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Segment 1

I'll be ready to start.
Yes.
Good morning.
Thank you for waiting.
While we establish quorum, I'd like to call to order this special meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
For Friday, May 24, 2024, the 1st order of businesses roll call.
I'd like to ask the clerk to please call the roll.
Council member Casarwani? Here.
Taplin? Present.
Bartlett? Here.
Okay.
Hahn? Present.
Wengraf? Present.
Lunapara? Here.
Humbert? Present.
And Mayor Erge? Present.
Okay.
Okay, quorum of the City Council is present.
I'd like to call to order this special meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
This is a special meeting of the City Council on discussing potential measures for the November 2024 Berkeley ballot.
And in consultation with the city manager, we're going to go to item 2 first, which is the request from the board of library trustees to place a limited library tax on the November 2024 ballot.
And so.
Thank you.
And thank you to the library trustees and all the library supporters here in the room.
And.
We'll now proceed to that item.
Thank you.
I am test mayor and I'm the director of library services for the city of Berkeley and I arrived in Berkeley in fall of 2020.
I really appreciate and thank you, Mr.
Mayor and council for the opportunity to address the board of library trustees recommendation that we include on the November 24 ballot, a limited additional tax for library services.
I'm going to go ahead and share my screen.
But before we get to that.
I would like an opportunity to describe some of the services that we share with the community.
I think everyone is familiar with the library.
The library is home to more than 1,000,000 ebooks.
And in addition to that, 700,000 ebooks, which are incredibly popular collections.
There are some things that people are not as familiar with, for example, the way that we facilitate access to.
Members of our community, including people who are experiencing housing and security.
This is an incredibly important service.
And as of right now, we're trying to identify additional funding to make that collection even larger.
We also provide very important platforms for learning, for example, for homework help.
So, in addition to in person homework help providing that online as well, I want to talk about our 5 locations, which are really beloved in our community.
And the thing that I want to say about our locations is that.
They are so magical for the ways in which they mean so much to so many people in so many different ways.
So, for example, you may be coming into the library to print out an assignment to turn in.
You may be meeting a friend or connecting with other caregivers to attend a program.
You may be seeking respite from being outside.
You may be coming into our library, sometimes they just want a comfortable space.
And this is an invaluable service that our over 130 staff are providing to the community every day.
Since I arrived in fall of 2020.
We've really accomplished a lot and I'm very proud of how far we've come, particularly given the challenges that we've all experienced during the pandemic.
The city of Berkeley remains 1 of the highest circling library systems in the state of California.
Regardless of the size of our system, so we actually compare to much larger systems, such as San Jose, even Los Angeles were in the top 20 with those and a lot of library systems didn't actually recover usage after the pandemic.
So this is a pretty significant achievement on the part of all of our staff.
Who both provide the collections and ensure that materials are getting into people's hands.
We successfully concluded renovations to our central library and we're currently investigating and very excited at the opportunity to provide new improvements on other floors of the building and are also looking at our branches as well.
Perhaps most importantly, we were able to introduce some very critical positions to the library.
We've also brought into our team and equity, diversity, inclusion manager, who is working with all of our staff, including the libraries, racial equity team to ensure that we are.
Fully embracing and incorporating the values of equity, diversity and inclusion into our organizational culture as well as our program of service.
We completed a strategic planning process in 2023.
Given that we had a library that had a history of either not having a complete plan, or a plan that didn't actually incorporate community and staff feedback.
So, I wanted to kind of take a few minutes to talk about our process and how important it is in terms of establishing our strategic planning process.
Our strategic plan and the direction of our future service to the community.
This was a truly engaged, inclusive process.
We engaged our public and our staff in the process.
We had over 2200 responses, which was comparable to what San Francisco Public Library actually got.
A city of a much larger size.
We received responses in 42 languages.
We issued the survey in five languages.
We had community conversations.
We engaged our public as well as the staff in a myriad of ways, including a very robust survey.
We had over 2200 responses, which was comparable to what San Francisco Public Library actually got.
A city of a much larger size.
If you could go back for a second.
We had over 2200 responses.
We had community conversations in libraries.
We had focus groups.
We had key stakeholder interviews.
We had staff focus groups in every location.
We had a steering committee.
We also had a number of specific conversations with our racial equity team as well.
So we have achieved, I think, a very ambitious set of strategic objectives and goals.
And we're currently in the process of operationalizing those goals so that we can begin to set forth on this work.
I do encourage everyone to please read the plan when you have an opportunity for additional detail.
This is a heat map that you're looking at that shows the highest levels of response in each of our zip codes.
And we did special additional outreach to lower income zip codes within the city of Berkeley to ensure that we were hearing from people who might be less likely to share their thinking about library services.
And that was a very important component of this.
I also just want to highlight that the three primary things that people talked about were our collection, our staff assistance, as well as – sorry, you can go back to the preceding slide, please.
Programs for children were incredibly highly valued.
There was actually a considerable amount of feedback that just focused only on different types of programs for children, educational goals that people had, and things that they wanted to see us do.
Our mission is very much community-driven and is focused on empowering and inspiring people in the community and eliminating barriers.
We wanted to keep it simple.
We wanted to keep it direct.
With respect to our vision, we are highly community-focused.
We are basically here to evolve and respond to the community.
That is what a library is.
I want to focus a little bit on our values, which we're also very proud of.
As you can imagine, when you go through this kind of process, it's difficult because there are so many values that are important to people and that I think are associated with library service.
These three, welcome, joy, and collaborate, which are intentionally verbs as well, basically represent the way that we want to – the spirit in which we want to serve the public and the spirit in which we want staff to experience working at the library.
As I said, there's a lot of more specific content, but we focused on three main areas or three thematic buckets really emerged from the feedback.
We heard a lot about patrons, so people and how they experience being in the library.
How does it feel to be included in the library? We talked a lot about working with the community in our next focus area, community-centered collaboration.
How do we actually have authentic partnerships with the community? How do we establish partnerships so that the library is not the gatekeeper of resources, which is something sometimes that public libraries have done in the past? Our third focus area really focuses on how we develop our internal organizational culture, how we become a truly equitable and inclusive work environment.
We have quite an ambitious plan, a lot of work in terms of capacity building for the future that we want to do.
It's clear that we're very well poised, I think, for an engaging and exciting future, but we do have concerns with respect to our funding.
This is why our board of library trustees, I think, made the leadership decision of embarking on conducting a community survey so that we could learn more about a potential revenue measure for the library.
Because we have a structural deficit that we are very quickly approaching.
If you look, you can see that the expenditures and basically the cost of operating the library system, you can see that column steadily growing greater.
Of course, the revenue that the library is able to collect is still increasing.
However, it is not increasing as quickly as we would need it to be for those to stay at level with each other.
Now, it is true that the library did have savings for some time.
Like many city departments, we experienced the challenges of having limited staffing and losing a lot of people during the height of the pandemic.
That led to unanticipated savings, which the library now has and is able to apply towards this difference between our expenditures and the revenue that we're collecting.
I'm trying to see what color line it is for you.
It's really steadily being spent through, which is appropriate.
We don't want to hold on to additional savings.
However, we're basically at a point at about 2029-2030 where we're not able anymore to apply these savings to the difference between our expenditures and the revenue that we're collecting.
At that point, we become insolvent, and so that is why we are planning now and thinking about how to position ourselves for the future so that this doesn't occur.
I also want to emphasize that this chart doesn't include some of the variables that we know that we're still managing in terms of what overall costs will be.
It doesn't reflect increases to medical and PERS that we believe are likely coming as well.
I want to talk a little bit more about the library's funding.
The library is not a general fund department.
We're not funded by the city's general fund.
I do want to acknowledge the very important services that we receive in partnership with the city, of course, through our HR departments, our payroll audit, purchasing, information technology.
However, the library tax fund originally was established to support library operating expenses.
And so 99% of our funding really comes from this fund.
I want to thank and acknowledge all of our friends and foundation members who are here today.
We're so fortunate to have the support of these two organizations.
They ensure that we're able to provide both really wonderful levels of programming for the community, as well as embark on different kinds of pilot projects that we wouldn't normally be able to experiment with without their funding.
In terms of our expenses projected for fiscal year 2025, I think the main focus here is that personnel or staffing represents a significant portion of our budget.
So, some people imagine that collections would represent a larger percentage.
It's actually 9%.
And that 12% incorporates things like security, which actually is basically another form of personnel.
So, what this really means is that if we need to make changes in order to remain solvent and avoid the structural deficit, there won't really be a problem.
So, if we need to make changes in order to remain solvent and avoid the structural deficit, there won't really be a way to avoid impacting our staffing budget.
We will do our due diligence and go line by line and determine how to make other kinds of reductions, but I think that this chart really well illustrates the challenge that we're facing.
Next slide, please.
So, this chart was provided through the Library Tax Relief Act of 1980 that was then established in 1988 as an ongoing tax.
So, this is a chart that was established for dwelling and residential and commercial parcels in the beginning in 1988.
And on the right, you can see what the current tax rate is.
So, this is a chart that was established in 1988.
Because the City Council is authorized to approve a slight adjustment in the tax rate annually based on the inflationary measures of the CPI or the PIG, it doesn't actually result in an amount of money that equals our expenditures.
So, our proposal is to introduce a new limited library tax of $0.06 per square foot on residential parcels and $0.09 per square foot on commercial parcels, which would raise $5.6 million.
It's projected to raise $5.6 million annually.
We have determined that this amount of funding would be enough to ensure that we could continue operating at our current levels and also address the fact that each year we are approaching a structural deficit if we don't actually create enough of a savings bed to prevent that from happening.
So, this is a chart that was established for dwelling and residential and commercial parcels in the beginning in 1988.
As I said, our board commissioned a community survey with Godby Research for March of 2024.
Godby Research is a leading expert in library tax measures, and they also focus a lot on school elections.
We have an 87% approval rating of overall satisfaction with the library services.
So, this includes people who are both very satisfied as well as somewhat satisfied.
And even though libraries do tend to do well in terms of this type of question, this response is extremely high, and I think it's a testament to the hard work of the staff, particularly having gone through such a challenging period.
So, this graphic really shows how the public registered voters in the city of Berkeley representing every council district, and they responded to a ballot question that we put together to ask people what their perception would be of a limited library tax of $0.06 per square foot on residential and $0.09 per commercial.
And you can see more detail in the packet with respect to various aspects of the survey and some of the questions asked.
What I want to highlight here is the difference of what occurred sort of when people were first asked this question without hearing any information.
When they were first asked about it, there was a very high percentage of people that said that they would vote for it or would probably vote for it.
Then after that, the methodology includes people being exposed to different types of information about this kind of ballot measure.
And so they're hearing how they would benefit or how the library would benefit from being able to incorporate such a tax.
They are also hearing other kinds of information about the potential drawbacks of a tax.
And when you look at the average of the tests, which is really part of the methodology of this kind of approach, you see that the actual average of the tests is still extremely high, which I think speaks well to our ability to pass this kind of library measure.
I do want to say that the fact that there are still people who are in the probably camp suggests that it will be important for us to really provide a campaign in the community that I know that our supporters are prepared to conduct in order to make sure that people understand what's at stake.
I just wanted to provide a little bit more information in this presentation about some of the things that people indicated were most important to them.
There were a lot of different items tested.
There is more information available on this, but I wanted to limit the presentation to the highest ranking items, which included keeping neighborhood libraries well staffed and in good repair.
Number one most important thing to the people who were asked.
The second most important item was maintain weekend and evening hours.
Of course, there are many other things that are important to people.
Once you get down to S within that list of provide more copies of up-to-date books, e-books and other materials, that's very important to people, but it's not in the highest bracket of importance.
So I just wanted to call that out for you, but I do want to share there are many other things that were asked.
So with respect to the future again.
If we were able to include such a measure and such a measure passes, we will be able to maintain our current staffing levels and hours.
We'll be able to address the very significant needs that we have in our technological infrastructure through our planning and through some additional work.
We're learning much more about what needs to be put in place to really modernize the library.
Remember that 3 of our locations are over 75 years, so we're talking about historic buildings facilities that really need a lot of maintenance and there have been a lot of maintenance projects that have been deferred for a considerable amount of time, including a significant air conditioning.
HVAC project that needs to be done at the central library.
The library will be able to address somewhat more aspirational projects.
I don't I would consider this maybe more modest, but for the library's website, for example, is something that many members of the public as well as staff mentioned as being right now almost an impediment to people being able to access information about library services.
That's certainly not where we want to be.
I think as a as a modern accessible library system.
If we're not able to introduce a ballot measure or a ballot measure fails, there will be some immediate steps that we'll be taking.
We'll, we'll certainly have to institute a hiring freeze, which really does impact staff because it, it means that we need to make sure that that people.
Are assigned to where they need to be, which is not necessarily where they initially thought that their assignment represented.
We know that if we need to reduce service hours.
In 1 way or another, we will have to reduce staffing hours.
So this will result long term in a reduced workforce.
We'll be looking at deferment of larger scale it and facilities projects as well as a lot of the projects that people have called out that would just make our spaces more comfortable for for people to be able to use them.
Now, we would need to reduce things that are in the library.
I think there's huge impact here.
And, of course, we would do everything that we could to avoid any kind of impact to actual staff.
But I think given the scale of the reductions that we would need to make in order to close the gap.
There will be an impact to staff that I think will be very challenging and, you know, really difficult to to negotiate.
So, I want to be very clear about that because we're talking about.
I don't think that there would be any way to avoid that if we can't identify additional revenue for the library.
That concludes my presentation.
As I mentioned, there is much more information available to you with respect to the community survey that we conducted.
And I'm also happy to answer any questions that you may have.
Great.
Well, thank you so much for this presentation and just really want to thank the library for all the incredible services it provides our community.
I know that we've had a lot of questions, but I just wanted to make sure that we were able to answer all of those questions.
I'm here today, the president, the board of library trustees, Amy Roth.
10 year army on the board of library trustees.
We also have this bed green here.
Yes, good to see you.
And then we have the heads of both foundations and, and all of the libraries.
So, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We are so glad that you could be here.
We appreciate it.
We're so grateful for your commitment to our libraries, which are critical, not just to our democracy, but to broadening access to education for everyone in our city and tests.
You've been an amazing leader of our library system.
We're so lucky to have you.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So, I'm going to suggest we go to public comment because then we have a number of people here who've been waiting to speak about this proposed tax measure.
And then we can bring it back for any questions or in discussion.
Great.
Thank you.
So, we'll, we'll begin public comment item to, if anyone would like to speak on the proposal to put on the ballot this November.
Please line up on this side of the room and we'll begin with miss screen.
Good morning.
I'm Beverly green, and I'm proud to serve on the Berkeley board of library trustees.
I grew up in Berkeley and purchase my home in West Berkeley.
When I returned to home after undergrad and grad school, the Berkeley library has been an important component of my educational and professional development.
I have studied in every branch of the library.
The library provides resources and access to actual books librarians reference materials and occasionally using the facilities for community meetings, which have been very, very important to me and to our community.
Some of you may know me from my day job at AC transit, and I have an incredible amount of respect for both of these very important public goods.
And I know the difference that each makes to our local economies.
And I know the difference that each makes to our local economies.
Libraries also serve as an important barometer of our very civilization.
I ask that you support this item to give our community the opportunity to continue to invest in our future through the placement of a revenue measure on the November ballot.
Thank you.
Good morning, everyone.
I'm Beverly green, and I moved back to Berkeley in 2018 and purchased our home here.
So I'm a homeowner and voter in Berkeley, and I'm so glad to know that the library did a survey because I think I represent many of those survey respondents who couldn't take time off of their busy work day as I was able to to be here today.
When I moved here in 2018, I do recall bringing my son, who is a Berkeley high student now at that time to the library.
He was somehow enthusiastically looking for Roman literature of all things.
And we headed into the central library there, and he looked and used the online system is to do a decimal system and found some dusty Roman literature there.
And I just remember him looking wide eyed that he could check that out and bring it home.
So, I will say we came for the books, but we stayed for so much more as a Berkeley high student.
So, as a Berkeley high student, the library is a place that's still open on evenings and weekends.
And those evening and weekend library hours are critical for him.
It's become a bit of a home away from home.
So he uses different components of the library, not only the quiet stacks to get his homework done in a place that doesn't have those distractions of home and other places in the community.

Segment 2

also discovered there's corners of the library where there's music and film and also the youth room where he can chat with his classmates in real life, which is such a valuable resource these days, in a way where he won't be shushed because it's the youth space and he feels safe and comfortable there with his classmates.
So with all that, I will just say, enthusiastically support this measure.
I will vote for it and happily pay an additional tax to support the extra hours and all of the many resources that the library provides.
Good morning.
I'm Kathy Brown.
I'm the current president of the Friends of the Library.
I wrote a letter on May 9th that I asked to have included in the packet for the 23rd, not knowing that the meeting was actually going to be on the 24th, so I'm going to read that into the record in case it didn't make it.
Dear Mayor and City Council, the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library strongly supports a new tax that will enable the library to maintain current levels of library services, collections and staffing so that the library can fully serve our community.
As president of the Friends of the Library, I ask that the City Council accept the library's request to put a new library tax measure on the November 2024 ballot.
Taxpayer support for the library is evident in the unfailing renewals of the original library tax fund created in 1980 after the passage of Proposition 13, made permanent in 1988.
Voter interest has recently been assessed and the outlook for a new library tax is positive.
Berkeley's voters recognize that our libraries are important to our neighborhoods and a vibrant cornerstone of our downtown.
The Friends of the Library, the Berkeley Public Library, will support a campaign to promote the measure.
We intend to leverage a combination of financial support, communications, and foot soldier energy to inform and persuade voters in favor of the measure.
On a personal note, I'd like to say that I have talked to neighbors, some of them are families with younger children who have moved here and bought houses within the last 10 years.
They are quite in favor of an additional tax.
They realize taxes are not popular, but they do fund essential public goods and services and the library is like number one among those.
And on a further personal note, I would like to say that I am the proud parent of the teen librarian at the North Branch, Robin Brown, and we've got some skin in the game here.
Thank you.
Good morning.
My name is Amy Roth and I currently serve as the President of the City of Berkeley's Board of Library Trustees.
I suspect that everyone here has their library story and this is mine.
I grew up in a single parent household and was a latchkey kid before that term even was in common usage.
Due to the early death of my father, my mother had to return to work full time.
I spent many an hour at the Noah Webster branch of the West Hartford Public Library waiting for my mom to finish work and pick me up.
Those hours might have been lonely, sad, and lost and instead at the library they were filled with discovery, adventure, warmth, and kindness.
My love of books and reading began there and has been with me all my life.
I've lived in Berkeley about 50 years.
I've been active both with the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library and with the Bolt.
My service on Bolt has helped me to appreciate the deep love that our entire community has for the library and what matters to them.
I was a co-chair of the team along with Terry Powell and Winston Burton that helped pass the last ballot measure for the library.
Through countless community meetings, I witnessed firsthand the voters' desire to see the Berkeley Public Library properly funded.
The voter survey completed earlier this year confirms that the level of support to pass a funding increase is still there.
As a trustee for the last eight years, I have also learned that to love the library is not enough by itself.
We are charged with maintaining service levels, preserving heavily used buildings, and keeping our collections' relevance and depth.
We must do this all while remaining fiscally responsible.
The proposed ballot measure addresses all of these issues.
I urge the Council to allow inclusion of the measure on the November ballot.
The Board of Library Trustees thanks the Council for considering this ballot measure.
Good morning.
My name is Tenier Emme.
I'm the newest of the trustees of the Berkeley Public Library, and thank you for appointing me in that role at the end of 2023.
I wanted to, obviously, this morning, lend my support to this being a ballot measure here in Berkeley, and I think the longer message that I want to convey to you is the newest trustee is having had now about six months to observe the executive leadership at the library, which you have already mentioned, is exceptional, and that's been my experience.
I think that Tess and the leadership team have done an outstanding job of presenting us with the issues in a very strategic, incredibly thoughtful, and forward-thinking manner.
I have complete confidence that if Tess needs this to pass, to support the services in the long term, that this is exactly what the library needs to sustain its amazing services, as everyone has said.
So I just wanted to underscore that aspect of it.
I think that this is being done incredibly thoughtfully, and as you saw in the presentation, with a lot of forward-thinking and a runway that I think sort of demonstrates the type of leadership that we are lucky to have here in Berkeley.
So I want to fully support this, and I will publicly commit to being a part of the advocacy work that needs to happen in the future, and as we work to get this passed with Berkeley public voters.
Thank you so much.
Good morning.
I need a bit more time than my two minutes, so I'm hoping someone will yield their time.
Thank you.
Or just go over time.
Okay.
Thank you.
Mr.
Mayor.
Good morning again.
My name is Kathy Hopp.
I am the executive director of the Berkeley Public Library Foundation, and I'm here with several of our board members wearing teal shirts over here.
And for over 25 years, the Library Foundation has provided funding for the library that goes beyond what tax dollars can offer.
Our contributions support innovative projects such as the Library on Wheels, the Mobile Kitchen Classroom, Cornerstones of Science, to name just a few.
Thanks to our donors, the library has telescopes and laptops for lending and new sewing machines.
Our donors have expanded the tool lending library to include culinary equipment.
Our grants have provided major support for capital improvements to Central Library and the neighborhood libraries throughout the years.
Essentially, if you walk into any library today here in Berkeley, and you look at the shelves, the lighting, the furniture, the technology that is there, chances are the foundation paid for it.
I share this with you because I want you to know that most of these dollars amounting to millions over the past quarter century come from over 6,000 individual donors from this community.
These are people who live and pay taxes here, just like you, and they understand that tax funding at even its current rate is not enough.
They recognize that for our library to grow and thrive in this wildly diverse city, that it needs more resources than those that cover basic operations.
And while these contributions make a significant difference in what the library can do, these dollars would never be enough to stave off the impending deficit, which puts all of this progress and innovation at risk.
Our support of the library extends far beyond the financial.
We stand behind the library because we understand that it is more than just a physical space.
It is the heart of this community.
It is, as one of our donors put it, the treasure of Berkeley.
Where else can you find such a wealth of free services and resources that have the potential not only to entertain and delight the imagination, but also transform lives, equip people with practical real-life skills, open doors to new worlds and opportunities, doors that might otherwise remain shut or too costly to access elsewhere? Public libraries like Berkeley help people grow their lives and sometimes literally save them.
I'm thinking about the unsheltered teenagers who come after school or who live in troubled home environments.
The library is the only safe space.
I'm thinking about how people are heard and being helped by the library's social worker, Shanice, or the non-custodial parents for whom the library is the only place that they can come and be with their children.
I'm thinking about the librarians who know so much about, well, everything.
Those librarians who are helping people find what they are looking for and discovering something they never knew existed.
The library demonstrates Berkeley's commitment to equity, education, knowledge, inclusivity, and accessibility, where everyone, literally everyone, is welcome and anyone can find something to enrich their life.
The Berkeley Public Library is one of our most valuable assets.
Our collective job is to do whatever we can to ensure its preservation and its ability to serve for generations to come.
So I urge you, council members, as caretakers of this great institution, of this treasure of Berkeley, to please do your part.
Make this ballot measure possible, and then help get out the vote to ensure its passage.
I know all of us at the Foundation plan to do our part.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm Shantia Anelides, also on the board of the Library Foundation.
I'll just take 20 seconds.
I was planning to yield most of my time to Kathy anyway, but as a Berkeley resident and a mother of young children, I really feel like even the hours that we have right now aren't enough.
Like, the only way that I can take my kids to the library during the week is if I get off work early.
So that golden hour between work and dinnertime is the best time to take my kids.
And even after the pandemic, we haven't gotten back to full hours.
Sundays is completely closed.
We're always looking for something to do on Sunday, and I feel like I guarantee that more parents and Berkeley residents would show up.
Families would show up on Sundays, especially if it was open.
I'm really concerned about even more reduced hours, and it would be great to have extended hours.
So that was what I'd like to say.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Are there any other speakers here in person? Okay, if not, we'll take comments on Zoom.
If you are on Zoom and would like to speak on item two, the proposed tax for Berkeley Public Libraries, please raise your hand.
Okay, Donna Dedamar should now be able to speak.
Hi, thank you.
Everybody loves the libraries.
I have no doubt whatsoever that if this measure were put onto the ballot, it would pass.
My concern is that, as was mentioned, 40 years ago or so, when the library was in threat of having to cut back hours, cut out weekends and stuff, we passed a parcel tax to keep it open.
And the city council at that time then eliminated all the general fund money that went to libraries and put the entire burden on that parcel tax.
And didn't, at that time, keep the libraries open.
It was a giant failure of the council at that time.
And what I'm fearing this time is that, as we keep doing this, there's already so much anger about transferring basic city services onto parcel taxes instead of out of general fund money, that I wonder if you, and I understand the reason for wanting to do that, because the library is a no-brainer.
Of course, you're going to give money to the library if it has to be through a parcel tax.
And so it makes it easy for you to say, yeah, let's put a parcel tax on.
But I implore you to start regaining some public credibility and say instead, you know, our libraries need this, and we will find a way to fund it out of the general fund, where some of the money for the libraries should have been coming in the first place.
The idea that after passing a parcel tax, in order to keep the libraries open, we're told that if we don't pass another one, they're going to be shorter hours again, is just anathema to a lot of people in public.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Kelly Hamilton.
Thank you.
I turned into a heavy user of the library e-books with the pandemic and have continued my reading passion with Libby, the e-book program and reading one to two books per week.
I support the ballot measure, and I wish that we weren't tight on funding because it saddens me that Berkeley doesn't sound like we can do a program like the Brooklyn Library.
I wish we could follow the Brooklyn Library Unbanned Initiative to make banned books available to young people ages 13 to 21 across the nation in the fight against censorship and book banning.
Thank you.
And I love our libraries.
Thank you.
Are there any other speakers on Zoom on item two, the proposal to place a limited library tax on the November 2024 ballot? If so, please raise your hand.
Okay.
Okay.
I don't see any other speakers online.
So we'll bring it back to the city council for discussion.
And I just want to just comment on something Donna Dedemard said.
I think the underlying challenge is Proposition 13, which starved local governments of critical funding for libraries and for other government services.
That's around the time that the city of Berkeley passed the library tax because of Proposition 13.
And that's around the time the city passed other tax measures as a way to supplement local funding.
So until such time that we can reform Prop 13 to close corporate loopholes and make sure that we can provide billions of dollars of funding at the state and local level, we are relying on taxes and our general fund resources to support government services.
I just do want to be very honest that the outlook for our general fund over the next few years is rather challenging with increasing pension costs, health care costs.
We need to also improve our infrastructure.
I do want to acknowledge the services that our city government does provide, our public libraries, indirect services.
But if it wasn't for the library tax, we would not be able to support and the generosity of this community.
We would not be able to support our world-class libraries.
And so we will continue to do what we can, and I know our community will as well, to help support and leverage the investment the voters have made through our library tax.
But it is absolutely essential that we do move this forward this November.
I do want to ask the Director of Library Services a question.
You had touched upon in the presentation that if this measure were not to pass, that you'd have to institute a hiring freeze over the next several years.
That may result in eliminating positions, reducing hours.
Could you talk a little bit more about that, and what would the impact be if we were not able to increase funding for the libraries in terms of staffing and hours and services? I think first and foremost, I want to emphasize that we would want to ensure that we had a collaborative process.
And certainly that's something that's really important to us.
I think in terms of trying to identify more immediate measures that wouldn't impact staff, hiring freezes would be the first order.
I think the first measure we would take, and that would result in us needing to rebalance people across the system because, as probably everyone is aware, we have to have a certain number of people in each location in order to be able to operate.
Not only for just functional reasons, but for safety.
We need to make sure that we have an appropriate number of people at every location.
There's also sort of no guarantee that the place where you have a staff vacancy is actually where you need someone.
So there's sometimes people that end up having to be reassigned positions or duties based on that kind of situation.
With respect to, I know that in some cases, some measures that have been taken in other municipalities include furloughs.
So for example, all staff of all levels going unpaid for periods of time.
Sometimes that can be, for example, for like a two-week block.
That's a strategy that I've seen be successful and, of course, impacts everybody across the board and impacts some people disproportionately in terms of income.
If we were having to actually look at the reduction of service hours, which, you know, we would want to sort of look at that longer term, and what we would be doing is a community assessment of usage and really looking at what reduction of service would least impact the public and still allow us to provide more equitable service.
Because we know that there are lower usage days, for example, or times of day.
And so if we were trying to identify how to reduce hours, that would be something that would be really important as well.
I think reduction of service hours is generally the most sustainable way of reducing the overall cost of operating.
And so we would be probably trying to identify which windows were lowest use and sort of impacted the public the least and still allowed us to provide equitable service.
Thank you very much.
So with respect to next steps, Mr.
Clerk, I know this came to the Agenda Committee.
Did we continue it to a date certain or this meeting? Okay.
So I would like to ensure that this comes back to the City Council in time for us to consider putting this on the ballot.
We do need to make sure that the text of the measure and the resolution does meet the proper legal format to be properly submitted to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters.
So I'll make a motion to refer this to the City Attorney to work with the Library to help craft the proper legal language.
This can return to Council in time for us to consider placing this on the ballot.
Thank you.
And if any Councilors would like to speak, please press your button or let me know.
We'll go to Councilor Hutton, our representative on the Board of Library Trustees.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And I don't know if everyone knows, but I have had the honor for the past seven and a half years of being the City Council's designated Board of Library Trustees member.
And I just want to acknowledge and thank the big library family that we have here in the audience today.
We have a library family up here, too, because I know everyone here is someone who loves and uses our Berkeley Public Libraries.
I just want to congratulate Tess Mayer, the Executive Director, who has been just an outstanding.
She started, I think, during the pandemic, yeah, so it's a really difficult way to come in.
And for those with a longer memory and who have not actively tried to have amnesia about the before years, she stepped into a complicated situation, not just because of COVID, but because there had been a rough patch at the libraries, a kind of lengthy five-year rough patch, maybe six.
And so to come in during the pandemic, in the wake of that, and provide the kind of leadership that she has been providing for our libraries with the support of this library family, it's been really stunning.
And our libraries are in extremely good hands.
And I think the presentation today gives you further evidence of that.
The strategic planning process, which was completed just a few months ago, was done with a level of care and genuine listening and open-hearted and accepting embrace of the community, as well as of the people who make our library happen, which is the people who work at our library, is something I haven't seen elsewhere and I think is to be commended.
And we have a level of buy-in from the library staff that you can only get when you actually do the work and you don't just do lip service.
So I'm taking this opportunity to express my gratitude for serving on this board, but also my admiration and gratitude to our leadership at the library and to all the other library leaders in the community.
As usual, this is incredibly well done, thorough.
The case is clearly made.
And what's important to me and I think to all of us is to see all these people who are ready to do the hard work because once this leaves, our job is to put it on the ballot and then it's out in the world and it's no longer our job and it becomes a job of someone else to ensure that the community knows about it and has the information they need to make a decision about whether they're going to support it or not.
So seeing this array I think gives me a lot of comfort and I just, you know, I think it's an absolute no-brainer for us to put this on the ballot.
I disagree that somehow there's any subterfuge about asking the voters to help us deal with inflation, make sure that our employees are well paid and compensated and that our facilities are modern and comfortable and serve all the needs of the community.
And I mean, we have actually protected our libraries by having this single stream and to think that in 40 years we've been able to juggle the increased needs and demands of a library.
I mean, the whole digital world didn't exist.
There's huge areas of work that libraries have taken on in those 40 years that were never contemplated at the time that the original library tax was passed and so I think it makes a lot of sense and the libraries I know have been very responsibly stewarded and we all know what inflation is and the library needs a little more.
It's a modest ask and I'm also confident that the people of Berkeley will once again rally to the support of our amazing libraries.
So it's with great enthusiasm that I support placing this on the ballot.
Thank you.
Council Member Bartlett.
Thank you.
And, you know, I actually cut my teeth in Berkeley advocating for libraries.
There was a lawsuit which blocked the funding from that bond measure many years ago to south and west Berkeley branches and I was able to get about a thousand or 700 or so high school kids to sign a petition to unblock the funds and teamed up with the mayor and other council members at the time and created new libraries now and advocated hard and got the funds unblocked and then rebuilt the south branch and the west branch.
Which was wonderful.
So I say that to state that my support for the libraries is integral and deep.
It's a core function of any city and in our city in particular, which is based on knowledge and learning and now, of course, all the compassion that we have to center ourselves on, libraries have now become a center of, I guess, social care.
So I support this measure 100% and thank you for all you do.
Thank you.
Any other questions or comments from members of the council? Okay.
Councilor Weingraf, anything? Okay, I don't see your hand raised.
Nothing at this time I support coming back for council decision in a couple of weeks.
Thank you.
So I'm just trying to do the calculations here.
Say we have an average, what, 1,500 square foot home, 0.06, that's? 90 cents.
$90.
Less than $100 for the average size home.
Relatively speaking, pretty modest given the services that are provided.
So I just want to state for the record that when this does come back, I absolutely will enthusiastically support putting this on the ballot and look forward to working with all of you to get this passed this November.
And we'll be sure to make sure this gets back sometime in the next month or so so that we can take action.

Segment 3

can contact us directly as soon as we have those verbal submission action.
We're at this point just reviewing the language of the ballot question making sure that it's in the resolution the proper format.
And so we should be able to get that come back to us will work with the library in preparing that.
the roof of the city attorney please call the role.
t So we're about a minute to go.
Okay.
Councilmember on when grabbed.
Thank you very much.
Thank you all so much for being here today and thank you for all you do for our community.
Let's take a 5 minute break.
I know we have staff who are here also to present on the next item and we'll be back in 5 minutes.
Thank you.
Councilmember on when grabbed.
Councilmember on when grabbed.
Thank you all so much for being here today and thank you for all you do for our community.
Let's take a 5 minute break.
I know we have staff who are here also to present on the next item and we'll be back in 5 minutes.
Thank you.
Councilmember on when grabbed.
Thank you all so much for being here today and thank you for all you do for our community.
Let's take a 5 minute break.
I know we have staff who are here also to present on the next item and we'll be back in 5 minutes.
Thank you.
Councilmember on when grabbed.
Thank you all so much for being here today and thank you for all you do for our community.
Let's take a 5 minute break.
I know we have staff who are here also to present on the next item and we'll be back in 5 minutes.
Thank you.
Councilmember on when grabbed.
Thank you all so much for being here today and thank you for all you do for our community.
Let's take a 5 minute break.
I know we have staff who are here also to present on the next item and we'll be back in 5 minutes.
Thank you.
Councilmember on when grabbed.
Thank you all so much for being here today and thank you for all you do for our community.
Let's take a 5 minute break.
I know we have staff who are here also to present on the next item and we'll be back in 5 minutes.
Thank you.
Councilmember on when grabbed.
Thank you all so much for being here today and thank you for all you do for our community.
Let's take a 5 minute break.
I know we have staff who are here also to present on the next item and we'll be back in 5 minutes.
Thank you.
Councilmember on when grabbed.
Thank you all so much for being here today and thank you for all you do for our community.
Let's take a 5 minute break.
I know we have staff who are here also to present on the next item and we'll be back in 5 minutes.
Thank you.
Councilmember on when grabbed.
Thank you all so much for being here today and thank you for all you do for our community.
Let's take a 5 minute break.
I know we have staff who are here also to present on the next item and we'll be back in 5 minutes.
Thank you.
Councilmember on when grabbed.
Thank you all so much for being here today and thank you for all you do for our community.
Let's take a 5 minute break.
I know we have staff who are here also to present on the next item and we'll be back in 5 minutes.
Thank you.
Councilmember on when grabbed.
Thank you all so much for being here today and thank you for all you do for our community.
Let's take a 5 minute break.
I know we have staff who are here also to present on the next item and we'll be back in 5 minutes.
Thank you.
Recording stopped.
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Recording resumed.
I can't change my name on here, but this one's me.
Oh, there it is.
I was able to change it.
Recording resumed.
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Recording resumed.
Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Okay, the city council's back in session, and we'll now proceed to item 1.
The committee survey for potential November 2024.
Ballot measures.
And I'd like to turn it over to the city manager.
Thank you, and thank you members of the council in public pursuant to council direction.
We're returning this morning to seek your feedback and direction.
I'm going to present on the topic will be Scott Ferris, our public parks, recreation, waterfront director, Peter radu interim HHS deputy director, and joining us from the PRW commission.
The chair is Claudia and then Gordon, our current PRW commissioner and former city council person will also be joining.
And then we'll have some information on potential language for survey from David Mermin and Nicolai Schwepper from lake research partners.
Next slide so very quickly we have aligned information in this overview.
As you can see, we will be looking at the park tax 1st.
And then we'll jump to measure P, talk about some community survey and options in a discussion of potential other ballot measures for November of 2024.
We'll walk you through a timeline that we believe that timeline will be critical in terms of any new measures coming into into play.
And then some next steps next item.
Please next.
Thank you.
Our agenda will include.
Basically, you are receiving just the presentation.
There's no action needed at this time.
We're not seeking action, but we absolutely do want your feedback this morning in the presentation will be including background on the parks tax and measure P.
And we'll talk about some potential scenarios for increases to the parks tax and measure P measure P.
You previously requested that we return with information regarding extension of measure P, and we've expanded that to also include information regarding an increase to measure P.
And we're also seeking your direction on the upcoming community survey.
So we'll talk about the language.
And if you can give us feedback on that language as well, and any other proposed measures for November of 2024.
Next slide so with that, I'm going to hand it off to our parks, recreation, waterfront director Scott.
Thank you.
Let me go ahead and start just starting about talking about the parks tax.
It was established in 1997 and it replaced what was the landscape maintenance tax that hadn't passed by a 2 thirds measure.
In 2014, it was amended.
At that point in time, the parks tax was operating in the red, and we are in danger of laying off an additional for.
For full time employees.
And had very little money for capital and so it was amended in 2014 to increase it.
It was increased by about 17%.
It added an inflation escalator.
It went from just being CPI to CPI or the pig.
And it's funded for about 450,000 dollars of annual minor maintenance and close to a million dollars of.
C.
I.
P.
allowable expenditures.
Allowable expenditures.
Half the facility has to be, it could be can be a building or an element in a park.
Trees or landscape or city landscaping.
Parks parks tax is generally healthy.
But in the last few years, we've, it's been buttressing the Marina fund and had to pick up.
So, if we're going to be able to provide more money in capital, and we'll show losses and fiscal 2425 and 26.
Then our fund balance by the end of 26 will be down to about 8.4%.
Next slide please just for a little refresher on what type of revenue the parks tax brings in our anticipated revenue.
So, if you look at this graph here, you can see that we've got about 18.5 about 18.3.
From the parcel tax, and this just gives you the 2 graphs below give you an idea of how this money is expended.
And so you see an adopted 24, you've got about 7% capital, a lot of personnel, 65%.
And a minor maintenance, we set aside about that 450,000 represents that 3%.
So, and 25, you see a little bit different story.
There's more money in capital.
And there is.

Segment 4

About the same money in personnel, it's just a less percentage.
That gives you a little idea of how the parks tax is spent.
It's personnel, non-personnel, minor maintenance, and capital.
Next slide.
At this point, I want to introduce our PRW Commission Chair Claudia Kuczynska and PRW Commissioner Gordon Wozniak who put forward the initiative to include the parks tax as a part of the 2024 survey and revenue process.
Claudia, are you there? Yeah, I am.
Can you hear me okay? Yeah.
Go ahead.
Okay.
Well, thanks for inviting Gordon and me here today.
He and I have been talking about a parks tax increase for a few years now.
I'm so pleased that we both can be here today to present our commission's recommendation for a 20 percent park tax increase.
For me, while all the points we will be presenting are important, the salient ones are increase in parks tax can relieve the overstrapped marina fund from the burden of maintaining green spaces at the waterfront and at Cesar Chavez Park.
Our largest and surely one of our most beloved of parks.
In turn, this will help to unburden the marina fund from the structural deficit by about one and a half million dollars.
Also, the very popular point is that it will help us grow and nurture our urban forest.
I'm not sure that any of you attended the recent tree planting events at Aquatic Park.
They proved to be so popular, and I think there's a picture of it up here.
They proved to be so popular that they actually had a waiting list of volunteers.
They were turned away on day one and were put on a waiting list.
Every demographic from families with toddlers who love digging in the muddy ground and planting poppy seeds to students, scouts, seniors, it was fabulous.
For me and for Gordon, it was one of the most remarkable examples of how people want to volunteer.
They want to be involved in the greening of our city and doing something that will help to combat climate change.
It was so inspiring for everyone involved.
Finally, having more capital available can mean we'll be able to provide matching funds to the many state and federal grants that require matching funds.
A good example of this actually was our first meeting about the perimeter trail rehabbing project over at Cesar Chavez Park happened yesterday.
That was a matching funds project.
It's very exciting to see that we're going to get our perimeter trail fixed and refined.
Well, first of all, thank you.
But Gordon would like to add some of his comments too.
Again, thanks very much.
Okay.
Can you hear me? Yes, we can.
Okay.
Thank you, Mayor and council members for giving us opportunity to explain and advocate for the commission's recommendation to increase the parks tax funding.
First, I want to just give a little background.
I've been involved in parks for over a quarter century.
I was actually appointed to the Parks Commission in 1996 when it faced the loss of its landscaping funding, because it had been put on by council and didn't satisfy Prop 218.
I was involved in that campaign, was a treasurer, and also when I was on the council, I was involved in the 2014 tax increase.
I've monitored and been involved with parks over a long period of time.
I feel that parks are very important.
They're one, they provide a refuge from our increasingly built environment.
They provide recreational facilities for kids and adults, and they provide just a place for calming.
It was very important, the park usage actually went up substantially during COVID.
People didn't have places to go.
They wanted to go to some place where they weren't immediately around people because of the infection possibility and it played a vital role.
Lastly, before we get into a few details, our population is mandated from the arena requirements to grow.
We need to think about the future.
Not only maintaining the parks we have, but also improving them so that we can serve the additional population that is going to increase substantially.
I would just like to make a couple of comments about the declining urban forests.
Because of climate change, the droughts and bad weather, a lot of trees have died in Berkeley.
We actually have on the order of 10,000 empty tree spaces, as Claudia mentioned, the tree training at Park was a great success.
There were families with kids there, there were lots of college students, and even some senior citizens.
It's also important to note that the city parks department has gotten four grants to plant trees over the last eight years.
It's also important that we ramp up tree planting because the tree canopy in Berkeley varies dramatically from 40 percent in some places in the hills to very little in some of the flatlands.
Tree canopy is another thing that is very important to people who live in the various areas and it helps urban cooling during climate change.
It's also important and the city parks department has made it a policy for biodiversity to plant essentially mostly native trees because it supports local insects and local birds who feed on those trees.
We need to have urban forests that reflects biodiversity.
Let me go then to the capital funds.
We've lived in some ways in a golden era over the last 8-10 years with particularly Measure T1 and the increase we had in the parks back in 2014, where there was some modest amount of money put for capital.
But all the funds for T1 now are committed or spent.
We see there was also some increases from the general fund in the last couple of years, but during these tougher budget times, those are being cut back.
The parks department needs more than a million a year for capital and major maintenance, partially because it needs to leverage taxpayers' dollars through grant funding.
You need matching funds to get a grant.
You can get leverage from as little as one-to-one, which doubles your money or impact, or from up to one-to-six and even one-to-seven in some grants.
This department has had great success in getting grants and it could do a lot more.
I think it gets the most grants of any department in the city.
If it had more access to grant matching funds.
One of the purposes of this increase would be to increase by more than a factor of two the money that would be available for capital, which would be available for applying for matching funds.
That would really, I think, be a big selling point when you actually go out and campaign for a ballot measure like this.
The last item is, I don't know if most of you know this, but 40 percent of the city's parks, 100 acres of it, are actually west of I-80 in the waterfront.
For historic reasons, they're funded by the Marina Fund, which in contrast to the Parks Fund and the Library Fund, which have protection deficits in the future, is in deficit probably for at least a decade or more.
Why it was that way, we have 53 parks in Berkeley, three are in West Berkeley, which are not funded by the parks tax.
This would be an opportunity for relatively modest increase in the order of a cent or two, to actually incorporate these three parks.
It's Cesar Chavez Park, which is the biggest, Shorebird, and Horseshoe, which are also modest sized parks on the order of five acres, and adequately fund those park facilities.
Currently, they receive less than 10 percent of the amount per acre of that parks in the other parts of Berkeley.
So there is a great need there to address that.
So last thing, I want to get to the costs.
It's a modest cost.
We were recommending, commission recommended an increase of around 20 percent, which would be about four and a half cents per square foot, based on the current, this year's base rate for the parcel tax.
For an average home of 2,000 square feet, that would be $90 per year or about 25 cents per day, which is a modest amount of money.
It's comparable to what the library tax proposal is, except that it doesn't have a split role, so it would be the same for business or homeowners.
In summary then, I would like to say, I think we really think it's important to do this survey, to see the results that whether the public would support.
We feel that they will, that parks are heavily used.
There's been a lot of effort improving the facilities in the parks in the last decade with the T1 funding and the increase in the parks tax.
We can do a better job.
We're also proposing on a separate item for future budgets, is that the city consider a parks impact fee, which could generate literally tens of millions of dollars over a couple of decades, to basically do major improvements to parks and even purchase land to increase parks.
But that's for the future.
But for the interim, a modest increase in the parks tax would make a huge increase, and it would allow this department, which is incredibly productive, to provide the services that are in constant use by our community.
Thank you.
Thank you, Gordon.
I think that's the end of the PRW presentation for now.
Next, we're going to measure P.
Peter, are you there? I am.
Thank you, Scott.
Good afternoon, council, and happy Friday.
I'm here to talk to you about measure P, and some language that we have for your consideration in the community survey.
Measure P is a real estate transfer tax.
It provides annual funding to the general fund, but it is used largely to pay for homeless services.
Berkeley voters passed measure P in November of 2018 with a large margin of approval of over 72 percent.
It increased real property transfer taxes for 10 years by one percentage point from 1.5 to 2.5 percent, for property sales and transfers over $1.5 million, which is a threshold number at the time that was meant to indicate the top one-third of valuations for transfers, and that top third benchmark number is re-established every year.
Because this measure is directly tied to market activity, real estate market activity, it is a volatile funding source.
In boom times, a lot of revenue comes in, in more sluggish real estate markets such as the ones that we're seeing right now, revenues tend to decline.
Revenues have ranged quite widely, anywhere from six million to 20 million, fluctuating greatly again with these market conditions.
As was presented to the council earlier this week, the lower than anticipated revenues from measure P, again, due to the ongoing high interest rates and sluggish market activity, is contributing to a substantial measure P structural deficit.
Measure P went into effect on January 1st, 2019, and absent any extension, it will sunset on January 1st, 2029.
The city is currently using funding for measure P for a wide variety of homeless programming.
I'm happy to answer any questions, council, that you may have about specific programs or uses of the funds.
But I do want to bring to your attention that you all may recall in July of 2021, the council adopted the All Home Regional Action Plan.
As part of that recommendation, asked city staff to perform an analysis of our homeless system, and to take a big picture look at our homeless system, and whether or not we are investing in the right types of programs across the entire spectrum of care to have an impact on and measurably reduce homelessness.
We have finished those analyses, we're putting the finishing touch on the report, and we are prepared to bring those before you as soon as July.
There will be definitely a great opportunity in the near future to dive into some of that homeless programming, and to answer more specific questions at that time.
I just want to bring that to your attention.
But again, if you have any specific questions today, I'm happy to answer them.
Next slide, please.
What I can tell you today is that measure P is our single largest and most important in terms of its ability to leverage other funding piece of our homeless funding puzzle.
It made up by far the largest part of the more than 35 million that the city of Berkeley allocated to homelessness in this current fiscal year.
If you look at this pie chart here, that additional 18 percent that is coming from the state ERF grants, those are directly leveraged with a one-to-one match by measure P.
Measure P is really, if you add those two together, responsible for well over 80 percent, either in direct contributions or direct leveraging of our homeless system.
It is the workhorse of our ability to do what we do.
Next slide, please.
Since 2019, and again, we can talk.
We look forward to presenting to you and talking in more detail about these things when we come forth with our original action plan analyses.
But for now, just a high-level summary is that since 2019, roughly 56 million has been committed to programs across 32 programs.
Quite a bit of money has gone out the door in support of homelessness and affordable housing programs.
It has leveraged again, roughly $10 million in encampment resolution fund grants, and over $30 million in home key funding, which together has helped leverage or directly create 177 units just within the past three years of non-congregate interim and permanent housing.
Next slide, please.
One of the things that we are, I think, rightly hearing about now in our current moment, is this idea about accountability in homeless funding.
That's the idea that the public deserves and expects to see that their dollars are being used in an effective way to measurably have an impact on homelessness.
In that regard, our numbers, Council, I'll speak for themselves.
We have now seen two straight homeless point-in-time counts where we have seen a reduction in homelessness.
Actually, we had a unique coincidence, if you will, in terms of when Measure P was being collected.
It started being collected in January of 2019.
In January of 2019, we actually had a federal homeless point-in-time count that sort of established a baseline for success and impact of the measure.
And since that time, from 2019 to the next count in 2022, we saw a 5% decrease in homelessness overall, which is remarkable when you think about the economic impacts to housing instability and to just the broader economy that the height of the pandemic brought us.
So the fact that we were able to sustain that and actually see a decrease in our homelessness count is remarkable.
And then again, from 2022 to our most recent numbers, which were just released a couple of weeks ago, we have now seen a 21% overall reduction in homelessness, including a dramatic 45% decrease in unsheltered homelessness.
And so, you know, this is a testament to the outsized role that Measure P has played in our homeless service system of care, to this council's consistent willingness to be able to use these funds for homelessness and to staff's just execution on this.
We've been very aligned in using this fund accountably and with measurable success.
And so should Measure P be extended and increased, the city will be better positioned to continue these efforts into the future.
Next slide, please.
So I think at this point, I'll turn it back over to Scott.
Thanks, Peter.
And just to review a little bit, in the start of the 2024 budget process, the council allocated $100,000 to do a community survey that was associated with the Vision 2050 potential street parcel tax.
And then in March of this year, city council authorized the city manager to use that funding to look at potential ballot measures for the parks tax and renewing Measure P.
Staff has run an RFP process and entered into a contract with Lake Research Partners and we are preparing a draft survey.
And based on this recommendation, but are here tonight also to take further information.
And if you want to include that in the survey or suggestions and directions around the particular questions.
Next slide.
For the parks tax, the draft survey has, we're looking at right now, a 15% increase.
And that equates to an additional $2.7 million a year coming into the parks tax.
And down below it, this bullet, you'll see how the money would be proposed to use.
And a 20% increase would bring in $3.6 million of new funding each year.
And all of the top two bullets, the tree planting and the landscape and park maintenance and the waterfront would stay the same.
The additional annual CIP would jump 1.45 million over the 1.09 million that we currently have.
All right, next slide.
And Peter, I'm going to toss it back to you.
Thank you, Scott.
So council below are some anticipated outcomes from changes, potential changes to the real property transfer tax, which is the source of Measure P funding.
And these are the questions that were presented for your consideration and for your feedback in the council report.
So one scenario, one would be a half percentage point increase in the real property transfer tax from 2.5% to 3% for property sales, for property transfers over 1.5 million, including that 10-year extension.
This would result in a roughly 50% increase in annual Measure P revenue, which has been, again, between 6 and 20, a little over 20 million over the last five years.
Scenario two would be a 1% increase in real property transfer tax from 2.5% to 3.5%, again, for properties over 1.5 million with a 10-year extension.
And this would result in roughly 100% increase in annual Measure P revenue.
And the third is a 10-year extension with no increase to the actual tax rate of the real property transfer tax from 1.5% to 2.5% for property sales that..
for property transfers over 1.5 million.
This would result in no increase in revenues but extend the tax by 10 years.
Next slide, please.
These are just some of a number of potential options that could be considered for the community survey.
And so below, we wanted to bring some other considerations to your attention and ask for your feedback and direction in informing the final draft of the community survey.
So some other changes to Measure P that could be asked about include removing or extending the sunset, changing the initial threshold for Measure P eligible transactions.
Currently, it is that highest one-third, but that could be changed, and adding additional brackets for higher-value transactions to..
And this would be consistent with the way that city transfer taxes are done in a number of jurisdictions across the state where there are some higher brackets for large-value transactions, such as above 5 million or 10 million, that have higher marginal rates.
Next slide, please.
Okay.
And, Peter, we're going to have Mark come in at this point.
But before we do that, I just wanted to let council know that after we get direction for you, we've been working with legal.
We're going to work with legal to make sure all our ballot measure language is correct and then go out for the next survey.
But go ahead, Mark.
Are you there? Sure, yes.
So this is the general timeline we have for the ballot development process for the November 2024 election.
Of course, today, we're here to get direction from the council on the community survey, and the council has already provided direction on the library tax measure.
Once the direction is received, the survey can go into the field for approximately seven days between May 28th and June 4th.
Then we are planning to have a special meeting of the city council on June 14th to present the survey results.
And at that time, the council will provide final direction on which ballot measures should be placed on the November 2024 ballot.
That directly leads into a short and intensive time for city staff to research, draft, review, and finalize the full text of the measures to write the 75-word ballot question and to put together the council resolution for each measure to be placed on the ballot.
And the agenda packet for the July 23rd meeting publishes on July 11th.
So that's why June 10th is our stop date there.
On July 23rd, we have a regular meeting where the council can place measures on the ballot.
Two days later, on July 25th, is when we publish, we can publish a revised agenda packet for the July 30th meeting, which is the last meeting before the recess.
And any changes, if there were changes on July 23rd, we would just have one day to submit the changes if they were to be in the revised agenda packet.
And, of course, the final, final deadline is Friday, August 9th at 5 p.m.
That's the deadline to deliver an adopted and signed resolution with the final text and the ballot question to the county registrar voters.
So that is the last moment that you can put a measure on the November ballot.
Next slide shows, talks about some of the potential ballot measures that we are looking at for the November election.
Of course, we have several initiative petitions.
We have one that council has already taken action on to place it on the November ballot.
We have seven other initiative petitions that are in various stages of the process.
Some of these are revenue measure initiatives.
So the timeframe that we're under and the window for the survey and developing the new measures is rapidly closing.
If there are, if there is the desire in the council to explore additional measures and to have those included in the survey, that would significantly delay the date that the survey could go out to the community, delay the results coming back to the council and shorten that window for drafting and development of measures even further.
And again, there's the final deadline there on August 9th.
So these are potential revenue measures that have been discussed or raised by various avenues.
So there are three types of measures that have been discussed.
Through various avenues, of course, the library tax, which was just discussed, the parks tax and measure P, which are part of this presentation.
Then there are three initiative measures that are also revenue measures, two streets tax, two initiative tax measures for streets, sidewalks and paths, and then there are two other recently proposed measures.
One would be an extension of the soda tax, sugar, sweet and beverage tax.
And another one is tax to support arts organizations.
So if all of these were to be on the ballot, that would mean that there would be eight revenue measures on the November 2024 ballot.
And I think we'll go back to D to wrap up.
Is that right? Thank you, Mark.
So the next steps for this morning is to provide direction on the upcoming survey, as well as any of the proposed measures for the November 2024 ballot.
So, as I said, staff will pull the council for a special meeting on June 14th to present the results of the community survey.
So we'd like to take some time and have council discuss the actual survey parameters and provide any direction at this time.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
I would recommend we go to public comment.
Okay.
So we have a couple of minutes or a couple of hours now to address the council on this issue.
So we'll go first to members of the public here in person who would like to speak on.
Item one with respect to potential November, 2024 ballot measures, and then we'll go to virtual speakers.
Thank you.

Segment 5

Good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
Good afternoon, mayor council members it's good to be in front of you again.
Can we elevate her to panel.
The last time I spoke in front of you all one of the last times I spoke in front of you all was when I was in the district.
And at that time we were unanimous.
We had unanimous support from every council member so thank you guys for that.
My name is Javier Morales.
I live in district two.
And I'm on the sugar sweetened beverage product panel of experts commission which is basically the soda tax commission.
So the distributor tax commission.
And I'm a resident of Berkeley high and as of last night have a second graduate from St.
Mary's so deeply embedded here in the Berkeley community.
And I'm presenting today with Lolis Ramirez.
Hi, good afternoon.
Sorry my allergies are a thing right now.
I've been working with Javier and others since the passage of the original measure D.
I'm not a resident of Berkeley but I'm a resident of St.
Mary's and I'm excited to be back here in support of this great measure.
So thank you for the time.
And we had rainbow Ruben here earlier but she had to leave.
She's a parent of a Berkeley BAM student.
She works for the California breast cancer prevention project and Martin Bork is on Zoom.
Ayanna Davis is on Zoom.
And again you guys just met Lolis.
You know, again, you know, it's kind of like we're back to the original purpose.
But since then I wanted to discuss it.
And the reason we were discussing it was because the the gardening and cooking programs in the Berkeley Unified School District were in danger of being sunsetted because they had lost a grant.
And so it's kind of similar kind of in a similar situation today where Berkeley Unified School District has actually issued some pink slips to garden workers because they don't have enough funds.
And so we're going to talk a little bit more about that.
But since then, I want to I want to give especially some of the newer members a little bit of background.
I won't take too long on this.
What we learned the first time at Berkeley was the first soda tax to pass in the country.
This had been tried like 30 different times.
But every time we were getting slammed and beat pretty badly by the beverage industry.
And so what we learned when we were crafting our measure, we went up to Richmond and talked to people who had actually tried to make a move on the beverage industry before and they got slammed.
And what they said is make sure you have the community behind the efforts of what you're trying to do.
Make sure the community's voices in it make.
Because that's the only way we're going to be able to beat industry that comes in and typically tries to drive wedges between mostly communities of color and lower income communities.
The folks that actually research shows drink much more And so this really was a tax designed for Berkeley by Berkeley residents.
The model that had been tried.
This is public health professionals said unless it's a two cents per ounce tax, unless it's a dedicated tax, unless it's a retail tax, they have all of these stipulations.
But what we did in Berkeley when the community got involved and we looked at the paths forward, we're like, okay, what's going to work here is one cent per ounce.
What's going to work here is a general tax.
What's going to work here is an excise tax.
An excise tax means that we tax the corporation for the privilege of distributing their product in Berkeley.
So the taxes paid before it even gets to the retailers.
And we also, this is something that was really novel, this panel of experts.
So the panel of experts was convened to help the city identify which community groups could be invested in to help alleviate some of the more egregious health conditions that are related to chronic consumption of sugary drinks.
So, you know, our approach here is the changing norms.
So we're looking at funding gardening and cooking programs and also our flavor here locally is we want funding to also go directly to community groups that are working with our most marginalized vulnerable populations.
Next.
So the major tax elements, this is, so what we're asking for is a simple reauthorization or renewal.
We're not changing anything.
What we got passed before was a one cent per ounce on sugary sweetened beverages and there's a threshold for sugar content.
We're asking for a distributor tax again.
It's an excise tax.
Industry will pay the tax.
We're keeping it at a general fund tax and we're keeping the commission and what we're trying to do in a 12-year sunset.
So it's almost exactly the same as what we passed before.
Next.
And, you know, this is just for those who weren't here, it was crazy because we knew how heavy when we pulled before we put the measure on the ballot, we pulled it like 69% that we would win.
I mean, 66% that we could win.
But we knew that when the beverage industry came in, that margin might erode.
So we did a lot of prep work and we did a lot of information sharing.
And this is a picture of us sitting there at our headquarters just starting to train folks on exactly what was going to happen, how the beverage industry was going to show up and why we wanted to pass this measure.
Next.
We also did a lot of house by house, street by street, block by block work.
This is a picture of a backyard house party that was sponsored by the state.
This is a picture of a backyard house party that was sponsored by the state.
And again, in Spanish, just about why we needed this tax and how the money was going to be used to further health in our communities.
And then, just like we predicted, the industry came in, funded astro turf opposition.
They hired people that looked like us to go house to house, to be at our farmer's market, to do that.
They were not just advertising.
They did this to try to shape our things here.
And you can't even go on the BART.
You can't even walk without stepping on their ads.
This is how much they came in.
This is how heavy they came in after us.
No matter how hard they tried, they could not drive a wedge here.
They even had somebody move into the parking lot.
They had somebody move into the parking lot.
They did that too.
But this is how hard they came in.
And so, again, what we're asking for is a reauthorization.
I just want to give you guys just a little bit more.
Yes.
I just want to add to this.
Because today you only see two of us and a few people online.
But we've been working really closely with the same coalition and we're doing the exact same thing.
We're doing the exact same thing with the industry again.
We're doing the exact same thing because as Javier will go in more detail, the tax is working.
We're fulfilling the promise made to voters.
So I think the moment that we say we're on the ballot, we're moving forward, this room plus the outside is going to be full of volunteers ready to knock on doors because folks remember that they're not just teenagers.
They're now adults.
They're ready for this.
So while you see only two of us, know that we have a full wrath of community members ready to join us in this effort.
I'm getting to the results here.
So the commission, I'm really I've served on the commission except for a six-month period.
I've served on the commission since inception back in 2015.
And I'm really proud of the work we've done.
No one has ever criticized that we've been so well-plotted for our investments.
And early, early on, we did the commission, we came together and we decided, we identified who were going to be our priority populations.
And I'm sorry, your little thing, the text.
Oh, no, you get to see the screen, too, I hope, because this text is really small.
But this is what the commission prioritized.
We wanted to prioritize children and young adults living in households with limited resources.
We wanted to prioritize the elevated type 2 levels of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, tooth decay, and cancers related to soda consumption.
We wanted to target, invest in black and Latinx communities, low-income communities, and teens that are disproportionately targeted by industry marketing.
We also wanted to prioritize Berkeley-based organizations to receive the funding to serve Berkeley residents.
We wanted to prioritize pregnant women.
We wanted to prioritize pregnant women.
We wanted to prioritize pregnant women.
And we also wanted to prioritize children and families who are in the process of forming lifelong habits.
This is the way we felt we could get in front of this product that is just really literally making us sick.
Oops.
And so this is not audited.
This is just like some rough numbers that I put together.
But this is roughly how we've done it over the last 10 years.
And I gave you guys a, there's a one-page handout that kind of talks about some other benefits that have accrued because of this tax.
And it's the other thing, we can go to the next slide.
These are some, we just did an evaluation of the community perspective on how this funding has actually benefited community members.
And what we found at the very top, I mean the big reason, we increased consumption of sugar and sweetened beverages in Berkeley.
There's research on that.
We've increased consumption of water in Berkeley.
There's research on that.
We preserved the BUSD cooking and gardening program.
We can all see that.
But we also increased the capacity and infrastructure for these community organizations that have received investment.
We provided employment.
They're able to pay their volunteers for doing work.
We created like an ecosystem of people that can come together and they refer to each other.
We've also created an environment where other health building policies have been promoted as well.
The healthy check-out stand, that's the first in the nation.
And we did it here in Berkeley and it was leveraged off of this.
Thank you.
So this is all an ecosystem of work that we're doing.
Where did Lolis go? There it is.
And then other community impacts as well.
So it's not just about helping to fund the gardens.
It's not just about reducing sugary drink consumption.
It's also about investing in the infrastructure for the folks who are working closest to the populations that are most at risk.
So the consumption is dropping.
Water consumption is increasing.
No evidence that the beverage industry has lost jobs.
No evidence that businesses have closed because of the soda distributor tax.
No evidence that the cost of groceries has gone up.
No evidence that the cost of untaxed beverages have increased.
No evidence that the general cost of living has gone up because of the soda tax.
And no evidence, this is another thing that they claimed before we were going to vote, was that the city would use this money to fill potholes.
They weren't going to use it for what it was intended.
But because of the partnership and the trust that I feel we have between the commission and the city, I feel like we've honored our initial intent.
So we are up for renewal.
And I'm going to hand it over to Lolis to take us home.
Sure.
Thank you.
So we are here today to ask for the council to consider placing this measure on the ballot for reauthorization.
There are no changes to it except the date of sunset and the way that the language is written right now, which we have a draft language ready for city attorney to review.
And the reason why we're coming to you in 2024, along with the proposed 75-word ballot statement, is that currently it is set to expire December 30th, 2026.
And this reauthorization would start on January 1st, 2027, for another 12 years.
It does seem a little odd why we're coming to you in 2024.
Really the value that this tax has brought in, we don't want to get to the point where we're right about to expire and running out of money.
We don't want to get to the point where we're running out of money.
We don't want to get to the point where we're running out of money.
And so what I will say is that we have recently polled, we've been working with, I want to get the name right, Fairbank, Maslin & Metz, FM3 polling firm.
They were polling for this measure between April 30th and May 1st, 2027.
And they were polling for this measure between April 30th and May 1st, 2027.
And yes, this is our coalition's own independent polling, but if there is a question included in the city's desired poll, we would see probably the same result of support.
With that, any questions or thoughts? » Why don't we save those until the next meeting.
» Thank you.
» I think we're good.
» Thank you.
» Thank you so much.
Okay, are there any speakers on Zoom wishing to speak on item one, the committee survey on November 2024 ballot measures? Please raise your hand.
I'm not a co-host.
Mr.
Cook, I think because I lost the Zoom connection, so if you don't want to speak, keep it up or lower it.
Okay.
Holly Scheider.
» Hello.
Greetings, Council, Mayor Ergeen.
I don't have much to add to what Javier and Lolis presented.
It was very thorough.
You mostly probably remember that I was involved in the original campaign and served on the commission for eight years.
I was involved in the campaign for eight years.
I was involved in the campaign for eight years.
I just wanted to echo the importance of this effort.
It has funded some fabulous community programs that have provided both innovative education to our high-risk populations that have effectively decreased health disparities.
It has helped identify communities in the region that have higher rates of diabetes and other health impacts as a result.
So education programs and organizing and some policy work, I think it has been very effective and I hope we can keep it up for another 12 years.
Thank you.
Hi, this is Martin Bork, Executive Director of the Ecology Center.
We were an anchor organization for this campaign back in 2014 and have been doing community-based nutrition education and health equity work in affiliation with our farmers markets and a program called Farm Fresh Choice.
And we had also been deeply involved in helping the school district to transform both its school lunch program and build out its cooking and gardening programs to get a garden in every school and cooking and gardening curriculum for all K-9 students in the district.
And this funding is what has made that structural and made it possible for us to do things that previous federal funding that went away had a lot of restrictions on it and being able to actually say that sugar-sweetened beverages are harmful to you is not something that was permissible under USDA regulations and is really critical in helping young people to understand the marketing that's coming at them.
We're fighting against major advertising dollars coming at young people.
Kids born today are one in three is likely to get diabetes in their lifetime and one in two of Black and brown kids are likely to get diabetes in their lifetime.
And so while this funding has really helped and it's really working, and it's working because so many community organizations are directly engaged with residents and young people and those targeted most, the soda industry continues to market to them.
And so we have to keep up the fight.
We have to keep working on this and we have to keep engaging our young people one by one as we move forward.
So we really hope you'll support adding this to the mix of ballot measures on the ballot in November.
Thank you.
Thank you, Martin.
Okay, we'll go next to Healthy Black Families and I'd like to ask are there any other speakers on Zoom? If so, please raise your hand so we can take your public comment.
Healthy Black Families? Good afternoon council.
My name is Ayanna Davis.
I'm Deputy Executive Director at Healthy Black Families and my first connection to the soda tax was actually working for a sugar-sweetened beverage tax in the city of San Francisco through my work as Wellness Manager at Rafiki Coalition for Health and Wellness where we educated the District 10 there, San Francisco, Bayview, Hunters Point, Potrero Hill neighborhoods and had complete support and saw cultural shift around sugar-sweetened beverage consumption but the tax lost and amazingly it was passed in Berkeley in 2014 and I've had the privilege of working with Healthy Black Families and the Thirsty for Change program that has offered workshops on managing and preventing conditions like diabetes and hypertension, trained community educators and advocates through our Adult and Youth Water Ambassadors program and evaluation with community surveys on soda and sugary beverage consumption and healthy eating through free cooking and as well as through our free cooking and shopping classes and we partnered with Center for Food, Faith and Justice as our faith-based partner to further serve community through working with youth in schools and sports programs.
We also collaborated with the Farmer's Market to offer monthly Farmer's Market for our community.
One of the things I want to point out specifically is this is protracted work as we have shown cultural shift and behavior change and impacted people's buying and response to predatory marketing in the city of Berkeley.
We have new generations that are coming up.
We have families that still need support and education in the work.
We have children that go through different grades and different awareness in the sports team and in the school district.
We have continued work with the faith community to do and I forgot to mention the gardening program.
All of these work, all of these need continued funding but most importantly the impact of Big Soda on our community will continue if we don't offer these programs and this education.
I know the impact because I have a son who has been served sugary beverages all through high school and college against my education of him but being impacted and influenced through community.
Thank you for listening and we encourage you to support this continued initiative.
Thank you very much.
Are there any other speakers? Berkeley Rep Development.
Yes.
Hi there.
Hi members of council.
This is Ari Lipski.
I am the director of Berkeley Rep Development for Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
Here representing our managing director Tom Parrish who is in New York at the moment.
I just wanted to speak very briefly on a proposed emergency measure for independent performing arts institutions.
A group of 13 of the city's independent performing arts groups met to discuss the proposed emergency measure.
We know that just about all of us have structural deficits and many of us are in danger of imminent closure unless we address those deficits.
I just wanted to thank council and several members of council for taking the initiative to help with this as we gather our forces and try to address these issues.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Any other members of the public on Zoom wishing to speak on this item? Seeing no additional raised hands, I'll bring it back to the council for discussion.
Javier, if there are any questions, we'll invite you back up.
I really appreciate you being here today.
And your work from the conception to now and getting the information out there.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And the panel of experts has done an exceptional job of allocating these general funds consistent with the promise we made to the voters.
It's having actual real benefits and improving health and wellness in our community.
If I may just begin discussion, I just want to get clarification.
The survey has been conducted by the community survey.
Is that correct? That's correct, Mr.
Mayor, but I would like to defer to Mr.
Mermin, who's on the call with Lake Research.
He can also respond to that question.
Hi, Mayor.
Hello, everyone.
Good to be with you again.
And as you know, we're preparing the survey for we've done community surveys on ballot measures for the city and we've often done two where we tested a set of concepts and then we tested specific ballot language.
In this case, given the compressed timeline, we're doing the one survey.
So we have to take care of the specific ballot language in the survey.
For that reason, and because we're testing both the measures, a couple of alternatives to those in terms of the level of revenue, as was indicated in the earlier presentation, we're going to test the robustness of support for both of those measures.
We do have about two minutes left in it where we could add a couple of questions with the current budget.
Currently, the survey does include two versions of the parks tax increase, three versions of the homeless services tax, one just an extension and two possible versions of the housing tax increase.
So we're going to test the robustness of support for those and then a few additional questions on demographics and top issues in the city.
So that's where 16 of our 18 minutes in the current draft is taken up with all of that.
So we could potentially add one or two more questions.
It could be a different ballot measure.
We're going to do that in the next few days.
I think we've covered everything in length and then we would need to, and then, of course, the timeline we're on is very tight as indicated earlier.
So we would really need to make those decisions very quickly in terms of any additions and any changes over the next few days.
» Okay.
Thank you.
I will just start my comments by saying that this survey was conducted on the basis of the measure P transfer tax and a potential extension or increase of measure P transfer tax.
So we are going to add additional topics.
Two more questions.
Then we would have to add that direction tonight or today.
» Thank you.
I'm going to move on to the next item.
There's going to be a lot on the ballot this year.
In addition to whatever is on the ballot locally, there will be a $20 billion GO bond for affordable housing.
And on the nine county barrier ballot, the state legislature is still trying to figure out how to implement that.
There's going to be a number of initiatives that will discuss putting bond measures in the ballot, housing bond, climate bond, and then obviously whatever the state ballot is going to have as well.
There are a number of initiatives that have qualified or signatures are being verified.
I think the court provided that information in the report.
I think it's important to understand what revenue measures we should put on the ballot.
And it really should be on the basis of what is, you know, what's important, what's a high priority.
And I will say that extending the soda tax, literally just extending it for an initial 12 years, which state law does allow, even though there was a lot of discussion about that, I think it's important to understand what's important.
And as noted, there is strong voter support for that.
I think that's very easy.
That's a general tax that only requires 50% plus one.
In addition, and that should be rather easy to write.
It's really just changing the date.
So the drafting of that measure is very important.
I do believe that we should put the library tax on the ballot for I think many of the reasons stated this morning around the need to continue to support our libraries and make sure that we can expand services.
They're not just libraries, they're community centers, community hubs.
And I do believe very strongly that we should look at the duration of the measure.
I think the mayor, Chancellor Drosty, when she was on the city council, said at the time that we shouldn't limit the duration of the Measure P transfer tax and had argued that we should make it permanent.
But we made it time limited.
We made it for a 10-year period because we wanted to demonstrate to the voters that we're not just limiting the duration of the measure.
We're making sure that we succeed at that.
The last week we announced the new point high count for the city of Berkeley.
Unsheltered homelessness is reduced by 45% in the last two years.
And overall, we're seeing overall reductions in homelessness in Berkeley.
And as Peter talked about in the slides,.

Segment 6

We're not going to be able to achieve the significant progress that we've made.
We've housed 1,700 people in Berkeley in the last 7 years.
That's significant.
We have helped hundreds of people through our housing retention program prevent them from becoming homeless.
We have sheltered hundreds of people on a daily basis.
We've provided expanded mental health and public health resources.
We're doing more than any other city in Alameda County.
We spend more per capita than any city in Alameda County.
It's a direct result of the investment that voters have made through the measure P-Tax.
I personally believe that we should explore extending the measure P-Tax and building on the success of what we've done.
I think the reason why we should look at doing it now is that if we don't extend it or if the voters don't approve an extension or an increase, then the nonprofit organizations that we fund through this tax, they need time to plan for how they're going to fund these services.
We need time, the city needs time, to determine how we're going to fund some of these services or make reductions in services.
One of the things that the city manager has brought up is if we want to continue the specialized care unit, we're going to have to identify some revenue source.
We're going to have to identify some revenue source that we're going to be able to continue to fund.
For all these reasons, one, to make sure that we can continue the progress that we've made, 45% reduction in unsheltered homelessness while our neighboring cities in the county saw an increase.
The 1700 people that we've been able to house just in Berkeley alone and the hundreds of people we help on a daily basis and the hundreds of people that we help on a daily basis and the hundreds of people that we help in our clinics, the people that access mental health resources, job programs, food programs.
It's absolutely essential that we continue to provide these critical resources.
Otherwise, we're going to have to make very difficult decisions at a time when the state is potentially decreasing its investment in homeless services as it's facing a very difficult time.
We've been able to cover successfully through encampment resolution funds.
We've now funded two home key projects and a variety of other state and county resources that only we were able to do in Berkeley because of the measure P-TACS.
But I do think we should look at, in addition to extending it, we could potentially look at an increase for the highest, highest value properties.
The reality is the average single-family home in Berkeley now is roughly 1.5 million or more.
This tax kicks in at 1.5 million.
We have seen in recent years very large properties sell, large multifamily and commercial properties.
We have seen in recent years very large multifamily and commercial properties.
Other cities in the state of California have graduated transfer taxes based on the size of transactions.
That may be one way that we can increase the tax.
Properties of a value of over 5 million, 10 million, 10 million, 10 million or more are not hitting the average homeowner with an increase.
I also don't want to create barriers for new homeowners to come into our city.
This applies to all transactions, not just residential but also commercial property transactions, transfers or sales.
I want to put that out there for consideration.
Lastly, I want to look at what our neighboring city of Oakland has done to look at a potential increase for higher-value transactions while also making sure that we are not increasing it for the average home value in the city of Berkeley.
We have heard from arts organizations, Berkeley Rep, the Aurora Theater, that they have not recovered from the pandemic.
We do need to figure something out, whether it is a tax measure or some other solution, how we can provide critical emergency funding for our downtown.
I want to look at the quality of life of our city, but also our economy.
They are a major economic engine for our city.
Imagine what would happen if the Aurora Theater and Berkeley Rep and Freight and Salvage closed.
I'm open to exploring potential solutions for that.
Thank you.
That is all I have.
We will go to the council members on Zoom.
Thank you, Mayor.
Thank you, everyone who presented.
That is too many people for me to call out.
A lot has been put out here.
I actually want to talk a little bit about the SOTA tax.
The SOTA tax, the parks measure, and this idea of a measure for the arts.
On the SOTA tax, I fully support putting this on the ballot again, doing the reauthorization.
I appreciate the prudent approach that is being taken.
I think that is being asked for for some of these other things.
Maybe finding a way to add because our success is leading to not having the funds to support important programs.
I think given the atmosphere in which this came forward and where we expected to be, I think it is important to understand that the funds that we have that are so critical and supporting all of these important health programs, initiatives, and initiatives for our youth, that we can continue them.
Again, this is one of those taxes where if you are successful, you get less money.
If you are not successful, you get less money.
The token or prize for your success is that the money goes down and the programs that we are funding that help support the healthy choices don't have as much money.
I am committed to finding other ways to support those programs going forward.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I support it.
My understanding is that the next step would be for us to refer it to the city attorney.
For the city attorney to look at the language, we will take our legal advice from her and the version that we put on the agenda.
I would like to have advice from the city attorney in the future.
I know she is not prepared to give us that advice here about whether we might be able to lift the sunset on it.
I am just interested in having an answer to that question.
Obviously not here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Again, I am extremely supportive.
One question I have for Mr.
Ferris, if he is still here on the Zoom.
Is he? Sorry, I don't have it open on Zoom.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I think it is good to be really careful and be modest.
Not go out and ask for more than we need, obviously.
I also think that we don't want to ask for, we are literally talking about $0.01.
$0.02.
$0.04.
Given that the libraries are at $0.06.
I am wondering if there might be some value in making these 2, these are 2 core city functions, our parks and our libraries.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know the reasons.
I mean, yes, personnel costs go up.
Maintenance costs go up when things are older.
We have trees that are dying.
We are planting more trees.
We have facilities that we need to maintain.
We have a lot of maintenance costs.
Now that kind of semi-free ride is coming to an end.
So that is my question, Mr.
Ferris.
What about just saying, you know, $0.06 for the libraries, $0.06 for our parks and our libraries.
I don't know.
Are there other options that go beyond like, you know, just not having our parks and trees fall apart might actually be able to be funded.
I'm just curious if, I mean, my guess is that you've got lots of $0.06.
I mean, is $0.06 really enough to make sure that the libraries don't fall into disrepair? I mean, is $0.04 really enough? That's a great question.
You know, I would never turn down additional possible additional funding.
We are currently, you know, the draft, the $0.04.
We could do that and do a 20% and something larger and pull for both of those.
Is the $0.04 the 20%? That slide didn't have like the dollars.
Is $0.04 the 20% and the 15% was like $0.03? Okay.
Thank you for that and another one for your direction.
I personally would like to pull on $0.06.
I think that there is some wisdom in having similar measures for similar things be similar.
And to that point, I also am curious about the differences between measures.
They're going to have a menu.
They're going to be looking at a lot of different options.
Differences between measures that are actually for similar things could be viewed as a reason to say no.
I would like to pull on the $0.04.
It does make up for some of the negative effects, long-term effects of prop 13 where residential taxpayers have paid a higher and higher share of local taxes and commercial has paid less and less.
I would like to pull on the $0.04.
I'm curious people's thoughts.
I am genuinely worried that if they have the split role and this doesn't, that there will be people who think that's meaningful.
And who try to read something into that when in fact it's just that it's not.
The commission actually talked about that at one point before making the recommendation.
Gordon, I don't know if you're still available.
Yes, I am.
Let me, Councilmember Pond, I would like to pull on the $0.04.
It doesn't have one now.
The basis there is a true 50% increase rather than a 6% increase for what you're paying, existing taxes.
That would be a big hit.
It would make the parks tax look higher.
It would make the parks tax look higher for a resident and 50% higher, which would be $0.30 per square foot.
But for the parks tax, you're starting at a basis of zero.
You're not adding a 6%.
The basis is 20.
It's a much bigger hit.
We discussed it at the commission.
Pardon? You're saying it's a bigger percentage increase.
The basis now is the same for residential and commercial and business.
Business owners would see a much higher increase.
They wouldn't oppose it.
Even though they might say the 4.5 or 5 cents would be fine.
I guess my concern here is two measures next to each other.
One that has something that the recent experience tells us that there are some voters who are opposed to it.
The other one is the comparison is the problem.
The parks tax would be a much bigger impact on the business owners, even if the base was the same.
They're not paying the extra 50%.
That's not in their basis.
I think it's worth thinking about.
I think it's worth thinking about small business owners and therefore they might organize a lot of opposition.
I think it's worth thinking about.
People read into difference in different ways and often will see.
I think it's worth thinking about that.
I appreciate and do understand your point.
I think I still have the concern to some extent, but we don't have to resolve it here.
It could be solved the other way around.
I don't know.
I don't want to address that.
I see your point.
The one we have already doesn't have the split role.
The commercial would be bigger.
Thank you.
That's helpful.
Thank you.
I have a question.
Providing whatever is feasible, I would like to pull on something more than the 20% increase.
I don't know.
What is 6 cents as a percent increase.
I think we're going to have to get back to you on that.
Let me see if I can do that before the end of the meeting.
That would be wonderful.
Full support to move it forward.
Some small thoughts.
On measure P, I think the overall success that we're having with our homeless programs, we have relieved so much suffering in rehousing almost 1700 people.
And, you know, sometimes when we think about a percent, that's just a number.
But I think the fact that people are able to rebuild their lives and that is a direct result of measures O and P and of the incredible work that our staff has done and our leadership to implement.
It will be a terrible thing for measure P not to be renewed.
I think there's a lot of potential here in potentially making changes.
I support having the threshold be at 1.5 million.
And I think that the formula that we've been using to recalculate that every year, it ends up being skewed to 1.5 million.
It's not working as we had intended.
And I would like to propose that we drop it and we simply keep our threshold at 1.5 million.
And we not recalculate that every year.
I did some analysis and I want to make sure that we're not recalculating that every year and that we're not recuperating as we had hoped and expected.
So that is one thing I'd like to look at.
I very much support a tiered approach.
Also thank finance again for the suggestion.
I would like to suggest that at 1.5 million, we stick with our 2.5% transfer tax, which is what we have now under measure P, that at 5 million, we go to 3%.
That is my suggestion.
I see the mayor nodding.
Is that something that you think we should ask our staff to look at and potentially pull? I do.
It's in line with my prior comments about looking at raising it only for higher value items.
I do want to interject for one second.
The clerk is informed.
We have to be out at 2.
We have 3 other colleagues that would like to speak.
I hope that can be part of whatever motion is made, mayor.
Stick with 1.5, get rid of the 2.5% and then go to 3.
I would like to suggest that under measure P, recalculation every year, keep the same rate from 1.5 to 5 million.
And then at 5 million, go to 3%.
At above 10 million, go to 3.5%.
I would be interested in having that.
I would like to know what my colleagues think.
I don't know if we should go ahead and pull on it.
One of the options is to raise it to 3.5% starting at 1.5 million.
I do not support that.
I do not think we should spend our time pulling on it.
There are a lot of home prices in Berkeley.
I would want the increase to come in at a higher level.
If others don't support it, I don't think we should spend our time pulling on it.
I would like to know what my colleagues think.
I would like to put something on the ballot that increases it by a percentage for what is now an average transaction.
I wanted to clarify that.
I wanted to speak quickly about the arts.
I spoke to a couple of people who came to me.
They came to Aurora theater.
Unfortunately, they don't have representation.
They came to me a little bit late.
They are going to cease operations this year if they cannot get their jobs back.
They are not in the same position.
They are feeling the continued impacts of COVID.
They have not recovered yet.
They told me anecdotally that freight and salvage are in dire straits or close to that.
They are in dire straits.
If we lose these organizations in the next two years, we will not get them back.
This is not just like we would like a little extra money for the libraries.
This is like the libraries would shut their door if they didn't get their jobs back.
We are going to continue to be a cultural and artistic place.
It is existential.
It is across the board.
It is our small arts organizations and the larger ones.
I think we need to do an arts rescue and maintenance measure.
It is not fully formed yet, but some of the ideas.
First of all, it would be like measure P and the sugar beverage tax.
It would be a general fund tax with a representation that we would strive to use those monies to support arts.
It would be a fund that would go to the arts.
Again, not done yet.
Maybe 80% of the funds would go to rescuing arts organizations.
Maybe there is a surge in money in the first three or five years and then it comes down a little after that.
It would be a fund that would go to the arts.
It would be a fund that would go to the arts.
There is a lot of demand for more diversity and culturally diverse arts to be supported in our schools.
With a very small amount of money.
If we were able to raise a huge amount of money, maybe $250,000 or $500,000 a year, we could significantly augment our support of festivals, street fairs, and that kind of lively one-time events that make such a difference.
We also would have a little bit of a fund that would go to the arts.
This would be to create a little capital fund, maybe a revolving loan fund to support capital needs.
That is something that will have to come maybe in the next week or two, but I did want to put it on the agenda.
I think we have a lot of questions.
We should extend sugary tax.
I know she is out of town.
I want to thank her for participating remotely.
We will come back to Councilmember Hubbard.
This is just the survey item, correct? I will say I certainly support surveying about the parks.

Segment 7

and appreciate the ideas of having it align with the library, although it seems like this 4 cents has already gone through some input from the Parks Commission.
I think just to keep things simple, we can just keep it at what has been proposed and ask about that.
I would like to see us ask something about the arts.
I don't know what form that question will take.
Most of my comments are about Measure P.
Is Mr.
Radu still available? First, I want to say that I wholeheartedly support Measure P.
I want to see it extended in some form.
The reasons why are related to what Mr.
Radu talked about in his presentation.
One, it has created resources for us to be competitive to draw down key state resources.
We successfully secured state home key funding because of our Measure P matching funds.
We successfully secured encampment resolution funds from the state because we had funds available via Measure P.
I think these permanent housing solutions are really driving the reduction in unsheltered homelessness that we're seeing.
We have a very strong story to tell the voters in terms of why it's worthy to extend this tax.
But I didn't hear from you, Mr.
Radu, why we should do it this election year, just given that it's not expiring for four years, not until January 1st, 2029.
My thought, I'm looking at what the sugary sweetened beverage tax advocates are talking about.
They're coming to us now because it's going to expire in two years.
Is there a reason why we're thinking about this four years in advance? Thank you, Council Member.
I appreciate the question and it's a very good one.
I would just reflect the mayor's earlier comments, which I think were spot on.
These programs are complex for serving people.
In the scenario where alternative funding can't be identified and we need to think about or contemplate making cuts to programs, finding alternative places for people to be and ramping down those programs.
I hope we don't have to do that, but in that scenario, it takes years of planning.
To the mayor's earlier point, just identifying the funding or seeing whether or not extending Measure P is an option now, will either give us the certainty that Measure P will be there in the long run and we can continue to plan and fund around these programs, or if it is not going to be there, we'll have at least four years to find other funding sources and or look seriously and make difficult decisions about what needs to be cut and how we relocate people out of those programs.
Just feeling the need to have an even longer runway.
The reason why I asked that is just because we are seeing the eight local revenue measures that we know of to date.
I think the mayor may have mentioned two other local affordable housing bonds.
That's why I was thinking, is there some way for us to hold off on this one so we don't overwhelm the voters? I personally am not worried.
I know you can't just go on my political instinct.
I'm not worried about this one because it's not a sales tax increase, not a utility users tax increase.
This is only going to affect somebody who chooses to sell a property, so I'm not as worried about it.
But this is just again, just about a survey.
I think it's fine to collect this input and get an understanding of the, it sounds like there's interest in these tiers.
I do want to say I've seen other cities have transfer tax tiers as well and using five million as a threshold.
I think San Francisco may use 10 million as well.
I think those numbers were suggested as thresholds.
I did just want to say that keeping our lowest threshold at 1.5 million, it sounded like there was some interest in keeping it at 2.5 percent.
It's certainly not going above that.
I actually wanted to suggest considering bringing it back down.
When I look at what Oakland is doing and what San Francisco is doing, nobody is charging 2.5 percent for the median home in their city.
That's just a lot higher.
They're at 1.5 percent actually.
If we're going to go higher for higher valued properties, we're inevitably going to raise more.
I know it's volatile, I know it's uncertain, but I'm not saying we have to bring it all the way down to 1.5 percent, but I know we have to make these decisions quickly, but I just wanted to throw that out there that now 1.5 is the median.
I think when this was initially discussed back in 2016, the intent was top third and now we're saying, basically, the average person trying to buy a home is going to get hit with a higher transfer tax.
Remember, 2.5 percent off of 1.5 million is not an insignificant amount of funds.
I want us to think about maybe aligning more closely with what other cities are doing, but then looking at the higher tiers.
I also want to say, this could raise more.
It's hard to tell.
I don't know what Mr.
Oyinkami would say, but I want to raise a point that I think we need to think about as we get the survey results, which is, is our staff prepared for 30-40 million of revenue from an extension and an increase every year when interest rates go down? Because that's what you showed, Mr.
Adu, with some of those increases.
I know we're talking about a little slightly different formula, but do we have the staff capacity to handle that? Do we have the long-term planning to know how to manage those properties? I will say personally, as the council member who approved two home key sites, I am worried about 20 years from now when those properties are in disrepair and there's no funding available to rehabilitate them.
That's going to be an issue.
I just want us to be careful about how much we're taking on.
Because I know we always think more revenue for homelessness is a good thing, but we have to make sure that we can manage it.
I think I haven't seen that.
How are we going to manage more resources? What are we going to do exactly with more resources? One of the budget committees I asked about, are we thinking about homelessness in terms of augmenting prevention slots, augmenting shelter slots, and augmenting permanent housing slots in the ratio that regional organization has talked about? I forgot the name, but they talk about ratio of four to two to one.
Are we looking at that? I feel like we need to do a little bit of planning work if we're expecting to get a lot more money.
We may get a lot more money even with the rate the same, even if we don't do the tiers because of lowered interest rates at some point.
I want us to be successful.
I want us to continue to show a reduction in homelessness.
But I think we just have to be careful about how much we're taking on and whether we can do it in an effective way.
That's what I'll say about that.
It seems like we can figure out what question we want to ask on homelessness.
I think that was pretty much all I had.
I just want to say generally a word of caution.
It all sounds great.
Thank you to the library folks who gave their presentation.
It all sounds like small amounts, six cents per square foot, four cents per square foot.
The transfer tax is a little different because it's not per square foot.
Remember, the voters are also going to see two significant parcel taxes for streets that are going to be hundreds of dollars a year.
And when they look at the totality of this, and they also look at the regional affordable housing bond and the state affordable housing bond, and who knows what else, they're going to start looking at the total bill.
And what I'm worried about is people just deciding, I really just can't afford this $1,500 plus increase.
I have to vote no on all of this.
That's what I'm worried about.
And that's why I'm asking if some of this can wait, because I'm worried about overwhelming the voters with 10 plus revenue measures.
So that's my word of caution.
This is just a survey, but I think we have some difficult choices to make.
And even with the library tax, my understanding is their deficit doesn't start right away.
So we have to think about how much overwhelm we're going to cause for the voters.
And not everybody can absorb 1,000 plus increases to their property tax bills.
So with that, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak.
And I do have to sign off as well.
I'm sorry, I can't hear Council Member Humbert's comments.
Thank you.
No problem.
Actually, we need to take a vote though, so I will stay for that, correct? We weren't requesting a vote, but we were hearing- Oh, you don't need a vote, okay.
We wanted to get your feedback in terms of the questions for the survey.
If we don't see that there's broad support for this tiered approach, we probably would need a vote at that point then.
Okay, it sounds like there's consensus on looking at a tiered approach.
Council Member Kessarwani, are you okay with asking a question about the arts? Yeah, I don't know what the question is exactly though, but if there's space to ask, we might as well get more info.
Okay, thank you.
I know Council Member Weingraf supports that as well.
Council Member Humbert.
Yes, thank you, Mr.
Mayor, and thank you for everybody, everybody who presented here today.
And I want to start with Council Member Kessarwani's last point, which I think is really salient.
The ballot is going to be incredibly crowded.
As the mayor mentioned, we also have the state and county housing measures probably.
I'd remind everybody that we lost Measure L just a couple of years ago, and that's a concern of mine.
I do have a real concern that voters are going to look at all this and say, this is so expensive, I'm going to vote it all down, and 100% of nothing is nothing.
I do support all of these measures.
I'm just worried about the crowded nature of the ballot.
As to Measure P, I really do support this graduated scale of percentages.
I think maybe 1.5, which is the average price now of a Berkeley house, as I understand it, maybe shouldn't be the threshold.
Maybe it ought to be a little higher.
But I guess I don't have a complete objection to keeping it at 1.5.
But I do like the notion of a graduated scale, maybe at 1.5 million, 3 million, 5 million, 10 million, something like that going on up.
Maybe 10 million is the top.
So I wondered if we could wait on reauthorizing the Measure P, but listening to the mayor's concerns and the comments of Mr.
Radu, it sounds like we probably ought to get it started sooner rather than later, even if we have four years before it sunsets.
The SOTA tax is a great thing.
I think the SOTA tax has been a smashing success for all the reasons people discussed and it's done great stuff.
We can't expand it because of state preemption, as I understand it.
But it does make sense to probably get it reauthorized extended two years ahead of its sunset.
A lot of my questions about the potential for delay on these things have been answered today.
As to the arts measure, we got to do something, I agree.
We don't have any cinemas left except the one in my district, the Elmwood, which is precious.
I love it.
There's some good movies on there this weekend, incidentally.
Everybody should patronize the Elmwood.
But otherwise, we have no cinemas downtown.
The draw is largely our restaurants.
Our cultural institutions really are the theaters and the performance venue at Freight and Salvage.
We got to do something to keep our downtown vital, and to bring people in to spend money and to acquire culture.
They're great institutions, I love them all.
I don't know exactly what form that takes, but I think we got to do something and I'm on board in that regard.
Looking here at my scrawled notes, parks, I didn't address the issue of parks.
Mr.
Ferris's spreadsheet, I've taken a look at it.
He's asking for a modest expansion in the parks tax, and then we're in the black.
I'm not sure that we need to do any more than what Mr.
Ferris asks for.
I think we're in good shape once we do that.
If we need more money later, six years down the road, maybe we could do another expansion in a less crowded ballot.
I think that's it for my comments.
I'm really cautious about the crowded nature of the ballot.
I don't know if there's anywhere that may not be a way we can avoid that, but I worry.
Anyway, thank you.
Thank you.
I know Councilor Bartlett's also video conferencing.
He said, I agree with Council Member Weingraf's comments.
I know that he also feels very strongly about the importance of continuing the soda tax.
Council Member Luna-Parr.
I also agree with Council Member Weingraf's comments.
Okay.
With respect to the soda tax, we do need to have our city attorney start working on drafting that.
There are two approaches.
One is just an extension for another 12 years, and the other is just having it continue in perpetuity.
That's a pretty simple thing to draft.
Perhaps we can have both options come back to us for consideration.
As a matter of city attorney, is that something that your office can work on? Okay.
Then with respect to the survey, that's what we need to go through.
I think I didn't hear any objection to adding a question about arts, supporting the arts.
I think the challenge is that there are various options.
We can do a TOT, we can do a parcel tax, San Francisco does a TOT.
But maybe some question about the importance of, would you be willing to pay a tax to provide critical emergency funding to keep our arts organizations going? We can work on the language, but you heard Council Member Hahn about the concepts.
I'm happy to talk to them.
We'll need something that's similar to ballot language that we can test so it's parallel to the others in the survey.
Then I would just, if I may, Mayor, sorry, just to note because I know we're dashing out here, but we obviously need to make these decisions quickly for the survey.
It sounds like we are adding tiered options for the real estate transfer tax, so that adds some time, and we would be adding this arts funding measure, which adds some time.
We may be a little over if that's the case, and then we'll look at if there's a question or two we can find to cut in like the other issue questions.
Working at increasing the tax, the Measure P transfer tax across the board, I don't think I heard any support for that.
No, so no across the board.
The only options would be renew as is or renew with tiers, or do you not want renew as is? You just want renew with tiers or expand to tiers? Renew with tiers.
Okay.
Well, then that won't add time.
But then the additional arts funding measure would add a little time, but we have that time to play with, I think.
Okay.
Just to answer Council Member Han's question.
Right now, the 20 percent increase with the commission represented is a little over four cents.
Increase adds $3.6 million.
A six cent increase is a 28 percent increase, and it adds $5.1 million to the parks tax.
Hold that.
How many questions are we serving about the parks tax increase? Right now, we have two, a 15 percent and a 20 percent increase.
We could replace that with a 20 and a 28 percent without adding time if you wanted to do that.
Yeah.
Why don't we do that? Let's do that.
Then I think you heard that there was a desire to look at, with respect to the tiers, over one and a half million, potentially starting at five, having a different rate.
I think we need to take into consideration.
Well, I think at the present time, we should survey keeping the current tax at, I think the two and a half percent at 1.5.
I think we need to run the numbers around.
If we were to reduce it beyond 2.5, what would that yield? Because I think the distinction between Berkeley and San Francisco or Oakland, is we don't have that as many larger transactions.
That's why they're able to do it and get as much revenue at a much higher tier, and it's graduated at those higher tiers because they have a lot of huge buildings that are selling.
We don't have that in Berkeley.
It's really smaller properties, but we've had some big transactions that have happened in recent years, which is why we got 20 million in one instance in terms of tax revenues.
I think we need to run the numbers.
I certainly think we can explore that, but we got to run the numbers.
But I think you heard some ideas around that.
Mr.
Redou, and Councilor Lunapar.
Thank you, Mayor.
I'm taking notes here to help make sure we get the wording for the questions right.
I just want to make sure that I think I'm hearing for two questions for measure P.
One is to continue the existing tax rate, but set the threshold at 1.5 million with no sunset.
Then a second question would be to continue the existing tax rate at 1.5 million with no sunset, and then adding some tiers at 5 million and 10 million.
Is that right? That's correct.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Councilor Humbert.
Yeah, I think 3 million.
I think that makes sense in terms of what I'm seeing houses.
3 million.
I think that makes sense.
In my neighborhood and Claremont.
1.5, 3, 10, and let's go to 20 to catch the big ones.
Okay.
Well, there was only so much time in the survey.
That's the issue.
But I think keeping it at two and a half percent for one and a half, and then looking at tiers starting at 3 million.
Yeah.
Someone could just instruct us on exactly which tiers, and I would say just having a larger number of tiers.
It doesn't make the question that much longer, but it makes it more complicated, which may reduce the level of support as people get confused by it.
Yeah.
I mean, I think starting at 3 million to say 10 million, an additional what? Half a percent or 1 percent? 3 million to 10 million, half a percent, so it's 3 percent.
Then above 10 million, an additional- 3.5.
An additional 4 percent.
Yeah.
An additional half a percent or a full percent at 10 million? 3 to 10.
We're brainstorming here because this idea just came up today.
3 to 10, half a percent, so it'd be 3 percent, from 2.5 to 3 percent.
Then above 10, it would go to 3.5 percent.
You got that? Or 4.
I mean, we haven't crunched the numbers.
We're just getting input.
We're going to have to crunch some numbers when this comes back from finance around how many properties are sold at X number of units, et cetera, X value.
But this is really just to get information so we can make decisions.
It's really I think it's what do people think about the idea of a tiered tax, basically.
I think that's what we want to hear what people have to say.
We have to pick what numbers we put into that survey question.
So let's make sure we're clear on what those are.
Yeah.
Got it.
Okay.
Councilor Lunapar? Would it be possible to ask a question about how many measures people are willing to support? If we put eight measures on the ballot, if they'd be willing to vote for all eight, or if we put 10, would they be willing? Yeah.
That unfortunately doesn't work very well as a survey question.
Because people are hard at projecting themselves into a hypothetical situation.
The way you would test that is to literally put all eight of those measures in the survey, but we don't have time to do that.
I think something along those lines would be really helpful.
I don't know what it could actually be phrased, how it could actually be phrased.
Yeah.
I mean, the problem is they'll say yes or no, that that matters, but we don't know how to translate.
We wouldn't know how to translate that into, does that mean they will not vote on this particular measure, yes or no? It's absolutely true that it's an issue.
The more things there are that might affect how people vote, the way to simulate that is to have them actually hear that list of measures.
We could list them and ask, here are the measures you would see.
Now, how would you vote on this Berkeley measure and that Berkeley measure? But again, that's adding a few questions in terms of time.
Or depending on how many, it doesn't have to necessarily list all of the measures that we're proposing, but rather list the number of measures and then we can decide which ones are the most or least helpful.
I don't know.
You can ask the questions.
We could, but I'm afraid that wouldn't tell you much because people would say, well, what are they for and how much are they? They'll have a hard time answering the question because they won't know what we're talking about.
I think direction has been provided.
This was a good discussion.
We need to leave the room, so I'll make a motion to adjourn.
Second.
Thank you.
Is Councillor Kisarwani on? No.
Is there any objection to adjournment? Hearing no objection, the motion carries unanimously.
Thank you.