OpenCityCouncil

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Segment 5

to put this together, but that we take these as informational for now and that we redo the RRV in November for the mid-year budget process.
There's a couple benefits I see of that.
One is that the D4 council member would be seated at that time.
It also has the benefit of not requiring the council members who did do this to redo it under a very tight deadline to get this done for the budget process coming up.
And I also think that now that we see publicly what everyone else's score is, I'm a little bit hesitant about redoing it right away.
I don't want to suggest people are gonna be gaming it, but that could be a possibility.
So that is a motion I have for the supplemental we receive that we that we receive it as information for now and that we we request the ability to redo the to do the RRV again in November.
We'll get more referrals between then and now, between now and then, and then we can have the full council at that time do it.
So that's what I have.
Thank you.
Council Member Casuani, can I suggest that you make a motion to accept this RRV report, if you want, with the amendments that Council Member Hahn is suggesting and then include your what you just said as a second part of the motion.
Okay, so I motion to accept the RRV rankings as presented with the amendment of eliminating items 50 and 57 from the list and combining 16 and 17 with additional review of what can be done to promote artist housing and to further refer to the City Manager to conduct RRV again in advance of the mid-year budget process.
And at that time include.
And at that time all the the current council members have an opportunity to to weigh in.
Okay, thank you.
Does that work? Okay.
Okay, thank you.
We have a motion on the floor in a second.
Yes, Council Member Taplin.
What would that mean for staff if we adopt these now and then do it again in November? So, if I can, Council Member Taplin, what will happen to the referrals, let's speak to that first.
So in terms of staff, we already have a bundle of referrals that are already in place.
So, for now, what this would mean to me is a tabling of these until November because I don't know that there's any that we're going to be able to work on right now.
It depends.
Because planning is sitting in the top seat and planning's plate is pretty full already.
I don't see them being completed or even the process being started on them before October.
So, if it waits until then, it won't affect any work because we probably won't get to start any work right away.
Thank you very much.
I'll just say that for my part, I recognize we have a vacancy.
We have just filled a vacancy, which I'm grateful for.
I do have to say on behalf of my district and my constituents, the rest of us have shown up to work and have continued to do so.
And this, I don't want people in the community, wherever they live, to feel like their priorities are not important and that we have to keep things on hold because some of us have left.
So, I do want to be clear.
I didn't mean to make it to state it as if it's because of our pause, if you all decide to take a pause.
I really don't see that we're going to be able to start or begin anything on this referral list, even in the top 20, probably until October.
So, I just want to be clear about that.
It's not, it wouldn't, it wouldn't start before then, even if you wait it.
Thanks for the clarification.
I didn't mean to say that that's what I was hearing from you, but I did want to voice frustration with, I did want to give voice to people who feel like we've been put on hold on ice because of the vacancies.
Council Member Bartlett.
Thank you, Madam Vice Mayor.
So, Madam City Manager, so when you say that this entire basket of work won't be addressed or touched until October, do you mean that as a matter of course or just the ones that affect like planning and, you know, the public works, the parts of the city that are inundated with requests? So, if there are projects listed in the top 20 in this report, it's usually the ones that we try to get to, but if it's jumbled with public works having seven of them and city managers having five, we're not going to be able to launch them.
So, what I want to just be clear about is the departments already have huge amounts of referrals from prior referrals and strategic plan initiatives and regular work on their desk.
So, adding these new 57 referrals, they're going to have to come in under your already existing referrals.
So, they won't start, more than likely, before October.
So, you can take a look at them.
If there's one on here particularly you'd like to point out, and now the only way that I see it starting sooner is if it's a part of a project that's already underway, something that they can pull in and move forward on.
Those can go forward, but I can't acknowledge what those are today, but I will tell you that if they can combine something with an existing project so that we don't, you know, be too redundant with our work, they will do that.
Okay, and then because one of my big ones is not going to one of the major divisions of the city, one that has, at least on this list and most lists, not that many referrals.
So, I'm just curious if it's going to also have to wait.
And then if we do this again, so the decision we make tonight, this is ranking these for the basket for October, does this get undone and then re-basketed later, right? So, I'm going to ask Mark for Mark's assistance on this, but let me first say that you can do whatever you'd like.
You can take this list and keep it, and we can have it as a solid list, and this is the list that we're working from.
You can come back in October, there'll be new referrals coming in, and if we haven't started working on these, they'll be back in the queue again, and then it would get re-ranked.
Right.
But I'll just make sure that that's what would happen, Mark, in terms of your process.
Yes, yeah, Council certainly has the option to adopt this list tonight, and if there are any that, as the City Manager said, can get wrapped into an existing project or one is related, belongs to a department or division that has capacity, however helpful that might be, it can start to get worked on.
So, you can adopt this list and then see what it looks like again in October.
And I do want to say it's really wonderful to see Mr.
Clerk more engaged.
You have been in the last couple meetings.
I like to hear you speak.
I like to have your energy.
It's really, really wonderful.
You come out of your shell.
I like it.
And, you know, to the whole City team, and again, thankful to a former Council Member Drosty.
I remember when this first came around, to make sense of all of our work, I noticed that we've all curtailed our number of items to allow staff the time to deliver on these things, and it's been coming.
It's been coming.
So, thank you for that.
And so, but again, the critique I had all those years ago is resurfacing right now in this moment, because the items you see reflected in this list represent themselves.
Years of work and years of waiting by constituents and years of effort to develop them in committee and community and to pass them, and then years to get it going again.
And so, it seems that somewhere in there is a lurking inequity where the people's work is thwarted after the fact, for like the third time.
And there's no way to redress that for the taxpayer, because they've already done their part.
You know, that's like turning on the water and then cutting off the faucet before it comes out the toothbrush.
That's not a great analogy.
It's getting late, but you know what I'm saying, right? It's just..
So, somewhere in there is, something's not appropriate.
I'd like to recognize Mayor Aragon now.
Thank you.
Well, Madam City Manager, I have a question with regard to how the approval of this referral list will intersect with the budget process, because some of these things require FTEs or funding to implement.
Will these things be on a budget referral list if we approve them? When will they be considered in the budget process? It's a little late now for this budget process, but we certainly could look at trying to push fast forward and get them onto a budget list for the Council, onto your budget referral list.
But it is, we're pretty late in the process now, but we certainly can try.
Some of them may already be on the budget list, on the budget referral list that you have in your possession now, but we'd have to go through and look at each and every one of the 57 and make sure that if there's a budget need assigned to it, that we add it to the list.
We can take a stab at trying to do that.
Sorry, Sharon Fredrickson, our budget manager, but I want to request that we take a look at the referrals if the Council adopts them this evening.
We'll need to take a look at the full list.
Thank you.
Well, you know, we discussed this, well, last week and on Monday, at the Budget and Finance Committee, that, you know, if we were to fund all of the existing budget referrals, not even including these proposals, we would have over a 40 million dollar deficit.
So, you know, it may be such that we aren't able to fund, maybe we can, maybe if something is a priority, we could fund it in June, or we defer it to the annual preparations process, or the FY 26 budget.
I just want to call attention to the fact that the Agenda and Rules Committee is working on a process to improve the Council's legislative system to align with the budget process, not just with the June budget process, with the AAO.
And so, this systems realignment process, which is something we've been talking about for years now, the Budget Committee, the Agenda and Rules Committee is working actively to come forward with a set of recommendations to bring to Council, hopefully sometime this summer, if not early fall, to put a new system in place.
So, this may, you know, I think we're envisioning that there'll be an RRV component, but we also have to keep that in mind that, you know, we may have an entirely new process that we're going to be implementing, you know, come the beginning of 2025, or the Council will.
I won't be here, I have five and a half months.
So, I really defer to you all about, you know, what you want to do, but I just think that's important.
I think we should move forward the list today, you know, I think out of respect to the Council members who've done a lot of work in putting forth these proposals, and I don't want to hold up the City Manager analyzing this list and ascertaining what could be done now.
I don't have a problem with taking a look at the list again in October, but I think we should move ahead with the list today.
Thank you, Mayor.
Mr.
Humbert, yes.
Thank you, Vice Mayor, and I'm going to raise an issue, maybe a personal concern, because it was Councilmember Bartlett's and my camera item that was ranked number one, which I was pleased about, but I do want to acknowledge Councilmember Lupara's concerns about the one D7 camera, which is right on the border of my district, D8, and her, you know, her concerns that her constituents weren't represented in connection with placement of that camera.
I want to point out it's in what's in the referral in the second tranche, which is not going to be done for who knows how long.
There's some cameras in our, in Councilmember Bartlett's and my referral in the first tranche that may get done sooner rather than later, simply because we're, in the original camera's referral, requires Envision's cameras posted along the state highways, excuse me, and we're having substantial delays caused by Caltrans and permitting with Caltrans and getting rights to install them on the right-of-way, and that's going to take a while.
Hence, some of the cameras on the second referral, Councilmember Bartlett's and mine, may move forward sooner because we have the funding for the original and can use them for the, you know, the cameras in our referral.
So I'd like it to go forward if only for that reason, if that makes sense.
Thank you.
Councilmember Bartlett.
So I actually have an alternative motion, and to be the same as Councilman Kesarwani's in all respects, except for removing the requirement to redo the RRV in September.
Second.
Can I make a comment? Yes.
Okay, so yeah, I, I wanted to, just a couple of thoughts after hearing other, other Councilmembers and the Mayor share.
One is that I did not intend for there to be any sort of expectation of pausing these rankings with the suggestion to, to do it again later.
And it sounds like to the extent that departments are able to pursue the top-ranked referral in their, for their department, they will.
So I assume that means that the cameras would proceed to the extent that Public Works has the capacity to do so.
The other issue that I think was raised is that the timing of this is difficult for incorporating into the June budget.
So there, it does seem that we need to do this at perhaps at a different point in the year for it to get properly incorporated.
So even doing it in September or October is, it sounds like it's too late for the mid-year process, but might be a good time for the June budget discussion.
So, so I, I think that that's another consideration here of when's the right time to do this so that it can actually be reflected in the budget.
We're usually about two months earlier in this process.
We're late with the process.
It's usually earlier.
It's usually.
Oh, so this year just happened to be late.
This year it's just late.
Okay.
Usually March for this process.
Okay.
Okay, well, I think I'm just, I'm just thinking if, if, if there, I mean, I, we don't have to do it again.
The, the, the, the proposal there was to give these other Council members an opportunity, but then again doing it in September, October means the Council members that may be elected in November don't have an opportunity.
So yeah.
So, so given all of that, I think I will, my mind's the main motion.
So I think I will just revise the motion to just do everything except the, the consideration of redoing it in October.
And instead we will request that we do it earlier in 2025 than what we're, than when we're doing it now.
So it sounds like that timeframe is like February to March.
That's correct.
Okay.
Who seconded the original motion? I did.
Is that okay with you? Is, I mean, are they now identical? Is that, or was there a difference between they're identical or are you asking for something different? I think mine, mine just was specifying that we will do it when we'll do it next.
So we'll do it in February, March 2025.
Whereas I, I think respectfully Council member Bartlett was simply saying, don't do it in September, but not specifying when we will.
That, I think that's it.
I'm happy to, to accept the changes.
I'm also more than happy to vote for the substitute motion, which is still on the table.
So, um, well, I, I think they're pretty close actually.
So I think if we can have one motion on the floor, that would be the, the most elegant solution.
Um, so I'll withdraw my motion.
Okay.
Council member Bartlett has withdrawn his motion.
You are the seconder, Terry.
So, um, point of, point of order, if I, even if I chose not to withdraw, it's already been withdrawn, correct? Like I don't have a, you don't know exactly how that works.
Like what happens if like the motioner withdraws with the seconder does not, like hypothetically speaking.
Well, I suppose the, the seconder could make a new substitute motion if they wanted to.
So substitution, we moved.
So you're keeping it? Keeping it, yeah.
Okay.
But it needs a second.
Now I'm totally confused.
Well, all right.
I, uh, I accept the withdrawal of the substitution.
Great.
Thank you.
Council member Hahn, do you want to say something? Yeah, I just, I appreciate, you know, um, it's always, I always like it when we actually have a conversation and back and forth and we all listen to each other and we get somewhere.
Um, it's, it's good.
Uh, I just wanted to say that I, um, I am very sorry that people chose to resign from this council.
Um, those resignations were for different reasons.
Um, I'm very unhappy that in the case of one of the council members who resigns, my understanding is that, uh, they received a lot of pressure, um, threats of a recall and I'm completely opposed to recalls in general.
Um, and, um, I don't think that's good for democracy.
Recalls aren't good for democracy.
People resigning from council isn't good for democracy.
We had another council member who resigned and what we're seeing here is the fallout of that disservice to the community.
Um, the whole package, um, I think is a disservice.
Um, we have Aurora Theater here who were left hanging because there's no council member.
And, um, I think we all know that we, you know, we get emails that come to all council and we get emails that come to all council members.
And, um, I think by habit, if it's not something in our district, we make the assumption that the council member who does represent the district in which the issue has arisen, it's just going to pick it up.
And that's what usually happens.
But this didn't happen this time because there's no council member in that spot.
And, you know, I think, um, I think that, um, I think that, um, I think that, um, I think that this is a discussion where it mattered.
It mattered that people quit the council.
And this is, you know, the clerk has, um, had to take a huge amount of time and effort to run 2 special elections.
There's monetary cost, but it's a very, very difficult process.
And, um, you know, this work that council member Bartlett is talking about that people spend half a year here developing an item and then getting it through a committee and then getting it before council and then getting it approved and then it goes through this RRB process.
And now we're supposed to delay it again.
I, you know, the, it is a very difficult process.
And, um, actually, the real problem is that representation matters.
And when people abandon their duties or are pushed into it, there are enormous costs.
And so asking our city clerk to do the RRB again.
I think I started my comments by thanking him and thanking the clerk's for doing the RRB process.
But I think it's a very, very difficult process.
And there's an extensive work that goes into this process.
And so, you know, I think doing the whole thing again, and we've all agreed on this.
So I'm preaching to the converted here.
Um, I'm just really reflecting on how disruptive all this has been to our city organization and to the Democratic Party.
And, um, you know, I think, you know, the people that are here every day at every meeting doing our work, um, are here to do.
So I'm very happy that, um, we are landing where we are.
And I, I support, I support the motion.
Thank you.
Just remember, um, council member Okay.
I'm good.
I'm ready to vote.
Okay.
I would like, um, for you to repeat the motion.
Keeping me on my toes.
Okay.
So the motion is to adopt the RRB as presented with the modifications of removing 50 and 57.
And the, this sort of, um, I think the city manager will continue to work on those, I think.
And then 16 and 17 are combined with, um, the added language around other other ways to promote artist housing.
And then that we will, that we will just to specify that we are going to do this again in early 2025 so that it does not happen again.
Okay.
So the motion is to adopt the RRB as presented with the modifications of removing 50 and 57 as February to March.
Great.
Okay.
And who is, who is the seconder of that motion? Council member Hahn.
Yes.
Okay.
Great.
Okay.
Clerk, please call the roll.
And is there, there was no seconder to the new substitute motion.
Okay.
Okay.
Can I make a point of clarification? Separate from the, um, you know, attempt to include District 7's, um, rankings, I, I kind of, I want to talk about a specific item on here and kind of my personal frustration.
Um, I'm very saddened by the, some of the things that we've heard from the community.
Um, one of the things that we've heard from innovative policies and referrals is surveillance cameras.
Last week, we heard from many community organizations who are in desperate need of these very resources.
We heard from community workers who have not seen a raise in nearly 20 years.
We heard from black and brown youth about the incredible difference that junior jackets made in their lives.
And from the volunteers who run the program on top of their nine to five-year-old children.
We heard from a number of community organizations who are in desperate need of these resources.
We heard from a number of community organizations who are in desperate need of these resources.
We need to put money into safer streets.
We need bike infrastructure and safe pedestrian crossings and dignified streets that allow for many different forms of mobility.
We need more housing and we need to make sure that our zoning encourages it.
We need strengthened environmental regulation.
Council's referrals over the past year that have reflected all of these needs.
We need to make sure that our city is not the only place in the world where we are.
We need to take responsibility of our reputation.
And I have been so inspired by the creative and innovative and imaginative solutions that this body has developed to better the lives of our community.
The many other incredible ideas and projects that my colleagues and their teams have put forward could fundamentally change the future of the city.
And I believe that cameras and increased resources for the police will not.
And it certainly does not reimagine public safety in the Berkeley.
So I'm really excited about this.
And I hope that we can revalue this list and really put our money where our values are.
Whenever this comes up next.
Okay.
Sorry.
Finally, this referral with a camera location considered for future potential camera installation in district seven at telegraph and Dwight.
As explained earlier was introduced and passed originally without a district seven council member.
It is currently closed parks and I'm really concerned that this will worsen criminalization of our own on house neighbors.
And for this reason, if the camera and telegraph telegraph and Dwight.
And to my knowledge, there's no ongoing history of violent crime at this intersection.
Although unfortunately they have, there have been multiple allegations of community members being harassed for sitting on sidewalks and entering the currently closed parks.
And I'm really concerned that this will worsen criminalization of our own on house neighbors.
And for this reason, if the camera and telegraph telegraph and Dwight will be included in a later truncheon anyway, I respectfully request that it be removed from the item.
Thank you.
And that concludes my presentation.
I do have a motion for a referral referral process that includes the possibility of a camera on telegraph and Dwight.
Thank you.
Well, we were a point of order.
We were in the middle of roll call.
City clerk.
What are the rules.
Well, You know, I defer to the chair.
I hadn't.
I'm sorry.
I have one question about the.
Removal of the one.
The one referral that was marked for removal.
The Kia car theft.
So that wanted to get included into the motion that could happen as well.
That could be included in the motion because.
It's no longer needed.
I'm not sure what number it is, but it's not included in the motion.
It's not included in the motion.
Including from the city of Brooklyn.
Okay.
So given that I will amend my motion to remove the Kia item.
I'm not sure what number it is, but 55.
Item 55 is also removed.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
I think I have to accept that.
Right.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay.

Segment 6

Segment 7

What are some of the potential resource constraints facing that work? Are there things that are stalled or that require substantial changes to state law that we can move over resources from to stand up a UBI program since that is something we can do under our current circumstances? Thank you for that question.
I believe that's a question for me.
We're in the process of operationalizing that component number 10.
I do think there are opportunities to address some of the work that is available through the City of Berkeley.
However, that initiative has more than one component, so we want to fully vet that work to ensure that we're able to to really undertake it.
I do believe that we will be able to, but as I've indicated in the presentation, we've just hired our first assistant and I want to make sure that in that consideration, I also consider some of our limitations in our office as we relocate.
But I see a hand up from the Mayor.
So, Mayor, are you good? Yeah, I just want to get in the queue, so I don't want to interrupt Councilor Tacklin's questions.
Thank you very much.
In closing, I'll offer myself and my office as a partner in moving that forward, and I look forward to working with your office, Mr.
Brown, on this and many other things.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I look forward to that.
I'm going to call on the Mayor now.
He's three hours ahead of us, so he must be very tired.
Mayor, please.
Well, thank you very much.
I want to thank Kari and everyone in the City Manager's Office for your work in advancing this important initiative.
I want to address my comments to the Phase 3 deliverables and recommendations because this relates to the upcoming FY25-26 budget process.
I guess my first question is with respect to the approximate cost for different FTEs, is that the numbers represented on, I guess this is page 15 of the Reimagined Public Safety Status Report, Phase 3 deliverables and recommendations, staffing investments, is that the full cost of salaries and benefits for the position? Correct.
That's for the approximated costs cover FY25 and FY26 in its salary and benefits.
Oh, so that encompasses both fiscal years? Yes.
Okay, that's very helpful.
Thank you.
I want to address some of the positions in the Police Department, and I really want to thank the Police Department and the Police Chief for their sort of thoughtful recommendations that they presented to us in 2022, and really embracing the concept of reimagining public safety, thinking about how that can be operationalized within the department.
I think we've heard a critical need for the Community Service Officer Unit, but the biggest challenge that we have is that these positions are limited term.
They're only for two years, and so they have hired one person, but they have not been able to fill all six positions because these are limited duration positions.
So this is obviously something we'll have to consider in the context of the city budget process, but I think it's absolutely critical that we make these positions permanent.
There's enormous benefits to the department in terms of assigning calls for service that don't necessitate an armed response, and it could also assist in the department's community policing work as well.
And I think this is really critical as well to the staffing analysis the department's engaging right now, because part of that is also envisioning what is a role for an expanded CSO unit to help supplement our current staffing needs in our department.
So it's not only beneficial for whatever new structure that we're going to have, beneficial for whatever new structure we're going to put in place for the police department, but there's a critical need for it right now.
I've always said that it doesn't make sense that we send somebody with a badge and a gun to respond to a car blocking somebody's driveway or a loud party, and that we really want to use the very limited resources we have in our police department on those calls that necessitate an armed, a sworn response.
So I just want to call attention to that.
That's something that we will need to talk about in the context of the budget.
With respect to the public safety dispatchers, we funded this, but there have been staffing challenges in the dispatch unit, and so they have not been able to fill these positions.
I think we should really focus right now on trying to fill existing positions before we look at growing the dispatch unit.
So I just want to call attention to that as well.
And then specialized care unit.
So we funded this as a two-year pilot, and we need to figure out what we're going to do after that two-year pilot, albeit it didn't launch until last year.
So I guess my question is, is there money that's carrying over to continue the specialized care unit for FY25, or do we need to budget for FY25 and 26 now? Thanks, Mayor Ergine.
I can respond to that question.
So the current pilot program is funded through FY26, and so the budget request would be starting in FY, or sorry, through FY25, and the budget request would be starting in FY26.
So it lands right in the middle of the budget process.
Got it.
And so part of what we're using, I believe, is American Rescue Plan dollars to help fund this.
Contrary to what people may have represented, we don't have $67 million in unallocated American Rescue Plan dollars.
We have committed all those monies.
If we had $60 or $70 million of unallocated money, Lord knows we can use it for a variety of needs, but we have clearly prioritized funds for the implementation of specialized care units.
So I think one thing we're going to have to think about is how are we going to fund this long-term, because there is a critical need for this, while we're also, through the money that we're potentially allocating for the outreach and education, doing billboards, ads, publicizing the specialized care units so people know that this exists and people can use it.
I think we had a constituent who contacted, I think they called into the Budget Committee, this was last week, to talk about their experience with the specialized care unit, how much they really appreciated it.
So this is a resource we want more of our constituents to know about, so we need to raise a greater awareness of it.
But we also think about how we're going to fund this long-term, and one idea I know that you have all suggested is perhaps this could be supported through Medi-Cal reimbursement potentially, maybe there's money in Prop 1, we need to look at that, and then is there some amount of Measure P that could support this as well.
And I know one of the things that we had talked about at the time, and I'll wrap up, is do we bring it in-house or is it going to continue to be something that's external to the City by a contractor? And I think that's something we'll have to talk about after we get the analysis of the efficacy of the program, but certainly one thing we need to do is use this $25,000, probably need more than $25,000 for the RPS public education campaign to really lift up the specialized care unit and the work that's being done.
And lastly, I appreciate the effort to continue to include violence prevention and youth services.
We're not only just focused on how do we improve our approach to public safety in Berkeley, but we're also recognizing that upstream investments are absolutely critical to helping reduce crime and to improve public safety outcomes in our community.
So we have some decisions to make, and these requests are in addition to the Tier 1 requests and Council budget referrals as well.
But some of these things are things that we have to continue, and some of these things are things we have to think very carefully about in terms of how we're going to be able to support these ongoing expenditures.
But I appreciate the City Manager's commitment to advance some of these things for budget considerations here.
And with that, I will conclude, and I will be signing off very soon as well.
So it's 1251 a.m.
in Washington, D.C.
So thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak.
Night, night.
Okay.
Council Member Bartlett, did you want to speak? Thank you, Madam Vice Mayor.
You know, I too want to right away thank you, Carrie.
Thank you, City staff, City Manager, the community members who work so diligently on this reimagining process.
It's truly amazing, a gargantuan piece of work that is arranged and edible and being delivered.
It's incredible project management skills, and it's incredible to see.
I'm really thankful.
You know, Berkeley is home, of course, to modern policing, and now we are home of the next phase of modern policing.
It's really exciting.
Looking just briefly through all the elements here, it's all here.
Everything's here.
Everything that you want is here.
It's incredible.
So I want to get into the dispatch, the SCU.
But first, I do want to call out the transportation fines and fees analysis.
That's in phase two.
That's in progress.
And to be initiated or funded alternatives form of that.
So this is something that my office authored and passed in 2016 as one of our early items as a means of creating sort of a less of a moral hazard around fines and fees, right? So a moral hazard is when you're incentivized to do a destructive thing because you benefit from it.
And, you know, when your municipality is addicted to low-income people getting ticketed and booted, right, it creates kind of a cycle of disrepair, literally, where the person is now unable to work, get evicted, all that, et cetera, or more tickets, and then somehow you go to jail in this process.
So this is a big evolution in the nature of the state versus the resident, as opposed to punitive overlord to engagement partner in your well-being.
And so, you know, we all see now the result of 50 years of underinvestment and demobilization of mental health care facilities and mental health care treatment in America and California.
We see them on the streets, right? We see the people who need to be in care and treatment.
And so much of this work, so much of these deliverables and timelines are about shifting into a wellness approach, a health-based approach to public safety and public wellness, right, where the violence aspect of it is like one element of it.
And the overall sort of dis-ease, if you will, in the community, the low-level stuff, that's another element.
And keeping people from falling through the gaps due to financial mechanisms is integral to not adding to the burden of people who become debilitated from these fines and fees.
So I'm looking forward to learning more about how we come up with ways to turn someone who is a minor infractioner—is that a word, infractioner? Infractionator—into someone who can be motivated to be a contributor.
Right? I don't mean picking up trash on the highway, but there's a need for that.
But I mean, you know, it's something where someone becomes a contributor once they've offended the community, right? And non-violent stuff, of course, right? So, and then getting into it here, the SCU, of course.
This is my baby here.
I spent the day with the vendor, Bonita House, really wonderful team over there.
And so we got into it.
And, you know, so the next element of this, the next phase of this requires, you know, more transportation resources, the ability to be more places at once.
And this does get into dispatch, right? And so an enhanced phone number.
I'm not a big believer in people being able to memorize multiple phone numbers.
I think we do need to just dig in and, you know, access technology and create one number for everything and utilize computer-assisted dispatch to enable our support people and our dispatchers to make the calls.
You know, and for those who are watching and don't know this, the dispatch team is highly stressed.
And it's not like what you imagine, just rooting calls.
It's very stressful.
It's very emotional.
It's very, very painful.
And they suffer the same sort of PTSD and burnout that our first responders do.
It's a brutal job.
And so we want to take care of them, get them the help they need, the resources they need, the support they need, and not burn out their minds.
So there are techniques available to us, technologies available to us, to extend their ability to root calls without overburdening them.
And so I think I would encourage us to engage in some new models of dispatch.
And they do exist, and they are good.
And the single phone number, too.
I mean, really, let's keep one phone number.
In terms of funding for post-year 2026, the mayor got into it a bit.
So the mental health resources, the larger pools of capital available for healthcare apparatuses, I think that's what we're looking at here.
You know, one possible tool, we could tie the SCU to a partnership or a captive, federally qualified healthcare center and sort of draw a pool of resources around that entity and build from there.
There's a number of things we can do that are available on the federal level to support this project.
So people smarter than me will have to explore this.
And then I talked about the dispatch needs.
Yes, computer-assisted dispatch.
I wonder, Chief Sprigg, are you on the line still? Yes.
Well, it's like a seance, kind of, right? I feel like if I had a Ouija board right now.
So I hear a voice.
I hear a voice.
Yes.
Chief Sprigg, are you with us? Yes, you are.
Yes, you are.
So curious about the dispatch, right? And also, I do want to ask you while you're here, and this is not in the report, but recall the BFD program that I actually based the SCU off of, right? I forget what it's called.
And that was really an impressive pilot you guys did there.
This is where they had essentially the paramedic model, where they went out in an SUV and talked to people, got them connected to resources, got them connected.
And it was really, really powerful.
So I'm wondering, and you haven't been there now, with the SCU and the dispatch needs and the potential for the BFD component that inspired it, do you see the potential for BFD engaging the SCU? So, well, we engaged the SCU in a referral way when we encounter someone who requires SCU services.
But we still have a huge need that the SCU is not, that program is not going to meet, which is low-acuity medical calls, repeat medical callers, habitual system users who take a huge amount of our system resources and result in us having such a high ambulance unit utilization.
So we do need a separate medical-based unit for low-acuity calls, similar to what we did during the pandemic with the mobile integrated paramedic program.
And we are about to run a pilot version of that.
We've just gone out to RFP for that.
It's going to have a nurse practitioner on it, so we can hopefully bill Medicare, Medi-Cal, and see what the cost recovery will look like.
That's going to be a six-month pilot.
And then we'll, of course, report back to Council on findings.
For that and other resources like the SCU or even telemedicine, referring callers directly to clinics, we do have to get to that dispatch center that's capable of priority dispatch, the pre-auditing of emergency medical calls, and then providing emergency medical instructions over the phone.
That's the end goal of the dispatch needs analysis.
Right.
And those are great points, and thank you.
And this is what the people developing this program have to get to the core of.
And by the way, thank you for your work with my office on the development of our own pilot project, which will be announced to this Council fairly soon, which I can't give away, obviously, for Brown Act reasons, but it gets to the core of this issue.
There is a duplicative friction because, as the Chief said, there are like so many of the calls that the SCU would receive are also the high utilizers of the system.
So people that call the ER five times a week.
And so somewhere in there, we have what necessitates the paramedic response, and you have to figure out how to divide that response from the call where someone is not in that population.
And it's almost impossible to sort out before it happens.
So this is a deeper issue that we'll have to figure out.
But it's important because that population is what we're seeing on the streets.
And there are resources to get them into wellness.
So thank you.
Thank you, Chief.
And I think that's really the core of my points.
And also, I want to call out the Vision Zero Quick Build on Martin Luther King Jr.
Way.
This was a direct outcome of us leading a walking tour with city staff to highlight some of the dangerous streets in the district.
And it was a couple of years ago.
And now you see, people don't know what that means.
You drive down by the South Brickell Library, you see lots of orange things in the streets.
That's the Quick Build guiding you where to go for safety.
And it's a cheaper way to do it little bulb outs and things that hint where you should drive.
And it can turn a highway into kind of a byway.
At least that's my way of saying it.
So I want to thank you for that.
And that's a direct example of responsiveness by this department and to the people.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Bartlett.
Council Member Hunt? Yes, thank you.
Well, Council Member Bartlett addressed many of the things that I also commend I've been interested in, but with a lot more humor.
So I want to thank you for that.
And I will simply join myself to all of his comments.
But I did want to start with some praise.
I this is, this work is absolutely transformational.
What we are trying to do here as a city is change a paradigm.
And it's a paradigm that cuts across many departments, as we can see with all these department heads and representatives from across the city who are involved.
It's really revolutionary.
And I am really in awe of the work that's going forward.
I want to first very much thank the city manager, we put a large, messy, very aspirational, um, rolled up, um, omnibus item in her lap.
And then that was joined by some additional really great referrals, mostly coming from Council Member Bartlett and then Council Member Taplin that kind of filled out a couple of the areas that were only kind of lightly touched in that omnibus item and all of that joined to travel together.
Carrie is an exceptional project manager and her commitment and clarity about getting this work done.
It's like, I don't know, cutting through a jungle or something to actually try to figure out how you transform.
How you transform, not just the approach to public safety, but how you actually actualize that transformation within an organization through a series of programs and policies.
It's just an incredibly dense and challenging um, course to chart.
And it's incredible thing that our city is pursuing it in this way.
So I really want to thank the city manager.
I want to thank Carrie.
Obviously, there's tons of people who are involved in this.
You need an engine for something like this.
You need a level of commitment and clarity and focus that is hard to maintain in all that a city has to do.
And in particular, when we've been through the pandemic and other things that have really disrupted our organization.
And so I just, I'm very excited about this.
I would be surprised if there are other cities that have this kind of aspiration that are doing as well.
And I think Berkeley's really going to show how it's done again.
And I really want to thank you for that.
Thank my colleagues and everyone who contributed important programs and ideas and items to all of this.
I'm very excited about it.
I, you know, a lot, first of all, obviously the prevention side, we need to avoid crises, right? I mean, a lot of public safety traditionally has been thought of as like, how do you respond to a crisis? And the obvious answer to that is try to have less crises.
And we certainly have a lot of focus on that, but even in our response to crises, we have tended to have very limited resources to respond and everybody's been trained to the highest security.
So you have these incredibly trained, educated people like our police and our firefighters, and we send them out when you stub your toe, we send them out as the mayor noted, when there's a loud party or something, and they'll have to be trained all the way up to addressing, you know, a major catastrophe or a terrorist attack or whatever.
And we send those people to these very low acuity calls.
And then we also send them out for areas where they have some training, but it's not core to their training, like mental health crises.
And I've seen our police respond to mental health issues and they're among the best, but it's not the core of policing.
And so it's a little crazy that we ended up where we did as a society where we're throwing these high acuity resources to low acuity situations.
A lot more people experience a low level crime having, you know, the window on their car broken into or a pot stolen from their porch or something like that.
But we, all those people who have low level issues, they wait a long time to get any response and they may never get a response because our resources go to the higher acuity things.
So this whole idea of widely diversifying our response capabilities, it's a no brainer.
And it's kind of amazing that it wasn't done before, but it's not easy to forge what we have into that new system.
I truly believe that when we're done with this process, we will have less emergencies.
And when we do have emergencies, we will be deploying the right resources to the right situation and low level issues that people really do want addressed that often go unaddressed will also have resources devoted to them.
So I think it's brilliant.
I think it's transformational.
I think it's important and I'm really excited with all the progress.
So thank you.
Okay.
Anybody else on the dais have any comments? Our city manager, I'm not clear if there's any action required on this item.
Thank you, Vice Mayor.
Tonight's recommendation was just for you all to review and discuss the provided status report.
So there's no action.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
We'll have public comment on this item now.
Carol.
Thank you.
Thanks to Carrie, Sasha and Katie for coming out to the Commission on Status of Women and engaging us and also their initiative and willingness to work with me independently.
And also to Rex because he's also been attending the Commission on Status of Women meetings when there's DEI related issues.
On gun violence, there's an issue of if there's people out of town that are coming in to commit the crime, will our gun violence programs work for them? I mean, what's the intersection there? I am deeply concerned because we've had guns in shelters with incidents recently and this has never been the case before.
I wonder how much of this has to do with drugs.
I am someone who favors cameras as long as there's the right civil liberties accompanying them such as the chain of custody or making sure there's no editing because, I mean, we head downtown at 145 in the afternoon.
A man holding a two-year-old baby with a gun held to the baby's head.
Something really serious is going on that's never been so bold in this fashion before.
The SEU.
We don't have Measure P money to fund the SEU.
I mean, we're down one-third now in Measure P monies.
There are DOJ grants though.
This is really important when you have a flood.
I mean, with the Measure P, we don't even have enough to fund cost of living increases for these CBOs that haven't had money for years.
I mean, the SEU is a fledgling program.
We need good crisis response.
We have to work out the kinks in it.
We need a full system that everybody is connected.
All these agencies that we fund, everything has to be properly connected.
We do need a Berkeley Basis Crisis Stabilization Center though so they have a place to go.
There are grant DOJ.

Segment 8

grants for this, the SU still doesn't have the message about their voicemail.
The response time is too long, people end up calling the Berkeley Police Department.
We honestly have to look at the results, how much is being diverted from the police because- Carol, please wrap up your comments.
I will.
Sometime when they're responding, the person is already gone and we have to deal with this and work with it.
I want to just end on the point that it needs to be a single line because skilled dispatch is a really important critical skill, and there has to be that triage of when it's appropriate for non-law enforcement response, when you have co-response, and when you need police.
Thank you.
Nathan? Hi, folks.
Talking four times and one sitting with you all is crazy, but I do want to say a couple of things.
I do want to thank Dr.
Arredondo, Mr.
Brown for meeting with me last week.
That was really illuminating conversation about the update.
As folks remember, I chaired the Remaxing Public Safety Task Force, which is just a reminder to the council even as they depart and we still just have a quorum.
You asked us to do something very big.
Frankly, very little was being discussed.
That was also to consider how you would do those things and facilitate those things potentially through cutting the police budget.
That is what you asked us to do.
That's why it was so hard in part to do.
We were honest in our report.
We didn't have all the answers at the time.
We've gained more answers now.
But I want to make sure, again, I'm very happy to know that gun violence is moving forward.
I'll be looking forward to hearing the details.
I'm happy to hear gender violence work is moving forward.
I want fines and fees to move forward.
Thank you, Council Member Bartlett for mentioning that.
But again, the ask was a lot bigger than what we were discussing tonight.
Yes, we are the original home of modern policing in the United States.
I personally would like us to be the modern home of a new paradigm of public safety that is not run and headed up by policing.
That has not so far really changed at all in this city.
I don't think police funding has changed at all.
I think they're getting more funding, right? Cameras, right? CSO officers, which again, in our report, we said you should probably separate from the police.
I'll just mention one other thing.
Again, it'd be nice to have more than four.
Is there even a quorum? Hold on.
One, two, three, four.
Celia, you're here.
We're going to get the CityGate report in probably a month.
If I don't know tons about CityGate, what I can tell you is their organization has lots and lots of police officers, former and current, who work for them.
I can tell you that in Oceanside, California City, I went to high school in.
They did a report last year.
There in their city, they were spending $188 million in their general fund, so 37 percent of their general fund.
I know that sounds very familiar to us here on policing, and the recommendation was more policing.
I'm hoping that when that report comes, we will consider it in light of all the community work that has already been done to push us towards a new paradigm and not simply fall back onto the old ways of, well, they said we need more police because that's likely what the recommendation is going to say.
We need to understand, again, those are good recommendations, but what we're building here is bigger than probably what anything they previewed.
I know the work is going to continue.
Mr.
Meisel, your time is up.
I will wrap up in just a second, Council Member.
I will be respectful of that.
It would be nice if they had stayed more than five seconds to actually hear my comment.
But again, the task that was asked of the task force was larger than what we were discussing today.
At the time, you've set a goal of cutting the police budget by 50 percent.
You all voted unanimously at the time.
I know that's not what we're talking about tonight, but especially when we get into funding SCU long-term, when we're getting into funding a UBI program, which we know the good that can do, we're going to have to consider the full purpose of what we said four years ago, the full purpose of what was discussed those years ago.
Because I get that right now, I sacrificed my early 20s on those ideals.
Mr.
Meisel.
I would sacrifice another decade if I asked for that as well.
Again, thank you, and I hope we can consider the full ideals of what we put into place at that time.
Thank you.
I guess we're on Zoom here.
Are there any other people in the boardroom who would like to speak to this item? Seeing none, we will go to speakers on Zoom.
Speaker with the phone number ending in 500.
You can speak now.
Hi.
Good evening.
Thank you for your hospitality tonight.
I just like to breathe again.
When you bring kids this world without any education and give them guns and drugs, what do you expect? Whatever.
It is really sad.
The US right now have over almost three million people in prison.
Catching more people doesn't solve the problem.
We need more jobs.
We need more education to start with.
Wasn't it beautiful, Berkeley, the way it was decades ago? We all work together and pray for peace in the Middle East, in Ukraine, and across the world.
Thank you.
You are a great group of people.
And thank you again for your hospitality tonight.
I'd love to meet you sometime soon.
Thank you again.
Have a good night.
Thank you.
Eva.
Thank you.
I wanted to echo the comments of the last two speakers.
I wanted to bring up something that happened a couple of years ago.
I was nearly struck by a car that was out of control, out of control driver.
And it was pretty terrifying.
And it's the kind of experience that, you know, I was on my bike, but I was stationary.
I was waiting at a cross light.
And it was the kind of thing where you think I'd really..
There should be surveillance cameras everywhere so we could stop this.
But, you know, a surveillance camera wouldn't have stopped me from being hit by that car.
What stopped me from being hit by that car is the passenger sees the wheel from the driver and the car then plowed into a gas station.
It's pretty scary.
What really would have worked is more speed.
And I think that's an analogy in some ways for how we should go about this stuff.
More surveillance and more policing really hasn't made anyone safer.
What we really need are, you know, kind of deeper structural solutions.
So I just wanted to offer that as some perspective, but I did want to reinforce the comments of the last two speakers very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, the last speaker is Jesse.
Good evening, council.
I think you can hear me, right? Yes, we can hear you.
It's nice to see you back on the board, Mrs.
Wengraf.
It's nice to see you in the room.
I want to point out that a lot of the things that we're having here, I don't know if the mayor is still with us.
You defunded the police grandstanding in an election year.
And what we're seeing is the repercussions of that.
The public safety issues with the council people resigning.
It's because it's the broken processes that Mrs.
Harrison was talking about.
Apex security is getting $1 million a month to sit and guard people's parks, steal containers.
You guys have pushed people out of the neighborhood.
You've created unsafe spaces and neglected the community.
For builders and developers, the number one priority in your rankings.
You forgot about the people.
Thank you for your service.
I have great faith in the leadership going forward.
I mean, I want to see our community have solutions together.
Thank you for your time, appreciate it.
Thank you.
Okay, that's it for the speakers.
We'll now take public comment on non-agenda matters.
Only people haven't spoken yet.
What's April's? Didn't he speak before? That's the university stuff.
Hi folks, back again.
On agenda at the beginning.
Was it this meeting or the last? Oh, sorry, that's Mr.
Bing.
You're correct.
Sorry.
All right.
Have a good night.
Thank you.
Let's catch up and talk reimagining, folks.
All council members, I'm taking this with respect.
Mostly I want to- Is there anybody else in the room who would like to address non-agenda matters now? Okay, seeing none, I move to adjourn.
Second.
Mayor's off, so you can do by unanimous.
Sorry? The mayor's off, so- You can do unanimous consent.
Okay, do we have unanimous consent to adjourn? Yes.
Okay, there we go.
Thank you very much.