OpenCityCouncil

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Segment 2

Um, with that, we'll proceed to the next agenda.
I'd like to ask unanimous consent that we reorder the public comment to go 1st to public comment from employee unions.
Is there any objection from the council here? An objection that with the action.
So, we do have time the 1st meeting of a month, but we're going to do a special public comment period this evening for officially designated representatives of city of Berkeley employee unions with 5 minutes allocated per union.
And so we'll go 1st to is there a representative from.
S.
C.
I.
U.
local 10 to 1 C.
S.
C.
or local 1 who'd like to speak for the 5 minutes.
Hello.
Okay.
All right, there we go.
Hi, happy Tuesday.
My name is Allison reamer.
I work in the planning department and I'm on the bargaining team for C.
S.
U.
P.
T.
R.
L.
A.
And we've been trying to bargain with the city since March.
But the city's negotiation team won't negotiate with us with our members present.
That's open bargaining, but we want our members present and our members want to be there to see what happens at the bargaining table.
We've talked to several council members and they've been supportive of open bargaining.
Another thing we want is coordinated bargaining with local 1.
We want our members and local ones members present just like.
Because our members want to be there to see what happens.
We have shared interests with members of local 1 and, um, you know, I've shared needs.
Democracy dies in darkness in the spirit of democracy.
We're asking the city's negotiation team to meet with us with our members present and local ones members present too.
And if there's still time, I don't see the timer up or I'm going to pass it to my.
Colleague 343, I can see the timer for me or just leave it right there.
Hi, my name is Katrina and I'm a project planner in the planning division, and I actually just celebrated my 5 years with the city, which is pretty wild.
Anyways, workers should not have to rally for the council to finally come to the table and give us a fair contract.
This lack of transparency hurts the community workers.
And their families city workers have been asking for over 2 months for the city to come to the table and support open and coordinated bargaining.
Why is the city not including the public in this process? Lack of a fair contract makes it harder to retain talented staff and to hire enough folks so that people won't have a heavy workload and burn out.
Like, most of us do lack of a fair contract also makes it harder to afford living near the community that we serve.
Speaking of affordability, city workers have fallen 30 and 40% behind inflation.
Meanwhile, the council and the mayor are at 80 to 120% ahead of inflation.
The year that workers got 3% cost of living adjustment, the city manager got a 28% rage raise.
Please, I did ask that people not shout or interrupt the speakers when I started this meeting so we can hear from everyone.
Please let the speaker continue with that interruption.
This year, as workers got a 1% cost of living adjustment, which was offset by the contribution increase to CalPERS, the city manager on top of her salary is getting a $600,000 separation package.
This year, the city manager on top of her salary is getting a $600,000 separation package.
Looking at other salaries and comparable jurisdictions, the city is not competitive.
The community needs workers to process applications for much needed housing to maintain parks and to care for kids at summer camp.
Unlike amending the demo ordinance and unlike the project appeals that I bring before this body, this isn't complicated.
I will now turn it over to Sarah.
Okay.
Okay, honorable mayor mayor and council.
My name is Sarah Sarami and I am a legislative assistant formerly serving in district 4 and now gratefully in district 7.
I am a member of the CalPERS community and a member of the CalPERS community.
I am a member of the CalPERS community, a chapter board member and a deeply committed community member born and raised in Berkeley.
At every council meeting I hear a lot of recognition about how grateful you are to the staff.
I hope you can show your appreciation through actions rather than gratitude.
I assure you, it will be more meaningful.
The list goes on.
These are the people who run the city and we dare to ask why we are not competitive.
We are here, the people who understand best how we can retain staff and support staff in the best way we can, and we are here because we are committed to doing our part to make the city a better place to live and work.
We are here because we are committed to doing our part to make the city a better place to live and work.
The list goes on.
These are the people who run the city and we dare to ask why we are not competitive.
We are here, the people who understand best how we can retain staff and support workers.
I promise you do not need a consultant or a firm, but you do need to listen to workers.
The list goes on.
These are the people who run the city and we dare to ask why we are not competitive.
We are here because we are committed to doing our part to make the city a better place to live and work.
We are here because we are committed to doing our part to make the city a better place to live and work.
There is no point in delaying the vote to approve the other unions.
Okay, you have 2 seconds, but I'll give you the opportunity to wrap up on behalf of CSU.
Okay.
Hi, my name is Cecilia Mariscal and I'm a worker in the planning department.
I would also like to know whether the city has denied a request for open bargaining for the last 2 months.
All of the wonderful things accomplished by the city, as the mayor referenced earlier, are a direct result of the workers that you see here.
I urge you to come back to the table and support open and coordinated bargaining.
As a sole provider in my own household, I'm struggling to find a place to rent in the city of Berkeley.
I have a 12-year-old in the BOSD school system.
It's a struggle to find a rental that I can afford along with the other day-to-day costs.
So I urge you to come back to the table and give us that cost of living rate, cost of living adjustment that we desperately need.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, well, I'm going to ask any representatives from, officially does any representatives from Local 1 ask me? Council members, my name is Mike Huberti.
I'm an affordable housing project manager in HHCS and a proud Local 1 member.
When you join the city, HR tells you that you get up to 1 year parental leave.
However, the fine print reveals you can take up to 1 year of leave, of your accrued leave.
There's no additional benefit.
I spent a year training my staff member in the complex, diverse skills required to be a housing project manager here in Berkeley.
In March, she shared how much she loves the community and working in HHCS.
It's the best job she's had.
But she's had to take a job with a different public agency that offers 6 months of paid parental leave, a child care stipend, a student loan stipend, things that aren't offered to us here at Berkeley, and a 25% raise.
With only 1 year of service, the prospect of caring for a newborn with less than 2 weeks of vacation and 38 hours of sick leave was untenable for her.
Now, I face months of recruiting, covering her workload, and up to a year of training a new employee to replace a valuable member of the community who wanted to stay, someone who truly loved this city.
Parental leave shouldn't be bargained for in a progressive city like Berkeley.
When we ask for parental leave and a cost of living adjustment that keeps up with inflation, for benefits that encourage people not to come but to stay, we aren't just numbers in a ledger.
Please remember that.
You are funding dedicated, passionate workers who love this community.
You're funding our families, our groceries, our homes.
Please give us the dignity of a fair contract.
Please give us a cost of living adjustment that keeps up with inflation.
And please support transparency with open bargaining for our community.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good evening, Councilor Mayer.
My name is Jen LaVorne.
I am a city employee.
I work for the civic arts program in the economic development unit in the city manager's office.
And I'm here along with all of our union colleagues to advocate for specifically open and coordinated bargaining.
The story that I want to tell is that I used to work for the city and county of San Francisco, almost 15 years there.
I was a volunteer here at City of Berkeley on a commission, and I was so passionate about the work that we were doing that when a job opened up, I applied for it.
And I feel lucky and grateful that I got the job.
It is truly a sincere passion of mine to support the arts in Berkeley.
And I know that you all also care about the arts.
But on the other side, I've been here for six years, and in that time, I have had six employees working with me.
And it is really hard to go through the process of training them up and then losing them.
And the last employee that we lost moved on for, you know, all the many talking points that we've given you, right? Just more competitive offers in other cities.
So that, you know, it hurts.
It's personal.
And I also feel like it really impacts our community, our arts community.
We did so much during the pandemic to try to raise them up.
We put a lot of our work aside because that was what was important.
And that kind of created a little bit of backlog, but then also the staffing turnover is also creating backlog.
And it's a hard mountain to climb.
And so my hope is that the city gets to a place where we're not having so much turnover.
I think that, you know, we're all passionate about what we do here.
And so we as employees are working alongside you all to implement all of these great programs and policies.
So that's why I'm here tonight.
So thank you so much.
Hi, I have 1 speaker on zoom and she may be able to speak after me.
I'm hoping.
Okay.
Good evening.
Council members and mayor and city manager.
I am incredibly lucky to be a resident and I'm incredibly privileged to serve Berkeley my community as a part of the public works department.
My name is Amanda Montez and I'm also a member of local ones board.
And I come to you tonight to highlight a citywide issue that's been relegated to our bargaining process.
HR has repeatedly told our city's management staff that salary bands cannot be adjusted unless they are adjusted within the MOU process.
We thought HR was supposed to execute periodic equity studies to ensure our city is a competitive employer.
Apparently, our unions are now responsible for making Berkeley a better place to work and our unions are responsible for making Berkeley a competitive employer.
The role of parking services manager has been vacant since 2000, excuse me, 2023 and candidates are not accepting offers.
This is a role that is enterprise funded revenue generating and related to our city's bond rating.
Management cannot move the pay scale to be competitive because HR says the union has to advocate for this hiring.
This role should be a priority.
We've already lost one senior staff member who was a member of this board to another jurisdiction who had because she had to be assigned a portion of the parking services manager role in addition to her own.
The salary bands left stagnant for years are impacting not only the ability to recruit, but also retain our staff.
Our general services leadership staff that manage all of the contracts from all of the vendors in our city have both left.
Because within the 4 years that they were here, neither of them had raises because they were hired at the end of their salary bands and there are no increases in the budget that you see before you tonight.
It is a budget that is balanced on the backs of our employee salaries, because we are not compensated fairly within this budget that you see before you.
We ask you to please act in the progressive way that Berkeley is so well known for.
Think about the future.
Think about your residents and the services that they deserve the services that my own family deserves as a member of this community.
Please think about what your employees need to stay here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So, there was 1 more person.
Let's see.
See how to.
Or local 1 and then I, I believe there are representatives also of.
Maintenance and clerical that want to speak as well, but to say, you should not be able to speak.
Good afternoon 1st of the council.
I'm here representing the city of Berkeley and local 1.
I asked you all.
To join us in negotiating in a progressive way as Berkeley is a community driven community and we need to.
Ensure that our employees have better benefits competitive wages so we can retain talent and attract new talent to our city.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
I understand we have representatives from.
Thank you.
Good evening.
Good evening.
My name is I look forward to my 15 year bag.
So, you know, I just want to say we set out this year with our negotiations with a very aggressive aggressive goal of ending it early with the goal in mind of being able to see whatever raises that we were going to get.
We were going to get as soon as our contract expires, which by the way is tomorrow.
So we set out with a goal to finish that early.
So we can see our raises sooner and get to the goal line and we met that and I really want to stress that we met that without compromise.
And that was to maintain our really awesome benefits in the city.
I don't know if you guys have ever gone to Kaiser and heard other people who've had to pay out and pay out and pay out.
That's really appreciated when you have a kid that's at the hospital a lot.
In this contract, not only did we achieve.
I did the math.
I did the research.
So we have seen unprecedented numbers this year.
But we also fixed inequities in our zero waste division.
We address a bunch of items that hadn't been touched in over 20 years, including.
To shoe uniform allowance.
Our sewer crews who were only making $0.90 for working with the lowest of the lowest parts of the city.
We address that.
We closed out equity studies.
The 3, 1, 1, and our mail services aids.
We address inequities in staff.
Who were in the same classification, but some of them get to work from home and some of them don't because of their particular job assignment.
We address these inequities.
And.
And not even the least of all.
We maintain all of our benefits.
We set forth with a really aggressive agenda that our members told us to go forward and the city met us.
And I really just want to express appreciation for that.
But there was no stone throwing.
There was no chair throwing, which, by the way, has happened in past years.
I know I've been here 17 of them.
But there was none of that.
We really met with a mutual respect and got there.
I'd like to defer the rest of my time to my chief steward Sherry.
Good evening, Mayor, Madam city manager and City Council.
My name is Sherry Jackson and I've worked for the city of Berkeley and parks, recreational waterfront for 6 years.
I became the chief steward last year and had the honor of being nominated and serving as the city's chief steward.
This is my 1st time ever doing this.
I really appreciated being part of a team with such a broad and diverse range of experiences and very passionate opinions.
While the overall process was extremely challenging, we were able to get through it.
This is my 1st time ever doing this.
I really appreciated being part of a team with such a broad and diverse range of experiences and very passionate opinions.
While the overall process was extremely challenging.
It was also very rewarding.
I felt everyone conducted themselves very professionally, and we worked together with the city to get the best possible contract we could.
And this was all for our members.
I'm extremely proud of what we accomplished together and I've heard wonderful positive responses from many of our members.
I'm being stopped in the hallway.
1st time ever being recognized and people are telling me.
Thank you so much.
This is such an amazing contract.
We really appreciate all your hard work and to hear that from our members is so rewarding.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I close in saying I fully support ratification of this contract and truly appreciate our member support throughout this process.
I relinquish my time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
My name is Sandra Lewis.
Okay, I work in the finance accounting technician and I was on the bargaining team and we set an accomplishment.
We have not been able to settle and come into an agreement where we could see if you.
We're going to work together.
And when you have a mind to say, I may not get everything I want, you may not get everything you want, but when you can come together, and you can say, okay, we're going to work in partnership, we're going to get this done.
This is what you can do.
Our contract was approved with super majority 71%.
We had 80% of our members come out and vote at 71% super majority.
This is what you can do when you have partnership, when you get away from your side and get away from your side and say, hey, we're going to come together and we're going to work together.
Thank you.
Good evening.
Everyone.
My name is I can probably say that I am a garbage man down as you were waste and I was a trusted elected member of the bargaining team.
My 1st time.
At 1st, I want to show my experience.
I was a little hesitant.
Like Rebecca said, I heard stories, chairs throwing cursing and I was like, I want to be a part of that.
But when I walked into it, it was a complete opposite.
We had 1 goal in mind the city had 1 goal.
Let's get it done.
Let's get together.
Best for what's our members.
And at the end of the day, you know.
All the chair throwing stuff aside, we had 1 goal.
Get fair wages for our employees don't mess with our benefits and, you know, at the end of the day, they're like, oh, well, you know, you guys are the bargaining team.
No, we go back to our jobs.
That's also our contract.
So, you know, there's been rumors.
Why would we want this? Why would we not want that? It's my contract too.
So, I fully support the agreement and I thank you guys all for your time.
Mayor and council Danny Walker.
President of maintenance, I want to thank you.
For putting in the contract, we worked really hard on it.
Been on a negotiation team for.
5 contracts, seeing.
Demerit seat change, seeing the city manager seat change 4 times and.
Vice mayor being Sophie.
And.
The rest of the council is new.
So, seeing a lot of these change is 1 thing that I can say about our contract.
People make a lot more money.
But when we go to the doctor, we give our car and we sit down.
So, we have here, I just want to be able to say wherever it's around here.
I don't know if he's here, but if and city manager.
Okay.
Thank you for coming in and working and showing what partnership I didn't want to leave that out.
Thank you.
I see young park from East Bay vice president for 10.
1.
Thank you, mayor.
Hi, mayor and respective board.
My name is young park and vice president of the East Bay region, which is on the county and country because the county.
And for the vice president for the local, I'm here.
My comment is very short.
I am here to share how much I deeply have a heart in city of Berkeley in my heart.
I have a very soft spot for city of Berkeley and respect and value being progressive city in our county.
And also.
We presenting a city of workers, so we presenting all 3 chapters, maintenance and clerical and also CSU that are our members.
So, I really wanted to say, thank you for maintenance and clerical and I encourage to approve it tonight.
But also, I wanted to urge the city council and mayor to push you for getting done for CSU as well.
And then they are also pushing it for it.
So I hope that approved for 2 chapters already, but also looking into how we can get fast.
It's already expiring.
So get to come to and done their contract.
So, everybody can be focus on public services.
I'm myself a public services employee with element accounting for 30 years.
So, public services, the key that we're passionate about doing for local government services.
So I really wanted to urge and also appreciation with appreciation to looking into those 2 tonight.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I don't know if we have any representatives from Berkeley fire local 1227.
Nobody indicated their interest in speaking tonight.
Maybe they'll speak on the budget.
I really want to thank all of our city employees and union leaders who are here tonight.
We really deeply appreciate your service.
I want to just 2nd, what Park said that we are committed to getting the remaining contracts done.
And I know that local 1 has come to the table to begin to work with us and look forward to seeing you coming to the table work with us.
And we are committed as a council to making sure we can get this contract done.
Because we want to acknowledge that your conscious about this very soon.
So, I really appreciate your commitment to this process.
We are just as committed.
We are committed to working with you quickly to try to reach agreement and to make sure we can provide a fair contract for all of our workers in the city of Berkeley.
So, I really appreciate you being here tonight and you're welcome to stay if you want to be here for the rest of our meeting.
If you are planning on exiting ask people exit quietly and we're going to take a short break before we go to the next order of business.
Thank you.
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Segment 3

Segment 4

to fix our adequate storm drains without public process and without considering the coming effects of climate change.
You have a three-page letter on this from us.
Essentially, the first item in the specification is that there will be a stakeholders meeting.
Work is going on.
There has been no meeting.
No public meeting is planned until February 2026.
The plan, the specification with the consultants does not consider rising groundwater levels, and it does not consider that capacity must be increased due to larger storms.
Both of these are included in Albany's contract with the same consultants signed a few months later.
Please read our letter and deal with these matters.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'd like to refer this matter to the city manager.
Thank you for your letter and all the work you do to support our watershed.
Our next speaker is Blair Beekman.
Hi, Blair Beekman.
Thank you, Mr.
Mayor, for your words on the previous item.
I live in San Diego these days.
Blair Beekman here.
We had a terrible flood issue where we did not take care of our storm drains.
It's a community process, and thank you for realizing that.
I also wanted to thank the first speaker who bravely spoke.
I hope city council staff or staff persons who are wandering around there today, they can talk to the person who first spoke at public comment and offer some sort of a phone number or email number that they can reach out to city council people or the person can reach out to city council people on.
Good luck in that.
He can call and consider some sort of daytime counseling services, good programs that are set up to address his issues and they can be addressed.
Good luck in that effort in talking this through.
And finally, I guess just good luck in the meeting today and talking about budget issues.
Thanks for the meeting.
Thank you.
Okay, we'll go next to Galaxy Note 9.
I think this is the fifth speaker.
Galaxy, the name of Galaxy Note 9.
Yes, hello.
Yes, hello.
I'd like to relinquish my time to Jose.
Okay, and the dean is here.
Thank you, Galaxy.
I just wanted to, since we're talking about the budget this evening, bring up a couple of things that are very much on the mind of the people of the city of Berkeley.
We do notice that Zabo and Associates is on a consent calendar tonight for more PR consulting for the mayor's office, which seems kind of out of step with the other cities around.
Nobody has such a service and we know that you're running for the state senate.
Mayor, consider the people who didn't get their raises in SCIU.
Consider the working class.
Consider the budget.
Consider where things are going and I really do think deeply that there is a misappropriation of funds.
All of the city staff have not gotten the same raises you guys have and there's a lot of, you know, as it trickles down from the top, people see what's going on and we want some transparency and we want some equality and some consideration for the city employees.
Thank you.
Okay, that concludes this round of public comment on non-agenda matters.
I want to thank everyone for coming tonight and once again thank our city employees and the supporters and leaders of the Black Rep.
With that, we'll proceed now to the consent calendar.
I know we have an urgent item, right Mr.
Clerk, that we need to accept from the city manager.
Let me pull that up, colleagues, and let me share screen.
This is an urgent item that's being submitted in the provisions of government code section 54954.2b2.
The item is an amendment to our contract with Lake Research Partners for conducting additional survey work as directed by the city council on June 14th.
And given that, we do need to execute this contract amendment because doing the additional work went beyond the 50k that's within the city manager's contract authority, so it requires that council has to amend the contract to add the additional funding to complete the additional survey.
And given the time sensitivity of this research needing to be conducted to inform our discussions, I move that we accept this add this item to the agenda this evening.
Second.
Okay, so this is a procedural motion, so the question is on adding this item to the agenda.
Roll call.
Oh, we're all here.
I think this is the first time in a long time we've had the whole council on the dais, probably since COVID, pre-COVID, actually.
So the question is on adding this item to the agenda of the provisions of government code section 54954.2b2 that there's a need to take immediate action, the need for action came to the attention of the local agency subsequent to the agenda being posted.
Is there any objection from members of the council to approving the motion to add the item to the agenda? Hearing no objection, that motion carries unanimously.
Thank you.
So that's a consent item.
And on the consent calendar, I'm going to do my best to try to help lighten the action calendar because we do need to pass the budget because the fiscal year ends at the end of the month.
So colleagues, bear with me.
I'll just first call attention to item 26, which I know that our representatives from our maintenance and clerical units came to speak about tonight, which is the approval of a new MOU with SEIU Maintenance and Clerical, a three-year agreement, and thank everyone, our staff and our worker leaders and union leadership for helping us reach agreement on this new contract.
I know that another council member may address item 22 and look forward to hearing staff's comments about the steps being taken to address the security issues at the Golden Bear Homes, but I ask that we keep that on consent as we need to take action on that tonight, that we not pull that but take action.
Okay.
I just want to call attention to item 45, supporting for ACA 14.
This is a bill that's been introduced by Assemblymember Ortega, which would ensure that the University of California, which is one of the largest employers in the state of California, follows certain basic labor standards that any other public agency has to follow.
And so I want to thank ASME 1399 for your leadership in carrying this bill forward and how the city of Berkeley will be joining this fight.
And it's really important to make sure that our University of California system treats its workers fairly.
So item number 56, adopting an ordinance to add chapter 12.75 to the BMC to establish protections relating to horses held, owned, used, and exhibited, or otherwise kept for racing.
The impetus of this ordinance was by former Councilor Harrison related to the Golden Gate Fields operating as a racetrack.
And since Golden Gate Fields is now closed, I believe this legislation is now moot.
So I was going to ask if there's any objection to moving item 56 to consent to take no action.
Was there any objection at moving item 56 to consent to take no action from the Council? Okay, hearing no objection, we'll move item 56 to consent to take no action on that item.
Item 57, accepting the risk analysis for long-term debt report from Government Finance Officers Association.
We sent this to the budget and finance committee to explore a number of issues around our bonding capacity and our sort of debt policy.
The committee did not get to this item within the 120-day period, so it automatically came back to Council with no recommendation.
So I'd like to ask if the Council can send item 57 back to budget and finance so we can actually carry about the discussion and analysis that the Council previously recommended.
Is there any objection to moving item 57 back to the budget and finance policy committee? On consent.
Moving item 57 to consent and referring it back to the budget and finance policy committee.
Hearing no objection from any Council member, that will go back to the budget and finance policy committee.
And Councilor Castellawany, item 59, thank you for introducing this important issue to establish a process to provide funding for non-profit food assistance providers.
I'd like to ask if we can move this to consent, item 59.
And I know that you have an amendment, I think you want to read into that.
I don't know if that's related to this item or the budget.
Actually, Mr.
Mayor, that is related to the budget, not this item.
Okay.
Thank you, though.
So is there any objection with item 59 to consent? Hearing no objection over the action.
And then item 58, this came from former Councilman Harrison looking at establishing new, really new GHG goals for the City of Berkeley and updating our climate action plan.
The committee did not take action on this, although I would defer to the Chair on this.
My thinking was we should send this back to FITES, but I guess I would defer to the Chair on this.
I'm not sure what your thoughts are about item 58.
Thank you.
We've still said FITES quite a bit, and we got feedback from staff.
There were a number of outstanding questions that were unresolved.
And so in the absence of an author, we elected to take no action.
If it comes back to FITES, it would be a similar..
Yeah.
Okay.
So, okay.
Well, I'd like to hear my colleagues' input as to what action we should take on item 58.
And I'll stop there.
Thank you.
Councilor Castellani? Yes.
Thank you.
Excuse me.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Mayor.
I would first like to respectfully request items number 49 and 50 be moved to consent.
Number 49 is the reservation of $24.5 million to create affordable homes at the North Berkeley BART station.
This is something that the Council has committed to in the past already, and it's simply making good on that commitment.
And item 50 is the related affordable housing compliance plan.
So that would be my request.
I know staff had a very nice presentation they want to give us, and maybe we can get copies of that so we can share with our constituents.
But I think this honors the commitment we made when we reserved $53 million for building affordable housing at our two BART stations.
50% of the units at North Berkeley station will be permanently affordable.
Colleagues, is there any objection to moving 49 and 50 to the consent calendar? I'm sorry, Mr.
Mayor.
I don't have any objections.
Okay.
I hear no objection.
Okay.
Thank you very much, colleagues.
Given the budget discussion that we'll be having, I thought it would be appropriate to move those to consent.
And then on item number 43, related to a park's fee on development, I would like to just be recorded as a no on this.
I'm very concerned about the fees that we are adding to the creation of homes and we just completed a feasibility study and enacted an affordable housing fee.
And I just don't think this is the right time to be doing this.
And on item number 22, Madam City Manager, this is related to the security that we are adding to Golden Bear Homes in response to concerns in the community.
Can you address this item for us? Yes, I can address it.
But we also have the team on as well.
Margo Ernst from Health, Housing, and Community Services is on the call.
So this item is in response to security concerns with the neighborhood.
And the concerns were both internal to the location and external.
So we had concerns on both sides of the issue.
So this item is actually to true up the cost for security services.
Those services are already in place.
So this is a true up item.
And this isn't a blank check in any way.
This is directly to address the security concerns that we received from the community and the neighbors, as well as the organizers and the operators at the location.
Thank you.
Councilor Cassarone, anything else? Yes, that's all for me.
Thank you.
Councilor Luna Parr.
Thank you.
So I want to speak first on item 40.
And I want to thank Director Davis and the Public Works staff for putting time and energy into this process.
I recognize that this has been a big effort, especially with the level of vacancies, and I want to voice my appreciation for labor.
However, I am really disappointed that the city has increasingly turned to public surveillance as a method of public safety.
The 2021 pilot program, which funded four cameras, initially sought to identify perpetrators of crime entering and leaving Berkeley.
While I do not agree with this approach to public safety, the increasing normalization of public-owned surveillance technology is what really disturbs me.
In just four years, our city has shifted from a pilot program whose continued usage was contingent only on the efficacy of the technology to funding nine new cameras.
We have yet to receive the efficacy report, but somehow we still have 18 cameras in queue for funding and install.
Additionally, from my understanding, the surveillance ordinance requires this body to assess whether the surveillance technology has, one, been effective in achieving its identified outcomes, and, two, to approve this technology only after determining its benefits outweigh its financial and privacy costs.
However, on March 1st of this year, Chair Chip Moore wrote a letter on behalf of the PAB to urge the Police Department and the City Manager's Office to articulate a clear evidence-based rationale for the deployment of additional surveillance cameras.
Frankly, I don't see how we can expect the Police Accountability Board to continue expanding energy on recommendations if we refuse to acknowledge them or the Office of the Director of Police Accountability work on our reimagining policing strategies if we are actively running in the opposite direction.
Additionally, while this contract for the proposed cameras does not fund any cameras in District 7, I have brought forward a resolution amending a previous item to remove the camera on Telegraph and Dwight from the location list altogether, which will appear on the consent calendar on July 9th Council meeting.
I do not feel that I can make a decision to approve this contract without knowing the effectiveness of this technology, nor do I feel that it is in the spirit of reimagining policing.
So, for those reasons, I would like to be recorded as voting no on the item.
For item 33, I would like to just say that I'm very grateful to our City Auditor for her office's diligent work.
We hear time and time again that our Police Department is understaffed, and in the Mayor's proposed budget, we have $300,000 allocated for additional recruitment in response to the supposed officer shortage.
If our department has the manpower to provide private security to large corporations, understaffing should not be used as an argument for increasing police funding in future discussions.
For item 49, I am incredibly supportive of this item to reserve $24.5 million for developing affordable housing at the North Berkeley BART station, and in the past weeks, we have received many thoughtful messages from the community, and every single one received about the North Berkeley BART station was in favor of items 49 and 50.
This project creates new affordable housing near public transit, helping us achieve our housing, climate, and transportation goals.
For item 45, Mr.
Mayor, I'd like to join the item if there's still room.
Let me just quickly, oh yes, be delighted to include you as a co-sponsor.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I'm also very happy to be co-sponsoring item 48 alongside Council Member Taplin and Mayor Ergen, and supporting Pride in the Plaza.
Happy Pride.
Lastly, I'd just like to extend a massive appreciation to our incredible staff for all the tireless work that you do to make so many essential programs in Berkeley function.
Thank you so much for coming out tonight, and I am in complete solidarity.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council Member Hahn.
Yes, thank you very much.
I also appreciate all of our labor partners and city staff who came out today to talk with us, and who are still here, many of whom.
I've got a number of things, and I'll try to run through them fairly quickly.
I just want to appreciate item 26, the MOU with SCIE Local 1021 Maintenance and Clerical.
I'm really excited that we were able to close that contract and provide the wages and benefits and the increases that we were able to provide.
Really value the work that our employees do, and I also want to appreciate the process and our staff and the bargaining team for great success.
I'm really excited that your new contract is in place, essentially, I guess, the day before or a couple days before your contract ends, and I think that that is a great achievement and something that I value as well for all of our labor units.
Thank you.
So, on item 33, sorry, Mayor, on item 33, which is the audit recommendation status, this is something that came from the Policy Committee, but no final action was taken, and I'm wondering if we could simply take action to accept the report.
We do need to accept the report.
And then we are not sending it back.
We're simply accepting the report.
The reason we sent this to the Policy Committee was to make sure that our Police Department was making progress on the implementation, the audit recommendations, and we all remember the impetus of some of this.
Police officers literally parked in front of the Apple Store when we have a significant shortage of police officers in our city, and no contracts.
The Department has taken steps to address these issues in the interim, so I think accepting the report would be appropriate given the progress made to address these issues.
Okay, thank you.
I assume if that's okay with all my colleagues.
Yes, looks like it.
Okay, so I wanted to shout out on item 36, the Bay construction for the 2nd Street stair center site.
The stair center was a great achievement of our Council, I guess in 2017 or 2018, that we were able to finally open that, and it has been an incredible resource for rehousing people.
But we are transitioning from a congregate model to individual spaces for the people come into that low barrier shelter, and this has been talked about for a long time.
It was actually our original version there.
I think you remember that when we proposed this, we showed separate small units, and that was our original vision.
So it takes a while, but I'm really glad that we're getting there, and I think it's going to enhance our ability to bring people in off the streets and move them towards permanent housing, so I'm really excited about that.
I wanted to join in Councilmember Luna-Parr's statements on item 40, and I would also like to be marked as abstaining on that.
There will be a time when I will vote yes on these things when our policies and protocols around surveillance are a lot tighter than they are now, and it's not acceptable to me that we are deploying this level of surveillance without adequate standards, and so I will join her in abstaining from that.
On item 44, Front Row Festival, and I want to remind my colleagues that there are lots of things that we can relinquish some of our budgets to, and I think we might be forgetting some of them tonight, so I would like to be recorded as contributing $300 to the Front Row Festival.
On the Downtown Berkeley Pride, I'd like to ask the Mayor if I, oh, I'm sorry, ask Councilmember Taplin, excuse me, if he would allow me to join that, and I would also like to give $500 to that item.
Thank you very much.
At Adjoining Rules, we had announced the addition of Councilmember Casualani.
Okay, so it's all full.
There you go.
All right, well, I'm enthusiastic.
Thank you.
And then we have, sorry, that's, yes, those are the relinquishments.
I also really wanted to thank staff on items 49 and 50, which are now on consent.
What an incredible, colossal amount of work.
The fact that this money is being allocated for a huge amount of affordable housing at North Berkeley BART, and this allows the first phase of our housing projects to go forward, and the housing compliance plan, which really shows that we've actually been able to achieve what we dreamed of, and that we're actually compliant with our greatest aspirations here, that we're going to have 50% affordable units at North Berkeley BART, which is really stunning, and I think something, it represents so many years of work, and I want to thank all my colleagues who've worked on that, as well as our staff, I think, who put like 10,000 hours into this.
So it's a huge milestone.
Sometimes when things go by on consent, we forget that they're monumental.
So thank you for that, and I think that's it for me.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't want to ask about item 22, the Golden Bear contract.
What are we going to do with that? My recommendation is to keep it on consent, because we do need to approve the item today to supplement the contract, so we can actually provide the enhanced security that the community has asked for, but if you have additional comments or suggestions to the city manager, this would be the time to provide those comments.
Okay, thank you.
Yes, I certainly support this facility and the contract, and I very much appreciate that we also are putting forward money for security.
I did want to put in the record that I do support some of the ideas that the neighbors have put forward, which includes that the security be 24-7, that patrols go beyond the Golden Bear Inn property, and obviously that's something that would have to be figured out how that works, but I think that would be important.
There's a desire for a hotline or some kind of a number that can be called so that neighborhood concerns can be addressed in a more timely manner.
I have met with some of the businesses there, and individuals who just feel that the amount of time it has taken for concentrated concerns to be addressed has been too long.
I would support additional patrols by our own Berkeley Police, increased public works attention to trash and other items and debris that may be being left in the area.
I think that there are some interesting ideas about maybe some shelter monitoring committees that have been done in San Francisco that are models that I think are worth looking at.
Obviously, these are not shelters, these are housing, but there has been increase in impacts in the surrounding area, and I think if there are good models in other communities, we should look at them.
I don't know whether they're appropriate or not, but that is a request of some of the businesses in the area, and just in general, I think that we have a lot of requests for just additional attention, and I support that.
I'm very grateful that we have these facilities in this neighborhood, and obviously very, very supportive of the transitional and permanent housing that we're providing, but also very open to how we can help address unintended impacts.
Thank you, Mayor.
Thank you.
If you could send those comments, suggestions to City Manager and Ms.
Bellow and HACS Scott Gilman, just so we have them.
I think funding the additional security is great.
There are some additional steps we can take.
I know we're going to take all that input into consideration, so appreciate you putting forward those comments and suggestions.
Received.
Thank you.
Okay, Councilor Taplin.
Thank you.
On item 48, we're adding Councilor Hisarwani as co-sponsor.
On item 44, we're going to relinquish $500.
On item 43, I would also like to register an abstention.
My thinking here, the budget and finance team and the policy committee moved ahead in order to close the deficit, so the ask feels a little out of sync for me, which is why it will be abstaining.
Councilor Bartlett.
Thank you, Mr.
Mayor.
I'd like to co-sponsor item 46.
It's your item, Mr.
Mayor.
The Equi-Black-Berkeley initiative.
Yes, absolutely.
Thank you.
It's going to be a wonderful, groundbreaking new community fund.
It's going to be amazing.
On item 59, I'd also like to co-sponsor, if possible, this is the RFP.
Or is this yours, Councilor Hisarwani? Yeah, the food security.
It was an RFP to develop food security measures.
I think there's still room for one more person.
Yes, there's still room for one additional co-sponsor, so thank you, and thank you for bringing it forward.
Very important.
Food banks are stressed.
Multi-decade level of barren shelves and food banks all over the place.
Really excited about item 13.
Thank you, City Manager, for working on this, and thank you, community.
This is $2 million for a gun violence prevention program.
This is pretty significant, led by the community.
Really exciting, looking forward to that.
Again, the stair center construction, item 36, really wonderful.
Thank you, Mr.
Mayor, and thank you, Councilman Hahn, for developing this in the first place, and this is part of our integral strategy that has reduced homelessness in this town by 45%, the best record anywhere.
Thank you again.
Excited about item 38.
This is Alameda County Transportation Committee has given us some funds for the Adeline Corridor, so we're going to remake that dusty highway into something wonderful and manageable with green space, walk space, you name it.
Councilor Hisarwani, I want to thank you for your leadership.
Item 49, the affordable housing at North Berkeley BART.
10 years ago, true story, 10 years ago, we brought this up in a Planning Commission meeting, and they said it was never going to happen.
They said, you can do whatever you want, but you will never touch North Berkeley BART.
That will never happen.

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Segment 10

Segment 11

So, you know, what do we normally do? Yes, and for that, and for that specific 1, Mr.
Mayor, it was laid out in the scope of work and the RFP process for them.
And this we're talking about agencies without an RFP process, but we can share with you what we do for all of the agencies and I'll turn it over to.
Yeah, that was my question.
Yes, I'm sorry.
I didn't answer my question.
Yes, good evening, mayor members of the council.
I'm Margo Ernst, the manager for housing and community services.
If I understood mayor, your question is what what is the typical reporting process for the community agencies under the RFP and we do have quarterly reporting.
There is also as part of the application, they, they are required to establish the metrics on how they measure success of the program.
So, the, the, the applications are evaluated on what their outcomes are and how they will measure success.
And then we incorporate those into the scope and so they do report through their quarterly reporting.
They will report on some sort of standard.
Kind of measures that are more like service units of service.
So, like, how many unduplicated people were served or how many bed nights or how many meals, but then they also have certain outcomes that they're reporting on as well, which is like, how the.
True success is measured.
So how many people I'm thinking of some of our emergency shelter programs, how many people.
Were moved into permanent supportive housing how many people got stabilized on income or had.
You know, housing retention and we're not displaced so various outcome measures like that and those are reported quarterly.
They also will submit quarterly financial.
Documentation and invoices that are then kind of paired up to.
To support the advances that are given.
I'm trying to think what else we have.
We, we, we have an end of year report where we close everything out.
They are, they do have.
Uh, you know, very, very specifically identified budgets that are approved as.
Part of their application and funding award and so we do regular and frequent budget amendments throughout the year.
If they're needing to make changes to those budgets, and then we true those up at the end of the cycle.
And we do a close out.
I think that probably covers the.
Kind of the basic framework, but if there's any other specific questions, I can answer those.
Thank you, Margo.
Okay.
Council.
Council member Kessler, do you have a motion to extend to.
Thank you mayor.
I think 1st, just looking at the time should we extend a little further.
I see.
I'm not the last in the queue.
So I make a motion to extend to.
45.
Okay, so I'm going to make a motion to extend to 1145 PM.
Council member Kessler wanting.
Yes.
Yes, Bartlett.
Yes, I on.
Yes.
1 graph.
Yes.
Yes.
Number.
Yes.
And mayor.
Yes.
Okay.
So, I'm going to move on to the next item on the agenda and I'm going to demonstrate on a number of things.
So, 1st of all, I want to frame this budget in the larger picture of the big thing that just happened recently called a global pandemic.
And that global pandemic caused an economic shock.
And the city of San Francisco has had a very difficult experience in our lifetimes.
And somehow, it all seems in the distant past, but it isn't.
It's very recent and so we are not a city just kind of.
You know, tripping along under normal circumstances, we are a city in recovery.
And we have managed our money very prudently and we have come out of this in much better shape than many cities in the Bay area, let alone across the country and I think we should.
Applaud ourselves for that and thank our staff and the mayor and the city manager for all the work that was done to to have that outcome.
So, this is a recovery budget.
This is not a normal everyday budget and this is the 1st year that we do not have funds.
So, we have these incredible money that came from our federal government.
Thank goodness.
We had Biden as president because he saved local.
Government and cities and counties across the country.
And this is the 1st year that we're standing on our own feet.
And we are in pretty darn good shape.
But, yes, as we come out of this, we actually have to have to do some things that we might not do under normal circumstances, but let's remember these are not normal circumstances and this is not a situation of our city going out and taking on some of the costs that we have to pay for our health care.
And this is not a situation of our city going out and taking on some financial responsibility irresponsibly that we have to pay for with a garage sale.
And this is anything but that.
This is, this is us getting out of the last.
And this is us getting out of the last crisis that we've been in.
So, I really, I just frame this very differently from how it's been framed.
So, then this idea of aggressive budget solutions that are not fiscally sustainable and what is our creative strategy.
Well, my creative strategy is called economic recovery.
And I believe that we can do that by continuing to believe in the incredible resilience of our economy by doing things like supporting the arts, which bring money into our community and by continuing to believe in the incredible resilience of our economy and believe that we are actually going to recover because Berkeley has done an amazing job and I believe we will continue to do that.
And I think that we're going to be able to pull out of this extraordinary time and how far we're able to pull out of this extraordinary time.
But I don't think right now is the time for us to to ring the alarm bells and say that something dire is going on actually something good is going on.
We have almost recovered from this incredible economic shock and yes, we're doing some one time things to continue that recovery.
So, I'm going to turn it over to the voters for money.
Parks has been asking for money for 15 or 20 years.
They've been needing this money.
This is not a new need.
This is not the result of some kind of spending or craziness that that has happened.
This is a long term problem that we are looking at addressing our libraries.
We're looking at how we're going to be able to make sure that our workers are being faithful to their work week and taking a whole bunch of part time positions that workers could not live on at 20 hours a week and offering to every single one of those people in the libraries that they could go to 30 hours so that they can be fully benefited and so by doing right by our workers.
We're going to be able to make sure that we're going to be able to make sure that we're going to be able to make sure that this is incurring greater costs than were otherwise anticipated and so prudently the libraries are going out to the community to see if they would would support the libraries in doing right by our workers so I just, you know, there's a whole framing of what's going on in our city that I really I just really disagree with it quite vehemently.
I think it's important that we have good government processes that we shouldn't be doing one off allocations and therefore the prudence and and intelligence of having a set amount of money for our food recovery for our hunger programs.
That's a great idea, but let me just say that's exactly what we're doing with small sites.
We're going to put money aside and we're going to let many organizations come to us with their good projects and we're going to evaluate them on a fair basis.
We're not going to do that one off thing that supposedly is not good government.
So I think there's a lot of consistency in this ask around small sites and the idea that we should have a set pool of money to allocate to our various organizations that are addressing hunger.
I want to turn to small sites as a program.
I want to echo some of the things that the mayor has said.
I want to thank the mayor again for this program.
Happy to rename it tonight.
I don't know if we can to the affordable neighborhoods program.
I agree.
That's a better title.
I will just repeat that human beings are not widgets that I value the people who have been invested and living in affordable neighborhoods.
I don't value the people who have been invested and living in our community for a long time.
And the idea that it would be okay to let them go and we can just replace them with other people.
It just doesn't work for me.
It's just a not a view that I have of the people who live here in our good city.
I want to echo some of the things that the mayor has said.
I want to echo some of the things that the mayor has said.
I want to echo some of the things that the mayor has said.
The affordable housing strategy.
And you know to the extent that that certain neighborhoods or areas of town may be heavily impacted by homelessness.
This is one of the ways that we keep people from becoming homeless.
This isn't just an affordable housing strategy.
This is a housing retention strategy.
And I want to echo some of the things that the mayor has said.
The affordable housing strategy is closer to a million dollars.
And I just want to say that it's great that we can get state and federal subsidy for the new bill.
But that doesn't mean I'm not paying for it last time I looked.
And I just don't know when people got the idea that state and federal money was not ours.
It is.
That's all of our money.
It's all our tax dollars and it's not cheaper to spend close to a million dollars.
And I just don't know when people got the idea that state and federal money was not ours.
It is.
That's all of our money.
It's all our tax dollars and it's not cheaper to spend close to a million dollars when you could spend 400,000 of our money.
And I just don't know when people got the idea that state and federal money was not ours.
It's all our tax dollars and it's not cheaper to spend 400,000 of our being the taxpayers on a unit.
I just also want to say echoing what the mayor said, we put a lot of money into affordable housing the last.
And I think that's what we're asking for.
And I think that's what we're asking for.
And I think that's what we're asking for.
And those measures are providing a lot of money for affordable housing at Bart stations.
In some of my colleagues districts.
And what we're asking here for small sites when you take into consideration.
We're talking about about 5% of it total.
Going to small sites.
So we're literally talking about crumbs.
And I just don't think that's a waste of our affordable housing funds.
We can meet more than one goal with our money.
I want to.
And I just don't think that's a waste of our affordable housing funds.
We can meet more than one goal with our money.
I want to.
Bank council members, Taplin and Bartlett.
Thank you.
I want to thank the mayor for sponsoring my small sites allocation.
And I want to thank the mayor for his motion to fund these at 5 million dollars per year.
And I think that's basically all I have to say.
Thank you to all the staff and everyone who worked to bring this budget together and to find budget solutions.
Thank you.
Council member Bartlett.
Thank you, Mr.
So, eight and a half hours later, Madam city manager, you sure you want to quit.
So, how could you leave this.
Welcome to it Igor Welcome to it.
You know.
Thank you.
Thank you, folks.
Yeah, I'm a bit biased about small size program.
I campaigned on creating just creating it back in 2016.
My nickname for my concept was homegrown housing and we describe this naturally occurring affordable housing where you can capture the residents from displacement and leverage.
And, you know, a lot of the stories that we heard tonight all over the place all over the place.
People just pushed out wounded.
You know, the market is so severe.
We are in the tumult and this budget.
And this budget is often every year.
Everyone says it, it reflects our values, right? It's the biggest statement of our values.
And again, it is this time as well.
We have public safety.
We have health care.
We have fire.
We have.
We have everything hunger, homelessness.
Children education, you name it, because as counselor Han alluded to the, we are in dire straits.
And by that, I mean, the social fabric of this town and the state and the country.
So, to address the scale of issues and mentioned comes because we want to thank you for your attention and your dedication to detail and your fiscal solvency impulse.
You know, so, but this, this is the council that did create the 1st reserve fund in city history a few years ago, which has been good and.
And I do think what you're witnessing, yes, this is a temporary sort of bridge stopgap measure that will afford us 2 years.
To ramp up our economy and create more efficiencies.
Some more more sustainable and I want to remind everyone tonight.
We, we, we started the day off.
After we congratulate Igor to join the council, we started off with debating the demolition ordinance.
And we're looking at a wound full of development.
Now, if you remember the crazy math and those charts, the.
The 1 thing became many things and right so when you combine that with the missing middle reforms where we eliminated single family zoning, we have by right development galore.
We're looking at a wound full of development.
We're looking at a windfall budget for the city.
We're looking at a windfall budget for the city that's going to save us tremendous, tremendous taxes for us.
Both in the land sales and the rental units as well.
So, we're setting the stage for a wind fall budget for the city.
We want to make sure that everyone can enjoy it and be a part of it, which is the end of spacement measures that were that were done defending here tonight in the small sets program, the affordable neighborhood.
So, we're looking at a windfall budget.
We're looking at a windfall budget for the city of San Francisco.
The 3, peace reduce housing.
Reserve affordable housing and protect tenants.
So, this is square with a fundamental housing strategy for success.
So, I think we should do more of this.
I think it's the budget allows for it.
We should be very adventurous in the marketplace and buy lots of buildings.
Thank you.
Obviously, this well, my 1st, 6 PM regular meeting is the budget meeting.
So I have been doing my best to get myself up to speed.
As quickly as I can, having our various spreadsheets and thank you to Madam city manager and so many others for your help, including tonight.
I.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness that has gone into this budget.
I could not myself have come up with a better budget, even if I spent a year on it and that's testament to the many more years of experience than mine that are on this council.
And, of course, the experience of our city staff.
The conversation with.
Someone on this dice, a big picture around when we are, particularly when we are in a tough fiscal situation.
How do we make sure that budgets reflect? Our shared values, and there are important process improvements and measures.
And they're important, but maybe they can't all be funded, but this year.
Or the next year, but the thing that's really matters.
Um, and really has to be ongoing.
Is investment and human infrastructure I think this budget reflects that.
I really appreciate council member is sober sobering reminder and I look forward to, you know, hopefully we will be in a much more sanguine budgetary situation in future years.
When I look at this budget.
And I look at some of the other choices that other jurisdictions have made, including neighboring jurisdictions.
When I look at the state budget and how their short file was plugged.
I think this budget goes pound for pound with a dollar for dollar with the best of them.
And comes out ahead.
I want to.
Just note.
My general support for small sites programs, not withstanding.
I remember working closely with several members, several of my colleagues.
To pass measure you 1.
8 years ago now, and it was always.
Always my recollection was that it was conceived as an anti displacement program and it was to provide capacity building.
And I wish that 1 of the reasons it had to provide for capacity building is because.
I wish there were more community land trusts out there at the time.
It was just the community land trust and Northern California land trust.
I'm not sure.
Perhaps there are some other applicants today that could apply for that funding.
But that is so important to invest.
I agree with several of my colleagues comments that.
Compared to.
The other investments that we have made, which I.
Fully support as well.
This is a pittance 10Million dollars.
Is a very small amount of money.
That will go a long way towards keeping folks housed.
And it costs a lot more money to bring someone back here once they're displaced.
Then it is to keep them housed and so.
Everything else I wanted to say has already been said, so I just want to voice my appreciation to the mayor and to everyone that made it possible for me to be able to vote on a budget today that I feel very proud of.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We have 4 colleagues in the queue, and then after you vote on the budget, we have to vote on the annual appropriations ordinance.
So we're not done.
So we.
For the 1st time in quite a while are going to have to probably extend to midnight.
Yes.
We have a motion to extend to midnight on Sunday.
So this is time sensitive.
So any other circumstance I would say we can hold something over.
But this is version in time sensitive.
So I move to extend to spend the rules and extend to 12.
Please call the roll.
Okay, customer because you want to yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
Vice mayor.
You're next.
Thank you.
I want to extend my appreciation to the major.
To miss FedEx and to Mr.
Thank you.
I'm a member of the finance subcommittee, and I'm on the budget and finance subcommittee.
I'm actually very impressed with this budget and seems to me that the mayor sort of worked his magic.
In, including almost everything.
Thank you.
The other things that came in at the 11th hour.
They seem to be worthy causes.
But I do think that we owe it to the voters to require some accountability on how that money is spent.
And I'd actually like to make a motion to amend.
Okay.
I'm considering as a friendly amendment.
And counselor, could you kind of restate the.
Because now that we've got clarification that.
Some of these agencies that don't go to the process don't have this level of reporting.
I think it's, it's in the interest of good government and transparency.
Thank you.
I'm sorry, Mr.
Mayor, the amendment, the language is refer to the city manager to develop and require quarterly financial reporting for all community agencies.
Agencies awarded funding outside of the community agency RP process through this budget process, including at a minimum reporting on amount and itemized uses of public funds.
Thank you, Mr.
Mayor.
I think we're going to have to accept that.
And I think for some of these agencies that have very limited resources, like, I'm thinking, Berkeley, junior jackets, for example, we're going to have to provide some technical assistance and support on the staff side.
To, to ensure that these agency, because not everybody's like the YMCA or has development staff or program staff.
So, I think we're going to have to accept that.
And I agree to this, but with the understanding that staff will have to assist because we don't want to set these organizations up for failure either.
So I will accept that with that understanding.
And who's the 2nd, Mr.
Mr.
clerk.
Well, that's a second there.
Thank you.
I agree with what you say, potentially setting these some of these organizations up for failure and some of the reasons why some of these organizations don't have the same organizational infrastructure.
I don't want to put something on those types of organizations.
I don't want to put money to hold up African American and other underserved people in our community.
And, and I do not want to put something on those types of organizations.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So, asking if you it doesn't sound like you accept, but if there's a way for us to carve this a little bit.
So, I don't want to put things on those types of organizations.
So, I don't want to put money to hold up African American and other underserved people in our community.
But I am concerned.
That this may fall in very unequal ways on the underlying organizations.
So, I think I have the floor.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I want to be really careful about the timing of staff technical assistance, because that has been a very difficult thing for us in the past.
I would recommend that this is an annual report for this type of an agency and not a quarterly report this so that we can have an annual just 1 time where our staff can work directly with them to receive information and data to account for the spending of the funds.
You know, quarterly, I think that's a good compromise.
So I think we should have that information.
And then I think at some point, these agencies will come back probably to request.
Another Toronto funds, the next budget cycle.
So we'll have some information that can help inform that decision.
So counselor on a mask.
With the understand that would be an annual report.
Would you agree to that? I would, but only with the explicit promise of technical assistance.
That's all I think.
I think that's doable.
I mean, that's 1 time reporting.
We can support them with what we need to be accountable for the funds that they've received from the city.
Thank you.
Yes, I will accept.
Okay, so that's in the motion.
And back to vice mayor.
Thank you the reason why I think this is so important is because as many of you realize there's a lot of distrust of government and we're going to the voters and asking them for a tremendous amount of support.
And I think it's incumbent on us, and it's prudent for us to require accountability.
And I think that's what we need to do.
And I think that's what we're going to get from those agencies and organizations that we're giving money to.
It's it just seems like good government to me.
You don't just give money away and not ask how is that money being spent? How is it helping?.

Segment 12

The community and the way in which it was intended.
It's it's responsible.
And I think it's the right thing to do.
So thank you all for your cooperation on that.
And I guess we have a motion and a friendly amendment on the floor and we have.
3 more colleagues that wish to speak council member Humbert, then Taplin.
Yes, thank you.
Mr.
Mayor and I will, I will make it short.
Um, given all the discussion on on this really important issue so far, I do want to thank you, Mr.
Mayor and council members Kesarwani and Hahn for all your really hard work on the budget committee and for producing this budget.
I'm glad you're on the budget committee and I'm not I went to law school because I'm bad at math.
I can I can learn though and major.
Thanks to Sharon Friedrichson.
Um, our, our city manager and all the staff who worked on this, I really appreciate this is 1 of the most challenging budgets I think Berkeley has faced in a while.
And I recognize that these choices are incredibly difficult.
And I think that's why we're spending our money wisely.
What makes me even more hopeful about the budget is is this reporting requirement that is the subject of this friendly amendment? I think I think that's really important for the reasons that council member when graph stated.
We got to show our constituents that we're spending their money.
We're going to go back to them and ask them for more money through bond or, or tax measures, parcel tax measures.
So, thank you very much.
Okay, counselor, thank you.
I wish to join my remarks to those of the vice mayor and.
Um, more than 1 thing can be true.
It's great that we have this budget that continues our deep investment in our community.
At the same time, it does give me pause that we are balancing that we are closing the deficit on the pension trust and the holiday on the workers comp and salary savings.
Um, and I think that as we move forward, I would like to not become dependent on these kinds of solutions.
And as we prepare to experience the robust windfall of our economy, I think that we should also cultivate a practice of of greater prudence.
Thank you very much for your comments.
I appreciate it and I hope that we can continue to do that in the future.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
For all our sakes, I've shortened my remarks from what I had planned here, but I want to quickly think budget manager Frederick Frederickson, the city manager and her office, the budget and finance committee and mayor for putting together a very thoughtful budget in a tight fiscal year.
I'm thrilled to see that funding is going to street trauma prevention, vision, 0, rapid response, traffic, calling projects, bus and then shelter maintenance and pedestrian safety evaluations.
This budget is by no means perfect and nobody got everything that we wanted, but I think that our budget funds, many critical programs and kick starts several initiatives that are deeply important to my constituents.
And I believe this budget will enable our incredible city staff to carry out the vital work that they perform and we'll move our city in the right direction.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, thank you.
So, any additional comments.
I just want to ask 1 quick question, Mr.
Mayor in your motion, did you just make that Claire clarification about the food and security RP would be for both years? Yes.
Okay.
Thank you for clarifying that your item did present it as a.
Okay, thank you very much.
I'm actually going to be supporting the budget.
I know it didn't sound like it.
I just felt like I wanted to point out my heartburn and my concern and and we were going to have to make tougher choices moving forward, but I'm prepared to vote.
Thank you.
And I do appreciate the caution because it's something we're talking about the whole budget process.
And I think the big cost drivers are wages benefits infrastructure.
And so it's going to be challenging.
There's no doubt it's going to be challenging.
So we focus on how we grow revenues, how we can be efficient.
But I think we've done the best we could to try to find a balance to make sure we can fund priorities now.
And also reserve some money for the future for anticipated costs in the future.
We still do have a pretty sizable fund balance that we can draw on for other unanticipated costs in the future.
And the 1.15 trust was specifically for to pay for pension costs.
We've got to replenish that 1.15 trust and that will probably should be a priority.
In November is looking at how we add to the trust the reserves replenishing fund balance.
So we can build that up.
And I think that's 1 way we can address that probably prospectively as well.
So, I appreciate your caution and we're going to have to make some tough choices, but we have found a way to be able to balance and to movies important priorities for now.
And I want to thank our city manager particular and Sharon for your work and your flexibility and creativity to help us find solutions here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Flexibility and creativity to help us find solutions here.
Councilman Han before we vote to very, very small things.
He's got the 1.94.
Yeah, why 94? It's something that is being referred to a 1.
And that is the market match program for low income residents.
I received a text just yesterday for Martin bulk at the ecology.
And he said that he was going to do it.
And he wanted to thank us all for considering it.
But the money has come through at the state.
And so that can be removed entirely And I'm just curious.
I'm not seeing the market match program.
Be referred to a one.
There was an intern program an additional 70,000 for the stations.
Yes, and I don't see it reflected here.
As being carried forward for consideration.
Okay, thank you.
Approve the proposed budget with the supplemental to my staff today.
But the thought with the proposal for council Kisilani on annual reporting.
I'm not seeing the market match program.
Add 200,000 for fiscal 26 for the.
Security process.
To add an additional 670,000, 240.
And then.
All of it will come up on balance based on what Sharon suggested.
And then the 150,000 for the cameras.
That's the motion unless there's any further discussion.
Let's call the roll.
Okay.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Okay.
All right.
Miss Friedrichson.
I know you're catching all those adjustments because that's the annual preparations ordinance.
So, when I proceed to item 54.
We have 525 annual preparations ordinance, and we do need to make some adjustments to reflect the action council just took.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I appreciate all the discussions and the deliberation on the budget.
Once again, I just wanted to.
Extend my appreciation to my awesome budget team.
I know they've been working diligently and I believe we have an updated.
The recommendations that you just took.
And so I'm going to ask if.
Rama and again, we've been acknowledged.
And once again, I'd like to thank Rama for.
His extensive years of service, and I think he has a spreadsheet that reflects the changes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Sharon.
We're so sorry, but we have 2, 2 minutes.
Yep.
So there you go.
So we have, thank you so much Rama.
We have a revised a 1 includes 150,000 for security cameras.
And the budget team.
And the budget team.
Includes the supplemental and the leg dates at step 14 that differential, according to the budget team is 670,000 and change.
And so, if you could read into the record that a 1, excuse me, not 1.
So, we have a revised a 1 includes 150,000 for security cameras.
And the budget team.
Includes the supplemental and the leg dates at step 14 that differential, according to the budget team is 670,000 and change.
And so, if you could read into the record that a 1 includes 150,000 and change.
And so, if you could read into the record that a 1 includes 150,000 and change.
Thank you.
I move to suspend the rules and adjourn.
Is there a second? Second.
Okay.
Seeing none.
Roll call.
Okay.
Yes.
Bartlett.
Yes.
I on.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
And Mary.
Yes, we have a.
I move to suspend the rules and adjourn.
Is there a 2nd? Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes, we are trying.
Thank you.
Thank you very much Mayor and Council.