that was designed as LEED Silver and was awarded
lead gold and and it's garnered incredible numbers of awards. The photos
of Southside complete streets, the Woolsey Eaton intersection which I think
is a work of art. These are just a few of the great accomplishments recently
completed by all of you and I want to say that I'm thrilled that the Fulton
Woolsey Bike Boulevard improvements have been completed including the
important safety crossing improvements at Shattuck and Woolsey between
districts eight and three. I'm thrilled that we're underway with the quick build
safety improvements on the Claremont Avenue corridor. They're happening right
now. We're moving toward final design adoption and bids on the critical
safety improvement at Zachary's Corner, Warring and Derby, after an inclusive
public process that included Zachary's father and grandmother. I see this report
shows the work we're going to be able to do to make our streets safer and
sidewalks better and safer through measure FF funds and I'm so grateful
that Berkeley residents supported that by an almost super majority. In D8 I see
that we'll finally get to work on the dangerous crossing at Claremont and
Eaton where our D8 resident Paul Fogel was so grievously injured several years
ago. This will be an FF CIP project. I see the first year of the five-year CIP
plan includes an expenditure for commencing the process of designing
permanent corridor improvements on Claremont Avenue. There will be a
substantial public outreach on this of course. I'm thrilled generally to see
that we'll be spending FF monies on repairing the worst of our sidewalks and
the worst of our streets and specifically some of our streets in the
worst conditions with PC eyes hovering in the single digits and these are
things we weren't able to tackle until, until FF.
So thanks to all of you and your staff for this report,
and also to every member of our staff and contractors
who have done and will do the work shown in this report.
Thank you.
Big hint of applause for all of you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member.
Council Member Bartlett.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
And I too want to thank you all for your work.
work these last few years you've accomplished so much and with a very creative process resource
become challenging constrained found new buckets of resources new workflows and dedicate yourselves
to making our city great again if you will and so and you've done a lot of great work in my
district you named it all I want to thank you again and so I'm curious though as we look at
sort of the next five years and uh you know the I don't want to just harken back to council member
vice mayor true goob's um comments you know it's it's a shame that the it budget is not um vigorous
because uh so much of the savings running are going to come from bless you are going to come from it
ultimately we know this uh as we get better processes and more efficiencies and do more
um with the new tools we have um and then the other savings in the on the physical side the cip
I'm curious about the cost trajectories across these different facets of the next few years.
I know they're protected to go up. They were last five years ago too. And so I'm looking at the
you know the the core sort of the core components that are that are subject to inflation,
inflationary pressures, the concrete, asphalt, electrical components and labor.
So I'm wondering, sort of a structural issue,
structural technique, structural strategies
are we deploying to kind of get the cost curve,
because our buckets of money are finite.
And so I'm wondering, are we looking
at new forms of procurement, large procurement at scale?
Is it new materials that last longer?
or new things like Concrete Maid of hemp, things like that.
You know, I'm curious as to what we're looking at
to get at the cost curve.
I can start and I can hand it over to our,
my colleagues to chime in.
So unfortunately, as you mentioned, council member,
we really don't have too much control as far as inflation.
And we do have some wild cards as far as the oil prices
over there gonna come down.
So there's not too much limitation that we have.
And there's, we tend to keep tight poles
forest technology and what's trending obviously with GI we look at pavers so
we have a good robust toolbox to be able to implement whatever is the most
efficient means and methods to treat the location but the majority of the savings
comes with the way we strategize how we package our contracts where we do work
where we compile a lot of infrastructure work at specific locations
based on the needs to be able to get competitive costs, meaning save in mobilization and traffic
control costs. So those elements from engineering, construction, project management and construction
management perspective, we do have a little bit of wiggle room and we can be strategic.
But unfortunately, to your point, as far as the material costs and escalation, that's
not within our limitation or our wheelhouse to be able to control it. But we do look at
the trends and we look at how do we competitively get the best pricing by combining projects
and by pulling it from all of the adopted plans that we have that is close to being
shovel ready to be able to get the most infrastructure and maximize the limited funds that we have.
And also, to your point for pavement, I think our team, a bunch of them are behind me in
and support for today, the engineering team,
Public Works and the full force behind me
and the brains behind all of this.
We look at through our engineering lens,
where do we have critical point management,
meaning that if we do have infrastructure,
that if we give a little bit of love today,
it'll save us $2 million in two years and we take that route.
And that becomes our first and foremost
professional recommendation to be able to control costs,
to be able to extend the life cycle of our infrastructure.
is already aging, so that way it gives us a little bit more flexibility to maneuver
and do more within this city with our limited resources. So again, as I mentioned, I want
to give huge shout outs to our engineering team, Transportation, who's behind us because
they're day in, day out, they do this, you know, and try to maximize the limited funds
that we have and roll out as much safety and infrastructure that we can efficiently.
I'm going to pick up to the team.
I'm curious, just as we have this sort of,
this jurisdictional spanning energy system here,
Ava Energy, do we ever have that possibility
of sort of group buying for materials
with the jurisdictions to lower the cost by it's scale,
you know?
So, we use a variety of methods to lower our cost,
and I think he touched on some of them.
But others of them are making sure our bids are competitive,
meaning that there are multiple bids on our construction projects.
It's always worrisome when you do
a mandatory bid walk and you have two or three contractors show up,
as opposed to 13 or 14.
Because you know you're going to get a much better price with more contractors.
So reaching out to those contractors,
making sure they're sure they're all aware of those bridge.
Quite frankly, a lot of it comes down to the relationship with our project managers.
So contractors are willing to bid on projects.
The City of Berkeley, because they know they're going to work with,
oftentimes very qualified and efficient project managers.
That makes their job so much easier if you're working with
somebody who can guide you through the process of the bureaucracy,
of our bureaucracy and construction management and inspection,
and we work hand-in-hand with those contractors.
So the relationship between our project managers and the contractors is really important,
and oftentimes increases the number of bids we get.
So they're stable of contractors.
Right now, what we're seeing,
we're in this little lull here where there's,
and will be probably for the next few years,
where there's not a whole lot of municipal money out there.
A lot of my peers are talking about,
hey, the projects that they are bidding out are coming
back around the engineer's estimate,
and are much more predictable than they have been in the last two to three years,
because there's lots of municipal projects out there,
and it'll be that way for the next probably four to six years.
We've got a window where we can roll out
as many projects as we're going to be more competitive.
All those type of things keep our prices down.
The Santa Fe right away bid,
which I was talking about earlier, came back in today.
We had a lot of very competitive bids,
and we had several of those bids that were
below our construction estimated cost.
But it's because we had a fair amount of bidders there,
and people are looking for work.
So all those factors go into how the contractor sharpens their pencil.
Last question. On this bid topic too,
Have you had any sense that the new entities envisioned under the Birth Inclusion Diversity Index,
have any of these new companies been applying, have they been competitive,
have they been partnering with some of the existing legacy companies? Just curious.
We've seen more, a much more variety of companies and a lot of
newer companies bidding on our projects than ever before.
Yeah, as an example, our current fiscal year 26 payment project that just went out as hitting
the streets, the contractor who won the competitive bidding is new.
So a lot of times it was a previous contractor that was awarded, but this time around it
is a new contractor.
Again, they were, went through the public bidding process.
They were the most qualified, responsible bidder.
We're looking forward to working with them.
very good thank you thanks for the question councilmember Keith I forgot I
pressed the button just a quick appreciation thought that I had during
the presentation which was 40 slides it was very long but that's that's not a
criticism I want to say that in recognition for how complex of a system
this represents and I was really struck somewhere during the presentation that
that each single slide represents an unbelievable amount of person hours for whatever projects
were depicted on the slide.
And I was just like, when I kind of thought of that and then there's like 40 slides, it
was just incredible how much work has been done.
And what we're looking at today is how well organized and executed it is because it's
a really, really complicated thing to manage.
So I just wanted to give props to all of you and the city manager and all the people who
execute.
It's really, I'm very impressed.
And that was my general appreciation and I have a very specific appreciation, which
is for Acting Director Murray, thank you so much for putting McGee on the FF paving plan.
It's a small, seemingly random street, but it's like basically rocks and the residents
are very appreciative.
So that's all.
Thank you so much.
Again, I want to give the credit to Measure FF team, transportation, engineering and
It gives us an opportunity for what I call the 360 perspective to be able to look at
all of our network where street segments that were missed for 30 years, they have an opportunity
now.
As they all pay their taxes, this gives them an opportunity for fresh pavement.
And also, it safeguards the road for bicyclists, pedestrians, strollers because when you're
in gravel, that's not a safe means of travel path.
and I think if I tried to ride a bicycle on that road,
I think it would store the entire thing, so.
Thank you, council member Kesser-Wani.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
I just, you know, this is actually my second time
getting this presentation because we did receive it
at the Budget and Finance Committee as well.
So I just wanna thank you again for all of the detail
that is presented here.
And I specifically wanted to call out the work on streets.
I know you did already, you know,
talking about that 8 million general fund increase.
I authored that and I just wanna take us down memory lane
because when I first got on the council back in 2019, 2020,
we would pass our five-year paving plan
And our public works director at the time would tell us,
and he sort of glossed over it.
And that's not a criticism because we were always
in the habit of seeing our pavement condition index decline
every time we approve the five-year paving plan.
And the reason for that is because we were not investing
enough general fund resources to actually see
the pavement condition index improve.
And I really zeroed in on that and recognized that
a major problem. Others did as well. You know, I don't want to take singular credit, and I really
wanted to see us commit more general fund dollars to that, and we made that commitment. And I want
to thank the advocates who rallied around Measure FF to draft that and collect the signatures and
get it on the ballot. What that measure does, as this presentation shows, it doubles down and
And gives us even more resources so that people who live on McGee that used to be district 1. It's now district 5. I'm happy to hand it over. And I'm even happier to see it.
Finally, get repaved. We had Holly street that was in similar condition and we.
We worked to get that 1 repaved a couple of years ago.
So, and I did want to briefly mention that Measure FF has language in it that says, if
we don't continue to do the eight million general fund commitment, that that parcel
tax revenue will also go down.
And I really appreciate that because I feel very confident that it has it has really locked
in that general fund commitment.
And this is really hard stuff because think about the deficit that we're in right now.
It would have been, if we didn't have that guarantee in FF
that we cannot pull these dollars,
it would have been really tempting.
And that's what prior councils did.
Reduce the investment in capital,
streets that we all use every single day to close deficits.
You know, that's really a big part of why we're in
the unfunded deferred maintenance, right?
Of a lot of our capital.
So, I mean, a lot of cities have this problem though.
You know, it's things are, you know, things wear out and degrade and the costs continue to grow.
So, so we have this problem. And so I just feel like there, despite the 1.8, I think you said 1.8 billion, right?
Of unfunded infrastructure liability. I really think that there's a bright spot here for our, for our streets and the sidewalks.
And then we have our $300 million general obligation bond
that the voters will take a look at
and hopefully authorize so that we can do more,
do more of all of this work
that we all benefit from as a community.
So thank you again,
and really glad to see where we are on the streets,
especially.
If I can add, thanks to Measure FF
and the approach that we're taking
between the baseline two programs,
I will read some modeling in our 12-year projections.
They show that our PCI as a full network
throughout the city will be in the 60s.
So that's a huge accomplishment.
That's only 12 years.
And again, that goes based on the framework
that we're addressing the city complete networks.
That's great.
I mean, as I said, we're definitely heading
in the right direction.
And kudos to council members
who made the $8 million decision.
As I said, we're still not in the 70s,
but hey, we're in a great place in the 60s and 12 years.
That's great.
We just got to keep heading in that direction.
Yes, and just quickly, Mr. Amiri,
for people who don't know what 60s mean,
I mean, that's a bad grade, but, you know, on a test.
But 60s here, just translate that.
That's not very good, but is it like good or fair?
It's very good for where we're at right now.
When you think about PCI of six,
And when the sweeper goes by and the dust cloud comes up
in a, you know, established corridor,
I think, as I said, we're going,
we're heading in the right direction.
Again, it shows a commitment from the residents,
from council to again, provide the resources
so we can deliver the goods.
So kudos to all of you guys.
Yes, and because also just really quickly,
I know it's getting late.
We have another big item to do.
When you're at six, you know,
In the past, we would tell you, well, we're really sorry,
tough luck now because your street is in such bad condition
that it would be too expensive to fully repair your street,
to fully reconstruct your street.
And so we need to put ourselves in a position
where we're not letting things get to that point, right?
That I think we have that cost curve for streets, right?
Where a dollar early saves $8 later on the reconstruct.
that's why we did the $8 million you know we were trying to save money by
maintaining and and I think that's where we're gonna be and so so I'm really I'm
really pleased to see that. Thank you moving on to Councilmember Leno Parra.
Thank you I don't have any questions I just I really want to thank all of the
people who have worked on this and I during the conversation I was reminded
of the origins of Measure FF and how three of us,
after the failure of Measure L came up with this idea
and it was a couple of 20-somethings
that cared enough about this that started it,
but it was so many people along the way
that worked on the campaign, that volunteered,
that voted for it and now it's the work
of our incredible staff that's going to implement it.
So I just am very grateful for all of that, thanks.
Thank you so much, I just have some comments.
Again, thank you all so much for your presentation.
Sure, okay.
I'm gonna interrupt myself
and open up the public hearing on the budget.
Thanks, thanks Mark.
All right, so, I mean, you all know infrastructure
is one of my top priorities,
and I'm very proud of all the work that we've done here,
especially on our T1 projects,
it's already been mentioned, I guess,
but New Willard Clubhouse, restrooms and lighting
in Ohlone Park, Civic Center Upper Plaza,
the dock repairs and so much more has really improved
the quality of life for our residents
and also for our visitors.
We've completed safety projects
on several intersections and streets in Berkeley,
working towards our complete streets goals.
I see these projects every single day
as I go around the city
and I hear from people in the community
that they see it too.
So I know that you all don't get to hear
appreciation all the time but know that the public really does appreciate your
work. And you know we've done so much here and I know there's a lot more to do.
I know that as Mariakar was saying the end of the presentation is a little bit
hard because there is so much to do and yet I know that we're really working on
on chipping away at this and that I really see that the next steps that
we're moving forward will get us in a good spot and and really making
significant work of this this great need. As my colleagues have also said I'm
committed to addressing funded and unfunded capital improvement needs. I
know that this will take many years to get to the point where we're adequately
maintaining our infrastructure versus just crisis management which I know is
what folks feel like it is right now. We've done a really amazing job at
leveraging funding. You all have done an amazing job of leveraging funding and I
want to make sure that we're continuing to do that and that's why it's so
important that we set aside funding from our general fund and also of course
that we are supporting this infrastructure bond that's coming up as
well because this will really address some of our most urgent needs while
also investing in capital projects that are critical to ensuring that Berkeley
continues to thrive. I also you know just want to thank everyone for just the work
that we have coming up because of course this is the plan once we approve that
there's work to do here. So I just want to say thank you again. Thank you to all
of you. Thank you so much to your staff. Thank you to everyone who put this
presentation together. It's a massive lift. And my staff and I have really
spent a lot of time with it. It's my second time hearing it and I just feel
more grateful the second time around. So thank you all. We are going to take a...
I think we need to take a 10-minute stretch break because we've been sitting
a long time. So we're going to take a 10-minute stretch break and we're
we're going to come back and the city manager will go over his budget or his staff will
I'll present my clearly we need this break. Yeah, I'm going to present my amendments and
then we will have council questions, public comment and then council comments. So 10 minutes
We'll be back. Thank you, um
Thanks for your statement
and I did part of it in Venice to this campus.
This was here.
It was also here.
And today, we are going to make a big scene about it,
but it is quite dramatic how much it was done.
And it was actually nothing like this process.
But this is quite true.
So anyway, I don't know if I need to be here, you know, I think, I mean, I am so grateful
for all that you and you're doing all of this.
Do you have an intervening item?
Do you have an intervening item?
I'll keep my fingers pressed.
I'm confident.
But there's another hearing next week.
Yeah, yeah. Which will be here, right?
Yeah, okay, I'll be here. Okay, thank you.
I'm going to do a little bit of a stretch. I'm going to do a little bit of a stretch.
Thank you.
Okay, thanks, everyone.
Thank you for your patience.
All right coming back into session. Thank you so much. I'm gonna pass it over
to our City Manager to present us with his budget. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll
be brief and then I'll hand it over to Budget Manager, Mark Hardupiah. We have a
short slide, a short deck, ten slides, ten minutes. You know reaching, getting into
the final lap of what's been a very long and hard budget process that we
started many months ago with the idea that we would work as hard as we could
to minimize the impacts of a very significant nearly thirty million dollar
structural deficit on both the services and programs and impacts that are felt
by residents and also on impacts to our staff and it has been a very hard journey
we are proposing to eliminate 183 positions from the budget, including
fiscal year 26 and then the two years that we're talking about tonight. And I'm
proud to say that that while it is deeply painful to lay off any staff, we
have really focused hard on making that number as small as possible. Of that 183
staff about 20 are filled positions who are on the layoff list. Our human
resources department director Janelle Rodriguez and her team have worked very
hard to to make that number smaller. Some people have some people will be will be
bumping into vacant positions so that 20 will go down to approximately 14 and of
the 14. She and her team are working very hard in partnership with our labor
partners who have been very good partners throughout this process on a
flexible placement program whereby we've frozen hiring in most classifications
and positions to preserve the opportunity for people to move into jobs
that are vacant even if they are not in the same classification in which they
currently reside as long as they meet the minimum qualifications. That will
be a voluntary offer that is made to people who are in that category and I
really do want to extend my thanks to our HR director Janelle Rodriguez and
her team who've been working very hard to go through that a tremendous amount
of analysis and work to minimize to the greatest extent possible the impacts to
our staff and prevent as many people as possible from losing a job. So it has
been a hard period. I really want to also extend thanks to Deputy City Manager
David White who's done a tremendous, tremendous amount of work. Our budget
manager, Mari Cardipai, who's done a tremendous amount of work as well as her
her small team. It's a very small team who put in a lot of hours and will
continue to put in a lot of hours until we wrap this whole thing up over the
next week or so here. So with that, I will turn it over to Marikar to walk
through the slide deck. Thank you Paul. My laptop's not working so bear with me.
This is just a recap of what we proposed and presented on May 19th to the full
Council, the proposed fiscal year 27 and 28 annual budget. Next slide, please, Mark.
So the purpose of overview, the purpose of this is to have a public hearing number two on the proposed
annual budget and five-year CIP. Continue discussion on the proposed fiscal year 27
and 28 budget, as well as the five-year CIP that you just heard. And of course it
It allows for city council and public input
to allow for adoption of a balanced budget
scheduled on June 23rd, 2026.
The short slide will cover a recap
of the proposed biennial budget,
as well as some technical changes since May 19th.
Next slide, please.
Apologies for this very small font.
Budget engagement timeline.
This is just to show you
of how we have been extremely engaged
throughout this whole biennial budget development process.
We started way before January, 2026,
but just wanted to highlight what's been happening
the past six months.
We've had budget and finance policy committees throughout.
The very first time we presented an update of the 27-28,
proposing the baseline, presenting the baseline budget.
February, 2026, we received a general fund revenue update
from our finance director,
as well as an overview of revenue enhancements.
We also have an overview of our front CIP fund,
which is when we propose and share
that it does not have enough funding balance
and it's expecting a structural deficit.
April, 2026 is when it really picked up.
We had a budget and finance policy committee
where we had charter officers budget reduction plans.
And also we had the overview of the 27 and 28
proposed budget balancing plan as well as budget referrals.
May, 2026, a couple more budget
and finance policy committee meeting.
We presented a proposed manual budget.
We also presented the proposed five year CIP
and a budget referral song stroll.
And on May 19th, as mentioned,
we presented to the full council the 2728 proposed budget.
And here we are now in June,
we've had two budget and finance policy committee meetings
on the 11th, the nearest proposed budget
and the community agency contracting overview.
And tonight we're here to continue discussion on the budget
as well as we presented the five year CIP to you.
and next Tuesday is the adoption of the proposed
biennial budget in the five-year CIP,
as well as our fiscal year 2027
annual appropriations ordinance.
Next slide, please.
I just wanted to really briefly go over,
I'm sure you know this already,
but our fiscal context of impacts and amounts,
we mentioned already that we are experiencing
a structural deficit and challenges,
not only in the general fund,
which is what we have mainly focused on,
but also in our special funds,
like parking funds, Marina, and our CIP fund.
There's a rising cost in personnel, pension, healthcare,
and our liability insurance,
as well as labor negotiations, inflation,
I think it went up 4.2%,
which is the highest, I believe, since 2023,
and we don't know how high it's gonna go still.
our historical reliance on one-time sources.
We still, our fiscal year 2026 year end results
are still pending, so we don't know how we're gonna end
fiscal year 26.
And we just did a whole presentation in front of you
about deferred maintenance and significant
unfunded infrastructure needs,
increased service demands and community expectations.
Of course, our November 2026 ballot measures,
both local and statewide, that could impact our budget.
significantly going forward.
And last but certainly not least,
state federal revenue limitations,
economic and political uncertainty.
Next slide please.
Just wanna emphasize again
that when we started this budget development,
the goal is a structurally balanced budget
that protects core services,
reduces reliance on one-time funds,
and sets the foundation for long-term fiscal sustainability.
We did that by first and foremost,
establishing our 27-28 baseline budget
by using actuals plus service needs going forward.
Budget balancing framework,
after the revenue and expenditure adjustments,
the general fund deficit ranged from 31.3 million
in 27 to 29.5 in 28.
Then there was an immense city-wide effort
to reduce 10 to 12.5% of general fund,
baseline budget, other front specific fixes
that are also in structural deficit and revenue ideas.
This included strategic cost shifts,
non-departmental refinements,
and required debt service support
and parking fund stabilization.
Even though we say that we want to move away
from relying on one-time resources,
There are strategic times where it must be done,
and as long as you use it, if it's a one-time source,
it must be used for a one-time need.
So the use of one-time resources in fiscal year 27,
we have identified $12.06 million of one-time funds
used to smooth out the deficits.
And this is being used to sustain services
in public safety, youth, and adult programs
in fiscal year 27 until the outcome
of a potential November 2026 sales tax measure is known.
city. Next slide, please.
This was also part of the May
19th slide presentation but the
general fund budget balancing
will face recap. We started off
on the initial was 32.3 million
and 27 with an updated revenue.
It became 27.14. And as I
mentioned, there's the
resources in 27, that was 33.3.
We used $2.1 million of that to smooth out the 27 and 28.
So it'll be easier to develop a budget, a balanced budget.
In 27, we ended with a general fund deficit
after revenue and expenditure adjustment of 29.2.
In 28, we started with $33.2 million deficit
after revised revenue projection, almost 25 million,
and all of the changes and adjustments,
we ended with 29.5.
So those two bottom numbers were the numbers
that we were working with when we initiated
the budget balancing exercise for the whole organization.
Next slide please.
Propose revised changes, all funds revenue,
so there are some technical changes that happened
from the amounts that we proposed and presented on May 19th.
I will not go over every single slide, every single one,
there's a summary page on the next couple of slides.
But overall, there's a variance of $13.7 million
from the numbers from May 19th to now on the revenue side.
Next slide, please.
And on the all funds expenditure side,
some of the technical changes that happened
resulted in about an $11.6 million change
from the amounts proposed on May 19th to now.
And in 2028, it is a $6.6 million.
The next slide, please.
This is a summary of the proposed all funds.
So the 2027 original proposed for May 19th,
the revenue was cited at $772.1 million.
The 27 revised today is $785.8 million.
The expenditure was at $905.2 million.
The revised proposed is now $916.8 million.
In the 2028 proposed original on May 19th,
the revenue was 773.4 million.
The revised is 788.2.
On the expenditure side is 865 million,
and the revised proposed is 871.8.
On the staffing side, it was 1,600.84 FTEs.
The revised is an increase of two, so 1,606.84.
And it's the same number in 2028.
So the changes from the 519-26
reflects capturing capital grants
and other capital funding that were not included
in the May 19th proposed amounts.
Also, we did not yet know what the consumer price index
and personal income growth rates were going to be.
They were not yet available on 519 and they are now.
So we adjusted for that.
And also the rent board budget approved their budget
by its board.
So we had to implement that as well
and incorporate that in the budget.
Detailed explanation of the changes can be found
in the schedule of changes in the attachments.
The 27 and 28 staffing count that increased to two
is due to the rent board's additional one OS three
and one project based assistant planner.
Position have to exceed three years.
Next slide, please.
This is the proposed general fund summary.
Nothing's changed on the revenue side,
on the expenditure side.
It is now $313.8 million in 2027,
and in 2028 it is now $319.5 million.
And that can be explained.
The change in the expenditures stems from the part
of the city auditor's budget balancing plan
that were not reflected in the May 19th to 26 numbers
that the budget office caught
and have now put into the proposal and out.
The general fund staffing count increased by 0.5
and that is again due to the rent boards additional
to FTEs and 1.5 of that is their special funds
and 0.5 of that is general fund.
But it does not increase their general fund allocation,
I just wanted to point that out.
What they did was they decreased their non-personnel
that they get from the general fund
and move that up to their personnel.
So that concludes this very short presentation.
Again, the point of this is to continue our discussion
and provide comments on the proposed budget,
as well as the proposed five-year CIP.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
And if it's okay with my council colleagues,
I'll present my amendments to this budget
and then we can take questions at the same time.
Does that work?
Okay.
All right, very good.
So, I want to start with some comments,
some introductory comments.
So, as was mentioned by Marikar's presentation,
we are in a $30 million structural deficit.
Simply put, that means our expenses exceed our costs.
With the reliance on one-time resources,
cuts of the federal and state levels,
the slow recovery from the pandemic, the increase in costs,
and continued financial uncertainty
from international conflicts, tariffs,
and unstable federal administration,
we have exhausted our options of one-time cuts.
We can no longer rely on these one-time fixes
and as a leader, as mayor, as your mayor,
it's my job to tell it to you straight, make hard decisions,
try to reduce the impacts of these cuts
and work towards increased revenues and a sustainable budget.
Together with city staff and the city manager,
we've been working to balance our two-year budget
in ways that don't continue to kick the can down the road.
My recommendation seek to address the priorities
that my council colleagues have expressed
while also leaving room for the uncertainty
of this November's election.
I wanna make sure the public understands
that the entire council is concerned
about the uncertain future of FY28.
And this isn't just about the possible closure
of a fire station, additional loss of staff, et cetera,
if the sales tax doesn't pass.
I can speak for all of us that public safety is a priority
and we will continue to work hard
to keep our stations open.
I want to show folks that there is no closure plan for FY 2027 and I really don't know what
November will bring.
On the ballot this November is a state ballot measure that will require two thirds for special
taxes and prohibit charter cities from levying transfer taxes.
I'm going to say that again.
This is a state ballot measure that will require two thirds for special taxes and prohibit
charter cities, which we are, from levying transfer taxes. If we lose our
ability to have transfer taxes in Berkeley we will be losing an additional
35 million dollars. Keep in mind that we are right now working to close a 30
million dollar deficit and we could be losing another 35 million dollars if
this measure passes in November. So believe me when I say that this budget
has been stressful but what might happen in November would be cataclysmic. My
My budget Brown Act circle did everything we could to fight for our whole council's
priorities while also being conscious of the challenges that lie ahead.
As mayor, it's my job to think about the entire city.
Every department, every person, every resident, every business, we can only get through this
challenging time if we stick together.
So I ask you all for your patience, your compassion, and for your support as we move forward.
So I'm now going to move into a little bit more detail about my amendments.
These were also presented at a previous budget and finance committee meeting.
So first we took into consideration the council referrals dating back from September of this
fiscal year.
Three of the referrals identified non-general fund sources so we're continuing to move those
forward in the FY 2027 budget.
When we did a deep dive on the budget reduction plan from the city manager's office and balanced
the priorities identified by city council members, we first focused on identifying priorities
that do not require general fund dollars.
These priorities included the council referrals
on downtown revitalization, car-free Berkeley,
car-free Telegraph, small sites,
and the sacred rest drop in center.
These projects draw from the LRDP settlement,
which is the settlement we have with UC Berkeley,
SOCIP, which is funding set specifically for downtown,
measure FF and the housing trust fund.
These sources of funding can only be used
for specific purposes.
So I wanna make sure folks understand
that those kind of big ticket items are coming from alternate sources, not the general fund.
Then we looked at projects and programs that council members named as priorities,
particularly those that have a potential for economic impact and revenue generation.
One of those was the full-time employee, a full-time employee in the Office of Economic
Development, of which seven of us identified as a priority at the May 19th council meeting to
to support small businesses,
project to increase housing at Telegraph
and Claremont Housing, that's called PITCH,
which will increase our tax base,
the DBA outreach worker helping
to support our unhoused community,
Solano Stroll, the largest East Bay street fair
and a commercial corridor,
bringing hundreds of thousands of people to Berkeley,
and Live Free, our gun violence prevention program
that helps to make our streets, neighborhoods,
and schools safer.
We identified $514,000 in general fund sources,
which I'll review in a moment,
drawn from salary and cost savings
that we're proposing to support the five strategic projects
in FY2027, which I'm gonna go over in a bit.
I'll show you all this and go over it in more detail,
but I want to give an overview first.
There are four other line items
in the city manager's budget reduction plan
that were identified by council members
or commissions as priorities
that we are not putting forward
as a result of our follow-up with discussions,
our follow up discussions with staff.
So these are the vegetation and fuel reduction.
It was reduced from 450K to 207K.
This was council member Blackaby, by the way.
Staff reported that the work that's needed to be done
can be covered by the 207K in funding that remains.
The street trauma prevention program,
this position was established
to increase cross departmental collaboration.
And I believe that moving forward,
this can be accomplished without dedicated staff.
Search program, staff reported that they are transitioning
to a volunteer instructor model and are not planning
to expand the Berkeley Ready Program,
and Heart to Heart, the Community Health Commission
prioritized this program, and the city contract
for lifelong medical care expired in June, 2026,
and without that partnership, the success
of the program was already in jeopardy.
So I'm now gonna walk you all through
the document. Sure. Uh, yes, I'd also like to move to accept my supplemental
sentence rise. Thank you. This is to accept the supplemental revised
material that was handed out at the meeting today. Council member, uh, this
right on 48 councilmember kisser. Why? Yes,
I'm going to put this up on the screen so folks can see. There are also number of these that are printed in the back. So feel free to check that out and I will highlight any of the differences that are the ones that are online.
This is the downtown Berkeley
revitalization projects which
includes funding for the
catenary can, an airy actually
think this is built on can, an
airy lighting project as well
as Oxford for all. This was an
item brought forward by
councilmember trade up. And it
will be paid for out of the
streets and open space
improvement plans so sip which
can only be used for funding
for downtown projects in a
certain way. So this is a
funding for downtown projects in a certain geographic area.
The next one is the car-free Berkeley item or car-free
telegraph, as I think many of us call it.
This has been referred to the LRDP funding process.
And the difference here is that it was split between FY 2027
and FY 2028, so half and half.
This was a referral from Council Member Lina Para, Kesser Whani,
and myself.
and additional information here was added
about what the total request is
and how it was split in half.
All right, small sites is listed on here, $3.8 million.
This funding is carry over of the $2.5 million
unspent budgeted for small sites from FY2026
and an added $1.3 million
of currently unallocated funding.
So I also wanna make it clear
that the HAC had recommended that we actually put
additional funding for measure U1.
And so this is actually scaled back
from what they had requested
because we wanted to just use funding
that would be set aside for small sites
and not funds that could go into the general fund.
And next on here is sacred grass slash village of love.
LRDP funding for 100K for FY27
with the stipulation that UC Berkeley
must match the 100k allocation.
And then as you can see in red,
these numbers were adjusted
because we had separated FY27, FY28 for car free telegraph.
So it changed the totals.
All right, so the general fund direct transfers,
again, the pitch project that I had mentioned earlier,
that's 180k from FY26 district eight salary savings.
So that's council member Humbert's office salary savings
and also 70K from FY27
from council member Humbert's office budget as well.
And so that's a total of $250,000
specifically for the pitch project.
Now moving on to the general fund expenses.
This would be the one OED full-time position
identified for removal.
And the initial reduction plan, 236,000.
And again, the reason why this was a focus
for so many of the council members
was because of revenue generation.
$40,000 for Solano Stroll.
And so there is an item tonight
that's specifically set aside for Solano Stroll.
And I have included that instead in this budget
and we've made adjustments to this number.
Council Member O'Keefe has also put forward a D13 item,
which has funding set aside for that.
And we've also had conversations with folks
to help support them in finding fundraising for the additional money. Live free. We were able to identify an additional $100,000 so that they could reach the $200,000, which is needed to fill the gap from FY 27.
Unfortunately, there was not funding that we were able to find for FY 28, so I want
to be clear about that.
And the city managers also, we've had conversations about continuing to assist in applying for
grants and supporting them and trying to find this funding.
DBA outreach worker, $38,000, which was not the full 40K, but this is basically all we
were able to add from it for a total of $514,000.
And so where is all of that coming from?
Those are all general fund expenses.
These are general fund revenue transfers that would be coming from my office, $160,000 from
the city attorney's office.
She'd done additional work to find additional funding from her budget.
So that's $52,000 of non-personnel, $100,000 from city attorney's office salary savings,
And then variable time off, which is for general fund savings only, an additional 11 days,
all set around holidays that already exist.
And again, it's oh, actually, I think the V is anyway, but this is optional is my point.
It's not required.
And then $15,000 from the city council catering from the city clerk's budget.
then also a settlement a cannabis settlement for $100,000 and that is $514,000.
So I believe my councilmember college you should have this printed in front of
you and folks and who are out here also there are some printed in the back if
you want to take a look a little bit more in detail but I will take questions
now from both my budget recommendations and the city manager's budget and I'm
gonna I don't I'll leave this open up here just for a little bit in case folks
to accept specific questions.
All right, starting with Council Member Tapplin.
Thank you very much, Mr. City Manager and Madam Mayor.
I did watch the budget and finance presentation.
I just had one question.
The additional 100K for Live Free,
I'm wondering where you found that.
From the City Attorney's Office,
had some salary savings in her budget.
Wonderful, thank you.
Other questions from my Council?
Oops, sorry, folks online.
I'm gonna start with Council Member Kesser-Wani
councilmember black could be after okay I'm on tap you you all can hear me yes
okay well I want to thank I believe it's mr. white and mr. paella who are at the
table I can I can see the back of your heads at this point but I want to thank
you for your presentation I know you've been coming to the budget and finance
committee regularly you've come to the council once already with a very detailed
presentation where we, you know, we did see in that presentation positions that are proposed
for elimination that are vacant. At that time, we were working with a number of 20 people,
you know, real people being laid off. And so I just want to center this on, you know, what the
mayor already said, that this is a really challenging budget. This is the most challenging
budget that I have been involved in and this is my 8th year on the council.
And you know, I did want to just do some budget 101 really briefly because I'm seeing I'm getting emails in my council inbox of people asking what is the quote unquote cause of the structural deficit and I think the mayor tried to explain this.
You know, it's a condition in which our expenditures as our city are consistently greater and growing faster than our revenue sources.
That's what it is, and in the last couple of budgets, what we have done is look at one time fixes.
For example, we borrowed money from our workers' compensation fund.
That was one of our solutions. We contributed less to our Section 115 trust for our pension
obligations, for instance. The problem with that is those one-time fixes are only available one
time. And the costs that are growing faster than revenues, it's our labor costs primarily, right?
It's salaries and benefits. And so we have to figure out how to right-size our organization.
Let me pause there and see if Mr. White would like to add any further context there
in terms of cost drivers and revenue sources. Can you speak into the mic? I couldn't
No, I have nothing to council member. Okay. So, so, so for folks watching at this at this hour at home.
You know, I hope that explains what's going on and and.
And I, I really want to speak directly to our, our city staff and say.
That I, I really feel this on a really personal level and I'm getting emotional as I talk about this.
And, you know, I, I spoke last time about 1 city 1 team.
And I have been meeting.
Weekly sometimes more than weekly with the city manager and the deputy city manager, you know, we met on Saturday.
And I was looking at vacant positions.
That are not proposed to be eliminated. I was looking at that list.
Of people who are slated to be laid off.
And, um, looking at all of our revenue sources.
And, um, I just want to tell you that I have looked at this really, really carefully, and I'm going to continue to do that up until June 23rd to look to make sure that I have looked at every single option that is available.
And the way I have to think about this is I can't.
You know, I really want to avoid the 1 time fixes for ongoing.
Costs so what that means is.
I could, I could try to find a 1 time way to pay for a position.
But next year, we have the same challenge to figure out what is that 1 time.
Fix for that position, so we really do have to.
Look at, you know, all of the work that has gone in.
From every department to look at, you know, which positions.
Are are ones that we're going to have to let go of so that we can make sure that our expenditures are in line with our revenues and it is really tough.
And I just want to tell you.
That it really is weighing on me.
And I know we're going to continue to work through this. So, so let me, let me get to some of my questions. So I did want to.
Ask you, Mr city manager, can you talk about.
What the process is for those 20 people who are on this layoff list?
What options that they are being offered? Can you walk us through that?
the city. Yes, Councilmember so the. As I mentioned that there's 20 people out of the hundred and eighty three positions that got eliminated who are actually filled positions that are slated to be eliminated and thus those people be laid off. We've worked really hard to try and figure out ways for them not to be laid off and that's sort of a three fold strategy. One is that any.
any classification that had a person in it that was slated to be laid off was
frozen for hiring and the whole series was frozen if it had like a one, two, and
a three progression up through the classification and the goal there is
that you know when we did this back on April 10th that there would be hopefully
some attrition some people might retire or get a new job or for whatever reason
leave the organization and therefore there would be an open position for
or someone who is on this layoff list to bump into
and maintain their job.
So that's one category.
And our anticipation is that probably after people bump
into open positions, we'll have 14 people left
on that list, that layoff list.
And then as I mentioned, we've been working hard,
our HR director and her team to figure out other open jobs
that they could bump into.
And what this is required is for me to freeze all hiring and positions so that again, we would have first an understanding clearly of what they can positions exist, and we wouldn't be filling those positions until we get through the budget adoption.
And then second, maybe there would be some additional attrition that would allow for vacancies to open up into which people could could be placed into that flexible placement program is part of our use with our labor groups.
and we work together to come to agreements
that we would start figuring out
who had the minimum qualifications to go into a job,
even if it was a completely different job
and classification from the one that they're currently in.
And that cannot be effectuated until the budget is adopted
and we have certainty about which positions are vacant
and which positions are filled.
So it's important for us to maintain this vacancy list
as it is and then the budget gets adopted
and then we can effectuate the flexible placements
for people who meet the MQs or could meet them very shortly
for any job in the city.
Those people would be offered those jobs.
And after HR has done a significant amount of analysis
to think through who might be eligible
for what jobs and what jobs are open,
anticipate that somewhere between another six and seven people would be
flexibly placed into one of those jobs and again this is voluntary and we don't
know for sure if that will happen or not but we have worked aggressively to open
up those pathways for people to remain employed with the city even if it's not
in the same job and in some cases it would be a job that paid less but it
That would be a job with benefits and so those are the two. Those are the two main strategies.
That we've used when I just pause there and see if if that makes sense. And if you have questions, we also have our director here. If there's more detailed questions, and she could step in as well.
Okay, thank you. Mr city manager. So, I know you were speaking.
City government hiring speak the MQ is minimum qualifications.
So, so I'm going to try to put that into lay person's terms.
You know, because we have vacant positions that are not being eliminated.
And, and, and on the other hand, we have some people who are on a layoff list.
You know, I feel it's really important that we pause hiring people from outside our organization.
And give those 20 or so people an opportunity to figure out if they're qualified.
For vacant positions in our organization, you know, I, I think we should be doing that.
To minimize and mitigate the human impact of.
Right sizing our budget, and that's what.
The city manager just described that opportunity for people, if they're qualified to be able to go into those vacant positions that remain and so I just want to thank you. Mr. city manager.
I want to thank our human resources director and the HR team because, you know, there is a lot of back and forth. I can imagine in trying to figure all this out and I know it can be stressful for people who are thinking about.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, but this is something that.
Um, I, I talked to the city manager about and wanted to make sure that we did as an organization. So, um, so, so, thank you, Mr city manager for just explaining that, uh, the other request that I had made at the budget and finance committee.
Was to, um, look at.
A possible revenue source for 8 positions in the fire department.
five firefighters and three paramedics.
Mr. City Manager, can you update us on the status of that?
Yes, council member, we have been diligently looking
at revenues.
You know, our finance team last updated revenues in February.
And since then, we,
there's a couple of potential revenue increases
that we don't have exact projections yet for some of them,
but there's a utility users tax
that when it was initially created
was mostly generating revenue from people
who had cable TV.
Since a lot of people have moved from cable TV
to streaming services like Netflix, et cetera,
we are eligible to apply the UUT utility users tax
to those streaming services.
anticipate that will generate some additional revenue. Again, we don't have
an exact figure out what that might be yet, but we are working on that.
Additionally, we've been negotiating with the county and looking at ambulance
transfer fees and expect that through several different ambulance transport
fees we would have revenues exceeding what our projections currently are. So
those are the two uh i would say those are the two revenue streams that we've
been most focused on and looking at thank you i'm sorry we have to actually
make a motion to extend the meeting oh okay um
do you want to pick a time madam mayor yeah i
let's just to be safe 11 45 second can you take the role on that please
clerk to extend the meeting to 11 45 councilmember kisser one yes
Taplan, Bartlett, yes. Tragob, aye. O'Keefe, yes. Blackaby, yes. Unapara, yes. Humber, yes. And Maryishi. Yes. Okay, motion carries.
Okay, and I'm done. I'm just all just about done with these questions and then finally, you know, I just wanted to briefly touch on the mayor's amendments or proposal to fund certain priorities.
You know, I want to thank the mayor and her Brown Act circle for those proposals on the housing trust fund allocation.
For small sites, Mr. White, can you.
Brief us on what new affordable housing projects are in need of gap funding at this point additional gap funding.
From the housing trust fund, can you give us a rundown of that.
Sure, I'd be happy to. So, um, in working with our housing and community services team.
They've done an assessment of the housing trust fund portfolio and, you know, there are a variety of projects that we believe over time will need additional funding. Some of which is known today and some of which is not known just because the projects are in the process of.
securing funding but we do know that the project at 1740 San Pablo likely will
need anywhere from two to four million dollars of additional money. There are
some smaller asks associated with a couple of small sites projects, one at
2321 10th Street and another one is the Solano Avenue Cooperative but I think
more importantly and I think what is particularly germane to this City Council
is you know there have been over time some very substantial commitments
associated with North Berkeley Bart and Ashby Bart station as well.
Those projects are in early stages of pre-development and moving their projects
along. And so given the timeframe that it's taken for those projects to come to
fruition,
we certainly anticipate in an environment with rising construction costs.
As you heard from our CIP presentation, rising labor costs that for sure,
those projects are going to need additional funding.
The amounts are to be determined. Um,
but given the constraints are on our housing trust fund,
we naturally are concerned about adequate funding being available for them.
Okay, thank you very much, Mr. White. And so I'm very closely tracking projects in my district.
And I had an opportunity to talk to Colleen Egan, the CEO of Insight Housing.
Insight is one of the affordable housing developers on the team at North Berkeley Bard.
and they're doing a new building of 83 units
of permanent supportive housing
at the North Berkeley Bard Station
for formerly homeless people.
She told me they submitted their Homekey Plus application
today, but they are still gonna need additional gap funding.
And so I want us to be mindful of these asks
when we're thinking about how to allocate
from the Housing Trust Fund.
And I did want to just highlight 1740 San Pablo.
This is the corner of San Pablo in Delaware.
It is a short biking distance to North Berkeley Bart.
So to me, anything on San Pablo Avenue
is a transit oriented development.
And that is 54 units of new affordable housing
from RCD, Resources for Community Development.
And they have an actual ask that's two to 4 million.
This is a blighted property.
Councillor sorry, you have 2 minutes over your time. So, okay, I can't see the clock. So, I'm just about to wrap up. This is a blighted property.
Gas station slash tax service. I don't know what it is. It's fenced off.
You know, I want us to think about investments that can transform blighted properties into new homes for people. Those people aren't able to come.
To the budget and finance committee and advocate for funding. So I am here tonight to advocate on their behalf.
I am advocating for the formerly homeless people
who are gonna move into North Berkeley Bart.
I'm advocating for the low income families
who I would like to see move into 1740 San Pablo
within a couple of years.
This project has been in the pipeline
since I started on the council.
So these are the trade offs we have to decide
about next Tuesday, June 23rd.
Thank you very much.
Thank you council member had given you some of his time. So go ahead. Councilmember black.
Thanks, Madam mayor and thank you so much to the team and look and thanks to the mayor. I want to again associate my comments with with mayor and customer cast. Why he said that about.
How weighty these decisions are how much we know these are affecting real people are residents, but also our working staff and so none of these are easy. These are all hard conversations and, but we're trying.
I appreciate the city manager's effort really kind of grabbing the structural deficit by the horns and saying, we've got to really make a dent in it. I'll observe. I think that, you know, we're going to make a lot of progress this year, but we also know the full closure of the structural deficit is pending potentially some things that might happen this November.
And and I think potentially it's also pending. I do think there are a couple of other things we need to have a look at that we can't before this end of this fiscal year, but things like questions around the public health, environmental health, some of these other functions that the county also provides.
And that other cities in our county are relying on the county to provide relevant rather than providing them in their own municipal form. So, again, I don't think we don't have the time or the effort to properly sort of.
Figure that out now, but I will say, I think there are some pretty big other things to look at.
After we get through this budget cycle to kind of finish the closure of the structural deficit ahead of next year, but I do appreciate the fact that we're making substantial progress here.
I wanted to, in addition to what council member ask about the 8 firefighter positions, which I know we're trying to fund. I'd also want to encourage us to look at the 3 additional the operations captain and the fire marshal and fire inspector in particular.
Some of those roles are both important for what's happening in terms of welfare safety in the hills that are also really important to getting.
Building projects approved and constructed, which is a source of economic development for the city as well.
So, I think, as we're, I know the city manager and team are looking at.
How we can find funding for that, but I'd advocate, not just for the 8, but I'm advocating for the larger group if we can.
You know, again, put our pencil to that, I support that the last question I had is this. We've heard this a few times in the budget committee. And as we've been talking to some of our labor partners, the question versus about freezing versus eliminating positions.
I wonder if the city manager HR team could talk about that because I'd also support the idea of.
There is something that feels like a bigger hurdle if you eliminate a job or a classification entirely, because adding that back down the road feels a lot harder than saying, hey, look, we want to freeze it.
At least for the next year, two years, take it off the budget books and then look at it and keep it. And if it's something that we can fill a later point, we could we could consider filling it.
But practically, what is the difference between freezing and eliminating? And are there some of these jobs that we could freeze versus eliminate? And would that make any difference from the budget process?
Well, you could freeze positions rather than eliminate them with clarity that they're frozen because we don't have funding to pay for them. And in that way, in some ways it's semantic.
I guess I would say that you could always,
whether they're frozen or removed from the budget,
they could always be added
if the council wanted to add positions
and there was a need for whatever the position was doing.
So that is always something that could be brought forward,
it could be put forward in the AO1
as a way to look towards, you know,
right side of the budget,
we've removed these positions from it
and we're gonna grow, you know,
Based on where we think it's most appropriate to grow, um, rather than have a list of positions to fill because they used to be filled and perhaps those are the right ones or perhaps they're not.
Yeah, yeah, last thing on revenue is transfer tax. I know there's a couple of big commercial transactions. 1 in particular I'm thinking about that are in the process of closing as we're forecasting transfer tax revenue.
You know, how closely do we look at those individual things or do we look at kind of a trend line when we're kind of coming up with our revenue target for something like transfer tax because that can be spiky, especially on commercial activity.
That that is spiky and we, you know, I mean, I guess I do want to emphasize the point that the mayor made, because it's a really significant 1 about the taxpayer protection act that has been qualified for the statewide ballot.
As she said, if it passes, it would be a $35 million annual hit to our budget because it would essentially eliminate all transfer tax.
So the Governor is working on a compromise by which that bill would be pulled off of the ballot.
And in return, they would have some sort of an agreement to limit transfer taxes but not totally do away with them.
that, you know, we don't know exactly what that would look like, even if it
does happen. But last the last sort of numbers they were talking about when we
projected the impact of the city, it would be approximately a $10 million
annual hit to us because they would reduce right now our top transfer tax
rate goes up to three and a half percent. What they were talking about is
limiting it to a one and a half percent and applying that only to single family
homes but not applying anything to commercial and multifamily so so all
that to say there's a lot of unknowns and I would say not unlikely that will
have another significant hit on the transfer tax side which makes it you
know might make it easier to forecast transfer tax if they take it away but
but right now Henry and the team does a good job of looking at looking at what's
happened in the past and kind of pacing it on a five-year average or you know
I think it's pretty good.
Thank you.
Thanks for all the work and I look forward to hearing public comment and feedback as
we try and kind of bring this over the finish line in the next week.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Folks, can we just keep it to questions, please, so we can get to public comment, then we'll
come back and do final comments.
Councilmember Lenapara.
Thank you.
I have a couple questions.
First for the mayor, the city attorney's savings, city attorney's office savings, those are
one-time funds not permanent. Okay thank you. Sorry just for the public that's
correct. Okay thank you. I'm curious I think how I'm curious how the referral
the pitch referral is going to slot into the ROV list as in how does it work in
terms of prioritizing planning referrals? Well it's a great question and you know I
know I would I would ask the council to help us prioritize and answer the
question that you just asked because there are other projects that are on the
list and if they don't but if they don't have funding and this does have funding
maybe you what you want to prioritize this but however you all want to do it
it would be very very helpful for us to get clear direction from you. We've
talked about doing like kind of a mid-year RV and I think that that would
make sense given that we've made some adjustments here so I think it would be
that we're going to be able to
Okay, thank you. Um, I know we've asked a lot of questions and you sent an amazing memo.
Thank you so much for that information. Um, I have a, I'm wondering how, can you tell
us what the amount of officers that are budgeted for in FY26 budget?
Are you asking about the most recently adopted budget FY26? There are 174.
that we're going to be able to
do that. So we're going to be
able to do that. So we're going
to be able to do that. Okay.
Thank you. And if they're less.
Hired police officers. I believe
154 is the amount right now.
Does that mean that there's a
surplus in the fy 26 budget on
the on the salary side. Yes, it
would mean that there would be
salary savings from positions
that we're going to be able to
get the funds. And we're going to
get the funds reallocated within.
Those are savings.
Is that.
Is it cheap? The chief is on. I
think she could help with some of
these questions that you're
asking council member.
If it's easier, we can also take
this offline. I I'm here if you
want to ask the question again.
the budget. But we only have 154 hired officers that surplus salary savings. How is it being
reallocated? So that salary savings is we're experiencing that both in our overtime costs,
they increase in our overtime costs. And some of that salary savings has also been absorbed
back into the general fund for other funding. Okay. Is there I think it'd be helpful to
to know where those funds are going to.
I have another question around the funding
that was unspent in the Edgeworth contract
and rolled over in anticipation of an expansion
of the Flock contract and FY26.
And I'm curious if there's a surplus in that, those funds.
Chief, you're muted.
Okay.
Sorry, I can see you.
Sorry, I'm working on it, sorry.
Yes, there is.
There is funds that are in the public works budget right now
that are held for the Edgeworth contract.
Some of those are already allocated
to some other Edgeworth or some other camera projects
that Public Works had underway.
But those funds are frozen as part of the council direction
to do the install on the fixed cameras.
Okay, thank you.
So they're just sitting there right now?
That's correct.
Okay, thank you so much.
Thanks for that information.
those are all my questions. Thank you. Other questions from council members
before we move on to public comment. Okay. I will take,
we will take public comment and this by the way is for um,
item 40, which includes a BNC. Um,
I addressed slown astrol in my comments and so feel free to address this in your
public comments. Come on up.
Is it a one minute clock or a two minute clock? One minute. Okay. Well, um,
thank you for the opportunity to speak. Um, my name is Thomas Gregor.
speaking on behalf of SEIU 1021 CSU PTRLA and our chapter is looking at eight layoffs human beings
being shown adore next month. Our chapter understands that the city needs to end its
reliance on one-time monies and we understand and agree with that. We don't think it needs to,
We don't need to end that addiction cold turkey in fiscal year 27, and we're not the plan proposed by management in
fiscal in mid-April earmarked nine point four million dollars to fund as bridge money to fund
33 positions in the hopes that the sales tax will pass in November and could pick up that bill come fiscal year 28, so
And I have a gentleman who is willing to cede their minute to me if that's possible
Yeah. And out of those 33 positions, 15 of them are vacant. And our chapter feels strongly
that it's more important to fill, more important to fund filled positions than vacancies. Vacancies
don't produce any outcomes for constituents. Vacancies don't have mortgages to pay or
family expenses to cover. So we feel strongly about that. And it would only cost $1.7 million
save our chapters eight jobs for one more year which would not greatly
increase the amount of money already being earmarked for one-time funds to
save jobs and that year could go be spent more thoroughly conducting
planning for an austerity plan. An example of errors we're making is the
elimination of the mobility the street mobility team is going to force calls on
on the more expensive police officers.
And in a June 12th daily Californian article,
the department had said that was an unintended consequence.
There shouldn't be unintended consequences in this plan.
They should all be even the unpleasant consequences
planned out.
Thank you.
Good evening.
Beneath the goal with full spectrum labs
and a Berkeley resident.
Berkeley, San Francisco and many other cities
with a relatively high cost of living
have all been experiencing a heightened pace
of market rate development,
but the creation of affordable housing is lacked.
Our cities are seemingly well-intentioned
in mission and land and prioritizing the needs
of historically underserved residents
in the context of historic income and qualities,
but something is a mess.
Since on-the-ground reality in all these cities suggest
the positive impact is not there.
Berkeley alone has lost over a thousand
unsubsidized unaffordable homes since 2020,
thousand nowhere at risk in the next five years.
and also with our sufficient city resources
to fund permanently affordable housing,
displacement of the city is and will be inevitable.
As I join advocates present here to ask
for city's allocation of 2.5 million
for the small size program in the upcoming budget,
I would sincerely urge you to consider
answering these questions.
What kind of housing are we creating
and who will we get to live in it and to what end?
Thank you.
I'm sorry, your time is.
I'm sorry, your time is.
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
Excuse me now.
Thank you, fair consideration.
Good evening, my name is Jean Clinton. I live on Ward Street between Shattuck and Telegraph
where one of the long time failed in abandoned streets. We've been working diligently over
the last year with City Councilmember Bartlett's office, Public Works staff, all of the relevant
council committees and citizen commissions. I want you to know we've witnessed really
hard work by the Public Works staff to wrestle with multiple goals and objectives while embracing
Council priorities and policies were impressed by the resulting five-year
CIP project plans. We're pleased to see that our street is included in the
measure FF plan for street repairs but still three more years away. Two years
ago we were scored a 12 on the PCI index. We're probably down to single digits now.
The street sweepers came by today and we had a cloud of dust for about five
minutes. I have a suggestion, I invite, can I have one more sentence? Thank you,
I'm sorry, unless someone else gives you a minute. Sorry, you're getting a
minute from James in the back. Thank you. We invite cash flow permitting, we invite
the council and public work staff to consider placing the two worst blocks of
Ward Street into the Carlton Street project just two blocks away which would
allow the work to occur in the first two years of the CIP. Thank you.
Thank you. Do you want to get minutes from folks? Yeah I'm gonna grab these two guys
right here. Do you want another one? You can have three people. Okay, so you will
have four minutes total. Thank you. Amore Lingmo, President of the Berkeley
Firefighters Association, Local 1227. We are slated for 20 positions to be
eliminated. Nine of those would be reinstated with station four if the
sales tax passes, but there's another 11 positions that would be eliminated. Five
firefighters, three paramedics, the fire marshal, sworn fire inspector, and a fire
captain. Those five firefighters and three paramedics, those are like
operational positions. We already work 56 hours a week. With the elimination of
those positions, we're going to work significantly more over that 72 and 96
hours a week on a regular basis with those positions gone. I want to thank our
council members, the city manager for looking for funding for those positions
including the fire marshal sworn inspector and the fire captain. Those are
essential to the development and safety of that downtown corridor. The fire
marshal and the sworn fire inspector enforces all the safety stuff that goes
into all the construction of those buildings as far as like all the fire
prevention fees that we collect. They handle all that stuff as well. As I
looked at the budget over the last 10 years, went back to 2016, the fire
department brings in a significant amount of its own revenue. We have
special-use taxes that come in, we have money from the UC Berkeley settlement
fund that comes in, and when you take a look at all the special-use taxes and
how much it funds our department, we're probably at a third that we are funding
our self-reliant on. And when you factor in our fire prevention inspection fees
they go to the general fund and our ambulance transport revenue that also goes to the general fund that's about 10 million dollars going towards
the general fund and so when you factor all of that in our net reliance on the general fund for the fire department is
actually closer to
Only half we're picking up half the tab and so and but we're also being hit the hardest of all the departments in this city
So I just ask you guys to please
Think about that and how much we bring in and how much we do for this community and how much we show up every day
every night
For all the citizens of Berkeley when you're debating these cuts. Thank you
Thank you. Oh, sorry. One other thing on that. We're actually 15 percent less reliant on general funds today than we were 10 years ago
Thank you
Hi mayor and mayor and members of the City Council, my name is a sin NTI
I am executive director of the Northern California Land Trust. First of all, I want to thank council members, mayor, and staff
for dealing with this really difficult budget season and cycle.
Second, I want to thank the council and the board for supporting the small sites program, particularly
having hopefully enough funding for us to be able to move forward with projects.
We're currently looking at a property actually that's really close to here in district 1 on Curtis
and then the last point I wanted to make was really about trying to
Help support all three P's by addressing preservation. We want to make sure that when we're adding new affordable housing units
We're not losing
Existing affordably affordable naturally occurring units. Thank you so much
Thank you
Good evening council members and mayor Ishii. My name is Angela and I am a resident of Addison Court housing cooperative just down the street
I'm here to urge you to accept the hack
Recommendation to allocate 2.5 million for the small sites program and protect measure you won
Low income folks are fighting to stay in Berkeley and small sites has worked for this
recipients at
Two six two seven California Street are converting their building into a permanently affordable self-managed co-op
Kind landlords who limited rent hikes at similar properties are aging and looking to sell
Housing preservation isn't just about affordable housing. It's also about keeping communities whole it reduces gentrification
By letting our elders and families age in place preserving the heart and soul of neighborhoods like Miss Betty Gray who lives in a small-sites building
Once they are ready to move on it naturally creates ways for other folks who join and stabilize local culture and history
This is how I moved into my co-op, please continue to fund small sites program in the upcoming fiscal year and protect measure you
$1 in affordable housing. Thank you
Good evening, Mayor Council. My name is Matt Gustafson
I'm the organizational director at the Bay Area Community Land Trust in a district to resident
I'm here as you know to speak in support of the small sites program and prioritizing this in the FY 27 28 budgets
I want to thank you mayor Ishii for including a small-sites referral in your proposed budget as well as council members Bartlett
And the para for including those as priorities that you stated the first time we had a budget hearing
I am here tonight with a letter of support that's been signed by almost 50 organizations plus individuals in
Mostly in Berkeley who I think all of you have already received this from me yesterday
also joining in support of this ask to fund small sites in the upcoming year
RCD by the way as well as East Bay for everyone also sent in their own letters in support of the small sites program
So I just want to say that this preservation as speakers before me have mentioned deserves to have a seat in our
Holistic affordable housing strategy currently. It's only funded three point seven percent of HDF and thank you deserves more. Thank you. Thanks
I'm devastated if I understand correctly that if this passes on the ballot in November,
does that mean we could lose measure P, which is about to become measure W, which is really
going to even make it more of a crisis situation, so that if I talk about the shelter, I mean,
this is just one thing that we're eliminating.
It's just one thing on top of another, and that HUD is now moving forward with the NOFA
that was held up last year because they had an issue
noticed properly to eliminate subsidies
and changing those permanent housing subsidies
of which we have 285 in Berkeley into temporary shelters.
And all of this is such a calamity
and I don't know that I have an answer for you.
Thank you for the DBA social worker.
But this is gonna be really a bad year.
Good evening, Mayor and Berkeley City Council.
My name is Alan Kane, I'm the executive director of the Solano Avenue Association.
I'm horrified to hear about all of these events and sad to see all the firemen here that are
potentially going to lose their job.
Given the climate of the situation, it's difficult for me to advocate for a street festival.
I'm here to advocate for a street festival.
I think the Solano Avenue strolls a one-of-a-kind event and I won't take up any more every time
than that.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Is there any public comment online on any of the item for looks like there's 8 hands actually. So, okay, let's start with Claire.
Uh, Greensfielder good evening. Mayor is she and council members.
I appreciate the difficulty that you're facing with all these budget cuts, but I'm here to speak on behalf of the arts organizations and the members of the Berkeley cultural trust.
Those of us that receive grant funding were pretty shocked this morning to receive a notice
that even our grant renewals for this year may be off by 10%.
I just want to factor that out for you.
We've already given $248,000 in budget cuts from staffing losses, and we really appreciate
all the efforts that are being made.
But in my own case, $1,000 to cut from a $10,000 budget means 10 honorariums for 10 artists
at $100 each.
These are small amounts and I just really urge you to look and not go forward with the
10% reduction for grants that have already been allotted and for next year since we've
already lost so many staff people that have more than accounted for the 10% cut that was
requested by the council.
In fact, we've cut 20% by losing staff.
So please consider.
Thank you so much.
Thanks Claire.
Next is Charlie.
Charlie should be able to unmute.
Hi, good evening, everyone.
Thank you for all of the community members
who went ahead of me and spoke on 40A.
I'm speaking to advocate for the small sites funding,
which was recommended directly
from the Housing Advisory Commission.
The line between housed and unhoused
can be a very thin one.
Displacement is real.
I am a part of the community known as the Courtyard on Sacramento, and we are trying to work with the Bay Area Community Land Trust to secure housing for 23 units, many of whom are retirees, long term members of Berkeley of over 50 years.
And these are social workers, school teachers, nonprofit workers, sectioning housing, adults living with disabilities.
Our property is up for sale for a commercial buyer
and people could be losing their homes.
Small sites saves homes,
keeps Berkeley residents in Berkeley.
Thank you.
Thank you, Charlie.
Next is Artel.
I'm unmuting.
Yes, I'm Linda Artel and I live on McGee Street,
which has been mentioned.
So I'm representing people who live there.
And our street is a failed street
that has not been paved in 33 years.
The City Public Works people say
there's zero remaining useful life.
We've been passed over so many times
because it was too expensive to fix.
So we're very grateful to be considered in Measure FF.
The street has ruts and pits and holes and gravel and dirt
and cyclists fall or avoid the place.
Pedestrians have to be very careful,
especially at night, at dusk and in the rain.
Again, many thanks to the staff and council members
that are helping us.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Jeff Lomax.
So it's painful to listen to the human tragedy here,
but as a reminder, four members of this council
have endorsed a parcel tax to finance an experimental bank.
and that experimental bank is intended to fund projects
in Oakland, Richmond, and other cities.
So there's a huge opportunity cost here
because you're basically taking Berkeley funds,
proposing to export them at a time
when we're hearing about this human tragedy.
Rather than endorsing this experimental bank,
you should be opposing this measure at this time
because we simply can't,
we're hearing all this tragedy tonight
And you're endorsing a proposal
that would take funds out of Berkeley
for a purpose we don't even know is gonna succeed.
So please change your position
from endorsement to opposition.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Kelvin Ward.
Yes, good evening, mayor, council members.
My name is Kelvin Ward.
I'm a regional organizer with Live Free California,
and I support the mayor's proposed $200,000 re-algebra
allocation to live free to close the fiscal year of 2027 funding gap.
I want to thank you for investing in this work.
I know this program is effective because I've led and supported community violence intervention
efforts as both an organizer and advocate in many cities.
And I've seen firsthand our intervention, mentorship and trusted community relationships
can change lives before violence occurs.
program more than pays for itself so I respectfully ask you to support the
mayor's reallocation. Thank you. Thank you. Okay next is Teresa Gonzalez. Hello
there. Good evening. I'm Madam Mayor, esteemed City Council members and city
manager. My name is Teresa Gonzalez and I am the state director for Liffrey,
California and the Berkeley Gun Violence Intervention and Prevention Program
with the city. I want to begin by expressing our profound gratitude to
Mayor Ishi for her leadership and commitment in identifying $200,000 to
close the FY27 funding gap. So Mayor Ishi, thank you. This decision reflects
exactly the kind of courageous, values-driven leadership that Berkeley
deserves and has committed to including all of City Council who supported this
initiative and its inception. We are respectfully asking the full council to support this funding
and vote for it next week. I wanted to just remind everyone that the results of this program speak
for themselves in 2025. The second year of the pilot we experienced zero fatal and zero
non-fatal injury shootings. The first such year marking history in the current pandemic.
next is kelly can you hear me yes okay uh just to add on to the comments about the small sites
and all of the benefits for the people living them and having affordable housing
when we preserve buildings we're also taking a sustainable action by not tearing down housing
that can be saved and used for affordable housing so I'd like you also to keep sustainability
in mind when you look at this. It's a climate friendly thing to do. Thank you. Thanks Kelly.
Next is Bryce Miller. I care deeply about keeping our communities intact and I'm urging
you to accept the HAC's recommendation to allocate $2.5 million for the small sites
program in the upcoming budget.
Small sites keeps affordable housing in community hands.
We're in a housing crisis and small sites and programs like it are some of the only
programs that can actually prevent displacement before it happens.
Small sites helps people like my neighbors stay rooted here, but small sites is about
more than just housing.
It's about racial justice, economic justice, and climate justice.
It protects families and our rights to stay.
So please fund small sites and protect measure U1 dollars for affordable housing.
Thank you.
Thank you Bryce.
Okay, next is Avery Arba.
Good evening council members and mayor.
My name is Avery Arba and I am chair of the Berkeley Tenants Union and head of the Berkeley
Lieutenant Organizing Task Force.
I'm here tonight to urge you to accept
the HAC recommendation to allocate $2.5 million
for the small sites program in the upcoming budget.
When Measure U1 was proposed by council
and passed by Berkeley residents at the ballot box,
it was passed with a promise that the funds would be used
to create social and affordable housing.
And by defunding small sites, this council would be breaking that promise, especially in this moment of federal defunding of housing programs. It is more urgent than ever to expand the stock of permanently affordable housing through the small sites program.
I once again urge you to accept the HACS recommendation. And I thank you for your time.
Thank you Avery.
Next is Sophia DeWitt.
Good morning, good morning, good evening, council members and mayor. My name is Reverend Sophia to it chief program officer at East Bay Housing organizations.
And as you know, we support affordable housing and I'm here tonight to say that I'm in support of the hacks recommendation for 2.5Million dollars for small sites.
In the middle of a funding reduction from the federal level. The city has to step up and continue to fund affordable housing and keep people in their homes and small sites is a program that can do this is already doing this.
If you look at examples like the California street tenants and what they're doing with
their property.
Now that you thank you Sophia last speaker is live free California.
Hello everyone.
My name is Santina Gonzalez.
I'm a project manager with live free California.
I just want to say, you know, the National Institute of Centennial Justice Reform, Nick Jr. has documented that a single fatal shooting has Berkeley taxpayers, 3.2Million dollars in 2024 Berkeley had 3 fatal and 5 non fatal shootings, which combined taxpayer costs of more than 13.3Million dollars.
And in 2025, that cost was 0 1,000,000 dollars annually. The Jeep they've delivered a 13 and 1 return on investment and avoided taxpayer costs alone. So the program really does pay for itself behind.
Every 1 of those numbers is a life, a family, a community that doesn't have to deal with unimaginable grief.
And so we just want to say we are grateful for the fiscal year 27 commitment to live free California. And we're just asking this council to take the next step working with the mayor, the city manager and our team to identify a sustainable million dollar baseline for.
Thank you so much for your comment.
That's it. Okay. So, um, it is 1135. We have 10 minutes left in this meeting. I just want to get a sense from a council member colleagues who else is planning to speak. So I have 1, 2.
three four okay and folks online are you planning on speaking or saying
anything else okay so we should extend to tell them a night just in case I think
token can we extend the meeting to 12 a.m. council member Kesser Whani yes
Tapplin yes Bartlett yes Traga hi O'Keeffe yes
Blackaby. Yes. Unapara. Yes. Humbert. Yes. And Maryishi. Yes. Okay, I like how you said
12 a.m. just to like really make sure it was clear. Okay, so Councilmember
Taplin. Go ahead. Thank you and thanks everyone. I know that this ship has
sailed but I do have the preface by saying I don't think it's wise to
the balance of budget on the assumption that the measure will pass. To correct
course we need to make we need a sober and clear view into the streets before
us. I applaud that there's work to accommodate council priorities. The
prospect of layoffs however just doesn't sit right with me. These are people who
show up day in and day out to serve the community. What I often hear from members
of the public is a difficulty reconciling councils priorities and
special projects with the reality of potential impacts and service disruption
resulting from workforce reduction. Public safety and core city services are
the heart of our work as an organization and they should be the last thing we cut.
There is still work to do to retain as many critical positions as possible. I
know we're not voting tonight but I will need to see a budget that also keeps the
fire department positions in place and to the extent possible makes whole the
city employees whose jobs are proposed for layoffs. Lastly, we do need to
to adopt some kind of policy around the use of council office salary savings.
I recognize a discretion is charter officer prerogative,
but respectfully it is general fund. And during the budget crisis,
I worry that by reverting to fiscal fiefdoms in order to support special projects,
we risk inflicting inequity, inequity, sorry,
and inequality.
Thank you council member, uh, vice mayor Traig up.
Thank you, I'd like to start off by also thanking
the mayor with whom I had the deep honor of working
on the proposed budget and just got to witness first hand
the incredible care that you put into every single line item
because you know, as we all do, that it's not behind each
those line items are real people and real programs and real impacts. And of
course I want to express my deep gratitude to city staff and the city
leadership and in particular Paul and David and Malekar for diligently
exploring every possible option for savings, cost recovery, and revenue
generation. I'm so grateful in the way in which the city administration has
approached this very difficult work with transparency and maintain consistent
communication with city staff leadership and the Berkeley community
throughout moving on to I just wanted to so I certainly support the the mayor's
budget I just wanted to uplift that we were able to preserve some of my key
priorities or find a way to fund them through some revenue transfers. I'm
looking forward to the maintaining of a DBA outreach worker that lasts $2,000. We
have a few possible pathways, one of which we might be bringing to the
Council in the future.
On Live Free, I am 100% committed to,
as I support the approach of finding a way to fund it
for this coming fiscal year, and then
looking for any and all opportunities for FY28,
and certainly lend my full support
to helping you find an approach to doing that.
I wanted to just touch on the small sites program.
There are real costs to people being put out on the streets.
I supported Measure U1 in 2016 because it was
one of the most efficient and effective ways
to preserve naturally occurring affordable housing
and ensure that it is maintained in perpetuity
or near perpetuity as affordable housing.
And so I support that part
of the mayor's recommendation as well.
I know it's not everything that the hack recommended,
but it is a huge step forward and shows
the commitment that I made when I was campaigning
for Measure U1 in 2016.
When I looked voters in the eye and said,
if you vote for it,
the council will do what it can to appropriate it
as intended in the ballot measure.
I know that there are ongoing efforts
to preserve the people
that work so hard day in and day out
and I will continue to support those efforts.
I have often said on the dais, I will say it again,
people are our greatest resource
and I appreciate the city administration's
thoughtful approach
and will continue to support any which way
to preserve as many positions as possible.
Lastly, I am troubled by the so-called
Taxpayer Deception Act
and I'm working to bring something forward
to make certain our opposition of it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Councilmember Bartlett.
Thank you Madam Mayor.
And I wanna thank you and the NC staff,
the manager and yourself and the budget committee people.
This is diligent work.
This is very difficult, very hard, you know.
They say a budget, it's a cliche, we all heard it.
The budget is a reflection of our city's values, right?
And all of our values are here and they're all important.
And all of our people are important
because they care our values
and they themselves are valuable to us.
And this is one of those moments
where we're faced with impossible decisions.
And so I wanna thank you for specifically your budget,
Mrs. Mayor, Madam Mayor, Mrs. Mayor, Miss,
you are married, Mrs.
Madam Mayor.
And for my, this week, this last chunk of days,
I've had three calls and three visits
that correspond directly to three things in the budget
that are super important to me
and one that needs to be beefed up,
I got a call from a constituent, a new management company,
and taken over their building, and is proceeding
to basically take steps to move them out
and do all those underhanded tricks we know that can happen.
And they were terrified, so I had to go to another city
and sit down with the owners of this company
and let them know they're in Berkeley
and they're under my protection, and to watch yourself,
right, and to do that.
And so, you know, that was one thing.
And so I think about small sites
and their little building is a perfect candidate for this.
It's naturally occurring affordable housing
and they could be brought into permanence
and saved from displacement,
which I also fought hard for you one for this very purpose
and I ran for office for small sites.
My very first can be a promise.
I called it homegrown housing
was what is now called small sites.
And it's something that's super important to me
to maintain the roots that people have in this community.
And then I got another call, of course,
when someone in my district was shot in the face,
a young woman shot in the face, 19-year-old woman.
And so people were scared.
So I had to go see them, talk to them,
try to calm them down, understand what's happening.
And these programs, these intervention programs,
are valuable.
They're important.
And they save lives.
They save dollars in lives.
And so live free is super important.
And it's something we fought for years
to establish this ceasefire style program.
And we're fortunate to have one now.
And I tell you, as the food becomes
scarcer, as we talked about tonight earlier,
the violence will increase, but to be ahead of it.
But also, the strenuous activity, the fire department.
Because when they have heart attacks,
When they freak out, when they get injured, who's there?
BFD.
We've seen this repeatedly.
And so there was a fire watch this week and a few days ago.
And my neighbor, their kid is in camp in the fire zone.
They called me panicking.
So they called me, James, they had to call up there
and find out what's going on up there at the camp,
if they had an escape route planned,
if they were prepared to defend these children
in the event of a fire.
And we all know there's only one way out up there.
And we all know that we're due for a fire.
And we are definitely due for a big fire.
And so in the instance of the desire
to preserve ourselves, our safety, our community,
and our people, we've got to make sure we don't sacrifice
fire department.
We need them now more than ever.
And so this is a snapshot in the service
we give our people here in the last few days
and reflects a draughtly on these three points here.
The fire department, small sites, live free.
And then of course, our wonderful workers
and other divisions and core services of the city,
we need you as well, it's super important.
And so I support anything we can do
to keep you in there for another year, at least,
to plan for the future, give you a little more time.
If you have to restructure, I understand that.
But give somebody some time to plan for the future
because people have families.
Thank you.
thank you. Councilmember Humbert. Thank you, Madam Mayor, and I'll try to make my comments
brief. I've appreciated all the things that my colleagues have said so far. I want to
thank our budget manager, the city manager, the deputy city manager who's been in this
so deeply. You, Mayor Ishi, the finance department, and all the department heads who put so much
work into what has been a very difficult budget. I know that all of you were called upon to
to make some incredibly difficult decisions
and have had heartbreaking, hard conversations.
I also wanna express my gratitude
for all of our city employees
who've experienced a lot of heartache and stress
as a result of this budget,
and are still working hard to keep our city services working
and moving forward.
I know that it's cold comfort
when you're facing increased workload, vacant positions,
and absent colleagues,
But please know that neither I nor anyone on this dais,
I think, takes your dedication for granted.
We do not.
I know that we're not taking a final vote,
but overall, I support the City Manager's proposed budget
and the Mayor's suggested savings and expenditures.
I wanna thank the Mayor for including me
in her budget, Brown Act Circle,
and giving me the opportunity
to share my candid opinions about the budget proposal.
Ahead of final adoption, I would certainly welcome city staff, constituents,
community organizations, and others to communicate to my office their ideas for
revenue, savings, or other changes to the budget.
There may yet be some change in the couch cushions and some coins in there.
And I'd love to hear people's suggestions.
So thank you again to staff, and I look forward to looking at this more and
more over the coming days ahead of final adoption.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council Member Leno-Para.
Thank you.
I also wanna thank the city manager,
the deputy city manager,
and the budget team led by budget manager, Dapia.
Thank you so much.
I also really wanna thank the mayor
for her very thoughtful proposal.
I'm happy that we are moving toward
a more sustainable, financially solvent budget
moving forward by not overextending
an already stressed general fund.
And I believe that her proposal represents this.
have one request. I think it would be really helpful if the city manager could
identify consultant studies in the queue that have not yet been encumbered and are
no longer on ROV to bring back to council for reconsideration. We sometimes
receive studies a couple years after they were voted on that are no longer
relevant or council might not necessarily prioritize anymore or
there's no longer funding available and it would be great to get a list of those
as part of budget consideration.
This has been an extremely stressful time for our city
and I think I can speak for many of us
when I say that this is the hardest part of this work
and no one bears the stress more than the people
who keep our city running every day.
We see your work and we are extremely grateful.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council Member Keefe.
Thank you.
Ms. Mayor.
Mrs.
Madam Mayor.
It's 1960s for just me, so we can do Ms. Mayor, not Mrs. Mayor.
I've been holding onto that for a few minutes.
I don't have a ton to say about this budget.
I was, I'm grateful to have been a part of the mayor's working group on the budget,
so I would say this, what's being proposed, reflects my wishes,
and I really want to thank her and her staff for all the work they did.
Most of the work, we had a lot of meetings and a lot of talk, a lot of discussions,
but they really did work hard on this.
And I think it actually just really,
this budget really reflects,
I actually told this to the mayor privately, I think,
but I want to say it in public too,
it really reflects strong leadership,
the way you really like looked everywhere,
really worked hard to try to accommodate
as many of our requests as possible
and spread it evenly around the district.
So I just, I think that's really good leadership
and I want to appreciate you for that.
I also want to appreciate you and all of us
and including and especially city staff.
This has already been said a few times,
but it's important and I want to say it too,
that this is such hard work that we,
this is the work, I mean, I don't want to,
I'm not trying to trash other previous councils,
I wasn't there, but this is the work
that's needed to be done.
We need to make our budget sustainable
and that's very, very hard
and I'm really proud that we're doing it.
I'm really proud to be part of this council,
doing this work as painful as it is
And I just want to say, again, thank you so much for,
you know, David White, you've done a huge amount
of this lift and a lot of Mark Hart and Paul too.
Just, you've worked so hard to make this happen
and it's been awful and it's gonna keep being awful,
but it's so important and I'm just so proud of all of us.
I really wanted to say that.
And then lastly, I just wanted to clear up,
we have this Sloane Stroll item.
I just wanted to give people a little context
about where that is.
I think we're gonna take no action on that
is I think the most appropriate way to deal with that
because the mayor has already included
a nice allocation for it.
And in case anybody's worried about it,
the numbers in the Solano-Stroll item were very big.
And I do wanna make other council members
and the public aware of something,
which is that because of the nature of this tight budget
that we're dealing with now,
we can no longer kind of be hand-wavy
around the true staff costs.
And that was the feedback I got from the city manager.
And so this budget, this item includes the actual cost,
including staff over time and a lot of other expenses.
So it is quite expensive.
It's also, I want to say it's the largest street fair
in the East Bay and it attracts 250,000 people,
which is more than twice the population of Berkeley,
if you think about that.
So it's a really, really big deal.
It brings a lot of value to our city,
to our nonprofits get to reach a lot of people,
a lot of economic value,
and it's just a wonderful, important cultural event
celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
So I'm really grateful that we're able to not ignore it.
We're not funding it fully,
but I have a D13 item,
and the Solano Avenue Association is gonna fundraise.
And of course, Albany is also paying some.
We had an Albany council member here.
So I just want to say we're making it work all together,
and I'm glad that it's been included in this budget.
And so I'm happy to take no action on my-
Do you want to make that motion?
sure. Oh yeah that's the only thing we have to decide on, right, because we're not going up to.
Okay I will move to take no action on my 11. Second. Second. As long as there's no item. Can
we can we take the roll on that please? Okay on 40 B to take no action. Councilmember Kesserwani. Yes.
Kaplan. Aye. Bartlett. Yes. Traggum. Aye. O'Keefe. Yes. Lackeyby. Yes.
Utapara. Yes. Humber. Yes. And Maryishi. Yes. Okay motion carries. Thank you. So I just have
have a few brief comments and then we have to finish.
So just want folks to understand that,
yes, we were looking at council priorities,
but council priorities also included focusing more
on unfilled positions and not cutting staff.
So please be aware that that is something
that we also were looking through
as council member Kesser-Wani had stated.
We also were looking over in our budget process
to try to look at unfilled positions
more than filled positions.
And that also I wanted to make sure it was really clear
that not only has my staff been looking at revenue
and other sources of revenue,
because we don't believe that it's just about making cuts.
We need to be finding funding in other places
that also of course the city staff
have been looking at that quite a lot.
And I don't think we got to spend very much time on it,
but just wanted to make sure that was clear.
And then also just to thank of course our city staff again,
so much for all of the work that they've done
to go into this budget.
And thank you so much to the city manager
who has really worked to help make sure
that our city staff understand what's happening
and where the process is.
And just, you are someone who really leads
with so much compassion.
And that is just probably the, in my mind,
the most important, really the most important
skill, talent, ability, characteristic
that you should have as a leader.
And I really wanna thank you so much for your leadership.
Yeah, thank you.
All right, and I will,
I know we have to have non-agenda public comment,
I just realized, hopefully we have enough time for that.
Is there anyone who has off-agenda public comment?
One hand raised?
Yeah, this will be really quick.
So as Councilor Elena Parra and Mayor Ishii,
two unhoused men just told me last week
that they thought a sacred rest was understaffed
or something because it's not open the hours
that it's posted.
Sometimes they find it's very erratic.
So I hope as you bring this item forward,
you can address that.
Thank you.
Thank you, Carol.
I think there's one online as well.
Yes, call her.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, well, I wish you a great time with the city budget.
I'd like to mention that our great business
contributed at least million dollars,
probably more to the city over the last 53 years.
What I'd like to make a point about what is happening
by the monstrosity in the White House, it is awful.
That war against Iran was illegal, it's criminal,
and look what happened.
It killed tens of thousands of Iranians.
Meanwhile, the Gaza Peninsula site is going on.
At least half a million Palestinians were killed
about this criminal, war criminal Nathaniel,
bloodthirsty criminal, not only for war criminal,
actual criminal, he stole money even from his servants.
Have a good night while living in a very bad time
and while going forward in a really bad time
and very scared, good luck to all of you.
Have a good night, love to hear from any of you.
I would love to hear from Mayor Izzy with a constant member,
let us talk, let us talk.
Have a good night.
Thank you so much.
All right, is there a motion to adjourn?
Seven.
All right, can we take the roll on adjournment, please?
You move dance.
Okay.
To adjourn, Council Member Kesterwani.
Yes.
Yes.
Tapplin.
Aye.
Bartlett.
Yes.
Tregab.
Aye.
O'Keefe.
Yes.
Lackey.
Yes.
Unapara.
Yeah.
Humber.
Yes.
Yes, all right. We are adjourned. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. Thank you all for staying late
Recording stopped