City Council - September 29, 2026 - City of Berkeley Meetings

Transcript

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all right hello everyone please take your recording in progress we are gonna

get started all right quiet down please if you would like to continue your

conversations you're welcome to take them outside all right I'm calling to

order the Berkeley City Council meeting today is Tuesday September 29th 2026 it

is 604 p.m. if we could start off with the role please certainly and mayor

before we take the role I just want to point out that councilmember Humbert is

participating in the meeting this evening under the Just Cause provision

of the Brown Act so we'll go through that script quickly and then we'll take

the role. Councilmember Humbert is intending to participate in this

meeting remotely pursuant to the Brown Act under the Just Cause justification. A

quorum of the council is participating in person at a single physical location

that is identified on the agenda open to the public within the boundaries of the

agency and meets accessibility requirements. This satisfies the

requirements of the Brown Act. Councilmember Humbert has notified us of

their need to participate remotely. Councilmember Humbert, if you would

please provide a general description of the circumstances relating to your need

to appear remotely at this meeting. Thank you Madam Clerk. Yeah, I woke up with a

rotten cold to which I don't want to expose anyone else. Thank you council

sorry to hear. If you could also please publicly disclose whether there are any

other individuals 18 years of age or older present in the room at your

remote location and if so the general nature of your relationship with such

individuals. There is no one else present. Thank you. Council Member Humber

you are reminded that you must participate through both audio and

visual technology. Okay and with that we'll proceed to the role. Council

Councilmember keser-wani?

Here.

Tapplin?

Present.

Bartlett?

Here.

Tracob?

Present.

O'Keeffe?

Here.

Blackaby?

Here.

Munepara?

Here.

Humber?

Present.

And Mayor Yixi?

Here.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much.

Oops.

All right, so we are gonna start off

with the ceremonial matters.

And I would like to start with a proclamation for John Caner.

John, would you like to come up?

Yay.

John, thank you so much for all of your years of service.

You have been an incredible partner

and an incredible advocate for the downtown.

It has really been such an honor

to be able to work with you.

Your work is legendary.

And although we're really excited to work

with the person who's replacing you,

Cara's wonderful, we love her.

We also know that you will be missed.

So thank you so much for all of your continued work,

but also just your involvement in the city,

advocating for a number of different issues.

So recognizing and celebrating John Caner,

whereas John Caner has served with distinction

as Chief Executive Officer

of the Downtown Berkeley Association for 17 years,

guiding the transformation and stewardship

of Downtown Berkeley into a dynamic, resilient,

and nationally recognized model

for equitable urban vitality,

And whereas over more than three decades,

John has brought exceptional leadership

across the business nonprofit

and community development sectors,

demonstrating rare expertise in strategic visioning,

economic development, organizational growth,

and cross sector collaboration

that has delivered lasting and measurable impact.

And whereas under his leadership,

the Downtown Berkeley Association has strengthened

the economic and cultural fabric of the city of Berkeley,

supporting local businesses,

advancing innovative place making initiatives,

and fostering a thriving, inclusive and welcoming downtown

for residents, workers, students and visitors alike.

And whereas John has demonstrated

extraordinary civic leadership through decades of service

on numerous boards, commissions and community organizations,

including the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce,

Berkeley Public Schools Fund,

Berkeley Partners for Parks, Aurora Theater Company,

Willard Neighborhood Association

and the City of Berkeley Disaster and Fire Safety Commission,

helping to shape the civic, cultural

and educational landscape of Berkeley.

And whereas John Caner's legacy is defined

by visionary leadership, steadfast public service,

and profound dedication to strengthening communities,

living an indelible mark on the city of Berkeley,

and setting a standard of excellence

for generations to come.

Now, therefore be it resolved that I, Adina Ishi,

Mayor of the city of Berkeley,

hereby proudly recognize and celebrate John Caner

for his exceptional leadership,

transformative contributions and enduring commitment

to the people and vitality of Berkeley

and extend the city's deepest gratitude

for his remarkable service.

Thank you, John.

Sorry, is your mic on?

Yeah, that'll better fit for the mic.

Is this working now?

Okay.

In particular, I'm proud of the work we did in Bart Plaza.

As I said, we didn't get Bart Plaza right.

We didn't get downtown right.

We really didn't get the city right as the portal,

the downtown.

And then also the construction of the new hotel as part of the downtown area plan was a major accomplishment.

I'm also really proud of the community we've built with the merchants, property owners, arts organizations,

non-profits, students, residents, neighbors, and social service providers.

But as we all know, there's still a lot of work to be done, Kara.

We still have 17 stalled housing projects. We have high retail vacancy rates.

We have public space projects yet to be completed. Addison Catenary Lighting Project, Harreldway

Place Making, Civic Center, Vision Plan, Upper Center Street, Oxford Fall, and even the Shattuck

Adeline Greenway. Good news is that with the DBA board and the new leadership with

Kara Hoosier, we have the team to meet these goals, or many of these goals, and working

collaboratively with the mayor, council, city manager, and staff. UC Berkeley,

Berkeley City College, Berkeley High, and all the other important stakeholders. I

might add there's also really strong business leadership now in place in the

city, which makes me feel really good. With Cara's leadership at the DBA, Beth

Rosner at the chamber, and Jeffrey Chirp to visit Berkeley, and Alex Knox in

Telegraph. Really the strongest team, which is a nice legacy to leave behind.

Thank you for the honor and privilege of serving downtown and Berkeley community

has for nearly 17 years. I look forward to years ahead of friendship and civic

engagement as a retired citizen. Thank you very much. We also had an

adjournment in memory that I would like to read as well. Tonight we are

adjourning in memory of Jean Nakamura. Below is a statement from Rebecca Chung

and community recognizing Nakamura's contributions

to BUSD, its students and our community.

I believe the family is not able to join

but watching online, and we will read the statement

since they are not here to do so.

Gene dedicated more than 35 years

to the Berkeley Unified School District,

devoting his career to educating

and mentoring young people.

He started his teaching career at Thousand Oaks,

later moving to Malcolm X and then Willard,

where he taught students from first grade

through eighth grade.

In 1989, he was promoted to assistant principal

at Willard Junior High,

where the principal Chris Lim and his co-lead,

oh, and he co-led the school in his recognition

as a California distinguished school in 1996.

Gene retired from this district in 2006

while serving as vice principal

at Longfellow Middle School.

He was honored as Berkeley Unified School District's

educator of the year in 2006, the year of his retirement

for his outstanding accomplishments to Berkeley schools.

Beyond the classroom, Gene made an extraordinary impact

on California high school athletics

as the varsity girls basketball coach

at Berkeley high school from 1984 to 2007.

Coach Nock built one of the state's premier programs.

Over his 24 year coaching history,

his teams won 15 North Coast section championships,

seven North Coast championships,

and two California State championships,

establishing Berkeley High as one of the premier

girls basketball programs in the state.

In recognition of his remarkable coaching career

and lasting contributions to the sport,

he was named Cal High Sports California State

Coach of the Year for girls basketball in 1991,

and he was inducted into the California

Coach's Hall of Fame in 2010.

He was most recently honored at the Valkyrie's

Japanese Heritage Night in 2025 with a Power Forward Award,

a community leadership award that recognizes everyday

champions who make their communities a better place.

At his public celebration of life on August 8th,

2026 in the Donahue gym at Berkeley High School,

family, friends, former colleagues, students, and players

all shared about how he touched so many lives.

He taught discipline, teamwork, resilience, sportsmanship,

and integrity to generations of students and athletes,

many of whom remained close to him throughout their lives.

They described how he taught success and life lessons

so much more than basketball or math.

He believed in people.

He pushed students and players

because he knew they could do more

and they never wanted to let him down.

Jean took pride in helping family, friends and neighbors

whenever they needed a hand.

Those who knew him will remember a humble man

of quiet strength, unwavering integrity

and endless generosity.

Whether in the classroom or on the basketball court,

he led by example.

He believed in the power of education,

the value of hard work,

and the importance of treating everyone

with dignity and respect.

Jean Nakamura has left his mark

on the city of Berkeley and its people

with his kindness, wisdom,

encouragement, and competitive spirit

that always wanted the best

for Berkeley students and community.

So we will be adjourning tonight

in honor of Coach Nakamura.

Okay.

We have one more item.

Oh, is John still here?

I just realized I have flowers here for him.

Sorry.

Okay, all right.

I will get those to John.

Sorry about that.

I can handle the workforce tonight.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Well, we have one more surprise item

for all of you this evening.

Julie, could you please come up to the front?

either. She's quietly cursing me. Okay, so many of you most of you probably know

Julie Sinai who has served as my chief of policy for the last two years. Julie

has been just an incredible I know I'm getting emotional already I haven't even

read anything yet. Julie has just been a really incredible force not only in our

our office, but for the city of Berkeley.

And this will actually be her last city council meeting.

So I have a very special proclamation

for Julie this evening in recognition of Julie Sinai.

Whereas Julie has been a resident of Berkeley

for over 30 years, where she has been deeply involved

in her community and raised her two children,

Joseph and Tirza.

And whereas Julie has been a staple

in the city of Berkeley schools and foundation work

since 2012, including serving as a school board member

from 2013 to 2014 and again from 2018 to 2022

during the COVID-19 pandemic,

bringing her expertise in public health

and local government to the forefront

as our communities work to address the needs

of students, faculty and staff.

And whereas Julia has dedicated her time

and boundless energy to working behind the scenes

on numerous bond and tax measures

in both the city and BUSD.

Her work was instrumental in getting these measures passed

and in terms of raising millions of dollars in revenue

for much needed projects and services.

And whereas Julie has worked in many roles

throughout the city of Berkeley,

including as a policy advisor and chief of staff

to Mayor Tom Bates, who's also here this evening,

director of local government and community relations

for UC Berkeley and chief strategy officer

at Lifelong Medical, finally retiring in 2024.

And whereas she came out of retirement

to work with Mayor Adina Ishi

and is making her second retirement official

so that she can spend more time with her family

and including her very cute granddaughter, Stella.

And whereas Julie's passion for social justice,

her wealth of institutional knowledge

and her ability to see complex problems

and figure out a way forward are just a few things

that have made her an asset to the city of Berkeley.

And whereas she speaks her mind holding onto a sense of humor

and playful curiosity,

making her a beloved member of Team Ishii

and the community, who will be deeply missed

once she enters the next chapter of her life, retirement.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Adina Ishii,

mayor of the city of Berkeley,

do hereby declare September 29th as Julie Sinai Day

in the city of Berkeley.

Thank you for all your hard work and dedication

serving the city and its residents.

Thank you.

Would you like to say a few words?

This was not expected, so I have nothing prepared.

I can't say how honored and what a pleasure it's been

to serve you, Mayor Ishii, and to come back from re-wirement.

And to be able to work with all of you on the council,

our honorable council members, thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you, Mayor Bates, for all the years we worked together.

Thank you to my husband for all of the patience

he's put in for all of the political activities

and the like that we do.

You know, it's an honor to serve Berkeley

and to be able to serve it both publicly and quietly

behind the scenes is truly a pleasure.

So thank you, this is, what do they say?

This is not goodbye, this is like, see you later.

I will be back as a constituent, District Five.

And just thank you for all of your work and your tireless effort because it is not easy

to be out there and I really appreciate each and every one of you and I appreciate you

Mayor Yushi, thank you.

Okay, thank you, thank you all.

Okay, so we will now move on to City Manager comments.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Only one comment which is that I need to remove item 21 on the consent calendar, which is the contract with one workplace construction for a window replacement in 1947 center that they pulled out.

So we need to regroup. So I need to pull that from the agenda. That's all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. And then I think on line is our auditor.

Madame city auditor, just hi there.

Good evening mayor and council I'm under the weather today. So I'm calling in.

Excuse me tonight, I'd like to share a couple of information items on the agenda with you. These are on the status of audit recommendations.

1st, I'd like to provide an update from HR. This is on the 2019 audit of the city's domestic violence policy response.

We initiated this audit because having a comprehensive policy

can help provide the proper response

to the important issue of domestic violence

to keep employees safe.

In this audit, we found that Berkeley's domestic violence

leave policy for employees did not fully align

with the state requirements and model policy elements

at the time of the audit.

We also found that Berkeley could adopt practices

to provide a more supportive domestic violence response

such as region education.

Since the last audit update in 2025,

I wanted to say that HR has implemented

the last open updated administrative 2.21 titled,

leave policy for absence related to acts of violence.

This policy incorporates model policy elements

and includes guidance for employees

experiencing acts of violence.

During this period, HR launched training materials

On the updated policy on the city's employee training platform, ensuring city staff have read and understood the new policy.

So, I really just want to thank again for implementing these recommendations to support employees and make the workplace safer in response to our audit.

Secondly, my office also followed up,

excuse me, on the 2024 audit of restaurant inspections,

two of the findings were that

the Environmental Health Division did not track spending

on its food inspections program to publish the inspection

for all permitted food facilities in Berkeley.

Since the last update in February of this year,

the division implemented the recommendation to track

and report how food inspection program revenues were used.

So that's good news.

However, the division has not resumed publishing

the food facility inspections data online

after it was removed in 2024 from the city's open data portal.

The division is preparing to launch

the new inspections database,

but has postponed the release from September of this year

to later in the fall.

I'm sorry from summer to fall of this year, according to the division, full implementation of the remaining open recommendations depends on the release of the new inspections database or council approval of support.

To support additional staffing, we will present our next status report to council for this audit next year.

Thank you, thank you Madam city auditor.

Very good. Okay. All right. So we will now take public comment on non-agenda matters.

Just give me a moment here. One, two, three, four, and five. All right. We've drawn five

cards in no particular order for the in-person speakers, and then we will take the speakers

Zoom and each speaker will have one minute and again the speakers in no

particular order you can go ahead and come on up are Oliver Davis, Bobo, Lisa

Teague, Steve Tracy and Russell Bates please come forward if your name is

called. Hi everyone should I start? Please go ahead. Hi good evening so my name is

Oliver Davis and I wanted to speak tonight about some issues that our neighborhood in

Oceanview is having with the clearing of the Oceanview homeless encampment and I just so

that it's a very complicated topic but I want to address two specific concerns that we have

since the encampment has been cleared or partially cleared several new sites have been created and

and some of them very close to our kids preschool.

And so I have been following a little bit the situation

and I understand that several sites

have been approved for specific people

who need some ADA accessibility accommodation,

but my question to you tonight is,

is it appropriate location to have those sites

be right in front of two preschools for 9th and Camellia?

And same thing for Duck's Nest on the Fortin Camilla.

So my kids play right in front every day

right next to that site.

So that's my question.

Thank you.

So we don't usually go back and forth to answer questions,

but we are having a public meeting about this.

And I do just want to make sure it's clear for folks

that we aren't approving any sites for people to move to.

So I know that that's a little bit of a point of confusion.

So I just want to make sure that's clear.

And my staff will come talk to you.

Thank you.

All right, next speaker, come on up.

Good evening, I'm Lisa Teague.

I'm here representing the Behavioral Health Commission.

I am currently the acting chair

of the Berkeley Behavioral Health Commission

and we need your help.

We need bodies in the commission,

particularly a veteran,

a member of the Berkeley Unified School District

and a young person from 18 to 26.

I have some flyers, ooh, I came equipped,

that I will hand to you.

And you should have received a letter

from the Berkeley Mental Health this morning,

I think, or yesterday, but I also have copies

of that letter to provide to you.

So, four seconds left.

I hope you all can help us firm up our commission numbers.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

We will take a look.

Okay, sorry.

Thank you.

Hi, I am a firm believer in the think globally, act locally.

This is acting locally, being here tonight.

I want to think about the genocide that's going on

in Gaza right now, that they want to move to the West Bank.

It's an ongoing situation there.

We're not supposed to give weapons to be used offensively,

but yet every weapon that's being sent or given

to the Zionist entity is being used to oppress,

suppress, and kill people, young people,

snipers shooting young people in the head.

We're getting kind of sick of that,

and it might be a good idea,

since people are feeling a little friendlier now,

is to reconsider the boating against the ceasefire

and vote for the ceasefire.

You never, up from the river to the sea,

make occupied Palestine 48 scientists tree.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm a resident and property owner in Berkeley

here to talk about affordable housing.

A very hot topic you are all very focused on.

At least you were in February

when you approved a project, 2109 Virginia.

That project has 15% affordable housing.

People might wonder, in a three-story zone,

how did an eight-story project get approved?

Well, 55 units with 30% affordable.

Council didn't approve it going to 110 units.

The state of California,

with their density bonus, superseded that.

So let's keep it at the current height zone of three stories,

and we get affordable housing,

and we get an eight-story building.

If it's up-zone to seven,

we get no affordable housing.

Thank you.

I'm listed as bobo in there.

I'm Dr. Steven Alpert.

The council's vote for protected bike lanes

on Hopkins demonstrates yet again,

this council's willingness to misrepresent facts

and violate city policy.

The introduction of that proposal quote,

given new information presented by the fire department,

kept pedestrian and bike safety infrastructure

on Hopkins Street, retains workable emergency access,

was utterly deceitful,

implying that Fire Chief Sprague had reviewed the proposal.

A complete street study was never conducted for Hopkins

as required by the city's bicycle plan.

Page 16, with the heading Complete Streets Quarter Studies,

reads, providing a complete network

does not require dedicated facilities

for all transportation modes on every street.

For bikeway planning, Berkeley considers both arterial

and collect roads and parallel streets

as part of the complete streets corridor.

The council's refused to consider bike lanes

on parallel ADA and rail streets, violated city policy,

resulting in a well-deserved lawsuit.

Thank you.

Thanks for your comment.

Okay, is there, are there any comments online?

It looks like there are a few.

Yes, we do have some hands raised online.

this is for non-agenda public comment.

Our first speaker is Nathan Meisel.

Nathan Meisel, nope, there we go.

Nathan, are you there?

Yes, I'm sorry, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Okay, and this non-agenda, this will be an agenda.

Just want to thank the council for their work

on a brand new PAB director.

Thank you for appointing someone with a good background.

Appreciate the work, have to go.

Thanks.

That's on the agenda, but you gave your comments,

so thank you, thanks for your comment.

Our next speaker is the caller

with the phone number ending in 211.

You are our next speaker.

Hi.

This is Ed.

I did email you about your gas.

It is monothrose chemical.

It is.

It does cause not just empirically,

but permanent damage to the eyes and to the lungs.

Ex-wife, my wife, Al, who is my wife, Ann Dixon.

She was a Berkeley high school teacher.

She had asthma.

Every time in 1969, you know,

there was very gas across the city, she almost died.

I had to haul her to drive her to Al Capet's,

live her life, stop, tear gas, no way.

On the other hand, I do like to bring back our business.

Mary Ishii, give me a call.

I request a meeting with you

in front of everybody, settle our method with you.

We contributed over a million dollars in tax money

and business licensing to the city of Berkeley surgery.

Long time, 62 years in business.

Have a good day.

I will call again about other issues,

Gaza and some other issues.

Good night.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Maria Sol.

Oh, thank you so much.

And that's why I'm calling in.

I, you have such a packed agenda for this second meeting and I just want to express my gratitude,

not necessarily for the outcome, although I am utterly elated, but for the process. Because

somehow or another we managed through all of these many months to speak and listen to one another,

to express our concerns and think about it but also feel it and care about it so i am just

jubilant that the process of this brought us more together even if we disagree and hope that we can

continue working peacefully and harmoniously thank you very much thanks my uh our next speaker is

Dalla Luna. Hello, I wanted to speak about crosswalk and crosswalk safety for pedestrians.

And as a driver, I am the pedestrian, I noticed the uptick in how careful one has to be just to

walk in the city of Berkeley. And then specifically, I wanted to speak about the crosswalk at the Ashby

Bart station across MLK. That one has been under construction for about six months. And it's not

clear what's going on but you've also turned it into like a railway construction where it's

no longer straight it's a zigzag so and then the lights that look like railroad crossings are

covered so it's not an operational but it has been modified but now pedestrians are just walking

across in the bike lane the green painted bike lane no one's using the crosswalk and so i just

wanted to juxtapose that with this unfinished crosswalk and then other crosswalks that need

repainting. I'm sure you all saw there was another incident. I believe it was with the bicycle. No,

it was a pedestrian on telegraph. Thank you. Thanks, Stella. Thanks for your comment.

All right. And our final online speaker is David's phone. Hi. I just wanted to

speak briefly in response to an earlier comment. It is sort of unconscionable to me the way that

we in our political debates the way that we are willing to pull in the fire department and to

politicize the fire department in order to make a point. You know somebody emails the fire chief

and he replies and it's supposed to be some scandal. The fact is that opponents of street

safety will grasp at any straw to try to protect their street parking. And those three to five

people who die on our streets every year, too bad about them, I guess. This idea of,

oh, it wasn't one lane, it was two lanes, 26 feet is 26 feet, and I have to go now. So thank you guys

thank you very much. Thank you

and that was our last raised

hand and 10 speakers. Okay Thank

you all so much. Everyone is in

a hurry to give their comment

today. Um all right. Um we are

now moving on to our consent

calendar, but we have two

urgency items that are coming

from my office. Um in

and there are urgent items I'd like to have us accept them

to be added to the consent calendar.

So moved.

Second.

Okay, can we take the roll on that please?

This is to accept the two urgent items from the mayor.

Council member Kezawani?

Yes.

Tapplin?

Aye.

Bartlett?

Yes.

Tracov?

Aye.

O'Keeffe?

Yes.

Blackaby?

Yes.

Lunapara?

Yes.

Humbert?

Yes and just to be clear this is for resolution to oppose

proposition 43 which limits the voters ability to raise revenues for local

government services and resolution in support of prop 1 the Veterans and

Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2026. All right very good. Okay and so yeah these

are all propositions that will be coming for before the voters this election and

And as a reminder to folks, ballots drop October 5th,

and it's really important to get information

out to the public about both of these.

And these items are supported by Cal Cities,

which is how we brought them here today.

So, thank you.

All right, very good.

I am gonna move us over to comments on consent calendars.

So, Council Member Taplin.

Thank you very much, Madam Mayor, and good evening, everyone.

Thanks for being here.

great to see some new faces and familiar faces as well. I wanted we've got some

great news in the waterfront tonight so I want to draw everyone's attention to

item number two which is the contract amendment for team go to South Cove West

Lot repaving project as well as item number 10 the contract amendment for

anchor CM for on-call Waterfront project and construction management services and

And I want to thank Council Member Tregoop for joining me on item 27.

This is my Cal Sailing Club's final 2026 open house relinquishment of Council Office

budget funds from general funds and grants of such funds.

And I want to thank Mayor Ishi for also joining as a co-sponsor, as well as Council Member

Benepara.

Council Member Tregoop, you are now a co-sponsor, so I can say that down to the record.

And I invite everyone to contribute what you can, and also I invite everyone here to join

us on Sunday at our open house. I'm a member of Cal Sailing and I have had the

pleasure of volunteering to give guests rides on the keel boats and one of my

favorite things to do ever is to sail a keel boat through the gaps in the pier. We

don't take the guests on that but if you join the club you'll get to do

that one day. So I hope to see you all there Sunday. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah

He's a great sailor, so.

All right, we're gonna go Council Member Blackaby

and then Council Member Tragob

and then online to Council Member Humbert.

Great, thank you, Madam Mayor.

First, I just wanna comment on item eight,

which is the appointment of Mary Oppler

as our new Director of Police Accountability.

I just wanna say how excited I think we all are

to be filling this role.

Mary went through a rigorous interview process.

I know we all really enjoyed meeting with her

talking with her in closed session and I'm just really excited for the

leadership she's going to bring to the city and and to the office and I think

at this point with a full complement of board members and a new director the the

PAB will be kind of at full strength and look forward to the partnership with

with her and with with the PAB moving forward. Item 27 thanks council member

Taplin for bringing in I'd like to contribute $100 from our office account

towards that. On item 28, thank you for, to Councilmember Tragob for bringing that item

about the Sinbad voyage restoration. We'd like to contribute $100 towards that.

I wanted to mention item 29, we're offering a resolution from our office honoring September's

childhood cancer awareness month. Thank you to Councilmember Bartlett for co-sponsoring with us.

It's a resolution that honors September as childhood cancer awareness month.

Childhood cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in children and much more can be done to raise awareness about and find

Cures for the deadly disease and so it's a way of bringing recognition and awareness of this important matter

item 30 also one wanted to thank

The mayor comes from Roulette part comes from her Bartlett for joining me

We're introducing a resolution declaring October 18th to 24th as united against hate week in Berkeley

which is an annual tradition, for many years in Berkeley.

I would just encourage folks who can make it.

There's a screening of a great film

called Minnesota Neighbors,

a documentary about Minneapolis's and Saint Paul's response

to the ice raids that's being produced here in California,

participation from folks in Berkeley.

That screening is October 21st,

7 p.m. at the Grand Lake Theater.

And then on item 31, would be happy to contribute $100

from our office account towards the Music in the Onward

Festival.

And then one more request on the consent calendar.

We have item 36 on our agenda on the action calendar,

which is the Surveillance Technology Ordinance

submission for mutual air support.

The police accountability board has reviewed

that as in concurrence with that.

They made one slight adjustment where

they asked that the language in the policy around audits

be incorporated.

And so my suggestion and my ask would

be that we could move this item to consent,

accept the PAB suggestion to clearly state

the surveillance technology ordinance audit

requirements in the policy, and direct the police department

to insert the actual surveillance technology

ordinance language about audits verbatim into the policy just to make that

completely consistent and clear. I think with that will satisfy TAB's ask and so

I'd ask that we make that adjustment and move the item to consent with permission

my colleagues. So you're making that motion? Yes move to move. Can you repeat

the motion first yeah item 36 it's the move that action item to consent the

only tweak which was you'll see it in supplemental one from the police

accountability board they had asked that there be one extra line of language

about the audit requirements which the police department also supports and so

I'd like to move that item to consent and then direct the department to insert

the actual language from the surveillance technology ordinance about

And I think that's what we're

talking about is we're going to

have to write about audits to

insert that verbatim into the

policy so that the ordinance

and the policy are consistent

when we talk about audits.

Okay, so we have a motion on

the floor. We have a second.

Oh, if it's the world Council

can be voted on as part of the

consent calendar. Yeah, thank

you. There you go. Okay. And

actually you're reminding me.

Thank you very much that I'm

also supposed to read something

that the city council emails.

Council Member Tragob and I had

received some emails with some

concerns about item 13, wanting

to make sure that the city

council had received the

surveillance technology report

before we voted on the

surveillance technology return

of the RFP that's coming to

council.

And so this slight change really

just changes the date so that

we'll still get that report in

November.

And then moving forward it will

be in March.

to say the first March surveillance technology report

submitted following the effective date of the ordinance

amending this section shall be submitted

at the first regular council meeting in March 2020.

Oh, this is eight, is that right?

March 2028 and shall cover the period

from October 1st, 2026 through December 31st, 2027.

So that no period is emitted from annual reporting

as a result of the transition

to a calendar year reporting period.

After review of the Surveillance Technology Report,

council may make modifications

to surveillance use policies.

Okay, yes.

Any concerns with that change?

Just to confirm.

So what that'll do is we'll still have the audit, sorry,

we'll still have the Surveillance Technology Report

this October.

November.

This November, sorry.

Yeah.

And then we'll pick up again the following year.

Yeah, yes.

Okay, so we don't move,

because I know there was concern we heard from the public

that there'd be a gap and...

Right, so we have November and then the following March.

Great, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, and then one other thing

I'm supposed to read into the record

is that also for Mary Opler, who is listening online,

literally on her way here to Berkeley,

I am supposed to read specifically

that we are adopting a resolution approving the appointment

of Mary Opler as Director of Police Accountability

and improving an employment agreement effective October 5th,

2026 at a salary of $230,000.

And I do just wanna say on a personal note

that we're really excited to have you, Mary,

if you're listening, it's so important

that we have a Director of Police Accountability.

There was really strong support

from both our community members and also our council

who were involved in the selection process.

And I'm really looking forward to having the public beat her.

We're gonna definitely think of ways

that we can make sure she gets out into the community

and meets with folks.

So thank you very much, Mary.

And we will thank Kathy,

we who may or may not be online.

When she actually is departing her position,

she's still gonna be serving as sort of an advisor

to help with the transition.

So just so folks know about that.

And when she has her final meeting,

We will say more about Kathy.

Thank you.

Okay, go ahead Council Member Traco.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

First, I would like to sincerely thank Kathy Lee

for her service to the Office of Police Accountability

and of course many other departments within the city.

And give a warm welcome to Mary Opler

to lead Berkeley's team of devoted community service leaders

as the next CPA.

I would like to thank my co-sponsors of item 28,

as well as those who also choose to give

to the restoration of Sinbad's voyage.

It warms my heart to see the swift

and passionate community action

that has gone into the morose restoration,

which is nearing its completion, I would add.

to items 27 and 31.

I would like to thank Council Member Taflin

for the co-sponsorship of his Counciling Club item.

I would like to give $100 each from my G-13 account

to both items and would like to also thank Council Member

Humbert for his music in the Enwood item.

And I would like to thank our Police Department

for applying and receiving additional funding through grants.

It takes a lot of time and effort to find,

submit, and be successful in qualifying for grants.

It is a very meaningful contribution to our city.

And speaking of grants, I am very pleased that item 18,

the Alameda County Transportation Commission

Comprehensive Investment Program, 2028,

at one Bay Area grant for application

is coming before us tonight.

It will provide significant funding opportunities

to make the Sacramento crossings safer.

Spanning a significant portion of my district

starting on Channing,

and is critical to the work that my office

has been doing over the last two years,

but this will help complete it.

On item 26, Division 2050 plan,

I am honored to have been able to be part of the plan.

I want to thank the mayor for appointing me

to that committee, and I'm excited to see it move forward.

And I thank the mayor for bringing forward

an asset management plan tonight.

I think it's really critical to the success of this effort.

Lastly, very grateful to the mayor

for adding me onto the resolution in support of Prop 1

and opposing Prop 43.

And thank you to staff for working diligently with us

and to the police chief as well for being

to this very important change in when the next status report will come as part

of Prop 14. I'd like to thank my colleagues for all the other important

items on the consent calendar. Thank you council member. We're gonna go online to

council member Humbert and then we'll go council member O'Keeffe, Kesterwani, Bartlett

that the clerk has a comment to make about a scrivener's error with respect to one of my consent items. Yes. Thank you. Council member Humber and apologies. Just wanted to note for the record that staff enthusiastically, but incorrectly added a few co sponsors to item 31 music in the Elmwood.

a few co-sponsors to item 31, Music in the Elmwood.

That item is from Council Member Humbert

and will be noted such in the record those co-sponsors were

correctly added to the sister city item.

So again, apologies and thank you for allowing me to make this statement for

the record. Thank you, Madam Clerk, and if anybody

would like to to join as a co-sponsor, now that it's just me on the item,

I'd be grateful. I want to start with some response to Auditor Wong's comments tonight.

I want to thank her and her staff for their continued work on the restaurant health inspection

and data availability issues. I have to say I'm concerned because I don't think it's

successful that these critical data remain inaccessible to the public online. I'd like

like to see this issue fixed by the beginning of the next calendar year at

the latest and if I have the privilege of remaining on this body in the new

year I'd welcome the opportunity to work with staff and my colleagues to bring

forward an item as a priority setting a clear deadline for these data to be

restored online in some fashion even if it's just the PDF postings that

Councilmember O'Keefe spoke about previously I mean that's got to be

possible you know to take some photographs of documents and post them

if we can't do it more elegantly.

Item number eight, appointment of Director of Police

Accountability, Mary Oppler.

I want to offer a hearty welcome to her.

She's joining as our new Director of Police Accountability.

It was a privilege to serve on the initial selection

committee where incoming Director Oppler really impressed

us with her breadth of knowledge and experience

and her overall demeanor and commitment and approach to police accountability.

I'm really excited to have Director Oppeler coming aboard and look forward to working together.

Let me move through here quickly. I'd like to be noted on item 27 as donating $250 to

the Cal Sailing Club for my office account. With respect to item number 28, I'd like to

donate that that's the restoration of the of the the Sinbad voyage.

Um, mural, I'm really pleased to hear from Councilmember

Treegov that it's almost, you know, completed. I'd like to offer

a thousand dollars from office account.

Um, thank you Councilmember Blackaby for item number 29

and 30. Those are really important items.

with respect to music and the Elmwood. I want to thank, that's item 31, I want to thank the

Elmwood Business Association and all of the Elmwood merchants for their hard work on this festival.

I hope someday some of our civic arts funding will be set aside for this really wonderful event,

but it has been a privilege to be able to continue to support this this event for my office budget

and to offer some stability for another two years.

Now, with respect to item 32,

which is my consent item reaffirmation

of the sister city relationship

between the city of Berkeley

and the city of Palma Soriano Cuba,

I'd like to thank my co-sponsors,

council member Blackaby,

council member Luna Parra, and our mayor.

And I want to also thank Tom Miller, Jack Kurzweil,

former mayor Tom Bates,

and former mayor and state Senator Lyle Hancock for bringing this item to me and for all their

work on the effort. I know we've had a long evening and we have more to come so I'm going

to read a very abridged two-minute version of this resolution and invite people to read it in full

online to learn more about this truly great humanitarian work. Whereas the city of Berkeley

has a long and proud legacy as an international city maintaining sister city relationships around

the world that advance friendship, cultural and educational exchange, and solidarity,

and whereas the City of Berkeley established a sister city relationship with Palma Soriano

on May 14, 2002, almost 25 years ago, whereas the city-sister relationship is focused on

helping Palma Soriano develop an environmentally sound, locally built clean water system, whereas

on December 2012, then Mayor Tom Bates, and then State Senator Lonnie Hancock,

visited Palma Soriano, and Berkeley residents and organizations have sustained this relationship

over many years. Whereas the City of Berkeley has historically stood with communities seeking

to charge their own destiny and to secure a healthy environment for their people,

now therefore it be resolved that the city reaffirms the sister city relationship between

the city of Berkeley and the city of Palma Soriano Cuba. Thank you. That's my trimmed

version. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Councilmember Humber. Can we go with

Councilmember O'Keefe, please? Thank you, Madam Mayor. A couple of things. First, welcome

Mary Oppler. I'm very, very excited to have you on board in this very important position.

I'm really grateful to have somebody so well-qualified

for the position, so many different experiences,

bringing so many different experiences to the position.

And also, fortunately, we have had

a very well-qualified person,

so thank you to Director Lee for your service,

and we'll have a chance to do that more formally later.

But anyway, just very excited about item eight.

Item 28, the Sinbad's voyage restoration.

I love public art, I love murals,

especially when they're meaningful like that one.

I almost said was, but is, is it's being restored.

I just really wanna thank Council Member Trago

for bringing the item.

I wanna donate $500, which I thought would land

more impressively until Humber donated 1,000,

but that's okay.

Yeah, I wanna donate $500 for that restoration,

and I just wanna say, you know, vandalism is a crime,

but vandalizing art is a special kind of crime,

and it's real horrible that that happened.

So I really thank you so much for doing that.

So really it's a good opportunity for us all

to make that gesture and I hope it's helpful.

I'd also like to donate $100 to item 27 and item 31.

Sound great, one of those things.

And then lastly, yeah, Council Member Humbert

already teed me up for this.

Item 37, which is the restaurant inspection

audit status report.

Yeah, I was pretty dismayed to read that

and to hear about it from Auditor Wong.

Yeah, I had sort of asked.

I still don't understand why the information

cannot be put online, and I need to understand that,

and actually, and also why it's taking so long.

And I would actually like to publicly ask Councilmember

Trigup, who is the Chair of the Health Life,

to get this right, Health Life Enrichment Equity

and Community Committee that I'm on,

and here's the Chair.

I would like to ask to refer that item

to our next meeting, please.

So that's not really an official motion,

But Dawn, okay, thank you.

So that's, I'm looking forward to having a conversation

then to try to understand why, what's happening.

Maybe we just don't understand the situation,

but it seems really frustrating and it's not acceptable.

So that's, sorry to end on a downer.

You know, the mural, yay.

I apologize for interrupting your comments.

Did you just to clarify that's not a formal motion

of the council to refer the item?

No, I'm just publicly calling for it.

I think it's the chair's discretion.

Is that right?

Yeah, so it's just his discretion.

The committee can add an item at their next meeting

if they so choose.

Yes, thank you.

Okay, thank you very much, Council Member O'Keefe.

We're gonna go Council Member Cassaroni,

then Bartlett, then Luna Parra.

Okay, thank you very much, Madam Mayor.

So I would like to be recorded as donating $100

to the Cal Sailing Club's final 2026 open house.

Thank you, Council Member Taplin.

I'd like to be recorded as donating $100

to restoring the Sinbad voyage.

Thank you, Council Member Tragoob.

And for item 31, I'd like to be recorded

as donating $100 to the music in the Elmwood Festival.

Thank you, Council Member Humbert.

And I also just wanna wish a very warm welcome

to Mary Oppler who is joining our city team

as our new director of the Police Accountability Board.

It's great to have a new permanent appointment

to that important position.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Bartlett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

And quite a few hits tonight here.

I want to first welcome again, as my colleagues have,

welcome the new director of police accountability.

It's been quite a search.

Happy to have you aboard.

Yes, the Cal Ceiling Club would like

to donate $200 for this event.

And people should check this out.

The Cal Ceiling Club is one of two public ceiling clubs

in the world and it's really top notch and it's for everybody.

Twenty eight, $200 for Mr. Gub and your wonderful item

around the Sinbad mural, is this the dancer Sinbad

or the comedian or the fictional character?

Either way I support it.

And then, and I also think Councilor Black would be

for your wonderful work on Honoring Childhood Cancer

Awareness Month, you know, very, very touching, very powerful.

and again, reinvigorating the United Against Hate Week

Resolution 2026.

And Councilmember Humbert would like to donate $200

to the Music in Elmwood Festival,

come down, it's a great event.

And then lastly, I'd like to recognize my colleague,

Vice Mayor O'Keefe.

Your tenure, I think, ends this week as Vice Mayor,

and it's been really great.

And thank you for your service.

I was mayor for actually for like one week when she was out of town.

I wasn't literally male or whatever. Yeah, I did. I signed a thing. It was great.

Okay. Um, thank you. Council member Lynn apart.

Clearly we've been already here. Been too long. Go ahead. Um,

okay. Thank you. Um,

I am very excited to welcome our new ODPA director, Mary Opler,

um, as part of the committee that interviewed our candidates for this role.

I really enjoyed learning about Mary, their background, and their vision for police accountability in the city.

On item 16, I just want to mention that I would love to have a further conversation in the future about the most effective way to combat these issues without enforcement, especially to prevent overdoses and severe medical issues.

On item 32, I want to thank Councilmember Humber for bringing this item forward.

the city of Toronto. I'm a

member of the city of Toronto.

I'm a member of the city of

Toronto. I'm a member of the

city of Toronto. I'm a member of

the city of Toronto. I'm a member

of the city of Toronto. I'm a

member of the city of Toronto.

I'm a member of the city of

Toronto. I'm a member of the

city of Toronto. I'm a member of

the city of Toronto. I'm a member

of the city of Toronto. I'm a

member of the city of Toronto.

anything else? Okay. Thank you.

Yes Thank you to the pub for

your feedback. Um, and also I

think Councilmember Humbert you

were saying that you are alone

now on item 31. Is that right?

Yes. Yes, Madam Mayor. I think

that's right. I'm happy to add

my name as a co sponsor as

well. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Appreciate it. Okay very good.

Thank you all for your

patience. I know we had a lot

of comments this evening. We

are now going to open for public

And move item 36 to consent also?

I just wanna make sure.

Okay, so for folks who have comments.

Thank you.

I know we changed a lot of things, so.

Thank you.

I think before we vote,

it might be helpful to read it back.

Yeah, okay, go ahead.

Please come on up.

So I'd like to point out that Celeste Marks

and Steve Albert are gonna donate their minutes to me.

Okay, great.

You all have three minutes.

So Mayor Ishii, first I'd like to thank you

for your work on the Realized Vision 2050 plan.

But now I'd like to address the whole council to let them know about the actions of one

of the council members in relation to the Realized Vision 2050 plan, item 26 on the

agenda tonight.

Council member Terry Taplin was one of the project sponsors for this plan, and Ray Yip

served as a test force lead.

Ray wrote a letter to the council about the plan, and Council member Taplin responded.

raised letter explained.

Our comments are based on having been key participants

on the initial vision 2050 effort and the recent updates

and having been involved in implementing

some of the recommendations in 2021 and 2022.

It ended with a note that many of the task force members

are available to help with the implementation.

We hope that you will factor our comments

into your consideration of the referral

and its implementation.

I was appalled at Council Member Taplin's response.

His response was, in full,

Dear Ray, I will speak entire for myself.

With all due respect, it's not clear to me

what you anticipate my takeaway to be from this letter.

Neither do I agree with your mischaracterization

or previous measures, the successes of which seem lost to you,

nor am I persuaded to support the establishment

of another working group.

even less so would I subject the city manager

or public works director to such kind regards.

Council member Taplin's response

was dismissive and disrespectful.

Ray offered his experience and his time.

The council member answered with contempt.

On November 12th, 2024,

the city of Berkeley issued a proclamation

to express our gratitude and appreciation

to Ray for his expertise.

generosity, and many hours of volunteer contributions

to the city of Berkeley.

If this is how Council Member Topplin treats

an honored member of the Realized Vision 2050 task force

who helped build the very plan the council member sponsored,

I can only imagine how he treats constituents

who disagree with him.

How much longer must Berkeley residents

have to put up with this sort of behavior?

Council Member Topplin should be stripped

of any leadership positions and censured

in the strongest possible terms.

Thank you.

Council Member Taplan, did you?

Yeah.

I would like to respond.

I am actually allowed to disagree

with people who write to us.

You've read part of Ray's letter.

I was responding to part of Ray's letter

and I am allowed to disagree and voice that.

Thank you.

Okay.

Kit.

I also have a minute from Carol Merosific and one from Julie Dickey, so that gives me three.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bull.

Okay.

I'll start by saying that I am a member of the Open Government Commission.

I'm not speaking on behalf of the Open Government Commission, but I am going to address the fact that the item 13 was on consent to begin with.

It does concern a matter that reports that are required to be made to the full council.

So to me it was sort of like, well, why isn't this change to that, excuse me, the reports

are required to be made to the action calendar.

So to me it's like, well, why isn't this item also on the action calendar?

But at any rate, I'm pleased with what I think I understood as the way in which you're changing

it, although two people sitting near me who plan to speak on this did not follow that,

and now it's on consent and I couldn't explain it to them without talking over you to explain

it to them.

still not so happy. I understand you want to keep the meeting short, but I

really think that there's something like this should be on action where, and

that's where changes are to be made are on action. But let me speak to what I

think it is, and then maybe I've got it, maybe I don't. So the surveillance

technology report covers many different kinds of technology. It covers the

license plate readers, but also GPS tracking devices, the fixed surveillance

video cameras, parking enforcement cameras, and many other things. It is very important

for you, the council, to see that entire report and the audits and so forth that come with

it before you go to potentially invest in even more types of surveillance. You need

to be looking at the reports of the surveillance you're already getting. So if I understand

correctly you will now get that report in November as originally scheduled if I

understand correctly the next report won't come until 16 months after that

instead of one year to come in March that's what I think you're doing with

the change but as I said I really I'm this I know you know as I said I know

you like to keep things short but consent is really meant for things that

don't require changes so this is rather confusing to people and as I said I've

other folks would not follow it I don't know if they can hear me well enough to

follow it now but I'm this it is really really important that you that you get

the full report I'm glad to see that that if I that that is what's going to

happen you will get the full report I mean I would have been just as happy if

you said well we'll wait until after we get the report in March to make any

decisions about buying more stuff but but it is really important that you get

the full report with all parts of it thank you thanks kid yeah that your

understanding is correct so we will be getting the report as scheduled in

November yeah I believe I have a few minutes that were seated to me to in the

back are there two other people who can see me there the minutes please you can

get a total of you can get one more person one more is there one more person

who okay thank you there you go you'll have a four so also before I start my

time. I've sent out the full context of my comment to the council. This counts

towards your time but go ahead. So I want to make a comment on item 16. That's the

alcohol policing partnership grant. My name is Tasha I'm a Berkeley native, a

District 7 Commission on the on the disaster and fire safety Commission

District 5 representative on the Community Health Commission and I've

worked as an EMT. Tonight I'm speaking only for myself not for any of these

commissions. I'm not here to oppose item 16 under age drinking and south side is

a real problem. I'm here because the staff report describes a public health

problem and then funds only one department's response to it. Look at what

staff wrote. BPD has responded that's Berkeley Police Department has responded

to more than 1,800 calls on the 2,400 to 2,600 blocks of Durant and the 2,300 to

2,500 blocks of Telegraph. Cal day and Welcome Week bring quote large spikes of

underage alcohol consumption and alcohol-related

medical emergencies, end quote.

The city risks, quote, strain on public safety resources,

and the answer and staff's words is,

a comprehensive data-driven initiative

that combines targeted enforcement,

education, and community collaboration.

I agree with every one of these sentences,

but the report counts only police calls.

It never mentions the Berkeley Fire Department,

the agency that actually responds

to these medical emergencies.

Here's what one of those calls looks like.

A student calls 911 because a friend

won't wake up or can't stand.

Berkeley Fire sends an engine and an ambulance.

Most of these patients are low acuity.

They need to be assessed, monitored,

and kept safe while they sober up.

But in our current system, many are transported

to the ultimate emergency department

where the ambulance waits to hand off the patient.

On a Friday night during welcome week,

that's a fire company gone from one

of the densest neighborhoods in the city

and an ambulance unavailable for the next cardiac arrest

or other high acuity incident.

Berkeley taxpayers fund that response

in part through Measure FF,

and none of it appears in this report.

A data-driven initiative has to include

the department carrying the medical load.

My second concern is a safety issue.

The report describes an enforcement operation during Cal Day,

one of two operations that together produced

84 citations and arrests.

Enforcement has its place,

but when students see heavy enforcement,

the person most likely to hesitate

is a 19-year-old deciding whether to call 911

for a friend who's passed out.

That hesitation is how a low-acuity call

becomes a fatal one.

California already addresses this.

Business and professions code section 25667

protects anyone under 21 from minor and possession charges

when they're the first to call 911

for an alcohol emergency and stay with the person

until help arrives.

UC Berkeley has its own responsible bystander policy,

but most students don't know whether one exists.

This grant includes an education component

that education should tell young people clearly

that calling for help is protected.

Third, the community collaboration this report promises

should include the people already doing this work.

University Health Services runs Party Safe at Cal,

which trains party hosts and sober monitors.

Greeks against sexual assault,

trains bystanders in Greek housing,

while alcohol and assault risk overlap.

In March of this year,

the Disaster and Affairs Safety Commission

initiated an ad hoc committee

to study the renewal of a low acuity medical response unit

that was previously terminated by city administrators

for lack of funding.

In April of this year,

recognizing that Berkeley lacks

sufficient public health resources

that respond to the widening social safety net gap,

The Community Health Commission considered recommendation

for BEHR 2.0, a low-acuity medical

and behavioral response unit built for calls like these.

BEHR is currently paused due to funding.

Other UC campuses are ahead of us.

UC Davis fires Health 34 program handles

non-emergency medical needs on campus with film triage

and follow up instead of an engine and a transport.

So I'm asking council for three things tonight,

and all of them fit alongside competing,

accepting this grant.

First, direct staff in and out of accordance with HIPAA law,

Report Berkeley Fire's EMS response data

for these same blocks and event dates

along BPD's calls for service.

Second, ask that the grant's education component

be coordinated with University Health Services

and parties safe, so it covers

when and how to call for help and protections.

Can I speak to my last third point?

No, I'm really sorry.

You know I'm super strict about time,

but thank you for your comment and Mr. City Manager,

if maybe we can touch base about this later.

Thank you.

Yes.

Okay, I'm Tom Yamaguchi, District 2,

and I wanna share Igor's enthusiasm for 18,

the Alameda County Transportation Commission grant

that we're hopefully going to get,

or at least we're applying for.

I was really happy to hear this when this was brought

before the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

I am cyclist to Rod Gose Intersection or that street,

Sacramento Street very frequently on the street. I live with chat chatting and also especially excited about

improvements to

Further down Russell's there's also a bicycle Boulevard and it's just like four lanes of high-speed traffic and very little production protection for

Cyclists and pedestrians, so I hope we can get this program. Thank you for your support. Thanks

Thank you Tom

Speaking of city other than Jenny Wong. She has a

It was a helpful environmental thing going on Instagram called Bring a Jar.

Check that one out.

As far as sister cities go, I think it's very important that before it's destroyed completely,

perhaps Gaza City might be used as a sister city.

Cuba is being wrecked by the United States administration.

And Gaza City is almost totally destroyed right now,

90% of the buildings are down.

It's a horrible situation there,

so if we want to extend a real sister city thing,

I think Gaza City would be a terrific example.

And the technology for surveillance

and it goes back directly or indirectly

to this item, this entity, so check that out, please.

Thank you.

Well, we have three of us.

We're only gonna take one minute.

We want to thank all of you,

and especially Council Member Humbert

and the co-authors for honoring Berkeley's long

and important tradition of citizen diplomacy.

The, Tom and I and Tom Miller who's here

have all been to visit our sister city in Cuba.

We're thrilled that the Cal graduate student

who developed the water system for that little community

is ready to come back as a professional

and put it to work and make a difference in people's lives.

So, thank you all.

So very briefly, again, we think it's very important

to reestablish this sister city relationship.

It's been on hold and God knows there's been all kinds

of problems that Cuba's been facing,

like this blockade that's going on.

So they've been suffering.

But we feel like Berkeley, extending ourselves again

to Syria, you all know, will be really important.

And also, their project that we're gonna be working on,

which is to help them get clean water

as a really essential thing for the city.

Thank you very much.

I just want to thank the city council

for the support, anticipated support on this resolution.

I'm Tom Miller, head of Green Cities Fund

that have been involved in the clean water project

for a number of years.

So thanks, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I hope you pass it.

So Tom actually has this Clean Cities program,

which is a foundation that he's set up

that is actually is going to be funding our efforts

and to Ayano, so it should be good.

Thank you.

Thank you very much to all three of you

and just to acknowledge to our former mayors as well.

So thank you very much.

Yes.

Okay, on item six, this is our bid solicitation

for 17,500,000 on the parking garage and it's on consent.

And even though this is over five years

and it's 3.5 million per year,

I think that when you talk about our budget deficit,

we deserve more than just a couple of lines

on why we're spending 3.5 million on our garage management.

Next, I'd like to go to item 21,

which was pulled and this is on the window replacement.

I believe that it was this building

that an employee came to a commission in 2018

to ask for bird safe glass

because there were two bird glass collisions

to that building.

It took us five years to get that ordinance passed

through council and I would ask that we have bird safe glass

for that building when the windows are replaced.

Thank you.

Is anyone willing to give me one more minute?

Okay.

So I got one more minute,

and I would ask that everything on surveillance

really deserves discussion and action.

And so I'm disappointed that 13 and 36

have been moved to consent,

and there will be no discussion of these items

in the environment that we live in

and what's happening with our federal government.

and the news media.

I really believe that every single little item,

which you may consider little

since it's sitting on consent,

but to many of us here,

anything on surveillance is a big deal

and it deserves discussion and comment

and a thorough review, thank you.

Thank you.

Hello Berkeley City Council.

Quick comment on item 26.

I'm very confused why we have

This item that requires a strategic asset management plan

be created when we have a $300 million infrastructure bond

in front of the voters in November.

It seems like something's backwards.

Seems like this should have happened

before you put 300 million on the ballot.

The other item I want to mention is three members

of our community worked very diligently

and very carefully on creating that Vision 2050.

And they were incredibly disrespected

by a member of your body.

And it was really appalling the way these three people

were treated, Ray Yep, Margot Shuler and Larry Henry.

And so I want to get it on the record

that it was disgusting the way a member of this body

treated people who have given their time to a commission

and over years dedicated their time to the city of Berkeley.

So I want to make that note, thank you.

Thank you.

Any other public comment in person?

All right, there are a couple hands online.

All right, moving to our online speakers.

Our first speaker is the caller

with the number ending in 211.

Caller, you should be able to unmute.

Hi, yeah, I have a really problem

with the measure I'm 16 and 17.

You know, since she approved the alcohol

and telegraph for downtown Berkeley,

Now, all of the little shops are 80% of the shelf have alcohol.

We have young kids who have people who have students.

Alcohol destroys the brain.

In 18, this kind of us, marijuana,

when we called during my UC golden years,

a lot of students, a lot of my classmates,

we got hooked on marijuana and it dropped out.

This is poison.

Help us to create a great country

so we don't have somebody else like Trump

ruining the country as you know it.

I don't know what you can do,

but hopefully you can at least control alcohol

and pot, as we called it in the good old days.

Thank you, and I will call you later on.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Shreyas Chant.

Apologies about the pronunciation.

No problem.

Thank you so much for the recognition.

My name is Shreyas.

I'm the Commodore for the Cow Sailing Club,

I just wanted to thank all the council members and the mayor for the recognition of Casio and clubs, open house program. We offer 7 of these 6 to 7 of these every year.

Our upcoming 1 on Sunday, we'd love to have you all there and really appreciate the recognition for the low and no cost access to sailing that we're able to provide and for all of your support of our mission. Thank you so much.

Thank you Commodore, next speaker is Zach Goldberg.

Hello, can you guys hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. Awesome. I just moved to Berkeley and this is actually my first City Council meeting. So I'm excited to be here virtually.

I just wanted to give a quick support for item 34 for the adoption of the new zoning on San Pablo Avenue as a young person moving into the city. I think it's.

Sorry, I know you're welcome to the city and we are actually on a comment period for consent calendar and information items only, but to give your public comment on item 34 a bit later when we're when we're looking at that item. Okay. Sounds good.

Thank you. All right. Next up is Cheryl Davila former Council member. Next speaker is Cheryl Davila. Cheryl, you should be able to unmute.

All right, one more time.

Our last speaker is Cheryl Davila.

And Cheryl, you have been allowed to speak

if you'd like to unmute and provide your comments.

All right, it does not appear as though Cheryl

is going to give comments at this time,

but there will be another period at the end of the meeting

for non-agenda public comments for anyone who's interested

and who hasn't already spoken.

Thank you, I see someone here in person, yeah.

I'm speaking about 26. Is that okay? Thank you. I just want to mention about

the plan for cycle tracks on both sides of San Pablo and I find the barrier

cycle tracks are not safe and I have heard from my council member that no one

has heard about any dangers from a barrier cycle tracks.

And I asked the walk bike Berkeley advocate if he has.

And he told me they're very safe.

But when I asked him if they would prevent,

have it prevented the fatality on Hopkins,

he said he couldn't answer that question.

And he did say that they were not safe

if there were lots of driveways.

but there would be some design mitigations about that.

And so I think that we need to bring it

to Council's attention that they are not safe.

And if they are like the ones on Milvia

where I had my accident.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Okay, all right.

Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?

Actually, Rose, do you mind reading through?

We have made so many changes this evening.

I just wanna make sure it's clear.

Certainly.

All right.

So we've added two urgency items from the mayor.

One regarding resolution in support of prop one

and the other resolution to oppose proposition 43.

Both having to do with voter rights.

And item 13, the ordinance regarding

amending BMC chapter 2.99 and surveillance technology.

There's been a revision to the ordinance

would like to add report language.

Item 21, contract regarding window replacement project.

That item was removed by the city manager.

And then there have been some various relinquishments

of funds and co-sponsors on item 27,

Cal Sailing, item 28, mural restoration.

Item 31, music in the Elmwood.

And last but not least item 36,

which was on the action calendar

regarding surveillance technology ordinance submission

that was moved to consent and language was added

to the ordinance to add language from the STO

regarding audit requirements to the policy.

And that was it.

Thank you, Rose, appreciate you doing that.

Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?

So moved.

Second.

All right, can we take the round now, please?

All right, to adopt the consent calendar as amended,

Council Member Kezerwani?

Yes.

Tapplin?

Aye.

Bartlett?

Yes.

Tracob?

Aye.

O'Keeffe?

Yes.

Blackaby?

Yes.

Munepara?

Yes.

Humbert?

Yes.

And Mayor Ishi?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you all so much. We're gonna take a quick well 732. I'm gonna give us 15

minutes actually cuz yeah we're gonna have a 15 minute break. Thank you.

Recording stopped.

much everybody for your patience if you could please come sit down please take

your seats can take your conversations outside all right we are moving on to

the action calendar we have a number of public hearings this evening starting

with item number 33 which is the California municipal finance authority

bond financing for Ashby lofts project from the city manager we actually don't

have a presentation madam mayor but if there are questions our HHS director is

is here as is our Manager of Housing and Community Services,

Marco Ernst.

Thank you so much.

Are there any questions?

No questions.

Okay.

Is there a motion to close the public hearing?

That's officially announced it's open

and then we'll see if we have any hands.

It is officially open.

Thank you, Mayor.

Public hearing.

But as there are no questions,

Is there a motion to close the public hearing?

Oh, yeah, that's, sorry.

Yes, this is the public comment period.

The public hearing is now open.

If there are no speakers on this item,

then we can go ahead and move forward

with closing the public hearing.

If you'd like to, we are on item 33,

the California Municipal Finance Authority Bond Financing

for Ashby Lott's project.

So if there is someone to speak to this item,

please come forward.

Hi, I'm Leah Simon-Wisberg from District 2.

I'm also on the Housing Advisory Commission.

I think this is a great item.

Please vote yes.

Thank you very much.

Apologies, I'm getting ahead of myself.

All right, so now, are there any other public comments

on this item?

number 33 anyone online there are no hands raised online from members of the

public okay oh you have a public comment yeah I do item number 33 correct yes

yes yeah Ashby what's it called laughs yes I don't know anything about it

because I didn't look at the agenda but you know I'm here because Maji is

running so let's get a new representative in district four thank

you and free Palestine all right and I actually have a statement I need to read

as well but should I read it now yeah I'll read it out okay we are here this

evening to conduct a public hearing pursuant to the federal tax equity and

fiscal responsibility act or Tefra Tefra requires that a public hearing be held

the proposed financing.

Satellite affordable housing

associates has asked that the

California municipal finance

authority, the CMFA, be the

issuer of tax-exempt financing

in an amount not to exceed 25

million dollars of tax-exempt

revenue bonds to finance and

refinance the acquisition,

rehabilitation, improvement,

and equipping of a 54-unit

qualified residential rental

finance agency.

The city of California,

California, has asked that the

California municipal finance

authority, the CMFA, be the

residential rental project, the project,

to be owned and operated by the borrower

and located at 2909-29199th Street

within the city of Berkeley, the city.

The California Municipal Finance Authority, CMFA,

is a joint powers authority

formed to assist local governments,

non-profit organizations, and businesses

with the issuance of both taxable and tax-exempt debt.

The debt to be issued by the CMFA

will be the sole responsibility of the borrower

and the city will have no financial

or legal obligations or responsibilities

regarding the repayment of the debt.

All financing documents will carry disclaimers

that the loan is not an obligation of the city.

The city will also bear no costs

in the issuance of the proposed debt.

This is a private loan with the borrower and their bank.

It is recommended that the city council adopt a resolution

approving the issuance of bonds by the CMFA for the borrower.

Such adoption is solely for the purposes

the public hearing. So the

public hearing is the public

hearing is the public hearing.

The public hearing is the

public hearing of satisfying the requirements of Tefra the code.

And the California government code section 6, 5, 0, 0.

Now is there a motion to close the public hearing.

So second.

Can we take them on that place to close the public hearing. Council member

has there any. Yes, tap one. I Bartlett. Yes.

Yes. Mayor Ishi. Yes. Okay. Any comments on this item? Okay. No comments? Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Can we take the roll now please? Okay. To approve the item. Council member Kessawani? Yes. Tapplin? Aye. Bartlett? Yes. Trigab? Aye. O'Keefe? Yes. Blackaby? Yes.

yes yes yes yes yes and Mayor Ishi yes okay thank you very much we are gonna

open the public hearing for item 34 which is the adoption of the San Pablo

Avenue specific plan and we will start us off with a presentation and just to

preview folks as they are settling in we will have a presentation then we will

take questions from council then we will do public comment then we will take

council comments and any deliberations. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Yixi and

council members. I'm Jordan Klein. I'm director of planning and development. I'm

joined here at the staff table by Justin Horner, principal planner, Phil

Erickson with community design and architecture, and Ann Ursh, the land use

planning manager. We're so pleased this evening to be advancing for your

consideration this San Pablo Avenue specific plan, which is the culmination

nation of a three-year community planning process.

San Pablo Avenue is one of Berkeley's most important streets.

It runs about two and a third miles through the length of the city,

connecting neighborhoods, connecting the city to neighboring cities,

and to the East Bay region.

It's home to longtime local businesses,

cultural institutions, and the people who live and work along it.

It's also been shifting over the past decade,

away from an auto oriented pattern of commercial and light industrial uses, and toward a more vibrant mixed use district.

And this plan is about shaping that change, as we go forward, so that it works for the people who are here now, and for the people who will come.

The plan reflects visioning, technical analysis, and a great deal of community engagement, including open houses, community workshops, a walking tour of the corridor, and two community surveys.

the planning commission received four status updates and the city council gave us direction

at a work session in November of 2025 and the planning commission made its recommendation to

you in June of this year. The plan sets out a vision based on three ideas. First, more housing,

including affordable housing along a corridor well served by transit. Second, support for small

businesses through more flexible zoning and programs and design standards that help fill

the city council to adopt the

specific plan and its design

standards along with the related

general plan and zoning

amendments and with that I will

turn it over to Justin Horner for the presentation.

Thank you Jordan. Yes, thank you for the intro. My share of the city council.

over to Justin Horner for the presentation.

Thank you, Jordan.

Yes, thank you for the intro.

My sharing.

Successfully sharing.

Justin is pulling up some slides for us.

Sorry.

Thank you for your patience.

Mary, she members of the city council.

by Justin Horner, planning department staff,

and tonight I'm presenting

the San Pablo Avenue specific plan

and it's accompanying zoning general plan

and other plan amendments.

Tonight, I will briefly review the specific plan's goal

and our outreach and engagement process.

I will then review the specific plan's chapters,

including the new San Pablo commercial zoning district.

I described the other plan documents

that are amended as part of adoption of the specific plan.

And we'll briefly discuss the CEQA analysis

before presenting the staff recommendation.

The agenda packet for tonight's meeting

includes a lot of items.

You are being asked to adopt

the San Pablo specific plan itself

and the separate San Pablo specific plan

design standards document.

To implement the specific plan,

you are asked to consider amendments

to the zoning ordinance and the zoning map,

as well as changes to the general plan

and the general plan map

to ensure conformity with the rezoning.

You're also being asked to consider repealing

the 33-year-old West Berkeley Plan

and the 22-year-old San Pablo Avenue

Public Improvements Plan.

Finally, there are small amendments

to the University Avenue Strategic Plan.

Now on to the San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan.

But first, a quick explanation

of what a general specific plan is.

A specific plan is a document

that implements the general plan

and is focused on a specific geographical area.

They're sometimes also called area plans.

Specific plans typically cover land uses,

development standards, and infrastructure,

and can also include programs,

such as economic development efforts.

Subsequent zoning, infrastructure, and other policies

must be consistent with an adopted specific plan.

We currently have four specific plans.

The West Berkeley plan adopted in 1993.

The Southside plan adopted in 2011 and amended in 2023.

The Downtown area plan adopted in 2012.

and the Adeline corridor specific plan adopted in 2020.

Now on to the San Pablo plan.

The plan envisions a San Pablo Avenue

that is a vibrant mixed use district

that connects neighborhoods,

supports a variety of housing and local businesses

and reflects Berkeley's cultural heritage.

It aims to increase housing, increase business activity,

enhance the public realm

and improve the area's transportation system.

As Jordan alluded to, here is a summary

of the plan's development process to date

and a snapshot of where we are now.

The process started in 2023 and consisted of three phases,

initial outreach, policy development,

and plan review and adoption.

Phase one started in 2023

and included key community leader interviews,

targeted intercept surveys, small group meetings,

and a community open house where staff received feedback

and comments on the general condition of the corridor.

Policy development was phase two of the plan.

In phase two, staff drafted policies in response

to community feedback from phase one.

We held pop-ups at various events,

a walking tour of the corridor,

launched an online community survey

that received hundreds of responses

and conducted a community workshop

to discuss height, massing, and public open space.

Phase three is the drafting of the plan itself.

We started with a community meeting

for the public review draft of the specific plan

in October of last year and held workshops

with both the Planning Commission

and the City Council in November.

We bought the public review draft to the Planning Commission

for their feedback in March.

And with that feedback, revised the specific plan

and held the Planning Commission public hearing in June.

So the map on the slide shows the specific plan area,

which is indicated in Maroon

and runs along San Pablo Avenue from Emeryville

on the left to Albany on the right.

The specific plan area is largely within

the West Berkeley Commercial Zoning District,

but includes some parcels along University

that are included in the University Avenue

Commercial Zoning District.

The specific plan would rezone the parcels indicated

in the slide to a new district, San Pablo Commercial,

or CSP, to implement the specific plan's land use policies.

The plan is organized into six chapters

and includes policies and programs regarding land use,

economic development, and streets transportation

and the public realm.

Chapter six, implementation, provides a detailed matrix

describing the timeline for each implementable task

and the responsible department or agency for each task.

The design standards document is a standalone document

that connects policies in the plan

to actual design standards used in development

and design review.

I will now briefly summarize each chapter

starting with land use.

The land use chapter includes policies

that establish the new CSP zoning district.

The new district includes revised development standards,

the identification of five specific designated nodes

which concentrate neighborhoods serving land uses

at specific intersections along the corridor.

The chapter also includes revisions to the allowed use table

to make uses identified through community feedback

easier to establish, while also facilitating temporary uses

to address vacant and underutilized properties.

The zoning district also identifies four ground floor

frontage types intended to create an active and welcoming street frontage.

The chapter also includes a new provision allowing you for affordable and family sized

housing on certain parcels in the mixed use light industrial zoning district.

This slide includes a summary of maximum height standards comparing the existing standards

on the left, the public review draft standards in the middle, and the proposed CSP standard

on the right.

In brief, projects that include housing

have a maximum height of seven stories and 75 feet,

while projects without housing retain

the current maximum height of three stories and 40 feet.

Proposed residential or mixed use projects

could exceed this maximum height

with the use of the state density bonus.

And as described in staff analysis

state density bonus projects included in the agenda packet,

we anticipate that most projects

would top out at eight stories.

The public review draft had included

different height standards within the designated nodes,

but the Planning Commission recommended a uniform standard

across the CSP zoning district.

This slide identifies seven parcels in the mixed use,

light industrial or mule district that are included

in the new affordable and family housing opportunity areas.

Typically, residential uses are prohibited in the mule,

but these provisions would permit residential projects

that are either 100% affordable,

or that include two or more bedrooms

in more than half of the total units

on these specific parcels.

Next, the economic development chapter includes

policies and programs to facilitate

outdoor business activation,

create flexible commercial spaces,

encourage public-private partnerships,

community benefit and business improvement districts,

and includes policies encouraging infrastructure investments

in designated nodes where communities

serving commercial uses are concentrated.

The streets transportation and public realm chapter

contains policies and programs focused on multimodal transportation access and

safety as well as the ongoing study of transportation needs and prioritization

for San Pablo projects in future planning efforts. San Pablo Avenue is a

state highway under Caltrans jurisdiction so the city's ability to

make changes to San Pablo is limited. However, the Alameda County

Transportation Commission recently completed a multimodal planning study for

San Pablo Avenue's entire length through Alameda County. The study led to three

improvement projects, the construction of certain safety improvements along San Pablo

Avenue, bus stop improvements, and bicycle facility improvements on roads that run parallel

to San Pablo Avenue. This specific planning process then is coming fairly closely behind

the heels of a comprehensive transportation planning process along the avenue. A consistent

theme throughout the community process was the need to improve and enhance the public

realm. To that end, the chapter includes design standards for sidewalks, street lighting,

landscaping, trees, street furniture and parklets, as well as the identification of locations where

smaller side streets that meet San Pablo could be closed and transformed into public plazas.

The design standards document is a standalone document that includes objective design

standards for development sites, like how pedestrians and vehicles access a site,

for buildings with a strong focus on active ground floors and for the design of public

and private elements at the pedestrian level. In general, the design standards are not particularly

prescriptive as the priority was to preserve design flexibility and to avoid imposing physical

requirements that could reduce the amount of residential space included in a proposed project.

The design standards instead focus on the ground floor buildings and creating quality public spaces

to enhance the pedestrian experience and strengthen the character of San Pablo Avenue.

A project that complies with the design standards would be exempt from the city's design review

process. There is also a process to get an exemption from a design standard it is physically

difficult to meet through an action of the design review committee. Tonight's action also includes

changes to a number of existing plans. First, adoption of the specific plan requires a number

of plan amendments. The zoning changes require conforming amendments to the

general plan and the general plan map, and as the specific plan includes

changes to the area around San Pablo and University, which require conforming

amendments to the University Avenue strategic plan. The recommended action

also includes the repeal of two existing plans. The first is the proposed

repeal of the West Berkeley plan. As shared with the council at its

November workshop nearly all of the plans implementation steps are complete

and the plans land use policy our policies are currently codified in the

zoning ordinance. These include provisions related to protected

industrial uses, protected non-industrial uses, replacement space requirements, and

the siting of specific sensitive uses within mixed use manufacturing areas. We

are also proposing repealing the San Pablo Avenue public improvements plan

as most of that plans improvements have been completed and the remaining

improvements have been ported over and included in the San Pablo specific plan

as infrastructure priorities moving forward. Finally a word about CEQA. As

noted in your staff report SB 131 was passed while the specific plan was being

developed and it provides an exemption for rezonings that are undertaken to

implement a schedule of actions in an adopted housing element. Tonight's action

is a rezoning which is included as program 27 of the housing element. Staff

has also prepared an addendum to the housing element EIR which is included in the packet.

The addendum found no new or more severe impacts than were disclosed in the housing element EIR.

The draft addendum analyzed a development projection which assumed state density bonus.

Thank you very much for your time and attention. Staff's recommendation is that you receive public

comment and move to accept the proposed specific plan design standards document and other amendments

as detailed in the slide.

In addition, staff recommends that the City Council

consider reinstating staff's originally recommended

minimum density standard of 145 dwelling units per acre

in the CSP district, which was removed

by the Planning Commission.

Thank you again and we are available for any questions.

Thank you very much.

Okay, we are gonna start with questions

from Council Member Taplin

and then Council Member Casarwani.

Thank you very much, Madam Mayor,

and thank you Director Klein and to your team.

Thanks to everyone.

I have four questions.

Can you describe the project's merchant stakeholder

engagement along San Pablo University avenues

and give some examples of the plans

incorporation of feedback?

Do you want to take some of those?

Yeah.

Who attended the listening sessions?

Could you reach out to what they say?

How old was it incorporated?

Well, there was a real variety of interaction

that we had in the early engagement.

We met with representatives from the neighborhoods

and neighborhood organizations.

We met with commercial users along the streets

and several nonprofits involved with serving the unhoused

and other community facilities that were along San Pablo.

And one of the things that was interesting to us

is one of the consistent threads that we heard

was make the street a more comfortable place.

And almost people might have said things

that disagreed about a lot of other issues,

but almost everybody said they want better lighting.

They want it to be a friendlier street at night.

So that really focused on the emphasis

of making the streetscape improvements.

There was also feedback from some people in the neighborhoods

supportive of the housing development that's been happening.

But having concern that the people who are living

in those new developments aren't really becoming integrated

with the neighborhood.

They don't come out, we don't see them on the street,

we don't meet them.

And that's where a lot of the focus

on finding opportunities for public space came out of it.

And one of the things that's constraint

in the specific plan area is all

of the publicly owned space is streets.

So the opportunities for parks and things like that

were constraining and that's where the idea

of the side street mini plazas on streets

that are shorter or don't have that much traffic on them

came about.

We also met with people in the development community

and architects who work on buildings on the street.

And besides some comments about zoning related issues,

they also agreed about the need for public space

and improvement of the public realm of the street.

So that issue of public realm

really did come across strongly.

Thank you very much.

My second question, Director Klein,

how would you characterize the current West Berkeley Plan's

impact on economic development since adoption?

Yes, Council Member.

So the current West Berkeley Plan was adopted in 1993

and included a variety of provisions

have been implemented through our zoning ordinance including strong protections

for light industrial businesses and also warehouses and arts and crafts uses

including a requirement that any space that's being you can't convert a space

that's being currently used for one of those uses

without replacing it with new light industrial space.

And those have been very strong and effective provisions

to protect local manufacturing.

There have been a number of amendments over the years

to those provisions and other provisions

of the West Berkeley plan.

I would say most recently,

this council made a number of efforts to expand and promote research and development uses in West

Berkeley. And I think that's what we've seen. A lot of the economic growth that we've seen in West

Berkeley, under the West Berkeley plan, has been life science and other research and development.

And so I think, yeah, there've been a number of zoning amendments that this council's desire to

advance that have required associated changes to the West Berkeley plan and so

I would say that's evidence that the plan is is less relevant to the the

current economy than it was over 30 years ago when it was adopted.

My third question is for the director and also the CEO manager. What actions by

City Admin or the Council in partnership with the community are required to move

forward with the construction of the many plazas and the establishment of a West

Berkeley business improvement district.

Do you want me to go first?

So adopting a plan is an important step towards setting out a vision and I would

say this is a bold vision you know side street plazas would be a real it would

be a change to our transportation network and it would create fantastic

new gathering spaces in our community.

And so adopting this plan is a critical first step,

but it is a first step.

And it's, you know, these kind of major capital

improvement projects take time to line up.

It takes time to line up the funding for the design

and then, and usually there's associated secret work

with the design and then, and we do,

we end up doing additional community process

around that design work.

And then we need to line up funding for the construction.

I'll give an example, in 2020 the city council adopted

the Adeline corridor specific plan.

We are now at an awesome stage where we have funding

for 100% design for an overhaul of Adeline Street

and the Adeline Transportation Improvement Project.

The city just received an $850,000 grant

from the federal government

that will fund design of new open spaces.

And those are major capital projects

that are gonna lead to,

I think over $100 million of investment

in Adeline Street over the next decade.

And it's gonna implement the Adeline corridor plan.

And we're really excited to advance that work.

But as you can see, it does take time.

And so there are many steps.

ahead of us still to actually achieve the vision

that's laid out related to public spaces,

especially in capital improvements.

For the business improvement district,

a little less expensive,

but still labor intensive and important

and requiring a whole, I would say another round

of property owner engagement and community development,

and that work would still be to come.

Thank you, and my final question,

thank you all for your patience,

how would the different high requirements

impact the production and financing of affordable housing?

I'm sorry, could you state that again one more time?

So among the various recommendations for base heights,

how would each of those configurations

impact the production and the financing

of affordable housing?

I'll take a crack at this and Tim can chime in.

Many observers and one of the pieces of discussion

at the Planning Commission about the decision

to set a base height at seven stories

versus, for example, five stories.

There was much discussion among the Planning Commission

members about how that could impact

affordable housing production.

Because if the base height is set higher,

a project needs to include less onsite affordable housing

in order to qualify for the state density bonus program.

As Justin mentioned during the presentation,

we believe that most projects will likely top out

at eight stories on San Pablo Avenue.

That's, when you get higher than eight stories,

its construction costs increase dramatically.

And so there was a lot of discussion about,

well, if we zone at five,

then you can include more onsite affordable housing

and you can get to eight that way.

And that's not an unreasonable policy position to take.

That said, we also have

a local inclusionary housing requirement.

And so even projects that have to,

even projects that are qualifying

for the state density bonus also have to comply

with our local inclusionary requirement.

And so a project that's taking advantage of a base height

of seven stories may include less onsite affordable housing.

But we'll still have to comply

with our local inclusionary requirement.

And what we see is that projects are more likely

to see out if they don't have to use,

put the units onsite in order to take advantage

of the density bonus program,

they'll often choose to pay the in lieu fee instead.

And some commenters we've heard say we don't want projects to include, to fee out.

We want them to use, to put the units on site.

Really there are trade offs.

On-site units are a great benefit because you get the units right away.

They're delivered at the same time as the project.

However, there's a lot of advantages

to getting funding for our affordable housing trust fund from projects.

Margo Ernst, Manager of Housing and Community Services told me today that

our trust fund dollars are leveraged four and a half to one with outside funding,

federal and state funding, and tax credits.

that's really powerful. Also, trust fund projects are more likely to hit deeper affordability

targets and can often provide housing for particular special needs populations. So there's

real advantages to having housing projects being out as well. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember

Thank you, Dr. Kesserwani, I know you wanted to also present some amendments that you're suggesting.

Thank you very much, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Director Klein and Mr. Horner for the presentation.

I just want to acknowledge the years of work that has gone into this.

Mr. Erickson, right, I have your name right, okay, with our consultant team and our city staff.

This was a referral from my predecessor in 2015, correct?

I think you have that right.

OK, so as much as I want to take ownership,

I can't do that for this.

But I'm so pleased that this is here before us tonight.

There is so much to be excited about here.

I think that the seven stories based zoning

is very appropriate for this major transportation

and commercial corridor with the width that it has.

And I just want to say that at the outset,

I'm really pleased with the requirement

for the widening of the sidewalks.

the simplified design standards above the ground floor

as well as standards for the ground floor,

planning for future public open spaces

because I really love this corridor

and I know we have a lot of challenges right now

with vacant storefronts and blighted areas

and so I really believe that this plan

can turn around this corridor.

I think there's a lot here that is going to work very well.

And so with that, so I love it a lot,

but if I have an opportunity to improve it a little bit,

I have to take that opportunity.

So if you'll indulge me, I have four amendments

I wanna put on the floor at the outset.

Oh, someone else is sharing.

So can I, can you stop sharing?

Okay, let me try again.

Okay, share screen, okay, those are just my notes.

Okay, let's go to the amendments.

Okay, can you all see this?

Okay, all right, so we talked about the seven stories.

That is for residential buildings and multi-use buildings.

The multi-use buildings are gonna be commercial

round floor and residential above.

So I think we have, I think it's an oversight.

The non-residential buildings.

So if somebody wants to cite a medical office,

a large employer wants to locate on San Pablo

or a civic institution wants to be here,

I think that they should be able to do the same height.

So the allowance is 75 feet.

So I'm suggesting we just make it all the same.

So non-residential buildings would also be allowed

I don't know if you have a

question.

I just wanted to do 75 feet the

reason being this remember this

is a transportation corridor.

This is walkable to North

Berkeley Bart and so if we can

cite a lot of jobs here and

make it easy for people to get

there without a car.

I believe that that is the

right thing to do and so I'm

putting that out here for my.

Colleagues consideration.

amendment is actually something staff has already brought

to us, which is we, I think we need to add

the minimum density standard back

because we wanna conform with our housing element.

I'm proposing a hundred.

I know that staff suggested 145.

Either one is actually fine.

The benefit of doing a lower dwelling units per acre number,

and this is where the planning commission was coming from

when they removed it completely is,

it does allow flexibility

to create larger family-sized units.

And the reason why we don't wanna go below 100

is because it is my understanding from staff

that MTC ABAG has a transit-oriented communities program,

and you need to be at least at 100 dwelling units per acre.

So that was my suggestion there.

Amendment three is a correction.

Sorry, council member,

would you mind just explaining for the public,

like when you say dwelling units per acre,

what that means, I think that would be helpful.

So it's an acre, so it's basically how many units

you can do per acre, I don't know how else to describe it.

For reference, the middle housing ordinance

has a maximum density standard of 70 dwelling units per acre.

It's actually, it's just not plain English.

I mean, you have to convert it, I think,

to a typical parcel size and square feet.

And then do the conversion to how many units it is

per a typical parcel size.

Maybe somebody wants to do that math

or does someone wanna chime in?

Our math teacher may want to chime in.

Welling units per acre is the common measure

of residential density.

It just translates into how many housing units

you're allowed to build on a parcel.

So I'm only familiar with our parcel sizes

from the middle housing ordinance.

So the typical residential lot is 5,000 square feet.

So when we said 70 dwelling units per acre,

that was roughly translated to eight units per parcel.

So this is going to translate to something for each parcel,

depending on the parcel size.

And what is it, 43,000 square feet per acre?

So that's how we get at this.

Is that right?

roughly. So, mayor, you're keeping me on my toes here. Okay, so I think that's enough

for that and we can answer more questions about it later. So, okay, I wanted to correct

what I believe was perhaps an oversight from the Planning Commission. They said, I thought

this was very clever of them, they said the first 50 feet of the ground floor has to be

The, how would you describe that?

The specified commercial use, the frontage,

active frontage, but we don't know how deep

these parcels are, I mean, we do know,

but we don't know which exact parcel we're talking about,

so there could be greater depth there.

There could be the possibility of siting some homes

or live work units in the back,

but the way that they effectuated this amendment,

You can see they wrote prohibited uses on the ground floor.

So they opened it up to the possibility

of having manufacturing, recycled materials,

processing, you know, parking lots

and non-vehicle repair uses behind the active frontage

because they use this word prohibited uses.

So we think they meant residential uses.

I think that makes a lot more sense.

I think we want an ordinance that says what it means.

And so that's just all that is.

it's just a correction there.

And then finally, Mr. Horner talked about

seven mixed use light industrial parcels

that happen to be part of this corridor.

Some of them are quite sizable.

And we don't currently allow housing on MULI parcels.

We do on mixed use residential parcels,

if you'll recall from middle housing, but not on MULI.

So what we're allowing here is these seven parcels

can now consider housing.

And what I think we should do

is just be a little bit more flexible.

So we have two options in the ordinance.

We said you could do 100% affordable,

or you can do more family sized units.

So we wanna keep that intention.

And our understanding is the teacher housing project

goes up to 120% of the area median income.

So that goes up to moderate income households.

So we are aligning with what we see around the community.

So we're saying no more than 120% of the area median income.

But to make sure we get a mix of incomes

and not just moderate income, as needed as that is,

everything is needed.

So we just added this addition to say with at least 50%

earning no more than 80%.

So you have some flexibility here with a mix of incomes.

And in my experience talking to affordable housing developers

when they're trying to do the funding

that's a good idea. So the the

this is something completely different.

We're talking about family-sized units.

Our intention here is, again,

to just be a little bit more flexible,

you know, to allow these parcels to get developed

with family-sized units, but other sized units as well.

So we are suggesting, or I'm suggesting 20% on that.

So those are the amendments, the four amendments,

and I'll stop there.

Thank you very much.

I have some questions I'm gonna hold them questions from councilmember Luna

Parra for either councilmember Kesar Wani or our staff I just have a quick

clarifying question for staff in the staff report it mentions the local

density bonus for for the condo projects and can you speak to how that's

incorporated into the plan. Certainly councilmember the local density bonus is

included as a pilot in the San Pablo specific plan area and as an

implementation step of the plan so the plan calls for the exploration and study

of creating a local density bonus in the plan area. So this is something that

would still have to come back to council and council would have to approve right?

Absolutely, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Traeger. Thank you. I also

have one amendment that I would like to share on the screen and before I do I'm

just going to provide some motivation for this. I understand that staff is in

in the process of developing a suite of anti displacement protections for small businesses

along the corridor, as part of the corridor zoning update. I also understand, well, and

Then in the San Pablo area specific plan, there is, I think, at least in the preliminary

description of what could be or conceptually, there is discussion of interventions such

as warm shelling which is the or at least the issue being that if a

commercial storefront is presented as four walls, a floor and a ceiling without

any kinds of utility ready connections or on-site bathrooms that is an issue

and the two renaissance items that I worked on that the a unanimous council

adopted both of them as referrals are I know that they are in the process of

either being implemented by staff or waiting for our RV process to for the

council to prioritize, but I don't want to miss the opportunity as part of this plan to at least get those aspects into consideration.

So I'm going to share my screen. It's been a long time since I've done this. So make sure.

sharing the right thing. There we go, okay. Okay, so it's what is in red and it

just refers to the City Manager consideration of the application within

the context of the San Pablo area specific plan, the San Pablo Avenue

specific plan design standards document, and or any associated documents as

applicable off-commercial anti-displacement provisions being considered as part of the

commercial zoning update and provisions of the Renaissance 1 and Renaissance 2 referrals

previously adopted by the Berkeley City Council.

I will note that this language has been reviewed by the Planning Director and the City Attorney

And I will let them speak for themselves,

but I don't think there were any flags

because this is simply part of the referral.

So I just wanted to submit that

for the council's consideration.

Thank you, can you make it bigger, please?

So that we can read it a little easier.

So you still have dark mode.

Oh, dark mode.

Okay.

I don't actually know how to change dark mode, I'm sorry.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

Very good.

OK, so a question from Councilmember Blackaby.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

And thank you to the team for this great work

and this very thoughtful presentation.

I had a few questions in a few different areas.

I was just going to bounce around.

Remember when we first talked about this last year,

so there were some requirements for place making

that are now kind of more incentives than requirements.

and Council Member Tapland already talked about

the side street plazas and how those might materialize.

I know that would take some work kind of

public private kind of partnership.

The city would probably have a role

to develop and might have a role.

Can you also talk about the privately owned

public open spaces and how those incentives would work

for a developer who's developing a property?

Certainly, thank you Council Member.

The, you know, as we've all mentioned,

there was a tremendous emphasis

and trying to improve, you know,

to increase the amount of available open space,

and you know, most of that has to happen

either on our narrow public spaces

or in private development.

And so the San Pablo Commercial Zoning District

includes two incentives related to this goal.

Each development project has a development standard

of a private usable open space.

So depending on the number of units you have

or the size of a parcel,

you're required to provide a certain amount

of private open space onsite.

What this zoning district includes

are incentives that give you additional credit

towards that requirement if you utilize them.

For example, if you widen the sidewalk

in front of your building,

then you'll get one and a half feet of credit

for every one feet of private open space

you're supposed to provide onsite.

And similarly, you'll get a credit

if you provide a privately owned public open space.

The design requirements of which are included

in the design document.

They need to have, it has to have a minimum size.

They're not just, each you get,

just put a little thing in the corner.

It has to have a certain size and certain facilities

to count as a POPO.

We had had it as a requirement earlier

and we moved towards an incentive after feedback

we received from the City Council

and the Planning Commission.

great and so you get so the basic idea is you know if you if you

in in

make available more public open space

and you'll be able to

take a little bit of the requirement to provide private open space

on on the press

similarly for uh... I think we talked when we we talked ahead of the meeting

there for sidewalk widening there's as they're kind of a similar

incentives again i'm just curious about all these things were trying to do to

activate

the public spaces but also

kind of that ground floor?

Yes, that's exactly right.

That we have a very similar incentive

for that for sidewalk widening.

We actually have it currently in the south side plan area.

That's where we first utilized it

and we imported that idea into the San Pablo specific plan.

And is there anything else around kind of

the ground floor activation that is in the similar vein

or those are kind of the best examples?

there's I believe there's an economic development program that offers a

reduction or waiver of the fees for a sidewalk table permit so if a business

if a cafe wants to have tables on the sidewalk we will and perhaps also the

park with fees there there are economic development strategies that basically

specifically aimed towards incentivizing activation.

Okay, great.

Let's talk a little bit about the,

kind of the objective design standards.

You know, some of the concerns we've heard,

obviously, from, from constituencies.

We don't want these just to be these big boxes

that kind of show up.

And I know in the design standards,

and again, you'd walk me through this,

there's some sort of, depending on the building height,

number of these features that you have to kind of incorporate.

Again, could you share how that, that part would work?

there was certain elements of the facade

and some of the articulation.

And I think depending on the building height,

you might have to do two of those.

If it was a bigger building, you have to do three of them.

But again, there was just, again,

an effort to not prescribe the design,

but to encourage some uniqueness

in the objective standards, if you could describe that.

Certainly, within the design standards document,

they are included for, as we mentioned before,

there are design standards for the site itself,

for buildings, and also for public open spaces

and public facilities.

With respect to, say, facade articulation,

which I think is the thing

that you're specifically talking about,

there are five distinct strategies

that are pointed out in the design standards document.

Recess is along some of the vertical or horizontal

to create just an appearance of, not just a flat wall.

projections, so not just either projections of a certain size, or recessions of a certain

size, again, to create some character in the façade, lines or what we call datum lines

or just sort of visible indications of the height of a building to sort of create, again,

not just a flat block, but something that looks like a building that's assembled, screening

devices.

So if you're screening a porch or a window, we have some standards around that, and some

about ornamentation so things that you may put in a corner or something you may

put at the top along a cornice and most a building that's proposed in the in

the zoning district needs to include at least two of those a tall building needs

to include at least three and so we do get some flexibility to choose among

them but you do need to choose among the ones that we mentioned. Okay so choose

wisely. Okay on the design standards I want to I'm sorry on the density I

I appreciate councilmember Kesserwani's amendment of the 165 to 100. I just wanted staff to kind

of react to that. What's the advantage of maybe bringing that standard down to 100? Councilmember

Kesserwani had mentioned that it maybe provides more opportunity to do more family housing on the

parcel so you don't have a bunch of studios but you have more possibility to do two and three

bedrooms because that's a dwelling, a dwelling unit. And so if you bring the density down you can do

more of those. Is there any magic to sort of the 165 versus the 100 as we're talking

through this here?

You know, I think the, you know, the 145, the 145 dwelling units an acre that was originally

proposed by staff was based on a survey of recently approved projects. And it was somewhere,

you know, it was not the top of it, but it was somewhere in the middle, right?

And a telegraph might have been 200 or something, for example, we talked about much higher.

Yeah. And so, and, and so.

Okay.

Oh, you went through it, okay.

Yeah, and so it was, I think we had originally

even proposed higher and the planning commission

wanted us to come in with a compromise.

We came in a little bit lower and then when we visited again

they didn't want one at all.

And so, I think that from our perspective

the housing element does ask us to assign

a minimum residential density standard

to all residential and mixed use development.

And so we do want to encourage that to happen.

And I think one of the things

that Council Member Casarwani

mentioned that at least at the

100 dwelling units an acre,

we're ensuring that we remain

competitive for transportation

grants for our areas, which is,

I mean, when we're talking about

how to do the plaza closures,

that's something we want to keep

in mind.

So I think that, you know, that

minimum density standard is

still, you know, well above the

maximum density standard we have

for middle housing.

And again, it's a minimum and

doesn't in any way constitute a

cap on what we'd see.

OK.

And last set of questions.

And it comes back to the building height,

kind of five story, seven story, the state density bonus,

and our own inclusionary housing ordinance.

I definitely find myself in the camp of saying,

I support ending up in the sort of seven to eight.

There are parts of San Pablo where I think I make sense.

But if we do that, I would support doing it

with more affordable housing on site.

And the way to do that is basically to zone at five

and let the density bonus do the work.

The density bonus does the work and so that's kind of,

so that's certainly one of that.

But I did wanna touch on this question

about how the fee out works on top of that

because we talked about if you zone for seven

and don't provide any affordable housing,

you basically fee out to reach the 20% requirement.

But even the density bonus project,

if you zone for five and end up with seven or eight,

that's usually not enough to meet the target, right?

And so they either would build more affordable units

or they would still fee out for a portion.

So just to verify, in either scenario,

we probably have funds coming to the Housing Trust Fund,

just a question of more or less,

because in the five-story scenario, you have five,

and I am getting to a question, Madam Mayor,

because I know you like how I ask these questions,

the leading questions.

But if we have a five-story zoning

and you use the state density bonus,

you still fee out for the rest.

and that fee out goes to the Housing Trust Fund.

Is that, again, the right way to think about?

Yeah, that's correct.

We don't see projects that meet our local 20% inclusionary

requirement with onsite units.

Typically, what's most typical is 15% very low income onsite.

And so they have to fee out for the last 5%.

And it starts with 15% before the density bonus.

and so maybe a smaller percentage

by the time you've added the extra floor.

Yes, it's 15% of the base project, that's correct.

So then by the time you add, so maybe five to 10%

by the time you get to the bonus.

Okay, thanks, that's all I have for now.

Okay, thank you.

I also had a question.

I was curious, council member, if you could speak,

well actually, you know, staff first.

I was curious if you could speak to kind of the demand

for those two, three building, yeah, the family-sized units.

Can someone speak to the demand at all for those?

I'm sorry, we don't have that kind of analysis available,

a demand, a market study by bedroom count.

I mean, a lot of the development

that is closer to campus, no mystery,

I won't be surprised to all of you.

It ends up being occupied by students.

Regardless of how many bedrooms there are.

So I think any market survey or study of Berkeley would probably be pretty skewed.

Yeah, please.

Just to add, and back to Councilmember Taplin's question

about community input and how this got its way into the plan.

And I think that the idea behind the affordable and family-sized housing in the Mulee was

specifically from a community concern that we would be seeing more development, but it

wouldn't be affordable and there wouldn't be family-sized units.

And so part of a response to that concern was to create really a market exclusively

for these type of projects that would be able to utilize these parcels in the Mulee.

So even separate a specific demand study,

we did want to be responsive to that concern

and see if it could happen.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Council member Castor Monti,

is there anything you want to,

I know you said that you were hoping to add flexibility,

but could you speak more to that?

Yes, and flexibility because when we make

these zoning changes,

and this has been 11 years in the making,

I know we weren't working on it nonstop full time

for that period of time.

But we're not gonna get another cut at this very easily.

And so my thinking is always,

let's try to be more flexible.

Anecdotally, I do know people want family-sized units.

You just, you meet people at preschool

who say they moved to Emeryville

because they couldn't find a family-sized unit.

So I do think this is a need.

50% was, it just felt like a very high number of the units

to me, but I'm open to some number between 20 and 50.

And the reason why I was concerned about 50%,

Mr. Horner, was a conversation that we had had

about the study saying that was the absolute max

of what was feasible.

That's where I get concerned because market dynamics

can change over a 40-year time horizon up for this plan,

and so I'd hate to see us have a requirement

and then not get any development, right?

Because some units, even if they might not be,

you know, exactly what we had hoped for is better than none.

So Mr. Erickson, do you wanna put chime in?

Yeah, I did, thank you Council Member.

I think the thoughts of the analysis

that went into arriving at those percentages

and the affordability levels and those sorts of things

did come from an assessment of property value

as it exists with the light industrial designation, and then the benefit that comes to the property

of being zoned as resident, being allowed to have residential. And then looking at construction

costs and making an estimate, I wouldn't characterize it as a maximum. I would characterize it

as something that looks feasible and I think I can't remember if this is in the implementation

plan but I think it is and if it's not it would be easy to add would be to start with

these percentages and then see what happens after three or five years and examine it and

maybe look at what's happening with the market at that point and maybe consider

reducing it in the future. But there is a there is a fairly significant benefit

in terms of property value to make that zoning change from light industrial to

residential and the analysis we felt through the analysis that was done that

this is something that's feasible but the market is very dynamic so if we

don't see those properties interest in developing those properties in three or

five years then maybe go back and make the reductions in the percentage of

affordability or of affordable housing or family housing I think that that was

the way that we were conceiving of it okay well you know I appreciate that

thought I have to speak for people who can't afford housing today.

They don't have three to five years.

So that's why I am such a strong advocate for homes.

People sleep in their cars.

They sleep in these encampments that we had people give public comment about.

So I saw a sign back there that says delay the plan.

We waited 11 years to get homes that's on San Pablo Avenue.

Like how much time do we have to take to house people

who are living on the edge,

who are at risk of getting evicted,

risk of becoming homeless, risk of getting displaced?

So I represent the people of West Berkeley,

the people of my district,

but also the people who would like

to be part of our community.

I believe in an inclusive, vibrant community

for people today and for the future.

You can shake your head no,

but I am the one who sits on the dais

and gets to make the vote and decision tonight.

Thank you.

So I think that actually Margo is in the audience today

and can maybe speak a little bit

to my question about demand, is that okay?

I think you're, thank you.

Good evening, mayor, members of the council.

I'm Margo Ernst, the manager

for housing and community services.

and you were asking about the need for affordable family-sized housing, is that correct?

Yeah, I mean the demand, yeah, the demand. I think we do have a fairly high demand for,

you know, family-sized units and we did, my colleague Anna Cash did remind me back there

that we had one of our recent projects that had did have family units and it also had

that we're trying to fill in.

that's a lot of people that are.

okay, go ahead.

Yeah, thank you.

I, since we're offering amendments during question time,

I guess, I did have a small amendment.

It was actually very similar to Council Member Triguebs,

which I really appreciate.

You know, it wasn't, we didn't talk ahead of time,

but it's not surprising that we both had the same concern,

which is we're doing a lot of work with the commercial,

with the corridors zoning update

to try to protect small businesses

that could be displaced through development.

And so I wanted, I also wanted to make sure

that we end up doing have done that yet,

but whatever we end up doing,

it also applies equally to San Pablo.

So I appreciate Council Member Trigube's amendment.

I had a sort of an addition to it

that I actually shared with him

and he's going to put it up on the screen.

It's actually a very specific mitigation measure

that is taken verbatim

from the Planning Commission recommendation

for the corridors.

and it's it's down he's added it down below. Um, couldn't prove it. Not limited to the evaluation of a business license tax waiver for businesses who are displaced by developmental projects. I thought that was a really good suggestion. And like I said, it's not official yet, but it's part of the planning.

Planning Commission's recommendation. So I would like to include it here in the same spirit of council member Trigge's amendment to include anything that's considered in part of the CZU or Renaissance. So I just wanted to add that. And that's part of, I guess, our proposal now.

We're going to talk about

how we can do it.

Thank you so much. And yeah, I

know I'm having folks sort of

also present things even just

because I knew that we that we

had some people making

amendments or proposed

amendments and I wanted to make

sure we were able to ask

questions about those and also

that the public could see it

then and then if they have

comments they can comment on it

as well.

I think that's how I think it's

good to this order actually.

the city of the city of the.

3 stories as recommended by the Planning Commission to 75 feet and 5 stories for non

residential buildings. Staff has been aware of this proposal and considered the potential

impacts of the consequential increase in commercial square footage and determined that the analysis

in the addendum in the 2023-2031 housing element EIR adequately analyzed the potential impacts

the planning commission recommendation but the additional amendment that you proposed. The

addendum assumed actually a decrease in total commercial use of about 319,600 square feet versus

what was analyzed in the housing element EIR. So any increase in commercial use that's attributable to

to this amendment would at most represent probably an incremental increase over the commercial use

analyzed in the housing element EIR. As a result the housing element analysis of

commercial related impacts continues to serve as a conservative basis for

evaluating the amendment. So I mean allowing taller non-residential

buildings in a highly urbanized corridor does not change the environmental

context evaluated in the housing element EIR and key impact areas such as public

services, recreation, are population-driven effects that are tied to

residential growth. And so because this amendment does not increase

residential capacity, these impact areas remain unchanged from what the housing

element EIR already analyzed. And none of the project areas located in the very

high fire hazard severity zone, so wildfire impacts, would not be

more severe than those that have already been studied. Construction-related effects

and soy disturbance have also already been addressed in the housing element EIR.

And the proposed height adjustment does not change the type of construction activities

anticipated or doesn't introduce new environmental effects beyond those already identified.

For transportation and vehicle miles traveled, the hazard element update still remains applicable.

Commercial uses in this corridor benefit from multimodal access and are located entirely

within an identified transit priority area and even with additional commercial square

footage employee VMT would continue to fall well below the 17.72 vehicle miles traveled

per employee significance threshold that was identified in the housing element EIR and

at most would only marginally increase it to about 11.7 VMT per employee.

So the potential carbon dioxide emissions per service population would remain well under

the threshold of 3.7 megatons.

So the amendment aligns with the housing element updates

environmental framework and remains within the scope

of impacts previously evaluated.

Okay, thank you very much, Mr. Horner.

I have no further questions or comments.

Thank you, any other questions from the council?

I'd love to move to public comment.

Thank you, okay.

We are gonna move on to public comment.

And again, folks, if you are just tuning in,

we are on item 34, adoption of San Pablo Avenue

with the public comment on the

item.

If you have a public comment on

the item please come forward.

If you are having someone cede

you a minute, if you could

please make sure that's

organized beforehand and

preferably that person is with

you or at least can wave their

hand so I can see them easily.

All right.

We will start with Leah.

I started?

Yes, Leah Simon-Wisberg,

District 2, I teach housing law

to seeing for almost 35 years,

no, I'm not that old, 25 years.

The first thing is, is the way to make a housing affordable

is you lower the land price.

By increasing the number of units

that you can put on any property,

you're just increasing the value.

You should be only allowing affordable housing

to have that additional value.

That's just basic and that's why social housing is about,

that's why it works in other countries,

and that's why it's not working here.

This is not ready, I keep thinking this is like bread.

Don't bake the bread yet, it's not ready.

We don't have enough protections.

The RIMP Board did a study during the pandemic

that looked exactly at this

and what protections needed to be put in place.

I send it to many of your staff.

It's on the Berkeley RIMP Board website.

Thank you.

One of the things that it talks about

specifically the west side and all the development that happened around 4th

Street and all of the apartments that were built. As a result of that we have

it's a wider community we've lost 21% of the Latino community since that

project was built. It's wealthier and wider as a result. That has the same

thing that's happened in many other cities across the country that have

the city of New York. And the

city of New York. And the city of up so in New York, which was the

first place to up so they had that same thing happen. The areas that up

so without significant protections and mitigation. Saw their communities get

and it looked at what we'd already done with the West side

and what we already did with the South side.

There is evidence.

The plan and the idea of us looking at this,

it's a good beginning,

but we don't have any of the protections.

So please, we need a little more work.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Hello, my name is Elijah,

and I live right on San Pablo in Chaucer.

The unit that I'm renting is part of this plan.

I'm pretty strongly in favor of the plan.

I think it's really important

that we build more housing downtown as a renter.

I want my rent to be cheaper.

That said, I have some complaints

about the design standards document.

I know that there was a strong effort made

to make it light and easy and not burdensome.

I think it's still quite burdensome,

specifically sections 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4,

and all of 3.1 seem, frankly, a little bit ridiculous.

I think it would be greatly improved

if you took every location where it said one,

or like two, or three, or four of blanks,

and replaced it with one of, if not none of.

every additional requirement you add,

when you legislate the aesthetics of a building,

raises the price of the building.

It's like very straightforward.

I don't think the public really understands

the amount of legislation of the aesthetics

of the buildings that we build.

I don't think they would support it if they did.

I don't think they're happy with the results,

and I think we should basically cut most of that,

or at least pare it back dramatically, thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, I have a minute from Londamy.

Thank you.

I wanted to thank Council People and O'Keeffe

for the suggestion of the protections

for commercial spaces.

But I'm really hoping that the council will postpone

adopting the plan until the projections are in place first.

That's very important.

And I'm also hoping that the council will consider

the lower base height because we are really, really hoping

to have included onsite affordable housing

because we really need to have socioeconomic integration

across the city, and right now our housing trust fund housing

is mostly placed where land is cheap,

meaning it's in the same places where the poor people

have always been kept segregated away from high resource

districts and away from market rate housing.

And so, the state rejected our housing element draft

in 2023, requiring more fair housing actions,

including better community improvements,

reports on the progress of fair housing goals,

and focusing more upzoning

in the higher resource neighborhoods.

I think you should consider that whatever you think

you're zoning for San Pablo is likely going to need

to be zoned for the CZUs in order to meet

state fair housing requirements.

And so, you know, the other issue,

it's a flexibility that Rashi says that she insists she wants.

The density minimum basically will limit the flexibility.

And so in order to have higher flexibility

with different unit sizes,

we need to have no density minimum.

so please support a lower five-story base zoning,

no density, minimum,

and commercial protections before voting, thank you.

Thanks Amy.

Excuse me.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, staff.

I am speaking now in a personal individual capacity,

no longer employed, retired from the city.

So I do want, as a city that I live in,

to look diverse, to be affordable,

And to not, as a prior speaker, two prior speakers said,

objectively, look at the evidence.

You will have a wider, wealthier town and more empty units.

I really plead for all of you to go

to a number of the brand new buildings

and see how many are empty.

How many of those expensive apartments

that people are begging for are beyond most people's budgets?

Three, four, five, $6,000 a month.

It's higher than many of our mortgages.

also for the BMR units, they do need to be on site.

I've been pleading and I talked to prior council members

and I would show them the data.

The below market rate unit, when there are fewer on site

and instead you have the alternative of the in lieu

and pay out, it's not enough.

Thanks, ma'am.

Oh, I'm on the team for Berkeley.

We're building a building.

I'm San Pablo, my church.

The reason you don't allow non-residential buildings

to be built as tall as residential ones

is because commercial real estate is generally

priced higher than residential real estate.

And therefore, if given the option,

developers will only, they will tend to build more offices

and non-residential buildings than residential ones.

And that's not what we need.

Secondly, I feel like a lot of people

just reflexively hate tall buildings, because reasons.

I'm suspicious of development

because developers are greedy capitalists

who want to make the most money.

I don't see why it's necessary to include them at all.

They do not build the buildings.

Construction workers do that.

They do not design the buildings.

to be able to do that. So I'm

the city of Toronto. The city

of Toronto is now in the city

of Toronto. The city of Toronto

is now in the city of Toronto.

The city of Toronto is now in the

city of Toronto. The city of

Toronto is now in the city of

Toronto. The city of Toronto is

now in the city of Toronto. The

city of Toronto is now in the

city of Toronto. The city of

Toronto is now in the city of

Toronto. The city of Toronto is

now in the city of Toronto. The

city of Toronto is now in the

city of Toronto. The city of

Toronto is now in the city of

Toronto. The city of Toronto is

now in the city of Toronto. The

city of Toronto is now in the

city of Toronto. The city of

Toronto is now in the city of

Toronto. The city of Toronto is

are the same as many others.

We want a vibrant, we want vibrant communities.

We want not to make the same mistakes

we made with downtown Berkeley.

If you look at, if you wanna see experience,

look at some of the statistics of the Berkeley buildings.

Only 8% ended up being affordable.

Over 50% ended up being students.

This is not a neighborhood

that's gonna create long-term people

being invested in the neighborhood.

they have to move when they partner up or have families.

So I'm against lowering the requirement for family units

and I feel we must provide on lieu affordable units

for people to stay in the neighborhood.

I don't know what's going on with the trust fund.

It doesn't seem like anything good that I can see.

I don't see it happening.

And that's my comment.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Hi my name is Rachel Bradley and I've lived in Berkeley all my life. I'm here

to entreat you to listen to the voices of the community asking you to protect

our independent small businesses and the special character of our neighborhoods

by reconsidering the seven-story up zoning proposal for San Pablo Avenue.

Such a giveaway to developers would strip away their incentive to qualify

for the state density laws by including on-site affordable housing as we've

already heard, which is an important social goal that can be protected by

limiting the heights to five stories. For example, the developer of 2109 Virginia

at the corner of Shattuck, the former Poulet, recently obtained approval to

build an eight-story building in an area zone for three stories by including a

modest number of below market rate units and relying on the density bonus. This is

not too much for our community to ask. We also need to create programs to protect

and nurture the existing businesses before any up zoning. Thank you for

are taking the time to reconsider these important choices.

Thank you.

Hello, I believe somebody's given me a minute of their time.

Thank you.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today.

I'd like to speak about the necessity

of more multifamily housing in Berkeley.

My name is Lev Marcus.

I currently live in Oakland,

where I work as a mental health counselor.

I'm part of a generation raised in Berkeley

that could not afford to stay.

My wife and I grew up half a mile apart on Cedar Street.

We met at Berkeley High,

reconnected through a chance encounter on Telegraph

five years ago and got married

at Northbury Community Church last year.

My life has been shaped by Berkeley

and I'd like to put down my own roots here

through home ownership.

Unfortunately, current housing costs

have taken single family homes

that are most common in Berkeley

completely out of reach for my wife and me.

Because many of our Berkeley friends

are in a similar predicament,

nine of us have joined together

with the intention to buy and co-own

a multi-unit property where we will live

and raise our families and community.

There's no other option.

we need multi-family, multi-unit properties

to make a long-term stable life in Berkeley possible for us.

To those worried about how this San Pablo plan

would change the character of the neighborhood,

like the previous speaker,

I contend that the character of a neighborhood

lies in its people,

and that for the neighborhood to maintain its character,

the people who were born there

need to have a chance to live there in the future.

Thank you.

My name is Oscar.

I am a recent new resident of Berkeley.

I actually moved here from another city

with really expensive housing, Boston.

So I'm quite familiar with kind of the process

of developments, plans like this beginning,

but then not really going anywhere

and the development's not really happening.

I think plans like this are really important.

I want to speak in support of them

because I agree with love before me

that communities and character of neighborhoods

are built by the people.

And in order for people to be there,

there needs to be enough housing.

And I think this is a good way to do that.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Pecce Verdell, District 1.

Please postpone any vote on the plan as presently drafted.

Without amendment, it is incomplete

and will not provide the affordable inclusive family homes.

Instead it can perpetuate discriminatory building practices

and may equally fail the state's requirements.

It is incomplete because there are no explicit directives

to protect local businesses from displacement.

It does not provide explicitly for turnkey commercial space

or explicitly for usable public space.

The plan doesn't provide family homes

because with an required minimum density

of 145 units per acre,

tiny units unfit for families will result.

It does not provide affordable homes

as you have given away any requirement

for your inclusive housing

by insisting on the high minimum density.

We can get more and better in inclusive units

by reducing the height requirements to five stories,

reducing the minimum density,

and inviting you the density bonus.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Hi, I'm Zach from D1.

San Pablo has been through a lot.

I visit family there about twice a week,

so I've seen a lot of it kind of up and down.

You know, you've got car parks,

you've got parking lots, you've got shuttered shops.

There's a corner, University in San Pablo,

3 out of 4, the retail empty.

It's got a lot of missing stuff.

Right, I think it's gonna survive seven stories.

I think will even thrive with seven stories.

I think a lot of effort went into this plan

to make it easier to build, live,

open restaurants and stores, visit bars,

work and travel safely.

And it's a good plan.

There is demand.

Panoramic north side filled in three months of opening.

And let's just get it done

because the one thing San Pablo can't take more of

is neglect, thank you.

Thanks, Zach.

Yeah, I'm Tommy Algochi.

I've been living on Chatting Way about a block and half

from San Pablo since 1981.

For the past couple years,

I've been watching the erection of a,

through exciting co-housing complex

that's going up on the other side of San Pablo on Chatting.

It has not been a fun experience in many times,

especially with the close streets

that I have to do a detour on my bicycle,

but it's been worth it.

It's been worth the inconvenience

because I'm really excited

about having these new neighbors come in

and I would love to see more new neighbors like them,

people who are paying property taxes

to fund our city services

and supporting local businesses up and down the corridor

and riding the public transit,

getting more people on the bus with me up at San Pablo.

So I'm happy to see those new dakers.

Thank you.

Hello, I believe I have a minute over there.

Next minute.

May I not need it, hopefully.

Thank you.

Council members, Madam Mayor, my name is Aditya.

I'm a constituent of D2.

I've been happy to call this part of the San Pablo corridor

home for four years now.

Recently, my partner and I were walking down 10th

towards me Tiara and a friendly neighborhood stopped us to chat and said, you look needed

a neighborhood. And it was friendly enough, but we both knew what he meant. He was saying,

are you gentrifiers? He pointed across the street and said, my parents were married there.

It used to be a church. They had to move. They grew up in the same house that me and

my siblings now live in, but they had to like, they've been there for decades. They got displaced.

I've grappled with his question even before he asked it.

I'd like to think I'm not a gentrifier.

But despite how I look, I don't have any tech money.

In fact, I've actively tried to depress rents

by bothering my landlord, but more importantly,

giving my neighbors resources and doing tenant advocacy.

And the fact of the matter is,

despite all my individual actions,

I'm never gonna be able to have as much of an impact

as you will tonight or in the future

regarding policies like this.

Truly, I support building more housing,

especially affordable housing.

I'm not against development,

and I know my neighborhood needs investment,

but without proper consideration,

the historically black and brown neighborhood

that I call home will be inaccessible

to people who have called the waterfront home

for years far longer than I have.

I would ask for more time to scrutinize this plan,

or really just to add a lot more protections in it.

It's not enough to build housing.

we have an opportunity to ensure that the dearth of affordable housing is addressed

in our community. Just today at Cafe Layla, I was seated next to two landlords who are

meeting to discuss their issues with Section 8. This plan, as it is, caters to people like

them. Can I get one more minute? Yes. Thank you. We should not rush this. And we should

add a lot of language that includes more public resource stations, more public spaces, more

affordable units and more opportunity to ensure that people already there get to

flourish along with the people who will be coming in. I'm excited to welcome new

people as neighbors, as the people in the community have welcomed me, but I

want to make sure that those people get to stay and be part of the journey with

me. I recommend all Councillors read, Kausahusta's development without

displacement report. It's fantastic. It has a lot of recommendations for

development without kicking people out in a place that is Ground Zero for

gentrification and I would also like to second what Leah said read the Berkeley

rent rate rent stabilization boards report all right take those

considerations into your consideration and let's make this plan work for all of

us thank you thank you yes I've been emailing back and forth with my

Council member Terry Kaplan about affordable housing and different ways to

approach it and my little bit of research tells me that 60% of people

need help with rent. They need some kind of affordable housing and so if 60% say

we only had 120,000 people, we'd have 72,000 people needing help in Berkeley

and if there's four people living in a unit,

that would be 18,000 units need to be built.

So if you're talking about whittling away

and giving more and more leeway and more flexibility

to developers to take away any kind of affordable housing,

this is out of sight.

It's, there's no, we can't even approach it.

And you look every time you take a walk

and you see somebody in their tent,

have just moved. You face it. Thank you. I have two extra minutes from Carla and Claudia,

so three please. Hi everyone, my name is Donald Simon. I am the president of Save Berkeley

Shops. I'm a resident of D8 and want to talk about this plan because it was described today

that its goal was to increase vibrancy and local business activity and it's really difficult to

imagine a more inaccurate statement when you actually read through that 900 page plus plan.

The plan itself on page 396 says that it will result in a net loss of 319,000 square feet of

commercial space. Think about that. It does not do anything to promote business in this commercial

corridor. It does everything to allow business to be replaced solely by residential development

only. On the four busy intersections that are referred to as the nodes, there are objective

design standards that are said to facilitate more activation, and more activation, but

there is nothing there that would require businesses at those nodes. Instead, the concept

around activation is that would allow business as usual to continue that we see in every

Berkeley housing project that's been built in the last ten years, where we have no ground

retail, and instead what we have are big empty spaces, cold shells, there's no

requirement for warm shells here, and what we have are lobbies and gyms for

the residents of that building. Nothing for the public, these are not public

spaces, these are amenities for the tenants. Tell me how that is going to

activate these areas to make them lively places to live and to be. The other thing

to talk that is most baffling here is that at the last council meeting you all

acknowledge that councils previous approach to up zoning neighborhoods like

downtown led to the disaster that we have there with stalled projects that

have decimated the business environment and made them undesirable places to be I

cannot understand how just two weeks later we're back and you're proposing to

up zone in the exact same manner that does nothing to address the stalled

project. Nothing that says, as we've given you a plan with our community

zoning plan, where you could say we're not going to allow you to get a

demolition permit until you can show us you have the money and the contractor

lined up to build what you said you would. How can you direct staff to do

something to address a problem? And then two weeks later move forward repeating

the same mistake without even hearing back with staff about what can be done

on it. The last thing is affordable housing. Let's quit calling our

our ordinance, an inclusionary housing ordinance.

It is an exclusionary housing ordinance

because developers can just pay a fee

and they don't have to put any onsite affordable housing.

By increasing the heights,

you are decreasing the incentive for developers

to use the density bonus,

which means there will be no onsite housing,

which means you will be eradicating businesses,

not to provide the diverse Berkeley we want,

but to provide a gentrified city

that I don't believe anybody does.

Please reconsider.

So I have to follow Donald's.

Okay, so I have my minute and then I have Carla

and I think one individual over there.

So I have three, but probably I can't make it till three.

Okay.

Sorry, Carol, who was the?

Carol Morosavik and then this.

Oh.

Oh, are there two talking?

Who's your third person?

I just saw two.

No, so two and then mine.

And then yours, okay.

I thought you meant three people, go on.

No, no, thank you.

Council should postpone adopting the San Pablo Avenue plan

until full attention is given

to commercial tenant protection.

I've lived there too long to see what has happened

on San Pablo and we all know the story of the lighting store

who was threatened, they were threatened

with doubling their rent to 16,000 a month

and they had to leave.

This kind of thing is going to happen rampantly.

Have you done an AI picture of what you're going to create

if it's all eight-story, 10-story buildings,

and then you have at night those commercial developments

that you're talking about raising

from three or four stories to eight stories

are gonna be totally darkened?

Who's gonna wanna walk on the street?

Amy Baldwin took pictures of downtown Oakland

where there's nothing going on the street.

There's just mass buildings.

So it's really important to think about

what it's gonna look like when we're done.

San Pablo Avenue cannot become another center street.

There must be clear protections for the city.

Empty storefronts must be re-imagined

and perhaps have fees assessed to create

and prevent, prohibit blight.

Clear assistance to protect current businesses

such as lease protections and help in temporary locations.

Many of you went to the Kala exhibition

where San Pablo Avenue legacy businesses

were given their time to show off,

and this was orchestrated by Robert Rivera and Kala.

We have many legacy businesses on San Pablo Avenue

that need to be protected and treasured.

They are our treasure.

The small Japanese-American community there is our treasure.

So please don't just slow them out.

The San Pablo Avenue specific plan has failed to include

state required place-based strategies

that have any meaningful obligations behind them.

So thank you Council Member Chigab

and Council Member Shoshana

for considering how to protect our businesses.

Of course, that's important.

This is the lifeblood of our city.

Let me suggest one other thing

about place making on San Pablo.

It needs to include landscaped open spaces

befitting Northern California.

We live in Northern California, you guys,

not New York City.

And we have beautiful coffee spaces.

I don't know if you've seen the little coffee store

set up behind Imassala on San Pablo Avenue

near Cafe Leila, another beautiful spot.

Can you imagine eight-story buildings shadowing them?

Can you imagine the beautiful Acme new bakery, Terry,

let's go, it's gorgeous there.

Beautiful wood.

And then imagine eight stories on either side.

Thank you.

Joel Meirson, District One.

I'm truly puzzled by the desire to have seven-story zoning

on San Pablo without any onsite affordable housing,

which the state density bonus law would require

if the zoning was for five stories.

I'm not the first person to point out

that Show Not Virginia and Shattuck

even three story zoning allows for an eight story building

if some affordable housing is included.

Keyword is included, onsite, not built somewhere else.

Berkeley residents want inclusive affordable housing now,

not segregated housing that will maybe be built somewhere,

sometime in the distant future.

Keep the five stories zoning.

Thank you.

I have one minute on Jean.

I mean, I hear one minute.

Any other minutes?

Yeah, eight minutes.

Okay, so I got two extra.

Sorry, who was your second?

Blue shirt next to him.

One second.

Your second minute though?

Are you arguing him?

Okay.

Hi, my name is Dietmar Lorenz.

I'm an architect, D1, been there for 30 years.

I like to focus on the five versus seven stories.

It's a kind of a false choice

because as many of you confirmed,

it all will end up in a build out

of seven to eight stories anyway.

It's just the question whether the affordable housing

will be onsite or segregated.

So I'd urge you to adhere to the public review plan

from last October that took three years

to produce and a ton of money for consultants

that arrived at five stories.

I'd also urge you to listen to the minority opinion

on the Planning Commission by Charles Kahn, who

happens to be the most experienced person by far

on that panel, a practitioner who

has done hundreds, if not thousands, of units in Berkeley

and really understands the number and the background.

And he made this from deep knowledge,

not because he was taught from a buff

that he should raise the number.

So he says five stories.

But then the most important reference point for us

is probably Senate Bill 79,

which prescribes heights for buildings

on transit-rich corridors and the BART stations.

But this would be a tier two,

and SB 79 would prescribe 65 feet or six stories

on a transit-rich corridor.

However, San Pablo isn't even a transit rich corridor now.

It doesn't meet the definitions of 79, but it could.

And I agree that we should plan it to be conducive

to meet SP 79 and want to have enough people

that transit really works on that corridor.

So if we look at this 65 feet, but the point of SP 79

is that the affordability criteria are already baked in.

And if you reverse engineer that and say,

if you take the affordability that's required in SP79,

what would the base zoning have to be to meet that?

And surprise, surprise, the number is five stories.

So with five stories you're meeting,

and it's actually overshooting it.

Like it wouldn't allow 65 but 77 feet by the formula.

But anyway, so SB 79, I think is a really good reference

point coming down from the state.

And so I like the way Council Member Blackett

be phrased and put it very eloquently.

Have a five story base and let the state density bonus

do the work.

I think this is really boiling it down in one sentence.

And also, 15 seconds left, it will help you.

Okay, I got, thank you, thank you Laura Barrett.

So the current housing element at first was rejected.

Kind of an embarrassment for a city like Berkeley

to fall flat on that and then there was some last minute

struggle and tweaking to get it in.

But one of the key deficits in that plan

was the lack of attention to affirmatively

furthering fair housing.

And if you start with a seven story base

And then the housing, essentially,

the affordable housing gets kind of packaged and segregated.

That does not lead you on the right path.

It virtually guarantees that you would fail

the next housing element.

And so, I think it really behooves the city

to take that very seriously.

And again, this is not about what you end up

with a smaller or a bigger thing.

You always end up with seven to eight stories.

The question is just how do you allocate

affordable units and when do you get them? If they are integrated and inclusionary, you

get them when these projects get built, not at some later date. Also, I don't think you

can look in the rearview mirror for matching grant funding because this has dried up and

you cannot make projections in the future. Thanks.

Okay, I think I have two minutes. So I didn't expect to speak on this. I did expect to speak

on the San Pablo plan but I didn't think

that I would have to ask, talk about the amendment

that was suggested here on the 50 feet.

As many of you know, I do attend

the Planning Commission meetings

just like many of our city meetings

and there was the 50 feet that was written by

and directed by Charles Kahn and architects

that many of us respect was very intentional.

That is not about residences in the building.

It is about making sure that we have the opportunity

for businesses in the building and commercial space

so that we don't have a big wall

walking down the street that we can't see through,

that there's no activity, that there's no street activity.

So if all of you think about NOVIA

and walking towards University.

And you walk by that building that used to be Acocale

and is now seven and eight stories.

And you walk by a wall and you walk by windows

that you can't see through.

And these are all things for the residents

and that is not commercial space.

There is that tiny commercial space.

Do you have a question Mr. Blackaby,

Council Member Blackaby and Luna Parra

while you are talking while I'm trying to explain this to you.

Just to address the council as a body please, thank you.

Right, but they're not listening.

You're talking about I'll cook away, okay, so we...

Let's stop back and forth please, go ahead.

Okay, so we're talking about that big wall of nothing

and there's no commercial activity

and there's no opportunity for businesses.

We do have that tiny business at the corner

which is doing quite well,

but there's not room for other businesses.

So think of this as really as a followup

of what Donald Simon is talking about,

having space for businesses.

It is very intentional, that 50 feet,

so that businesses can come back

and we have lots of activity on San Pablo

and it just doesn't become a blank wall.

And we have too much of that already on San Pablo.

So that is my main point.

And the other thing that really worries me

about the plan that we have,

that we've been presented tonight,

is that it really feels so much like a gentrification plan

is just for the wealthy and we're not going to get the affordable housing that

we need and we really do need family housing. Okay we are gonna take a brief

ten minute break and then we're gonna take the online comments and then go

into council celebrations. Thank you. Recording stopped. Okay, hello everyone.

Thank you for your patience um okay I do think it's worth mentioning that

unfortunately council member Luna Parra had to go back home because she's not

feeling well but she will be taking the meeting from home Rose do you want to

say anything about that or I know she's not quite on yet yeah council member Luna

Parra has shared with us her intention to continue the meeting at home under

to allow her to participate.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

OK, we are taking public comment online.

There are 16 hands raised online, so let's get into it.

All right, our first speaker is Donna.

Hi, I am ceding my minute to Tony Mester.

to Tony mister all right give us just a second please looking for Tony oh there

we go yep got it and thank you very much we will save your minute Donna for

Tony all right our next speaker is and apologize for the pronunciation

Yeah. My name is Jatin. I live just off of San Pablo Avenue on Dwight Way with my wife

and our 10-month-old son. I want to obviously start off by saying we're in a historic housing

shortage and it's urgent that every part of every Bay Area City does its part to build

more housing. But I also want to share my personal perspective. I moved to the Bay Area

10 years ago for a job. I built my life here and I fell in love versus San Francisco and now

Berkeley. Berkeley is the city that my son will grow up in. He will call home and I want him to

grow up in a city that he can actually afford to live in. To do that we have to build a lot more

housing than we do today and that means dense multi-family housing along San Pablo Avenue where

today a lot of lots are auto shops, parking lots, car washes and single-story strip malls.

I also want my son to grow up near San Pablo Avenue that is bustling and vibrant because of new neighbors. New neighbors who bring more foot traffic. And I urge the council to pass this plan. Thank you.

Thanks for your comment. Alright, our next speaker is Cheryl Davila, former council member.

Yeah, so I'm a 45 year resident of District 2.

And, um, the gentrification is real.

Every morning, I look out my window and I see gentrifiers.

I don't have a problem with that,

but we need to have affordable housing.

We don't need a bazillion story buildings along the corridor,

and we also need to make sure that the businesses thrive

because people aren't going to come there just to live there.

We need to have businesses to support them and to make sure that you're

not like creating monster buildings that are fugly, we need to like have a community

along San Pablo. And you know what? I don't know what outreach happened, but I wasn't aware of any

of those meetings or invited. And I know a lot of my neighbors weren't either. So the community

The input, thank you next up is Zach Goldberg.

Hey, this is Zach from D1 again or D2, I live 5 minutes away from San Pablo and the 10 minute walk from the University and San Pablo node. I'm fully supportive of this plan.

I feel the emotion that the council woman from D1 expressed before when I saw a poster up, opposing the plan, it really just made me mad as.

millennial who's, uh, you know, cohort is priced out of cities like Berkeley,

everywhere. We need more housing. We need to now let's make it easier for

developers to build. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Noah.

Hi, can folks hear me? Yes.

I'm here with my wife, also Berkeley resident. She's going to seed a minute to me.

Hello. Thank you. You have two minutes. Okay. Uh,

Good evening. My name is Noah Broad. I'm speaking of my personal capacity as a Berkeley resident, but I spent 15 years working on housing, homelessness and economic development, including with HUD and the small business administration.

And I've also been part of a development on the corridor, the Berkeley Moshov co-housing project that someone spoke favorably about earlier.

I submit some written comments. So I'm going to be brief. I supported opting the San Pablo plan, but just without the minimum density standard.

The plan is well designed, it reflects a real community effort, and I think it's going to meaningfully change how San Pablo evolves, but the plan that you're placing tonight was also adopted with the vision for transforming the quarter.

And it didn't that one didn't necessarily achieve its goals and why that's why I'm speaking against the amendment to agenda that was added a couple of days ago, but in favor of moving ahead with the plans approval.

That amendment sets a minimum of 145 units per acre along all 2.3 miles of the corridor and that mandatory minimum is kind of like a sign that says you must be this tall to ride at a fair missing middle projects.

Sorry, too short co ops too short co housing projects like Berkeley, most of condos and larger family units style buildings. Sorry. No shorties.

We know that we need more housing.

We know we need more housing of all types and modalities.

And I support that goal.

100% want to caution the council against adopting

an amendment that reduces the number and variety of builders

that can participate in the quarter's future.

It reduces competition to develop the corridor also,

and it reduces pressure on the bigger developers to act,

because they can land bank,

they can buy stuff, leave it empty forever.

So we need more housing of every type.

And the 2.3 mile length of the corridor, it's just a different type of corridor than like telegraph or Adeline. It's a much more diverse 1 that can support a wider, a wider range of heights. So, I approve the passage of the thanks.

Thanks for your comment. Our next speaker is David shear.

Hi, I urge you to approve this item tonight.

I serve on the Housing Advisory Commission,

but I'm speaking on my own behalf.

We need a diversity of affordable housing in this city.

Onsite units are great.

They do not serve special needs populations.

They do not serve extremely low income households yet.

They do not serve the homeless.

They do not serve seniors who are living entirely

on social security or SSI.

Only the Housing Trust Fund can do that.

The plan as it is will result in tens of millions of dollars

to the Housing Trust Fund.

I want more BMR units, but the city cannot create broadly affordable housing by writing

a law that says, I declare housing affordability.

That doesn't work.

That has never worked.

Last, I need to set the record straight about state density bonus law, because there's some

incorrect information out there.

The idea that seven-story base means no SDBL is totally wrong.

It is respectfully rather ignorant of what SDBL is and how it's used.

Taller buildings are what people fearmonger about, so that's the focus, but it's not a

hype bonus.

It's not what it is or how it works.

project of a certain size will use state density bonus law. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker

is CLP. Hi, my name is Casey. I'm a DT resident and I urge the council to adopt this. I'm super

excited for the future of what San Pablo Ave can be. I'm really tired of empty lots and

you know a lack of a vibrancy, I would like it to be a place that's enjoyable to walk.

I live on the lower end of where this specific area plan would fall and there's just not a lot

around here and if we could have more residents we could have more shops and it could be a walkable

bikeable transit friendly place, it would be lovely and I'd love for my kids to be able to

grow up and be able to live in this area, and this plan will help us get there. So thank you,

and I urge you to vote yes. Thank you. All right. John Jackson.

Hello. I would like to cede my minute to Moni.

Okay. I do see a Moni on here, so John will make sure she gets your minute. Thank you.

next speaker is Andrew Talbot. Yes, thank you for the chance to speak on this item.

I definitely support the measure as it is and would welcome more neighbors in my neighborhood.

I'm in D1, Nathan Cedar, and just near San Pablo. San Pablo is some of the richest land in the world

probably, especially in the country, and that we have dilapidated buildings and empty lots on it

I also would love to have more affordable units but with he was unfunded before 40 billion mandates that means you're just taxing middle class and lower class renters to when we shouldn't study using funded mandates that tax wealthy landowners and homeowners.

Thank you.

landowners and homeowners thank you thank you all right Martin Hammer my

name is Martin Hammer I'm an architect and I've lived in practice in Berkeley

for 27 years I live in district one I object to blanket up zoning of the

entire San Pablo corridor which will undoubtedly create unintended

consequences. Not all portions of San Pablo Avenue are the same. Instead of approving

this plan, I encourage an end-to-end analysis by planning staff to see what type of upzoning,

if any, is appropriate for each section. Some of you may be familiar with Jane Jacobs'

classic book on urban planning, The Death and Life of American Cities. It's a recommended

reference point, and to be careful with what is allowed as a matter of right versus requiring

administrative use permit or design review. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Sean Hart.

Hi, yeah. My name's Sean Hart. I'm a renter here in Berkeley, and I'm strongly in support of seven

stories of the speaker just before me called Blanket Upzoning. I think that's a great phrase,

That's exactly what we need for 7 stories of blanket up zoning on San Pablo. And I encourage you to advance it tonight. I think this is a great proposal. There's been some talk about the state density bonus a lot of night as well. The governor just signed a lot of strengthening that.

And this would enable Berkeley to take even more advantage of state density bonus. I urge you to vote yes on as much housing and vibrant commercial activity as we can possibly have. So rents come down and also renters just have more options to choose from here on San Pablo and everywhere else in the city. Thank you.

Thank you all right next speaker is the caller with the number ending in 211 hi now i have

a comment about housing in berkeley in general i lived in berkeley for 62 years and bought

housing craig month 1968 for 28 000 houses today my concern though earthquakes big giant earthquakes

faults running under our feet. The ever fault is called

the sleeping monster. If this thing goes seven magnitude, there's a quake which

it did in 1868. This is overdue by about 20 years.

It does. All of this big, deeply built, giant apartment

buildings, refabricated, are going to collapse.

We have to consider new engineering in any new

apartment building in Berkeley to survive. It will happen.

It runs under Piedmont Avenue, it runs on the third Arlington, it runs all the way to Fremont.

It's a giant huge earthquake. Everybody was in 1987 who had the San Francisco earthquake.

That was 200 miles away. It destroyed the Bay Bridge. One big section of the Bay Bridge fell

and cyber freeway collapsed. Thank you. Thanks for your comment. Your time's up.

Our next speaker is Otto Pippincher. Hi, thanks so much for having me.

However, I am ceding my minute to Moni.

All right. Thank you, Moni. We'll have another minute. Thank you.

Next up is Kat.

Hi there. One thing I love about living here,

and that's a point of pride for Berkeley,

is that we have so many more independent businesses than chains,

and I'm worried that the existing commercial tenants that give

South San Pablo its cultural identity will be pushed

out if protections are not mandatory upfront.

The Canary and the coal mine is on life support.

More commercial and retail closed in San Pablo in the last 10 years than opened.

Everyone loves to put photos of the cute shops at Dwight and San Pablo in their slide decks,

but it really shouldn't be allowed because nothing like that ever gets built here.

Housing can bring customers, but it doesn't automatically create a lively street.

Concrete coal shells tell small indie businesses to go away,

but they are a good place to put a Verizon, Burch a Potlais.

Commercial units need to be small, warm, and affordable.

I don't want to walk down San Pablo passing nothing but Amazon lockers,

vape and crotum shops, Waymo loading curbs, ghost kitchens and empty storefronts in the future.

So please do what you can to make sure that that doesn't happen. I also second Martin's

suggestion that everyone read the death and life of American cities by Jane Jacobs. Thank you.

Thanks, Kat. All right. Our next speaker is Moni, and Moni, you have three minutes.

Hi, my name is Moni Gangobutai. The San Pablo specific plan is a pie in the sky proposal that

hopes to create something it cannot. Blanket upzoning is based on the false notion that

upzoning automatically leads to more housing or more affordability. What it does do is increase

the value of the land pushing out small businesses and affordable housing tenants. How?

Upzoning landlords anticipating the possibility of and are approached by corporate developers who

who can make a much higher offer on their property

will double their rent as they seem to have done

to Berkeley Lighting Shop,

which is on San Paulo Avenue and just got kicked out,

or use some other vehicle to push out their tenant

so they can accept a corporate developer offer.

In Emeryville, up zoning resulted in a 25% rent increase

in overall rents that was reported by their local paper.

As we know from what happened to Center Street

missing link the biotech building at Aquatic Park.

We know that corporate developers will buy properties and then sometimes let them sit.

They gain profit from their existing properties and get

tax benefits from quote unquote failed ventures.

What we get is boarded up buildings and blight.

In Oakland, up zoning near the Paramount and Fox Theater

resulted in shuttering of businesses.

and this once vibrant commercial district is now a ghost town.

There's precious little retail in the area and little to no foot traffic.

Please do not destroy our vibrant San Pablo corridor.

Contrary to what one of the city council members said,

there is more blight in downtown Berkeley than on San Pablo Avenue,

at least where I live.

Luxury apartments will not house unhoused folks.

I am a decades long policymaker for the state of California.

Take it from someone with experience,

rolling out broad policies that are not well thought out,

like blanket up zoning,

instead of more targeted up zoning,

will result in unintended consequences.

When the state did this time and again,

we got widespread fraud.

Take it from a fraud investigator.

That's what I do now.

please do not devastate our vibrant corridor frequented by people across Berkeley.

I do not know how someone can say that they represent

the low-income residents and people of color or people of Berkeley,

if they have not read Berkeley's own rent board study on up zoning.

I'd like to read parts of it.

I'm not sure if I have enough time, but I'm going to try.

It says, up zoning can lead to speculation,

increase land values and displacement.

By the same token, upzoning has not led to greater racial

integration and opportunities for vulnerable communities.

Time is up, thank you.

Our next speaker is Matt O'Brien.

Good evening.

It is inconsistent to claim to want to house

the homeless now, while supporting construction

of market rate apartment towers and developer buyout fees,

which delay even further construction of affordable housing.

Also, representing these upzoning plans,

including the CZU,

as addressing past discriminatory housing policies

is deceptive, as there is no mechanism to ensure

that members of communities discriminated against

will live in these homes.

It's not as if the new market rate buildings will be,

for example, exclusively for African Americans

or Japanese Americans.

They will be for whomever can pay five or six grand

a month in rent and with the developer buyout in lieu fees

allowing no affordable units in a project,

adopting the plan will foster more segregation

and gentrification in Berkeley.

I ask.

Thank you, your time's up.

Okay, our next speaker is Sarah Bell.

Hi.

I am chair of our Housing Advisory Commission,

but speaking in my personal capacity tonight

on why we need to pass the plan with seven-story based zoning

and do it tonight.

We talk about our homelessness crisis.

But in lieu fees are how we fund deeply subsidized housing that

can get people off the streets.

Moderate income units don't house unhoused people.

I'm pained by how little deeply affordable housing we

of the funding to create, and our housing trust fund

is oversubscribed, to put it mildly.

We need those in-boo fees, but we only get them

from projects that actually happen.

Housing development operates on very thin margins.

Our city's own economic analysis found

that projects would soon become infeasible.

If we lower the base zoning,

we won't get more affordable housing to use density bonus,

we'll just get less housing overall.

I wanna end on a personal note though,

I lived on San Pablo for four years

and I absolutely loved it.

So let's create the opportunity

for more people to live there.

Thanks, Sarah.

Our next speaker is Tony Mester.

Tony, you have two minutes.

If Lauren Parsons is in the audience,

she's going to donate.

Lauren, are you still there?

I have two minutes.

Okay.

Don't see anyone yet.

Okay.

Most of the vacant and derelict lots on San Pablo Avenue are the sites of stalled projects

yet to be permitted or to break ground. I have sent you a table with data about these projects

from the Cities To Sell platform. I found 12 projects mostly six stories also one seven to

at eight that contain a potential of 1,233 units, 255 of which are affordable, meaning

rents below market. Two projects with 148 total units are 100% affordable and the rest

are density bonus projects with 107 affordable units mostly for very low income. These projects

are stalled because of the economy. And they're going to remain stalled mostly because the Fed

is raising the rates. And construction loans are 2% and 3% more than the bank rates. So nobody is

going to build in this environment. So if a higher base height were passed, the applications

for these projects could be resubmitted without the density bonus units. And the city could

potentially lose over 100 apartments for very low-income renters. Whether they would be built

elsewhere using the in-loof fees is purely speculative, but those are the facts on the

ground. One problematic factor, as Leah pointed out, is that when you raise the zoning capacity,

you increase the price of the land. So the plan designates these newly

sites and those sites aren't even for sale. They are active commercial sites. I know them all.

So my review of the pipeline shows the average density of these proposed buildings are 284 units.

So you don't really need a minimum density. Thank you. Your time's up.

Hi, our final speaker is Nancy Rader.

Good evening. I support the remarks made tonight by Meryl Siegel and Donald Simon.

We're already seeing many apartment buildings going up on San Pablo Avenue.

We can meet our housing goals without further gentrifying Berkeley and destroying its character. Please reconsider this plan. Thank you.

Thank you. Rose did you want to? Yes, thank you mayor. That concludes public comment and I'd just like to take a moment to do the Just Cause script with Councilmember Luna Parra. She'll be joining us remotely under the Just Cause justification in the Brown Act. So we'll just go ahead and go through that. Councilmember Luna Parra, are you available? Alright, perfect.

Council member Lunapara is participating in the meeting remotely pursuant to the

Brown Act under the Just Cause justification. A quorum of the council is

participating in person at a single physical location that is identified on

the agenda open to the public within the boundaries of the agency and meets

accessibility requirements. This satisfies the requirements of the Brown

Act. Council member Lunapara has notified us of her need to participate

remotely. Council member Lunapara please provide a general description of the

circumstances relating to your need to appear remotely for the remainder of this meeting.

Thank you, I'm home because of illness. Thank you, sorry to hear that. Councilmember Lunapara,

please disclose if there is any other individuals 18 years of age or older present at your remote

location in the room and if so the general nature of your relationship with such individuals.

My partner Sam Greenburg is here. That's it. Thank you. Council Member Lunapar,

you are reminded that you must participate through both audio and visual technology.

Thank you. Yes, thank you. Feel better. My gosh, we are dropping like flies over here today.

Okay everyone, wash your hands. All right, so let's see. We have just done our public comment,

so we are gonna go back here for deliberations

and comments from council members.

I have one here, Council Member Kesser-Wany,

then Taplin, then Bartlett, and go ahead.

Thank you very much, Madam Mayor,

and thank you to the public commenters,

and I wanna say, you know, I wanna make it clear,

like with the prior controversial item we had,

you know, I fully respect differences of opinion

about the best approach,

especially on this issue of the five stories

versus seven stories,

I do want to just quickly give the reasoning

for why I think seven stories is the right height

for this entire corridor.

One is keep in mind the West Berkeley plan is from 1993

and we are not updating it

until more than 30 years later tonight.

Hopefully we can take this vote, you know, 2026.

So when I think about this plan,

I'm thinking about a very long time horizon.

And so I can't risk waiting to come back to it

because there are so many people

who are marginally housed in our community

who couch surf, who sleep in cars,

who aren't sure if they're gonna be able

to make rent in the next month.

So I want us to air on the side of more rather than less.

And when we look at how much a seven-story building

It has to pay into the housing trust fund, Mr. Klein.

Can you explain how much that is

and how many affordable units that can create?

Yeah, as we noted, projects in Berkeley

typically take advantage of the state density bonus

and include units on site.

If a project were to, you know,

just some back of the envelope math,

say 150 unit project to average unit sizes,

900 square feet, our affordable housing in Louvre

fee is $633 per residential floor area.

That's about eight and a half million dollars

that goes to our affordable housing trust fund

that could provide the local match of over 40 units.

So it's significant, makes a significant impact

to the supply of affordable housing in this community.

Okay and you know the other point I want to make

about those 100% affordable housing projects,

when they are serving the formerly homeless people,

you know that some of the commenters talked about,

they want affordable housing units

for the unsheltered people in our community.

Those buildings can offer the onsite medical services

and social services and connections to other supports

and so what I want to add is

I want to make sure that this

population really needs that

that you don't find in these

buildings where you have the

inclusionary onsite mixed with

market rate building so I think

that's an important point as

well and then I did want to

respond to this.

Point that was made towards the

end that somehow developers

would resubmit and not do

density bonus projects I just

want to remind us that this

Mr. Klein, can you explain the other benefits that are conferred and why a developer would

likely still pursue a density bonus for those other benefits?

Yeah, so density bonus projects are eligible to take advantage of waivers and concessions

of local requirements that either physically preclude the project or that impact the economic

feasibility of the project.

So, I do anticipate that, actually,

even with the seven-story base height,

projects will still include on-site units

in order to qualify for waivers and concessions.

Okay, thank you very much, Mr. Klein.

So, in the interest of time and moving us along,

I want to make a motion.

Is that in order or do we need to close the public hearing?

Typically, prior to the motion,

we closed the public hearing.

So moved.

Second.

Okay, can we take the roll, please,

to close the public hearing?

Sure.

Council member Kesser-Wani?

Yes.

Tapley?

Aye.

Bartlett?

Yes.

Trega?

Aye.

O'Keeffe?

Yes.

Blackaby?

Yes.

Munabara?

Yes.

Humbert?

Yes.

Mayor Ishi?

Yes.

Okay, so I'm gonna make a motion to adopt a resolution

and do I need to read A, B, C, D in the record

as they appear on the first page of the report?

If you're adopting staff's recommendation,

you could simply state that,

staff's recommendation from the item.

Okay, I'm adopting the resolution as proposed by staff.

And then I also want to adopt the first reading

of an ordinance to amend the Berkeley Municipal Code

to create the San Pablo Commercial District

Chapter 23.202.160 and additional conforming amendments

to other sections of the municipal code.

And with that, I want to include the four amendments

that I had shown previously with one tweak.

I can show the screen again at a later point

when we're getting closer to a vote.

But the tweak I wanna make is for the family size units,

I wanna require 35% family size units.

instead of the 20% I had proposed earlier.

And I also, I'll just state that this motion

includes the language proposed by council member Traguv

and then what was added by council member O'Keeffe

and open to further discussion about that.

So that's the motion.

Second.

Thank you very much.

Can I ask a clarifying question?

Does the motion include the supplemental material

in the supplemental one

or maybe the director can clarify that?

Yes, it does.

with the amendment to the supplemental material

to lower the minimum dwelling units per acre

from 145 to 100.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Councilmember Taplin.

Thank you very much.

And thank you, Director Klein, Councilmember Cussewani,

and everyone, and Madam Mayor.

And I also wanna thank my housing advisor,

commissioner, and the commission chair,

and all of the businesses that participated

in my office's roundtables around this over the years.

in Papa merchants the University Avenue merchants all the neighbors who

participated in my early working group around this and everyone participated

and shared their feedback at the open houses and with city staff and I was so

happy to see so many of those ideas presented tonight you know I am so lucky

to not only serve the city and district I grew up in but the neighborhood that I

grew up in still live in I think one of the speakers recently moved to my

neighborhood. So welcome to my neighborhood. I grew up in section housing.

I live across from my mom in a tiny studio in a mixed in a middle housing

building with with several family units and then a tiny studio that is where me

and my books live where I my books live and you know I I spend my entire life on

this avenue. I go I bike on San Pablo to take my laundry to the laundromat. I go

like three times a week, I buy plants from Eastbury Nursery,

I get my COVID shots at the Kaiser on 10th,

and all of us who live on both sides

of San Pablo Avenue on this end of the district,

we all hang out, Missouri Lounge, heads and tails,

Acme, Middle East Cafe and Market,

and people are talking about their concerns

that the new residents won't engage in the community,

But if you go to the places where we're engaging,

you don't know who lives in one building.

If we create this vibrant, you know,

I love the part I live on,

and I want that for the entire avenue,

you know, from Emeryville to Albany,

I want all of us to have this beautiful walking experience

with these pedestrian plazas for events

and markets and everything.

And I totally understand the need for protections

and things like that,

but the way that we create protections

is by adopting a plan to do so.

So I will be supporting the motion

and I really thought I would be speaking for much longer,

but I guess that's sort of.

That's okay, it's 1030, so.

All right, Council Member Bartlett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

And I think Council Member Tapplin knows really

a wonderful illustration and it doesn't feel as good.

Oh, sorry.

I have, thanks.

I remember everyone else.

Yeah, no, but I'm so sorry.

I know it's out of, it's out of,

No, but this question about the HDF,

I care very deeply about maximizing our housing trust

fund dollars so that we can deeply

invest in these projects serving vulnerable populations

with sensitive needs.

And I also support us having the flexibility

to also create mixed income residential communities.

I think both of these things are important.

But when we are able to deeply invest using the HDF,

we can have greater determinancy around the populations

we're choosing to serve.

And I do think that matters a lot, thank you.

Thank you, okay, Council Member Bartlett, back to you.

Thank you Madam Mayor, and thank you for that addition.

Yeah, it's interesting, this last number of years

that I've served in council,

this debate has come back over and over

and I've grappled every single time.

You know, this notion of onsite affordability

versus in lieu monies to develop our own affordable housing.

And the trade-offs, they're varied for each option.

And I grapple with it every time.

Every couple years I really grapple with this,

and this is one of those nights,

and I am grappling with it.

On the one hand, a functioning ecosystem

requires economic diversity, right?

So a building, being a microcosm of the city

and of the country and of the world

would have different people living in there,

or have different strata.

And that interaction produces a sustainable community.

And what's not sustainable, of course,

is what's causing our country to topple right now,

which is the ultra-haves, ultra-have-nots.

And we've talked about this before

with the projection of people who

oppose all housing, so if we're affordable.

And fast-forwarding, the homeowners

will, when they pass on a multi-million

or buy their house for $3 million or $4 million.

And then the only person who is not a multimillionaire

will be someone living in affordable housing.

And that's a very top-heavy society

that was not going to last.

And then we're confronted with the result

of that larger economic system is resulting

in untold devastation.

People are dying on the streets, all over the country,

all over Berkeley, everywhere.

Homelessness on the rise.

There's a senior population bomb,

people who need supportive care and not getting it.

We have a trillion dollars cut from health care

in this country, resulting in more people

destitute, unable to get help, in need of supportive care.

And so I look back at my greatest hits, if you will,

the Senior Bill of Rights,

the Ashby Transit Village, the Ashby BART Station.

I look at Step-Up Housing, this supportive kid,

this new model we created.

I'm so proud, it's winning global awards, by the way.

It's really amazing work.

And small sites, my baby, where we brought buildings

and stopped displacement for families.

And this all comes from the Housing Trust Fund.

All this stuff.

And so, you know, I think tonight, as I grapple with it,

I have to confront the emergency that is our community.

And I've got to get money for the people.

And also, to answer the point as well,

regarding the predictive nature of the five-story,

and then people taking advantage of the density bonus

to get to seven by having people live inside of it,

my understanding and my observation

from the new developments that I'm

seeing that are 10 stories and so whatever,

they're all taking advantage of it as well.

They're feing out, if you will, to us.

And they're also taking advantage of the density bonus

and putting them to one side of the building.

So this may be a chance to have our cake and eat it too,

if you will, or hogs and tails if you're into barbecue,

which you know I am.

And on a quick aside, Mike, you might know this,

Paul, you know this, city manager.

What did I get in my SAT test?

Barbecue sauce, barbecue sauce.

That's a city manager joke.

Yeah, so again, so all that inside,

you know, all that on balance, you know,

I'm going to definitely be supporting

the seven story measure.

I think it is the right thing to do for the people.

And I think it does lead to economic integration

in spite of the fiat capacity.

Thank you, council member.

Okay, we are gonna go council member Blackaby,

then online to council member Humber,

and then back in person to council member Trickup.

So starting with Councilmember Blackby.

Great, thank you, Madam Mayor.

I just wanna thank everyone in the public who commented

and thank my colleagues for a really interesting discussion

and debate on an issue I know we all really care about,

which is how do we provide and produce more housing

at all price points for people to be welcome here in Berkeley.

I wanted to comment first and offer potentially

a friendly amendment to the main motion.

Let me share my screen.

This is building on some of the business support work

that Council Member Trago and Council Member O'Keefe did.

Just adding a little more,

so I mentioned it, Rashi, a little more flair

to the, for folks who are Office Space fans.

But just to flesh out a little more

of what we were thinking about in the second paragraph.

And that's, so stuff in yellow is stuff we added.

So I'm thinking that in addition

to the potential business license tax waiver,

things like establishing marketing promotional programs

to boost activity to impacted businesses

that OED could potentially coordinate

with community partners.

So if you're a business in an area that's being impacted

and you've got construction going on,

hey, can we give some extra promotional marketing support

to drive foot traffic to those businesses

while they're in that period of impact?

There's been, we've seen some success

at setting up meetings between the folks

who are managing construction and impacting businesses

to find some potential accommodations

to help people in that period.

So it's just formalizing some of that

and also suggesting that there could be

some other policy changes or waivers

during some period that might also be there.

So it's really just expanding the list of possible solutions

to give more color, more ideas

for the city manager and team to consider.

But it's really thinking, hey,

we need to be very creative here

in how we would reduce impact on the businesses.

But it's in the same spirit from Council Member Trager

and council member Shoshana O'Keefe,

but just adding a few more specific ideas

if the mover would be open to this friendly amendment.

Yes, council member Blackaby, absolutely.

I think, I wanna thank the three of you

and thank you council member Blackaby for these additions,

which I think are important to have our city manager

look into and maybe this is now a Halloween costume idea,

flair that is amendments to a land use proposal

on the Berkeley City Council, you know,

because I need something.

So thank you so much.

I accept all of this and we're good.

Okay, great.

And then I do, look, and I appreciate the discussion

about the seven stories by right, or the five stories.

I still think any way we slice it,

whether you zone for seven and get some sort of

in lieu fees paid to the housing trust fund,

or you zone for five with state density bonus,

and you also get money paid to the housing trust fund.

We're gonna fund the housing trust fund more or less.

I do think there is value in having

more affordable units on site.

And so I offer a substitute motion

that's the same as the entire base motion

that we've just laid on the table,

including the friendly amendment,

and make one change, which is to change the base

to five stories for residential.

And again, in the hopes that we are still aiming

for the seven and eight stories,

but we start with the base of five

and then let the density bonus do the work.

that's my substitute motion. I'll second that. Although can I actually sorry are you making a

friendly amendment or you're making a substitute motion? Only change. It's the same as everything

that councilmember Kesserwani outlined with the friendly amendment but setting the base to five

with the expectation the density bonus will still get us to the same place with more on-site

affordable. And so councilmember Larkivy are you also going to keep the commercial the non-residential

the building height would, it would be lower stories,

but the same feet as five stories.

So it's the similar thing is,

I hope that's clear to the clerk.

Okay, but it's clear to me.

Okay.

Okay, yeah.

Sorry, just making sure, clerk, is that clear to you?

Maybe just repeat it for me one more time.

So my only amendment is to take the same base motion.

Right.

And then Rashi, your confirmation to the clerk is,

because you're looking for the, go ahead.

The only change with the substitute is that everything

from the main motion with the change being the base

is now going to be five stories for residential.

Correct.

It was that next part.

I didn't write that down.

Sorry.

Can I just ask for clarity that because they're so similar,

I think it just makes sense that we just sever

and we vote separately on the height piece instead

of having a motion.

OK.

Thank you.

I think we just still need clarity.

So a five-story building that's residential or multi-use,

how many feet is that to do the conversion

to the non-residential?

Under the proposed zoning?

Yeah.

The residential only or mixed-use residential,

the maximum height is 75 feet and seven stories.

So I'd say like 560, for example.

Five stories, 60 feet.

So it's 60 feet to do five stories in?

that's the only way to do it.

and seven stories. So there's basically a five-foot bonus, which often allows for taller

heights on the ground floor. So the ground floor commercial space could get up to 15.

So if you wanted to do five stories, you could do five and 55.

Okay. Okay. So it's – because it's like you need to be clear. So it's five stories

and 55 feet, and then it's still 55 feet for the non-residential buildings, the commercial

and but that would get you four stories roughly just so it's clear what that is

okay that is still I feel like okay I feel like that's still not clear to I

don't know how the public is supposed to follow that so I'm gonna ask that we

have something written so we can just if someone could write something so we can

see the difference we still have some more comments and I think that will help

but in the meantime I would like to have something in writing so we can just be

clear where we're voting on okay thank you I apologize for interrupting if I

that we're going to be doing.

And I think that's a good thing.

I think that's a good thing.

I could just interject real quick here. As we're kind of contemplating the motion, the motions. If we could think about what is being severed exactly. Typically when something is severed, it means that it's a stand-alone motion. And so I just want to be clear that the severed portion is something that is adoptable and can stand alone. Excuse me, on its own.

I think it needs to be a substitute motion.

So I'll craft it with adjusted language

and make it very clear.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Okay. Thank you.

All right.

I know you both are going to be typing away for a moment.

So, okay.

So we're going to go council member Trigab,

then Humbert, then O'Keefe, then Lunapara.

Thank you.

First of all, I too just want to acknowledge

all the immense effort and work,

many commissions, particularly planning

that were engaged in this multi-year effort,

and thank you so much Director Klein and staff

for getting us to this point.

I have met with a number of stakeholders

as has my office, of course.

There is going to be a deference

to the West Berkeley representatives,

but this is something that impacts the entire city.

And I want to be part of

making sure that whatever decision we arrive at is the highest and best use for the most number of people,

and in particular, those who have the fewest resources right now,

for a Berkeley that truly, as many people as possible, can call home.

I am grateful that the small business anti-displacement language and

commercial mitigation language was added. Thank you so much to Councilmember

Kessarwani for being amenable to that in your motion and thank you to my

colleagues for putting this together. I think this is really going to be a

a great representation of where we are going as we try to not just balance, but try to

find a win-win between vibrant neighborhoods and maximizing housing opportunities, affordable

housing and as we affirmatively further fair housing as well.

I want to briefly, before I get to the crux of the matter

on five versus seven stories just mentioned too,

I appreciate that the language is,

or the plan contemplates a local density bonus

for quantuization, and that is an item

that I co-sponsored that Council Member Casarwani authored.

I will say that should this come back to a future council,

I would like to make sure that any residential ownership

or condominium pilot, including the one devised here,

shall require on-site inclusionary affordable units

and that such owner occupied units shall be exempt

from just making sure, basically,

that it is sold as condos, and it stays as condos,

and it cannot be gained to become something

different in the future in order to maximize home ownership,

including first-time home ownership opportunities

or housing for seniors.

Now getting to the five versus seven,

I have struggled mightily with this question

because I personally think that there are benefits to both.

I think about the Housing Trust Fund was really,

the funding that was in there is what made possible projects

such as the one in my district, the Hope Center,

which provides 60 beds, 60 units

of deeply affordable housing

for those coming out of homelessness,

collocated with onsite supportive services.

And while that is in downtown and not West Barkley,

and I would love to see

as many deeply affordable housing opportunities

in West Barkley,

in order to maximize highest and best use,

I am going to be arriving at the seven story variant

in terms of the residential height, thank you.

Thank you, I just wanna be clear,

were you suggesting any additions?

You were mentioning something.

No, so thank you.

So council member Luna, the response to council member

Luna Paris question, which I think was about this is that,

and maybe I'll just ask staff to reiterate

the local density bonus for condos.

That is something that is referred to in a conceptual way,

but still needs to be studied before it comes back

to the council correct?

That's correct, it requires more staff analysis

and would have to go back before the point of commission

and then come back before city council before adoption.

Yeah, so I am comfortable with not adding language

but I do hope that this is something that staff takes

under serious consideration when this comes back.

Thank you, okay, thank you for clarifying.

So, okay, now we have Council Member Humbert,

Council Member O'Keefe, Council Member Luna Parra,

then Council Member Tappan, then Council Member Wani.

I'll run you through it, I'm just to be clear,

because the parliamentarian versus the online thing

that we're discussing.

Okay, and yeah, second.

To 11.30 p.m.?

Yeah. 11.30.

Okay, very good.

Council Member Humbert?

Would you like me to take the roll on that?

Oh, sorry, yes.

Thank you.

Okay, to suspend the rolls and extend the meeting to 11.30,

Council Member Kesser-Wani?

Yes.

Tappan?

Aye.

Bartlett?

Okay yes. Blackaby? Yes. Munepara? Yes. Humbert? Yes. And Mayor Ishi? Yes thank

you. All right thank you very much. Okay council member Humbert. Okay thank you

Madam Mayor and I want to start out with thank yous of course to Director Cline,

Justin Horner, Phil Erickson, Ann Hirsch, members of the Planning Commission,

council members Kasawani and Tapplin, and all the members of the public for

their engagement on this. I've appreciated the comments made about the Housing Trust Fund.

It's really provided a tremendous number of deeply affordable supportive units in this town

and it's really been valuable. I'm thinking of Councilmember Bartlett's step-up housing.

I'm thinking of the Hope Center. I'm thinking of Jordan Court. I'm thinking of the Maudel

Chirac building which is just not too far from from my district and in council member Bartlett's

district. These are all really critical housing units for those people who need wraparound services.

So you know the Housing Trust Fund is doing great great things and we're actually able to use the

housing trust fund monies to leverage at some really significant percentage and get additional

monies added. The biggest unresolved questions as I see them are the heights, commercial building

heights and minimum density standards, and I'm happy we're kind of winding up on building heights.

Of course, you know, there are arguments on both sides, a strong argument and maybe five stories

encourages the maximum provision of affordable housing.

At the same time, I think there's also an argument for a street as wide as San

Pablo supporting taller heights and that perhaps in the future there

will be construction types like mass timber that will allow the

buildings to go even higher. But so far we haven't seen that in

Berkeley. What I do not agree with is this idea

that we've heard that if we allow seven stories on San

Pablo, we are automatically required or even obliged to allow that on any

commercial corridor in the city. Frankly I think this is false and I don't think people should

make the argument whether sincerely or as a scare tactic. Affirmatively furthering fair housing

does not mean every single street with commercial uses or not needs to have the same building heights

across a roadway width. We've already adopted different zoning in downtown on south side,

along Adeline, and this has not resulted in legal or HCD action against the City with respect to

affirmatively furthering fair housing. We already have multiple pieces of state legislation

including AB 2011 and AB 893 which use roadway width as a determining factor for building heights,

so I don't think we're going to have any problem if we continue to factor that in. With respect to

commercial density I don't think it makes sense to restrict this to three stories and I think we're

we're past that and as far as minimum density standards I see both sides of it and I think that

council member's suggestion of 100 units dwelling units per acre makes sense I think that's a good

that's a good place to land I think it helps encourage family size units and that's really

these are, you know, this has been a really interesting discussion. I've liked, I've really enjoyed hearing from everyone, and I'm waiting to to vote on it and I'm glad that we're going to get there tonight.

Thank you. Okay. Council Member O'Keefe.

Sam Parrow is such a nice part of town. Can we all agree? I'm just really glad to be giving it the love that it deserves.

it's actually like, it's a really long street.

If you look outside of Berkeley,

it's one of the longest kind of most important streets

in the East Bay, and there's so much going on.

And our segment of it is especially nice.

I just wanted to call that out.

We've got trees, we've got so many small businesses,

we already have a lot of housing.

It's just, it's great.

So I'm just, I want to start with that.

I'm really glad to see where expanding warehousing

is allowed, those couple lots that we're adding

the city of the city of the

very philosophically drawn to the value

of economic integration.

I think that's just really important

whenever we're building housing,

if we can make sure that people of all incomes

can live together, that to me is just a value

that I wanna promote.

So that's my reason for voting for the five-story limit,

but I don't have super large confidence it's gonna pass

and that's okay, I think.

We're gonna pass a great plan tonight

and I'm really excited for that.

And those are my comments.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Leno-Pah.

Thank you.

I wanna talk some more about this policy question

that we're having about onsite units

versus 100% affordable housing,

because it's a very interesting one,

especially as someone with a planning background,

this is something that the academic field and housing

actually grapples with a lot.

There is no single answer as the best form

of affordable housing.

Low income folks looking for affordable housing

want different things

because low income people are not a monolith.

Some want units in a mixed income building and some want to live in a 100% affordable building that is tailored to their specific needs. Some want the city to help keep them house and cooperatively manage small sites buildings and we have heard a lot from community input for all these types of affordable housing.

Some would also benefit strongly from permanent supportive housing units for formerly on house folks and we can use the housing trust fund money to pay for all of these.

I also want to assure everyone, all the speakers,

that this inclusionary fee is not a small amount.

Our planning director spoke to it earlier,

but a single project can add millions of dollars

into the housing trust fund that can help fight displacement

and build new units, that's huge.

All of this to say that I think

onsite affordable units are fantastic,

but they are not the only answer.

And I think seven stories base height

is the right way to embrace this diversity.

Thank you, and thank you to planning staff.

Thank you council member Leno Para, council member Taplan.

Thank you very much.

In addition to everything we've just heard,

I would just offer that as a multi-modal person,

a representative of transit dependent persons

and households, and as the city's representative

on the ACTC, St. Pebble Avenue

is a inter-regional mixed use commercial corridor.

It's a transit corridor.

And we know that with more people riding transit,

this will help us increase ridership

to save our transit agencies, our transit partners.

And I think that, you know, looking at our,

where our emissions are coming from as a city,

is what I feel is the most appropriate height, base height,

to achieve our climate goals, our housing goals,

and our transit goals.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Casarwani.

No, I'm ready to vote.

I, uh...

Okay, Council Member Blackaby.

So I will, uh, so we have, let's roll the tape here.

This is the final comparison.

Okay, so just for clarity.

So in the current, in the packet,

this is what's coming from planning commission,

planning staff, non-residential.

This is page 942, table 23, 20445.

So non-residential is 40 feet and three stories,

residential is 75 and seven.

The main motion from Council Member Kester-Wani

keeps residential at 75 and seven

and changes non-residential to 75 and five, right?

And then my substitute motion moves non-residential to 55 and 4 stories and residential to 55

and 5 with the assumption that with the density bonus, again, we get back to 7 or 8.

So I believe those are the key changes between.

The only just quick minor thing is, so technically, Mr. Klein, we had talked about non-residential

so it could be as much as 15 feet per floor.

Is this, when we say 55 feet and four stories,

it doesn't allow for 15 feet.

It's like 13 and three quarters.

Is that close enough for this?

Yeah, or I mean, if somebody was dead set on 15 feet,

they could do a three story.

Right, so it's a possibility that the 55 feet

only leads to three stories, so it's three to four.

It depends how they wanna build their building.

I just wanted to make that point.

okay thank you okay so thank you very much for doing that i appreciate it i just think

it's really helpful for the public because there's so many numbers it gets we get very wonky at the

end of the night and i just want to make sure the public really understands so um i i did just have

a few comments um i i would say that i want to align myself with council member bartlett's

comments i think he really beautifully described that tension between our sort of options around

the height and i want to address that first because actually that's really kind of the smallest piece

I know you all have put in a

massive amount of time and

energy and energy and energy

and I know you all have put in

a massive amount of time and

energy and energy and energy

and energy and energy.

I know you all have put in a

massive amount of time and

energy and energy and energy.

I know you all have put in a

massive amount of time and

energy.

I know you all have put in a

massive amount of time and

energy.

I know you all have put in a

massive amount of time and

energy.

I know you all have put in a

massive amount of time and

energy.

I know you all have put in a

massive amount of time and

energy.

I know you all have put in a

massive amount of time and

energy.

I know you all have put in a

from housing trust funds and I really want to thank all the work that staff has done. I know you all have put a massive amount of time and energy and thought into this and so I really want to thank you not only for your work but also for you advising us and reading all these different things that we've sent to you and reviewing them so thank you to all of you and to our city attorney's office as well.

and I am taking a step back from this as well.

This is a really exciting opportunity for us.

There's so much excitement to me

to really be able to breathe some more life

into this corridor.

And so I really want to thank Councilmember Taplin

for his work in reaching out to the community

and also just your joy around your neighborhood.

I think that that is really a beautiful thing,

being able to walk to all of these different restaurants

and doctor's appointments and grocery stores,

different establishments in your neighborhood,

like that's kind of the dream, we want that for our city.

And so I really wanna thank you for kind of keeping that

in our kind of our site.

And I do just also wanna say a thank you

to the council members who have all put in things around

supporting our businesses.

That's something that's also really important to me.

I just did my State of the City on doing business in Berkeley.

And one of the things that we talked about

was support for like mid-sized spaces

that we want places for smaller businesses

to be able to grow into as well.

And so I do support having more commercial spaces

for that in particular.

And I think that's all I wanted to say.

Just thank you all so much for your thought

and working together.

Really appreciate when we're able to kind of have compromise

and have this discussion, it's very rich.

the city. So we have a motion.

motion. Okay. Let's go to the

motion. Okay. Let's vote on the

main motion, please. On the

main motion. Councilmember

Kesser, Wani? Yes. Taplin? Aye.

Bartlett? Yes. Tracop? Aye. O'Keefe?

Yes. Blackaby? Yes. Unapara? Yes.

Humbert? Yes. Maryishi? Yes. Motion

So we need to vote to what the proper terminology rose.

I'm sorry.

So my understanding is we will not be getting to item 35

tonight having to do with the affordable housing

preference policy if council would like to continue

this item to a future meeting date.

A motion would be in order and a date certain for the item.

I will entertain a motion.

So moved.

Can we have a second?

the city of Toronto. Thank you.

Thank you. And I'm going to

move that to 10 13. Thank you.

Yes. And yeah, they certain 10.

13. Yes. Okay. And is there a

second? A second from Councilman

Bartlett. Okay. All right. So to

continue item 35 to the October

13th Council meeting Council

the motion is seconded by the

Hi, here, I'd just like to make a comment about the Gaza genocide.

The Lancet Institute made an actual figure of how many people died in Gaza, over 600,000.

Palestinian issue is wrong.

Half of them are children and babies.

They were incinerated, they were destroyed, they were evaporated.

Israel dropped over six Hiroshima atom bomb on the smallest tiny vector of Gaza.

All humans, when you come to this horrible earth, whenever given a choice,

what are you going to be born as? Germany, Egypt, America, this is a horrible mess.

And the biggest loser in the process, Israel, is the most hated word in the whole world right now.

Netanyahu is a criminal, he's been in prison, not a president.

Thank you and have a beautiful evening.

Bye.

Thank you.

Um, oh, we have people in person, but we also have someone else online, but let's just finish

the online first and we'll come in.

Go ahead.

Sure.

Um, our final online speaker is CLP.

Hi.

Uh, thank you, this is Casey again from D2, thanks for an exciting meeting tonight.

as somebody who chooses to not drive as much as possible,

I wanted, and I know some of you do that as well,

I wanted to let you all know that this week,

starting October 1st is a week without driving.

I have the option to drive,

but a lot of people in this country do not,

including many members of our community here in Berkeley.

I'll send you an email with some follow-up,

but I would like you all to take a moment

and think what would change in your life

if driving was not an option?

And so there's tons of people who cannot drive,

whether they're too young, too old,

too disabled, too poor, to be able to afford a car.

And so Week Without Driving was started by non-drivers

up in Washington State.

It's a nationwide movement at this point,

and I'd love to encourage you all

to participate.

I'm not on social media, so I can't encourage and support you there, but it's a great way

to start to think about members of our community who cannot drive and how do they get around

and what is life like for them when transportation is a constant struggle.

So thank you all and I look forward to hearing your Week Without Driving stories.

Thank you.

Anyone else online?

All right, we also have our last online speaker.

Thank you very much.

Kelly, take it away.

Okay, I got two minutes.

I wish I brought my phone camera up here

so I could take pictures of you on your phones.

If we're gonna have back-to-back meetings,

I think it'd be really nice

if we had a food truck down here

so that we could have a little snack

since we're, some of us are here from four until 1130,

and we could make that.

So different suppliers of food in our city

would have an opportunity to share that with us.

So why don't we think about a food truck here?

I think it'd be a great idea, and I see some thumbs up,

so I'd really like that.

I'd also like to suggest at meetings like this

where we have back to back meetings

and we have the heaviest item at the end of the evening,

I would really ask you to reconsider

the order of your agenda items.

It would be really nice to have these items

that require a lot of thought at the beginning of the meeting

rather than at the end of the meeting.

And we had the easy stuff on consent at the end

that we could just pass and get rid of.

And then we have one theater left in our city,

the Elmwood.

I don't count the Pacific Archives

because they're not really showing current film

most of the time, but we do have the Elmwood.

And there is a film that I would like to recommend

to all of you, and it's probably not gonna be

an easy film to watch.

and that is NASA.

And it opens on the 9th at the onward

and it received 25 minutes standing ovation

at the Venice Film Festival and I would ask you all to go.

Thank you.

Thanks, Kelly.

I support food trucks outside.

All right.

Good evening, everyone.

Esteemed council members, thank you for the opportunity

to offer a recommendation for strengthening

the housing preference process.

As a Maudel Miller Sherek resident,

the application process illustrates why organizations

paid to conduct outreach

for the affordable housing preference policy

must be evaluated based on advocacy efforts

that continue after someone joins a waiting list.

My application was submitted

through Maudel Miller Sherek leasing team,

which consisted of RCD and John Stewart,

where I was notified via email

that applicants' positions could change

based on preferences they were able to verify.

At the interview stage, applicants were told

that arriving 30 minutes late would require rescheduling,

that only one reschedule was allowed,

and that a $15 fee per adult had to be paid

by money order or cashier's check

at the time of the interview.

I firmly believe these requirements created loopholes through which an eligible applicant

could lose an opportunity despite qualifying for housing preference. Therefore, organizations

funded to conduct outreach should serve as applicant advocates, helping descendants and

other eligible applicants complete applications, gather verification documents, prepare for

and fees, and respond promptly when an appointment is missed or paperwork remains incomplete.

Their deliverables should include completed and incomplete applications, verified preferences,

and reporting on how many applicants ultimately secure housing.

A clear handoff between outreach advocates and the leasing team

would help applicants navigate through every stage of the housing preference process

where no eligible applicants will be left behind.

Thank you and I am complete.

Thank you for your perfectly timed comment.

All right, any other public comments this evening?

Off agenda, okay.

Is there a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

A second.

I was like, no motion, all right.

Okay, can we take the wrong that, please?

All right, to adjourn, Council Member Kezerwani.

Yes.

Taplan.

Yes.

Bartlett.

Yes.

Triguth.

Aye.

O'Keeffe.

Yeah.

Blackaby.

Yes.

Munepara.

Yes.

Humbert.

Yes.

Marishi.

Yes.

We are adjourned.

Thanks, everybody.

Have a good evening.

Get home safely.

Recording stopped.

City Council - September 29, 2026

Agenda

1. Increase Spending Authority to Create Purchase Orders Against Contract No.

2. Contract No. 32600016 Amendment: Team Ghilotti South Cove West Lot

3. Increased Spending Authority: East Bay Regional Communications System

4. Loan Administration Board Dissolution; Repealing BMC Chapter 3.72

5. Minutes for Approval

6. Formal Bid Solicitations and Request for Proposals Scheduled for Possible

7. Adopt Resolution Approving Publicly Available Pay Schedule

8. Appointment of Director of Police Accountability

9. Contract: Agile Occupational Medicine for Occupational Health Services

10. Contract No. 32100138 Amendment: AnchorCM for On-call Waterfront Project

11. Contract No. 32400043 Amendment: Elavon, Inc. for Online Credit Card

12. Donation: Memorial Bench at the Berkeley Waterfront in Memory of Mike

13. Amendment to BMC Chapter 2.99 to Establish Surveillance Technology Vendor

14. Contract No. 31900143 Resolution Amendment: Passport Labs Incorporated

15. Contract No. 32400003 Amendment: Cooke & Associates Background

16. Grant: Fiscal Year 2027 Alcohol Policing Partnership (APP) Grant

17. Revenue Grant: Cannabis Tax Fund Grant Program (CTFGP) Acceptance

18. Alameda County Transportation Commission Comprehensive Investment

19. Contract No. 32600193 Amendment: Bay Construction Co. for Transfer Station

20. Contract: IDAX Traffic Data, LLC for On-call Traffic Survey Consulting Services

21. Contract: One Workplace Construction LLC dba Vantis for 1947 Center St.

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