Okay, hello everyone, good evening.
All right, I'm calling this meeting to order.
I'm calling the Berkeley City Council meeting to order.
Today is Tuesday, October 13, 2026, and it is 6.06 p.m.
Can we please start off with a roll?
Okay.
And the next member Kesser
Whani is here.
Tapplin is currently absent.
Triggum, pleasant, O'Keeffe,
Blackaby, here.
Lunapara, Humbert, present.
And Mary Ishii.
Here.
Okay, Quorum is present.
Thank you very much.
I believe it's the first meeting
of the month, so I will read
very appropriate given that we just had indigenous people say yesterday. So the City of Berkeley
recognizes that the community we live in was built on the territory of Huchun, the ancestral
and unseated land of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people, the ancestors and descendants of the
sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. This land was and continues to be of great importance to all
of the Ohlone tribes and descendants of the Verona Band. As we begin our meeting tonight,
we acknowledge and honor the original inhabitants of Berkeley, the documented 5,000 year history
of a vibrant community at the West Berkeley Shell Mound and the Ohlone people who continue
to reside in the East Bay. We recognize that Berkeley's residents have and continue to
benefit from the use and occupation of this unsteaded stolen land since the City of Berkeley's
incorporation in 1878. As stewards of the laws regulating the City of Berkeley, it's not only
that we recognize the history of this land,
but also recognize that the Ohlone people are present members
of Berkeley and other East Bay communities today.
The city of Berkeley will continue to build relationships
with the Lejeune tribe and to create meaningful actions
that uphold the intention of this land acknowledgement.
Thank you.
We now have a number of ceremonial matters this evening,
starting off with the acknowledgement
of our director of police accountability,
Both are outgoing interim former director
and also our incoming director.
And so perhaps I will just turn it over to the both of you.
Did you want to share anything?
And then I have a few words I want to say too.
I'm going to say a few words and then Director Opplebles.
Thank you honorable mayor and members of the city council.
It's been an honor and a privilege
to serve this city once again.
I've been here a little over six months now,
and one of the things I look forward to
in my re-retirement is getting back to my exercise routine
because all my pants are getting a little tight.
That exercise includes pickleball because, yes,
I became one of those people in my first retirement.
I have to say I was surprised and overwhelmed
by the incredibly positive reception I faced
I returned. I had apparently built up a cache of goodwill that simply wasn't evident to me
and it triggered a dormant case of imposter syndrome that I've been fighting to beat back
down ever since. The number one question from friends and family members when I came back to
work was, why? Why are you going back to work? Of course a big reason I returned was because I
care very much about making sure the Office of Director of Police Accountability and the Police
accountability board remained functioning. In my remarks upon being appointed, read by
the mayor in my absence, I said that I felt strongly about making sure that meaningful
civilian oversight of our police department lives on and that I am a true believer in
the value of community members helping keep our police accountable and ensuring that police
policies, practices, and procedures
reflect this city's values.
I'm still a believer.
I've had a front row look at the new
and emerging technologies available to law enforcement
with our department on the cusp of adopting some of them.
I can say they're exciting and scary.
Exciting for helping our police department prevent
and solve crimes more expeditiously and more safely.
Scary for the potential intrusions
into the privacy of law abiding civilians.
I see an important role for the ODPA and the PAB
in monitoring the uses of these new technologies.
Back to where I returned.
Knowing that my tenure would not and could not drag
on endlessly was another big enticement.
I thank the mayor and the council for working quickly
to find a new permanent director.
And you have chosen well in Mary Opler.
Thanks also to HR for figuring out how to keep me on
for these two weeks after she started,
because it's been an invaluable opportunity
to help Mary get oriented.
Finally, I came back because I had a lot of faith
and trust in many of the city's leadership
with whom I had worked with before,
including City Manager Paul Boudenhagen,
Deputy City Manager Dave White,
City Attorney Faruma Brown,
Deputy City Attorney Sam Harvey,
Police Chief Jen Lewis,
Deputy Chief Jen Tate and Captain Joe Okies.
After working with them for six months,
that faith and trust has not wavered.
I've had the pleasure of working with new faces,
including the Mayor,
Human Resources Director Janelle Rodriguez,
HR Manager Monica Walker,
Steven Heilis in the City Attorney's Office,
and Arlo Momburg at BPD.
I wanna thank the members of the Police Accountability Board,
all of whom are new to me,
and who are putting in so much of their volunteer time
and thought into their work.
With special thanks to Chair Josh Cayetano
and Vice Chair Leah Wilson,
whose efforts have been far above and beyond
what is typically expected of those positions.
Last but not least, huge amounts of gratitude to my staff,
Jose Murillo, Dan Weinberg and Saeed Mehdi,
again, for holding down the fort
for two months without a director
and for their support these past six months of me as interim
and for their commitment to the work of votersite.
Because the title,
Former Returning Interim Director of Police Accountability
is really too unwieldy,
you can just call me Director Emerita.
Thank you.
And hello all, I'm Mary Oppler,
I'm the new Director of Police Accountability,
and I just wanted to say thank you so much, Director Lee.
Kathy has been an absolute godsend.
Coming here, I didn't know what I was gonna get
until you really get boots on the ground.
You don't know what an organization
is truly gonna be like, and I am incredibly impressed.
The staff has been absolutely lovely.
They have made this transition very easy.
They're very hardworking and Director Lee
is incredibly generous to not only come back
into this role but agree to stay on an extra two weeks
because I know she wants to get back to retired life.
And I just want the community to know
that you have been in good hands.
I am very impressed with the staff,
Director Lee's leadership and the hard work of the board.
I am very impressed by the work that they're doing.
I've worn many hats in my life as a public servant.
The one I identify with most isn't being an attorney
or working in oversight.
It's actually my time at the American Red Cross
because I believe in people power.
And I'm just so excited to see Berkeley out here,
see this level of civic engagement just warms my heart.
And I think this is really going to be an excellent fit.
So I look forward to working with all of you.
And again, thank you so much, Kathy,
for everything you've done.
Thank you.
don't leave yet. So you know the police accountability board has already sent a
formal thank you and a resolution to thank you Kathy for returning and Kathy
told me I already have a day named after me don't do that so I'm trying
without trying to embarrass you too much I did just want to say thank you very
much for your service and for returning to the city it was incredibly essential
to us that we had, someone that had community trust,
and, you know, it's, your work really speaks for itself.
The community members, the council, city staff,
everyone was very thrilled that you were returning,
and I just really want to thank you very much
for coming and holding down the fort,
and of course, they have a very warm welcome to Mary Opler.
We're very excited to continue to work with you.
We just have a very small token of appreciation for you,
Cathy, that I'm gonna bring over to you, so thank you.
Thank you so much. All right. We have a short virtual presentation by Director Barnally
Ghosh with PowerPoint and they will be given some time to speak and then I would like to
ask that council if you do have some brief questions you may ask them but we have quite
a long number of things on our ceremonial calendar
and also on our calendar this evening.
So if you could keep them brief.
Okay, Barnaly, are you here?
Hi, Director Ghosh, oh, there you are.
Hey, everyone.
Thank you for accommodating me this evening.
I'm Badali Ghosh.
I'm the board board director for District 3
and I represent Berkeley, also Berkeley resident.
We wanted to just give you a brief update
on what's been going on at BART.
Some of the good news and also what to expect, depending on how the regional transit measure goes in November. So if I could have the next slide.
Bart, if you've been writing Bart lately, I hope you've noticed that our stations are cleaner. The system is more reliable. We're doing everything we can to accommodate the writers who are back.
We've used a multi-pronged approach to safety with the new fare gates that are new infrastructure. It's reduced our maintenance costs. We have police riding our trains.
We have transit ambassadors, crisis intervention specialists. So, we can keep riders safe and also make sure folks who might be facing issues are connected to services.
We're cleaning our trains at twice the rate and we have all new trains, which train cars, the fleet of the future, which is much easier to clean and I am rushing because I know we have limited time and I want to make sure we have at least a couple of minutes for questions.
Next slide, we always like to remind people
that you can now tap and write.
You can use your bank card to use VART.
And for folks who need it,
we have a 50% off clipper start to support writers
who are low income, our students,
and also our seniors get a discount.
VART and other agencies have been really working hard
to make sure our schedules sync up.
It's a challenging process with all of the different schedules and frequencies,
but it has been something that has been the focus of
all our agencies since the pandemic and we continue to do that.
So every six months, we try to realign and rebalance all the schedules,
so passengers don't have to wait between taking services.
At Downtown Berkeley, we have new improved LED lighting,
also at many of our other stations.
During the pandemic, we heard loud and clear from writers that safety was a concern.
Cleanliness was a concern,
so we're using, like I said,
a multi-pronged approach to deal with issues of real safety,
but also perception of safety,
which better lighting helps us make our passengers feel more safe.
Next slide. Downtown Berkeley is our busiest station.
It's my home station.
And this is going to be something we all
have to think about, all of the people who
might be impacted if the regional transit
measure doesn't pass.
Because of the university, we have huge improvements,
increases in ridership since the students voted for Bay Pass.
We're also investing in the cities
that we run through, working in partnership with all of you
To deliver 1300 housing units at not Berkeley and Ashby stations. We're also working with the city in partnership to make sure that bought riders have more ways and safer ways to get to our stations by working in partnership to deliver a bike and pedestrian station access improvements.
Boardable is a very popular thing that board does,
and we're always excited to partner
with our Downtown Berkeley Association,
our arts institutions,
and we hope to continue to do that in the future.
Next slide.
So one of the things I wanna talk about
is how we are very efficient,
and we have one of the lowest operating costs
per passenger mile for heavy rail operators,
and this is a very distinct category.
And operating costs have been growing below inflation
compared to our peer agencies.
And because of this distinct system that we are,
that we're a fixed rail system,
our service doesn't always scale
with the cost of operating it.
So cuts in service don't always deliver
The kind of cost cutting that we might need to balance our budget. So it's a very sort of sensitive unique system and so disproportionate service reductions put revenues from fairs at risk because they don't save us money proportionally.
So that's something we've considered sort of going forward next slide.
One of the things that was very important to me,
I said on the audit committee,
is that we have structures in place
to make sure our public dollars are being used well.
So Bard's Office of the Inspector General,
which is our independent auditor,
does performance audits that help us as directors
make better decisions and helps our staff deliver
a better product to our writers.
And they also investigate allegations
of waste, fraud, and abuse.
This is really critical to managing
and gaining the public's trust.
That being said, in 2026,
there was an additional independent financial efficiency
review that was conducted as part of SB 63,
which was the legislative item that led
to the regional transit measure being on the November ballot.
And that showed that at BART,
we've already been trying to save money,
516 million in operating costs through service reductions,
workforce controls, operational efficiencies.
This is between 2019 and 2025.
We also reduced our capital costs by 519 million
and increased revenue by 99 million.
So we are gonna continue to look at what kind of cost cuts
we can do without impacting our riders.
That is very personally important to me.
You will notice though that some of these cost cuts
have impacts on riders.
We're running shorter trains during some of the commute hours
and I hear from people, hey, Bart's getting crowded.
Can you add more cars?
And we can, and every car that we add consumes electricity
and increases our costs, and we have to make sure
that that's balanced with increased revenue.
Next slide.
As you all might be familiar with already,
we are facing a deficit,
and a big reason for this deficit.
It's a historic underfunding
of public transit agencies in the US,
but it's also a direct outcome of the pandemic.
due to remote work and just people working differently
and traveling for different reasons,
our ridership has dropped compared to pre-pandemic ridership.
And what that means is that we are facing
a $370 million structural deficit.
If the regional transit measure doesn't pass,
if the measure passes, we would get 310 million.
We would still have to make some cuts
and we are committed to not increasing rider fares
and doing that with continued efficiencies
and also hoping that ridership continues to trend up.
However, if it doesn't pass,
then the board board approved an alternative service plan
that would go into effect in January,
that would include service stopping at 9 PM,
stations, closures, employee layoffs,
and some of these employee layoffs would be our police officers,
our cleaning staff, all of the things that make
board easy to use and safe to use and fun to use.
So, like I was saying, the good news is, ridership is trending up.
Almost all of our riders have come back, they're just riding fewer days a week.
That's just where we are in terms of people going back to work.
However, we are seeing, you know, big events are bringing ridership back.
Like you can see here, October 6th was the highest ridership day since 2020.
And on the days that people are going back to work, the most popular days for in-person
work, we are regularly going above 200,000. But just a reminder that before the pandemic,
our ridership was around 400,000 plus. So even though ridership is trending up,
that is not enough to close our deficit. With every 5% increase in ridership,
we make about 13 million in new fare revenue, but that is a very small step towards closing
a 370, $380 million revenue. So we're excited that people are coming back. They're noticing
our new trains, customer satisfaction is up at 91% and more, so we are doing everything we can
and we hope that this will gain the trust of riders and that we can continue to operate
into the future. Last slide, if you have any questions that I can't answer today, please
feel free to reach out to me directly. Also, Henry Simmons is in the audience today if you want to
chat in person. And I will stop there and see if there's any questions folks have. The thing I
think about the most as somebody who also lives in Berkeley is what happens to our Berkeley
institutions, to UC Berkeley. Yeah, and you can stop sharing this slideshow. What happens to UC
Berkeley? What happens to our downtown businesses if the measure fails? So much of the health of
downtown of our residents here, people who come here for work, for play, depends on BART.
And of course, this is not just about BART, it's all our transit agencies are facing this crisis.
So thank you for giving me the time today and for accommodating me while I recover.
And I'm going to stop now. Thank you, Maryshi.
Thank you very much. Are there any quick questions for Director Ghosh?
I did just want to check and see if Peralta students would be receiving something like Bay Pass.
Funnily, we did meet with one of the Chancellor's, Vice-Chancellors, and we did discuss that.
I think those discussions will be ongoing. They already have, I guess, Easy Pass
that they use on their shuttles. If board survives, those will definitely be conversations.
I think we've talked, there's definitely student interest for Bay Pass.
We just have to have the conversation when we don't know what the future of our transit
systems is.
Totally understandable.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for being here and for presenting and also, Henry Simmons, thank you.
I know you're in the audience as well.
Thank you.
All right.
Very good.
So moving on, we have two proclamations, one for United Against Hate Week, which was requested
by Councilmember Blackaby.
Excuse me, Vice Mayor, are you Vice Mayor now?
Vice Mayor Blackaby.
all right very good and one thing I did just want to say is that you know with
us being in election season that there has been a lot of very intense and
inappropriate hateful rhetoric and so I did just want to call that out and say
you know as mayor it's very important to me that we on the council are
continuing to uphold these values I mean we have this United Against Hate
proclamation that's here that we're speaking to today,
and I really want to make sure that we as a community
are continuing to fight against hate
and to speak up when we see anything
that's wrong or hateful.
And so I want to say that not only here
in this political, in our setting here on the dais,
but also out in the community and on the campaign trail.
So I do want to call on all candidates
to our campaigning right now to really be,
speak out when they see things like that.
And I wanna thank my council member colleagues
because I feel like the tone that we have set here
on the dais, especially over the last two years,
has been really very positive in working together.
And so I really wanna applaud us for that
and also encourage us to continue to do that.
I think it's very important as our city leaders,
especially when we see what's happening
the federal government level. So I will pass it over to Councilmember Blackaby.
Thank you Madam Mayor. That's Ray Yap to step forward. We're pleased to be joined
today by Ray. Ray is a volunteer with Not in Our Town which was the
organization that launched United Against Hate in 2017. And so Ray on behalf
of many other people who are here and who are not here is going to accept the
proclamation tonight. I just want to associate myself with the mayor's words.
We'll read the proclamation, but I think with the proclamation together as a
council, as a community, we're saying loudly and with one voice that hate has
no place in Berkeley, whether it's anti-Jewish hate, anti-Muslim hate, anti-
trans, anti-LGBT hate, hate in all its forms. As the mayor said, whether that's
on the campaign trail here at council meetings or any other civic gathering
large or small, that's true across the board
here in Berkeley and I think it's important
for us all to ratify that.
This is the proclamation that the mayor has made,
proclaiming United against hate week in Berkeley.
Whereas the United States is a nation of immigrants
whose strength comes from its diversity,
and whereas the Constitution enshrines equality
on all individuals regardless of race, gender,
orientation, religion, or political view,
and whereas rhetoric continues to generate
a toxic environment that encourages the propagation
of racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic,
sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and other bigoted views
by emboldened hate groups and individuals.
And whereas deep divisions within our country
are the result of extreme ideology,
further strengthening a cycle of mistrust and suspicion
fueled by fear, anxiety, and insecurity.
And whereas the city of Berkeley is
dedicated to preventing and opposing hate and intolerance
in our communities.
Berkeley started United Against Hate Week in 2017,
which has since expanded into a national movement.
And whereas education, compassion, and cooperation
are key to unlocking understanding
and embracing differences between people,
with United Against Hate Week an important step
in bridging divisions and strengthening our communities.
And whereas Minnesota Neighbors, a film profiling
the brave actions of Minnesota residents
during ICE's operation Metro Surge,
will screen at the Grand Lake Theater
on October 21st at 7 p.m.
Now therefore be it resolved that Adina Ishii,
mayor of the city of Berkeley,
does hereby proclaim October 18 to 24, 2026,
as United Against Hate Week in the city of Berkeley.
Thank you.
Would you wanna say anything, Ray?
Mayor Ishe, council members, I'm Ray Yip.
I'm pleased and happy to be here
to represent Patrice O'Neill.
She's the founder of Not in Our Town
and the Not in Our Town organization.
Patrice is very busy these days.
There are 11 premier showings of Minnesota Neighbors.
So she's flying around and representing all of these openings
at various cities like Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Los Angeles,
and of course in Oakland next Wednesday on October 21st
at the Grand Lake Theater.
I had the opportunity to work with Jack McCormick
and Patrice back in 2018 or 2019.
So very close to the beginning,
and that was a Bay Area effort.
And I think all of you have seen the signs
all over the city, including in your offices.
And we are happy that Berkeley has kept up its commitment
to anti-hate and racism by continuing your support
for United Against Hate Week, which is only next week.
So I hope all of you have signed up or will sign up
to attend the premier showing next Wednesday.
And I'm going to pass around to the clerk's office,
this flyer and also another sign
in case you need another one.
And hope to see you at the premier showing next Wednesday.
Thank you for your support.
Hey, moving on for our final proclamation this evening.
We have one on pregnancy and infant loss awareness month,
which is October, 2026.
It was requested by council member Humbert
and he's online right now and we'll read it from there.
And I believe that two people are in attendance for this,
Catherine Bierce, and then someone else who is online
that perhaps if you're online,
if you could raise your hand, that would be helpful.
Thank you.
Oh, in person, or are you Catherine?
Okay, great, come on up, thank you.
Okay, go ahead, council member Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor, and it's my, it's my solemn privilege to read the following mayoral proclamation on Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, October, 2026.
Whereas since 1998, National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month is observed every October to break the silence around miscarriage, stillbirth, termination for medical reasons, or early infant death,
while raising awareness and support for grieving families and,
whereas a 2024 study published in Health Affairs
estimates that approximately 1,034,000 miscarriages
occur annually in the United States.
As miscarriage and abortion care
rely on the same medications and procedures,
abortion restrictions in some states
have left providers uncertain
whether they can offer standard miscarriage treatment,
miscarriage treatment, delaying essential care,
and whereas four in 10 women experienced PTSD symptoms
within three months following either a miscarriage
or ectopic pregnancy.
PTSD symptoms reported by the study's participants
included nightmares, flashbacks,
and re-experiencing feelings associated with the loss.
Depression anxiety and PTSD are common after pregnancy loss
can last for months or years, yet most parents never receive follow up care.
And whereas, Berkeley is home to Alta Bates Hospital, commonly known as the birthplace
of the East Bay, with over 4,000 births per year.
And whereas October 15th is observed as pregnancy and infant loss Remembrance Day when families
around the world like candles at 7 p.m. local time for the international wave of light.
And whereas resources for grieving parents, including HAND helping after neonatal death,
www.handonline.org, SAND, support after neonatal death, meeting in person on first and third
Wednesdays in Oakland, The Compassionate Friends, www.compassionatefriends.org, Crisis
Support Services of Alameda County at 800-309-2131 for a 24-7 hotline, Empty Arms, www.emptyarmsbereavement.org,
and Chasing the Rainbows, www.chasingtherainbows.org, among others.
Now, therefore, be it resolved that Adini Ishii,
mayor of the city of Berkeley,
hereby proclaims October 2026
as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month,
that I recognize and respect the rights of women
and pregnant people to make their own decisions
about their healthcare,
while also honoring the grief of parents
experiencing pregnancy and infant loss at any stage
and for any reason, so that we may create
a more compassionate community in Berkeley and beyond.
Thank you.
Thank you, council member.
And did you want to share a few words?
Yes, thank you for being home to Alta Bates Hospital,
birthplace of the East Bay,
and also given the common name of this miscarriage
that there are actually hundreds of dead babies
every year and every month in Berkeley, sadly,
and I'm one of those people who experienced that this summer.
So I want to help raise awareness of how common miscarriage is
and highlight how important it is to resources to support people in our communities.
So there's, for folks who are experiencing miscarriage or who have been through a loss of an infant or pregnancy, you're not alone.
And for the community leaders and people in the room here, I have three requests.
First is to please never say, but you can always have a second kid, because a loss is a loss.
Secondly, to be aware of resources like those named when people have miscarriage, you can point them to resources like HAND and others.
And then thirdly, I hope that tomorrow you'll text three friends in three states to ask them to vote for
the state of the state of the
president of Hand of the Bay Area, which is a volunteer run non-profit led by
bereaved parents who've lost a baby in pregnancy or infancy. And I'm also the
mother of Sage, my two-month-old baby who died three years ago from a rare
undetected heart condition and, yes, was born at the Altebate Hospital. And losing
a baby is sadly far more common than many realize, and yet the grief can be
profoundly painful, disorganizing, and just isolating. And yet this grief is
often met with silence, not indifference, but because people don't always know how to make
space for it, leaving families feeling alone and separate from their communities. And so I wanted
to share, yes, HAND as a resource offers support groups, peer support, bereavement education,
and many other resources at hansupport.org. So our abundant gratitude for this proclamation and
for you affirming the importance of remembering every baby, honoring every family's grief,
and reminding bereaved families that even in our loss, we still belong. Thank you.
Thank you, Rayna. Okay, thank you all so much. That concludes our ceremonial items for the evening.
We will now move on to City Manager comments. No comments tonight, Madam Mayor.
Thank you. And I believe that our City Auditor is making our way to the stage. So we will hear
hear from her in a minute.
Thank you, Madam City Auditor.
Thank you and good evening, everyone.
I just wanted to provide a quick update
on our 2025 audit of the Homeless Response Team, or HRT.
This should be an information item on your agenda tonight.
We initiated this audit because HRT
is an important touchpoint for encampment residents
in Berkeley and a key component of the city's approach
to addressing unsheltered homelessness in our community.
The HRT has made significant progress on this audit since the audit was released, implementing
five out of six outstanding recommendations.
One highlight includes the City's new Encampment Coordination Policy, which addresses the recommendation
of formalizing the structure and procedures for weekly Encampment Coordination meetings.
These meetings are useful to coordinate services for vulnerable encampment residents.
The HRT also published new performance data reports
that expand reported outcomes for HRT program participants
such as demographic characteristics,
shelter enrollment, and housing outcomes.
I just wanted to thank the HRT
for addressing our recommendations
on service coordination for encampment residents
and increasing transparency and accessibility
of public reporting to the public.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Madam City Auditor.
All right, we are now moving on to public comment
for non-agenda matters.
Okay, so we will draw five names from the drum
for comments that are not on the agenda.
Item's not on the agenda,
and then we will go to the first five hands raised
on the Zoom.
and each speaker will have one minute.
Okay, the five in-person speakers are Hillary,
Maria Soule, Dorothy Durrens, Elaine Stettin,
and Marlene Watson.
Okay, if you've heard your name called, please come on up.
Okay, any order is fine.
you can just come forward.
Good evening.
My name is Dara Thea and I live in Berkeley.
And thank you very much for observing
this special week against hate.
Imagine a candidate warned of a jihadi takeover
of City Hall.
Imagine officials called Islamo terrorists
because of their faith or their heritage
or a mosque-based organization
labeled a foreign lobby in a questionnaire.
Berkeley would respond within hours and rightly.
No one would demand a debate over definitions first.
I ask for the same standard.
When Jewish residents are told
they have taken over City Hall,
that they are foreign agents, that they are Nazis,
the response should be just as clear.
During United Against Hate Week,
Let us name anti-Jewish hate as plainly as the other.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Mary Inaichi and Council, my name is Marlene Watson.
I'm here also with Lee Spragg.
He's online.
We're the original artists of the Tur Island Monument Project.
And I'm here to bring on a couple of points
here over the years, it's been 34 years.
And I thank you all for having us at the powwow,
I think just past Saturday, Indigenous Peoples' Day powwow.
And everyone had a good time there.
And what has been the issue with this project,
and I worked as an architect,
got my master's in architecture from Berkeley,
from my master's in science and civil engineering
from Berkeley.
And when we started this project in 34 years ago,
we went through all the approvals twice.
Malina, I'm so sorry, but you're out of time.
I'm gonna send my staff to get your contact information.
We can follow up.
I don't have another minute.
No, I'm so sorry.
We don't have, we're an off agenda comment right now.
So we only select five people and they only have a minute.
So we'll follow up with you.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
Hi, good evening.
My name is Elaine Stelton and I'm ceding my time
to Reverend Mills.
Thank you.
Good evening, thank you all very much.
City Council, higher up.
Thank you very much City Council
for adopting the proclamation against hate.
as you've stood against hate for so many years.
I've been here for three years,
and I've seen your poise,
and I've seen your conduct in the face
of intense debate and hatred being spewed around here.
It is important I represent a group of seven clergy,
Jewish and Christian clergy,
who have spoken out against anti-Semitic language
being used in the political campaign right now,
not just by candidates, but also by pressure groups
who are using language and invectives
that are beyond the pale can only be classified
as hate speech and should be called out
as such very old anti-Semitic tropes
are being dredged up again in this speech
talking about a Zionist takeover of the city council
as if there is a small, an old conspiracy theory
dating back to many, many years.
Thank you very much. Thank you for all your work.
Thanks for your comments.
I might not even be able to reach this microphone
pretty soon.
OK, thank you very much.
And Mayor, thank you for the amazing gathering
that you held at the middle school a week or so ago.
The words against hate is kind of obvious.
And yet, I find that it's a lot more productive to be for peace,
because everyone can be against something,
and then we have more conflict.
and I've seen it happen over and over again.
Even to use the example of,
bicycles don't wanna be driven off the road by cars,
well, I was almost driven off the road
by a bicycle the other day.
Things are getting very tense and tenser,
which is why I keep ad nauseam repeating the same thing,
please, please, please be within
in empathy and compassion, in unity,
because it's the only way it's gonna work.
Thank you.
Thanks, Maria.
Okay.
I guess we were informed that Hillary is not here,
so we can pick one card to replace that.
Linda W.
Good evening.
My name is Linda, and I've lived in Berkeley for 36 years.
Thank you for marking me on United Against Hate Week.
At a recent campaign event, a city council candidate
spoke of a Zionist takeover of council.
That claim that a hidden group has seized our government
is one of the immediately recognizable
and ancient conspiracy theories about Jews.
The newest iteration swaps Zionist for Jewish,
but it doesn't change what Jewish residents hear,
that our civic participation is illegitimate.
It's impossible to rationalize the obsessive focus
on Israel, Zionists, Zios, Zionazis,
as merely criticism of a distant foreign government.
Instead, it's a mass hate movement
with all the characteristics of a mass hate movement.
Six local clergy have asked the candidate
to retract and apologize.
This week of all weeks, it's vital
to name anti-Jewish hate cleanly,
including the anti-Zionist conspiracy theory.
Thank you.
Thank you.
OK, now we'll go to the first five hands raised online.
First one is a caller with a phone number ending in 211.
Hi, I agree with you, Councilman.
Immigrants built this country.
In the first administration, Donald Trump,
during COVID-19 was that 1.2 million Americans
died unnecessarily, or most other country
had tens of thousands.
Second, in my great company, we hired more women in our company.
We had average 100 employees at our three days of business and we paid them very well.
If you look at the picture, I send you constantly, you will see at least one-third of the employees
are women, beautiful women.
She was the head of our advertising department, she set over three million dollar advertising
budget.
So we made millions of dollars to the city of Berkeley,
to the IRS, and to the state of California.
And the man who invented COVID, both of them,
Lebanese-American, for Moderna,
and Greek-American, for Pfizer.
This man is mentally ill, he should be removed.
He is destroying the country as we know it.
Please read everybody, the book,
written by Rekwelson,
to call everything Trump.
Your time is up, thank you.
Next is Dahlia.
Hi, thank you so much and thank you City Council
and Mayor for standing for this anti-stand
against hate week united.
I just want to reiterate what my very colleagues
have already stated, which is Zionist hate is hate.
And let's please stand against all hate.
And as the very tiny person at the microphone said,
unity, peace and appreciation,
respect for all people, all cultures.
Thank you again for anti-hate week next week.
Thank you.
Next we have Russell Bates.
All right, good evening, everybody.
It's interesting for me to see the American flag bear sense.
Unlike some of the previous speakers,
I see this country becoming more and more the United
States of Israel.
There is so much Israeli influence, Zionist influence.
People are being punished for speaking up
for Palestine. My idea would be I would like to see from Peabody Avenue to the end of University
after this next election the City Council signed a street. Thank you very much.
Next we have Lee. Lee Sprague. Yes. My name is Lee Sprague. I'd like to give my one minute to
to Marlene Watson, okay, thank you.
Hi, it's Marlene.
From the beginning, or 2005, Scott Parsons,
the artist of this Turtle Island Monument project
was designated by the city of Berkeley in 2005.
And from then our project was not our project anymore.
And the city has put Lee and I as consultants
ever since 2005.
And there was another city resolution besides the 2005,
there was another one recently
that also proclaims Scott Parsons also as the artist again.
So what we are asking for is to rescind the resolutions
of a non-native artist to take his name off of our project
is we have the Native American Arts and Crafts Act
as a protection for something like this.
I'm sorry, I think your time's up,
but I think my staff will reach out to you.
Appreciate it, bye.
So next we have Rachel.
Hi, my name's Rachel Bradley,
and I'm here tonight to lament
the continuing carnage on our streets.
where pedestrians are repeatedly run over in crosswalks
and seriously injured or killed.
We can't just accept this as the way things are.
It's only likely to get worse as more people move here,
walking our streets and driving their cars.
The city must take serious and immediate steps
to improve pedestrian safety
for all Berkeley residents and visitors,
including the elderly couple from Barcelona
who were the latest victims of a hit and run on university.
Two obvious places to start are better lighting
and consistent traffic enforcement.
Repainting the faded crosswalks all over town
would also help.
This needs to be a top priority
and not just a long-term goal.
The statistics are appalling.
We're close to or at the top of the list
of similar cities for such injuries.
I urge you to imagine how you'd feel
if you or your loved ones became victims
of this ongoing traffic violence.
Keeping its citizens safe
is the first duty of any government.
The status quo is simply not acceptable.
We need to change it now.
Thanks.
That concludes non-agenda public comment.
There is another non-agenda public comment period
at the end of the meeting.
There's another non-agenda comment period
at the end of the meeting.
Thank you, sorry, couldn't quite hear you.
Okay, so it is the first meeting of the month
and so are there any public comments from employee unions?
Anyone online from an employee union
that would like to speak.
Please just raise your hand.
Okay, okay.
We will move on to the consent calendar then.
Just turned on the parliamentarian.
Okay, all right.
Moving on to the consent calendar.
Council members.
Anyone?
Okay, council member Blackaby.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I just had a couple of quick comments on consent.
On item 10.
Choke Squeeze as you're walking out.
If you could please keep your conversations down.
Kelly, please.
On item 10, the Board Adaptive Sports
and Rec's 50th Anniversary Celebration,
the item from Council Member Taplin,
wanted to relinquish $100 from our office account
towards that event.
And on item 11, the Creations Berkeley tour,
sponsored by Council Member Bartlett,
we also wanted to relinquish $100
from our office budget towards that item.
And then I had one request around information reports.
There's three really good, chock full of data,
housing related reports, number 18, 19, and 20,
and was asking consent,
and I think I need a couple colleagues to support.
If we could pull those to action
just for the purpose of having a quick discussion
and some Q and A, there's some really good data
about our progress on building affordable housing
in Berkeley and I wanted to at least highlight that.
So if there were a couple other colleagues.
Yes, I'm happy to pull that as well.
Okay, so I don't, Madam Mayor, we'd wanna put it
but maybe around when Director Gilman is doing the other item
we could kinda do it in that sequence.
Yeah, I think that makes sense
because I think what I'd like to do for our action calendar
is have our former business from the,
oh, sorry, where is it?
Oh yes, thank you.
Our old business, which was item 15,
moved up to the beginning,
and then we could have the environmental health item
and then those items.
Great. Yeah.
Sounds good, thank you.
That's all I have.
Okay.
All right, moving on to Councilmember Bartlett.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
And I want to thank the vice mayor for your item tonight
around the hate week.
I'm happy to be a co-sponsor on this one.
I think it's hate week.
And briefly wanted to,
the board of adaptive sports
and her creation's 50th anniversary,
like to give $200 in office.
And of course,
and thank you everyone for considering
this great group of kids.
This dance for going LA,
item 11, creation's Berkeley.
And I think that's about it.
Thank you very much.
Moving on to council member Trigab.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
First of all, I want to appreciate council member Kaplan
for including me as a co-sponsor on item 10.
And I would like to contribute $150 out of my G-13 account
to item 11 by council member Bartlett.
Thanks for bringing that forward.
On item four, I understand that this is a contract amendment.
I would just like to appreciate the great work
that building opportunities for self-sufficiency
has done at the McKinley House and all across the city.
Thank you to BOSS for all your work.
I really appreciate my colleagues supporting my item,
a resolution in support of Proposition 4,
the California Fair Elections Act of 2026
on the November 4th general election ballot,
which is item 12.
Prop 4 will allow other cities and counties in California
to have similar opportunities that we have here
in Berkeley for fair publicly funded elections
And lastly, I just wanted to,
if I may ask the city manager
if he could just confirm that on item one,
it would be with the amendment to the timeline
for the first report that the council adopted
at its previous meeting.
Yes, council member, that's right.
The first report would come to you in November,
as we said at that last meeting,
it would be November 17th, that first meeting in November.
And then subsequent reports would come in March starting,
not that few months later, but the following March.
Thank you, and no further comment.
Thank you.
We're gonna go to Council Member Kessawani
and then online to Council Member Humbert.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
I'd like to be recorded as donating $100
to the Board of Adaptive Sports
and recreation's 50th anniversary celebration.
And thank you Council Member Taplin for that item.
And I'd also like to be recorded as donating $100
to Creations Berkeley for the dance group.
Sounds like it's a road trip.
Okay, great.
And thank you Council Member Bartlett for that one.
That's all, thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I'd like to, with respect to item number 10,
the Borup Adaptive Sports and Recreations
50th Anniversary Celebration.
I'd like to relinquish $100 from the D8 office account.
Thank you Council Member Tafflin for bringing that.
Item number 11, brought by Council Member Bartlett
on Creations Berkeley.
Would like to relinquish also $100 from the D8 account
to contribute to that resolution.
The number 12 resolution in support of Proposition 4.
Thank you Council Member Trigob for bringing this item.
Public financing of elections is good public policy,
and I'm in favor of extending this privilege
to all cities in California.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
We're gonna go to Council Member O'Keefe.
Prolamantarian keeps kicking you out of the queue,
but you are there and then Council Member Lenapara.
I'm number 31.
Oh, yes.
I'm gonna build us a road.
I've been building doing microelectronics.
I'm looking forward to that.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I just have, thank you, Mayor.
I just have two quick, three quick comments.
I'd like to donate $100 to item 10,
$100 to item 11 from our office account,
and I just wanna thank Council Member Tracov for item 12.
That's it.
Thank you very much, Council Member Lenapara.
Thank you.
I'd like to donate 150 to both items 10 and 11,
and thank you for authoring them.
Thank you very much.
I'm also gonna add $100 to item 11,
and then also thank Council Member Trago
for item number 12 is, I don't know if I would be here
if we didn't have public financing, so thank you very much.
All right, we are now gonna go to public comment
on information items or consent items only, please.
Come on up, Kelly.
Okay, and I have two more minutes.
And I'll take another one if anyone wants to give me one.
Okay, someone's giving you a minute in the back.
Okay, so you have four.
Thank you.
All right, so I'm commenting on item number two,
the San Pablo specific plan,
which is your second reading tonight.
And the San Pablo specific plan is going to impact Berkeley
for decades to come.
And I think it earned more than a 10 minute presentation
and I think it deserved a lot of questions
that weren't asked.
And I ask you to consider some reconsideration
of that San Pablo specific plan.
And that is, number one,
that you approved moving affordable units
to 120% of AMI, and I ask that you limit that number
to no more than 10% of the units
in affordable housing building.
I ask that you return the family units to 50%.
As you heard Margaret Ernst say at your last meeting,
that it was very difficult to rent the one bedroom
and the studio apartments.
And that we have a really big need
for affordable family units.
And those of us from the community
really had misunderstood the intent of the city.
We thought it was going to be family units
and affordable, not family units or affordable.
And I really wish that you would put those two together,
family and affordable at the Mulee sites.
We also took out the 50 feet of commercial space
at the street level in the front.
And this was really to encourage activity on the streets
so people would enjoy and feel comfortable
walking on the street, and that was removed,
and I would ask that that be returned.
It was a long discussion at the Planning Commission
to encourage the first 50 feet
as for commercial space for street activity.
The Planning Commission also had long discussion
on removing the density standard,
and to put that as no minimum
on the density standards, so that on different site lots,
especially awkward shaped lots,
there could be flexibility in design,
whereas it was brought down from 145
to 100 units per acre.
The Planning Commission recommended
that it be no minimum for that flexibility.
Open space and gathering space should not be an incentive.
It should be a requirement.
If there is anything that you pick up today
on health and community,
it is about open space and gathering space.
In fact, it was in the book Super Agers
when I left the meeting on the 29th
and I picked up where I left off
and it was on mental health.
And mental health was measured with access to nature.
and that access to nature can actually be measured
in reduced emergency room visits.
This is critical, it is important.
And the nature score, they suggest it should be above 80.
I put in my zip code here in Berkeley and it came up as 39.
I ask that you reconsider these items
and have discussion about it,
so that we can have the best for Berkeley.
Thank you, Kelly.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Kim Pawak and Carol Marisovic.
I am here to speak on consent item number two,
the second reading of Sam Pabo Plan,
and what I think is a significant abuse of ethics
and discretion on the part of this council
when they pass the amendment.
I was appalled at Council Member Kesserwani's
a conduct at the last hearing on this matter.
And so should you, given the referendum
that you propose today.
How many times are you going to let
C.M. Kesserwani bring in substantial amendments
to a plan at the last minute without not one of you
even objecting to it?
I get that some of you agree with the outcome.
But the fact that you let her abuse the process and the Brown
Act is insulting to the constituents you and she
claim to represent.
Clearly, it gives you no chance to check her data.
I submit that these significant last minute changes
to height for unit per acre density in the spa,
as a proposed violation of the Brown Act.
Cessawani is laughing right now.
That shows how disregard she is to the constituents
that she claims to represent.
What's worse is her MO.
And you continue to let her do it at each significant proposal before you.
She comes in with a last minute amendment.
Do you understand you're telling darkly that litigation, referendum, and
complaint to higher office are the only thing that force you to listen to constituents?
You spend all your time thanking staff instead of asking the hard questions.
If you research them, perhaps you'd understand how harmful these changes are.
It is this game that this Cassarani pulls
at every controversial proposal,
which is plain insulting to Berkeley.
Let her laugh, keep on laughing.
She clearly had time to speak with the Planning Commission
staff and the Planning Department about the amendment,
and yet she first presented it to the public on the dais.
This council never curtails her childless Trump-like rants,
such as the one that happened last time,
Even though your rules say you should,
she unreasonably berates well-intended citizens
who supply facts in opposition to her process,
her ethics, and her data.
More importantly, despite her claims,
she does not represent the interest,
or care about her D1 constituents,
the unhoused, the disenfranchised,
and those who cannot afford housing.
She's smiling.
She thinks this is funny.
She clearly claves more about her social media.
I don't expect this will make much difference today
because you've chosen to put it on the consent calendar.
Many of you have hops for higher office,
but one thing has happened.
Because of Kesserwani and Sensony and Disparagement,
there are more neighborhood associations
that have risen up and we're gonna be here.
26, 27, 28, 29 and 30.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good evening. I'm Dr. Steven Alpert. The actions of this council regarding construction
of new housing are profoundly disappointing. The San Pablo specific plan, similar to the
pending three quarters of zoning, purportedly provides affordable housing for families.
Indeed council members proudly proclaim they support housing for families. However, as
documented by Kelly Hammergren in her detailed activist diary post on October 9, the vast
majority of new housing approved by the City's Zoning Adjustment Board, whose members you
appoint, allow for studio and one bedroom units. For example, the 11-story structure
Recently approved for 29-100, 29-29-29-29-20,
Shattuck has 242 units of which 219 are studios,
only 13 are two bedrooms and one,
only one unit is three bedrooms.
That building will not provide housing for families.
Stop this farce.
Council Member Tregwood and Mayor Ishi
support Council Member Kessalani's proposal
to allow developers to remove
the small percentage of onsite affordable housing
mandated by state density bonus
and instead pay in lieu fees to the housing trust fund.
City staff, along with paid consultants,
spent several years formulating
the San Pablo-specific plan,
engaging with the community members
to offer their vision
for the transformation of San Pablo Avenue.
The resulting ideas and recommendations
were disregarded by this council.
Similar to the Hopkins bike plan,
majority of council members simply disregard
and ignore information in real-world data
that contradicts your predetermined agenda.
These public council comment sessions
are now entirely performative.
We pretend to listen to us,
but have already predetermined your votes.
It's a disgrace.
Hi, I'm Gail Elcock and I'm D2.
And I'm just thinking about the last meeting
where I was left with the question I've been asking
from the beginning of middle housing.
What's the cap?
How much?
And the two comments I'm referring to are,
we have to build as many house units as possible
for as many, any number of people that want to come here.
And the other comment was,
we need as much housing as possible,
which I also heard Saturday from one of our council members
that more housing is the answer to our economic problem.
So in case we forget that the affordable housing
is actually what we need, not just more housing.
And I consider what's being built on St. Pavel
as middle housing, not affordable housing.
Here's in case any affordable housing does get built.
Thank you.
I'd like to speak for the
surveillance technology accountability requirements.
Transparency and accountability
is sort of a necessary common sense thing.
And I go to the board,
the public, the police accountability board meetings
and try to emphasize that in construction,
if I'm gonna get a permit,
I know I'm gonna be hit with an inspection.
So it's like, it could be simpler
if we're making agreements to also be able to break them
when there's a breach in trust of some sort or another.
And if we don't track these things in fact and evidence,
we're sort of steering without a steering wheel.
So bless all of you, thank you,
and gosh, there's so much to do.
thank you thanks maria i have two minutes
more so i have three total thank you very much so it's interesting that you have item on the
you're talking about hate and none of you did jack doodoo qua for about the genocide
Zainism is equal to hate, which is equal to racism.
Which item are you referring to?
Are you talking about, item, are you talking,
I'm talking about hate week.
That was not on the consent calendar or on information items,
so you're welcome to speak on one of those.
Surveillance, and you know what?
I'm so tired of you interrupting me.
I want my freaking time back.
She does this every fucking time.
It's really annoying, Mayor.
I will give you your time back, but profanity,
just watch your profanity, please.
If you could give her more time back, please.
Yeah, get the smirk off your face,
because it's really annoying.
Caswani, the other person talking is talking,
you didn't stop one person who was talking
about any member of the council,
and that's something that you do, I guess, sometimes.
So if you're gonna have these rules,
you should be consistent with them, period,
which you're not.
Yeah, keep smiling, it's not fucking funny.
Excuse my language.
I think you are welcome to make your comment,
but you should know, it's not okay.
We don't need flock and we don't need a mayor
that continuously interrupts the constituents
just because she doesn't wanna hear what they have to say.
There's a genocide going on.
You're talking about hate yet y'all, you are all haters.
And the fact that we have all the Zionists
in the room tonight, I'm happy I wore
my Anti-Zionist Club sweatshirt.
I hope y'all can see it because Zionism is equal to hate,
which is equal to racism.
Maybe y'all don't know that, but it's a fact.
When you don't allow a certain group of people
to live, to breathe, have different set of rules.
I'm sorry, this is clearly not about
consent calendar information items.
It's about surveillance.
I'm not even hearing you talk about surveillance.
All the time, everywhere, we're being surveilled.
And these things should not be happening.
And I hope these rules that you guys are having
on the surveillance policy is a good one.
I haven't read your item, but yeah,
I don't know why she's over there
and choosing to ignore this constituent of the city
who has lived here for 45 years.
And some people don't appreciate the fact
that the council doesn't even listen or pay attention.
That has been mentioned numerous times at numerous meetings.
And you still continue to do it. You continue to be rude to the people that vote in this city.
It's not okay. And there has been a genocide going on. And if you can't love everyone, treat everyone equally, Cheryl, can you please stick to conversations on the subject?
And you don't have to control everything, Mayor.
You should check yourself.
You can refer to us as a body.
Oh, see, now you're going to your little rule
that time is up.
Your time is up.
Sometimes.
So, you know what, Cheryl?
Cheryl, the rule is to address the council as a whole.
I was addressing the council as a whole.
Okay, and folks can talk about certain things
that people are doing, that's their right,
but they can't address individual people.
They are addressing people.
So I don't want to argue with you Cheryl.
You got the lotion on it.
You got the lotion on it.
You got the lotion on it.
Okay.
All right.
Is there other?
Well I only cast a lot.
Is there, excuse me, is there any other comment
on consent calendar or information items only please?
Anyone online?
looks like we have a few hands raised.
We have eight hands raised right now.
So we have M Jones.
First, this is for consent and information items only.
Although.
I'm what M Jones is waiting on non-consent items.
This is all public comment only for.
I understand.
You're waiting for an action item.
I'm waiting for not on the agenda items.
Oh, okay. All right. I'll put you back. We'll get that at the end. All right.
Rachel Bradley.
Hi, I attended the recent public hearing on the San Pablo Avenue specific plan and was deeply disappointed to watch the council ride roughshod over the deep concerns of the community
to adopt a plan that will actively discourage affordable housing and that gives short shrift
to residents' documented concerns about gentrification and the lack of family housing,
as well as undermining our small businesses in the area. Not to mention, allowing the last-minute
amendments that further undermine the community's wishes and goals. More and more Berkeley residents
are feeling ignored and unheard by their representatives. This is not a healthy
environment that encourages trust and pulling together to achieve common goals.
I know I'm not the only one who's deeply disappointed by your short-sighted adoption
of the plan. It's not too late to reconsider. Okay, the next speaker is David Scheer.
Hello. I just wanted to speak briefly about information items I think 18 and 19 on Mejoro
and inclusionary housing. They tell a really important story. It's kind of a bummer to see
them on information, but they tell a really important story and I think part of it is that
the city of Berkeley is actually a regional leader in building affordable housing. That's
that's building affordable housing through inclusionary,
through the Measure O Bond, through the Inlufies.
So this is something where we really need to like,
I think be shouting it from the rooftops
and I hope that we can find ways to do that.
Another important story that it tells
is that inclusionary units and inclusionary
and the Inlufie is totally dependent
on the private construction market.
And it's a real problem because it means that
there's a lot of times we're not getting
what we need to be getting.
Measure O and bonds are a way around that
and measure O is almost done.
So we're gonna have to re-app.
Thank you so much.
Okay, next is Janice Ching.
Janice, go ahead.
I see you're unmuted, Janice, but we can't hear you.
Is that better?
Okay, okay.
I want to add my concern about the loss of public engagement when substantive changes are brought forward at the last minute.
This is about the San Pablo Avenue's specific plan.
People who have been watching that plan for such a long time deserved, but
did not get to review and comment on the proposed changes.
They didn't get enough of an opportunity.
I'm also very concerned about giving away height by right, and
that will take away the incentive
to build the affordable units we need
and get from the state density bonus.
So, you know, I'm against that.
And lastly, I wanna warn against the loss
of commercial units on our quarters.
This is already happening on Shattuck,
and I worry that it will turn San Pablo Avenue
into a less safe and less welcoming area.
Thank you.
All right, and we have Tony.
Good evening.
I do wanna remind the council
that every bit of money you spend
comes from us, the taxpayers.
And you took about a million dollars from MTA
to do the San Pablo Avenue specific plan planning.
And everything that the planners came up with
was overturned, such as the nodes,
such as maximum density, such as height limits
that would incentivize the use of the density bonus
and affordable housing, and many other items.
And I have been trying to understand
where the changes came from in March of 2025.
and I haven't been able to figure it out.
So I'm gonna continue to ask.
In the meantime, I do not like the zoning
on San Pablo Avenue.
I am a fairly expert person in Berkeley on zoning.
Zoning is sort of like labor negotiating.
You use comparative standards.
Thanks, Tony.
Next is Dietmar.
Hi, my name is Dietmar Lorentz.
I'm an architect in Berkeley.
I share the concerns a previous speaker mentioned
about the process of the San Pablo plan
and the last minute motions,
which were obviously circulated by staff,
but the public didn't learn about it until the hearing.
I think this is really a poor conduct.
And then, you know, many of you on the dais deliberated.
Well, you know, is it, you know,
are we doing a five story base or a seven story base?
Basically, you know, does this affordable housing
come through the state density bonus
or through the housing fund?
And, you know, with all this struggle between the two,
many of you said there's merit in both approaches.
It's in hindsight, very surprising that nobody suggested,
why don't we meet in the middle and allow a six-story base?
You know, if you're really concerned about compromise,
and it's also always this false statement
that you wouldn't get anything into the housing fund
if it runs through the state density bonus, the facts, you know, say the opposite.
Thanks, Sibmar.
And last speaker is Carla.
Hi, good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Carla Appleberry, the founder of Creations,
and I just want to thank you all in the taxpayers of Berkeley for supporting our proposal on
tonight's consent calendar, and I just want to clarify something.
This opportunity was described, kind of, could have been as a road trip, but it's so much
more than that. It's professional development and giving young African-American girls access
to training, performance opportunities, and a world of arts beyond Berkeley.
And with concerns like gun violence and human trafficking affecting our youth,
Creations is doing its part to keep children safe, engaged, uplifted, and encouraged.
every child we reach matters. These girls have spent years dancing at Berkeley's annual
celebration and we look forward to continuing. Thank you for investing and have a good evening.
Thank you, Carla, and thanks for clarifying that. And we do have one more speaker. We have Dela Luna.
Yes, I wanted to also speak about the amendments that came in last minute. That has happened
recently twice with the San Pablo,
the first reading, and then also with the tear gas.
It was Kesirwani council member who did that both times.
That was just like in the past 30 days.
So it is surprising what that first speaker said that
nobody on the dais even mentioned it or said anything.
It does eliminate the public giving us an opportunity to
review and then make comments on it.
Then I wanted to say that there is a marked difference in
How some speakers are treated as the 1 speaker was addressing council member Kestrawani directly, and there was no intervention. So, I just wanted to say that.
And then I also wanted to say that, oh, Christian Zionism does exist and Christian Zionists do live in Berkeley.
And I feel like that's being erased from the conversation and that's it. Thank you.
Okay, I think that's it for the public comment, is that correct? Yes. All right.
Councilmember Tapland, yours is up first. Yes, there's a lot I could say but I'm
just going to move adoption of the consent calendar. I'll second that and I
did just want to thank folks who have commented about the San Pablo Avenue
specific plan and I do just want to say for the record that all council members
and the mayor are free to introduce amendments to any item during the public
council meeting believe it or not that's the point of the meeting to debate the
item and consider amendments and I do just want to remind everyone that I
wasn't the only one who had amendments we had council members trego bokeith and
Blackaby who added important substantive amendments to the item that made it stronger and I am
very proud of the plan that we passed and I regret that my smile and listening to public
commenters has upset them and I look forward to passing the consent calendar with a second
reading of the San Pablo Avenue specific plan. Thank you.
Thank you, council member Blackby.
Briefly, this was in consultation with the city attorney
on items 18, 19 and 20.
Just wanted to confirm before we vote
that the ask is to consider them together one block.
It's not three separate things.
One question period, one public comment period
on all three reports,
just so it's clear on the agenda process.
Thank you, I appreciate you clarifying that.
Yeah, and I did just want to say out loud for folks,
you know, we have had a lot of conversations
with the city attorney's office about what's appropriate
and not appropriate in stopping people.
And certainly when people are speaking off topic,
not on consent or calendar information items,
it is appropriate for me to interject
and ask that they speak on those items.
And also I think it's important to acknowledge
there's a difference between when you're addressing
something that a council member did or said
versus saying, you, council member,
I think that you need to do this better or something.
there's a difference between addressing individuals
or the council as a whole.
And so, you know, I will continue to uphold the rules
that we have agreed to on council, you know,
and I think it's really unfortunate that we have people
who are oftentimes trying to shoehorn in their own issues
into the business of the city,
because it prevents us from being able to move forward.
And I also do want to agree
with Council Member Kessinwani's statement,
the purpose of us having conversations on council.
It's not about last minute amendments.
It's about, this is what we're deciding,
and actually at that meeting in particular,
about the San Pablo Avenue corridor plan,
we had people present their amendments
before we even had public comment.
So it did give people an opportunity to speak to it,
and that is actually something
that we've been talking about too.
It's something that was recommended
to our agenda and rules committee,
and I think it makes a lot of sense.
So, you know, I want folks to understand
we are absolutely listening.
We are here, we're taking notes,
we're paying attention,
and our staff are also here listening,
taking notes, paying attention.
And sometimes we just don't agree with the commenters,
and that does happen occasionally.
And so, you know, I don't want folks to feel like
we're not listening, we absolutely are.
It's just we may not agree and change our minds
on issues all the time.
So I think that's important to say.
the motion is on the floor. I
we are gonna switch into the presentation for item 15,
which is the affordable housing preference policy.
So I will give 10 minutes to just let everyone
take a quick bio break and for folks to set up
for the next item.
Thank you.
Recording stopped.
Recording in progress.
Recording stopped.
Recording in progress.
Okay, hello everyone.
We are back from the break.
Thank you very much for your patience.
We are jumping to item number 15,
affordable housing preference policy,
pilot assessment and policy update,
which was continued from the September 29th, 2026 meeting.
Thank you so much for your patience with us.
Thank you so much for coming back.
Thank you so much in advance for your presentation.
Go ahead.
Yeah, good evening, mayor and city council members.
Thank you so much and not a problem.
We're happy to be here tonight.
My name's Mike Huberti.
I'm the senior project manager
and housing policy supervisor
with Health Housing and Community Services.
I'm here tonight with the Housing and Community Services
Manager, Margo Ernst, and my colleague Anna Cash,
our Housing Policy Specialist on our housing team, in HCS.
And we're here tonight to present to you
about the Affordable Housing Preference Policy.
We're gonna provide you an update on the policy,
how the implementation has gone so far,
and prepare some recommendations to help the policy
hopefully work more effectively for both applicants
and affordable housing providers.
So Anna's provided a presentation tonight,
And I'm gonna pass it to her to get started.
Okay, thanks, Mike.
Good evening, Mayor, Council Members and the public.
My name is Anna Cash and I'm a Housing Policy Specialist
in Housing and Community Services Division.
Is that better?
Thanks.
So I'm gonna start walking through the policy
and we've had new Council Members elected
since this was first adopted.
So I will give a grounding of the policy to start us off.
Berkeley's Affordable Housing Preference Policy
was first adopted in 2023
and took effect January 1st, 2024.
Preference policies are a tool that cities can use
to prioritize applicants in affordable housing lotteries
based on specific criteria.
And Berkeley's preference policy implements goals
identified by the community and city council
of helping people who've been displaced from Berkeley return,
preventing additional displacement from Berkeley
and acknowledging and addressing historic injustices.
The story of Berkeley's housing preference policy
starts with community organizing in response
to many years of displacement,
especially from the black community in South Berkeley.
South Berkeley community groups galvanized
around the Adeline corridor specific plan
and planning for the BART stations
and called for specific anti-displacement policies,
including a preference policy or right of return.
The preference policy that has been adopted
is the result of extensive community engagement
and leadership by the city's community partners
with Healthy Black Families as the lead community partner.
Healthy Black Families worked on surveys,
a community leaders group,
and outreach like town halls and forums
to help shape the community driven preference policy.
And staff have also had critical partnerships
with the online affordable housing application portal,
which is now the regional portal doorway,
as well as with RCD and John Stewart Company
and other affordable housing developers
to figure out implementation.
So there are seven preferences in the preference policy.
There's a first priority for families
who lost their homes when BART was built
in the 1960s and 1970s.
And then there's six other categories
that are worth one point each.
So displacement due to eviction, foreclosure,
resident of a redline neighborhood,
descendant of a resident of a redline neighborhood,
Homeless are at risk of homelessness
and families with children.
This is a cumulative points-based system
where lottery rankings are resorted
based on the total number of points
an applicant household has,
and you show proof for each preference
that you qualify for.
There are two types of affordable housing in Berkeley,
nonprofit affordable housing
supported by the city's housing trust fund,
and below market rate units created
by the city's inclusionary housing ordinance,
and we call those HTF and BMR units respectively.
So the first large HTF project that preferences
were applied to is Model Miller Sherrick Community,
which is across from Ashby Bard in the heart of South Berkeley,
87 total units, and it has Healthy Black Families offices
on the ground floor.
So a lot of the pilot lessons that we'll speak to
focus on that building because it's larger
so there's more that we can learn.
But preferences have also been implemented
at two BMR properties with five total preference units so far.
We undertook both qualitative research
and partnership with Healthy Black Families
on resident experiences at the Mardell property,
as well as quantitative analysis
with the support of street level advisors
digging into leasing data from that building.
And we also conducted several stakeholder interviews
to get a well-rounded picture of the pilot.
I'll start with what's working well,
which is that the policy is creating a pathway
for long-term Berkeley community members to come home.
17 households with ties to Red Line neighborhoods
moved into Mardel-Miller Sherry community.
That's more than one in four of the households who moved in.
And when Healthy Black Families conducted
a resident survey in the building,
2 thirds of respondents indicated that they had applied
because they wanted to return to South Berkeley.
One of the quotes from that tenant survey
speaks to the profound personal impact that that can have.
This person said, it was fair and truly a blessing.
Affordability in Berkeley had been out of reach for me
since I left my mom's house in 1984.
Another promising aspect of the policy
is the priority for those whose families
were directly displaced due to the construction of BART
in the 1960s and 70s.
We obtained BART public records to form a database
of these homeowners and the city issues certificate.
So we work with people through that process.
We also formed a partnership with the Berkeley Public Library
to support people in looking for documentation
of their ties to these homes.
So far, 17 certificates have been issued
and we review those applications on a rolling basis.
This is a quote from a recent BART certificate recipient
who said, my great-grandmother was a single mother
with three kids who worked hard to buy her first home
to then be forced to move.
So those certificate applications have really shown us
how these stories get passed down through the generations.
And now I will speak to some of the challenges.
So number one is the complex point system.
The points-based preference policy started out
on the Alameda County Housing Portal,
which then transitioned to the regional portal doorway.
Doorway is designed to support tier-based
preference policies.
This inconsistency and the heavy burden
verifying many points creates friction for both applicants and leasing staff.
Adopting a tier-based system will align Berkeley with regional standards and
will allow doorway to transparently display applicants waitlist position to
them when they log on. The next piece is income mismatch. For some of the
preferences such as the homeless eviction and foreclosure preferences, the
majority of applicants who verified for these categories were not income
eligible for 50% or 60% area median income nonprofit affordable housing
units. So that speaks to broader structural issues. Finally the homeless
preference. Staff reviewed nearly 900 homeless verification forms and were
able to verify few people for the preference. And also service providers
shared that having a specific homeless preference led to false expectations
since it wasn't tied to supportive housing that typically comes with
homeless placements, so it was more confusing than helpful for many applicants.
Responding to these challenges were proposing policy updates that staff developed in consultation
with key stakeholders for model militia community, including Healthy Black Families, RCD, John
Stewart Company and Doorway.
This chart shows what we know from the lease up at model militia, which is that descendants
of people who lived in Berkeley's red line neighborhoods faced the greatest cumulative
displacement pressures. Four points was the highest number of preference points
that applicant households who moved into preference units had and the orange
bars represent redline neighborhood descendants. So you can see they're
highly represented in the highest priority categories. All of the
households with four points were descendants of redline neighborhood
residents and 80% of highest priority applicants those with three or four
points had generational redlining roots. This new proposal elevates historical
injustice, displacement from Berkeley, and ties to the community more. It honors
the community's intent and creates a more effective process. Just as a reminder
in the current policy, applicants get one point for each preference and they add
up, and each of those preferences needs to be independently verified. So let's
say you selected all seven preferences, you would be asked to submit
documentation for all seven categories. This new proposal is around a ranked tier
system. So a tier system groups applicants by priority with all applicants in a
higher tier considered before units are offered to the next tier. Under this
system, applicants only provide verifying documentation for their highest
qualifying preference. So this proposal reduces documentation burden and makes
the process better for applicants. The new proposal still has first priority for families
who were displaced due to BART construction. Then the next year lifts up households with
generational ties to red line neighborhoods. Then current and displaced Berkeley households
is a consolidated category that is inclusive of the many ways that people experience housing
precarity and displacement. Within the red line neighborhoods and current slash displaced
resident categories households with children are prioritized first. That was a priority for the
community partner Healthy Black Families that we wanted to honor and research shows children
are most vulnerable to and impacted by displacement. So why make these changes? First is a strengthening
of equity and anti-displacement focus of the policy. One key change is to reposition descendants
of Red Line neighborhood residents to tier two priority level. As we saw in the pilot data by
prioritizing these long-term community members, you're prioritizing those with the most layered
and compounding displacement experiences. Then simplification. These changes consolidate three
overlapping categories into a broader displaced from Berkeley category. And also, this new system
uses tiers instead of points. With tiers, instead of providing documentation for every category,
applicants only provide it for the single highest tier they qualify for out of the three categories.
So this means faster lease-ups too. And it supports Berkeley families by applying that
families with children sub-layer. It's also important to name the bigger picture around
displacement in Berkeley. The preference policy is just one tool in the toolbox and there are
additional opportunities around anti-displacement efforts as we look to the upcoming BART developments
and other sites. For one, there's a need for holistic support for returning Berkeley
community members, especially those who've been displaced for a long time, making sure
that they're well connected to Berkeley resources to help them thrive. Also, the income mismatch
that took place at Model shows that many people who've been pushed out of Berkeley can't
afford affordable units that are reserved for 50% or 60% area median income. So, there's
There's a clear need for more deeply affordable housing, and it could also be helpful to explore
connecting preference applicants with existing housing for extremely low income residents.
HAC unanimously recommended the staff recommendation to Council at their July meeting, sorry that
should say October for City Council.
If Council chooses to advance the proposed policy tonight, staff will revise administrative
guidelines and coordinate with the regional online housing portal doorway to implement
the new preferences by the November 1st effective date. So again here's our
final recommendation and just to go over some of the key benefits, the proposed
policy revisions make it easier for applicants to apply with reduced
documentation, work effectively with the doorway online affordable housing
application portal, make it easier for property managers to verify
documentation, supporting more efficient and faster lease-ups to get people housed
was faster and these changes more directly center the equity goals of the policy. The revisions
elevate part displacement and the redlining preferences to focus on equity while still being
inclusive of broader displacement experiences and Berkeley community members. Again, our intent is
to preserve the community priorities and translate lessons from the pilot to make a better process
and experience for applicants. Thank you so much for your time and we look forward to your questions.
thank you so much really appreciate the presentation and the really you know
interesting and imported data um i'm going to take council questions from council members starting
with councilmember tregga oh actually no i'm going to start with councilmember bartlett if that's okay
just because it was his district we are mostly talking about and then um for the model sherrick
building thank you thanks very much and it's wonderful to see this in practice after all these
years. Um, a couple of quick questions, though, and this is we're gonna some of
the anecdotal, um, reports I've heard about, um, I guess, uh, friction in the
application process resulting in possibly, um, our numbers being lower.
I am some wondering if, um, if you can speak to that at all. Anything you
heard?
Yeah. Well, you know, I'd say part of our recommendations tonight is to help
to improve the applicant experience.
As Anna mentioned, each preference requires
individual documentation.
And in addition to that, that's in addition
to the real layers of documentation
that are already required for affordable housing applicants.
So our hope tonight is that by adopting
this new policy revisions, we can really simplify
that experience by reducing the burden on applicants.
So that was one thing from talking with folks,
talking with healthy bike families,
and tenants at the building,
as well as the property managers,
that we found was kind of a big burden
for folks using the current policy.
So would that look like a certification
that they can take with them a portable certification
or a profile that's reusable?
Something persistent, right?
If you didn't make this round,
they can come back next round.
Because you're right,
the foundational friction
with applying for affordable housing anywhere in this county
is really cumbersome and difficult.
It'd be great if we could even inform that process.
Yeah, so I mean, one of the reasons
that we wanna work seamlessly with Doorway,
the regional online affordable housing application portal
is that it does save people's sort of basic profiles.
So, you know, there's an effort there
to really make things more straightforward for people.
And then with the BART certificates,
we as staff work with applicants to issue certificates
that they can use for different affordable housing lotteries.
For other preferences, the two other tiers,
those are verified as you go through
the affordable housing application process.
But as Mike mentioned, our hope is that, you know,
by having so many fewer categories,
the burden will be really reduced for people.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember Trachum.
Thank you so much for this incredible amount of work.
And I have two questions.
The first is, and I recognize much of what is in our
100% below market rate housing pipeline
is rooted in South and West Berkeley.
but since this is a city-wide policy going forward,
what is the mapping of, let's say,
I mean the preference is someone who may have been redlined
out of a community or displaced,
maybe had family living in South or West Berkeley
and was displaced?
But a unit may open up in Berkeley,
but outside of those communities,
just wanted to try to understand the positioning of this policy
with the overlay of Berkeley, as well as
whether this would apply to inclusionary units
inside otherwise market rate buildings
or does this policy specifically impact
the 100% BMR buildings only?
Yeah, so the preference policy applies citywide
and it applies to both the housing trust fund units
where it's 100% nonprofit affordable housing
as well as below market rate units
in market rate buildings,
so long as they're not otherwise reserved
for special population like shelter plus care.
Did you want to add anything?
I think, I'm not sure if I fully understood
the first question.
So, you know, the policy does apply citywide.
If you want to go ahead.
Yeah, I think the, for, and Anna and Mike can correct me
if I misstate this, but for tier two,
which is displaced from a redlined area that,
can you describe the areas in the city that that?
Sure. Yeah.
Yeah. So the second tier is, you know,
if you are descendant of someone who lived
in a redline neighborhood and the redline neighborhoods
are primarily South and West Berkeley
and small sections of Central Berkeley.
And that's in recognition of, you know,
of the many years of harm that redlining has led to.
And also the ways in which redlining has paved the way
for gentrification and displacement today.
So those are the very same areas
where we see the greatest displacement pressures in Berkeley.
So it's both to address historical harms
and also to address the displacement pressures.
And tier two, the tier two preference is citywide.
So it's not location specific in terms of like
where that preference would apply.
That preference can apply to any affordable unit
that is subject to our preference policy citywide.
So it's not just in those units that are in those areas.
And then the third tier also does give preference
or displaced households citywide.
Is that my characterizing that correctly?
Yeah, so I think if I could clarify,
My question really gets to if someone had generations
of family that were, for whatever reason,
displaced out of what is a formerly red-lined community
and they may get on this list,
but a unit may open up outside of those areas.
how would this map on if it's citywide?
Yeah, so the city doesn't centrally manage a wait list.
The only thing that we're sort of centrally managing
is the BART certificates.
So the process is that people are applying on doorway
the regional portal and they have sort of just housing choice
to apply to the buildings that they want to apply to.
they can select which
neighbourhoods they want to
apply in.
And then, you know, the lottery
is reorganized by these tiers,
and if they're selected for a
unit, they would provide
verification of their preference
if they want to move into that
unit.
So somebody with, you know,
generational ties to South
Berkeley could be choosing to
apply to a building in South
Berkeley.
Maybe it's important to them to
come back to their direct
neighbourhood, or maybe there's
a building in another part of
the city that they would like to
to and that's you know up to their choice. I hope that answers. Yeah. Okay
thank you and my my last question is around you you mentioned that one of the
barriers was the inflexible nature somewhat driven I guess by other you
know like federal laws like 50% AMI 80% AMI or just how the density
bonus works and those might not be fully responsive to the magnitude of the need around housing
for all affordable income levels. I'm wondering how you're thinking through what other policies
might you recommend that the city may look at going forward in concert with these recommendations
to provide additional flexibility,
say to have units with deeper affordability
or allowance for say workforce housing
outside of the 50 and 80% AMI.
Yeah, I can start it at the bottom, yeah.
Yeah, so we do want to acknowledge
our housing trust fund projects do provide some 30% AMI,
extremely low income units
and permanent supportive housing.
so we do offer those resources.
It's not that that's not available.
It's just that the way the system works,
it requires certain percentages of each type,
and then also it depends on
the funding sources that are available as well.
So each project gets unique funding sources that
often don't allow for as many low-income units as we need.
So we do offer them,
and we also want to acknowledge that there are
project-based vouchers from
the Murphy Housing Authority that also serve extremely low-income families as
well. So those are some current sources that we do have available and I'll
pass it to Anna to talk about some other options. Yeah I mean part of what we did
with stakeholder interviews was talk to other cities so we learned about some
interesting models for example in San Francisco folks who qualify for
preferences related to displacement but can't necessarily afford the sort of
or general lottery units over there,
they're sort of connecting with the housing authority
to help link people up who qualify for preferences
with project-based voucher units
where rent is tied to income.
So that's just one thing that we learned about
in the process.
And we also have our,
like the permanent supportive housing that we have
that is deeply affordable and it has supportive services
that are tied to it.
those units aren't leased up using the preference policy
because there's a different process for leasing those up,
which is through coordinated entry.
So I think it is primarily the issue
that we were coming up against is for those units
that are at higher income bands
and getting so many applicants
that really wouldn't income qualify.
and like setting up the expectation
that they would get a preference
and be able to get the unit
when their income might be too low for those.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council Member Blackaby.
Thanks, Madam Mayor, and thank you Anna, Mike, and Marco
for being here twice.
And thank you for the presentation on this great program.
I really just had one question as sort of,
someone was really interested in the numbers behind it.
Could you give us a sense of during the pilot phase,
again, roughly the number of applicants
and how many people got placed into the number of units,
and then how you anticipate that scaling
kind of during full rollout?
I'm just trying to get a number,
kind of an idea of dozens of people, hundreds of people,
and kind of how many people this is gonna touch
if you have some order of magnitude guidance of the,
or hints, what that might look like?
Yeah, I mean, so currently, you know,
The policy applies to a portion of affordable housing units.
So for the current iteration of the policy,
that's 75% of units.
So our hope is that with some of these policy revisions,
the policy will be even more effective
at placing people who qualify for preference
into those preference designated units.
I wouldn't expect that we can necessarily say
75% of the new affordable housing stock
will be people with preferences,
but I think the goal is to just continue to increase
the number of preference households and preference units.
I don't know what you might wanna add to that.
Yeah, I also just wanna restate
and Margot's point earlier that
buildings do have special funds as well
that require kind of direct placements
such as permanent supportive housing.
So the preferences won't necessarily apply
to every unit and every building.
We have to kind of work within that puzzle,
within the puzzle pieces of funding.
So it's kind of hard to pinpoint a number,
but I know Margot and I are,
or your requestable item can talk more
about the housing pipeline later,
that'll give us, she has those numbers
that can give us more of a idea of what that might look like.
I do, I have numbers on that.
I hope you're right.
I will say one thing, I know it was important,
when the City Council adopted the first iteration
of the preference policy,
one of the things that was really important
was to get it adopted kind of in advance
of our robust pipeline of projects and units coming online,
including all of the units at the North Berkeley
and Ashby Bart station.
So it was well positioned when it was adopted
to really take advantage of like all the units
that are being generated with both housing trust fund dollars
as well as measure O dollars
and really to be able to have it apply to those.
And so that's still the case, even with the second iteration.
Yeah, I know, and I'm looking forward
to talking about the numbers on that stuff later.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Other questions from my council colleagues?
Nope.
Okay, I was gonna ask a couple questions.
So with the income mismatch,
I just wanted to make sure I understand.
You were saying that people had, from the report,
people had lower incomes than the levels
that we're seeing in the in the
60% area median income units, and those income bands
both come with minimum incomes that an applicant
household needs to make and maximums.
And so part of what the leasing staff is doing
is making sure that people make enough income
to afford the unit.
And in many cases where they were verifying preferences,
We saw that, you know, especially for the homeless preference, they were able to confirm, yes, this person qualifies for the homeless preference, but they don't make enough income to qualify for the affordable housing unit on the basis of income, which is a separate process from the preference policy.
And was that just for the unhoused applicants or was that for others as well? That's what I wasn't quite clear on, I think.
Yeah for eviction and foreclosure that was also where we saw the biggest income mismatch numbers.
Yeah I just wanted to kind of acknowledge also going back to councilmember Trico's question to
like one issue that I think we're really experiencing now and trying to navigate is
as higher incomes continue to move into Alameda County and across the Bay Area
incomes on the lower end of the bracket are stagnating and so what we're seeing is our AMIs
are increasing overall, folks on the lower end are,
it's getting harder for them to kind of keep pace.
And that's something that we're kind of still trying to,
a lot of communities are struggling with
and our system is kind of experiencing that gap right now.
Yeah, I see, thank you, that's helpful.
And then you also mentioned holistic support
for families that are moving back into the area.
And I think that that makes sense to me
and I'm just wondering if you could speak more
to the types of supports and, you know, if you all had thoughts on like how we could
do that better.
Yeah.
So I think one thing is just making people aware of the resources that already exist.
So whether it's workforce development from the county or free diapers from WIC or whatever
the case may be, you know, affordable housing is a huge support to people by many people
who have already been pushed out of the community might be one economic shock away from housing
precarity and so and from greater challenges. We know that the general cost of living here
is high. So I think one piece is really just making people aware of existing resources
and working with our community partners to help, you know, make those connections. There
have been programs in other communities Austin Texas has a displacement prevention navigator program where trained community members help neighbors stay in their home with housing resource guidance and other support so there's interesting models out there from other communities but I think just you know really ensuring that people are well aware of resources.
Yeah and there's just some simple stuff we could do better like our parks department offers
priority access for income qualifying folks to register for their kids for summer camps.
You know we have our youth works we have great programs at our senior center and so you know
Anna and I and our team we're discussing just creating better synergies in our department to
really connect folks and our housing to these awesome resources that we already offer.
Yeah that's that's awesome thank you I really appreciate that.
Okay, I think that there are no more questions,
so I will see if there's any public comment on this matter.
Again, we are on item number 15,
which is affordable housing preference policy,
pilot assessment and policy update.
If you have any comment on that, please come on up
and raise your hand online.
So I'm really disappointed that we don't have
some statistics on how many applicants are turned away.
You know that really want this housing and they applied but we don't have enough units
So I think that's really important for us in terms of our
Planning in this community of what we need for affordable housing. We need to have those statistics
They should be here and I'm disappointed that they're not part of the report and not available right now
So that's one comment
The other comment is
In relation to people not having enough
Income they're homeless who don't have enough income to even qualify for the affordable housing
and
That should tell us why they're on their street
Because they don't have enough income to qualify for affordable housing
So there isn't any place for them to live the what's left to them is being on the street
And I think I think we need some better numbers on that also
So that we know how much housing we need for the extremely poor
So, I don't know what we do tonight about that
but I think that that really needs to be given
to the council and the community
so that we have that kind of information.
As far as the preference,
this sounds a lot easier if they only have one thing
to prove rather than a bunch of things,
but I still wonder, you know,
I saw something in here that you may need a PRA.
Thank you.
Thanks, Kelly.
So that makes it hard.
Appreciate your time.
Thanks.
Thank you.
We have two more minutes.
Good evening, Mayor, Council, staff, community.
My name is Moni Law.
I've been advocating for affordable housing
for the 15 years that I've been here.
And I came to every city council meeting and Mayor Tom Bates
asked me once, Moni, why are you coming
to the meeting on the next week?
I go, yes, Mayor.
He goes, but why?
And I said, because I care.
And here's one of the biggest items
I'm really concerned about and I thank you for your work by the way.
We work together during that time.
All those meetings, I went to many of them, lots of them,
and we created this wonderful policy and here's the heart of the matter.
I'm a poly-sci major for UC Berkeley,
not a math major, but here's the basic math and here's the basic problem.
Average median income, what's the average income in Berkeley?
$180,000 a year.
What's half of 180, $90,000?
How many teachers do you know who make $90,000?
How many store clerks do you know who makes 90,000?
All the categories of people in our communities don't qualify often for the 50%.
The 30% still too high because you know how much people make for SSI, 700 a month.
Social security on average people make 1,200, 1,500 a month, that's not enough.
so they don't qualify for the so-called affordable housing units.
The arena numbers for the city of Berkeley were not met for 20 years.
My understanding is they slapped Berkeley pretty hard and said,
you could be fined if you don't come up in your numbers of actually affordable units.
Regional Housing Network Association,
whichever NA stands for, our HNA.
In these last 10 years,
we had an opportunity under the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance to make
more affordable housing on site instead of the end move fee.
We let developers off easy.
They got the opportunity to put money into
the inclusionary housing fund to build later,
some other time, some other place.
We need the housing now and we've already lost a lot of
opportunities to ensure that type of housing was built that was low income,
truly low income.
Finally, as I came back to Berkeley after being here 25 years ago as a student,
or longer than that.
I was so shocked and sad to see how many black people
disappeared that I asked Mayor Gus Newport,
where did all the black people go?
It said, well, they've been displaced,
gentrification is strong, and the community ability
to stay in their grandparents' houses no longer.
Grandparents died, they then have no place to live,
and half the people I talked to,
I talked to most of the people that are homeless in Berkeley,
they grow up here.
Their parents owned the home for three generations.
they lost the home, they lost their housing,
and they're sleeping on our corners
and under tents and tarps
and being swept away like they're trash,
they're human beings.
We have to do better for the unhoused in Berkeley
and we have to do that by the decision making
of our policy makers, which are our elected officials,
to change and improve the inclusionary housing,
whereas point out, make.
Mayor, and not Mayor, Council Member Susan,
And also Linda, Maya, and Susan.
The last name is escaping me.
One graph.
Wanted to know what I meant when I said
the inclusionary housing is difficult to obtain
because they have to apply to each building.
Other cities do a unified application
so you can do it once and not run around
to every building, 500 of the buildings
you're trying to run to.
They miss a deadline, they miss a document.
It's way too high of a threshold for a family
that's already stressed out
to have to go to every building,
put in for the lottery, pray and hope.
Now by the way, the numbers I was hoping you would say it,
but I believe there were 9,000 people
that applied for the Maudel Shirek Building.
I know people who applied for it,
they didn't get it, they're heartbroken,
they're still on doorway every day
trying to find an opening that they can afford.
So there's ways we could do this.
Please vote for better policies, thanks.
Thanks.
First, how well promoted was the policy?
I think that has to be looked at if there were so few applicants.
Second, and this point has somewhat been made.
What if the grandparents who were discriminated against,
those individuals, some of them left and they now have a home elsewhere,
with a backyard for their kids to play, why would they want to come back for a small apartment?
Instead, their siblings may have stayed,
may have been working in very minimal wage jobs,
and in fact are extremely low income and may be homeless,
may be, will likely be aging,
and they would be excluded
because they're not extremely low income.
Theirs isn't about the right to return.
Theirs is they have the historical ties to redlining.
They're here, they're here, and they're poor,
and some of them are homeless, and like Moni,
I have also spoken to people who grew up here
and are homeless and are struggling
or stayed with siblings for a while,
but how are they covered by this?
But are very, are very unstably housed.
Some people are not homeless, they're unstably housed.
and they're hanging on with a family member
who may keep them for a while,
then they go couch surf with another family member.
How are they gonna be covered by this policy?
And it's important that we also look at people
that are here now that are homeless and extremely,
are at risk of homelessness
that fall in the extremely low-income category
because, and they don't all need to be in supportive housing.
That's another issue to talk about,
is if everybody who is economically deprived
has to be into supportive housing
is not necessarily the case.
Thank you.
Thanks Carol.
Is there, are there any public comments online?
Let's see.
We have six hands raised.
So this is public comment on item 15,
affordable housing preference policy, Monique Allen.
Hello everyone.
James Chang is online and he's given me one minute extra.
So I have two minutes.
Okay.
Thank you.
Esteemed council members and Madam Mayor,
as a Motto Miller She-Rec resident
who does not recall receiving a survey
from Healthy Black Families,
I thank you for the opportunity to speak about
Berkeley's housing preference policy process.
The Motto Miller She-Rec community apartments
received over 9,000 applications for two waiting lists
for just 87 apartments.
That number does not show how many applicants qualified
for Berkeley's affordable housing preference,
but it does in fact show a need of a scale of a need.
These applicants who did not receive housing
should not simply disappear from view
when one development fulfills
its affordable housing commitments.
To remove the burden from the applicants,
I ask that the city required organizations
paid to conduct housing preference outreach
to also advocate for applicants after being denied
from the initial application,
especially with this new program that's tiered, outreach organizations work should include
verifying descendants and other eligible applicants for the housing preference, provide a prioritized
clear path for consideration for future affordable housing, beginning with the model Sheerik
pool of thousands of possible eligibles. These organizations must continue to advocate
for the pool of known eligibles rather than leaving them alone to start all over. Their
Their performance should be measured by verified applications, completed applications, follow-up,
tracked, denied applications, and successful housing placements with wraparound care resources
to mitigate the risks associated with 100 percent affordable housing.
Model Miller Sherrick is only 6 percent black.
These people are still seeking a home.
These organizations should do better and let us close the loopholes between outreach, verification,
application, denial, and placement, where no eligible applicant is left behind.
Thank you. And with that, I am complete.
Thank you, Dr. Allen. Thank you.
Next is David Scheer.
Hello, I, oh, two minutes. Great.
So I am in total support of the updates to the housing policy,
that the housing preference policy that staff is putting forward tonight.
I think that the preference policy is one of those places
where we put our values into action.
So I think that this revision will improve the policy
and I hope that you pass it.
Aside from all that, I just wanted to highlight
and make sure that council and the city manager
and HHCS leadership understands what a phenomenal job
the staff did in this revision.
To me, this process of revising the preference policy
is just a textbook example of a thoughtful, collaborative
and data-driven policy development process.
They really went like full spectrum.
They partnered with Healthy Black Families.
They talked to the residents.
They talked to private and nonprofit property managers.
They got the data.
They talked to jurisdictions with similar programs.
They really did the work.
And I think the outcome of that is here for everyone to see.
It's a program that's gonna work better on its own terms.
It's gonna work better for the community.
It's gonna be easier to implement
for both our staff and for property managers.
So I just wanted to call that out
and make sure that everybody is very clear
on just what a great job that they did.
Separate from past that, I just wanna say
that as important and meaningful as this policy is,
we know that it's not really enough, right?
It only applies to regulated low income housing,
which is only ever gonna be a small percentage
of our housing stock.
And not everybody who has been displaced from Berkeley
or their descendants are low income.
when Bart came in and demolished large portions
of South Berkeley, they displaced a lot of homeowners.
And of course we know that during the foreclosure crisis
20 years ago, a lot of Berkeleyans were abused
and defrauded and they were foreclosed on.
So you know, leaving Berkeley as a homeowner
and we've got this program that you can come back
as a low income tenant, it's not the same.
So we really need to make sure that we're finding things
to do for middle income people.
That's all, thank you.
Okay next is Taj.
Good evening council.
I was here in support of the previous commenter.
So please take me off the board.
Thank you.
Next is Delaluna.
Yes, I wanted to say that I agree that you could see
how much work that the staff put in.
And I appreciate some of the challenges they brought up,
especially about the income
that's going to be rising in the area.
It's already happening in San Francisco
and we are expecting it to happen here shortly.
So I appreciate that the staff brought that up
instead of not mentioning it,
but it does seem like there needs to be another metric
just besides the median income,
like there has to be something.
I know it's not average.
I don't know what it is,
but there's something else that's not attached
to the highest income earners
because it balloons the data and the income levels.
And then hearing about people who don't qualify that again
has been a known problems,
but I appreciate the staff bringing it up
instead of not bringing it up.
And I'm impressed by the outreach to the community
and especially about getting the people displaced by BART
and going through the effort of getting those records
to give people the certifications
that must take quite some time.
But my question and what you didn't speak about
was about the people that might be in the queue
who might've applied for the Sherrick building,
and maybe there's let's say 4,000 people
that are in that queue,
and they went through the process under the old certification.
And so how would they fit into this new process
with the new certification, with the only four levels?
Are they still at the front of the line?
And then there was a previous speaker who spoke,
and it might've sounded like these people are not included,
like they won't just cross over to this new system.
So I just would like to hear about that,
like making sure people aren't gonna be dropped.
And then I do hope this passes
because I know people are waiting.
So that's it, thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, next is Maria Sol.
Thank you, and hi again.
I just want to follow up on what Moni spoke of.
This is very complex, obviously,
and there's so many different facets, so much to deal with.
And you know, I've been intimately involved
with the full spectrum.
Those people that deserve respect that have nothing
but not disposable like we see happening globally,
they deserve a space.
And yet income is necessary for the choices
that are affordable.
And yet there's so much power and privilege
and profit incentivization.
I was involved in Chicago when the banks were redlining
and burning buildings down with people in them.
So I just want us to stay open to what our premises are
and how we regard people and be as creative
as we possibly can,
because this can be accomplished if we pay attention
and are filled with care for everyone.
We can be okay.
Thank you again.
Thank you.
Thanks, Maria.
And we have Janice Ching.
Whoop, wrong one there.
Janice Ching.
Good evening.
I support the Affordable Housing Preference Policy
and appreciate that we are prioritizing
affordable housing for families.
My question is why are we not prioritizing
building family sized housing in the market rate sector so that we can get more of this type of housing with the state density bonus.
How do we get market rate builders to build more family sized homes?
How can we incentivize that?
And it also concerns me that the AMI continues to rise so
quickly causing people to not qualify for the lower income housing.
need to come up with a way to address this issue as our incomes increase in
the city. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comment? That's it. Okay. Thank you very
much. Coming back to council, are there any comments? Councilmember Bartlett. Also
Councilmember Little-Pier, your mic is on. Thank you Madam Mayor. And you want to
I want to thank the staff here for diligent work, I know this is really hard, the Black
families as well, as everyone else who worked hard to bring this policy to life.
And Lori Drosti, former councilman who initiated this and thanked her for allowing me to join
it when I came to council those years ago.
And so it's important to realize this effort was targeted by the federal authorities, we
were afraid of it because it had lots of issues legally, which one did you get into on the
record and it was a lot a lot of pressures and we stuck with it and we
moved the needle forward and forward and forward and here we are and I have to
say 17 and sound like a lot but I'm very pleased these results we're seeing
families reconnect with the community that generation of displacement pulled
apart and that means something and my office by the way is on the green line
it's on Shattuck it's the old green line and if you think about the history which
which I do every day when I look out my window.
The green line is what it sounds like,
an investment boundary.
And it's ring with banks, it is today, still.
And these banks who have their own form
of neighborhood preference,
they determine who to get a loan,
who could buy a home, who could build wealth,
and ultimately who could remain in the community.
And now we are, generations later,
working diligently and intentionally
to reverse some of those consequences.
And that's what it means so much to me now today.
We're not just making homes and apartments.
We're reconnecting families to their roots.
It's wonderful.
And we heard about some friction in the application
process, for sure.
People having to start over, having
to submit the same information again and again.
And really glad that you're fixing this,
making the process simpler, more effective, and more just.
We heard some talk about the affordability levels.
And that's a larger issue we can get into,
but the fact that you're invited back
and have access to your home is important.
And so if you realize that for a long time,
these lines were drawn to keep people out.
And now despite the challenges,
both internal and external,
we were acting with intention to create Pathways Home.
And I want to celebrate that,
celebrate you and all of you.
Proud to be from Berkeley tonight.
Alders open.
Thank you very much Councilmember Keefe.
Thank you.
I just have a small thing I want to highlight.
In the presentation,
there was a reference to the partnership with the libraries
and I'm the Board of Library Trustees representative.
And I just wanted to just highlight the work of Jeff Finley
is actually the name of that librarian
at the Central Library who's been doing that work.
And it's my understanding is it's really,
really important work.
He's been working like directly with families
to help them gather the documentation they need
to show that their families were displaced.
So I just wanted to recognize Jeff.
It's really amazing work.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, we are moving to Council Member Trigob
and then online to Council Member Humbert.
Thank you.
I would like to echo many of the comments,
just thanking staff and also thanking the community
And I think this has been a beautiful partnership.
It has been, you know, the work you've documented has been painstaking, but I am very excited
and proud to be voting on this policy tonight.
And I just wanted to weigh in in strong support of this item, creating opportunities for more
folks that have been displaced and uprooted out of Berkeley to be able to find a place
that they can call home again.
And I look forward to the continued partnership that I know we will have on this topic as
there are opportunities to refine, to address some additional structural impediments to
to getting as many folks into housing,
they can afford as possible, as soon as possible.
And lastly, I want to, one commenter mentioned
how the transition to the new system would work
if someone is already in the pipeline.
And I trust under your leadership
that will be seamless in the transition process.
But thank you so much.
Thank you.
Going online to Council Member Humbert.
Yes, thank you.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I wanna thank Director Gilman,
as well as Margo Ernst, Anna Cash and Mike Uberti
for all of the really hard work on this.
I also really appreciated Council Member Bartlett's heart
felt comments. I found them really inspiring. So thank you, Councilmember, for your wonderful
comments. I truly appreciate how much careful thought and community engagement went into
developing this policy. It's deeply important that we try to right historic wrongs while
also being cognizant of current needs. And I think this approach does an impressive job
of attempting to balance a variety of factors and stakeholder interests and simplifying things
in a way that's much more elegant than the original framework. I truly appreciate health
housing and community services, and I am pleased to be able to, that we're going to be able to
move this forward tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Kesterwani.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor. I just want to thank our staff for bringing this item before us
and refining this proposal that we previously adopted.
And, you know, I think it bears repeating.
The reason why we have an affordable housing preference
policy is because we don't have enough affordable housing.
And, you know, we had the debate last time
and heard some public comment tonight
about the San Pablo Avenue specific plan.
And I just want to be clear from my perspective,
every opportunity that we have in our city
to create more homes, whether they are market rate homes
or below market rate affordable homes, it's necessary.
And people are asking how much?
Well, we are in a deep hole as a region and a state.
And so that is why I think we did a very important thing
along San Pablo Avenue.
We paved the way for thousands of new homes
to come to that corridor.
And many of them will be below market rate
affordable homes and and we need this policy as well so that when we place
people into those units you know we do it in a way that seeks to as much as
possible redress prior harms that were made so thank you again for this policy
and look forward to adopting it tonight. Thank you I also want to add my thanks
and and just say that you know I really do want us to take a look at how we can
and provide more holistic support.
I think that makes a lot of sense.
And looking at other kind of common sense things
that we can do, I do think it is frustrating
that people have to apply to new buildings
over and over again.
I hear you all calling out some of the challenges
and ways that we can do better.
So I just really want to thank you for doing that
because if we don't come back, we can never improve it.
And the fact that we did this in the first place
was a big deal, so thank you.
Okay, so is there a motion?
Because we've got a lot of comments.
Thank you.
So I will move to approve the
staff recommendation.
Thank you.
A second from Councilmember
Bartlett over here.
Okay.
Let us take the role, please.
On the motion to approve the
staff recommendation on item
15, affordable housing
preference policy.
Councilmember Kesser-Wanyi.
Yes.
Taplin.
Aye.
Bartlett.
Yes.
Traga.
Aye.
Yes, and Mary Yes, okay motion carries. Okay, very good. So count. Thank you so much. Thank you
Those of you who are not relevant to items 18 19 20, please feel free to depart
Councilmember
Blackaby has brought items
18 19 and 20 from the information reports on to our action calendar as
Sort of a singular item and so I will ask
if there's anything in particular you wanted to present or if this was mostly
just for questions. It's mostly for questions. I'll just I'll have the
reports up so we can refer to them so as we're talking through it. And I shared
some of the questions with staff ahead of time so hopefully we can so there
there's no there's no gotchas here it's really just to kind of dig into the
numbers a little bit. So starting on number 18 where we talk a little bit
about the pipeline of BMR program.
I know in the report, and I've got it here in table two,
we're projecting across all projects
at some point in the future,
about 32 and a half million dollars
in projected revenue, fee revenue.
Remind us just in the context,
what's currently in the housing trust fund
this would be supplemented against.
Yeah, sure, thank you.
So across all of our sources,
So the housing trust fund plus our other sources
that fall under the housing trust fund umbrella,
which includes like measure O, measure U1 commitments,
and some other one-time sources that we have
across all of those,
we have about 4.9 million that is uncommitted.
And I do want to acknowledge this is gonna come up
in one year later questions.
There's actually a mistake in the measure O report.
there's not 17 million uncommitted,
there's only about 2.9 of Measure O uncommitted,
so we will be preparing an update,
a revised Measure O report,
and bring it to a future council meeting
with the correction.
Okay, great, you can come up to that, okay, thank you.
And I did also wanna clarify,
I'm not sure if this was part of your question,
but we don't typically commit future fee revenues,
so we don't have any of that 32.5 million
that you note, none of that is currently committed.
The only time historically that we've committed future fee
revenues was when we pre-committed $13 million
of mitigation fees to the BART station development projects.
And that money has since come in.
So those reservations are now cash on hand.
Right.
It's only really recognized as the project comes online.
OK, great.
And then remind us, so for a typical project,
again, we leverage this Housing Trust Fund money,
it's a force multiplier, so it's maybe one piece
and then four to five acts of other funds come in against it.
Is that, again, this roughly order of magnitude?
Turn it over.
We leverage between four and five dollars
for every one dollar of commitment
for a typical Housing Trust Fund project.
There are exceptions to that,
and there's also another exception,
which is our small sites program,
which leverages, has a much lower leverage.
We leverage about 30 to 80 cents
for every dollar commitment in those projects.
And that's largely because there aren't the resources,
the programs statewide and federally don't exist
to support that type of preservation project.
Got it, okay.
Flip into the next page.
So this is then actually saying
what was actually produced in fiscal 2026.
So the pipeline is hypothetical and potential going forward.
In fiscal 26, 34 newly constructed BMR units
were actually made available for lease.
So roughly 10% or so of the pipeline
actually came through in terms of new units.
Should we expect that?
I know a lot of that's driven by market conditions,
but that would suggest that this pipeline of 292 units
might actually be kind of an eight to 10 year process
to fully go through.
Is that a reasonable expectation?
Yeah, you know, it's really difficult to determine the predictable pace because each project is unique.
So, you know, it's really dependent on the project size, the number of units affects the number of materials, the type of financing they need,
the developers, options, the developers, option two, how they want to comply, if they want to provide more onsite units or not.
And as well as changes to state law that might encourage more onsite units such as, most notably, the density bonus law.
And then, as you mentioned,
just broader economic conditions, right?
So, the higher interest rates affect
how people can get on.
So, as those shift over time,
it's difficult to say with a predictable pace
how each project will come through.
But we do wanna note that if a project does install,
it's typically, the timeline will be three to five years
from development, entitlements through occupancy.
So, that's kind of like a gauge.
But, you know, as we've seen throughout the community,
I know there's been talks about it recently,
specifically for like downtown.
It is possible that projects
might not follow that timeline.
Okay.
Yeah, and I'll just add to that to say,
you know, there's only like a single point in time
when we count the units, whether it's units or fees.
So it really can vary widely year to year
because if we have a large project that say
has a higher number of onsite inclusionary units,
then whatever year that that CFO is issued
is when that's gonna hit.
So it really can vary widely,
but if you look at it over, say, a 10-year period,
there might be some average that we could talk about.
But year to year, a lot of fluctuation.
And you'll see that again.
I was looking at table three here was my next question,
which is significant fluctuation too
in terms of when we recognize that fee revenue
from a high of $16 million four years ago
to a million and a half this last year.
So again, that cyclicality, again,
just what you're talking about,
it's driven by market forces,
it's driven by things outside of our control,
but we recognize the fee revenue
as the project comes online.
Yeah, that's correct.
We collect the fee revenue at certificate of occupancy,
which is also a bit different than other city fees,
which typically happened earlier in the permitting process.
So that also kind of changes the timeline
for revenue collection as well.
So we have to kind of wait till the very end of the process.
Okay.
I will add to that recent changes, somewhat recent,
in the last few years, changes to density bonus law
that sort of increased the percentages
of on-site affordable units
and the corresponding density bonus did shift
what percent of on-site units we tend to see now,
which is a higher percent.
So it used to be that, you know,
maybe more projects would fee out
or if they weren't feeing out
and they were a density bonus project,
they would kind of cap out at 11% onsite.
And now it's like tends to cap out at 15% VLI onsite.
There are some other changes in density bonus law
that might change that over time.
So that is another reason why
we might see a reduction in fees.
Although we do have a, as you noted,
like there is a healthy pipeline.
We anticipate there will be years in the future,
the near future where we have a larger fee collection.
Obviously that's just current pipeline.
I mean, we add to the pipeline every year, so right, yeah.
Okay.
Shifting to Measure O, so this is the next report.
So what we just talked about was housing trust fund.
This is from development fees, right?
And then Measure O is the affordable housing bond
that voters passed.
Remind us and me, because I don't know,
but can affordable housing, can any one project use money
from both O and the Housing Trust Fund
or do they pick one or the other?
It's, yeah, so they,
the way we define our trust fund and the,
there are some sources that support housing development
that don't, aren't technically like part
of the Housing Trust Fund itself,
but they're still in the umbrella
of our Housing Trust Fund program.
And so we, you know, they, it's common for projects
to have a mix of funding across multiple sources.
And it usually has to do with which sources are available
at the time that we fund that project.
Sometimes you'll notice we'll bring a resolution forward
that will say it'll commit an amount to a project.
It might say like, you know, 15 million from a combination
from the following sources.
And we don't even, we haven't even identified
which source it's gonna come from yet
until we execute the loan agreement,
which might be three to four years down the line.
So it is common that they will,
it'll be kind of pieced together
from a lot of different sources.
And we look at it holistically.
So like we're looking at the local commitment collectively
when we're looking at things like the trust fund guidelines
in terms of the funding caps
or percentages and things like that.
So yeah, it's common.
Rarely is it because they're applying specifically
for Measure O versus housing trust fund.
More commonly what can happen is certain sources
can't be used for certain activities.
Maybe it's pre-development or,
sorry, what were the other pre-development or?
Like typically Measure O is for hard costs
and our other funds are more flexible,
so we put those into pre-development.
Yeah, so it also depends on that.
It all kind of feeds the same pot to some,
but then some have restrictions
in terms of how they can be used.
That's right.
Yeah, so by packaging them we are able to piece them together to kind of help the applicant.
Okay, we were just talking about the remaining measure O bond capacity you mentioned.
I know in the report it looked like it was something like 17, but it's actually much
less than that in terms of what's left.
It's closer to three million, it's about 2.9 million, and we don't anticipate issuing
an RFP for that.
We might at some point in the future, if we've pooled enough resources to really justify
We do have certain projects that qualify for over-the-counter applications and we we try to keep some money available for those types of applications which are like emergency health and safety rehab for our existing pipeline or gap gap financing for projects that we've already committed resources to and
And if they're at the stage where they need
just some gap financing and without it,
they might lose other commitments,
substantial commitments through the state
or tax credits, then we can consider
those applications over the counter.
So coming back to the city manager,
so I know in the report there was sort of a discussion
that as we were nearing the exhaustion of Measure O,
should think about timing of whether or not we do the next bond and that's
something we'd have to talk about maybe starting next year. Any thoughts on that?
Yeah, that would be something we want to talk about next year. I'd work with our
our team, our finance director and HHCS team to get a sense of how much capacity
we have to go out to market for more bonds, where we're at with the housing
pipeline and what the future might look like, and then come back to
council and see if council would like us to actually explore that more formally
okay yeah and I know you had asked in in your questions that you had sent about
sort of like which yeah a bond or or the trust fund and which is you know which
is the most impactful or makes the biggest difference and I I did want to
respond to that and just say you know both are immensely valuable measure O
the city of Davis. So we have a
lot of money that we know was a
huge infusion of a large amount
of money that allowed us to
really. Get this robust pipeline
and really invest in the 2 part
station developments. As well as
a lot of other significant
projects throughout the city.
But we also have you'll in our
pipeline. I say you'll notice
because I think we say he did
separately as I think that this
45 million dollars of housing trust fund dollars committed to our pipeline and that's primarily mitigation fees. It's mitigation and in lieu fees and a little bit of home funds. So it's, you know.
Both are so valuable 1 gives us.
Uh, like a certain fixed amount at an infusion at a single point in time. That's incredibly valuable, but the mitigation fees are they're kind of like the bread and butter. I mean, those are the dollars that even though they do vary from year to year,
they are a constant revenue source for the trust fund.
And it's what allows us to do the gap funding.
It allows us to do the emergency repairs
on our existing pipeline.
We do have an aging pipeline.
We have a lot of older projects.
And then it allows us to even conceive of new projects.
And so I did wanna say both are so immensely valuable.
And they work really well together.
because like I said, having the influx
of the Measure O dollars really gave us this robust pipeline,
but the mitigation fees are what are allowing us
to keep these projects alive.
And almost, I don't know if it's right
when you think about it, but the Housing Trust Fund
and sort of this, and LuFee's just sort of continuing
to steadily kind of refill the pipe,
but a Measure O, a subsequent bond could be kind of,
again, a larger infusion for very particular projects,
very particular needs that could come on potentially,
support by the voters kind of comes online much faster whereas the housing
trust fund is sort of a steady increase over time. Okay. One kind of comment and I
love this chart because this was sort of the chart that was showing cumulative
city assisted units by year so this is actually where we are so far and the
forecast for where we hope to be by 2035 and just my thought here and maybe this
is also for the city manager but it would be probably useful at some point
to just you know I the data is fantastic but then putting the context
around it like what's good or where do we want to be you know like we're to
meet the targets of what we think we need to do not just for Reena but just
as a community in terms of the number of affordable housing units that we want to
have ready and in place to support the kind of community do we want what's
what's good or what's the target that we're shooting at and that also might
useful when we talk about a bond because it's like you know we're you know if
we're gonna be at 2300 by the end of 2035 that's probably not enough
ultimately we probably want to be farther but what do we need to do to get
to the bigger number so anyway that kind of planning exercise I think would also
be really valuable at some point I can just say yeah we would agree I mean I
think that would be an important exercise also kind of fun and also
uplifting when you think about tying it to the preference policy and thinking
about all the people that were displaced
and what would it take to bring them back.
And then looking at that in the context
of the funding required to do all that would be.
And the other thing that would be interesting to look at
is compared to other cities and what are they doing.
Yeah, that's great.
Last thing, this is the last report,
which was the, again, all the data here is fantastic
because it just, you can dig through this
and dog here and I marked up my stuff.
The last one is on the condo conversion report.
I know, here's the number of applications,
number of completed and pending.
It seems incremental, marginal.
Any thoughts on what we could do from a policy side
if we really wanted to accelerate this process?
Like what other tools might be in our toolbox
as a council as a policy body to move this forward
more quickly if you had any thoughts?
So yeah, we wanted to acknowledge
that the condo conversion, the council has done a lot
to advance ownership opportunities
and make them more flexible over the past couple of years.
The condo conversion ordinance exists
to kind of regulate the process.
And I want to acknowledge that some advocates may consider
that by going through the condo conversion process,
you take away rental housing,
which might lower affordability in the community.
And that's why the city assesses
the affordable housing mitigation fee on the process.
So there actually is a cap of 100 units per year
for this reason, but the program hasn't come close
to approaching this in practice.
Many applicants are what's called a tendency in common owners
who are taking to transition their ownership structure
into more formal condos.
So in terms of ownership as well,
you know most federal and state sources
for affordable housing that we've just discussed
are targeted towards rental housing,
which further limits the city's ability
to invest in ownership.
The city previously had a down payment assistance program
in the 90s and the early 2000s
in the form of shared appreciation loans.
But this program was ended because council determined
at the time that the median purchase price of homes
kind of negated the city's ability
to really effectively provide meaningful loans for people.
So I just wanna say in terms of increasing condos
and more ownership opportunities overall,
we submitted a separate info report back in June
that kind of further expands on these options.
But the city council established
the same inclusionary housing in Luffy
for rental and ownership projects.
Previously, it was higher for ownership projects,
so this is a way to kind of not make developers
lean towards one way or the other.
They can choose what is better for their project.
Adopting middle housing rules to encourage
small-scale multi-family infill development.
Amending the zoning code for streamlining provisions
for middle housing infill projects compliant with SB 684,
which allows small lot subdivisions
for projects under 10 units.
Amending the zoning rules to permit the sale of ADUs,
really from the main property, so these are examples
of the regulatory aspect.
In terms of condo conversion, possibly lowering the fee
could encourage them more, but it's a fine balance
with protecting sitting tenants as it is.
Great, thank you.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for the indulgence, and I appreciate
all the great information in these reports, so thank you.
Thank you.
Councilmember Tracob.
Thank you, just two quick questions.
I think they're quick figure one on page four of the fourth report,
the inclusionary housing program fee revenue.
Um, I know you mentioned that there have been some changes in how the density
bonus, uh, percentage is calculated at the state level and you know,
where the cap is, but that's a pretty precipitous drop.
and I'm wondering does that fully account for it
or what other, I also recognize that funding is,
funds are not always collected at the same time
but can you just speak to what accounts for this drop
and what factors may lead to an increase
in fee revenue again?
Yeah, well, you know, a big reason a lot of projects
have paused is the really increase in interest rates
have really significantly increased since 2002,
as well as increased labor.
I'm sure we're all aware of the tariffs.
That's increased, especially for larger projects costs,
as well as, sorry, that would be increasing material costs,
as well as labor costs.
So those have all been kind of deciding factors
outside the city's control that have affected projects
moving forward.
Yeah, I think some of it is development cycles or trends.
And I wasn't here back in the, you know,
when we had that peak year of 16 million or whatever,
I don't know how much of it might've been like
pent up progress from things stalling during COVID.
I don't know if that was the case here in Berkeley.
I know it was where I previously worked is like,
there was sort of like a pause
And then everything kind of went into construction
at the same time.
So I don't know if that influenced the amount of fees
that were received in those one or two years.
But I would say economic factors certainly
have contributed feasibility issues with development
that might make some project stall
or some not even come through.
And then the change in the density bonus percentages.
And I will say it's not just that it went from 11% to 15%.
I think that developers got a lot more savvy
about what density bonus could,
they could achieve through density bonus.
And so I do think overall there had been a trend
during that time of just more developers
utilizing density bonus in the way
that it really worked for them.
Okay.
I also wanted to acknowledge,
this probably is in the best graph,
and if we went back further years,
it would show kind of more of a trend.
And by doing it at that peak year,
it kind of makes it seem more precipitous that it was, yeah.
All right, thank you.
And my other question, I think,
it's just an accounting question for my own edification on,
this is on the second report, the Berkeley Way,
the 2012 Berkeley Way,
there's the bridge affordable component with 89 units.
There's also the permanent supportive housing component.
I know the two are collocated.
I'm just wondering how to read this.
Is this additive, the 89 units plus the 53 and 44
on the other page or is this all going together?
Thank you, I'm trying to catch up to where you're at, sorry.
Sorry, pages one and two of seven on the measure.
It is additive.
Yeah, so they would be, they're all individual sections
of the development.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Any other questions?
Okay, very good.
Is there any public comments on these items?
Anyone online for public comment?
Oh, Moni's running to the front.
Go ahead, Moni.
Sorry about that.
Quick question or point.
that was done some years ago,
they found that you could set aside 20% of the units
for affordable and still meet the ROI.
So the rate of return was actually justified
that even putting that many,
and I think part of the reason that I've seen
over the last few years and others have agreed with me,
and I'm not an expert,
but by allowing a developer to take an alternative,
like you said, it becomes savvy, of course,
There are fewer that are being built on site, even though the study that the city council
itself actually ordered to be completed and they paid for it and it justified more units
on site than just the 10% that a lot of agreements have been developed for.
So it should have been set up in that way if it's still possible.
That would help a lot.
Also for the Housing Trust Fund, the only...
that's all right.
I just I think the only
building is my understanding
that spent built is that
Berkeley way project.
Mitigation fees and the in the
fees and the fund that sitting
over there to be built at some
point in time and maybe there
are more that are being built
that I've missed but I think
it's just pretty ways that
correct. Yes, that's all and
we could do better things.
Thank you any public comment
Uh, Cheryl Davila. Former council member Cheryl Davila, please be respectful. I know it's hard for y'all. Um, yeah, so.
Well, the rena numbers, not a good number. Um, I don't know how truthful and accurate that is.
Also, you know, 10%. It's supposed to be 20% in lieu.
Um, well, and if they don't put it in, they're supposed to pay the in lieu fees.
So I think they should be more.
Than 10% and at least the minimum 20% and that's even a low.
Number we need affordable housing. We need affordable for the very, very, very, very low income. We need affordable for people that are on social security or disability or disabled.
And for others that can't afford these market rate units.
And yeah, the in lieu fees, only one project,
I'm wondering like what's in the pipeline
because I haven't heard of anything.
And it's interesting that now you're giving two minutes,
when usually only give one minute,
I know nobody comes to these meetings
because they're not listened to, heard, respected, honored,
and it's pretty much a waste of time.
So people don't join these meetings
because they're not, you can have 400 people in the room
and you don't pay attention to those 400 people
unless like the tear gas thing,
which I'm happy you kept the ban on,
but it's an election year.
So that's probably why that passed.
Next is Janice Ching.
Hi, I really appreciate the staff report
that shows how robust the pipeline is.
And I am wondering the range of projects that have been in that pipeline, because I know
that some of the projects sit there for some time and that a lot of the developers are
trying to sell these projects.
So anyway, that's one point.
And the other thing is just that with the number of projects that are in the pipeline,
We're still trying to incentivize developers to come forward with more projects, and I
understand that we need to keep that pipeline robust.
But when the economic situation is as dire as it is, showing that precipitous drop, it
just seems that maybe now is not the time to be giving gifts away to the developers
to get more projects going proposed when they can't build it and possibly for years.
So I just want to say there has to be some kind of balance here between what we incentivize
so that we can get the affordable housing that we need.
Thank you.
Thanks, Janice.
Okay, that's it.
Okay, that's it.
Okay, thank you very much.
Any other comments from council colleagues?
Thank you.
Yep.
All right, very good.
I don't think there's any action
since this was an information report,
but I'll just thank you both for your time
and for answering our questions.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, we are going, you need a break.
Okay, all right.
Let's take a 10 minute break.
And then just to be clear,
because I know we jumped around a bit here,
we will come back to item number 13 and then 14,
and then we will be at 16, 13, 14, 16.
Okay, thank you.
Recording stopped.
Hello, oh, there we are.
Okay, all right, everyone, we are back in session.
No, we're not.
Okay, we are not back in session.
Recording in progress.
Now we're back in session, okay.
It is not clear to me, did Council Member Kesser, sorry,
did Council Member Tapplin actually leave?
Is he gone?
He's belonging to him.
Okay, all right then.
So we are moving on to item 13,
which is provisions to the approved environmental
health fee schedule.
So I'm going to open the public hearing for item 13,
and I will pass it over to our city staff.
Thank you very much for being here.
I can just say Madam Mayor, we don't have a presentation,
but if there's questions, staff are here to answer.
All right, are there any questions for our city staff?
Thank you so much for waiting in your patience.
It's been a long night, okay.
I am not seeing any hands raised.
Okay, is there any public comment on item 13,
revisions to the approved environmental health fee schedule?
Kelly, are you walking up?
Okay, yeah, Kelly's walking up.
It looks better and let's vote and go home.
The chairs are so uncomfortable.
You've got the great ones and we've got the hard ones.
Okay.
Thank you.
Any online comments?
One from Cheryl Davile, a former council member.
I don't know, maybe that's from before.
Okay, nope.
It's not.
Okay.
All right, any comments from council members?
Is there a motion to close the public hearing?
So moved.
Second.
Can we take the roll on that, please?
Okay, close the public hearing.
Council Member Kesser-Wani.
Yes.
Tapplin is absent.
Bartlett is absent.
Tragob.
Aye.
O'Keeffe.
Yes.
Blackaby.
Yes.
Unapara.
Yes.
Humber.
Yes.
And Mary Ishii.
Yes.
Okay, public hearing is closed.
is there a motion to approve
staff recommendation.
Thank you very much.
Is there a second?
Is there a second?
Thank you.
Can we take the role in that
please?
Okay.
To approve the revisions to the
environmental health fee
schedule.
Councilmember Kesser-Wani?
Yes.
And Tragem?
Hi.
O'Keeffe?
Yes.
Monopara yes Humber and Mary yes okay motion carries thank you is it
possible that people online can't see us can we double-check that please can't
yes cannot see us I mean I could test it okay okay Kelly says that they can see
Yes, online, so perhaps this person has a screen
that's frozen or something.
Okay, all right, very good.
Ken, I'm going to open the public hearing
for item number 14, which is amendments
to Berkeley Municipal Code, section 23.304.100,
site features in residential districts
to require undergrounding of electrical transformers
on private land.
I will pass it over to our Director.
Hi, thank you, Mayor.
Good evening, Council Members.
I'm Jordan Klein, Director of Planning and Development,
joined here at the staff table by Justin Horner
and Branka Tatarovich from the Land Use Policy Team.
And Branka is pulling up the slides
and is going to present on behalf of staff.
Take it away, Branka.
No, no, it's on all right.
All right.
Thank you, Mayor Ishi, and the members of the City Council.
My name is Branka Tatarevic, and I'm an Associate Planner
with the Land Use Planning Division.
Tonight, I'm presenting an ordinance
that amends BMC 23304 100 site features
and establishes a clear land use rule
for electrical transformer placement
while preserving the separate authority
of the City Engineer and PG&E.
The presentation focuses on how those decisions
fit together. The issue at hand is not that transformer siting lacks technical review.
Under the current process there is no zoning standard so siting is negotiated on a project
by project basis. This results in late and inconsistent siting decisions often long after
the site and frontage design have been finalized. At the same time PG&E favors pad mounted
above ground equipment.
All of this can reduce usable frontage and developable space
while applicants lack a predictable early design
standard.
The cabinet or the vault, if the transformer is underground,
is only part of the land use impact.
PG&E also requires clear, level working space,
vertical access for replacement, and a constructable trench
route.
As noted in the staff report, the minimum clearworking space
in front of the equipment door is eight feet.
While these photos show suburban locations,
Berkeley is largely built out
and most of the development occurs
on constrained infill sites.
This slide shows two Berkeley examples.
On the left side of the slide,
the photos show an above ground transformer
on the property on Dwight Way.
Despite multiple efforts and review processes,
the project was unable to obtain a variance from PG&E
to place the transformer underground,
even though the property is a designated landmark.
On the right, the photograph shows three vaults
in the sidewalk containing underground transformers
that serve the new Berkeley City College campus.
This slide shows how the ordinance fits
within the existing decision-making structure
and clarifies who is responsible for each decision.
First, PG&E determines whether a transformer is needed and establishes the capacity and
other technical requirements for the equipment.
The ordinance does not change PG&E's authority over utility service design.
Second, the applicant is responsible for coordinating with PG&E and the city early in the project
and developing a citing approach that complies with all applicable requirements.
The third row, the zoning and land use, is the change made by disordinance.
The new zoning rule prohibits above-grade electrical distribution equipment on private
property for residential, commercial and mixed use projects.
This establishes the city's electrical equipment citing expectation at the beginning of project
design. The rule does not authorize placement in the public right-of-way. If the applicant
requests placement in the right-of-way, it is a separate decision made by the city engineer
and public works through the engineering permit process. Approval remains entirely within
the city engineer's discretion. If the city engineer determines that placement in the
right-of-way is not in public interest, the ordinance provides an exception that
allows above-grade equipment on private property. The applicant or property owner
remains responsible for all costs associated with design, permitting,
installation, maintenance, relocation, and removal of the equipment. Finally, all
required approvals remain in place. PG&E must approve the utility design and the
project must obtain all applicable city permits. So the ordinance establishes
the zoning rule but it does not replace or override any other decisions shown
here. The amendment is intentionally narrow. It establishes a zoning standard
for residential commercial and mixed use projects in residential and commercial
zoning districts. It does not make the utility decision,
are granted encroachment or transfer design and cost responsibility to the city.
In all, the amendment does not create a citing entitlement.
Every citing and encroachment issue remains a separate engineering decision under the
city engineer's sole discretion and based on the public realm criteria listed on the
slide.
The recommendation to the city council is informed by utility, interdepartmental and
developer input.
The Planning Commission recommended council adoption with slightly different language
in June 2025.
Based on the input received, staff identified the land use benefits and operational trade-offs
shown on this slide.
On the land use side, undergrounding
protects active frontages, preserves limited infill land,
reduces visual impacts, and provides applicants
with a predictable standard.
On the operational side, underground equipment
may be more costly and difficult to maintain,
raises water intrusion concerns, and may constrain
future capacity upgrades.
These considerations frame the policy choice
represented by the ordinance while technical
feasibility and right-of-way impacts would continue
to be addressed by agencies responsible for those decisions.
And finally, staff recommends that City Council conduct
a public hearing and adopt the first reading.
The ordinance supplies the missing zoning rule
while preserving the existing lines of authority
and responsibility.
That concludes my presentation.
Thank you, and I'm available for questions.
Thanks, Branka.
Thanks very much for the presentation.
Any questions from folks?
Okay.
I was gonna check and just ask about the space constraints.
Is it possible to, would you have to expand the space later
to allow for more equipment,
or how would that work just so we understand?
Well, there is a constraint, but usually,
as we heard from PG&E, those transformers
are designed to allow for a larger capacity.
So whatever the needs increase,
that capacity should be fit for for a while.
but they are designed for certain size of a transformer.
So if the need is completely outside
of the calculated capacity,
I guess they would need a bigger transformer
and a bigger vault as well.
But I think that would, in terms of development,
also change the nature of the project entirely.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
Okay, I don't see any other questions up,
So, I will see if there's any public comment on this item.
Good evening, Ann Marks with PG&E.
I pretty new to the company.
I got to read back in the archives
and there's been a lot of back and forth.
So, I wanna really commend the staff and the council
for the time that's taken to sort of understand
all the intricacies of this issue and what is there.
I think PG&E, our goal is safe, reliable energy
And we want that to be provided a way that's cost effective, that takes into account things
like aesthetics and operational needs.
And so it's not that we are always trying to put in a pad-mounted transformer.
I think there's definitely situations where that is not the case.
So I think this, you know, understandably, this is a way to express a desire to not have
pad-mounted transformers and to put them subgrade.
And so I think that is stated in a way that I think allows us to continue working with
each other and understanding how to make that happen.
So you know, but I think when you look at that conversation, the conversation of PG&E,
I think you understand that obviously when it comes to make it safe and reliable there
are certain recommendations that we make and there are certain things that are the preference
as expressed through the CPUC, which is, you know, obviously our state governing body.
Thanks. Thank you.
Other comments. May Rishi,
I have a thumb drive that has the images for the public.
I think that typically we wouldn't have public commenters give a presentation.
You're welcome to speak to the images and hold them up if you'd like.
Okay. Just thought the public might want to see them, but whatever.
I'm a member of the Planning Commission,
As some of you may be aware, I'm Shoshana's appointee,
and brought this issue to Planning Commission a year ago,
and there was unanimous support for the Commission.
The problem being that,
although our PG&E representative, thank you,
was somewhat neutral about this.
I appreciate that.
The actual formal edict from PG&E prior to that vote
and still in effect is above ground on the private property.
And I wanted to illustrate for you what that means
from a design standpoint for our community.
So I provided this put together just today.
You're familiar with the EDGE project
probably on Bangkok recently completed.
This is with the old policy where all the tech
was a letter from the planning department
to PG&E asking for undergrounding in the sidewalk
and we got it and that's what we have there.
Undergrounding in the sidewalk as shown by Bronco earlier
and we have on this important,
this is right at the intersection of Telegraph
and Bancroft we have eyes on the street,
we have windows, we have got a commercial front
in addition to the lobby there and the image on the right
if you vote no on this ordinance
that's what we would have for this project
would have had or would have for a similar project.
The next project, I think, is one that should be
close to your hearts.
This is actually not a middle housing project,
but it looks very much like one.
This is the kind of project that could be
and should be approved under the middle housing ordinance.
And it's a project that I think looks nice as designed,
but assumes that you vote yes tonight.
Thank you very much.
and I think the rest is self-explanatory.
If you have any questions, let me know.
Thank you, thanks so much.
Appreciate the images.
It is helpful to see.
Good evening, my name is Avi Foreman.
I'm an architect, general contractor and developer
deeply affected by the proposed legislation.
Today, there's a non-governmental body
that single-handedly has the ability
to avoid any multifamily housing development
based on nothing but their own profit motive.
At 2800 Telegraph, the site of the former cream cycles,
we were approved for the construction of 75 beds
by the city of Berkeley, only to be told by PG&E
that they would not install the transformer as designed
because it was in a subsurface transformer,
which is marginally more expensive for them to maintain.
This would have required us to place the transformer inside,
which would have required 20-foot vertical clearance,
cannibalizing about 1,000 square feet from two floors
out of our extremely tight footprint,
required large street fronting doors
and effectively voided the planning approval
granted by the city of Berkeley
and rendered our approved project unbuildable.
This effectively leaves a private for-profit corporation
able to unilaterally deny approved projects
and unilateral authority to stop the construction
of new housing units in the interest of their shareholders.
Whether indoors or outdoors,
pad mounted transformers are unsightly, unsafe,
and in many cases, such as mine, untenable,
to let this critical city planning policy,
which deeply affects the city residents
and developers alike, cannot be left to be made
unilaterally for a for-profit institution
whose interests are their shareholders
and not the city of Berkeley's.
The legislation is critical for infill developers like me
to ensure that PG&E is required to abide by the laws
and approvals as established by the commission
and government of Berkeley.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. My name is Patrick Kennedy. I'm a developer.
I have been building for 35 years in the city of Berkeley and every project I have built has been a buried transformer.
And in 35 years, I have never had a problem with PG&E maintaining it or replacing it.
And the idea of having to replace it with a much bigger one is probably unlikely,
unless a building is scraped and a much bigger building is built,
in which case you can do another buried transformer.
So I think that's not a particularly big issue.
I think the much more important issue is that if the city wants to promote
middle housing throughout its neighborhoods and enable a large number of smaller
developers to re-knit the fabric of our neighborhoods
with triplexes and fourplexes and middle housing.
It must support this ordinance because pad mounted transformers
on small sites essentially destroy 25%
of the value of the site and make many projects untenable.
Just to give you an idea, I know several of you
attended the groundbreaking we have for our six-unit project on Cedar.
If we had to put a pad mounted transformer on that site,
we would have lost one of the six homes.
We would have denied one family the opportunity to move to Berkeley.
We would have removed a million and a half dollars from the city tax roll,
and we would have had a blighted transformer on a corner that otherwise would have had a beautiful new house.
So, the cost of the buried transformers, by the way,
is always borne by the developers.
So, we're paying for the cost of that.
And the only matter of consequence to PG&E
is the purported difficulty in maintaining
a buried transformer in the public right away.
Thank you.
Thanks, Patrick. Thank you, bye-bye.
Thanks.
Okay, Kelly?
So I actually love looking at plans, architectural plans,
and when I see the plans making space
for the transformers at the front of the building,
they're just plain ugly.
You can't really make a nice flowing design
across the front of the building
because you have to leave this great big giant space
for the transformer.
And you can't put anything in front of it.
You just got these great big giant doors.
It's just plain ugly.
I don't need to take any more time
to tell you how many times I want to say it's just ugly
and they should be undergrounded.
So I would ask that you approve this.
Thank you very much.
I love any issue that unites the two of you.
So thank you.
Thank you very much.
Is there anyone online?
Speakers online, first is Cheryl Davila, former council member.
So who knew that I would ever have any agreement with the speaker prior to Kelly?
But I do agree with the points that they made as well as Kelly.
Things should be undergrounded, but I'm just curious, like, how that works in an earthquake, if that research has been done.
And, yeah, it's interesting that PG&E.
Doesn't want that, but yeah, who know.
We're all in agreement here. Thank you.
Love that. Thank you.
Um, next is Brianna Morales.
Hi, good evening, everyone. Um, I'm Brianna Morales and I'm speaking on behalf of the housing action coalition.
Um, we're a member supported advocacy organization that works to advance, um, California's housing goals. Um, to, uh, to settle our housing and affordability crisis.
Our members are the building industry. They are builders and architects and labor who actually deliver housing and so their experiences shape our recommendations tonight.
We support the intent of the ordinance and as we heard tonight, small infill lots
can hinge on where a transformer goes and that matters to a lot of small builders doing duplexes and other missing middle housing. So our ask us to make sure it works for them
Um, as well as community members and other builders. So, 1st, uh, you know, certainty staff's own slides say that public works isn't required to find or approval right away location and the exemption depends on a city engineer engineer finding with no stated criteria deadline.
And for a small developer with 1 tight lot, that open ended step is a pretty real risk. Um, so please make the exception objective and time bound 2nd options. Our members tell us that side and we're put placements are.
Preferred in some ways and that even though right of way is still better a few cities are generous with it and so underground works on many sites.
But not all, so please keep these.
Options practical and open, including the front setback with objective screening when it's the only feasible spot. So a standard meant to protect homes never cost the project 1.
We also saw that Fremont lets commercial and mixed use projects either go underground or or screened 3rd, you know, data staffs slides list, higher cost and constrained equipment supplies, trade offs, but.
The report doesn't quantify them. It seems so we'd welcome independent cost data from local builders before 2nd reading and hack is always happy to be a partner in doing this. So thank you so much. We really appreciate all of your hard work and have a good rest of your night.
Thanks and Maria so again I am so unimpressed with PG&E I don't trust them
they have been culpable for death and destruction there's endless deferred
maintenance exploitation shutting off people's electricity when their life
depends upon it I just do not trust them I do not like them and I'm very
concerned about well I've even reported leaning what do they call them power
poles you know the the ones that are everywhere above ground they're tipped
like at such serious angles with lines pulling them over, it's like you know
when they cut trees to free the lines, they butcher the trees, I just recommend
extreme caution when it comes to anything with regard to them. So I'm just
going to the foundation again. Do they care or are they just there with greed
and lack of accountability.
So I'm just speaking to the premise.
Thank you.
Thanks Maria.
Is that it on our comments?
That's it.
All right, coming back here.
Councilmember Traka.
Thank you.
I would like to sincerely appreciate staff
for bringing this item forward.
This same proposal was included in part two
of our Renaissance item,
and I think we definitely channeled each other's vision,
and I particularly appreciate the discretion
this item provides to the city
for installing electrical distribution equipment
in the public right of way
for ADA accessibility and pedestrian access,
not to mention all of the salutary reasons
why undergrounding should be allowed.
I'm glad that everyone appears to be unanimously behind it
and this is the part that I rarely get to say in public,
but I would like to thank Pijini as well
for coming to the table and working with staff
and stakeholders through this issue.
With that, I'm very happy to move this item.
Thank you.
Councilmember Kiswami?
Oh, sorry, is there a second?
Second.
To close the public hearing.
I move to close the public hearing.
Second.
Thank you.
Hi, actually, let's just take the roll on that
and then we'll come back.
Second.
Close the public hearing,
Councilmember Kiswami.
Yes.
And Trager.
Aye.
O'Keefe.
Yeah.
Blackaby.
Yes.
Lunapara.
Yeah.
Humbert.
Yes.
And Mary Shee.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you, council member Kisarwani
and then council member Humbert.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
I want to thank the planning commissioner Khan
for bringing this forward to the commission.
And I do also appreciate all of the people
who've spoken in support of this.
I think this makes a lot of sense.
I was just wanting to double check
I think I have the assurance that I didn't want, you know, one additional ADU on a block
to lead to an individual homeowner getting hit with a bill to underground a transformer
that benefits the whole block.
But it looks like this is just for private property, not for the pole mounted transformer
in the public right of way, correct?
Correct.
Okay.
With that, I am eager to approve this.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Councilmember Humbert.
Thank you Madam Mayor. I also want to thank Commissioner Kahn for bringing this item and Director Klein and Branka Tatarovic for their work on it.
I think this is a really important measure to help ensure that we're keeping our sidewalks clear, also helping to ensure that we're maximizing space in new mixed use buildings for retail space and active street frontage.
frontage. In a highly urbanized area like Berkeley, putting electrical infrastructure
underground is very important and should generally be done as a matter of course and it sounds like
it has been and I think it should be seen as a cost of doing business for our utilities. I do
want to briefly acknowledge that staff including our own sustainability and toxics teams identified
some real trade-offs here around maintaining and upgrading underground equipment as buildings
electrify around resiliency and around water intrusion. Those are important considerations
but on balance I think the design, land use, and public realm benefits clearly outweigh them,
especially since per my understanding this ordinance still leaves PG&E to determine
whether a transfer is even needed and keeps the city's engineers discretion over the public right
of way. I also understand that PG&E would generally prefer not to underground the equipment
and I understand the practical considerations that they have raised in writing. At the same
time, undergrounding is a reasonable and increasingly standard expectation in built
up cities like ours. I'm hoping PG&E will work constructively with us and with applicants to
find compliance solutions. Utilities have managed this in other jurisdictions that have adopted
similar requirements, and I think we can do it here. So thank you, everybody, for this item.
thanks all support it thank you and thank you again also to commissioner con and also to our
city staff for all their work thank you everyone to the commenters both for your comments but
also for your patience this evening um i do want to thank and for being here in person um it's
amazing to have a pg and e rep that we can actually call so i do just really want to thank
you for that um thank you very much for being here and with that i will see if there is a motion to
And then there's a second.
Okay, can we take the roll on that please?
Okay, to approve the amendments to the Berkeley Municipal Code to require undergrounding of
electrical transformers on private land.
Council member Kessarwani.
Yes.
And Trigab.
Aye.
O'Keeffe.
Yes.
Blackaby.
Yes.
Lunapara.
Yes.
Humbert.
Yes.
Okay motion carries motion carries thank you very much thank you everyone okay um all right
guess what we have one more item okay so we are moving on to item number 16 which is establish
2027 city council meeting schedule um i will i don't think there's a presentation for this
does anyone have questions on this item
Seeing no questions I will ask if there is any public comment on this item Kelly's coming up.
You know I'd really like all of you to take more time off and I mean that sincerely I really would
like to see you take more time off and I would appreciate it if you just extended this a little
a little bit, and made your vacation go through Labor Day.
I know that schools start before some schools,
some schools start after Labor Day,
and I think that would be a good thing to do.
Thanks, Sally.
Yeah, so Labor Day is on September 6th and 2027,
so just, you know, make it another week.
Yeah.
We have one last meeting,
and some of us would be really happy about that.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thanks, Kelly.
Anyone else pop a comment for this item?
Anyone online?
Sure, to have a former council member.
I don't see how that's funny, but you know, whatever.
Yeah, so I don't know about taking more time off
because you already got a raise to shorten the agendas.
It's 10 o'clock and you're pretty much done.
So like, I don't see how that's a good thing.
You give less time to the people to speak on items.
You don't listen anyway, but the point is,
I don't know if you are working that hard, honestly.
I don't see it.
And a lot of people in Berkeley don't see it.
I know a lot of people aren't happy with all,
the entire Berkeley City Council currently.
So yeah, you don't need more time off
and thanks for letting us know all the time
you are gonna take in advance.
And three pals done, three as well.
Thanks for your comment. Are there any other comments on this item?
No. Okay. All right. Coming back. Councilmember Humbert. I know you have something you want to share.
I do. Thank you, Madam Mayor. This is an amazing night because I'm finding myself totally agreeing with, um.
Kelly Hammergren, um, so we're getting all these concordances here.
That are unusual, um, you know, I, I do think that that, that her idea is a good 1. I think that.
You know, a schedule where the final meeting.
Um, is July 7th and we eliminate the August 31st meeting makes a whole lot of sense. We come back after labor day.
That way we don't have an awkward 1st meeting right before the labor day holiday.
And during a period of significant filing activity during.
Election years, but we're also able to have more of July for recess for.
Council members and city staff with school age kids.
Um, so I, we, we talked about this at agenda and rules. And if I'm recalling correctly, the.
Clerk said elimination of the August 31st meeting wouldn't necessarily be a problem.
I mean, we have so many special meetings and closed sessions that we do meet our, you know, basic requirement of.
Uh, a number of meetings, so I, you know, I'm I'm I'm offering the Kelly hammer.
plans. So thank you. Is that a motion? Because I want a second. Yeah. That is a motion and
there's a second from Councilmember O'Keeffe. Yeah, clarify the dates just in the motion.
Would be July 7th, the last meeting. The 6th. July 6th would be the last meeting before
or the summer recess and the first meeting back
would be Tuesday, September 14th.
Okay, is that clear?
Okay, very good.
All right, there's a motion on the table.
Any other comments on the floor?
Sorry.
Yes.
Yeah, I just wanna say that this,
I mean, whether we keep August 31st or not,
I'm in favor of that.
But just, I just wanna say how appreciative I am
as a teacher.
I know that anybody who has kids in schools has the same,
like, I've never understood why our recess
does not overlap with the school break,
and I'm just so grateful that we're making this change.
It's gonna make a huge difference in my life
in the lives of a lot of people, not just up here,
but the staff who work with us.
Absolutely, I think as we consider, you know,
wanting to have our council be inclusive,
thinking about parents who have children in the schools,
I think that's really important.
So thank you, thanks everyone.
And thank you for your suggestion, Kelly,
and also Council Member Humbert.
There's a motion, so can we take a moment, please?
Okay, to adopt the 2027 city council meeting schedule,
modified to remove the August 31st regular meeting.
Council Member Kesserwani?
Yes.
And Tragem?
Aye.
O'Keefe?
Yes.
and I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm a
of you. And on Saturday night I went with three friends to the film NASA. And I, it's a
difficult film. I already knew about Lavender and Where's Daddy, but I would
ask all of you to go to that film. And if you don't know what, what Where's Daddy
is, whereas daddy is tracking someone who may or may not be a member of Hamas the
phone and when they get home that's the place to bomb. And so watching that film
and listening to the conversations,
knowing about this procedure, this plan,
and that's when we go, that's when someone is killed
is when they're home with their family,
their children, their babies, their toddlers.
It's difficult.
I suggest that you all go.
I think it's good to bring someone with you
so you have someone to talk to afterwards.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We were actually just talking about that film earlier today.
So thank you.
Carol?
So it's meaningless to pass laws that are,
of which there's no education
that the public doesn't know about
and there's no means of enforcing it.
I've mentioned the elevator ordinance before.
Yesterday on the bus, I met someone in a wheelchair.
He had no legs, and he said, really?
He was really surprised,
because he lives in one of our affordable housing providers,
and his elevator was out for four days,
and they told him, no, it has to be a month.
And that's one of our recognizable
affordable housing providers.
Somebody else told me she was really happy
that she could afford to buy a home,
Because she, when she was in elevator building and she has a visible disability, she was frequently stuck in the building. She didn't know this was a law. It was a law since 2018 that someone has to be relocated after 24 hours.
So, 2 weeks ago, I didn't talk on items, not on the agenda, but it was very much in my mind because I had been advocating for my friend for several days from another well-known affordable housing provider.
A provider in Berkeley that when their elevator broke down,
they were told by the property management, it's an amenity.
And she's 82 years old.
The only reason she was able to be relocated in Berkeley
was because she no pay to redo.
And the city manager's office, and she called there
and he called Scott Gilman and someone talked to her
and worked it out.
Everybody doesn't have that connection.
And the man, when I was trying to help her,
the rent board didn't even know this was a law.
The rent board employees,
I was educating them on various provisions.
So, we have to be able to enforce things.
Thanks, Carol.
Hi, Michael Casey, long time Berkeley resident,
40 plus years, attended Washington through Berkeley High.
My dad and I own a property for the last 40 plus years
as owner occupied.
That was a city planner for City of Oakland
Planning and Building Department for 15 years.
Last week I received a notice
from the Rental Housing Safety Program.
I got two notices, one as a tenant, one as an owner.
Over the past two to three years,
I've been getting a letter from RHSB
and it states, you know, it's a rental property, it is not.
they say just go ahead and pay $120 fee.
I just go ahead and pay it.
Now, I'm told that I'm supposed to do an inspection
to see if this is my own residence.
After living there for 40 years,
told likely just administrative error, blah, blah, blah.
I mean, as working for the City of Oakland
Planning and Building Department,
I know you have to have a search warrant
or a active building permit to come on someone's property.
So this feels like a violation,
especially all that's going on with the world with ICE
and COVID to just want to inspect people's properties.
I called the inspector, oh yeah, we're gonna come in.
It's a four hour window.
You take off work and my dad who's 85 years old
with health problems is supposed to miss doctor's appointments
to sit there and wait for this inspector to come through
to tell him that he's an owner of a,
just check to see if he's an owner of a property.
I mean, I think this is ridiculous.
I think we can do better than that.
I don't know who to talk to about this
and what should be done,
but I think it should be brought to everyone's attention,
especially at this day and age
where people are uncomfortable having inspectors
or city officials and government officials
coming on people's property to see if they are an owner.
So thank you for your time and sorry it's so late,
but I wanted to get that in.
I'll email it as well.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
definitely interesting to know what's happening with that.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you so much.
Is there any other public comment online?
Yes. M. Jones.
You have two minutes. M. Jones, there you go.
Hello?
Yes.
Oh my God. Anyway, I would like to speak on,
I sent that e-mail to the mayor and
D2 D3 and planning departments and I would like someone
in that email to get in touch with me. I am living next
to a rat in Raccoon infested building that is a historical landmark
Reeve formerly Reeve's record. And um oh shit, can you hear me? Yes. Okay sorry for um anyway
and then I'm having to deal with the traffic, the parking uh challenges being next to the Creekwood
restaurant and now the commercial building that I live above has opened up a smoke shop and I never
got a notice about it. About a smoke shop opening. Isn't it? Isn't that the policy that
a smoke shop has to have a public meeting before they open up. Question. Sorry we don't address
questions during public comment but you can finish your question, your comment period.
Yeah so yes I would just I sent an email to the mayor and the planning department weeks ago.
I never received any follow-up from anybody of those departments. I call all these different
different departments there's it's always a voicemail there's never a live person so
you know i'm just really frustrated and i would like someone to address my concerns
and that's it thank you thanks for your public comment my my staff has gotten
received your email and um we will we will follow back on you thanks for thank you i'm so sorry you
you had to come to counsel this way.
Is there anyone else online?
We have Delaluna.
Yes, I wanted to speak about earlier
when Christian Zionists exist
and Christian Zionists live in Berkeley
and Christian Zionists might be on the dais.
So when you all were talking about
like the political campaigns
and the way you were trying to define hate speech
and then tie that into anti-hate week,
I just felt like you were a racing Christian Zionist
who do exist and do live in Berkeley.
Secondly, the statement talking about a nation of immigrants
that's actually a white supremacist dog whistle.
Immigration law didn't exist till the 1970s.
So everyone who came in before the 1970s
was not an immigrant.
And then the laws were of course only created
for black and brown people to restrict them.
So when you say a nation of immigrants,
you are erasing the history of this country
and for certain populations who are often marginalized,
which I think you all were attempting to address that,
but then you kind of side handed,
like there was some underhanded things that were stated.
And I don't think you stated it on purpose,
but I just wanted to say, to bring awareness to it.
And what's characteristic about that is that
it wanted to racist colonialism and then it was a settler move to innocence. So it's like saying,
oh, we're all immigrants. You just kind of like erase everything that happened and then kind of
proclaim an innocent stance. So I wanted to offer this book, it's called Not a Nation of Immigrants,
full title settler colonialism, white supremacy and the history of erasure and exclusion by Roxanne
Dunbar-Otis. And she's went to Cal, so there's a connection there. And she lives in the Bay,
But I just would encourage you all to read this, so when you make statements like that,
you aren't coming with underhanded cuts, and you didn't mention racism against Black people
or hatred against Black people. So it kind of felt just imbalanced, and you used it to talk
about the political campaigns unnecessarily. And we have Cheryl Davila, former council member.
I agree with everything that last person said. It was only geared towards anti-Semitism,
not geared towards Black and brown people, and barely mentioned Islamophobia,
which is really prevalent right now and has been since 9-11.
So it was really sad that the Zionist with that horrible symbol, yes, a Holocaust survivor,
however, in these times sitting in a Berkeley City Council meeting with that symbol during a genocide
and ethnic cleansing and apartheid, murder of children, and hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians starved, martyred, disabled, living under the rubble, trying to maintain a life
with no toilets, no water, no food,
but yet they're steadfast and resilient.
It was really kind of disgusting to be there this evening
and that's the only thing you talked about was hate
for one group of people, which just shows your racism
and inability to have compassion and empathy
as an elected official supposed to be representing
the constituents, but you only represent those that were...
Thanks for your comment, thank you.
All right, and Maria Sol.
Oh, wow, oh, geez.
You know, I wanna take this moment to thank Kelly Hammeran.
She's just so diligent and efficient and amazing,
and the fact that she brought up another opportunity
to develop compassion and empathy for everyone.
I keep saying, we're one family
and of course we're exceedingly diverse.
This evening that we've discussed,
has to do with are we gonna prevent harm
or are we going to exert our power and privilege
and benefit personally at the expense of many.
So I keep bringing, I try to keep bringing us back
I have every faith in the heart. I know you're always so smart but I know you all have hearts
and we are in fact in this together so I don't mean to be boring and repetitive but if we don't
start there as a cum unity where we can share and care and look out for each other instead of
militarizing through surveillance and AI, you know, weaponry now or, you know, killing as a sport.
We are one human family and I thank each of you for coming and doing all the work that you do
and doing the best that you can and encouraging all of us to do the same. So, thank you again.
thank you thank you Maria other public comments online okay all right thank you all so much for
your public comments i will see if there's a motion to adjourn i will entertain i move to
adjourn thank you is there a second second okay can we take the roll please council member kisarwani
Yes, trego hi okey. Yes, black be. Yes. Yes. Yes. And she yes. Okay. We're adjourned. Thank
you all very much. Have a good recording stopped.