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Segment 1

Okay, so we're ready, yes? Yes.
Okay, so I'm going to call to order the March 25th special meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Today is Tuesday, March 25th.
It's four o'clock p.m.
or no, it's not actually, it's four o' nine.
And if you could please take the roll.
Okay, council member Kesarwani, absent.
Taplin, present.
Bartlett, absent.
Tregub, present.
O'Keefe, present.
Blackabay, here.
Lunaparra, here.
Humbert, present.
And Mayor Ishii, here.
Okay, quorum is present.
All right, hi.
So we're going to start with the consent calendar.
First thing on here is public comment on consent calendar and information items only.
Is there any public comment? There's no online commenters.
Okay, so Mr.
City Manager, is there anything you wanted to say? No, I mean it's just codifying an agreement that we had with the labor groups that we brought before you in closed session and now we need to codify it in open session.
Okay, thanks.
In that case, move approval of the consent calendar.
Second.
Oh, are there, is there any opposition or actually everyone's here in person so we can pass this by unanimous consent? Yes, okay.
I'm glad everyone's here in person today, so great.
All right, so let's move on to the action calendar.
We have new business starting with the pavement management and infrastructure planning presentation and I will pass it over to these folks over here.
Thanks so much for being here.
Good late afternoon, Mayor and Council Members.
Got our technology working here.
My name is Terrence Davis and I'm going to introduce the rest of the team.
So, thanks for being here tonight with the rest of the community to hear this presentation, this workshop around our pavement and infrastructure.
So, let me introduce this illustrious panel that we have here and also some other people in the room who are subject matter experts and we really thought it was important to bring folks here to be a part of the conversation just to hear feedback from the council as we kind of embark early in this planning that we're going to talk a lot about.
So, to my left and I'll go down and then I actually got people in the back too is Waheed Amiri, Deputy Director Responsible for Engineering and Transportation.
Joe Ryrie is our consultant with PEI who manages our pavement MTC street savers program and PTAP and we're going to talk a lot about that and then Ricardo Saucedo is our, I'm doing good if I get the names just right, and Ricardo is our acting supervising civil right now responsible for our pavement programs.
Eric Anderson is our principal transportation planner and then in the back we have a brand new hire which we've been really really excited about and this is Babak Dorji who is our new Vision Zero program manager, a position that's been vacant for at least two years and so I told him if anybody comes up to him to run out the back before but we're really excited to have this team because this is the team as we talk about these projects and this infrastructure that's going to really help design and deliver based on some of the feedback that we get from the council.
So we do have a fairly lengthy deck today but we're going to get through it fairly efficiently so there's like 40 slides or so but don't fear because we want to make sure that there's opportunity for plenty of conversation because that's the purpose of this so we're going to try to breeze through much of this and it's really for context in some cases and we're going to kind of pass the mic and various folks will have elements of the presentation today.
So here's what we wanted to cover today we want to just talk a little bit about setting kind of level setting around what our deferred infrastructure needs are particularly around roadways and then at that point Joe's going to talk to you about pavement conditions and rehab we'll at that point then move into a discussion about transportation safety which includes our bike pedestrian vision zero plans etc and then move back into a conversation about funding projections particularly with the passage of measure ff we'll talk about now what are all of our funding projections are as we go forward and start the planning work and then really one of the key reasons I wanted to come before you today was to have a conversation about policy and starting to just consider what future policy should look like now that we have this new funding source that has some particular restrictions we wanted to just start the conversation the last policy that the council adopted may need to be revisited so we're not asking for those decisions today it's more of a this is some stuff to think about as we go do work we'll continue conversations with you as well and then we'll talk about next steps in action there's quite a bit of planning involved and the work ahead of us and so we'll talk a little bit about what some of those steps are and then of course we want to certainly hear feedback from you in the community so that's the plan so just in terms of our deferred roadway related infrastructure we these are the this chart represents the kind of various categories of roadway related infrastructure that is deferred now I've listed here just for for quick reference some of the sources and this lines up for the most part with what we'll see later when we talk about measure ff but our roads and streets there's a 250 million dollar number that is from our 2023 mtc or metropolitan transportation commission pavement technical assistance report uh where joe is going to present because as we kind of have been developing this the 2025 data is available so we have included that so just want to point that out and street savers is the uh software that we use to capture that the sidewalk information is captured from our cip our capital improvement program the 62 million for bicycle safeties from our 2017 plan which is currently undergoing update and eric can talk about that the 61 million is from the pedestrian plan the the green infrastructure plan those costs vary because it's based on the number the types of improvements and the acreage that we do in terms of actual paving projects etc and our ability for acquisition of space to do that so we'll also kind of talk about that a little bit and then accessibility we do have a american with disabilities act self self-evaluation and transition plan we typically refer to as ada transition plan that has 47 million dollars of identified deficiencies that we would over time work to remediate so that is the picture as we start this as we talk about roadway related infrastructure so um lots of plans and we we kind of come at this with this um awesome amount of information and all of these tools and the ability to kind of approach this new funding source uh and the reporting responsibilities associated with a plethora of plans kind of at our disposal that we can really leverage and pull projects from so and the vision 2050 framework provides us an opportunity to kind of layer those so we can take elements from all the various plans and pull them pull them together to prioritize and make some decisions um with the adopted plans of course we also have the city's general plan and any other specific plan and council referrals which are not listed here but that is as we talk about next steps where we're going with this in terms of the work that's in front of us so in general for this level of capital planning i've joked with folks in the in the public works industry and said i got all this money this is um this is daunting it's a lot to plan this amount of capital to be able to go out every year and deliver projects for the community it's a great problem that we don't often have in our careers so we're looking forward to it so no fear however it does take a lot of coordination so um one of the misconceptions is that the planning documents that were aforementioned there are no construction ready documents in any of those plans so often there is a misconception that oh just do tier one projects and you know the bike lane or the pedestrian plan well they're they're conceptual level they haven't been designed and many of those costs haven't been updated since the plans were developed so that is again just something we want to kind of put out there that is something for consideration um we need some staff and consultant resources and it takes some time to to scale that up so right now we're working really hard behind the scenes on all the boring sausage making trying to get all of the resources in place to make sure that we can actually scale our capital delivery to the level to accommodate the new resources associated with measure ff um a big one and why he will probably talk a little bit about this as will joe is that you know we've seen very rapid construction price escalations year over year and so um our dollar diminishes each year and and many of the plan estimates that are kind of in the public space haven't been updated so when we come back with new numbers that may be a bit of a shock because the numbers you know in three or four or five years have significantly escalated and then um the the the last one is just really around expectation management in terms of what we're going to be able to accomplish primarily because of those price escalations and really the policy discussion will also play into this as well right now like if specifically for measure ff there was a goal and in the city's council paving plan a goal of achieving 70 pci we will not get there we will not get there and primarily as i indicated it's because of those escalations in cost that right now unless something changes in the market as we project out into the future that's going to be very difficult so we wanted to be very transparent honest open up front as we start this planning process that there's not a model that we see that we get there but certainly that is part of the conversation with that what i'd like to do is turn it over to joe to walk us through pavement conditions and rehabilitation okay thank you you might need to move that closer to you is it on are we good now yes thank you thank you thank you terence and madam mayor members of the council and it's in community it's great to be with you all um talking about one of my favorite subjects and that's pavement um to start off with i wanted to just go over some some data some facts that we can look at the city of berkeley is responsible for and maintains 212.8 centerline miles now just to give you an idea of what that means if we were to stack them all up end to end and and then try and get somewhere with that that would get us from here all the way up to mount shasta to the north or from here if we were to go south it would get us to about the city of paso robles and so it's quite a large network 39 over 39 million square feet of pavement that equates to 683 football fields just saying we have an average pci of 56 that's everything averaged out um to rebuild the system if if no streets existed right now and you needed to put in a whole brand new street system it's 1.2 billion dollars and that's just the roads that doesn't include curb gutters sidewalk signals or anything that's just pavement okay so let's move on from there um we can when we talk about roads we like to classify them by their use and arterial well we're pretty familiar with freeways and thankfully caltrans manages those but when we're talking about city streets we're talking about three other classifications the arterial system is the larger roads and they're the most used in the busiest streets a collector is a medium use road and it has medium traffic and residential streets are smaller and less traffic and so with that in mind we can keep going forward and talk about some of the other things that we need to to understand pavement this is really an important picture when we talk about pavement it's important to understand that pavement does not deteriorate linearly it deteriorates following this kind of an s-shaped curve where pavement is in good condition for a while and then it falls off quickly and then levels out into a poorer condition and we've seen this phenomenon when we've driven around on roads and one day we'll say hey when was it that this road got so bad because it's gotten to the point where it's deteriorating and it's falling off faster now pavement deteriorates two different ways asphalt pavement does and that is first of all by the oxidizing effects of sun and water and then the second way that it deteriorates is by fatigue loading the constant bending of traffic going over the road um let's talk about each one of those just just briefly just so we have some more background on that when uh when we talk about pavement um one of the ways is by loading and as Terrence has brought up in here um the impact of vehicles on on a roadway consumes the pavement life significantly this uh what we did to help bring home the the um impact of this is we took a a chevy s10 blazer if we can remember what one of those looks like it was uh it's like a small suv and then we equated it to different types of of heavier vehicles and so what we found through our calculations what is that uh one two axle truck or panel truck panel delivery truck is equal to in weight 442 chevy s10 blazers conversely down at the bottom of the graph that we're looking at if we were to take a fully loaded five axle truck it equals almost 15 000 chevy s10 blazers which means that when one of those heavier vehicles passes in front of us it's as if that many other cars went in front of us and so to when we talk about pavement we're not talking about the busyness of the road we're talking about what the road is actually carrying and the way that i think about it is in it's a bank account and we've built in so many trips into this road and as the heavier vehicle goes over it there's withdraws from there and once it's all used up then the road is is at the end of its service life and is falling apart so these are pictures of of common types of pavement distresses that you may notice when you're out driving around the first three weathering unraveling transverse or longitudinal cracking and block cracking are all part of that environmental type of of deterioration that is one part of way that pavements deteriorates this is where the binder is age hardened by the oxidizing effects it also the cracking is formed because as the sun bakes the asphalt it actually burns out the volatiles and the mass of the of the actual structure shrinks and as it shrinks the cracks begin to form and that's what causes the cracking the fourth picture is oh wait terence this is the exciting one this is the one that will always get calls back on they'll say i saw this when i was driving is the alligator cracking now we all know that engineers aren't really great coming up with good names and we just called it alligator cracking because it looks like alligator skin and and so but when we see alligator cracking that's this is an indication of that fatigue loading and you'll see alligator cracking forming in the wheel paths of your of your drive lanes and you'll see that this is an indication that the pavement is reaching the end of its life okay when we talk about a pavement condition index we use this to be able to talk about the overall condition of the pavement and we take those distresses that we talked about we talked about four of them we actually look at eight different types of distresses when we and we combine them together and we calculate what's called the pavement condition index or pci for short and the pci has been with us for a long time it started back in world war ii to actually talk about the condition of the runways and and then we've just continued to use it to be able to talk about the condition of pavements and compare that back and forth to other agencies or how we're doing and and we do use that throughout california and in fact throughout the nation all uses a pci and it's based on a hundred point scale where 100 is a brand new pavement no distresses at all and it goes all the way down to zero and all of the pavements in berkeley have a pci and that pci is really important to guide us in terms of street selection and treatments one of the ways that we can or a principle that we can follow when we're looking at ours our pavement is some guiding principles and of the when it comes to pavement preservation the federal highway administration has given us some guidelines and they tell us that the way that we want to try and select our pavements or do the work on our pavements is to apply the right treatment to the right pavement at the right time and then i've added using the right materials so that helps guide us when we want to be able to select pavements that for the biggest bang for our buck this slide here shows us the principle of what's called critical point management again when we're thinking about selecting pavements we're recognizing that there's our deterioration curve again that there's different treatments that are are required along that deterioration curve again trying to apply the right treatment to the right pavement at the right time and we recognize that there's points along the curve where if we were to perform a treatment at that time then it preserves that that life and so that's indicated by each of those red circles on there and that's the sweet spot those are the pavements that we're looking for before they fall into needing the next treatment which is more expensive also shown on this slide is the graph to the right which shows the anticipated cost for the the types of treatments that we're talking about and notice that when when pavements are in good condition the cost for treatment is is lower than it is for when it's in in worse condition and needs more restorative care the range these are our current numbers and we've seen escalated prices as as terrence has indicated this is how the system of berkeley breaks down we said that you had a overall pci of 56 your arterial system our most used system our most used streets have an overall average of 57 your collectors has have an average pci of 64 and your residentials have a 53 when it comes to managing pavements and you have not enough money to stretch all the ways that you needed to go to the end of the road oh that was no pun intended anyway when we think about that it it's good practice to focus your dollars on the most used streets to keep them in the best conditions it's not only good for that but it's also good for the economy of of an agency as well we thought it would be interesting to show the council where and how berkeley compares to the some of the rest of their neighbors and so in the last um they call it the pothole report that was produced by the by mtc in 2023 this shows that berkeley was in an at-risk state and it shows the rest of the cities that were an at-risk state it's important to note that along the bottom that the current overall regional average for the bay area is a 67 pci so that gives you an idea of how does berkeley compare to the rest of the cities in in the bay area now we thought also that since this is a workshop that it would be beneficial to be able to or helpful to review the the needed funding or the funding needs of your of your street system and just to provide context and so these slides or this slide shows five different scenarios that we ran just to give you an idea of where things are at so let's let's walk through each of these and just so that you understand where that what they are so let's first of all look at the green line that you see right there this is an unconstrained budget and what it shows us is that the overall need of the system the backlog amount of work is about 372.7 million dollars if the city were to somehow accomplish that much work in one year it would only cost about 6.9 million dollars per year to keep it in that better condition the next line i want to point out is the is the gold line or the or the yellow line that runs straight across that it that's a scenario where we said what does it take to be able to maintain the average of 56 right now and that that cost is 26.2 million dollars per year to maintain the system in its exact same condition the funding that has been applied for the for berkeley has been about 15 million dollars a year it's projected that if if that is the amount of funding that's put towards roads we can expect the pci to drop to a 52 if you were to spend no money over the next five years the the pci would drop to 45 but to increase it just by five points would cost 41.7 million dollars per year in order to turn the corner and be able to get it to rise now before i turn over the mic i just wanted to go over a few pressures that we have seen that are affecting paving dollars the first being there's an increased amount of traffic using our roads think back to that bank account that we were talking about and and we just with the increased amount of vehicles we are seeing um uh our pavements deteriorate quicker increased vehicle weights um evs uh we are we're working with as a society and um they're about 30 percent heavier whether we're talking about cars trucks or buses on average that extra weight again is consuming pavement life faster we've seen increased construction costs going up just in the last uh two years we've seen anywhere from 50 to 60 percent increase in in prices weather is always kind of one of those unknowns and when we have a really wet winter our pavements tend to deteriorate a lot faster and then we have some unfunded regulations that are putting pressure on our paving dollars two significant ones are the the required ada upgrades that we need and want to make to our road system to keep them compliant keep them so that they meet codes these we're talking about the curb ramps and then the other is the post storm water requirements that are being imposed upon streets and and that's our green infrastructure and the water board is very adamant that we need to apply some or meet some requirements depending on the treatment those two unfunded regulations can actually cost about 40 percent of every paving dollar that's the average that we've seen over the last couple of years as we've designed and bid out projects and with that i'll turn it back to terrence thanks joe at this point i want to turn it over to waheed um to talk about our transportation road safety all right thank you terrence and good afternoon everyone so joe took a little bit of my thunder on the following slides regarding green infrastructure but i'll let us slide so i have the privilege of taking you guys through the next few sections i believe we all know that safety is a cornerstone of measure ff and 30 percent of the revenue generated is dedicated to safety and.

Segment 2

Improvements.
Staff are currently working with the public to update the city's bicycle plan.
As part of it, the maps in the plan are currently being updated to reflect which corridors have been completed and where implementation is still underway.
Berkeley's current bicycle plan, which was published and adopted back in 2017, proposed somewhat of an ambitious citywide, low stress bikeway network that would make Berkeley streets safer and more appealing to the majority of Berkelians, including individuals that are interested in cycling.
Now, the bicycle plans' priorities are being updated to be consistent with the city's Vision Zero policy, with regional and county funding priorities in sight.
Based on our public engagement so far on the 2025 update, planned bike routes and other recommendations will not change substantially.
I'll go into a little bit more details regarding the new prioritization criteria in the next slide.
So the 2025 bicycle plan update will prioritize projects based on updated criteria as you see in front of you.
Being safety, which is based on the high injury streets from the city's Vision Zero action plan.
A heavy community engagement and support, which is based on, as I mentioned, the engagement that we did back in 2022.
That was the result of a lot of good feedback that we have incorporated into current infrastructure projects and the current engagement that's happening as part of the 2025 update.
Last, but not least is equity based on the equity priority communities defined by MTC, which I think Terrence mentioned is Metropolitan Transportation Commission at the beginning.
This update represents the city's efforts to refine and enhance its bicycle infrastructure.
Again, focusing on safety, connectivity and equity.
The update is based on public engagement, as I mentioned, but also emphasizes on technical analysis and coordination with Measure FF.
It's important to note these figures that I'm still I'm going to share are still preliminary.
However, I'd like to present the key statistics derived from our engagement and Eric can probably go into deeper if there's any other questions regarding it.
But so far, we've had 521 participants comment.
We've collected all of them.
We've received 615 comments, some of the top concerns, and I'll throw the percentage of their specific questions.
We'll be happy to answer towards the end.
44% was related to roadway safety, 34% focused on insufficient bike facilities, 25% supported intersection improvements and 9% opposed elements of the plan.
As Joe alluded to earlier, I took a little bit of my thunder like other work around the city completed projects have been substantially more costly than estimated in the plan.
For example, the numbers you're seeing in front of you, based on my experience and cost escalation over the last years, eight years.
These numbers you see here are much higher than anticipated or forecasted.
For example, in the past two years, the costs have increased closer to 50%.
So, while you guys are looking at the numbers we've provided, as mentioned, we've seen escalations up to 50% and that shouldn't be a surprise.
And to be honest with tariffs and other stuff that's going on, I do see there'll be a steady increase.
But the good news is that of the 15 tier 1 segments in the bike plan, 5 have been completed, 7 are partially completed or in progress, and 4 are in the development or upcoming phase of the project.
I'll speak to this city's Vision Zero Action Plan in a few slides.
However, in regards to bicycling, I want to highlight that all 15 of the tier 1 projects in the bike plan address safety related to the high injury streets prioritized in the city's Vision Zero Action Plan.
Would you mind just moving the mic a little closer or just or speaking up a bit? Sure.
Thank you.
Okay, okay.
The 2020 pedestrian plan aims to make Berkeley a model walkable city where travel on foot or with an assistive device is safe, comfortable, convenient for all people of all races, ethnicities, income, ages and abilities.
The plan conducted a citywide analysis of pedestrian safety and activity, including a Vision Zero pedestrian high injury streets analysis and equity analysis.
The overall focus of the plan is on improving safety for pedestrians crossing the street.
As many of us know, the statistics show that nearly all pedestrian injuries and fatalities occur while crossing the streets.
The majority of these casualties are in crosswalks.
This slide represents a methodology for ranking pedestrian improvement projects.
Our pedestrian plan ensures that key corridors and intersections are improved based on safety data and usage trends.
As part of the prioritization scheme, the plan integrated Vision Zero traffic safety analysis.
Our pedestrian plan used an equity analysis to further prioritize historical red line and disinvested parts of Berkeley.
Of the ten high priority streets identified improvements on one has been successfully completed and the remaining nine are partially completed and I'll speak to this a little bit more in the next slide.
The pedestrian plan recommended ten high priority pedestrian recommended high ten high priority pedestrian projects on high injury streets.
It also recommends citywide pedestrian projects.
The ten projects proposed a variety of pedestrian crossing treatments to improve safety, such as sidewalk corners that are commonly known now as bus bulbs.
Median islands, a refugee, and also flashing beacons.
All of these streets are also included as high injury streets and the city's Vision Zero action plan.
The city has made progress on each of the ten quarters in the pedestrian plan.
This includes projects on University, South Sacramento, San Pablo, and Shattuck.
We also have upcoming exciting projects on Adeline, Alcatraz, Sacramento, and San Pablo.
The recently implemented MLK Vision Zero quick build project made Martin Luther King Jr.
Way between Dwight and Russell Street significantly safer for people on foot.
MLK, as we all know, is a major thoroughfare for people of all ages and abilities and to get them to multiple schools, parks, transit stops, and other destinations in the surrounding neighborhoods.
In 2022, the Vision Zero action plan set the goal of eliminating all fatal and severe injuries crashes by the end of 2028.
On an average, stats show that people die and at least 33 people sustain severe injuries a year on Berkeley streets.
Berkeley is committed to Vision Zero, which aims to eliminate severe injuries and fatalities in our roads.
Three elements, roadway design improvements, such as curb extensions, protected bike lanes, and so forth.
Traffic calming measures that are included, but not limited to speed humps, speed tables, and narrowing lanes, and also enhanced pedestrian crossings with better visibility and signal timing optimization, daylighting, et cetera.
Berkeley has declared climate emergency.
Through Measure FF planning implementation, integrating green technologies into transportation infrastructure enhances climate resilience.
This bioswale at Rose and Hopkins is an example of how the city is taking action and doing its part to combat climate change.
The city also adopted its green infrastructure plan back in September 10th of 2019.
It outlines the city's approach to integrating green infrastructure.
This plan provides guidance on identifying, implementing, tracking, and reporting green infrastructure initiatives within the city.
Here's an example of Public Works successful implementation of green infrastructure at different locations, whether it's the pavers, parking areas, and also bioswales.
We want to emphasize that substantial land area is required for roadway projects.
Given Berkeley's density, identifying new locations for this type of infrastructure are mandatory by regulation, as Joe alluded to earlier, and will be challenging.
Green infrastructure implementation competes for space, particularly prime location and prime space, meaning parking and also bikeway improvements.
It is a challenge to find suitable green infrastructure sites.
I know Joe provided some scenarios for ballparks, but here's another bit of data that could help illustrate the challenge.
Treating an acre of impervious area, which is around 43,000 square feet, requires constructing approximately 1,750 square feet of area for treatment.
In Berkeley, that's usually a three-bedroom home with a nice backyard.
So with that said, I'll hand it over back to Terrence.
All right.
Let's talk funding.
So my father was a teacher, and I would wait until he came home.
You know, he got up early and he'd come home, and then I would wait until he came home and he was tired after work to ask him for money.
So that's where we are in the presentation.
I'm here all week.
So this next part, I want to go through.
I'll go through fairly quickly and make up some time.
We're almost there.
So thank you for the patience.
Now let's just talk about Measure FF.
Just to recap, the assessment rate is $0.17 and $0.25, respectively, for residential and non-residential.
We have worked with the finance department in Alameda County and come up with some projections, which we're going to go into later about specifically what that looks like over the horizon, that 14 years.
And then also just a reminder of the breakdown per BMC and what was adopted, that 60% for streets with those breakdowns, as you see there, 30% for safety, 10% for environmental enhancement, fees, audits, public art, et cetera.
The goals of Measure FF, which are kind of the guiding principles as we look at this next phase of our development planning, was to raise the PCI.
We talked about that.
Eliminate the backlog of sidewalks and pedestrian paths and deficiencies and then eliminate, you know, severely eliminate the traffic crashes throughout the city.
So all of the goals of FF certainly align with all the previous plans.
Now the money.
So right now these are our preliminary estimates by year.
And just what I'll say is that what you see here represented over the 14-year horizon are finance estimates.
These numbers are in millions.
And the acronyms CPI is Consumer Price Index, excuse me.
And PIG is Personal Income Growth Index.
And each year in May the council has an opportunity to adjust the assessment by either of those two indices.
So I wanted to show them both.
Right now the PIG wins in terms of more revenue.
But certainly that will be a policy decision the council will have to make each May of each year.
Just kind of to paint the picture by allocation percentage, just to give an example of year one, if that $15.6 million is an accurate revenue projection, just gives you an idea of the type of revenue that we would be looking at.
About $7 million of that purely for streets, $4 million for safety, $2.3 for pedestrian, and about $1.5 million for the other.
And as we're going to talk about later, as we do more integrated planning, and again following the Vision 2050 framework, there's going to be a lot of integration across these projects.
So if we look at combined revenue right now for, again, these are for roadway-related projects.
This doesn't include many of the transportation projects that we do that are often the source of grant funding or other sources.
So these are kind of the ongoing sources that we have as we plan specifically around roadway-related project improvements.
Right now, again, Safe Streets, $15.6 million, that's our year one projection.
The general fund per the new council policy right now is sitting right about $10 million for what we call our baseline streets funding that goes into our capital improvement program each year.
Gas tax, which is two sources, that's the state gas tax, SB1 and HUDA, is between $6 million and $8 million.
That ranges a bit.
And some of those revenues do also support ongoing maintenance activities.
So some of those funds support our streets crew at the corp yard for pothole repair and positions and equipment, so on and so forth.
And then the last is Alameda Measure BB.
Right now, the projection for fiscal year 26 is just about $8 million.
So those are the funding sources as we kind of go into this initial planning phase that we're considering.
So now moving just to the last two sections here, just want to talk about policy.
And the council adopted this policy in 2022, which is our existing paving policy that has the five-year paving plan.
We've done the first few years of that plan.
And in general, as you see here, I won't go through them all, but I think, you know, we've done a good job in terms of following the policy, and they've really forwarded our ability to advance the program.
So, you know, conformity with the water board that Joe talked about, supporting other city plans and policies, avoidance of removal of trees if possible, so on and so forth.
And then certainly also having a very sensitive and keen understanding of trying to make sure that we achieve projects in equity zones has also been something that our engineering staff has really been focused on.
And that essentially, that paving plan is updated with the biannual city budget.
So that's the typical timing.
So I always get nervous.
I asked all the engineering group, I said, what would be your wish list if you could come up with some policy recommendations? And these are some of the things that, as we contemplate moving forward, that our technical and other public works staff have really contemplated about things that we'd like to put on the table for future consideration.
And many of these things have come from conversations with many of you.
So, evaluating additional development and other impact fees, as Joe talked about right now, you know, we do have, you know, some impacts from heavy equipment and also from EVs.
So, and as development occurs, continuing to evaluate that those fees, you know, are taking care of the infrastructure, negotiate investments from utilities.
Right now, we have a, I would say, we do have a very good, a good working relationship with both the utilities.
What I would say is that our policy right now, and many of you know this from conversations about projects in your district right now, you know, don't require the utilities after they trench to go beyond a certain, you know, couple feet on each side of the trench.
Oftentimes, if the road needs to be repaired, we miss an opportunity or we don't require them to go curb to curb or to center line.
That is a standard that is in place in other parts of the region.
So, we are, that's one thing that we will do some homework and bring some recommendations at some point in the future.
Green infrastructure is unfunded and, you know, Measure FF now brings a funding source.
But as Joe talked about and as why he talked about that, there's several complications from a funding perspective related to green infrastructure and the cost related to it.
And in some cases, it means trying to actually acquire the piece of property to do the green infrastructure improvements.
So, green infrastructure funding, having dedicated funding is something that needs to be considered.
Dig once, that's been in development since the last plan, but it definitely can continue to evolve vehicle impact fees talked about it.
And then this one in particular, I just want to pause and just talk a little bit more in detail about, you know, one of the things is we talk about these escalations in construction is how do we take our money further so that we can actually impact more of our infrastructure? And one of the ways that we talk about that we can do that is by bundling projects in a tighter geographic area.
There's pros and cons to that, obviously, because that might mean a particular part of the community would get one or two or three projects.
What the benefit from a construction management perspective is that each time we let a contract, the contractor charges a mobilization fee.
And that fee is, you know, that charge is built into their bid is typically fairly significant.
And so if a contractor can just go to one geographic area, that mobilization cost is reduced.
So there's cost savings there.
Again, there's tradeoffs and we can certainly talk more about that as we go along.
And then kind of related to the previous recommendation, really, you know, think about reserving a portion of our annual paving funds for these utility coordinations.
So we do know in advance what the five year for East Bay Mud or PG&E, what their projects are.
So if we can save some specific funding and set those aside to have some partnership and either pay PG&E or the East Bay Mud to complete the project in its entirety or work out some other cost share MOUs, that is something I think we can leverage.
Right now, we're not we could do more in that area.
There's complications, obviously, and dealing with the utilities and that negotiation and all of the legal stuff involved with that.
But that's certainly something that we can take a look at.
And related to that, just really having some type of standard reimbursement agreement.
So right now we have a policy and standards and specs is how we would refer to it.
That requires the utilities to pay a certain width outside of their trench.
But we could certainly revisit that and adopt some other policy that was more beneficial to Berkeley and to making sure that we advance these projects.
So where are we going? We're rounding the horn here on this.
Next steps.
So just immediately next, what we need to do is continue to communicate with the community and make sure that folks understand the expectations around PCI and other projects just because of some of the factors that we've raised.
We are in process of working through a program manual and a staffing plan and really taking the T1 project as a template and leveraging a lot of that to just put in a lot of the administration necessary.
We are starting that process and we'll be hiring some staff and consultants to overlay all these projects.
And now the task is let's lay them all on top of each other and see what kind of priorities we can come out with in terms of our capital.
And this next one is right now, there is no as we go forward, there's no clear mechanism for us to look at complete streets and traffic safety applications in and of themselves and like a process to determine when and where those should be applied.
So, in some cases, a policy as an example, if every project that we do should have complete street or traffic safety elements, as we indicated, if that is the policy decision that changes how we prioritize and that changes how far we go in terms of the resources that we have, as you saw previously.
So, that is something that we just need to consider and have a conversation about public process per measure FF there's ongoing public process.
So that'll continue to occur as we go through this process.
And then we are the council adopted the creation of the oversight.
So we are in the process of working with the other committee commissions and we will be doing that work actually this week.
So that that work is all currently happening.
These are all of the tools that we use our is a great planning document, our street saver software and then one of the things that why he has been working on diligently with our specialist is really creating more forward customer community facing dashboard so folks can see what we're doing.
So that not that, you know, we don't want to engage through public process, but that is part of the public process just by educating folks and letting them see real time in a clear graphical way what we're doing.
And the results of this is that, you know, right now the plan is that the first round of funded FF projects potentially will be ready by twenty six summer construction of twenty six.
That means existing plans that we prioritize right now going to design soon and then are ready for delivery sometime in the summer construction season.
The bulk of the measure FF funded projects specifically are going to have a long planning horizon and they won't really go into construction until twenty seven and beyond.
But we do think that there are some specific projects that we can utilize measure funding to get into our existing plans now and then ongoing oversight reports will be required as a part of the oversight commission and will be presented on a regular basis.
And this is we are recruiting now for the citizens oversight committee see sock.
I guess that's that's the acronym we came up with.
Yeah, I'll leave it there.
I'll leave it there.
They so this is the responsibility we will have seven members total to from as it stands to from transportation infrastructure one from environmental and climate and then four at large.
And those four at large have to have particular skill sets per the BMC and that is either civil engineering program infrastructure or municipal finance and bonds.
Here's the general timeline the council adopted the oversight application and that is currently live on our website now that will run through April fifteenth and we're hopeful that we'll get substantial amount of applicants sufficient amount I should say to for the council to make a some appointments in May.
The goal for us is to start this broader integrated planning and design work, which is a significant planning effort.
So we're gearing up to do that as I talked about assuming that we stand up the oversight group that somewhere around June is my anticipated timeline where they'll have their first work plan and kind of land on their chair.
The ins and outs of how that group will work and then also, you know, what I call their work plan just in terms of identifying kind of how they will work with staff and then also how we'll present to the council.
Between May in October, we will move and continue with the design process and then also have some public process as a result of that as well.
The first revenues from FF are anticipated to be delivered in December of this year.
And then, as I indicated summer, you know, first round of funded projects.
So, with that, we made it through.
Thank you so much for that presentation.
I'm going to start off with council questions.
Are there questions? Thank you very much.
Director Davis and all of you for this very detailed presentation.
I did want to focus on some of these financial slides.
So slide thirty five.
I'm maybe this is in the ballot measure, but I just didn't know what you meant by CPI versus P.I.G.
And the council has a choice.
Could you clarify that? Sure.
Sure.
So per the ballot measure and what's now codified is that each each May of each year, the city council has an opportunity to escalate the assessment and they can utilize one of two indices.
They can utilize either consumer price index or this personal income growth for the San Francisco Bay region.
So the council can elect to do that each May and has the choice to use either of those indices.
OK, so we would receive your input every May of what that rate was and make a determination.
OK.
And so you but you have this projected moving forward already, because my understanding of how these work is like you get them for the prior year.
Yeah.
So so we did our best to just look at current the current indices and make some assumptions about what future years might look like.
Obviously, we don't know in year five what the personal income growth rate will be.
So there these are very much just a large.
Oh, OK.
Yes.
OK.
Thank you for that.
And and and, you know, forgive me, this is too detailed.
You need to go back and check.
But does the language in the ballot measure speak to not doing this? Because sometimes these are negative, you know, these rates.
So are we required to inflate the assessment? Good question.
I will instead of answering, I will double check that because I have a particular interpretation around it says may elect.
So I guess I'd have to talk, you know, maybe that's a legal question.
Yeah, it's a legal question.
OK.
OK.
So I just want to make sure we have some flexibility.
Sure.
We could leave it the same if somehow there's some issue with these.
OK.
So and I did have to question slide thirty seven.
So you're saying measure FF is fifteen point six.
So that tracks to the fifteen point six in year one.
OK.
But when you say general fund is nine point nine.
You know, I was one of the council members who asked and the council agreed to increase the general fund baseline to fifteen.

Segment 3

I'm wondering why it says 9.9 there.
Is that an error? I will double check to make sure that that is accurate.
I think when we talk about the total baseline, per my understanding, the total general fund contribution to the CIP is 15 and some change.
In terms of specific baseline contributions to pavement, I believe the additional $8 million was added to pavement.
So this is inclusive of, I think there was a $2 million pavement contribution and then another $8 million, and there's still another $5 million that goes into the CIP.
Okay, so this is not pavement here.
What is this showing? This is showing pavement.
However, the total general fund contribution into CIP for public works is in the $15 million range.
That's inclusive of other projects as well.
So it could be project supportive that we've talked about.
And that's where this gets a little convoluted.
So there's a contribution for ADA.
Those all get rolled up into one number in the CIP.
And so I will go back and confirm.
But in terms of if we look at what's programmed for pavement based on our baseline general fund contribution, it's in the $10 million range.
Okay.
What does CIP stand for in this context? I'm sorry.
Capital Improvement Program.
Okay.
So I just want to be cautious.
And maybe we need to talk offline because that money that we allocated is for paving.
So I'm concerned when it's showing only $10 million per paving.
The intent of the council's policy is to have $15 million plus inflation go to paving.
So I'm not clear on what's being described.
So, Council Member, just to quickly chime in.
Okay.
So what the tax measure says, it's $15.3 million in funding for street maintenance from sources other than this tax.
It doesn't stipulate specifically the general fund on its own.
It has to do $15 million.
Okay.
That's a different point.
And I don't want to get too detailed.
I just want to be respectful of other people have questions.
Oh, you're talking about the maintenance effort that we have to maintain our $15 million baseline.
So but you're saying it doesn't specify which sources.
Correct.
So meaning you're going to take gas tax and Alameda County measure BB to be included to reach $15? Yes, at a minimum.
Yes.
Okay.
You know, I understand.
Okay.
Because I, you know, in that ballot measure, it may not have specified the source.
But to take non-local funds and add that and say that's part of the 15 when the council policy was $15 million of a local general fund.
That looks like supplanting by another name to me.
You know, that that doesn't look right to me.
So I want to make sure that the council policy of $15 million plus inflation is going to paving understood.
So, you know, if you if you can give me a breakdown of how are we spending like in this fiscal year? Not now, but like offline.
Sure.
Where is that money going? If it's not all going to paving, is it going to safety improvements on those streets? ADA improvements, it sounds like.
Yeah.
So understood.
And council member, I perfectly understand.
So we can provide that cost breakdown.
And this I'll say I should have had a caveat.
This is this is an oversimplification of our funding and our budgets related to roadway improvements.
So this is just kind of supposed to be representative.
But I certainly understand your question and request.
We'll get that.
OK, because the reason I'm asking all those detailed questions is because when you go to this other slide, five year projection.
So this is done by our consultant.
Correct.
Yeah.
So, you know, I think I just want to give you the feedback for the future.
What will be helpful knowing that measure FF has passed.
You know, it's not accurate to say the current budget is 15 million per year.
Right.
It's actually I just did the math of all these different sources.
It ends up being, you know, this is rough, but roughly 45 million or more.
So I think we need to we need to tell our story accurately.
That means we if this is like accurate in terms of money for a PCI point, we're going to get a PCI increase greater than five.
But I mean, it's not quite right because it's not all going to paving.
But, you know, I just feel like whatever they did running these numbers, I would like to see a line that just shows like how much PCI increase are we going to get with measure FF, the council policy for general fund baseline paving money and those other sources like what's that total and what will that get us over the next five years? That would be a great graph for not just the council to see, but for the public to see.
That's what they're getting for this investment, you know, because this is a big sacrifice for people to pay this parcel tax.
And, you know, I just want to make sure that we're we're accurately telling telling people what what will be had by it.
And just to I think Joe may have touched on this, but this is a function of our street savers software.
And in essence, it's a part of our what's called our pavement technical assistance program that's done every few years via MTC.
And Joe is it's his fault.
But this this is this is just representative of really kind of pure paving.
And so one of the reasons I said there's lots of caveats to this is that, you know, that doesn't include safety projects.
As an example, it doesn't include all those other elements.
So once we go through this process of prioritizing projects, we can feed that back into street savers and then create scenarios.
So this is this is OK.
This is to a certain extent.
This information is outdated already.
Yeah, it is new revenue.
But this is this is I guess you would call it kind of old baseline information.
OK, yeah.
I mean, as long as as you know, if it could be labeled that way, it does say February 2025.
So it makes it seem like it's current.
But it's not.
So I just want to note that.
And yeah, I would be great to get an understanding of like all of this funding, you know, what portion of it goes to paving and then and then rerun this with that information.
So, you know, I know it's complicated.
There's a lot of numbers.
I'm a budget person.
So I was paying attention to that.
So you got you got caught in that.
You got caught in that.
So thank you.
And then the other point I want to make is, you know, just like you were talking about public process and I just want to note the the heartburn I feel because we all know about public process and street safety.
You know, that gives some of us some PTSD.
So so I'm just worried because I think I think we need to contemplate how I don't know if you've done this work.
Like, how are we going to do the public process around the safety improvements? How are we going to determine what safety improvements? And I'm really worried about multi year expensive consultant processes that don't actually get to a safe street.
You know, that was a horrible outcome that we had on Hopkins.
And I want to make sure that we have plans in place that are realistic, but also are clear about what the directive is.
And so we actually get improvements out of this funding and not just a bunch of public process and very little improvement.
You know that that I think and I think the community feels that frustration.
We we can't just put hundreds of thousands of dollars into consultants getting public input.
And yeah, the public is divided because this stuff is difficult and controversial.
You know, this is past now and we need to do these improvements, so we need to figure out how to do them in a way that's cost effective and efficient where we still get the input, but we don't get bogged down by it.
So that's all I'll say about that.
Thank you.
I think that was not a question.
I think your question was about public process, if there's a plan for that.
So just to make it a question.
So so we're in this process now really early in developing all of these elements.
So there is no definitive process yet.
What I will say is it is required per measure effect that there is a public process.
So we will be working on that plan with the inclusion of potentially, you know, instead of because I agree with you, council member, about these long drawn out consulting public processes.
You know, even looking at positioning our own city resources to be able to help support some of that.
So we are doing that work now.
What I also say is, as he indicated, the work that Eric is doing and my back right in the back related to Vision Zero and the bike and airplanes have public process built in.
So we can leverage a lot of that as well.
So we like to build stuff.
So our goal is also to try to make sure that we are engaging in that process, but that we also are efficient so that we can move forward with selection and building stuff.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
And yeah, I'm sure that there were plenty of lessons that were learned during that time, even though most of us were not there.
And I'm sure you'll take that into account.
Thank you.
Council Member Humbert, do you have questions? In fact, I do, Madam Mayor.
Thank you.
And there are questions, but, you know, they're kind of broad questions and you've probably covered some of them to some degree.
There are questions, but there are also things to think about.
So, you know, I don't want necessarily detailed chapter and verse, but but I feel like this is an appropriate time to ask them.
And thank you so much for that presentation.
It was really interesting.
And I love learning that engineers named alligator, alligator paving, because I always wondered where that came from.
And I certainly see it around, unfortunately.
But how.
Okay.
My first question is, how will public works integrate FF projects into the city's capital project delivery program? I want to note that and to sort of reflect what council member Kesarwani said, FF passed by a very significant majority, which just paved the roads and do nothing else, essentially failed miserably.
So we have a consensus, not a consensus, but a significant majority in this town in favor of of what FF contemplates.
So I want to make sure that FF really is an integral part of capital project delivery.
What are your just kind of general thoughts about how you integrate FF projects into the whole this whole stream of capital improvements? That that is entirely aligned with how we see FF as well, in that it gives us an opportunity to really have a paradigm shift around how we do project planning.
We'll continue to have other funding sources, grants, et cetera.
But FF really now is this kind of catalyst where we look at these things and kind of this integrated way.
So we have to build that framework.
And as I indicated, like Vision 20, 2050 has some tools for us to be able to do that.
But some of that program plan and the other administrative elements that we need to build the framework, we have to build that out to make to make it make sense.
But that is essentially the path that we're taking.
Thank you.
That's really helpful to hear.
And sort of a related question is to the extent we're using I'd love to see the department staff up so we can, you know, minimally use consultants.
But we're always probably going to use consultants.
How will you integrate those consultants, educate them essentially so they're aware of all of our policies that the new FF policy that's reflected in the measure Vision Zero, the bike plan, the pedestrian plan, et cetera.
How will you bring them on board? Great question.
And just just for context, right now, we utilize consultants for our existing capital delivery on the design side primarily.
So they're already supporting a lot of our design elements.
And most of the folks that we utilize in that capacity are very savvy and do this for multiple jurisdictions in the region.
So the integration is less difficult because they, you know, we've already have some existing working relationships and a lot of these folks.
This is what they do is kind of help cities deliver on various measures, whether it be a general sales tax, partial tax, whatever.
So we're pretty confident we have mechanisms in our we already kind of set up to do this.
And we are developing a staffing plan now.
And that staffing plan kind of that first phase, those staff will really be tasked with building relationships after they do the solicitations to make sure that we select the right type of consultants and get them where we need and that they are integrated and understanding the community.
So that is a part of our selection process to make sure that they understand not only Berkeley, but whatever they're working on in terms of the funding source.
All our funding sources have some restrictions.
FF is very unique.
But, you know, as an example, SB1 has reporting requirements to the state, et cetera.
So we build that into our selection process.
Thank you.
Appreciate that.
And then sort of the paving plan has historically been done by engineering.
It's just been kind of historically, at least my sense is having been on transportation commission and actually also having been on public works for a for a blink of an eye with some of the people who are sitting here in the room.
I think it makes sense, but do you think it makes sense to include the transportation division to a greater degree in the paving plan? I mean, now it's it's not just paving.
It's complete streets.
It's FF.
And I'd like personally like to see more participation than we have had historically from the transportation side of the public works department.
That was me and why he's morning conversation and we again, we're aligned there and agree about this is an opportunity to leverage all of the strengths of the department and have some more integrated planning.
And so we're already having conversations about how we can kind of align resources, put some things in place to do that.
There will still be transportation specific projects.
There'll still be kind of one off projects as we get grant funding through MTC or whomever or AC transit.
So we'll continue to have those kind of separate projects.
But this really gives us a framework to now take all of our funding and really align it around all of the plans that we showed.
So that was the intent of showing those various plans is that we see that those five, six plans now is being completely integrated through FF.
Thank you.
That actually is music to my ears.
On a couple more specific questions, we have major corridors that are soon to be paved.
I'm certain of Claremont in district eight.
I think it's due to be paved in twenty, twenty seven.
So it's just kind of right around the corner.
Maybe the last year of the current paving plan or anyway.
Oxford, I think, is due to be paved.
They are due for significant corridor studies.
Can you let me know a little bit about what you anticipate in that regard when those corridor studies will start? The Oxford has been pushed back a little bit because of Zachary's corner and we repurpose some of the funding to be able to prioritize that referral.
So Oxford will not move in twenty, twenty eight.
But when it does, absolutely.
The complete start aspect is part of that.
We have some preliminary assessments from the past that we'll pick up and dust off and take it from there.
Claremont, you're correct.
It is for fiscal year twenty seven.
Right now we have fiscal year twenty five out to bid and working on the design elements for twenty six packers.
We have some time and I've heard feedback also from fire department and others that that that that corridor Claremont is of interest.
So we will look at that.
And again, with the complete streets lens.
But I do want to make a comment to the previous one.
It is not that transportation did not collaborate in the past on on paving projects.
It was just limited.
As Terrence has pointed out now with FF, it's all hands on.
And the funding and resources there before we were trying to utilize with the limited funding that we had.
And again, with the alligator conditions everywhere, you know, is a trade off.
But here, as Terrence mentioned, we talked about it in detail in our latest conversation with this morning, that that is our goal and vision is to make sure that we have many layers and transportation, a strong component of it to look at it holistically.
But with that, I think during one of the slides, we did want to make it clear that the holistic approach, complete streets.
Also, it takes a little bit more funding and timing.
I want to make sure that we baseline expectations.
I know that we want to get out there and start delivering projects and improvements to the best of our capabilities expedited.
But again, the more components we add, the square footage comes a little bit shorter and also the duration and community engagement, because you have many elements and not just one.
But the vision and the goal is there.
Thank you very much.
And thank you for that.
Mentioning the fire department with respect to Claremont, because I know they do have they do have some plans for Claremont and that are in development.
So it'll be critical to to to work with them on designing Claremont.
And then the final question.
Well, I do have a very specific question about dig once.
Don't we already have a dig once policy? I have this recollection of working on a dig once policy when I was on public works.
I was on the one of the subcommittees.
Do we have a dig once policy? We do.
We do.
OK, thanks.
And then finally, my question, it's just kind of open ended.
What can council do to help you succeed in all this? Because it's it's a massive amount of work.
It must be exciting, but it's it's daunting.
And, you know, I want you to know that I'm here to do whatever I can to help you succeed.
But think about what your asks might be.
And, you know, you don't have to do that right now, but come back to us.
Let me take out the binder.
Hold on.
We appreciate that, council member.
And that was part of the reason we wanted to start the conversation before we got any revenues and just start to kind of get feedback from the council.
So certainly this is this is what we need just to get some feedback and some direction, ask some questions so that we make sure we're on the right track.
Thank you so much.
But also, if I can add, I think Terrence provided a really good slide as far as the initial steps to support, whether that's coordinating with utility companies to dig once or be able to maximize repaving.
And also all this also decisions regarding policies, how to fast track decisions and what the requirements are.
I think that's going to be extremely critical because that's going to be the game, the game player book that I give our team to say, there you go.
We have full support.
This is all we need to do.
Run with it.
Let's get it out.
Thank you.
That's all I have.
That was a lot.
Thank you.
OK, so, folks, just so we know, it's five thirty.
So just to be aware, I know you folks have a lot of questions.
I want to make sure you ask them.
But just as we're thinking about them, just be prepared because we've got a lot of of flashing lights right now.
So, Council Member Blackaby.
Thanks, Madam Mayor.
I, for one, want to say I am excited about pavement.
I'm very excited about pavement.
Glad you're here.
Thank you for the presentation.
And I promise I'm not going to ask 10 questions like last week.
I'll be much more judicious.
So appreciate the discretion.
Real quickly, just I had a couple of things to take through on the sidewalk number early on when you're talking about deferred maintenance.
Sixty million dollars.
I assume that's for like existing sidewalks as opposed to in my district.
Lots of streets with no sidewalks.
So that's measured sidewalks where we have sidewalks and not places where maybe we should build sidewalks.
Is that fair? That's correct.
OK, great.
On the prioritization.
Oh, on the on the pavement management.
And you were talking about the different costs per square foot to move something from PCI 51 or PCI 26.
Are all those numbers basically measures of how you would get back to 100? Or are there situations where you can never get to 100? You're just trying to get to a lesser number.
Thank you, Council Member.
That's a great question.
Your your goal is it is really to get somewhere between 90 and 100.
That's kind of the sweet spot of what you're trying to do when you do a rehabilitation.
Right.
And when you when you do more of a maintenance treatment, you get somewhere in the ninety ones, ninety twos.
So again, it falls back on that basic principle of do the right treatment to the right pavement at the right time.
And so that's that's the sweet spot.
So there's a number of scenario where you'd say, hey, let's get from 50 to 80 and call it good.
If you're treating a 50 street, you're going to try and get it back up to 90.
Yeah, you're if you're in the 50s, then you're looking at the restorative treatments are going to take it to to 100.
OK, if you're in the 70 range and you're going to do the surface seals on it, then you're going to get up into the into the low 90s.
OK, I've heard.
And this may be a bad anecdote.
And but I've heard sometimes streets reach a certain condition where sometimes it's just better to let them fail and rebuild it as opposed to, you know, is that is that fair and accurate? Is that and is that contemplated in how you do this, the software? Absolutely.
And that's taken into account in the critical point management style approach of selecting streets.
OK, one point I just came up.
We had a closed session and talked about some of the things I do have some concerns about just our broader liability as a city for poor streets.
And thinking about how that might factor into our prioritization as well, because that is an unseen task of just like, hey, people slipping and falling on streets.
And the more streets that we have in bad repair and letting those go to further bad repair.
It's not costless to us to let those sit in that condition.
I just wonder if that's also contemplated.
Absolutely.
You're trying to pick with that critical point management style.
You're picking streets from each one of those general regions of the deterioration curve.
So good streets, poor streets and in between.
OK, comment very quickly on the on the when you talk about the maintained road system and the amount of miles or two arterials, collectors and residential.
I would love to see in the future some calculation of like usage on each of those.
So, like, yeah, there are only 22 miles of arterials, but it gets a thousand miles of usage or something based on traffic.
That would just be interesting to see, because, again, residential streets get less traffic, arterials get more traffic.
But anyway, just in terms of the actual usage of each of those kinds of categories, shared Councilman Cassowany's questions about the five year projections would love.
Similarly, we'll have to see kind of where we are under the new scenario and where that actually gets us.
And then flipping towards the end on Measure FF, actually or go forward on the paving policy.
I'm really gratified to hear about your thought process around coordination with our partner agencies.
That's, I know, something we've talked about.
We've got a number of those projects in my district.
And the more that we can do that just, I think, will make everyone's lives easier and happier neighborhoods as well as ours from a public works perspective.
Question on prioritization.
When do you anticipate we'll see or be able to weigh in again on the next set of criteria for how you do the prioritization? And the reason I ask is, you know, I have concerns about maybe adding some other attributes into that model.
For example, is a particular road on an evacuation route or is an evacuation route from from an emergency perspective? And should that bump up because of that? Not sure that it does in the current matrix.
Curious that like, hey, if a street has never, ever been repaved before or hasn't been years and years and years, should that also get a little bump up? Right.
Things like that that just I think would also go a long ways towards neighborhood satisfaction.
So I think the question would be when we might be able to weigh in again on that, what that prioritization algorithm looks like.
Great question.
I don't have a definitive answer, but what I'll say is that right now in our current timeline, I would say some, you know, in the May, June, July time frame is when we anticipate kind of having that framework starting to be built out.
Some of that's dependent on if we can get some resources in place, because as I said, we have to scale.
But that was always the intention, is that as we built out the framework and started to prioritize projects, that we would come back to have policy discussion.
And the software and the tools that we have are pretty flexible.
So once we have the data, we're going through this, as I said, the PTAP, this Payment Technical Assistance Program.
So we're gathering all new data right now for 2025.
So once Joe and his group are done with that, we'll have updated information.
And that tool essentially allows us to model.
So we can put in various criteria, various cost information, and kind of spit out those charts that you saw.
So, you know, somewhere around that time frame is when we would anticipate being ready to do that.
Great.
One other piece of data, being data driven, I saw on the data collection slide.
I would love to see more again in the future as we do more of this actual traffic data, like car trips, truck trips, bike trips, pedestrian trips.
Like, do we know how much these pieces of infrastructure are being used and in what ways beyond what people want? But like, what are we actually seeing in terms of performance? Again, I don't know how to present that, but it just there'll be something that would be great to see.
Terrence, you mentioned in a previous meeting we had like goals for better kind of communication.
I just thought maybe could you talk to us a little bit about in terms of commuting back to neighborhoods or how we can be helpful in terms of kind of communicating with neighbors so people know what's going on and what's coming? Anything that we could do to help there or your thoughts about how we can improve that? Certainly, Council Member.
I appreciate that.
Again, part of what we wanted to do today was start the communication.
Right.
And try to do more of this when we can.
So as we go through FF and I think I heard some Council Member Keshawani raised a very interesting point around public process.
And part of that is just about better communication.
And there's a recognition that we need to be better about how we communicate what's happening in the districts so that folks can kind of self-serve and get information about what we're doing.
So they can kind of get come along with us as we plan.
So one of the things that we're really focused on, not only with the, you know, through some dashboarding and creating some GIS layers that are community facing is want to make sure we get you information about kind of the planning process and what we're contemplating is happening in the district so that you can then take that information to the community.
So we recognize there's a bit of a gap there and that sometimes folks just don't know.
They see the paving plan.

Segment 4

How to Use the Information at the Board of Trustees We are going to have a couple of different kind of oversight bodies.
So again just thinking about how to manage this, but you're going to have the SSOC and you also have like the sort of standard Transformation Infrastructure Commission and kind of the project prioritization process.
Have you thought at all about how those different bodies hopefully will be most effective and not step on each other at all? No.
Okay, great.
That'll be something we can help with.
Thank you.
Thanks for the time and thank you for all the work in the presentation.
Thanks, Mayor.
Thank you.
I'm going to go to Councilmember Taplin because your little light went off earlier.
Thank you very much and thank you all for the presentation.
I just have one question to clarify.
So it sounds like you're already working on some policy recommendations so you probably don't need Council to get in your way.
We have some preliminary ideas and certainly I think we'd like to present those and get feedback and refine those based on what the Council desire is.
So certainly, you know, we've had conversations with the community and with the Council and we've picked up on some of that.
We have some best practices in the industry.
We're looking at cost tradeoffs.
And then we'd like to present kind of those draft recommendations to you and get some feedback.
Thank you very much.
We're happy to take that up at fights.
And my office is happy to work with George for Davis and the same manager to engage our utility counterparts as appropriate and whenever necessary.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember Councilmember take up.
Thank you so much.
First, again, just want to applaud your team.
This is fairly impressive, and our office continues looks forward to continuing to work with you.
If you have followed my convention for asking questions just for time, I try to do rapid fire.
I will number them this time and I will try to ask broader general questions and the rest I will provide to you in writing.
So the first question is, there are a lot of different plans.
There's Vision 2050.
Our office is very engaged right now in several different ADA related conversations with constituents as well.
There's a, you know, there are opportunities.
When we bring our infrastructure into back into the 21st century or into the 21st century to, of course, leverage all the different additional requirements around green infrastructure completes treats.
You, you alluded to some kind of grand unified strategy around this coming.
When we want question one, when might we plan for that.
And how can we support that happening.
Question two.
And you've, you've provided this to our office, but I wanted you to brag a little bit here.
We were very concerned about the lack of staffing to complete all of this work.
You have been rapidly staffing up.
Can you give us a staffing update insofar as how this can help support these plans, particularly around implementing measure FF.
The third question is around the revenue schedule for FF.
It is my understanding that collection of the tax started in January 1st of this year.
And although the tax revenues did not come to the city until December.
It will be 150% of the tax rate in the first year.
Later on, dropping to 100%.
Correct me if I'm wrong on that.
But my question is, how are you planning to leverage the influx of money that's going to be front loaded.
And do you consider including some additional funds in the transportation bond issued every July to smooth out the cash flow.
And are you aware of any additional grant opportunities.
I know we don't have a grant writer in the city.
How can we support you in leveraging grant opportunities as a council.
Question number four.
A little bit controversial, perhaps.
But have we explored a road user charge.
You know, EVs are great.
And you mentioned 30% increased weight.
I myself have a plug in hybrid, and I understand what that does to the world.
And I think the bigger question is, are our jurisdictions like ours.
Kind of the right size where something like this could be explored.
And question number five is around.
How are we planning for the upcoming economic uncertainty.
How confident are we in the 10 year projections that we showed that you showed.
And I'm almost done.
The next question is around community notification.
As I was talking to constituents who, by and large, are really happy about both the paving improvements in my district and some of the traffic safety.
Such as on MLK, but told me and it was in different parts of the district.
So it was pretty across the board that they were not notified or they maybe didn't realize there were there was an attempt to notify them about these improvements.
What are you doing around notification and transparency.
And I think my last question that I will ask on the dice are two questions.
Just comment also very interested like my at least one of my colleagues to see how we can leverage opportunities to work with our utilities to extract.
Well, not to extract.
Let me walk that back to make sure that utilities are paying their fair share around improvements.
And finally, how are we leveraging or how can we leverage opportunities to work regionally with our neighbors, neighboring jurisdictions, Alameda County, etc.
Berkeley is doing a heck of a lot.
And it's great.
I love going to conferences and kind of bragging about all the things that Berkeley is doing on this front.
And we, you know, some of these improvements also benefit other jurisdictions, especially around the border areas.
And so I'm wondering if there are opportunities or how can we be more aligned with our neighbors to make sure that they also do their fair share of improvements at the same time or don't just get all the benefits, but they're none of the costs.
Thank you.
Rapid fire answers.
Here we go.
So, in terms of the planning, we do have a lot of plans and this unified planning right now, the time my timeline has that initial kind of framework coming back around October.
So, we do have to get some consulting support.
We do have to get some staff realignment to be able to do a lot of this work.
The folks you see at the table, many of them are doing plan updates right now.
So, we have to let those processes complete as well so that we have the latest information staffing update.
Thank you for the shout out on that.
We have done a tremendous job.
Hats off to the team.
We've reduced our overall vacancy rate, particularly in transportation that was in the 20% range is now we've, I think, in the last 12% or something like that.
So, we've hired three or four key positions there and then what we plan to do is leverage FF to also create some additional staffing opportunities to do this kind of integrated in what I would call almost this long range planning effort.
In terms of the, you are correct in terms of the way that the revenue measure FF was billed beginning in January.
And my understanding is that it's billed for 18 months.
So, there is this 150% year one, and then year 14 is reduced by by half.
So, that extra revenue, we have not completed the projections precisely having to work with the city manager's office to refine those.
But essentially, the goal of that would be to leverage that to just do more projects.
And as we get started, there's always a goal for us, whether it be measure FF, measure BB, gas tax to a certain extent, or general fund contributions that we utilize those as leverage for matches or for grants.
And so, we will continue to do that.
Eric at the bottom of the table has been very successful in doing that on the transportation side.
So, we'll continue to try to look for grant opportunities.
Obviously, in the federal and state environment, things seem to be shifting and those grants are slowing down a bit.
In terms of economic uncertainty, this is just a roadmap.
And so, each year, we will come back and update the estimates, not only on the revenue side, but also the cost estimates.
As Waheed and Joe indicated, we can do our best crystal ball and then come back and find out project bid prices come back 20, 30% higher.
So, just like our annual budget or biannual budget, this is something we're going to have to update each year.
The community notification, I agree.
I got some calls as well around folks who were not aware of projects that we were doing.
Part of our staffing plan for Measure FF is actually a community engagement position, who not only will we utilize our traditional methods of communicating about projects through our website and our community messages and social media, but we'll also have an individual who can also go connect with the community.
Because I found often folks still want to talk after the project is completed and our engineers have moved on to the next project.
So, it makes it difficult.
So, we'll have a dedicated resource for that support because I agree with you that that's a missed opportunity to have a communication with the community.
And opportunities to leverage working with regional neighbors is complicated.
We do have conversations with our regional partners and also the neighboring jurisdictions on a regular basis to share information.
Coordination and planning outside of Albany to a certain extent becomes difficult.
In a perfect world, we would be really kind of talking about best practices and also trying to share resources and do broader regional projects.
Typically, I found that it's difficult because each organization has its own process, standard and specs, timeline, and contracts.
And it usually kind of falls apart there.
But it is something that we continue to look at as we all chase these escalating prices and really wanting to improve the region collectively and have the same shared goal.
So, we have the conversations, but it is very tricky and difficult to solve for.
Thank you.
I had a question about the world user charge.
I'm sorry.
I skipped that one on purpose.
No.
I don't blame you.
So, in light of, we do have a, you know, as we talked about kind of broadly on one of the slides about impact fees, that is contemplated in there as one of the potential impact fees.
So, not only for development or for large vehicles, but it could also be for, as Joe indicated, the load of an electric vehicle is significant in terms of what it does to the roadway.
So, those are all things that we can explore.
I don't know offhand, personally.
We'll have to talk with the team about who's done that in the region.
But that is something that we could certainly take a look at and see if there's an appetite for the council.
Great.
Thank you so much.
I will provide the balance of my questions in writing to your team.
And then, just in closing, I do share Council Member Cassarwani's desire, when you showed the different lines on the chart, I would like to see the line that shows what it will take under Measure FF.
You know, what will, how can we get it to the goals of FF and being specific about localized funds that are specific to the intended purpose.
So, with that, thank you so much.
Thank you.
And I think we would all be interested in that.
So, just to save folks that comment.
I would like to move on next to Council Member Lunapara.
These are questions.
Thank you.
Yeah, I just have one question.
You know, often when streets are repaved without, you know, different infrastructure changes, people go faster.
They can almost become even more dangerous.
And so, I'm curious if this is, and I, you know, this is, I can see this happening with neighborhood streets, such as Claremont and Hopkins and Dwight.
And I'm curious how this is being taken into consideration, especially with the new FF funding when making these decisions and the designs.
That's a great question.
So, even before FF, we have put together a task force mixed with our augmented consultant staff members and new staff members within transportation engineering to actually assess that.
We're putting together a game plan on how pre and post analysis to be able to look at the metrics, look at the, you know, facts to see realistically what is occurring.
And just off the bat, the plan is once implementation of the new infrastructure is in place, we won't go the next day.
Obviously, we'll leave a little bit of time for it to normalize because we have changed the characteristics.
And then maybe a month later, we'll have, you know, one of our consultants go out there and do an analysis to see what the trends are.
And then from there, let's say looking at it, if we do have the data to support it, this is where FF comes in.
We would like to eventually, with the data supporting it and the facts being there, to engineer as part of it.
So, it's not let's study it after the fact, but it'll be part of the upcoming infrastructure project that includes because we now know, and we have done the study and the data supports it, that we do need to add additional features as part of this project to be able to control that environment.
Does that answer your question? Yeah, so it's done retroactively for the most part.
Okay, thank you.
Most of my questions were answered earlier.
Thank you for the presentation.
Thank you, Council Member Bartlett.
Thank you.
Vice Mayor Bartlett.
Thanks for a wonderful presentation.
Really, really great work, as always.
And, of course, grappling with this deep, deep, deep-seated infrastructure deficit that is everywhere.
And it seems that we're at the point now where we have to kind of recognize the old ways aren't working and get into the new ways.
And so, I'm curious about the cost escalation you mentioned early on that's made it harder.
Any key drivers? No pun intended.
I just realized I made a joke.
Very good question.
Some of them are the need to deal with some of the unfunded regulations, which are newer to projects.
We've also seen contractors' specific elements within contractor bids go up significantly.
One of those, for instance, is traffic control.
We've seen like a 300% jump in just the traffic control.
And we've been attributing it to instead of a contractor performing, self-performing traffic control, they're subbing that part out.
And when they sub it out, it's been more expensive.
And so, I've seen that's some of the things that we've seen.
What about materials? Materials have gone up, not as much as we might think.
You know, there's a tie with paving projects to the oil index.
And everyone will say, well, the barrel of oil went up here and the barrel of oil went up there.
But there's also some other impacts that have been more significant.
The cost of labor, the prevailing wage keeps continuing to be raised by the state.
And that trickles down to our projects.
And also, again, like some of the regulations, just recently in the last couple of years, we've switched over to how independent trucking operators would be able to count themselves.
We're exempt from having to pay themselves prevailing wage now because of the regulations.
They now pay themselves prevailing wage if you're an independent single trucking operator.
And that has significantly impacted the cost of trucking, for instance.
Materials are almost drowned out.
Any increase in materials are almost drowned out by some of the other regulating factors that are causing pressure on the costs.
Wahid, have you seen anything different? No, and I was just going to comment.
The majority that we've seen is labor, quite a bit.
These are good to know because we have a lobbyist who works for the city.
And we can communicate to our legislators and try to come up with some quick fixes if we can.
So it's good to have these parceled out potential policy areas we could fix.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Council Member O'Keefe? Okay, I have 10 or 11 questions for you.
Ready? No, they were almost all answered, luckily.
I guess that was a jab, Igor.
There was just one thing left that wasn't quite scratched by.
This has come up a few times in the conversation.
I'm curious about the sort of holistic prioritization process that you're undergoing, you know what I mean, like to try to take FF and complete streets and everything and try to figure out what to do.
So my understanding is you're currently developing a new process for prioritization, and then it's going to come before us at some point.
And my question is, is it just presented or do we have to approve it? Is there a formal opportunity for us to weigh in? I'm interested in the specifics of what that process looks like, and that is my only question.
Great question.
In a perfect scenario, we would align that process with the adoption of our CIP.
I don't know that because of the timing that we can do it, because that is really one of the vehicles where the council adopts the CIP each year.
So we'll have to give some thought to the timing of that.
But in essence, it would be almost like an element of the CIP in terms of here is the criteria, and we would expand the CIP development.
Notwithstanding, the goal for us is certainly to bring that criteria forward along with policy recommendations so that the council can weigh in and make some determinations.
So that actually is going to be critical before we go too far down the line in terms of actually starting to project out projects and get those projects into design.
So that is, I would say, if there are multi-steps in this kind of initial process, that's probably in the step three range once we have some folks.
And once we start to document some policy decisions, once we complete this planning work that's underway, then it's really about what kind of policies do we want to utilize.
And you'll hear some recommendations from us around criteria as it relates to how we maximize dollars, how we align these projects together, and go from there.
So that is earlier in our journey to help us make a determination.
Otherwise, we would just be picking projects based on existing criteria, and I certainly don't want to miss the mark there if there's different priorities.
I'm sorry, just to be super clear, is this something that we have to weigh in on before it's implemented? Yes.
Or we have to approve, I should say.
Well, yeah, because ultimately you appropriate the dollars and you appropriate the money into the projects.
So by default, you would have to appropriate and have questions around what projects you were approving.
Okay, but the articulation of the prioritization policy itself isn't something we necessarily have to approve.
I mean, I hear you saying we're going to have a conversation about it, and that's probably fine.
Yeah, I guess yes and no.
You do because in many ways you're going to approve the various plans that come before you.
That's one.
You're going to approve the CIP, and this is based on the CIP and the plans.
And so by default, you will approve them separately, but also what I'm saying is in order for us to be effective, I think the council needs to see the prioritization criteria and the policy recommendations before we get too far down the road to make sure we're aligned.
Okay, I think I understand.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
Okay, I think we are going to public comment.
And just to be clear, because I know folks have come in for the general meeting, but we are still in the special meeting, and we are taking public comment on the pavement management infrastructure planning presentation.
Is there public comment on that? Thank you.
Very good.
Go ahead.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Margo Shuler, former public works commissioner, and worked for East Payment for many years.
Several comments have come up, and I will be writing a lot of you individually.
One is the street saver concept, which I'm really happy you briefed them on because it's really core.
But the thing to remember, it's geared for asphalt streets, which means it's hard to integrate innovation on the street paving materials.
So keep that in mind.
It's hard to compare Alston Way to the rest of the streets.
PEI has spent a couple of years and come up with a mechanism to do that, but it's not straightforward.
Two, the weather impacts issue.
You guys have talked a lot about water.
I don't want to forget heat, and that raises the issue of coordination with other departments, the issue of the parks department being involved.
The parks control our street trees.
That controls our street surface temperature.
They have to be engaged in the process as well, further tremendously complicating your work, Mr.
Davis.
But then the other issue about the impacts of asphalt as a material, asphalt has been shown to be the single most damaging material to salmon.
The entire West Coast, the University of Washington has studied this, has come up with a recommendation in the Puget Sound.
They are no longer allowing asphalt overlays.
We've got to reconsider materials, not just because of climate change, not just because water innovations.
It kills fish.
We live on the bay.
Bundling requests with utility services.
Our utilities are all different.
Some of them are private.
Some of them are public.
Are you asking the city of Richmond, the citizens of Richmond to help Berkeley pave its old streets by levying East Bay mud a wider pavement process than any other city in its 29 city jurisdictions? That doesn't fly.
Thank you for your comments.
I appreciate you bring that up.
All right.
Madam Mayor and council members, my name is Ray Yip.
I was a member of the former Public Works Commission and was also formerly a member of the Transportation Infrastructure Commission.
Today is a very exciting day.
Congratulations to Director Davis and your team.
Excellent presentation.
I will skip the detailed comments on that, but I wanted to take a minute to give credit on how we got here today.
So the road to get to today was not quick and not easy.
A lot of credit goes to the former Public Works Commission.
Margo Shuler, who you just heard from, Larry Henry was formerly here.
Myself have worked on paving analysis for at least 15 years each.
I'd like to also give credit to our auditors, Jenny Wong and former auditor Ann Marie Hogan.
They really raised awareness on our street condition with their audits.
Also want to give credit to former Mayor Jesse Arreguin for his initiative on Vision 2050.
The task force did tremendous work and prepared a report accepted by council.
And last but not least, I want to give credit to the City Council.
In particular, I recall Council Member Keserwani speaking very boldly about the need for general fund monies and the issues she brought up earlier.
And Council Member Taplin, for your work with the Fights Committee and continuing to raise the awareness on infrastructure.
So this day is a happy day for people concerned about infrastructure, but the road to get here was long and very difficult.
Thank you.
Thank you for your comments.

Segment 5

We have another comment in person.
I want to particularly thank Councilmember Kesarwani.
I thought you gave very thoughtful, insightful comments, not to exclude anybody else.
I was captured by Councilmember Tregub mentioning that we don't have a grant writer because I recall a grant writer coming before Council a few years ago and that being approved.
So I was just wondering what's happening because if there's any time that we need a grant writer, it's now in these economic uncertainties.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Are there any comments online? Yes, we have four hands raised.
The first speaker is former Councilmember Gordon Wozniak.
And just so folks online know, we're talking about the special Council meeting item number two, payment management and infrastructure planning presentation.
Go ahead.
Okay, thank you, Mayor and Council, for letting me comment on this.
I want to make a couple points.
First is I think it's a serious problem if after 14 years the PCA is basically the same.
I think that's unacceptable.
And I think the Council has to try to look at some creative ways to try to improve that.
And one is basically the money that comes into the city often dies or gets whittled away by a thousand cuts.
You should really try to look at this and try to reduce all indirect costs, all non-direct costs, basically overhead.
You want to try to reduce it to try to get more purchasing power for these funds.
The other is that there will be a certain amount of idle funds and many millions of dollars which is in the city's investment account.
You want to try to get higher interest rates on that when you know it's there and like you do on the longer term health programs.
The other is it's been mentioned by a couple people that the paving curve is not only for asphalt, it doesn't include permeable pavers, which the one on Alston Way was at 100 percent 10 years after it was put in.
It doesn't have the same curve.
It has a very much better curve.
Now it costs more money up front, but it's also greener because it actually takes storm water and filters down into the ground.
So this should be looked at, not just assume that it's only going to be asphalt, particularly for the streets that have very heavy traffic, the arterials and the collectors where you get the really heavy trucks and it degrades faster.
They have like a 10-year half-life compared to 25 for the residential areas, which are the bulk of the area that you have to maintain.
So asphalt's fine in the residential areas, but from the main streets they should look carefully and whether the front costs would justify the savings you get over time because you have PCI for 100 for over a decade.
So thank you very much for letting me make those comments.
Thank you.
Next is Nancy Rader.
Good evening.
My name is Nancy Rader in District 6.
Thank you Director Davis and Council for providing this early opportunity to think about the implementation of Measure FF so the community can be involved.
I just wanted to flag two recent detailed letters that were sent to the Council on this topic by the umbrella group Berkeleyans for Accessible Rights of Way, which was signed by many groups and individuals who were concerned about the accessibility or lack thereof of Berkeley streets and sidewalks.
The letters urge the City to use the availability of Measure FF funds as an opportunity to take a holistic approach to planning infrastructure improvements to be sure that new infrastructure serves everyone's needs, including our disabled and senior populations, and to substantially advance the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
These goals should be at the forefront as the City implements Measure FF and updates its bicycle, pedestrian, and Vision Zero plans.
Sadly though, I didn't hear much focus in the presentations on how these critical issues are being addressed and the issue was not flagged as a Council priority.
So I urge Council to make sure that the ADA and accessibility issues receive greater focus moving forward.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, next is Blair Beekman.
Hi, Blair Beekman.
I've been trying to learn to practice tech accountability ideas that first started arriving in 2014 and 15 in the Bay Area and the state and the country.
It's been really interesting work.
I've been based in San Jose.
I feel it's practices that are helpful to all cities of the Bay Area, the state, and the country.
So I try to speak at Berkeley meetings sometimes.
I attend.
This is, I guess, my first meeting with new Council persons and a new Mayor.
Thanks for the years of work of Mayor Ehrling, and I'm really hopeful in what the new Council and Mayor can be working on in Berkeley.
To note for public meeting items after long presentations, I know Berkeley, they like to have it as a study session process and have, you know, Council comment and questions.
It's a good process, but traditionally, it's better to have the public comment first because then Council can have questions of the community.
I'm talking about procedures, and I'm done now, and I just stated my feelings about how a meeting should proceed.
That is the standard practice.
I know Berkeley has their special way, but I just thought I would mention it.
Thank you.
Thank you for your comment.
No, Mayor, I have more to say.
I have more to say on the actual item now.
If you let me continue, please.
Go ahead.
Thank you.
Thank you for respecting my time and space.
To speak on the actual item now, I think it's important that we are going to have this next year, it sounds like, where money is not going to be coming in yet.
To me, it is a time that we have to still be considering our ideals, our best practices for, you know, the year 2026 and 2027 when money and projects will at least start flowing in.
Good luck that we talk about tech accountability, its importance.
I think this is a Council that can really want to address tech accountability as an equal and not just a second rate as our previous administration has done.
Good luck in those efforts, and good luck how you talk about this item.
Thank you.
Is there another comment? Yes, there's two more, three more.
Next is Helen Walsh.
Hi, my name is Helen Walsh, and I'm a member of Berkeley's for accessible right-of-ways.
For identification purposes, I also sit on the Commission on Disability.
I'd like to thank you for the presentation and for this opportunity to comment.
I'm glad there is a vision and a goal.
As a person with a disability, I also have a vision and goal that seeing things through a holistic lens includes the diverse population of persons with disabilities and seniors.
I am concerned that Berkeley is not going to be equitable with road safety plans or integrated in its planning.
Accessibility of public right-of-ways was not included positively.
I did not hear any clear data of inclusion of an ADA transition plan for updates and treatments.
I only heard the ADA updates and treatments are unfunded and will take 40% of every paving dollar.
Are we going to ensure ADA funding for ADA updates and treatments? Does Berkeley really mean that transportation system will be accessible to all? Where is the ADA transition plan in all this? Thank you for your time.
Thank you for your comment.
Okay.
Next is Meryl Siegel.
I want to thank the Council for their thoughtful questions and their thoughtful progression through this measure.
I want to thank Mr.
Davis and his staff.
It was an excellent presentation.
The only thing I request is that, and I see I'm going to run out, is that businesses are also involved in the plan.
Oftentimes in my work here in D1, we talk to businesses and they haven't been included.
It's really important because infrastructure and bike paths and great roads are really needed and so are our businesses and so are our healthy thriving businesses.
I was glad to hear a healthy discussion about public comments and input.
Let's not forget the economic drivers that keep our city so vibrant and healthy.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Any other comments? We have Shaina Rush.
Sorry, I'm using my co-workers log in.
I'm not Shaina.
I logged in a little late.
Are we already past public comments on non-agenda matters? No, no.
So we're in the special agenda right now, item number two.
Okay, never mind.
Okay.
Okay, that's it.
No more public comment.
Okay, thank you so much.
We have not actually done council comments.
We just did council questions.
So we just had a lot of questions.
So just so folks know, do we have any council comments? No comments.
Okay.
All right.
Well, briefly, I just want to say thank you so much for your presentation and I really appreciate you trying to set expectations.
Obviously, there's a lot going on and a lot of coordination and we really want to make sure people know about what's happening and that we have a really transparent process.
I also just want to briefly say yay on the community facing dashboard.
I think that's a great idea and I think folks really do want to be able to see what's going on.
So thank you so much and I'm sure we'll have further engagement about this.
Appreciate you all being here.
Anything else? Okay, we don't need to vote on this because it's just a report I believe that we're receiving.
So thank you very much for being here and we're going to move on to the next item.
Okay.
Mayor, if you'd like to save a little time, I could just present from here.
Sure.
And then that way we can just get going and I'll go through this very quickly.
And just so folks know in the audience as you're setting this up, we have one more item left on our special agenda meeting agenda and it's about 6 23.
This will take us, I don't know, maybe 10-15 minutes and then we will have a short council break.
So I just want to make sure folks know in the audience since many of you are here for the general meeting.
Thank you, Mayor and Council.
I'm Mark Newmanville, the City Clerk for the City of Berkeley.
This is part two of our City Council referral prioritization process.
This is the results based on the scoring that we saw presented at the March 11th meeting.
So at the March 11th meeting we had the the raw scores and the referrals that were to be removed from the list.
This meeting we will be looking at the actual results of the prioritized list where we took those raw scores and we put them into the algorithm.
The reweighted range voting system is a system where every council member assigns a score of zero to five to the council referrals that have been assigned to the city manager and then those scores are tallied and we come up with the highest score and that's the number one priority.
Then for the remaining referrals there's a repeated process of reweighting the scores that council members votes are worth and continually reassigning all the way down from one to 43 in this year's list.
So in the council item attachment one exhibit a that's the final rankings that's the prioritized list based on the scores the council assigned the top priority all the way down through the number 43 priority and then attachment two has the the final ranking score but it also includes the the raw scores from council members.
So the results of the the process and again congratulations to our colleagues from Public Works who were just here.
They had the most council referrals.
I think this is the third year in a row for them.
Planning previously had the championship belt but Public Works is is is back on top.
So that's the top 20 there sorted out by department.
I think Public Works also had something like four of the top six so they definitely are heavily represented on the priority list and then across the bottom there just shows all of the departments that have any one of the 43 priorities.
So certainly when it comes to addressing these priorities as we just saw certain departments are over represented and they have capacity and workload considerations that they'll need to take into effect.
So one of the principles of this process is that the city manager does have discretion in assigning referrals we just don't go one two three four five all the way down the list because there has to be some accounting for the capacity and workload and the the the the spread of these prioritizations through the various city departments.
So the actions for this meeting is to review the list.
Council could determine if there are any additional referrals that it wants to remove from the list and then the final action is just to there's a resolution in the item to adopt this prioritized list for for the 2025 council referral prioritization process.
And that concludes my presentation.
Thank you so much for the presentation.
Council Member Traga I see your light but just we're doing council questions.
Do you have a question? I do not have a question.
Okay any other questions before we take public comment? Okay public comment.
This is on item number 3 2025 city council referral prioritization results using reweighted range voting.
Any online? There's one online commenter that's Blair Beekman.
Hi thank you Blair Beekman.
This sounds like an interesting item.
Good luck in how this sort of project can develop in Berkeley.
I'm initially from San Jose.
We can be a bit neat and procedural in San Jose.
Sorry if I rubbed any feathers.
Good luck on how you work on this item.
Thank you.
Okay thank you.
Moving on to oh are there any other comments? No other comments.
Thank you.
Okay moving on to council comments.
Council Member oh Council Member Taplin is first.
Thank you very much.
I want to thank my colleagues for participating in the RIV process as well as community members who spoke and also watched from home and with that I move adoption of the resolution.
Second.
Thank you.
Council Member oh all the comments have gone away.
All right in that case do you want to take roll or shall we approve this unanimously? You can.
Okay.
I'm sorry I forgot to say this but I did notice there were a number of referrals that were arts related.
I was wondering from an operational perspective how staff handles several referrals that are distinct but interrelated.
So I work with the departments and go through each of the referrals and see which part of the department is responsible for each referral.
So they all start with their top ranked referral but it may be as you are suggesting that they have the capacity to do two at the same time if it's a different division within a department.
So we have those discussions.
If there were capacity would it be preferable or appropriate to bundle the arts ones together? I would prefer that they just stay as they are frankly.
Cool.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
Okay and thank you for your question.
If there's nothing else then I'd like to pass this unanimously.
Okay.
Looks good.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Oh is there a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn.
Second.
Okay.
All right.
Again can we end unanimously? Yes.
Okay.
We are adjourned then.
Thank you so much.