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Segment 1

Okay, good evening everyone.
Thank you very much for your patience.
I am going to call to order the Berkeley City Council meeting.
Today is Tuesday, October 28, 2025.
Clerk, could you please take the roll? Okay.
Council member Kesarwani? Here.
Taplin? Present.
Bartlett is currently absent.
Tregub? Present.
O'Keefe? Here.
Blackaby? Here.
Lunaparra? Here.
Humbert? Present.
And Mary Ishii? Here.
Okay.
Quorum is present.
Okay.
Council member Bartlett is present.
Very good.
Thank you.
Okay, so given the number of items on our agenda tonight, we're not going to be able to get to item 32, which is the amendments to allow separate sale of ADUs.
So we're going to push that back to another meeting.
However, if anyone came here tonight to speak to that issue, you may still do so during that time when we would have taken that item, which will be at the end of our meeting agenda.
However, if you want to come back and speak about it at the future meeting, when we actually are hearing the item, you can do that as well.
We'll have public comment at the meeting where we discuss this item, as I just mentioned.
So thank you all very much for your understanding.
And just so I have a sense, I'm just trying to see who's here.
Okay.
Very good.
All right.
So we are going to move on to ceremonial matters.
We have one ceremonial matter for this evening.
It is a proclamation honoring Women's Cancer Resource Center and celebrating Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Do we have a representative here? Oh, wonderful.
Please come up here.
Thank you.
All right.
So October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and WCRC does work in the East Bay to support women who are impacted by cancer.
They have been a longtime provider of holistic care to the Berkeley community.
And see, I'm going to read the proclamation.
Recognizing Women's Cancer Resource Center for October 2025 Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Whereas the Women's Cancer Resource Center, WCRC, founded in 1986 by a small group of women with cancer, began as a grassroots effort to support one another and advocate for change in the healthcare system and has grown into a trusted community organization serving thousands across Berkeley and the East Bay.
And whereas WCRC has built a strong foundation of care through free, culturally responsive services, including patient navigation, mental health support, wellness classes, transportation, and financial assistance, helping individuals access the resources they need during and after cancer treatment.
Its Berkeley office continues to be a welcoming space filled with warmth and compassion, where staff and volunteers meet people where they are, offering support that reflects the city's values of equity, inclusion, and community care.
And whereas WCRC's work centers those most impacted by cancer, low-income individuals, seniors, Black, African-American women, and Latino women, and LGBTQ plus community members, ensuring that no one is left behind due to barriers of cost, culture, or access.
And whereas WCRC's leadership and innovative model of holistic care have earned national recognition and its partnerships with institutions like UCSF and Stanford have helped bridge gaps between medical systems and community needs.
And whereas in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, WCRC's ongoing commitment to supporting individuals affected by breast cancer is exemplified through its administration of the Faith Fancher Breast Cancer Emergency Fund, which for over two decades has provided direct financial assistance to low-income women and men undergoing treatment in Berkeley.
And whereas through its ongoing advocacy and programs like the Faith Fancher Breast Cancer Emergency Fund, WCRC continues to provide direct support to those undergoing treatment and remains a vital part of Berkeley's health and social service landscape.
Now, therefore be it resolved that I, Adina Ishii, Mayor of the City of Berkeley, do hereby recognize the Women's Cancer Resource Center for all their hard work serving our community and celebrate October 2025 as Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the City of Berkeley.
Thank you so much.
We're deeply grateful to the City of Berkeley, the Mayor, and the City Council members for this recognition in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
The Women's Cancer Resource Center got our start right here in Berkeley in a small apartment on Shattuck Avenue in 1986, and since then we have grown to serve more than 30,000 women and caregivers impacted by cancer, including 7,300 Berkeley residents since 2012.
Our mission is to help our clients access the health information, care, and support necessary to have a higher quality of life throughout their cancer journey, and 85% of our clients are female or gender expansive, 80% are low-income, 76% are over the age of 50, and 70% are Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
Breast cancer is experienced by half of our clients along with more than 50 other cancers.
Our diverse staff, volunteers, and board members represent the communities we serve.
Cultural humility is a guiding principle for our organization and informs how we listen, build trust, and respond to each person's unique experience.
We meet clients where they are at with compassion and respect, and we envision a future where all people can access equitable cancer information, care, and support.
We are proud to call Berkeley home, a city that has always stood for community.
Thank you for believing in us and for this opportunity tonight to share our mission with each of you, both online and in person.
A good reminder to make sure everyone's getting all of their health checkups.
Okay, so moving on, we have City Manager comments.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I have one comment.
It's in relation to item number seven, which is the referral request to rescind incorrect information related to Turtle Island Monument from the Civic Arts Commission.
I alluded to this in Agenda and Rules, but my request to you tonight from the City Manager is to refer that item back to the City Manager to assess the Civic Arts Commission recommendation and then report back to Council.
Thank you, so we need to take a vote to, no, we don't need to take a vote to adjust that.
Be part of the action on the calendar.
Thank you, yes.
And is that any other comments? That's all, Madam Mayor.
Thank you.
Okay, moving on to our Auditor's comments.
All right, good evening.
Thank you so much.
I'm just here to comment on a few of the information items.
These are audit follow-ups.
First, in January, our office released a follow-up report on the 2009 audit of City leases.
We found that many of the same issues still existed 16 years later, including the need for a clear lease management plan and an incomplete inventory of lease and license agreements.
This evening, Public Works submitted their first update on implementing our recommendations to Council.
The Department has reported that they have started work on many of the recommendations.
They now have someone in the role of real property administrator, and this staff member is working with an interdepartmental team to provide input to the City Manager on a property management plan, which will help clarify the City's approach to lease management.
Additionally, the real property administrator is taking the lead on developing a complete central inventory of leases and licenses, and that includes useful information like contract numbers, the annual cost of living adjustments, hoping to see market rate increases, maintenance information.
Having a more complete inventory should allow the City to assess the costs and benefits of leasing and ensure the City does not lose track of its properties, two issues identified in our report.
Today, I also learned that several leases were discussed at yesterday's meeting, and I'm glad to see that this is taking place to update those leases that have been holdover.
Second, I wanted to share that Public Works has implemented the final two recommendations related to our 2020 audit on Berkeley Street maintenance called Rocky Road, and that officially closes the audit.
So since that update, Berkeley residents have passed Measure FF, a parcel tax expected to generate $15 million annually for 14 years, with a portion dedicated to street paving.
So thank you to Berkeley voters.
However, even with a combined increase of paving allocations from the general fund, zero waste fund, stormwater fund, this amount is still less than the estimated $42 million needed annually.
So I just wanted to set expectations that we have increased costs and with deferred maintenance that does not quite get us to the PCI of 70.
But with this infusion of FF, we will see improvements overall on Berkeley Streets.
Public Works staff has also continued to present updated revenue and PCI projections to Council and really appreciate that report.
Finally, with Fleet, Public Works has continued to make progress on implementing recommendations from the 2021 audit on the Fleet Replacement Fund.
11 of the 12 recommendations are partly implemented and one is fully implemented.
As of May of this year, Asset Works is the only system used by Equipment Maintenance Division, successfully phasing out funds, our old system of tracking this, thus implementing this recommendation.
Public Works senior management is currently reviewing a draft update of the equipment and vehicle replacement policy.
I cannot emphasize how important it is to have a policy that does this work, which includes several updates recommended in the audit.
I do want to note that replacement costs used to fund personnel, that still needs to be addressed and we point out in our audit that replacement fund should be used to fund vehicles and not other expenses that are not put into that fund for that purpose.
So I look forward to seeing progress on this.
Additionally, Public Works sent out a right-sizing survey earlier this year to better understand the needs across the city going forward and so I just want to give Public Works a big round of applause for all of their work on all of these audits.
Thank you very much.
I see you in the back, Terrence.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much, Madam City Auditor.
Moving on to public comment on non-agenda matters.
If you'd like to give public comment on non-agenda matters and you're participating remotely, now it's time to raise your hand.
And I'll draw five names from the bin for in-person non-agenda comments and each speaker will have one minute each.
There's lots of blank ones in here.
Okay, so the five in-person speakers are Carol Morozovic, Betsy Morris, John Curl, Renee, and Susan L.
So you can come up in any order and you'll have one minute each.
Okay, Carol, you've been given two minutes.
Okay, thank you.
At the last three-by-three meeting, the Berkeley Housing Authority Director stated that it would be significant if the City of Berkeley enforced the source of income discrimination ordinance to house our low-income persons.
And that's consistent with an article from Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, which was written on October 27, 2025.
No, no, I'm sorry.
Which was written on, anyway, it was October 2024 that they wrote it, where they state homelessness is the result of the unaffordable housing market, which federal rent subsidies help to address.
Enforcement is necessary.
This item came before Council in March, on March 9, 2021.
It was passed unanimously.
It was based on a Homeless Commission recommendation from 2019 to amend the source of income discrimination ordinance to establish administrative enforcement procedures.
Council passed it unanimously with a five-point recommendation, which included drafting amendments for an administrative procedure to enforce the anti-discrimination property rental ordinance as the source of income parallel to the fair chance ordinance.
Submit to Council in 2022 a report reviewing the effectiveness of the source of income discrimination ordinances for the first five years.
Two other points, and also to refer to the four-by-four, the discussion of feasibility of enforcement of source of income alongside the fair chance ordinance, based on the first Homeless Commission's first-in-time standard recommendation.
None of this has happened in almost five years.
We need to have this happen.
And now referring back again to the DREDF article, they state that Santa Monica is the only city.
Thank you, Dave.
I'm sorry, Carolyn, your time's up, but you feel free to send us an email and let us know the rest of the information.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Come on up.
Hello, City Council.
My name is Susan L.
I'm going to give my minute to John Curl in support of Turnaround the Monument, Lee and Marlone.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You have two minutes.
I thought you just gave me your time.
So, you know, we're speaking now because first we were on the action agenda, then moved to the consent calendar, and now we're off the consent calendar.
So the item is still on consent.
The item is still on the consent calendar.
Item seven.
We can speak about it later? Yeah.
Now is not the time to speak.
If you're just talking about Turtle Island, then that's still on consent.
Yes.
Okay.
Let me ask a question, though.
Lee and Marlene, the original artist 30 years ago.
I'm sorry, can you bring this up? Can they speak on Zoom? People can speak on Zoom during that time.
Yes.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
You will have one minute.
Yes.
My wife has one minute, too.
Her name is Liliana.
Her card wasn't.
Yeah, it wasn't picked, but mine was picked.
I wonder if I could get her a minute.
She doesn't have a minute if her card wasn't picked.
Okay.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Unfortunately, yeah.
Since her card wasn't picked, you know, she doesn't have a minute to give you.
So you still have a minute, though.
Okay.
My name is Rene, and we have a big problem because most of our friends in the community where we live on District 4 and by Sacramento, we don't have the money to pay the taxes that you're charging, and we really don't get the services you say you're giving.
The city is really, really bad shape.
The streets, everything, everything's a mess.
You can walk around my neighborhood, there's garbage everywhere.
And well, it's basically like we hear all this stuff about you're doing all this, and you guys give yourself prices and all that.
There's mutualism, and you know, but it's more like parasitism.
We've got people with cancer, and nothing is being done.
You know, you guys decide, you take the money from the poor, and I don't know what you do.
I don't even know your salaries.
What was your wife's name? Liliana.
Oh no, that's not the answer.
If you have comments or questions about specific taxes or services, you can reach out to your council member or to my office.
So thank you for your comment.
Okay.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
And then Susan L.
Is Susan L.
Sorry, I'm here to support Lee and Marlene.
So you're there for that as well? Yes.
Okay.
So we just had two speakers, so I'll pick another one.
Adam Stone and Bernardo Lopez.
I'm not seeing any speakers.
I'll just use our public comment on that.
Hi, yeah, I'm actually I wanted to comment on the encryption for BP, but that's on the agenda.
Okay, I'll sit down then.
Okay.
Thank you.
Hi, everyone.
I'm Bernardo Lopez and I'm here to support Lee and Marlene.
I'm here to support Paul.
Paul Kilo Blake.
And Monee law.
Anyone else speak? Are you speaking on non agenda? Monee are on the Turtle Island.
Okay.
Yes, he has to be here.
Do you want he's in the back? Good evening.
Good evening.
My council member trigger in absence and council member on screen.
Hi, and mayor and city manager and city attorney just really quickly.
I have a concern about.
Somebody left their phone up here replacement of our vehicles for the city to be.
Climate positive, and I saw a fleet of trucks go by the other day, and I don't know if the police have purchased another fleet of trucks and vehicles.
But I don't know that we're meeting our green standards that we're seeking so that I'm concerned about just yesterday.
I saw a new truck that I've not seen in the fleet before, and I want to double down on the concern that Carol shared about income discrimination.
I speak to a lot of tenants who have section 8 vouchers, but no landlord that will take their voucher.
So we do need enforcement procedures to make that a meaningful law.
Thank you.
Thanks, Monee.
Thank you for following up with my earlier comments referring sorry, Paul, you're giving her your minute.
You're giving Carol your minute.
Yes.
Yes.
I'm sorry, I can't.
Paul, are you giving her your minute? Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
The disability rights, education, defense fund article written published on October 9th, 2024 reads since.
Additionally, dread of attempted exchange with each of the municipalities with the source of income ordinances that reported no affirmative enforcement efforts, but largely disappointing results.
Only the cities of Alameda, Cordo, Madera and East Palo Alto responded to drive and have since agreed to take new affirmative steps to combat discrimination based on source of income in their communities.
The other municipalities contacted, including cities with large unhoused populations, like Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego completely ignored.
The city of Alameda, Cordo, Madera and East Palo Alto.
Dread of communications.
We really need to move ahead with what was passed in 2021 in this collaboration should.
The city should engage with the disability rights and thank you.
Okay, moving to non agenda comments from people participating remotely.
First is Janice Schroeder.
Thank you.
My comments address transparency, accountability, and the protection of the most vulnerable in our community.
I am very opposed to Lewis's proposal to encrypt the last.
Janice, I'm sorry, but we're actually that's an item that's on our agenda.
We're currently doing public comment on non agenda matters.
So you're welcome to give your comment later in our agenda tonight.
Thank you.
Next is Madeline Roberts rich.
Hey, guys, excuse me, my, my young daughter is here with me in case you're in the background.
I'm calling once again to ask you to explore ways that you can collaborate in a smarter fashion with the developers that are developing unprecedentedly high buildings on Shattuck in the downtown.
It's really important that downtown Shattuck has access to nightlife entertainment amenities, primarily cinema.
I was there just this last Friday and it's really really empty without any of the cinemas operating.
There are ways you can collaborate with developers to get that done in a creative fashion.
It doesn't mean necessarily having a full scale movie theater but movie nights or some sort of using public art funds towards being able to screen movies, using their, I guess, their park space, etc.
So it's really really important that that gets done the retailers need it the community needs it, it's in the downtown area plan, and I was very disappointed at what happened with the UA theater in that negotiations weren't made with Patrick Kennedy to be mitigated the impact of Madeline.
Thanks for your comment.
Next is Nathan myself.
Hello Madam Mayor Can you hear me.
Yes.
My name is Nathan myself.
Skip the chase here.
The city has a long history of slow rolling public records request.
I'll speak specifically to the Berkeley Police Department as I know that best.
I'll give you just one example.
Back on August 11 of 2023 I requested any text messages that related to public business from the period of September 2020 to November 2022, basically, the primary period of the text message scandal right.
The city took 450 days plus to respond to that request, and at that point, they provided no additional text messages in fact they had simply slow roll for over a year, simply to tell me that there are no disclosable records.
Please consider this story.
And a lot of others.
When you go to your other items today.
Thank you.
Thanks Nathan.
Next is a caller with a phone number ending in 211.
Hi, good evening.
So, our company manager, Roy, hand you some documents, please read them and respond to us.
I'm requesting a meeting as soon as possible with Mayor Ishii to settle this matter.
President Trump is having a wrecking ball to the country.
He's doing all kinds of illegal things, firing people, firing, closing all kinds of avenues, taking money from the poor and hungry to give it to his puppet masters, billionaires that have to stop.
Also, with the worst part of it, count one to 10, the World War Three.
This man had a nuclear football in his hand, and he's, he's very vindictive, very hateful.
The way he was killed, the way he was dead, like he did with this down in the Caribbean.
He is a very, very dangerous and very bad man.
Have a good evening.
I'd love to meet you sometime soon.
Good night.
Thank you.
Feel free to reach out.
There's office hours that we have that we release some via our newsletter.
Next is looks maybe like League of Women Voters.
USCT Swift.
Swift, maybe.
I want to call your attention, though, to the need to reform our system for building permits.
I became aware of the problem when I tried to replace a single bank of 31 year old clear story windows that were leaking a simple.
Like for like, replacement 10,000 dollar job.
And our permit request was returned 5 times for non substantive risk revisions over about 2 months.
Classic red tape.
My case is not unique, and we need to improve the system.
Efficient permitting is critical, especially in our growing housing crisis.
San Francisco has recognized the problem.
And has begun what they call permit SF to revamp their permitting process and we can learn from them.
Thanks.
Thanks, I appreciate your comment and feel free to send us follow up.
If you have more comments.
And the last commenter is Marlene.
Yes, this is Marlene Watson.
I know we have our topic here.
But it's for the civic arts commission action item.
And my specific comment is about the did you so I think you have a comment that's on Turtle Island monument.
Is that right? Yes, this is the parks and recs department.
So I would be able to comment on them too.
So that's actually a little bit later on our agenda.
So if there's a piece of your comment, that's on non agenda matters, feel free to share it.
Otherwise we'll go to the next speaker.
Okay, last speaker is say.
Hello to the members of the body.
My name is say hello.
I'm on staff with youth spirit artworks.
And we have our headquarters there on Alcatraz Avenue, and I just want to.

Segment 2

Commend all of the members for all of the really hard work that we're doing specifically for our unsheltered residents, and to specifically continue to challenge us to disaggregate data specifically for transitional age youth, whether we're talking interim shelters, crisis response, especially the changes that are happening to HMIS as regards the outreach modules.
And I look forward to our executive director.
I'm scheduling a meeting with you, Madam Mayor, sometime in the future.
And again, thank you all so much for your work.
I know this issue is particularly challenging, and it's something that matters a lot to all of you here, and that's why you're serving.
Thank you again.
Thank you for your comment, and I look forward to someone reaching out.
Okay, that's 10.
Okay, very good.
Thank you everyone.
I know it's confusing.
There's like different parts of the agenda, and okay, so we are moving on to the consent calendar.
So first thing I want to do is there's an urgency item, which actually, sorry, I'm realizing I don't know if I have it right here.
It's in the sub two packet.
Excuse me one minute.
Okay, thank you.
All right, so the urgent item today, the reason that it's being submitted is for an emergency situation.
And so this item limiting the use of city property and facilities for city purposes constitute an emergency situation because of the imminent threats of the immigration enforcement activities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Last week, on October 22nd, 2025, President Trump announced the operational surge of Customs and Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and potentially the National Guard in and around a 40-mile radius of the city and county of San Francisco.
This, of course, includes Berkeley, which is within 22 miles of San Francisco, deep within the designated target area.
While the president announced the rescission of the immediate threat of a surge in immigration enforcement in San Francisco, on October 23rd, the ongoing threat looms over the region.
For this reason, it is urgent that the city of Berkeley designate open spaces and public parking lots be designated for the city purposes only and not for the staging of federal immigration operations.
This item, we need to vote for it to put it onto the agenda.
Yes, that is correct.
So I'm going to move that we add this item onto our consent calendar.
Second.
Okay, motion seconded to add the urgent item to the consent calendar.
Council Member Casarwani? Yes.
Caplan? Yes.
Bartlett? Yes.
Trageb? Aye.
O'Keefe? Yes.
Blackabay? Yes.
Lunapara? Yes.
Humbert? Yes.
And Mayor Ishii? Yes.
Okay, item is added to the agenda.
Okay, thank you very much.
I would also like to vote to remove, a vote to remove item 18 to action.
We've received some concerns, sorry, and 18, just so folks know, is the authorization to encrypt Berkeley Police Department primary radio channels.
And I'd like to move that item to action.
We've received some concerns from the community about the encryption item.
Council Member Lunapara and I worked closely with Chief Lewis and our City Manager to make sure that we balance transparency and access to public information with victim privacy, officer safety, and operational integrity.
We'd like to pull the item off the consent calendar in order for people to understand the work and the research the Chief has done to create the supplemental and address community's concerns.
So if folks have seen that the Chief wrote a supplemental and we want to give her an opportunity to address it.
All right.
I concur.
I'm happy to be a third to pull that to action.
Okay, thank you very much.
So that item will be moved to action.
Okay, all right.
Do we have any council comments on consent? Oh, okay.
Apparently our system's not working, but Council Member Blackabee.
Actually, I think Council Member Lunapara, do you want to go first and I'll follow you? I think you were beating me to the button, so.
Sure.
I want to start with some of the easier stuff.
I want to register a resounding yes vote for item two that affirms the staff preference for the Virginia Bikeway.
I want to thank City staff for this and for their work and for their recommendation.
I'd also like to contribute $200 to item 31.
Thank you, Council Member Humbert.
And I love Halloween personally, so this is exciting.
On item nine, I'd like to introduce additional language to the waiver for the sanctuary city, for the sanctuary city ordinance for our critical contract with Superion, just to make sure we have the updated interaction information on their interactions with federal immigration departments.
And I have the language that I'll pull up and we've shared with the city manager as well.
These red, this is the red language is the added language to the contract and I can read it into the record.
Whereas for the purposes of this resolution, immigration authority means any person or agency engaging in efforts to investigate, enforce, or assist in the investigation or enforcement of federal immigration law against natural persons, including but not limited to the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security or its component agencies, U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S.
Customs and Border Protection, or U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Whereas it is the understanding of the City Council that Superion does not currently provide any immigration authority with data broker or extreme vetting services, as defined by the statute of limitations of the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security.
And then at the end, be it further resolved by the Council of the City of Berkeley that the city manager is directed to include in the contract with Superion a provision requiring Superion to notify the city in the event that it enters into a contract with immigration authority to provide data broker or extreme vetting services as defined in Chapter 13.105.
And be it further resolved by the Council of the City of Berkeley that the city manager is directed to contact Superion by December 31st of each year during the duration of the contract to request that they affirm in writing that the following statement is true.
At the present moment, Superion does not currently provide any immigration authority with data broker or extreme vetting services as defined in Chapter 13.105, provided that they have not previously notified the city that the Superion has entered into a contract with an immigration authority to provide data broker or extreme vetting services.
Thank you.
But can I just, do you mind? Yes, I did confer with Council Member Lunapara and those are fine.
How does this work in terms, like procedurally? You just, if you just email that to me, then when we process the resolution, we'll add the new language.
Okay, is there, do we have to do a vote to include this? No, it's just read into the record, so it's cool.
Great, thank you.
As long as there's no opposition.
Great, yeah, okay.
I'm not seeing any right now, so go ahead.
Okay, thank you.
Finally, I also think that we should pull item 28 from the consent calendar, given that there's a supplemental and I think it warrants more discussion.
I support that.
Who's going to make the same ask? Okay, that will move on to action as well.
All right, moving on.
I know, I'm not sure if this is working now, but I'm going to go to Council Member Blackabee, since he had been trying to earlier.
Okay, thanks Madam Mayor.
First, I want to thank you for adding the urgent item, limiting the use of city property and facilities for city purposes, and bringing that tonight.
I very much support it.
It's consistent, obviously, with our sanctuary city status.
It's really the next step at kind of affirming and proactively taking action to act on our values, and so I appreciate you bringing that.
I did note, one, there's a clause.
We're in the amendment phase in the consent calendar, but in the, there's a bit where it references county-owned property that I think should be city-owned property in the second bullet.
So, Mark, if you see that as well on the policy or ordinance development, draft administrative policy restricting the use of city-owned property instead of county-owned property, since this affects the City of Berkeley.
I'll keep going, but I think it's just kind of a drafting issue, so I just wanted that to be clear in the process.
A couple other pieces on item four.
I thank the city manager, Pierre Redoux, and team for the letter to the Board of Supervisors urging collaboration with the county on homelessness programs outside of Berkeley.
You know, we need to be clear, and I know we've talked about it before in our, given our budget situation, that we simply can't afford to provide the same level of support for our unhoused neighbors without county support, full stop.
And so, I think any communication to the county, I know the mayor's doing a lot of work at the working group level, but, you know, we need their support.
We need their partnership as we're entering this sort of difficult budget period.
So, I just want to thank the city manager and team for continuing to communicate and work with the county because we need access to the dollars that they've collected to help fund the programs that we do run.
Question on item five.
Really quickly for the city manager, it has nothing to do with, in particular, with the public art program strategic plan, but I know that, you know, there are a number of budget requests that we get that move on the consent calendar, and again, I think my question is more, how do we, are we triaging, how do we think about and triage some of these things? Again, I support public art.
I support doing a, doing a strategic plan for sort of the public art program in the city, but I also know that there are certain things we may need to triage, and I was curious how you and the team, you know, advance some, or are there some that we may kind of pause and delay as we're heading again into this budget cycle, how you think about that? Yeah, that's a great question, Council Member.
Generally, what we'll do is we'll sit down with the group, whoever's the group, in this case OED, that wants to advance an initiative like this, and we'll look at both what's the rationale for advancing the initiative, and very specifically, how is it funded.
In this case, it's not funded with general fund, which is always like kind of the big thing for us right now, as we're looking at, as you all know, a very significant structural deficit.
So, to the extent that, you know, things that come up that are important and not funded through general fund, and there's a resource stream for those, those are ones that we would be more likely to bring forward and put on consent.
Thank you.
I know, I appreciate that, and just encourage us all, as we move forward, we all have to use, we'll have to use our own discretion as well in more requests, so I just appreciate hearing about the process, so thank you.
Item 19, thanks to the chief and the police department for the securing the Office of Transportation of Traffic Safety grant to step up traffic enforcement here in Berkeley through September 2026, as we've seen too many incidents of traffic violence on our streets, you know, we've been in conversation, I know a number of our colleagues have been in conversation with the department, how can we do more on the enforcement front to make sure that we are getting a handle on what's happening, so again, I appreciate securing an additional revenue source that will help contribute to that effort.
Thank you to Council Member Lunapar for moving Item 28, I support that, and then lastly, I'd like to add $250 from my office budget towards the Russell Street Halloween festivities.
I think that's it, thank you very much.
All right, thank you very much.
Council Member Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor, and I want to thank you for bringing the urgency item as well, it's critically important, and I really appreciate your diligent work on pulling that together.
First of all, I wanted to comment on Consent Item 2, which is a staff preference for the Virginia Street Bikeway.
Thank you staff for all your great work on this, I know it's been a long process, but when balancing safety of pedestrians and cyclists against the loss of a handful of parking spaces, the choice is clear, and each of the affected homes, as I understand it, has a driveway anyway, so the cost-benefit analysis is really clear to me, and you made the right decision, and I appreciate and affirm it.
Let's see, this has gone to action.
I'll quickly go through my agenda here.
This has gone to action, and I'm getting to the renewal of the Elmwood bid for calendar year 2026, and that's Consent Item 29.
I'm really thrilled and pleased to renew the Elmwood Business Improvement District for another year, our Elmwood shopping area with the only remaining cinema in town.
The Elmwood, aside from the Pacific Film Archive of course, is a treasure.
There are now very few vacancies in the district, and we have a wonderful set of small merchants plying their trades along this charming part of College Avenue.
There are good restaurants, really interesting shops, including Your Basic Bird, Mrs.
Dalloway's Bookstore, along with Andrew Hahn's lovely Stationery Store, and a plethora of others, and don't forget the great restaurants like my favorite, Gordo's Taqueria, Baker & Common, Nabilam, King Yin, Five Tacos, Donatos, and so many others.
I can't name them all.
We have a good little grocery store on Ashby right below College, and the famous and beloved Dream Fluff Donuts.
Again, I can't name them all or I'd violate our time rules, and I don't want to do that.
On the Council Consent Item number 31, which is my item, Russell Street Halloween Festivities, I'm donating $1,000 from my discretionary budget.
I wanted to say thank you to my colleagues so far who have contributed, and the colleagues who will contribute to this year's festivities, and I want to especially thank the Russell Street Neighbors and the Claremont Elmwood Neighborhood Association who have put this on each year and carry on this treasured Berkeley tradition.
It's a privilege to be able to support this event each year.
My Chief of Staff, Eric, wanted me to say thank boo for this, but I just couldn't bring myself to do that.
So with respect to this event, here's hoping it never gives up the ghost.
Thank you.
That's all I have.
Okay, thank you.
Moving on to Council Member Bartlett.
Thank you, Madam Mayor, and I want to thank you, Council Member Humber, for bringing forward the Halloween Festival on Russell Street.
Always quite a good event, and I urge everyone to attend.
It's very crowded, though.
You got to really have sharp elbows to navigate it, not going to lie.
Yes, so $200 to support this event.
Item 31, thank you.
Okay, thank you.
Council Member Caseroni.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
I also want to thank you for your leadership on the urgency item, and I'm proud to be a co-sponsor of that item to limit the use of City property and facilities for City purposes, given the ongoing threat we face from Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
And I also wanted to call attention to, as others have done, Item 2 is the Virginia Street Bikeway that will create an uninterrupted connection between the North Berkeley BART station and the regionally significant Ohlone Greenway, and this is very important given the future development of the station and the reduction in parking spaces that we will have there.
We do need to make sure that it is safe and easy to access the station without needing to drive, so that one is very important.
And I also, others have not mentioned Item Number 24, which is, I don't want to rank order them, but it is also very important.
This is the contract to do the Ohlone Greenway modernization and safety project, so that the improvements that you see right now from the BART station to Virginia Gardens that have been done by BART, essentially those improvements of widening the greenway and adding lighting and improving the crossings of streets at Cedar Rose and all of the streets all the way up to the Albany border, all of that work will be done through this contract for the Ohlone Greenway modernization and safety project, so that is a huge undertaking.
I know our public works staff have been working for multiple years to do the conceptual design and get the feedback, and I did an item to get some additional funding that was needed, so that's a very important item for us.
And then finally, I wanted to be recorded as donating $100 to the very essential Russell Street Halloween festivities, Item Number 31.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Council Member Taplin.
Thank you.
On Item 31, I would like to be recorded as contributing $250.
Okay, thank you.
Council Member Trakob.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
There are many items on this consent calendar that represent many years of work on the part of staff and members of this Council, so I want to thank everyone for your fortitude.
I would like to speak to a few.
I would like to, first of all, echo others' appreciation to the Mayor for the urgency item to limit the use of city property and facilities for city and county purposes.
On Item 4, which is a letter we are sending to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors regarding opportunities to collaborate with Alameda County on homelessness programs outside of Berkeley.
This represents just the latest phase, but certainly not the beginning nor the end of an effort to ensure that we are looking at regional solutions to continue to fight homelessness in the region and that no city, including Berkeley, can do it alone, and that this would ensure that we continue to partner with the county to make sure that everyone in the region is doing its fair share.
And I also want to thank the Mayor for her leadership as the Chair of the Mayor's Task Force on this issue.
I'm getting feedback that my audio is very low, so I will try to speak louder.
There we go.
Okay.
Apologies.
Item 9, I want to thank Council Member Lunapara for the excellent additions on the waiver of Sanctuary City Contracting Ordinance with Superior LLC for Fund Software, and I feel much more comfortable voting for this item with those additions.
Item, I'm going to, for time, move past some other items, but I wanted to give $100 out of my D13 account for the Russell Street Halloween festivities.
And let me just make sure, I think.
Yeah, on the item 18, I also just want to say, on the issue of Turtle Island, which is on the consent calendar tonight with the amended recommendation, I very much, and I think I speak for many, if not all of us, when I say I look forward to a resolution of this item in the most expeditious manner possible, we want to get this right.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member.
Council Member O'Keefe.
Thank you.
Just two things.
I'd like to thank Council Member Lunapara for moving Item 28 to action.
Appreciate that.
And I would like to be recorded as donating $250 to the Russell Street Item 31, which is one of the two best Halloween celebrations in Berkeley, Mariposa being the other one, District 5.
And I also just, I got a hot tip.
I read the item, but I didn't, I'll be honest, I didn't read the resolution that was attached to it, and I bet some of you didn't either, but you should, because it's very, very funny.
Good work.
Council Member Humbert.
No, it's Eric.
Good work, Eric.
Okay, thank you very much, everyone.
I also want to voice my support for number two, which is the Virginia Street Bikeway.
Thank you very much to staff.
I know that those decisions can be really challenging, but I just want to affirm that I'm very supportive.
And thank Council Member Lunapara for number nine, as well as give $250 to number 31 for Council Member Humbert's item.
So thank you all very much for that.
Okay, moving on to public comment on consent calendar and information items only.
If you are here for consent calendar and information items, please come on up to the front.
Do you mind just clarifying if the polled items will be up right after, or would they be like at the end of the other action? So the polled items will be on action, and they are going to go in the order of, hold on, scrolling down, they will be on the order of number 18, which is the authorization to encrypt Berkeley Police Department primary radio channels, and then number 28, which is the remove pre-transfer eligibility restriction of the transfer tax rebate for wildfire hardening, and then it will go to 33, which is telegraph multimodal corridor project conceptual design.
And then if people are here and still have comments on number 32, even though it's been moved to another agenda, they may give their public comments for item number 32.
All right, come on up, and you will have one minute apiece.
Go ahead.
Hello, my name is David White.
I'm not to be confused with a person who has the same name and works in the city offices.
I gave you all a handout called the Peralta Hopkins Death Trap, otherwise known as amendment item number 24.
You heard the council member mention Cedar and Rose.
She didn't mention Hopkins and Peralta because that's the most dangerous intersection I've ever seen after the changes.
I live on Peralta.
I've ridden a bicycle since you had to have a license to carry it on bark.
I said, how is this going to make me safer? If I want to get to the pickleball path, there's two ways I can do it.
Under this construction, both of those ways make it more dangerous for me to do it.
I could go straight down Peralta to the stop sign at Hopkins, but I have to go over a raised walkway, and I have the bulb pushing me out into traffic the way I could go along the red line right now.
Thank you.
Thanks for your comment, and we will take a look at this.
It's totally unsafe.
She said, take it off the consent calendar.
Thank you very much.
Vice Mayor Humbert is going to run the comment.
I'll be right back.
Speaking to item four, it's important to know that this letter is at least in part triggered by the denial by the county for another motel conversion under county measure W funds.
This is that they chose quantity over quality.
Our motel conversions have been exemplary at providing unhoused persons a place to stay that works with them on permanent housing while providing them privacy and dignity.
We need to continue these motel conversions.
This is really frightening because our other current motel conversions, we are in jeopardy after 2026.
We can't even sustain them with outside money, so we have to be getting county measure W money or other money to continue this excellent model.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next.
Good evening.
My name is Laura Magnani.
I live at 1425 Virginia Street.
I want to speak to item two and ask that it be taken off of the consent calendar and put over for another meeting.
We just learned less than 24 hours ago that this was coming up tonight and that you were going forward with the plan.
It's one of the people who would lose a parking place, and there are already a parking place, and there are already two bike lanes, one 100 feet from my curb into the BART station that goes directly to the Ohlone crossway.
That's what it was built for, and there's also on Delaware.
So I'm really hoping you would look into this more seriously than you have and give a chance.
We didn't even have time to write to you about this item being on the agenda, so I'm hoping it will not stay on the consent calendar and it'll be put over for another meeting.
That's my request.
I'm sorry the mayor didn't get to hear it.
I'm opposing item two being on the consent calendar, Mayor Ishii, and hoping that you will move it over to another meeting so that those of us who live on that street will actually have chance to continue the conversation.
Thank you.
Hi.
My name is Andrea Altshuler.
I live at 1417 Virginia Street, so I'd be directly impacted by the proposed Plan A.
I'm strongly against the proposal, both for the way it would impact my neighbors and me, especially those of us with disability, and for the fact that it's an unnecessary outlay of taxpayer dollars.
Having been a cyclist for many years of my life, I'm well aware of the risk of cycling, but there's very little evidence of the risk of cyclists on this small section of Virginia Street.
Based on existing conditions and many years of observation, I literally have lived in my house for 36 years, never seen a single bike accident or been told about one.
The traffic diverter and stop sign have been here for many years.
It slows traffic.
The evidence for the need to build this is very non-existent to my thinking, but very specifically for my family, and my husband deals with physical disabilities and has a blue disabled parking placard.
Our driveway is quite narrow, and getting in and out of the car is getting increasingly difficult for him in the driveway.
We're eligible for a designated disabled spot in front of our house, but if the protected bike lane is there, he would be denied that, and if we park in our across our driveway, which thank you.

Segment 3

It would negate the need for the bike lane.
Thanks for your comment.
Imagine you have yourself and a parent.
Thank you.
Please don't do this.
I'm sorry, your time's finished.
Thank you.
Go ahead, Kit.
I want to comment on the urgency item that's been added and also on 9.
I really appreciate Councilmember Lunaparra's changes to 9.
I think those are really good changes.
But in both cases, you really need to not underestimate ICE and the Border Patrol and so forth's desire to push whatever boundaries there are and not to act legally.
So I hope that what you come up with in terms of defending city property is really strong.
That, for instance, would forbid armed officers to go into the public libraries.
There's no reason for really anyone to take weapons into the public library unless it's the police responding to an event that has happened in that library.
And ICE should not be allowed to come in with weapons, even though it is a public space.
In terms of the Superion, I hope that this is a temporary thing and that you will look at getting out of contract with them because of their connections with ICE.
You can't really count on them not reporting data to the ICE folks.
Thanks, Kit.
Hi, I'm Hallie Fraser.
It's about consent item number 27.
I yield my time to Marlene Watson.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You will have two minutes.
Hi, my name is Susan, and I'm yielding my time to Marlene Watson.
Thank you very much.
Hi, I'm Bernardo Lopez, and I'm yielding my time to Marlene Watson.
Okay.
Thank you.
That is three.
I'm John Currill.
I'm also speaking about the Turtle Island Monument.
Sorry, Marlene is..
She's on phone or online somewhere.
Okay, so we'll just give her three minutes.
Okay, go ahead.
Lise Bragg, the other artist from the Turtle Island Monument, I think should be either online or on phone.
We were so excited that we're finally doing this.
I personally have waited 30 years for this moment, over 30 years.
Back in 1991, Arlene and Liam Marlene, two Native American people, were working on Indigenous Peoples' Day, which we brought to the world here, and this was part of what we were doing.
They proposed Turtle Island Monument.
The fountain had been broken for 30 years, and they proposed this beautiful vision of transforming the fountain into a monument for Native people in America, which does not exist anywhere.
The City Council at the time, the Mayor and City Council, and the entire city got behind it enthusiastically, and shortly after it was done, it got swept up into this landmarking of the entire downtown city.
The artists, for 30 years, they've been waiting for this.
I'm so sorry, but your time is up.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thanks for being here and your work.
Thank you, Mayor and City Council.
My name is Betsy Morris, and I want to speak to Item 16 and thank Scott Ferris for bringing this.
I understand it is for YouthBuild, and I want to fully support continuing our tradition of supporting young people to get into work by offering internships or short-term employment.
I note that there's another almost $6 million on the consent calendar in the form of grants or actual contracts that you'll be signing or agreeing to tonight.
Another $6 million with a variety of skilled contractors, tree arborists, landscaping.
I would like to suggest considering a 1% request of our contractors in grants that we receive go to youth employment.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thanks, Betsy.
Thank you.
Moni Log, resident of Berkeley, Cal grad, Class of 82, USF Law School, and Go Bears.
Number 16, I endorse what the prior speaker just spoke to.
The importance of youth is so urgent right now with them having a bleak future, many of them not thinking they have an opportunity for education, let alone a job.
They get job training skills and pay.
They use the skills training of prior programs that used to exist in Berkeley.
We do have YouthWorks, but it was underfunded, and they had thousands of youth apply for a couple hundred jobs.
We need more employment.
Secondly, I'd like to support the fact that we give cultural appreciation, not cultural erasure, and we are on unceded Ohlone land, and we should respectively honor the talent, years of work, and brilliance of Lee Sprague and Marlene Watson.
Thirty-five years of their work should be honored and uplifted and put in place.
Let's see a turtle by the monument.
Thank you.
Thanks, Bonnie.
Hello, good evening.
My name is Ilana Auerbach, and I also support a Turtle Island monument in the Civic Center.
I want to thank you, Cecilia, for trying to adhere to our Sanctuary City contracting ordinance and want to echo the speaker who said, yes, let's get out of this.
Let's try and unwind this.
I know you couldn't find something immediately, but this is good language, and we should try someone else who does not and isn't at risk of doing business with ICE.
I am all for safe bikes, bicycle areas, and I live right near there.
I ride my bike there all the time.
There's no cars around.
Generally, I'm just the lone bike.
So I would really listen to the neighbors here and make sure emergency vehicles can get by.
Make sure you've done your due diligence, and it doesn't make sense to spend however much.
I don't know how much you're spending on this, but take a look again, please.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I think I have two minutes that are being yielded to me.
I see one.
I see two.
Okay.
Thank you.
Members of the council, I'm speaking in regard to consent calendar item number four, a letter to Alameda County Board of Supervisors about opportunities to collaborate with Alameda County on homelessness programs outside of Berkeley.
I think that's a great idea.
I'm glad there's a letter going out.
What I want to say to you is that one of the collaborations that didn't work, I'm sorry, we're about to enter into a new collaboration around emergency response.
After the failure of the special care unit, Alameda County is now going to be the provider in emergency response.
I just want to say that I have served for six years as a mental health commissioner.
I have struggled and wrestled with this issue of getting care to people who need it in a timely manner.
Our city failed.
We failed.
I would love an opportunity to really talk to you about why that special care unit failed.
The report that you got from RDA was absolutely flawed.
It did not get to the root cause.
I believe there was a few causes.
One was the failure of the police department to cooperate with integrating the special care unit into the infrastructure of emergency response in our city.
They just refused.
They don't want to cede any territory.
They don't want to cede $1 of their budget to something that actually might work.
I'm disappointed, council members, because the mental health commission is failing.
It is required by the state.
Our city is exposed to lawsuits because we are not in compliance with state regulations about the staffing of the mental health commission.
We don't have a city council member.
In all the six years that I've been there, I have not had a city council member attend more than two meetings.
Council member Tappan never showed up.
Lunaparra came to a couple.
Kate Harrison came to one or two.
We can't get traction on these issues.
And I'm not willing to give up any more of my time to sit for hours and hours and hours talking about things, researching them, creating proposals that go nowhere.
So I really want to ask you, if you're going to collaborate, you need some hands-on involvement.
I don't know who you guys imagine is doing that work, but it's not getting done.
We are not reforming our policies.
The failure of the special care unit did not teach us any lessons.
What are we yielding from those millions of lost dollars and those lives that could have been improved or even saved with a proper emergency response? And I would love to meet with you.
Your chief of staff did not respond to my email, but I hope they will soon.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Other comments online? Yes.
So now we're going to public comments on consent and information items.
We're going to people participating remotely.
So if you'd like to speak to a consent calendar item.
Of course, noting that item 18 regarding the police radios, that is on action.
So now is not the time to comment on that.
Also, item 28 regarding the transfer tax rebate has been moved to action.
So now is not the time to comment on that one either.
You'll have 1 minute.
And the 1st speaker is Ben Gerhardstein.
Hi, everyone.
This is Ben Gerhardstein with WalkBike Berkeley.
Good evening.
WalkBike Berkeley strongly supports the 2 Ohlone Greenway items that you're looking at tonight.
Item 2, which provides standard width bike lanes and sidewalk also on Virginia Street, connecting the Ohlone Greenway to North Berkeley BART.
And item 24, the construction contract for safety improvements on the Ohlone Greenway to the north of North Berkeley BART.
Yesterday, we joined many of you in a celebratory ribbon cutting for the North Berkeley BART pedestrian and bike improvements.
And we're excited for you to approve these items tonight, which will connect and build on those investments that BART made.
We commend staff for the excellent planning work that went into the Ohlone Greenway plans that are going to construction.
Along with the Milvia Street bikeway, that was a top priority from our 2017 bicycle plan.
And so it's great to finally be getting to construction on that project.
We're pleased with the staff recommendation for Virginia Avenue, prioritizing safe access for people walking and biking over preserving a few parking spots.
Ben, your time is up, but thank you very much for your comment.
Okay, next is George Littman.
Hi, I have Carrie Sanders here who is going to cede me her minute.
Hi, I'm here and I would like to cede to George.
Thank you.
Two minutes, George.
Very good.
Thanks.
I would like to express my concerns about item 9.
I agree with everything that Kit Stegner said on the topic.
I'd like to clarify what this is really about.
This item grants a waiver for administrative and financial software from Superion, which is part of and has been absorbed by Center Square LLC.
This item was made necessary because the vendor is a public safety company that cannot declare it will not work with ICE.
I also appreciate the clarifications from Council Member Lunaparra with new language for this item.
It is certain that the vendor will at some point work with ICE or other immigration agencies or national security agencies, which will put our residents at risk and violate our new sanctuary ordinance.
From my background in IT project management, I know that replacing mission critical and complex software is a big job and could take years to accomplish.
If we depend on this vendor to declare they have begun contracting with immigration, we will likely be stuck with them for years into the future.
I've heard that the proposed contract extension is only for two years, and it appears from the wording of the item that City Management is looking for a different system.
If so, that's good news, and it gives the city a target of two years to replace the vendor.
It would be wise to speed up the replacement process and find a vendor outside of the public safety industry.
And just while I'm on this topic, I want to refer to the history of the Nuclear-Free Berkeley Act waiver that was granted to a vendor 3M for their work with the public library some five to ten years ago.
The Council made a wise decision at that point to give the library two years to find a suitable vendor.
And the library was able to manage the switch in that time.
Let's get started on that now.
Thanks, George.
Ready, thank you.
Okay, next is Nathan Mizell.
Thank you, Mayor and Council.
I just want to thank Council Member Lunapara for her work on Item 9 in regards to the contract.
Certainly doing all we can to be aligned with our sanctuary city status makes a lot of good sense.
I'm supportive of the bike items as well.
And I believe, I forget which item is the traffic enforcement contract for the Traffic Bureau.
But, you know, speaking of that, the public records request I mentioned related directly to that type of work.
And it took, again, 450 days from the original request that the PAB put out for the bike team text messages to come up.
And that was a severe violation of the Public Records Act.
And if the city is going to rely on public records for access to any other type of communications, it should definitely work in those response times.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, next is Lisa Bullwinkle.
Good evening, everybody.
I'm Lisa Bullwinkle.
I'm on the Art Commission, and I am the Chair of the Policy Committee.
And I'm the one that put forth the resolution number or the referral number 27 concerning Turtle Island in the hope that we can have an incredibly beautiful art project in the center of our city that should have been there a long time ago and not live with a hole in the ground for the next 40 years.
So thank you for pushing this forward, and I hope that when it comes back to you, you'll rectify this mistake that the city made and help these artists come to some healing.
Thank you.
Thank you, Lisa.
Okay.
Next is Marlene.
And can you give me a sense of how many folks are left? There's five more.
Okay, thank you.
Hi, this is Marlene Watson.
I'm a graduate of UC Berkeley College of Engineering, a Master's in Architecture, a Master's in Civil Engineering.
I just received the Academy of Distinguished Alumni inductee of Class of 2024.
I started this project when I was a graduate student in the College of Architecture at Berkeley, assisting and working with Lee on this project.
We were contacted about three years ago by the Parks and Rec and the Civic Arts Departments.
And it was capital funds with the state funds.
It was a capital project and an art project.
And we spent almost like two and a half to three years on this project.
You had the Native designers, but we were sidelined.
We were not told and the city never got our consent to have another non-Native artist to take credit for art and get contracted and paid and a resolution for this project.
And as we met with them, Zoom meetings throughout all that time, they kept saying that the state funds, you know, there was an urgency, but you can't have capital funds with a capital project on a Native design with Native designers and the Native community support to get the funding for this project to continue.
After all these years, and then go to bid as a non-Native project.
And I tried to say that for the three years to Ferris and to Lavorne, both of them, and to the whole design team.
They were well aware of it.
But yet they still made decisions to go forward to sideline Lee and I and try to say that we had an issue.
Well, our issue was that we knew we were being undermined behind our backs and the city council and the mayor had recognized this non-Native artists all along.
And so that part wouldn't happen in any other project.
And 30 years of doing architectural engineering work in the Native land, Native Indian country, I've never experienced that and never came across that ever.
And for, you know, I grew up in Oakland from the Bay Area, all the Natives in the community have known me and my family since I was, we're all, you know, transplanted from the reservations to the boarding schools to Oakland.
And I was a structural engineer major at 16 years old at Berkeley.
And so I'm proud of what I've accomplished in life.
And I'm proud to be still part of this project.
And I appreciate that the civic commission is bringing this forth as an action item.
And this should have happened a long time ago.
And for us to be here to say that it needs to go back to the city manager, it's just uncalled for.
And so Lee and I need to have another contract to be able to continue this project according to the original design.
And we need it to the city to recognize what wrongs they have done.
Marlene, thank you so much for your comment.
I appreciate it.
And thank you all for, I know you gave her your minutes as well.
Okay.
Next is why we walk.
Oh, man.
Should be able to unmute.
Oh, you can you can come back.
Next is a caller with a phone number ending in 405.
I heard three things.
I heard three things.
One, I think the Virginia residents should have time to tune in about what should happen.
24 hours notice is really not the way our city should run.
And shame on the people who gave the residents only 24 hours.
Second, Bravo to all the council members who contributed to the Russell Halloween.
Third, what did our mayor said? No.
Because of anxiety of kidnapping by ICE.
I don't know why is that canceled, but Russell can continue.
That's all my question.
Thank you.
Okay, next is.
Theo Gordon.
Hello, council.
So there's a lot of great things on the agenda.
I won't have time to support all of them.
Thank you for picking that up.
And then I wanted to specifically talk as well that item to say that I'm strongly in support of having a great bike lane.
We need mode shift and that means prioritizing bikes and transit.
And this is a great place with bike lanes and transit right there.
Every bike lane that we try to build has a few residents who oppose who support bike lanes in general.
But for some reason, this specific 1, because of their personal parking is a problem.
If we listen to every 1 of these groups of particular residents, we would never have built any bike lanes.
So, thank you for keeping this on consent and following our existing city policies that prioritize mode shift and bike lanes and building this stuff faster.
We need more concrete in the ground and less paperwork.
Okay, thank you.
Let's go back.
Try why we walk.
Oh, may.
Okay.
Let's try one more time.
You should be able to unmute.
Do you want to spell it? How is it spelled? I'm sorry.
W.
Y.
W.
I.
I.
W.
A.
K.
O.
H.
M.
E.
That's my indigenous name.
Yep.
I'm from the crane clan.
I'm from gun lake.
I'm speaking from the reservation here.
I just want to thank you for bringing this issue up.
It's been 35 years.
Just because the city appropriates our artwork to a non native artist doesn't mean it's right.
The city needs strong protections and resolution form to protect future native artists and their rights from being appropriated.
I would also like to recommend that we have a truth and reconciliation.
Committee that we can look at this in depth.
What has happened for the last 35 years should never have happened.
We've been gaslighted the harder we fight for our rights as artists.
The more we're portrayed as being.
Hostile all the old tropes about American Indian.
I'm sorry.
You're out of time.
So Berkeley should never find itself in this position again.
I'm hoping that we get to sit down.
Reconciliation process.
Thank you.
Comment.
I'm sorry.
You're out of time, but thank you.
Appreciate it.
That's it.
That's the last speaker for consent items.
I just want to say that it was the organizers who canceled that event because they didn't feel because there are people who said that they didn't feel safe.
And, yeah, that was a horrible thing.
And it is really sad that we had to cancel that.
It was such a loss for the community.
And, you know, certainly has nothing to do with our Halloween and our support of our of our Halloween celebration.
So thank you all.
Council members, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda calendar? So moved.
And just to be clear, because there are a lot of things that change.
We took two things off of the consent calendar.
They moved on to action.
That was items just to do this again.
Item number.
Sorry.
OK, sorry.
That was item 18, which was the authorization to encrypt Berkeley Police Department.
Council members.
That's 18, which is the authorization to encrypt Berkeley Police Department primary radio channels.
28, which was the remove the remove pre-transfer eligibility restriction of the transfer tax rebate for wildfire hardening.
So those two things are moved off onto action.
And then we added an urgency item.
And also there were some adjustments made by council member than a part to item number nine.
And the city managers.
Yes.
The city manager's request on item 27.
That's right.
Referred to the city manager to consider the commission's recommendation report back to the council.
OK, thank you.
And sorry, did someone make the motion? No second.
And I seconded.
OK, very good.
Thank you.
All right.
To approve the consent calendar.
Council member.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
OK.
Consent calendars approved.
Thank you.
So, folks, we have still a few items on our action calendar, but I'd like us to take a 10 minute break.
All right.
So we will take a 10 minute stretch break and be back at.
All right.
All right.
All right.
All right.
All right.

Segment 4

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Segment 5

We are the only real accountability in this town.
It is our videos on Instagram that let people know what's really going on.
And if you continue to just feed yourselves on the pre-digested summaries coming from the chief on the same day that you're taking a vote, you do a grave disservice.
Yes, Berkeley will be, if we continue to have unencrypted channels, yes, we will be the only one.
And if everybody in this county turns fascist and collaborates with ICE, does that mean we'll do it too? There was another time when Berkeley was the only one, when Berkeley in 1973 was the only city in America that had civilian oversight.
That was a time when leaders led, not followed.
That they stood up and had a little courage.
What will you do for us? How will you ensure that we get to directly observe police? We can't watch them if we can't find them.
How will you help that part of the community? This talk of community that you have behind closed doors, behind offices? Or was that all happening in the chief's office? Is that the community? Thanks, Andrew.
Next speaker.
Come move up closer.
Yeah, so you can head straight to the next speaker.
So out in the real world, it's as if the police are not opaque enough, unaccountable enough, uncooperative enough already.
And that's not even accounting for all the exemptions that they already have to use encryption.
And a lot of people are just wondering what the hell you people are thinking.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm Glenn Turner from District 5.
And I'm actually shocked that all these other places are getting encryption and it's only Berkeley that hasn't joined the club because this crime is down.
If you look at things, if you actually look at some of the statistics, everything except arson is down.
So where is all this paranoia coming from? We have been hyped up to a vigilance of dangers everywhere, but it's not.
And what's even more concerning is public record acts are not being observed and available.
I'd like to see body cams on all these police along as connected to these reports.
I want to see whether they're smothering some person with a mental illness, piling on somebody.
We should be taking care of people, not just surveilling everybody constantly.
This has got to stop.
Thank you.
Hello, Council.
My name is Sherry and I'm speaking as a UC Berkeley student, constituent of District 8 and on behalf of Cop Watch Berkeley.
The encryption of these radio channels will negatively impact the community's access to information and reflect negatively on BPD in terms of necessary transparency and policing.
This will also prevent journalists from reporting critical breaking news in a timely manner to inform the community and will prevent organizations like Cop Watch Berkeley and any community member from monitoring public servants such as the police.
UC Berkeley also has an alert system called Warn Me, and it's under review for its efficacy.
Last year, when there was a shooting on the campus, they provided a very late and vague warning.
These new systems will always be slower and less effective.
This is just one example of how it benefits the community to have open police channels.
I urge you all to vote against.
Thank you.
Good evening, members of the City Council, Mayor Ishii.
My name is Audrey.
I'm a UC Berkeley student here.
And I just want to talk about why we shouldn't approve the encryption of police channels.
Already, the police department has the ability to encrypt communications.
You can see it in the writing of the item itself.
Sensitive information is going to continue to be protected.
Another example I want to bring up is Palo Alto Police Department initially encrypted its data, but opened it back up in 2022.
And the PD in Palo Alto told Berkeley scanner that they have not encountered major problems as a result of this decision.
In 2021, the Berkeley City Council majorly voted to uphold the First Amendment and the spirit of transparency, requiring unencrypted radio traffic in most cases.
But what has truly changed since then? For many people, concerns about our constitutional rights and government secrecy has only increased.
Now is not the time to break Berkeley's reputation of transparency.
Important police radio channels and information are already encrypted.
We don't need to encrypt the public's last access to police radios.
Please do not approve the encryption of police channels.
Thank you.
I have a minute from Paul Blake.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So just days, please, counsel.
Just days after ICE was deployed to our county, you're going to cloak the police radio in secrecy.
This is the exact opposite of what we need in this moment of rooting of fascism and authoritarianism that's getting rooted in our country.
What we need is courage and creativity.
Can I have your attention, y'all? Everybody's on their phones.
Wow.
It's really hard when you have.
Thank you.
Yes, you're listening.
And thank you, Mayor.
But.
Courage and creativity following in silencing the radio channel because everyone around us is doing it is not the right reason to do it.
Capitulating to the demands of Jen Lewis is not the reason to do it.
Everything that comes before this council that has to do with public safety that Jen Lewis may not be in agreement with, where does it go? It goes to the Public Safety Policy Committee.
Everything goes there first.
How come this didn't go there first? They didn't get to weigh in.
Where is our police accountability board? We voted 85% of us.
We want police oversight.
We want transparency.
We want accountability.
This is the exact opposite of what we want.
Where is the police accountability board? They put out a press release, and they're saying, at a minimum, send this to that public safety committee.
Engage in true community.
Don't talk to just walk, bike, Berkeley and the reporters.
What about Berkeley Cop Watch? What about other community organizations? Have you talked to Friends of Adeline? Have you talked to Where Do We Go? Consider to the homeless.
Have you talked to all of the people that are supporting our most vulnerable and marginalized people? Have you talked to the undocumented community here? I don't think so.
Send this to the police, to the Public Safety Committee, please.
Follow your own footsteps.
Your time's up.
I understand.
Thank you.
Good evening, council members and Madam Mayor.
My name is Tasha Baptiste.
I've come to you many times before on various items involving public safety.
I serve on the City of Berkeley's Disaster and Fire Safety Commission and work in emergency medical services here in the Bay Area.
I'm here tonight to express deep concern about the proposal to remove public access to the Berkeley Police Department's radio scanner.
We should be fighting for transparency and accountability and community care, not whatever is going on here.
Transparency in public safety communications is a cornerstone of accountability and community trust.
The scanner has long allowed residents, journalists, and volunteer responders to stay informed in real time, especially during critical incidents like fires, protests, or citywide emergencies, when accurate information can literally save lives.
Removing the scanner would not make Berkeley safer.
It would make our city less informed and more dependent on filtered, delayed narratives.
Open access to police radio has been a hallmark of democratic oversight in Berkeley for decades.
If the concern is about privacy or operational security, there are far better solutions.
Thank you.
Folks, I'm sorry.
We have to keep moving.
Let's go.
Next, please.
Hi.
Hello.
I'm a UC Berkeley student, and I just wanted to be quick.
30 minutes is too long of time for too much harm, and rest in peace to Kayla Moore.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I don't know how much there was, but the remainder of his 30 seconds or whatever he had.
Okay.
All right.
I don't think we can do 30 minutes, 30 increments, but I'll keep track of it.
Go ahead.
Okay.
I have a minute from Elizabeth and Bryce.
Oh, lovely young people.
Thank you very much.
So three minutes and 40 seconds.
Okay.
Got it.
My name is Manny Law.
I was honored to be appointed by Mayor Jesse Oregon and the fair and impartial policing work group.
And I appreciate some of the council members and people in this room that have worked on that issue.
Are we in a police state? Are we focusing on public safety? Are we incorporating public airwaves, as the prior speaker said, that importance? Or are we having a secret society that we're developing? Are we the only city that had no police dogs? I know you're reading your phones, but I don't know.
Did you know there are no police dogs in the city of Berkeley? Did you know that we're the only city for a long time that did not have helicopters? The idea of public safety is not to make quick decisions as we're doing here today.
This is half-baked.
The public accountability board, which did pass by 84% of your community, voted to have a meaningful process in a police accountability board.
I had to file charges as a city employee, city resident, Cal graduate, after being bashed in the back by a police officer.
After that case on Black Lives Matter Day, when people got gassed and punched, and a minister got bashed in the back, and an elder got bashed in the neck, and a person got shot in the leg, we filed a federal lawsuit.
Law v.
City of Berkeley, I ended up having the named plaintiff by chance.
As a result of that, there's supposed to be body-worn cameras.
This, again, is not the right way to go in developing policy.
Did we look at, as the prior speaker said, other cities? Did you as a body, as a final decision-maker on a very big decision, take time to speak to primary stakeholders? That's a general process when creating policy and new laws and new regulations.
This is a problem more than a solution.
You should have taken attention to what was the police accountability board.
I read their press release.
I read their plea for sanity and review.
Looking at this operationally, it is not the best course of action.
In fact, it's a dangerous one.
We will have less transparency, less accountability, more risk of this city, which is going to be on fire.
You all do know that we're a target point for certain people, white supremacists, who the FBI said is the number one risk to public harm.
Not others, but white nationalists are the number one public safety risk to this country.
People of color are at risk, immigrants are at risk, and we have to do more for more transparency, not less.
So I plead, I beg of you, I implore you, I urge you to put this decision after full review.
Thank you.
Thanks, Monique.
It seems that we should be advanced enough to exclude private information.
I understood those issues that the chief presented.
This is a difficult time.
I was thinking, by not encrypting, are we giving more information to ICE and federal agencies, or is that actually the last speaker speaking? Do we need the information as a community because we're in such an odd time? So I do think this merits further discussion into these issues, further and deeper review of these issues before it's voted on.
It's very difficult, actually, for me to know where I land because of what I just said, that this is an extremely difficult time and there should be a way just to take out the private information.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Other public comment in person? Okay, let's move online, please.
Okay, so now is the time.
If you are on Zoom, we're doing public comment on item 18 regarding encryption of Berkeley Police Department primary radio channels, so please raise your hand if you'd like to speak.
We currently have 13 raised hands.
First is Ricky.
Yeah, hi.
Thanks for calling on me.
I feel that this matter needs more time and should not be voted on tonight.
It does not make sense to me to count on the police department itself to ensure you, the city council and the mayor, that they have exhausted all alternatives.
Why should we trust that assessment? The city needs outside assessment, and the police accountability board should be involved, and other groups like Cop Watch and other community groups.
Someone gave a great list.
Ilana gave a great list.
I'll just tell you, I was a witness to incredible police brutality by the Berkeley police at 8th and Harrison against an unhoused man.
After five minutes, he could no longer walk, and they had to carry him and shove him headfirst into the backseat of a police car.
I had my video camera.
I taped the whole thing, and I submitted it and filed a complaint.
We have to be able to keep our eyes on what the Berkeley City police do.
Thanks for your comment.
Next is Nathan Mizell.
Oh, sorry, Mark.
I forgot to ask, how many comments are there? 14.
14, okay.
Thank you, Mayor and Council.
This is Nathan Mizell.
As you know, I was a PAB member.
I was a mayor's task force for impartial policing member.
I was the chair of the Reimagined Public Safety Task Force.
This is not transparency.
All of you all up there already know this.
The PAB has not even seen this proposal, and yet somehow it's going to become a finalized policy.
This is a huge policy change, and you have completely disregarded the accountability body made up of members you nominated and confirmed.
So don't really understand that.
I know you're not going to listen to me.
That's not really news these days on public safety issues.
We've gone back on so many of our commitments we made in 2020 and 2021.
I'll just say, go ahead and read Mr.
Guso's op-ed while you're out there on your phone, some of you all.
It's very clear this is going to lead to more workload, not less, because there will be more public records requests, including from me, probably on the daily, to get the right public records.
Hopefully you plan to comply with state law and not make me wait hundreds and hundreds of days.
Thank you.
Next is Daniel Brownson.
Yeah, I also joined the chorus of people asking you not to approve this encryption, especially as how Textgate is still unresolved.
And we're talking about giving Berkeley police another means of communication that they can hold conversations that they know we wouldn't want them to be having on because of the comments they may be making about our community members.
And in my mind, this makes us more vulnerable, not less, to ICE and other fascist bodies getting a hold of our community members' information, because due to the lack of transparency, there's little to stop Berkeley police from inviting them in.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is David Scheer.
Hi.
I will start by saying that I respect what Chief Lewis and the BPD are trying to do tonight.
My job at work is all about protecting personal information and avoiding the harm that can come from unwarranted disclosure, so I get it.
I will say that this does feel rushed, and I think that we should just hit the brakes on it, and we should send it to the relevant policy committee.
I'm not saying never, but we should take the time to develop solutions to the issues of public oversight that a lot of folks have brought up tonight.
We can't find those solutions if we don't take the time to look at them.
But I appreciate what BPD is trying to do with the near real-time log and the transparency hub.
That's good.
It's not good enough.
The transparency hub is kind of useful, but there are huge gaps.
Thank you.
Next is Mark Hedlund.
Hi, I'm a District 8 resident.
I just wanted to speak briefly against encryption.
I endorsed David Scheer's comments earlier.
I'm part of Walkbrook Berkeley and part of the group that's worked with Emily Raguso and other journalists to monitor traffic and try and get better reporting out of it.
I think that you can see the quality of Emily's work shows some of the benefits that have come from that.
I know that she thinks it's important, and as a result, I do too.
I would also say to Chief Lewis, for the case of Juan Cong, who was killed at Virginia and San Pablo on his bike, I called the public information officer again and again and again asking for information about that case and never even got a call back.
I think if the police are going to be the ones metering out this information, they need to commit to actually engaging with the public and responding to queries from the public.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
All right.
Next is Ben Gerhardstein.
All right.
Can you hear me now? Yes.
All right.
Sorry about that.
Hi again, Council.
Ben Gerhardstein, Walkbrook Berkeley.
So BPD's scanner transmissions have really been critical to us in informing and focusing advocacy efforts for street safety throughout Berkeley.
The public scanner has allowed us to monitor incidents in real time and gain more details than would be available otherwise.
And with the assistance of local journalists, we have been really able to increase awareness of these issues to the broader community.
So we appreciate BPD's proposed call for service log.
We think that's a good starting place if we're moving toward encryption.
But it doesn't fulfill our needs entirely.
As you've heard from others, information about traffic collisions that has helped us in the past includes things like the parties involved, severity of crashes, status of victims, and responsible party.
And so we look forward to continued dialogue with BPD on this issue in the hopes that we can maintain some of that information in the log or in other forms to help us with this advocacy effort.
Thank you.
Next is Jordan.
Hi, Council Members.
I am speaking today in strong opposition to BPD's proposal to encrypt these scanners.
There are a myriad of reasons that have been explained by many people as to why we need to keep these scanners unencrypted, from disaster preparedness to police accountability.
And I'd like to speak to one of the points made by BPD, which is this idea that they are somehow protecting the privacy of vulnerable individuals by encrypting this scanner.
I don't know if any of you guys have spent time listening to the scanner.
I have been listening to the scanner for years.
I've never heard information that is compromising of a vulnerable individual, so I simply don't buy this line of logic.
And when you have somebody like Nathan Mizell, who was the chair of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force, telling you very clearly that we are unable to get clear information from the police department, we are not getting timely responses to our PRAs.
This tells you the department has a pattern of a lack of accountability and a lack of transparency, and this encryption is just part of that pattern.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, next is Avi Simon.
Hi.
Yes, I'd like to speak in opposition to this move to encrypt the scanner alongside so many other people who have spoken already today.
I've been a member of Berkeley Copwatch since 2021, and in that time we've worked with scores of members of the community from undergrads at UC Berkeley to even a Berkeley high school student and so many others to teach them about their right to watch the police and monitor police activity and training a generation of people to push back against the constant tide of secrecy coming from all law enforcement agencies, period.
And the scanner is an essential part of this work, and we really just have to appeal to you, the civilian oversight of our city, our voice, and say, please, please keep this critical resource available to us.
The cops are never going to agree that this is essential.
Thank you, Avi.
Thanks for your comment.
Next is Paola Laverde.
Yes, good evening, Mayor and City Council members, Paola, District 5.
This is a very Trumpian move.
As a former broadcast journalist, and I spent a lot of time in my career as a journalist listening to the scanner, and I listened to the scanner in Berkeley quite often, this is a way to silence the voices.
This is a way to disable the community's ability to monitor the police.
The chief blamed two issues, I guess, two weeks ago.
We had six robberies in one hour, one by campus and one on Shattuck University.
I think it's not that they were listening to scanners.
It's probably because we have such a man shortage or personnel shortage.
That's the problem that we really have, and this is trying to cover that problem with hiding the information.
There's not a lot of information that goes out there.
But I think it's very Trumpian, so all the City Council members who claim to be progressives, if you're voting on this, you're not.
Next is Daryl Owens.
Hello, Council.
I would like to put things in perspective, honestly.
Berkeley police, compared to Oakland and other jurisdictions, generally do a pretty good job when it comes to case closures, relatively.
They're generally pretty responsive when you call them, especially compared to other jurisdictions like Oakland.
So I'm not entirely sure to blame the recent robberies on the lack of encryption just doesn't really make a lot of sense.
I want to support the police doing a good job at case closures, but the scanner allows for so many people to be engaged in our democracy.
I mean, there's so many hit and runs, injuries, deaths, fires that I would not have known about because we had the scanner.
And there is no public information outlet that's good at telling people what's going on in their city absent the scanner.
No offense to the police department.
No police department anywhere is good at this, telling people what's going on.
The scanner is the best you have.
So, yes, a lot of police are encrypting their scanners.
There's not an iota of research backing up why this is the case.
Thanks, Daryl.
Your time's up.
All right.
Thank you.
Next is Frank.
I'm going to be repeating a lot of what other people have already said because no one this evening has spoken in support at all.
Not a single person has spoken in support aside from the police themselves.
Nixle alerts are not an equivalent to having a transparent public police scanner.
Nixle alerts come out late, are lacking much detail, and are written by the police.
I'm sorry.
I'm, like, losing it that we're doing this again and again and again.
You're constantly just doing whatever the police ask of you and ignoring what the police accountability board recommends to you, ignoring what the public recommends to you.
This policy, like, I only learned that this vote is happening 20 minutes ago.
And I know I'm not the only person in the city that would like to have more time spent discussing this policy and reviewing this policy before it just goes to a vote.
If you're saying your staff is too constrained to deal with having a public scanner, that is illogical because you're just adding on more work they're going to have to do with these public records requests that are going to come in.
Your time is up.
Next is Neil Egbert.
Yes, good evening.
Mayor council and community members.
My name is Neil Egbert and I'm here on behalf of the Berkeley Police Association as their president.
Nearly every major city and law enforcement agency has moved from open radio transmissions to secure encrypted communications.
This is not a new idea.
It's now the standard that we see around the area.
The reasons are clear to protect sensitive information, safeguard victims and witnesses and most importantly, ensure our officer safety.
Open radio channels expose critical operational details to suspects, criminals, and anyone who wishes to do harm in our community.
Victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or other crimes have no idea that their names, addresses, injuries, or locations could be broadcast over the air.
Even delayed broadcasts still release this information without their consent, putting them at risk and discouraging others from coming forward.
This isn't just about privacy.
It's about their safety and trust in law enforcement.
Our officers also face real immediate danger.
Suspects have and can listen to open radio channels to gain tactical advantages, evade arrest, or even target officers.
Encryption allows us to communicate freely and respond effectively without tipping off those who enter our city.
Thank you, Neil.
Your time is up.
Thanks.
Next is Sam Spielman.
Hi, yeah, my name is Sam Spielman.
I've been a Berkeley police officer for 22 years.
I want to speak on behalf of the victims, witnesses, and callers who share their private information with the police.
When someone calls 911, they share their personal details, names, addresses, medical issues, mental health problems, and sometimes what happened to them.
This information is very sensitive and important for their safety.
But most of this private information is broadcast live over open police radios where anyone nearby with a scanner app, like an abuser, a suspect, or a curious neighbor can hear it.
This puts survivors and witnesses at more risk.
Encryption isn't about hiding things from the public.
It's about protecting the people who trust us enough to speak up.
Victims need to know that their private details won't be broadcast or listened to by somebody who wants to hurt them.
More police agencies across the country are using encryption to keep victims safe.
Berkeley should do the same.
We ask the council to stand with the victims and witnesses and citizens of Berkeley and protect their privacy.
Thanks, Sam.
Your time's up.
Okay, next is Dora the Explorer.
Dora, go ahead.
Hey, Madam Mayor and Council.

Segment 6

It's Todd Andrew.
I may use your first names once in a while because I know you personally, but the timing on this is really, really bad.
And I kind of wonder, even given the needs for victim and caller and police officer, public safety officer safety, isn't there a better way to handle this? Isn't there a technological, operational way to handle this that doesn't put the public in the dark? And yes, there's delay, but I'm talking about real time.
We have ICE potentially invading soon, National Guard, who knows.
I'm a big fan of the BPD, and you all know that I am.
Use of force record is good, discrepancies are decent, clearance records decent, but can we please come up with another solution other than full encryption? Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Next is caller phone number ending in 453.
You should be able to unmute.
Star six.
Hi, everyone.
Josh Kaitano, Chair of Berkeley Police Accountability Board.
I did not hear this item from the department until after it was put on the consent calendar, and we as a board have not been able to consider and provide the council with its recommendations because the last that the department told the board, they were still deciding whether to switch to encrypted radios.
The TAB asked for the department collaboratively work with the board before making proposals to council that impact police transparency and accountability like this one.
Right now, the department is not required to inform us of the policy change until after that has happened, so we think the council and the public would benefit from when the TAB is able to provide its input.
It should not happen here, but happen, for example, with the surveillance item a few months ago.
If we wait until after a policy is approved, inertia sets in.
It's difficult to stop a process that has already started, especially here.
We ask for a referral from the council to provide additional information on this proposed policy change.
Thank you.
Thanks, Josh.
Next is Theo Gordon.
Hello, council members.
I just mostly wanted to reiterate the comments from David Scheer, Mark Hedlund, and Daryl Owens.
I also wanted to take specific issue with the idea of using Nixle alerts to replace some of the work that the scanner does.
Nixle alerts are for broadcasting public emergencies for people who are otherwise tuned out.
It's not for oversight, and if we use Nixle as a replacement for the scanner, people will turn out from Nixle alerts, and that will be a big problem during earthquakes, fires, tsunamis, et cetera.
If we do go forward, we should find a way to retain all call recordings and allow citizen oversight groups to review original recordings, as well as just members of the public should have access to redacted recordings upon request.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Kelly Hammergren.
Thank you.
I was not expecting to comment, but this is my comment.
I'm hearing people asking for more time and review, who I would have expected to be fully supportive of encryption, and that tells me that you really shouldn't be passing this tonight.
You really should take time and put it through committees, which would be the normal process for this council, to put it through the public safety committee of the council, and to put it to the police accountability board.
I don't see that if you vote for this tonight, that you will ever go backwards and decide that it was not the best decision.
So I do support everyone else who has asked you to give us more time.
Thanks.
Thanks, Kelly.
Your time's up.
Okay.
That was the last speaker.
We have one more hand pop up.
Okay.
All right.
Andres Bejarano.
Good evening, mayor, council members, and community members.
My name is Andres Bejarano, and I'm currently a detective sergeant at the Berkeley Police Department.
I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the victims and witnesses who I work with on a daily basis.
Some have suggested delaying police radio broadcasts to balance transparency.
That is not enough.
Even delayed information exposes victims, witnesses, and officers to risk.
Suspects can still track locations, piece together details, and act upon them.
Victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or other violent crimes trust us to keep their information private.
A delay does not protect them.
It only postpones the danger and can discourage people from seeking help.
Officers face those same threats.
Encryption allows secure real-time communication without putting anyone at risk.
I urge the council to protect our community, our victims, and our officers by supporting encrypted police communications.
Thank you.
Okay.
We have one more.
This last call for public comments on Zoom for the police radio encryption.
We have Graham's iPhone.
Good evening, mayor, council members.
My name is Graham Chivas.
I'm an officer with the Berkeley Police Department.
I'm here to speak about why encrypting our police radio communications is essential for officer safety.
Every day, we respond to unpredictable and dangerous situations relying on our radios to share critical information and coordinate effectively.
Right now, open channels allow anyone, including suspects, to listen in, putting officers at risk.
Across the country, incidents have shown that criminals can use this information to ambush officers.
Encryption allows us to communicate securely and tactically, keeping officers safe without compromising our mission.
Transparency remains essential, but should come through reports, press releases, and community updates, not by broadcasting sensitive information in real time.
Many agencies nationwide have already made this change.
Berkeley should act now to protect the men and women who protect the community.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
That's it.
Okay.
Thank you.
Starting with ‑‑ we're going to go to council comments, starting with Council Member Taplin.
Thank you.
Chief Lewis, earlier in the ‑‑ during the presentation, you mentioned that there are state and federal requirements.
I was wondering if you could elaborate on what those are.
Yes, sir.
So, there's the CEGIS, which is the Federal Agency Federal Protection of Confidential Criminal Justice Information, so your record, basically, information.
And then there's the PINI, which is Personal Identifying Information.
And state mandate is that you don't broadcast that kind of information on the air.
Thank you.
I did want to address a few questions that came up.
And this is just purely a clerical clarification.
Mr.
Clerk, can you confirm when agenda items are published? Agenda items on a regular meeting agenda are published 12 days before the meeting.
Thank you very much.
And then people were asking why this came to council as opposed to going to committee.
This item came from the CM Andrews office.
And as a charter officer, charter officers are allowed to place things on the agenda.
I wanted to clarify that.
And I do want to appreciate the work that you and your team, Chief Lewis, as well as my colleagues did to address some of the concerns that we heard tonight.
And for the purpose of discussion, I will move adoption of the supplemental.
Second.
Thank you.
Council Member Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
And as is probably clear, I support this item.
The proposal with the supplemental material provides a means to keep the press in the loop, maybe not perfectly, but without giving police banned using bad guys and gals, the news that BPD is on the way, giving them time to flee, or heaven forbid, set up an ambush.
And compellingly to me, and I think I said this before, if cities around us are encrypted and they are and we are not, we become, you know, a target for these organized criminal crews.
And we know that they're out there and they are victimizing our businesses and our residents.
So I will be supporting this item.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Other council comments? Oh, Council Member Keefe.
Go ahead.
Oh, okay.
Sure.
Council Member Trichot.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
I want to confirm that you can hear me.
Yes, we can hear you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I would like to appreciate members of the community for speaking out.
And, you know, I just want to say off the jump, I do not take your concerns lightly or half-heartedly.
And this is why our office and several other council offices, at least, have been in conversation with the Chief.
And I felt much more comfortable following those conversations when Supplemental 2 came out.
Because our question was, is there something that could be a middle ground here? It sounds like what is being proposed is equivalent to the City and County of San Francisco, which is our closest neighbor that allows for a middle ground that could work.
I do not take concerns about abandoning transparency lightly at all.
And I have my entire lived experience and career to prove it.
However, we are in not normal times.
And over the last few days, we have seen what can happen when we are at the mercy of an administration, a federal administration, that clearly does not seem to regard our rights whatsoever.
So, not only is, to me, the safety of community members to be protected from those who seek to come to our city and engage in crimes, I am also very concerned about putting our residents at a heightened risk from actors and agencies who are directed to basically ignore or go against our rights.
And for all of those reasons, while I understand that this is not going to be something that is broadly supported by everyone in our community, I cannot in good conscience vote in a way that, in my estimation, would subject our community to a heightened risk.
With that said, I think the Council has a very robust Public Safety Committee.
I appreciate the work of the Berkeley Police Accountability Board.
And I welcome any other proposals and understand that there will be continuing conversations and engagement with the community and would support any other ways in which we can get this right.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
Council Member O'Keefe.
Thank you.
I wasn't quite ready, so I let Igor jump in.
Yeah, I actually, one or two speakers said, you know, do any of you even listen to the police scanner? I actually did for a long time.
It was kind of like a little hobby of mine.
And one time I was listening to it in my kitchen and I actually heard that my neighbor's house was on fire.
And I ran over there and I got there right when the police got, I'm sorry, when the fire department got there.
And I was like, oh, I didn't get there before because I don't know if I would have gone in.
But anyway, that was an exciting moment.
I've really enjoyed it.
I think it's fascinating.
I like to know what's going on.
And so if any of you are in that situation, I understand.
And I'll be honest, I was really torn when I learned about this because it's not just for entertainment.
It obviously does play a really important role in accountability and oversight in press coverage, which is excellent.
Thank you, Emily.
So this encryption move will be a big loss.
I really want to acknowledge that.
And I was really torn when I first learned about it.
I want to say I really appreciate the supplement.
I think that's, I think it's a great idea.
I think it'll really, it won't be the same, but I think it's the best you can do.
And I want to say I was torn because this is clearly important.
It's very clear to me.
Yeah.
I believe that this information being broadcast publicly really can undermine the effectiveness of the police.
And that's a concern to me.
And I just, that plus the fact that it is actually required by state law, it's sort of, I have to support this.
And I'm just saying, I'm actually really glad that you're able to offer something instead.
And so I am going to vote for this with supplement, but I just, I want to say one more thing.
I heard some of the speakers talk about what's going on with our federal government and the law enforcement at that level and how awful it is.
And you're not wrong.
It's awful.
It's terrifying.
But I really want to caution people not to conflate that situation with our police.
It's all law enforcement.
Yes.
And it's scary.
Law enforcement can be scary.
And when they aren't obeying the law, it's really scary.
But just because the federal law enforcement is not respecting the law, that doesn't mean that that's what's happening with our local police.
I personally believe that our police department has ruined our trust.
And so yes, police accountability is important.
Yes, we have that.
I support that.
But I just really want to caution people to be clear in your minds who the real bad guys are when you're speaking in a hyperbolic way.
Because I just, I really want to emphasize that our police are not fascists.
They're not behaving in a fascist way.
They respect and obey the law completely.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member.
Council Member Keserwani.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
Thank you, Chief Lewis and Arlo for the presentation.
I know multiple people have said this and we heard from the public, you know, comments as if this was sort of a discretionary choice.
So you know, the first two whereas clauses of this resolution, they note that the California Department of Justice issued an information bulletin requiring encryption of all criminal justice information and personally identifiable information transmitted over radio systems.
And this is consistent with the FBI security policy.
So that is why this item is coming before us because of these information bulletins, these requirements from the state.
And I think that I want to thank the Chief for this supplemental.
I want to thank my colleagues who engaged with our police department to make sure that we could have some level of transparency that's more immediate than the calls for service data set that can be accessed by the public.
Chief, I wanted to ask you, I know this resolution, it talks about the items that you can provide.
So it includes the, let's see, what does it say here? The general type of call, nearest intersection or block level address of the call for service and the time that the call was received.
Is there anything else that you are exploring that you could possibly add to this data that you can tell us about at this time? I know that work is ongoing with the community.
Yeah, absolutely.
We're looking at adding, including the priority level of the call.
So is it a high level, high priority level calls, lower priority level call? Is it in regards to an ongoing incident or a cold report of an incident that occurred long ago or just prior? And so we're looking at adding those additional pieces of detail that help inform the community of the nature of the incident.
Okay, and maybe a good way to think of it is we have to pull from existing tables or existing cells of information.
And so we have to consider whether that cell might have confidential information or not, right? And whether it jeopardizes safety in any way to include that.
And if it doesn't, then the possibility exists for us to include it, right? But if it's not already captured in that manner in that initial CAD report, then we wouldn't be able to put it into the call log because it doesn't exist or isn't captured at that moment.
Right.
Okay.
So obviously we can't pull in data that we're not already collecting in a systematic way.
A perfect example is, because I know this is one of the questions, is who's at fault in the collision? So the initial CAD screen where the dispatchers enter in the information does not have a place to put that where we could then grab it and put it on the initial call log.
However, once we get the collision report is completed, then we're able to have that information on the transparency hub that provides who's at fault in the collision.
Okay.
And I don't know if you know this offhand, but would a member of the public be able to sort of connect that collision report with that call for service as some kind of identifying code or detail to be able to do that once that is all posted? Like if they're aware of a collision that occurred, would they be able to find it on the log? Yeah.
If they have the time and the general location, then that'll appear and it'll be apparent.
Okay.
Okay.
So it sounds like, you know, it's going to be a different method.
It's not going to have the personally identifiable information that's currently available, but it's going to be something that will allow the public to be able to monitor what's going on.
And so I feel satisfied with that and I'm prepared to support this item.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Council Member.
Council Member Blackabee.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I just say at the outset, like so many issues that come to the City Council, we're being asked to balance two sometimes conflicting but important issues.
We see this on housing policy.
We see this in so many other areas.
And in this case, it happens to be community safety and transparency.
And look, if all we cared about was transparency, then absolutely, we should keep the existing system.
We should keep the existing framework where the scanner is publicly available.
But that's not the only interest.
You know, we also do have a public safety interest.
We have an interest to keep our members of the public safe.
We have an interest to keep members of the police department safe.
So the question is, how do you draw that line? How do you find the proper balance? I will say that I think one of the primary responsibilities that we all have as elected officials is keeping the community safe.
And I take that very seriously on fire, on police, on crime, on whatever.
And so it is important to me that we do find the right balance.
I'll also just comment that on the timing, to some extent, the move by the county really did force our hand on timing.
You know, I think we'd all prefer that, hey, we knew a year ahead of time that this was coming and that we had more time to prepare and maybe more time to, you know, do a thorough kind of look and analysis at all of the options and exhaust them.
But the force, the fact is, we're sort of in a situation where now we are the outlier.
Every other jurisdiction in our county and also Contra Costa County have made this move and we're the outlier.
And how long do we want to be, would we want to be the outlier from a public safety perspective? And that is of some concern to me.
I also echo some of my colleagues' comments, like, you know, oversight's vitally important.
We do have a good police department, but oversight's important.
Showing confidence and trust in the people who wear the badge and keep us safe is important.
We already face recruiting and retention challenges with our department.
You know, putting our officers in a position where they feel more exposed and they feel not supported by this council and by our community has other longer term impacts.
And we don't want to go down that path.
We already have a challenging enough environment.
And we do believe in the leadership of our department.
We do believe in the people who serve us.
And we should show that.
And I think this is a way that we do show that.
All that being said, I agree that oversight is important.
I've always been a believer in oversight.
I've participated in the oversight process.
I think it's important that as this process unfolds, we continue to get the feedback.
We're getting the feedback from the community.
I would encourage the Police Accountability Board to do policy work on this, to work with Arlo and the team.
We have plenty of examples where they are reviewing policy.
They're going to be looking at the drone policy.
This is another example where they can provide sort of community input and feedback.
And we can refine this and course correct as we go.
You know, and if there are other mechanisms beyond this weblog, let's find them.
You know, but I think this is the best we could find at this point to move forward and move forward in a way that didn't keep folks entirely in the dark once we started to encrypt the communications.
So in terms of wrestling with all these issues, I come out in favor of this policy.
I really want to thank the Chief.
I want to thank Arlo.
I want to thank the community for this engagement.
No one's ever going to be fully satisfied as we kind of move forward, but I do think in the balance of equities here, to me, to this particular Council Member, this feels like an appropriate balance that supports the public safety, you know, needs of our community and also helps to provide some transparency, even while realizing that we are, you know, taking some other pieces of this away.
So to me, it does strike the right balance and I'll be supporting it.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Lunapara.
Thank you.
I'm going to be very honest about where I'm at.
I think I came into this meeting after having worked very closely with the Chief and her team to come up with an alternative that is a compromise between what the community was asking and what the Police Department initially put forward.
And I want to so sincerely thank the Chief and her team for working with us on that in good faith.
And so I came in expecting to, knowing that there was going to be opposition to the item to support this item with the supplemental.
And at the same time, I am hearing people, from people who we worked with on this item from all over the political, Berkeley political spectrum, saying that they don't feel like their needs are being addressed.
And so, and this is disappointing to hear also for myself, because we were not able to come to a place where people can feel that their needs are being addressed.
I also really, you know, the encryption was going to happen at one point or another.
The question is about what we're going to do to address some of the issues that come with that.
Some of the issues that the transparency, the lack of, or the effects that would have on transparency.
We have a memo from the Attorney General of California that says that we have to encrypt eventually.
And I think it is really important to protect the information of the people who call in.
And like I said, I'm also hearing that people don't feel that there are still steps missing here.
I do think that this item should not have been on consent originally.
I think that it should have gone to the public safety committee.
I understand the concerns around delaying this and how Berkeley would be the only jurisdiction.
And I also don't want that.
And I think there are ways that we could have gone through a more rigorous process while focusing on getting this to council quickly.
I think that the PAB should have been involved before this came to council as well, and they should have gotten the chance to give their full opinion.
I'm being, you know, both of these things are going on in my head at the same time.
And so I'm trying to be like as honest about this because that would not have, and I want to also really thank everyone who came out here because my thought process would not have been as complicated as it is if it wasn't for the public.
I think I support, because we have to encrypt, and I really think that the chief and her team were really committed to finding a compromise, I ultimately agree with this item and hope that we can continue to work to improve some of the questions that people have.
I hope that the police department can also meet with cop watch and make sure that we're addressing some of the things that they would like to see.
But I do have concerns about how the process went, and I think that seeing so much opposition from the community confirmed that in a way that I didn't realize before.
I guess I just wanted to say that, and I think that this is a very complicated piece, and I think it deserves complicated thoughts.
Yeah, that's what I have right now.
Thanks.
Thank you, Councilmember.
Councilmember Bartlett.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
And you know, the points made by my colleagues are pretty much odd.
I would say everything they said, essentially.
But, you know, I definitely am in full support of transparency and the Fourth Amendment and the ability to watch the watchmen.
However, I did a really informal straw poll among my constituents around this topic, just talking to people, and I heard a couple of stories that sort of gave me pause and kind of, you know, reoriented my stance on this topic, because as much as I'm for the global effort to achieve civil justice, I'm also acutely here for victims.
I represent victims, and they need more respect.
And so, in this instance, I had a business that was subjected to a few, a series of robberies of increasing, they became increasingly violent, and people were hurt, and they were using the scanner, this device, this app.
So they had warning, and they were able to really get away with some pretty terrifying stuff.
And the other one was a bit more of a heartbreaking one.
A constituent went through some problems, and.

Segment 7

Her family called on her to get support from our people, and someone listening to the device, the scanner app, wrote her name up on social media, horrifically embarrassed her and shamed her.
Really, really sad.
So, I'm moved by all the arguments here, but there's something to protecting people and their privacy is here with me.
And also, of course, not allowing people to strategize to commit harm on our residents.
The San Francisco measure, as Council Member Tregub mentioned, seems like a fairly good compromise.
And I think the City Manager's supplemental gets at that.
And that being said, I do think that, I think the Police Accountability Board will automatically weigh on this, right? At a certain time frame? They can.
Okay.
30 minutes, 30 minutes, sorry, 30 days of implementation.
Apologies.
30 minutes, and we have to do it tonight.
Let's set that clock.
Yeah, so I think, as everything, there is room to dig into it and perfect it and make it better.
And we have lots of agencies and agents to undertake that work going forward.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I do really appreciate what you brought up about suspects, because that's the point, one of the points that I wanted to bring up as well.
Also, people who are accused, their information is on there, their description, their name.
I think that that also I find problematic.
I do appreciate people bringing up, especially sharing personal information of victims.
That is particularly concerning to me.
And unfortunately, we are in a time in history where people are specifically attacking police officers.
And so I do think officer safety is something that I'm concerned about.
I also share Council Member Lunaparra's feelings.
We had a lot of conversations about this.
And so I do really want the public to understand that we had many conversations, that we spoke with the chief, that we spoke with our city manager.
And really, what came out of this was the chief's supplement.
And I really do want to thank the chief for all the work that went into this, because not only is it just that we came to you, you also said, I want to make sure that we're being as transparent as possible, like, I'm going to figure out how to make that work.
And, you know, you took the initiative.
So I really appreciate that.
I really appreciate the partnership there.
And I also know that, like, here's what folks are saying, some concerns they have.
I have just like a couple more quick questions.
One is, will the recordings be saved? And would they potentially be able to be shared without the personal information? So recordings are saved for a period of two years.
Obviously, if they're pulled as evidence of a particular critical incident or call or part of the evidentiary piece of the case, they'd be pulled and held according to that retention period.
And as far as sharing information back out about the recordings, obviously, when we have to pull recordings, we pull recordings regularly and provide them to the PAB and the DPA as part of their complaint processes.
Pulling them out, those go unredacted.
But if we were going to release for some reason publicly, we would have to ensure that they were redacted.
So imagine the staff burden on pulling off through all of those.
So we would be looking to the government code to guide us on public records acts requests around that, and also maintaining privacy and understanding the workload of pulling all those records.
Thank you.
And also, when would the encryption happen compared to this data system, this transparency system that we're talking about? I want to just make sure that they're going to be closely tied.
Yes, so we'll have to schedule the process of getting encrypted.
We've been told that that could happen relatively quickly.
And we've already prepared to roll out the call log.
So that would be contemporaneous.
Oh, that's great.
That's great.
That's really important.
I want to make sure that that's the case.
And I also want to appreciate that you're going to continue to work with community organizations to make this system as transparent as possible.
And thank you also both for being here and taking the time to go over this with us and answer all of our questions.
So, okay.
Any other council comments? Okay.
We already have a motion on the floor.
So let's take the roll, please.
Okay.
To approve item 18, including the item in the supplemental from the city manager, council member.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
With sincere appreciation to all of your work and everything we did together.
No number.
Yes.
And Mary.
Yes.
Okay.
Motion carries.
Thank you.
You aren't killing the P.
We have two more items left, but we are going to take a 10 minute break.
Thank you.
Seriously, you just wash your hands of it.
You put your head in the sand and you don't have to look at police brutality.
You don't have to deal with it.
You care about victims, but not victims of police brutality.
What about Draco? What about the unhoused people? You don't give a what? You know what? I cannot get my council member to meet with me.
I can't get any of this.
We can't get in the conversation.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
You gave me.
You get a supplemental on the day.
Yes.
Yes.
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Yes.
Yes.
So, that's one type of definition of vegetation that needed to be included for removal.
And I want to thank council member Blackaby for working with council members Humbert and O'Keeffe in adopting that language that I worked on with Chief Sprague to confirm would be workable on a technical level.
So with that, I'll yield to the chief's comments and any other questions from the city council.
No comments, we worked with the commission and city manager's office and council member Blackaby to bring forward what's in front of you and we support the commission's recommendations.
Thank you.
Are there any questions from folks? Okay, I'm going to go to public comment.
Is there any public comment? Okay, actually, I know you'll just make your way.
Okay, go ahead.
Go ahead and give your public comment.
And then I do want to let you know that we're going to have a public comment on this item.
Yeah, of course, I'll try to keep it brief and concise.
Hi, so my name is Elizabeth Thomas.
I'm an urban studies student at UC Berkeley.
I'm the external affairs director for Telegraph for People, and I'm also from San Leandro.
So I know just about how important this is for us.
However, I also encourage the city council to keep the cap for the $3 million home sales.
And I also encourage the city council to keep the cap for the $3 million home sales.
Sorry, it's late.
So we have a hiring freeze, and I think that trying to reduce the amount of money that we're going to be able to spend on housing is going to be a big part of what we're trying to do.
You know, we're in a fiscal crisis here in the city.
Sorry, it's late.
So we have a hiring freeze, and I think that trying to reduce revenue by saying that, oh, even though you sold your house for $3 million or more, we're still going to continue this rebate program, you're losing money.
Programs like this cost money.
It costs staff.
And if you're having a hiring freeze, you're acknowledging that there's this disconnect between money and revenue.
And if we're going to incentivize this, and I think that that's an excellent thing, I think we also need to acknowledge some of the city's financial realities.
So again, thank you.
And yeah, so definitely this is great.
But also, you know, we're Berkeley, you know, let's, you know, maybe not have tax breaks for the wealthy all the time.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, Council.
My name is Bryce Miller.
I'm a UC Berkeley student.
I'm in Telegraph for People, and I'm a voter in District 4.
I want to second what Elizabeth said.
I really support this bill.
Home hardening is really important, but we cannot be having tax breaks for homes that are worth more than $3 million.
So, thank you very much.
And I'm happy to also help in other places.
So, yeah, please.
Yeah, we people with 3 million people can buy a house for $3 million can afford that.
Thank you.
Other public comment.
Online.
This is for item 28 transfer tax rebate.
There's no hands raised online.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
I'll be fast.
Thank you, Mayor.
I want to thank Commissioner Katz for his work on this and working on the language as well as Greg Murphy's the chair of the disaster and fire safety committees, my appointee to that commission and for the fire department for working on this language.
Just a few comments.
I think the non-controversial piece is the woody brush edition, which, again, the fire department also supports.
It's the idea that if you've got this stuff that does require more work, more mechanical attention, that's more like a home hardening exercise than removing mulch or something that requires more annual maintenance.
This is sort of a permanent change that's more akin to home hardening.
So I think it should fit on the cap.
Again, I understand and I respect people's point of view on the cap.
What I'll say is, you know, this is not a giveaway back to the pockets of people who can afford it.
This is money that goes directly to contractors who do home hardening on people's homes.
This money goes to actually not just home hardened, but neighborhood hardened an area that we need to protect, not just for that neighborhood, but for the rest of the city.
There is a community interest in getting this right and any incentive that makes sure that look, we're asking homeowners to do a lot with ember.
We all heard this in June.
I hear this every day.
Right.
As we all know, we're asking people to do a lot and change a lot and bear a lot of this burden in District 6 and some in District 8.
And we're willing to do that.
But I think the incentives and support from the rest of the community to acknowledge that people are being asked to make changes is necessary.
And I think it's fair.
We have an existing seismic retrofit program in Berkeley that provides the same incentive.
It's half a percent of the one point five percent total transfer tax.
We are incentivizing people again to do the right thing and strengthen their home.
I would argue that what we're doing with home hardening provides even more neighborhood benefit than seismic.
Right.
Seismic rebate is about protecting my home, making sure my home doesn't fall down.
And yes, there are things like making sure it doesn't spark a natural gas leak and that can have impacts.
But given our narrow structure separation distances in the hills, each home that's hardened gives further resiliency to the overall neighborhood.
So there is a community interest in getting this right.
Guess what? The seismic rebate has no cap.
There's no cap on the seismic rebate.
I could buy a five million dollar house and my seismic rebate is the full zero point five percent.
We're just asking for the same consideration here on home hardening that we already give to seismic, because, again, it plays as much, if not more neighborhood benefit than seismic does.
The last thing I think.

Segment 8

The first thing I'll just suggest is that the staff report, by the way, this came through the Public Safety Committee, we're supportive of the item, the ask of staff was to come back with some options for consideration on the cap.
We had not committed to a cap, so we did not pass a cap through the committee.
The cap came through the staff process and they've added it, but it is worthy of a conversation because the committee didn't approve the cap itself.
If you'll note, the way the cap is currently written, it's a hard cap that basically says if you sell your home for $2.99 million, you get the rebate.
If you sell your house for $3.001 million, you get zero.
And so I also just think that the structure of that cap is fundamentally unfair and kind of works against the, if it's good enough for the $2.999 million homeowner, it's good enough for the $3.001.
So anyway, so I just think there's structural things with respect to the cap as well.
So respectfully, again, I understand the concerns.
I understand the budgetary situation that we're in, but we are also in a fire emergency.
We're also trying to encourage people to do everything they can to protect themselves and all of us, all of us down the hill.
So I think it's worthy of our consideration as a council to do this bit, like we're already doing for seismic and extend it to home hardening as it currently exists.
So appreciate folks' consideration.
Thank you.
Council Member Taplin.
Thank you very much and thank you to Commissioner Katz and Chief Sprague and Council Member Blackabee.
Quick question, the seismic retro, sorry, seismic rebate program.
What is the, what's like the area that that applies to? Is that citywide or is that like, it's citywide.
Okay.
It's citywide.
Citywide.
Yeah, I think that's, that's notable.
There are three issues I'm having with the idea of removing the cap.
One is the potential revenue loss.
It would be helpful to see what funds would be impacted were we to apply this uncapped exemption.
If it's the transfer tax, I want to see what programs will be impacted and how and to what degree.
I think that it's both true that we are in a fiscal crisis and that we have a very serious vulnerability to wildfire.
Those are both true.
For me, I'm hearing from a lot of my residents and from residents and other flatland neighborhoods about the burden they're facing paying our taxes.
It would be very difficult for me to exempt one part of town from taxes while the entirety of my district and the districts that neighbor my district would continue to pay those taxes.
That's not to take away from the importance of providing incentives and assistance to people who are, who are making these changes to their properties.
And I would welcome and would support further measures to provide that assistance.
But I cannot, I cannot support a tax exemption for homes over $3 million or at $3 million.
Thank you, Councilmember O'Keefe, and then we'll go to Councilmember Traycott.
Thank you, Mayor.
Thank you, Councilmember Bacabi, for this item and for the supplement and for allowing me to co-sponsor, which I'm happy to do.
And Bacabi did a good job summarizing the arguments.
I really want to emphasize one argument in favor of the supplement of removing the cap that really convinced me because I agree with you, Councilmember Kaplan, and I agree with a lot of the commenters.
You're absolutely right.
This is, we, this is, we're in a fiscal crisis and we're giving tax breaks to who? I mean, it's, it's a lot to ask, but there's one, there's one orientation that makes it clear to me that this is the right policy.
And that's, what are we trying to do with our home hardening efforts and with EMBER? What, what is the purpose of it? We're trying to achieve something like herd immunity with our neighborhoods, our fire-prone neighborhoods.
It's not just, you know, each person makes their home fireproof, and so that person's home is protected.
That's actually not how it works.
The neighborhood, and Chief Sprague can come, if I get this wrong, please tell me, but my, my sense is that if 80% or something of the homes have been fireproofed or have been hardened and have zone zero compliant, then the whole neighborhood is, is very, very protected.
And if 70% or 60% have done it, there's still some protection, but it's a lot, it's a lot less.
So the name of the game with all of this is to maximize compliance.
And that is, like, what are we doing if we're not maximizing compliance? And so, to me, this is one more way to bring in a few more houses, which really could make the difference.
And that argument for me is why I not just, don't just support the supplement, but actually wanted to co-sponsor it.
Thank you, Council Member, Council Member Trago.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Yeah, I, I appreciate all of Council Member Blackabee's work on this.
And, you know, transparency, I too am conflicted on the, the waiver of the $3 million threshold.
And I, I do understand the benefits of it.
And I understand that if we don't get compliance at the end of the day, that just puts all residents, not just those, whether they can afford to make those fire hardening improvements or not.
It makes everyone more at risk to being impacted by an out of control fire.
So I get that.
And I'm also having trouble squaring that when, for instance, we have a referral that has been in referral purgatory around a transfer tax exemption for 100% affordable housing properties.
And understandably, there have been questions about fiscal impacts.
I believe that they're far more minor than what the impacts might be to the city here.
And I understand that in some way, these are apples and oranges, but I just wanted to provide an illustrative example of why I'm really struggling with it.
And I'm wondering if council member Blackaby might be open to creating some kind of provision where maybe in the first X number of years, yes, we can incentivize this by providing no cap.
But at some point, there will be a phasing out and a reporting back to some kind of threshold, whether it's $3M or something else.
Okay, thank you.
Council member Humbert.
I'm up.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Yeah, I was privileged and happy to, to, to be a cosponsor of the sup.
My primary concern with the, the, the, the item itself is is the cap and the cap is like a cliff.
And, you know, as council member Blackby pointed out, if it's 2.9999 million dollars, you get the credit.
If it's 3.001 million, you don't.
And that just seems to me to be screwy and unfair.
There may be a room here for a compromise.
I'm a cosponsor of the sup, but I do see, I would see it potential for some kind of a, of a compromise where, for example, you just didn't get credit over 3 million dollars.
If you sold a 10 million dollar house, you don't get credit for the difference between 3 and 10.
I'm just throwing that out there.
So anyway, and I really find council member Blackby's comments and council member O'Keefe's comments to be really compelling, especially the, the, the argument about herd immunity.
It's really true, and I don't want to elaborate on that because they both have spoken so eloquently, but I'm on board with those arguments.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council member Bartlett.
Thank you.
Question.
I guess I'm not up on the, the evolution of the item.
Has this already gone to the budget committee? It has.
Right.
Okay.
And are these are these issues that we grapple with? The cap is new.
The cap was something we asked for.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah, again, it's a, yeah, I, I understand the number does seem kind of arbitrary as you mentioned there, but of course, you know, it's difficult to task our constituents who are complaining about the tax bill all the time.
So they have to shoulder it, but the rich guys don't.
I mean, that's the shorthand is how it sounds.
That's how it is.
So it's a difficult issue.
I'm not compelled to support it at this point.
Thank you.
Council member.
Yes, thank you very much.
Madam mayor and thank you council member Blackaby for the supplemental.
I do appreciate the rationale and I think that.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So what was particularly compelling to me in what you said, and I think council member said this as well is that this really is a communal effort.
And so we want to incentivize everyone in the fire zones to make these home hardening improvements.
And I think I am, I think council member Humbert may have said this.
It is a little annoying that there is a cliff of, you know, when you're at 2,999,999 and 99 cents, you get the full benefit.
And then not, you know, when you're 1 cent higher.
So I, when I saw your supplemental council member Blackaby, I, I did want to look at the data in terms of how many home sales are over 3,000,000.
And, and what is the revenue loss for the city if we were to pursue the cap and we were given some data.
I'm going to attempt to just explain the math of because I just want the council to know how much this might cost.
So, so in the data that we got, we were told that the total sales over the last 7 years.
So if you divide that number by 7 and you do 1.5% of it.
That's the the amount sort of that that you you work from and then it's a 3rd of that for the transfer tax.
So I'll just show so 6, 0, 7, 5, 1, 8, 500 divided by the 7 years.
So that's 86 or 87 million reduce it to the 1 and a half percent that's 1.3 million.
If everybody who bought a home for more than 3 million does the full rebate, which is unlikely.
So this is a max you would get 33% of 1.3 million.
So at a max, this would cost 430,000.
Now that's assuming the past is representative of the future and sales fluctuate, but this is an order of magnitude as to how much it would cost.
And I, I, I also explored, you know, what if we just held everybody to 3 million, meaning regardless of how much your home sold for 10 million, 7 million.
If we just held everybody to the 3 million amount, would that yield any significant savings? And if you do that math, so there was 146 sales that exceeded 3 million in 7 years.
If you divide that by 7, that's about 21 home sales a year.
If you just multiply that by 3 million, reduce it to the 1 and a half percent and take a 3rd of that, you're at like 309,000.
So, so, so just to let you know, so the staff proposal obviously has zero cost for homes over 3 million.
If we did this sort of compromise thing, the max would be 300,000 order of magnitude.
Councilmember Blackabee's proposal is 430,000.
I just wanted to put that out there for the council's consideration.
It's tough because the deficit that we were advised about at the Budget and Finance Committee the other day is 25 million.
So it feels stressful to add a cost in, and that's an annual cost, because we increase our problem that we have to solve.
So we have to think about, well, what are we going to reduce then to cover this and then the rest of the 25 million? So I think this is not something I'm totally against, but I feel like it's tough to do it right now with the budget situation we're in.
So that's kind of where I'm at right now, and I think we've heard from everyone, but I'm interested to hear from the rest of my colleagues on this.
Thank you.
Thank you.
A couple of us left.
Go ahead.
And I understand Snifty.
Again, I also just want to remind us this is not cash that's going back.
This is not a welcome to Berkeley, here's some money kind of thing.
This is going to harden homes.
This is money that's invested in the community to strengthen the community.
So I just want people to also think this isn't like taking $300,000 and just lighting it on fire.
This $300,000 is going to remove woody vegetation in your homes.
This is fixing roofs.
This is fixing siding.
This is fixing fences that intersect houses.
All the stuff that we know works.
So, again, is that worth $300,000 investment? I mean, that's a policy choice, but I just want people to be accurate about what it is and what it's not.
This is not a giveaway.
Again, if we don't do this, many people will not do the work.
Thank you.
All right, Councilmember Lunapar.
Thank you.
I want to bring up something that has been brought up in budget discussions in the past, especially given our deficit at the moment.
If we remove this cap, this is $400,000 that is going to come from somewhere.
What are we going to cut to get this $400,000? And is that going to end up being child care for people who rely on it? What are we willing to trade for this? Is it going to be staff members that we have to lay off? These are all considerations that we have to take into consideration when we're giving this money back.
I also want to talk a little bit about the argument that I think is compelling around making sure that enough people do this, that the fires do stop.
And I also think that we have been open and clearly interested in supporting requirements for everyone in the community to adopt it and to provide financial assistance to those who need it.
This would be financial assistance for people who do not need it.
I just don't think that that's reasonable.
I want to thank everyone who's worked on this.
I do think that the original item is really important, and I'm glad that we're working on it.
I just don't think that the supplemental aligns with our city priorities, and I want to hear what we would be willing to give up.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm going to go back to them.
So starting with Councilmember Kaplan.
Thank you.
I just wanted to point out that the policy recommendation includes, along with the request of staff to submit an ordinance, the inclusion of analysis and options for an eligibility cap based on home value.
I do think that this is a recommendation that would allow for options to be returned.
So, I don't think that this conversation necessarily will end if we don't vote for the supplemental, but I do think that the analysis and the options are going to be important for us to have before we agree to.
So, I do think that the discussion of whether to exempt homes in excess of $300 million in value.
$3 million, yes.
Sorry.
No, no, it's okay.
Where does it end? All right, sorry.
Councilmember Okie.
The question of what are we getting for this money? Like, how do we weigh it? What are we giving up? Think about how much money the city would lose if we had a catastrophic Pacific Palisades level wildfire in the hills.
How much money would we lose as a city if you want to put it in financial terms? Now, the chances of that are small.
But mathematically, if you make it slightly smaller, you are actually saving money in a probabilistic sense.
But I really want you to think there is a, we are protecting our city's revenue by maximizing the number of homes that are hardened.
Because we are lowering the chances of a catastrophic wildfire, which would have devastating financial consequences.
Thank you.
Councilmember Lunapara, you have something else you want to add? Yeah, I also wanted to add that when homes do home hardening, that also increases the value of their property.
Maybe not by as much as the rebate would be, but there is an incentive also for homeowners to do that.
I appreciate that answer, and I think you're right in a larger sense.
But we still are going to have to make policy decisions.
We're still going to have to adopt a budget next year.
Okay.
Other comments? Oh, sorry.
Councilmember Traikop.
No problem.
So, it is 1.38 a.m.
where I'm at, and I am doing my best to do math as quickly as Councilmember Casarboni.
I do not want to hold this important item up.
So, if there was a vote on it, I would request that we sever out the portion that removes the cap.
And I would be interested in having additional discussion, because I understand that it's not as simple as basic dollars and cents conversation.
But I don't know if $3 million is the right number.
I would be open in looking at options that include a sunset.
Maybe we can incentivize getting to that hard mentality over the course of a few years after implementation, and then phase it down or out.
I just don't know what that means right now in terms of dollars and cents.
Councilmember, maybe I can ask a question of our city manager of how that $3 million number came to be.
That might be helpful for Councilmember Taplin and Traikop's questions.
It's two times the median, and it aligns with Measure W's $3 million at the top tax rate of Measure W.
So, there is an ease of implementation, given those numbers? No, it's just more like double the median felt like a lot.
Okay, Councilmember Bartlett.
Thank you.
These are interesting points.
Councilman Lunapar brought up the home value being enhanced by the home hardening.
And my colleague next to me, Mr.
Humbert, talked about a compromise.
This seems like the addition of this new element.
I mean, do you want to go back to the committee and think of some ideas around this? No? Okay, sorry.
I haven't gotten a chance to speak yet.
So, I would like to speak, and then we can come back to this.
I'm sorry.
I'm reaching the point of the hour where I'm starting to raise my voice.
So, all right.
Yeah, I just want to say we did discuss this at Budget and Finance.
And I want to tell you all that this morning that Councilmembers Keserwani and Blackabee and I received reports on the dismal state of the marina fund and the parking fund.
Like, we are talking about a $28 million, at least, structural deficit.
And I have told people that I cannot, in good faith, support us losing any more money, period.
Like, I just think that that is something we need to have a conversation about.
It's tough.
I hear you.
We have all been incredibly supportive of the fire work, of EMBER, of home hardening.
We are trying to find other ways.
Just want to make sure folks understand this is not the only way that we are supporting people in their homes.
So, we are considering the tradeoffs here.
That's what we're talking about.
And I want to address the cutoff argument.
That's just how policies work.
There is a cutoff.
It sucks.
I'm sorry.
Like, I know it's challenging to figure out what the right number is.
But $3 million as a home, for me, is a lot.
So many people in our city can't even afford to buy a home.
So, we're talking about people who can afford to buy a $3 million home.
Or in the next five years, they're going to sell their home and it will be $3 million.
So, I think we need to think about that.
We just really, to me, I cannot, in good faith, subsidize multi-million dollar homes, people who own them.
Even this item in general, like, I actually thought that the cap should have been lower.
So, I was willing to go up to $3 million.
So, the fact that we're even talking about this, for me, I'm telling you, I'm sorry.
I know.
I've reached a late hour.
So, like I said, losing my cool.
But that's really hard for me.
And we just, we need to remember that all of these decisions matter.
We are talking about very likely having to lay people off.
So, when we're talking about tradeoffs, like, this is what we need to be thinking about.
And just to make sure it's clear, I'm not arguing that we don't need to maximize compliance.
I'm arguing that we shouldn't be subsidizing those who can afford a $3 million house.
So, that's where I'm at.
I'm happy to take more comments.
But also, we have no motion on the floor.
So, Council Member, who's next? Council Member Blackabee.
Yeah, I'd like to, I guess, propose an amended motion.
So, let me share.
I just happen to have some other language in my back pocket.
So, let me, just a moment here.
So, this language basically fixes what Mark described as the cliff, where if you're at 3.001, you get nothing.
And if you're at 2.999, you get something.
So, the way this reads is up to one-third of the tax imposed shall be rebated.
Expenses shall be rebated on a dollar-for-dollar basis for a property sales value up to $3 million.
No additional transfer tax shall be rebated for incremental sales value in excess of $3 million.
And then we review that number every year to make sure that it represents the 95th percentile.
So, we're willing, I'm willing in the spirit of kind of a compromise to sort of say, great.
We will take home values of more than $3 million off the table, but every house up to $3 million gets the full value of the tax credit.
And if you have more than $3 million, you're limited at $3 million.
So, that would be my, so my compromise would be to include the woody vegetation and this cap instead of the current staff cap.
That's my motion.
Second.
Okay, I'm going to make a motion for the original staff report, but include the part about the, I forgot the language of the, I've been calling it shrubbery.
Yes, of the woody vegetation.
So, including the woody vegetation, but keeping the cap the way that it was before.
So, there are now two, there's a motion and a substitute motion before, but I need a second.
I will second.
Just to clarify, you're moving the original with the policy recommendation, policy committee recommendation? Yes, exactly.
But the addition of the woody, what did we just say? I'm sorry.
Woody vegetation.
Thank you.
Okay.
Wonderful.
I second.
Okay.
All right.
Going back to the order.
So, Council Member Keserwani.
Yes, I wanted to, can I do the city clerk propose a friendly amendment to both motions? Okay.
Okay.
So, what I'd like to do, so in reviewing this item today, we realized that it wasn't necessarily clear that the one-third is based on the base transfer tax percentage of 1.5%.
It's very clear that the seismic rebate only applies to the 1.5%, and we have language on that in the Berkeley Municipal Code.
We don't have it for this home hardening rebate.
So, I wanted to propose in the first paragraph, L1, in the last sentence, the last clause that it would read, shall not exceed the maximum of one-third of the base 1.5% transfer tax paid per property.
Yeah, that's good for me.
And then, Council Member Blackaby, is that acceptable to you as well? Okay.
And our seconders.
Okay, great.
Okay, so that is in there.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
Moving on.
Council Member Taplin is next, and then Council Member Tracob back to you.
That was just to make a motion.
Okay.
Thank you.
All right.
Council Member Tracob? Did you have a? Yeah.
I mean, if, well, this is a question.
This might be about both motions.
I just wanted to see if we could.
Originally, I was raising my hand to see, ask if we could refer this new amendment to the city manager for analysis about the feasibility of how this could be enforced and staffed the costs of staff time associated with enforcement.
So I would still be.

Segment 9

I understand the policy issues here.
I think we would benefit from more analysis and whichever motion passes, I hope we can bring this back for further discussion at a later point.
But I guess, that said, I will be, for now, supporting the substitute.
Okay, so getting more information about after.
Yes.
Okay.
All right.
So we are voting on the substitute motion, which has Council member Kesarwani's changed the original staff report, including the cap.
And adding the woody vegetation onto there.
So we're going to first take a vote on the substitute.
And the new language at the end.
Yes, that was Council member Kesarwani's addition or change.
Just so I have it on, in case we get to the main motion, Council member Blackview, Council member Kesarwani's new addition is just added to what you have on the screen? That's right.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
On the substitute motion, the original language in the item, plus the woody vegetation and Council member Kesarwani's amendment on the motion, Council member Kesarwani.
Can I suggest something? With this substitute motion, and I guess, I guess maybe I don't think we need to make any change here, but I just want to say for the record that if the substitute motion passes, Council member Blackview could still do a budget referral, perhaps.
So that, because I think what's giving me pause right now is to incur greater costs without the budget picture.
So I just wanted to note that, that it could still be considered as part of the budget process.
I guess that would require changing this ordinance, which could happen.
Okay.
That's all I want to say.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
On the substitute motion, Council member Kesarwani? Yes.
Kaplan? Yes.
Bartlett? Yes.
Traigub? Aye.
O'Keefe? Abstain.
Blackview? No.
Okay.
Council member Kesarwani? Yes.
Luna Parra? Yes.
Humbert? No.
And Mayor Ishii? Yes.
Okay.
That motion carries.
So the item is concluded.
Okay.
We need to extend time.
Thank you.
No, it's 1050.
I thought our time.
I'm trying to think about how much time this item might take.
Let's extend to 1145, just to be safe, and then we won't have to do it twice.
How's that? So moved.
All right.
Second.
Very good.
Can you take the roll please clerk? Okay, to extend to 1145.
Quick public comment.
Council member Kesarwani? 1145.
Oh, okay.
Yes.
Kaplan to extend? Yes.
Bartlett? Yes.
Traigub? Aye.
O'Keefe? Yes.
Blackabay? Yes.
Luna Parra? Yes.
Humbert? Yes.
And Mayor Ishii? Yes.
Okay.
Motion carries.
Thank you very much, Mark, for being our time watcher.
Appreciate you.
Okay, so we are moving on to Item 33, Telegraph Multimodal Corridor Project Conceptual Design.
And presentation.
Presentation.
Yes.
All right.
Hi, thank you so much for waiting.
I so appreciate you.
I'm going to pass the floor to you.
All right.
We'll get right to it.
As Elliot logs in here, but good evening.
Last item of the night.
So we do have a short presentation for you here.
So with me, I just want to introduce the team that's at the table.
And we also have some other folks in the room.
But we have Elliot Schwimmer, who's our senior transportation planner.
And then Thaddeus Wozniak, who is with our consultant team, who's the director of engineering.
And so those two will kind of handle the presentation today and answer questions at the conclusion.
So once you're ready, Elliot, we'll get started.
Thanks, Thaddeus.
Our panelists.
Raise your hand.
Just so I can find you on the..
Or what name are you under? I'm on the stream, actually.
Sorry.
I need the Zoom link.
Oops.
Oh, you need a Zoom link.
Okay.
Let's see.
Sorry.
All right.
Well, I'm going to need your..
Might be easiest if you went to the online agenda and joined from the..
I'm going to need the email address.
Yeah, what's the easy..
If I join from the stream? No.
Well, there's an online agenda.
Yeah, just go to the online.
Just Google.
Yeah.
It's right here.
Zoom link.
There we go.
Click there.
Then he can add you.
Okay.
Okay.
Sorry about that.
Thank you for your patience.
Good evening, Mayor, council members.
I'm Elliot Schwimmer, Senior Transportation Planner.
Happy to be with you discussing the Telegraph Multimodal Corridor Project tonight.
I'll try to go fast.
So the recommendation in front of you is to adopt a resolution approving the recommended conceptual design of the Telegraph Multimodal Corridor Project and direct the city manager to direct staff to proceed with detailed engineering and design of the project.
In this presentation, we'll review existing conditions and analysis, review the concept design selection process, summarize stakeholder feedback, survey results, discuss the recommended conceptual design, which is concept 3B, and discuss next steps.
So the project is Telegraph Avenue.
It's from Dwight Way to Woolsey Street or the Oakland border.
It's about 0.85 miles.
The project is consistent and implements the following city and AC transit plans.
The 2016 major corridor study from AC transit, 2017 bike plan, 2020 Vision Zero action plan, 2020 pedestrian plan, 2023 transit first policy implementation plan, and the 2025 bike plan update, which is a draft.
A summary of existing conditions.
Line 6 operates on the corridor.
It's the third highest ridership line in Berkeley.
It has 12-minute headways, 4,600 daily riders overall.
For driving, there's a 25-mile-per-hour speed limit.
Roughly one-third of drivers are driving over this speed.
For walking or pedestrians, there are long crossing distances.
The curb-to-curb width is 68 to 74 feet.
There are two parking lanes, four travel lanes, recently updated ADA curb ramps throughout the corridor.
For bicycling, there are fading and deteriorating conventional bike lanes.
They are narrow, located within the door zone.
People frequently are seen riding in general traffic lanes.
Regarding parking, there are 183 public spaces on Telegraph with a 58% utilization.
And then for the off-corridor utilization, there are 577 public spaces on side streets within a one-block walk of Telegraph.
Utilization on off-corridor is 62%.
Regarding Vision Zero, between 2013 and 2025, there are 21 severe injuries and 107 minor injuries within the project area.
This slide shows a timeline of public meetings.
In 2022, we had the first public meeting, also presented to the Telegraph Business Improvement District.
In 2023, met with the Lower Neighborhood Association, met with Telegraph for People.
In 2024, met with FITES, also conducted door-to-door business outreach.
And in 2025, this year, we met two more times with FITES, met with the Commission on Disability, and the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission twice, had a public meeting, met with TBIT again, and here we are today.
So a summary of stakeholder feedback.
So AC Transit and UC Berkeley favor maximum transit benefits, so Concepts 1 or 2.
Walk, Bike, Berkeley supports staff's recommendation and a full closure of the Dwight Triangle.
The Telegraph Business Improvement District supports staff's recommendation and supports studying a full closure of the Dwight Triangle slip lane.
The public survey results, which had over 500 responses, favor pedestrian and bike safety improvements, and the chart on the right is one response from the survey, shows that 54% of respondents favor Concept Design 3.
At the public meeting, there were questions around parallel bike boulevards.
There were concerns around removing left turns under Concepts 1 and 2.
And the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission concurred with staff's recommendation, but requested that we work with AC Transit to continue to reduce transit delay under Concept 3B, return to the TIC with options for closing the Dwight Triangle, and return to them at a later date with specific intersection and bus stop designs to review.
So this slide focuses on fire department feedback.
So we met with the fire department three times to solicit feedback.
The fire marshal expressed support for Concept 3.
Concepts 1, 2, and 3 were presented in that June meeting.
It was before we developed Concept 3B.
The fire marshal said it would be more intuitive for users and consistent with the Oakland Street design, also emphasized potential for the center turn lane to be clear for emergency vehicles.
They also clarified their access requirements, which are that fire apparatus can get within 15 to 30 feet of a building with an unobstructed street width minimum of 26 feet, near buildings 30 feet or taller, maintain left turns at Webster for access to Alta Bates, and maintain access at Derby and Stewart Street for fire apparatus.
Their other comments will be looked at in more detail during detailed engineering.
They were that traffic calming devices in the center turn lane should be designed to permit emergency vehicles to pass through them.
We talked about mountable raised bikeway buffers versus paint-only buffers.
They asked for parking enforcement of the center turn lane, including on weekends, to make sure it's clear.
And they expressed that they do not support closure of the Dwight Triangle slip lane.
In terms of business impacts, past research on the impacts of biking, walking, and other road safety infrastructure has found little to no causal impact of these types of changes on business employment, revenue, and turnover, and that bike lanes can provide positive economic impact.
We did connected door-to-door business outreach.
In October 2024, contacted 62 businesses.
Purpose of outreach was to understand commercial loading needs, and we learned that most businesses received deliveries two to three times per week.
Some businesses have off-street loading, but many received deliveries from vehicles loading on Telegraph Avenue.
Some businesses oppose the bike lanes, others support them, but we learned that there is a need for loading on Telegraph.
As I mentioned earlier, we also undertook focused outreach with the disability community.
We presented to the Commission on Disability in June, specifically regarding this project.
We've also had ongoing conversations with the community regarding accessible complete streets design considerations.
In our June meeting, we heard that it's difficult to deploy and operate wheelchair ramps in protected bike lanes.
One commissioner prefers ADA spaces on side streets.
They said the project should incorporate accessible pedestrian signals, concerned about construction impacts on accessibility, suggest evaluating past projects, and implementing lessons learned for future projects.
They had general feedback regarding our project delivery process, that accessibility should be integrated into the early planning and development and scoping of projects, that the city should consult an ADA expert with experience designing cycle tracks for accessibility.
Regarding protected bike lanes, they have to travel long distances in wheelchairs to get to the nearest ramp.
They said they're not necessarily legible to visually impaired persons.
They can't predict when a bike will be there, and that streets have gotten less accessible for visually impaired people over time due to quiet or silent EVs, silent bikes.
There's uncertainty as to whether bikers will yield to them when they enter the street.
For Zero Waste, it's a public works department, we walk the corridor with Zero Waste supervisors.
They said that maintaining existing driveways ensures Zero Waste operators can access dumpsters.
The plastic carts can be serviced through the bike and floating parking lanes.
They expressed concerns about floating parking lanes increasing the distance between the curb and the truck.
Moving on to the initial concept schematics.
These slides are admittedly hard to read, but green represents bike lanes, blue is parking and loading, gray is vehicle travel lanes, and red is our bus only lanes.
The initial concept one has two travel lanes in each direction, one general purpose lane, one transit right turn and driveway access lane, also known as a business access and transit lane or a BAT lane.
Concept one maximizes parking by limiting left turn pockets.
It would eliminate left turns at 13 of 15 intersections.
Concept two is similar to concept one, has two travel lanes in each direction, more left turn pockets and opportunities.
Instead of just Webster and Ashby under concept one, it would also allow left turns at Stewart and Parker Street, but making other trade-offs like reducing parking and loading, or removing floating transit stops.
It would eliminate 11 of 15 left turns.
Then initial concept three is a continuation of the Oakland design on Telegraph.
The important context is that Oakland has approved a road guide design or a lane reduction from four to three lanes from downtown Oakland all the way to the Berkeley border.
Oakland's project is anticipated to be part of existing conditions by the time Berkeley's project is constructed.
The initial concept three reduces travel lanes to one in each direction, maximizes left turn pockets and opportunities, and includes a continuous center turn lane.
Since the public outreach process for these initial concepts, we developed a revised concept, concept 3B, that we feel is a compromise between what we've heard from the public and the feedback we've received from AC Transit.
This slide shows that compromise or recommended concept 3B.
We developed this because we identified that most of the transit delay under concept three was occurring near Ashby.
With targeted transit improvements around Ashby, we could eliminate most of the transit delay.
This option includes transit priority elements from Webster to Russell Street, about three blocks, that includes bat lanes and queue jumps to allow the bus to reenter traffic ahead of the other vehicles.
Otherwise, this concept is the same as the initial concept three.
This slide shows a plan view of the Ward to Oregon segment under concept 3B.
This concept, except for around Ashby, mirrors the design features of Oakland's Telegraph Complete Streets projects for consistent user experience along the entire route.
This design includes a class four bike lane, floating parking, lane loading, bus boarding islands, one travel lane in each direction, and a center turn lane.
This slide shows a plan view of the Ashby to Webster segment under concept 3B.
In this segment, concept 3B looks similar to concepts one and two for three blocks between Webster and Russell in order to mitigate most of the transit delay, which occurs as a result of congestion at the Ashby-Telegraph intersection.
Even with these transit improvements, we still forecast that concept 3B will delay transit by up to 10%, but we will be looking closely at opportunities to refine the alternative to minimize transit impacts during detailed engineering.
There are a number of strategies that we are looking at to reduce or eliminate this transit delay, such as permissive left turn signalization at Ashby Avenue instead of protected phasing.
It could maintain the BAT lane beyond Webster or Russell, perhaps to Stewart.
It could extend left turn lanes.
It could tweak signal timing at other intersections.
All these things will be looked at during the later phases.
I also want to mention that the modeling for this project does not include the transit signal priority benefits that ADC Transit recently implemented as part of their Telegraph Rapid Corridors project.
Next slide.
Left turn impacts.
Every concept will impact left turns off the corridor.
Concept 1 would maintain two left turn opportunities at Ashby and Webster.
Concept 2 would maintain four left turn opportunities, Ashby, Webster, Stewart, and Parker.
Concept 3 would maintain all left turns except at Derby, Russell, and Woolsey, which are the bike boulevards, where left turns would be prohibited under all concepts.
Concept 3B would maintain all left turns except for at the three bike boulevards and at Howe Street.
The map on the right shows how someone who lives near Derby and Ellsworth, for example, would be impacted by the left turn prohibition at Derby Street under concept 1.
Due to a number of other diverters in the area, in particular along Ashby, they would have to take a pretty circuitous route to access the neighborhood west of Telegraph.
This slide shows the estimated impact of parking revenue from each of the concepts.
Parking revenue in 2024 along the corridor was about $188,000.
Average revenue per space was around $1,000.
Concepts 1 and 2 would eliminate between 43% and 52% of the parking on the corridor and would result in between $81,000 to $98,000 in lost revenue.
This assumes that the spaces are occupied 100% of the time, so this can be considered a worst-case scenario or most conservative.
Concepts 3 and 3B would remove far fewer parking spaces than concepts 1 or 2 but would still result in that loss of parking overall and would likely reduce parking fund revenue by about $30,000 annually.
This is a snapshot based on the current level of design, but we expect these numbers to continue changing as we get into detailed engineering and we further refine the design.
So here's an evaluation matrix that compares the concepts at a high level.
We did a quantitative evaluation, but this summarizes the results of the quantitative evaluation.
Each concept design was ranked based on its ability to meet project goals.
Public feedback was also incorporated into the scoring.
We determined that concept 3B scored highest among all concepts.
As you can see on this chart, existing conditions does not accomplish any of the project goals.
Concepts 1 and 2 accomplish most of the project goals but would substantially decrease the amount of parking and loading.
Concept 3 accomplishes most of the project goals but would substantially increase transit travel times.
Concept 3B accomplishes most of the project goals or accomplishes all the project goals and mitigates concepts 3's impact on transit travel times for the most part.
So why is concept 3B the recommended concept design? Again, we identified that Ashby contributes over half of the increase in vehicle travel time and 84% of the increased transit travel time.
This led us to believe we could eliminate most or all of that transit delay with targeted transit improvements around Ashby rather than a dedicated transit right-of-way the entire corridor.
Concept 3B prioritizes vision zero because it results in slower vehicle speeds compared to concepts 1 and 2, has shorter pedestrian crossing distances because there would be only 3 lanes of traffic to cross instead of 4 or 5 lanes under concepts 1 and 2.
It would make left turns more predictable because it includes left turn pockets where left turns are allowed.
We also had reservations about the likelihood of the public to comply with the left turn prohibitions under concepts 1 and 2 because most intersections under those concepts where left turns would be prohibited lack diverters except at the bike boulevards, so left turns would be prevented using signage only.
We think there's a possibility that drivers who are used to making left turns onto their streets for decades would continue making those turning movements illegally creating unsafe conditions.
Concept 3B maintains most parking and loading, is consistent with Telegraph Business Improvement District input, lines with fire department feedback, responds to the public survey preference, and is consistent with the Oakland design.
Specifically regarding the Dwight Triangle, we looked at 3 options and determined that all are feasible.
Option 1 closes the slip lane to vehicle traffic and creates new open space, potentially in partnership with adjacent businesses.
This option requires changes to realign the geometry of the intersection to make the turning movement work for larger vehicles, turning southbound onto Telegraph.
It also requires turning the northbound approach on Telegraph into a two-way street or one lane in each direction, which reduces road capacity.
Option 2 would keep the slip lane open to all, but would add a raised crosswalk to improve pedestrian safety.
Option 3 would keep the slip lane open to all, would save costs by not raising the crosswalk, but would improve safety for bicyclists by adding a bike lane through the slip lane.
Option 1 would add about 15 seconds of additional delay for northbound vehicles, including transit vehicles.
The full closure of Option 1 would be the safest option for pedestrians and bicyclists.
I should add that the Fire Department does not support closing the slip lane, but Walk Bike Berkeley, Telegraph Business Improvement District, and AC Transit are all interested in closing the slip lane.
I also want to clarify that the item in front of you does not make a recommendation regarding the Dwight Triangle slip lane.
However, having an understanding of Council's vision for the slip lane would help us determine how to best incorporate it into the larger concept design.
We heard from FITES that the committee would like it closed.
We also heard from the TIC that they are interested in closing the slip lane.
All concept designs, Concepts 1, 2, 3, or 3B, could accommodate a full closure of the Dwight Triangle slip lane.
So scheduling next steps.
We already talked about the analysis and outreach that has been done to date.
Once Council approves a concept design, the project will advance to detailed engineering, where there will be further outreach to public and technical stakeholders.
We have some remaining grant funding under the current phase to finish up concept design development.
Earlier this year, we won an Alameda County Transportation Commission grant to fund detailed engineering through 100% plans, but I want to be clear that construction is not yet funded.
That is the final slide, so thank you for your time.
I'm happy to answer any questions.
Thank you so much, because you also gave us our 9 a.m.
presentation, and here we are over 12 hours later.
So thank you.
All right, so clarifying questions from folks? Yes, Council Member Lunapara.
Thank you.
I actually have a couple questions for the Fire Department.
Thank you so much.
I want to clarify one of the positions.
My question is around, I guess I'm trying to think through it.
If there's no bus lane and there's one lane going in each direction, why is that preferred by the Fire Department than having a dedicated bus lane, especially given that that one lane would have transit stopping and probably causing traffic behind it.
Why is that preferable over having a bus lane that the Fire Department could utilize to get to each other? Our experience with dedicated bus lanes is that oftentimes they're occupied by other vehicles, delivery drivers picking up food, dropping off food.
So oftentimes a bus lane is not actually available for emergency response.
I'm not sure how significant of a preference that is.
I think we can go either way, but that's the context and reason behind it.
That makes sense.
I guess what I'm thinking through is I'm picturing concept 3B, which is similar to the Oakland design.
And when the bus stops, all the cars stop behind it.
And so then it kind of creates this block on both sides of the street.
And so theoretically, the fire truck couldn't get by at all.
Versus having maybe possibly more.
I believe in 3B, the center lane is the whole length of the street.
The middle lane? Yeah.
Okay, thank you.
Yeah, I think that's the question I have right now.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Council Member Taplin.
Thank you.
I have two questions.
During the presentation, you said that the report doesn't factor in the data from AC Transit's transit priority improvements.
Is that something that can be reported or shared with council as you move into the next phase of the project? Yeah, just to clarify that.
So the analysis that we did did factor in the improvements that AC Transit's doing, but it's not taking credit for those.
So we're not coming in and saying that the transit travel times are going to improve as a result of this other project.
The analysis is only looking at the geometric changes that are being proposed here and not taking credit for AC Transit's work that they're already doing on the corridor.
Thank you so much.
And the TIC is recommending that staff continue to work with AC Transit to increase bus travel time.
Decrease bus travel time.
Thank you.
And you did mention some improvements that you've identified.
Can you restate those, please? Yeah.
So the analysis that we've done to date has really been a high-level sensitivity analysis looking at the concept.
So while our analysis right now says that, oh, there could be about a 10% increase in travel time along the corridor, we haven't gone through that next phase of detailed design and refinement.
That can really help us hone in those numbers, and we think that there are a number of opportunities there to improve travel times.
One of them is just looking at the signals along the corridor and seeing if there's opportunities to allocate more green time along Telegraph, as opposed to the side streets, and look for additional opportunities for signal coordination to help the bus move farther along.
We also know that the second most congested intersection, in terms of delay on Telegraph, is the one at Stewart.
So as Elliot mentioned, there are opportunities potentially to look at maybe extending that transit lane a little bit farther forward and look at how improvements at Stewart specifically around signal timing or maybe a lane in one direction or the other can help improve the transit travel time as well.

Segment 10

Thank you very much.
Okay, thank you.
Moving on to Councilmember Humbert.
Yes, thank you Madam Mayor, and actually most of the questions I had have already been asked and answered, so I just want to confirm that this design matches the design, essentially matches the design of the Oakland improvements that will end at Woolsey, right at the Oakland city border, Oakland-Berkeley city border, is that correct? That's correct until you get to Webster and then you'd have a bus.
Right, and then there's a little bit, but if we put in a, you know, options one or two, that would be, you know, for all traffic including the buses, sort of a radical change right at the Berkeley border from the Oakland design to a new Berkeley design, is that correct? Yeah, yeah, so I see some real virtue in the design being consistent, reasonably consistent, all the way from Temescal to Dwight.
So anyway, that's, those are really the questions, only the questions that I had.
Thank you.
We have two more questions from our Councilmember Traigub and O'Keefe, so if folks want to start lining up for public comment, go ahead and start making your way over there.
Okay, Councilmember O'Keefe.
Thank you.
I apologize in advance if you did cover this clearly.
I'm very tired, but I'm curious, how did you incorporate the feedback from the disability community? We will continue to, well, so that their feedback was specific to the design considerations that will be understood and further refined during detailed engineering and design, but one item that they asked for and said, one member of the Commission asked for blue zones on side streets, and so that's something that we can look at at the corner, putting the ADA spaces on side streets so that they can deploy the ramp onto the sidewalk as opposed to into the bike lane.
Okay, thank you, and you said the rest of these will be addressed when the more detailed engineering analysis is done? Okay, and then my second question is, so I understand it's not the Oakland, the plans for the Oakland part of Telegraph that borders Berkeley is not done yet, but the Temescal, it's completed.
Will this look like what Temescal looks like? Is that, what are the differences between this and that? That's accurate.
From Woolsey to Webster, it would look similar to Temescal, and then actually north of Russell, it would look similar to Temescal.
Thank you.
Okay, Council Member Trageb.
Yeah, thank you.
Moving, kind of teeing off Council Member Keefe's question on feedback from the disability community, did, can you just confirm, did the Commission on Disabilities state a preference for one option over another, or were these general comments that are potentially applicable to any of the options? They were, they didn't express any preference for an option, and they are general, they were general comments that apply to this project as well as any other streets, complete streets project in the city.
Okay, and then can you provide any more detail about the projected timeline for the design and engineering phase as it pertains to really figuring out how to mitigate the 10 percent increase in travel time for buses in option 3B and further engagement with the disabilities community? I can continue.
We intend to continue refining this, this 3B over the immediate future after, as soon as Council approves a concept design, we'll refine it to try to eliminate the transit delay.
The detailed engineering will take that refined concept into the detailed phases.
Is there anything you wanted to add on detailed, well, feel free to jump in.
And then as far as the disability community feedback goes, we will continue working with them as part of this project and other projects, including the bike plan, to understand how we can, and I listed some similar ways we are incorporating their feedback, and it's on the slide.
We will continue to work with them to address those concerns.
Okay, thank you.
And then my last question, and this is just, maybe you can confirm, is it safe to say that 10 percent increase in travel time for option 3B represents some built-in conservatism that does not take credit for mitigations that may already exist? And on top of it, you will be exploring further mitigations? Yes, that is correct.
We're not, the 10 percent increase in travel time is not taking into account the AC Transit Rapid Corridor project that is being implemented right now, and does not include any of the additional mitigations that the project team will continue to look at.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council Member Bartlett.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
A question regarding the off-corridor utilization, 62 percent.
So these are the adjacent streets, right, just off of Telegraph.
So I'm just going to remember now, just anecdotally, it's my own memory.
Do you know how many of those adjacent blocks, do this currently have RPP? Most, if not all.
They do, right.
And under those rules, can short-term parkers utilize those blocks? For two hours.
Two hours, right.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, thank you.
Moving on to public comment.
Come on up.
I'm going to give you all, I've been waiting five hours for this.
I know, thank you so much.
Not yet, let's wait.
I'm going to give you a one minute.
Thank you so much.
I know you're excited.
Go for it.
I am so excited.
I know you guys are too, because here it is, what, 11 30? Let's see, I'm a multimodal person.
I live at Ashby and Telegraph.
Thank you, Council Member O'Keefe, for asking the key question, will this look like Temescal? And the honest answer, yes, it will.
Have you all been through Temescal? No, it's not great.
There's pylons everywhere.
There's people parked in the middle of the street.
People can't deliver stuff.
You can't pick up trash.
There's nowhere to park.
It is an absolute labyrinth.
You can't get through there.
You guys are tired.
If you wanted to try to get home right now, if you live past there, it's just really hard to get through.
So I just have to say, for someone that lives around there, it is really hard to get through, and I wish you would say no to this project.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good evening, Mayor and Council.
My name is Ryan Lau, External Affairs Representative at AC Transit.
You should have received a letter regarding this topic from us.
Off the bat, I just want to say that we have a great working relationship with the Office of Transportation and Public Works.
We collaborate quite frequently, but with that said, we do have some concerns about preferred option 3B.
So Line 6 that travels along Telegraph carries around 5,000 riders per day at a 12-minute frequency, serving a number of different key locations.
The concerns that we have are stated 10% increase in travel times, which are considerable for operations and riders.
The lack of dedicated transit lanes mean that we get stuck in traffic just like everybody else, and the survey timing was during summer when most of the students were out, and that's my time.
Thank you.
Hello, City Council and Mayor.
I'm Spencer Owen, and I'm one of the board members of Telegraph for People, and I am pissed.
Not really, but I just wanted to say I think this plan is really it's recognizable for its impact.
It's realistic is what I want to say and what the City Council may pass, but I would really love to see a plan like one or two that has a dedicated bus lane throughout the entire Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, because it holds the 6 bus, which is really pivotal that connects downtown Oakland to downtown Berkeley, and it also helps us commit to our climate goals of deprioritizing vehicle, car vehicle travel, and prioritizing public transit travel, which would push your climate goals into the future.
Thank you.
Hi again.
Bryce Miller, District 4, Telegraph for People.
I want to thank these guys on the project for meeting with us a couple years back and getting our input, and I want to echo what Spencer just said, and I think that cars and parking are the biggest waste of space we could possibly have in an urban city like Berkeley, and I also chuckled earlier when I heard the name Telegraph Rapid Corridor Project, if that's right, because and I said to my friend Elizabeth, there's nothing rapid about Telegraph, and as a 6 bus rider, the 6 bus is so slow on Telegraph.
It needs to go so much faster, and that's why Telegraph needs a bus lane on the entire stretch of Telegraph, all the way to Dwight, all the way to Bancroft, actually, and I think parking needs to be diminished in order to have a bus lane.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good evening, Mayor Eshan, City Council, Sam Greenberg, Walkback Berkeley Coordinating Committee member.
So I started this all very skeptical of an option that didn't include a bus lane through the whole corridor.
It felt like it would be abandoning transit, and studies aren't perfect, but that goes in both directions.
The numbers we're seeing from Public Works in terms of transit performance work for me, and they make me comfortable with the middle ground that we're seeing before us today.
I'm a frequent 6 rider, and I'll often take the 6 down to areas in Oakland like Temescal or Kono, where the street's been redesigned, like Option 3B proposes, and it's a different world.
I feel like I'm not even on an arterial street anymore.
We can have that too, and there's a genuine safety difference between the options.
Separately, I want to highlight the progress that's been made on closing the Dwight Triangle, but I want to encourage you to direct staff to come back with detailed designs for closing the Dwight Triangle as part of your motion today.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Quick and easy.
I know it's been a very long day.
First, thanks to Public Works.
I like the presentation, and I'm glad the conversations are happening.
I'm excited to see more developments on Telegraph.
I just want to second what the last public commenter said about having a very thorough concept of the Dwight Slip Lane and stuff like that.
Because of the interest from TBIT, from students, from council members and stuff, it's important that we can really take a good look at that and develop something awesome.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Last but not least.
I just want to first of all thank you guys, thank everyone here for community outreach.
This has been really great.
I think what this has really shown is that this is an exercise in trade-offs.
The protected bike lane is one of the most important things.
It's safety.
It's continuity with Oakland.
But at the same time, like others have mentioned here, there is a lack of a bus lane.
And while I think that we can definitely do lots of improvements to improve bus times, there will also just generally be by putting all the buses and the cars into one lane, there's risk of some slowing down there.
But at the same time, this is a project that we have accomplished.
And I think that's also just really important in general.
So again, shout out to everyone here who has worked on this.
I think we're just kind of sitting here and figuring out what's the best with what we've got and like all of the things that people have said.
And lastly, I just want to echo, you know, really just emphasizing a detailed plan for Dwight Triangle.
This is something that's really, really important to so many different stakeholders.
Thank you.
All right.
Going to participants on Zoom.
We have currently have four hands raised.
Okay.
All right.
I think we do need to vote then to extend.
I'm sorry.
I was very hopeful.
All right.
Wait.
Midnight? Yeah.
Okay.
Midnight it is.
All right.
Second.
Okay.
To extend to 12 a.m., Councilmember Kastnerwani? Yes.
Kaplan? Yes.
Bartlett? Yes.
Trageb? Fine.
O'Keefe? I'm with you, Igor.
Sure.
Whatever.
Blackabee? Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Lunapara? Yes.
Humbert? Yes.
And Mayor Ishii? Yes.
Okay.
Clearly, we've gotten out of practice of staying late, you all.
So, we got to.
All right.
Let's continue our online.
Sure.
Yeah.
Okay.
First speaker is Ben Gerhardstein.
Hi, everyone.
Ben Gerhardstein with Brockport Berkeley again.
As Elliot and Sam noted, we strongly support staff's recommended telegraph multimodal quarter project conceptual design.
This design will make this high entry quarter much safer and more accessible for everyone, especially people walking and biking.
We also support staff continuing to work to improve transit service and think that everyone can be satisfied at the end of the day.
That said, we are disappointed that this item doesn't include a design recommendation for closing that unsafe slip lane at the Dwight Triangle.
So, please do encourage them to come back with options for closing that slip lane.
And let's get this project moving.
Thank you.
Okay.
Next is caller phone number ending in 000.
So, press star six to unmute.
All right.
We'll come back.
Next, we have Todd Andrew.
Can you hear me? Yes.
Okay.
Thank you.
Hi, y'all again.
I just want to say for those of you who ride bikes, council members Taplin and Humbert, maybe a couple others I'm unaware of, you know that the worst part of telegraph is the transition between Berkeley and Oakland, right? Don't we all wish it were more like Oakland? So, I don't know what the earlier guy was talking about, but please try to do what you can to make it safer in the Berkeley section of telegraph.
Thanks so much.
Bye.
Thank you.
Next, we have Theo Gordon.
Good evening, council members.
My name is Theo Gordon.
I live just off of telegraph and I commute to work on telegraph.
I have 27 years left on my mortgage, so I think that makes me a long-time resident.
And I support option 3B, although I would prefer a full bus lane.
When I try to bike to work, it's 10 minutes of white knuckle terror from the second I turn on to telegraph until I finally get to Temescal and can take a breath.
And because of this, I've stopped biking to work and I take the bus instead.
So, again, I would support option 3B.
I would prefer with a faster, with a bus lane, we should be prioritizing buses along with bikes and make sure that the six can run faster than this meeting.
I also want to thank staff that all the options include a dedicated protected bike lane.
We have city policies like Vision Zero and voters have spoken through Measure FF that they want complete streets.
So I'm glad that we're not even studying incomplete streets, that we're not even studying things that don't have bike lanes.
Lastly, I support closing the slip lane.
It would be a great community and green space and an entry into future car-free telegraph.
Thank you.
Thank you, Theo.
Finished right on time.
Next, we have Rebecca Mervish.
Good evening, everyone.
I want to echo the things that Theo said.
I support option 3B and please close the Dwight Triangle slip lane and thank you.
You all are the best.
Bye.
Thanks, Rebecca.
Get some sleep.
Okay.
Last call for comment or the phone number ending in 000.
Okay.
Sorry.
Okay.
No more speakers.
Okay.
Thank you.
Council Member Humbert, do you want to start us off? Yeah.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
First of all, I want to thank Public Works Director Davis, Deputy Director Amiri, Mr.
Schwimmer, the consultant team, and all the other staff members who I know have been working hard on this for, I was going to say since 2021, but it was 2022.
There's been a lot of public outreach, a plethora of public outreach, and also a tremendous amount of study and speed studies and parking studies.
This is really, really thorough work.
This runs along D8 all the way from Woolsey, my district, District 8 from Woolsey, the Oakland border, all the way to Dwight, where my district ends on the east side.
On the west side of the street, it runs between District 8 and Council Member Bartlett's District 3 until we get very close to the abhorrent Dwight Triangle, where District 7 picks up, as I understand it, thinking of the map.
Ever since I've lived in Berkeley, 26 years, I've been concerned about this stretch of telegraph.
It's a vast, dangerous wasteland of asphalt with unsafe crossings.
It's clearly a high-injury corridor.
We saw that in the statistics, but it's frightening both to ride a bike down it, to walk across it, and even to drive down it, as I drive down it, and I drive more than I should.
I'm scared to death at every crossing, especially at night, because it's hard to see pedestrians.
It's not properly lighted at this point in history.
I would look forward to it being lighted with whichever one of these plans we adopt.
Every single one of these iterations, these plans are, to use a statistic maybe used by our president, a thousand percent better than what we have now.
A hundred percent better than what we have now.
Substantially better.
I mean, just night and day.
I've seen this twice, I think, at FITES.
I sit on the FITES subcommittee, and I've seen the support for option 3B there.
I'm generally ready to move forward with that option.
I wish we could have pushed a little bit further in order to speed up the buses, but what I'm hearing are promises that we will continue to do that.
I like the idea maybe for some additional sections, short sections of bus lanes, maybe at Stewart.
But I recognize that option 3B has been identified as a more workable compromise to ensure driveway and delivery vehicle access, as well as emergency vehicle passage.
Thank you to the chief for addressing that.
And perhaps in the future, depending on how the quarter performs, we can revisit additional bus-only lanes or other features.
But stopping there for a second, I want to address this issue about Temescal.
Temescal is a lot of information overload, which forces automobile traffic to slow down.
The safety experience on that stretch, I've looked at the statistics of Temescal, are far superior to what they were before those improvements were installed.
It's also a really thriving, lively, wonderful commercial district with lots of great shops and restaurants and people on the street and people having fun.
And automobiles, you know, a lot of drivers don't like it.
They don't like it because it slows them down and they have to pay attention.
And you have to do that there.
One of the elements, though, of this information overload is all of the restaurant pavilions that are built there.
And I don't think we're going to see that in the Berkeley section of, you know, of Telegraph from Woolsey to Dwight.
So I don't think we're going to be dealing with that part of the information overload.
But it's wonderful.
It's safe there in Temescal.
And if our section of the Telegraph looks more like that, you know, I will rejoice.
I did have one clarifying question for staff.
On PDF pages 15 and 17 of the staff report, we see a couple of different diagrams of option 3B.
And I noticed on page 15, it appears there are no bus boarding islands at Ashby.
But on page 17, it appears there are bus boarding islands at Ashby.
Can staff clarify this? You know, given that we have another Crosstown bus running on Ashby that we fought for, and I'm just still really happy about, my own preference would be for those bus stops to be right there at that, near that intersection.
While they're looking, did you have any other questions? No, that's it.
That's pretty much my statement.
You know, I, you know, I, you know, I, you know, that's pretty much my statement.
You know, I started out today wobbly about, you know, one or two versus 3B, but I'm, you know, firmly now in the 3B camp.
Can you clarify the diagram that you're referring to? Yeah, I don't, I don't have it right in front of me.
It's PDF pages 15 and 17 of the staff report.
So on page 15, it appears that there are no bus boarding islands at Ashby.
Page 17 appears that there are.
I guess it doesn't really matter where are the bus boarding islands at or near Ashby.
Do they, are they there? Yeah, these are details that will be fully fleshed out during detailed engineering.
All right.
There's potentially space for bus boarding islands, but we need to look at it further.
But it's not confirmed that they're going to be right there yet, right? Okay.
Thanks.
That's all I have.
Thank you.
Okay, folks, we're, it's like 1145.
So please keep your comments brief.
We've got Council Members Taplin, Lunapara, then Bartlett, then O'Keefe.
Thank you very much.
And many thanks to the team.
If I were to be surveyed, my preference would be for option one.
I do appreciate, and I am assured that the work to mitigate transit delay will continue.
But I am fully committed to seeing bus lanes up and down Telegraph.
And I would full-heartedly vote for option one.
That being said, I would vote for option 3B if it included direction to close the plane.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Lunapara.
Thank you.
I want to start with something a little unserious because I don't know if you have ever ridden the 6 on a weekend, be like week and night between Whitehorse and campus.
It is so much fun and so packed, so insanely packed.
It'll be like 1130 and it's packed.
And this is a bigger, my ultimate point in this is that there's such a large subset of our population that does not have a car.
And that also enables us to experience the city.
And so both the city of Berkeley and Oakland in so many different ways and safe ways.
And I think that that's really important.
I think Council Member Taplin and I might be the only council members that don't have a car.
And regularly, I think that's true.
And regularly rely on bikes and public transit to get around.
So I, you know, as a both transit rider and cyclist to get from Southside to Oakland, it is so daunting.
Either way, it's daunting because the bus, the 6 bus, when it gets to Oakland, especially around Temescal, it does get really slow.
And I think that this is a really, this is something that I've been weighing so deeply.
I also understand the concerns around safety, around what the fire department is saying.
And around loading that created option 3B.
And I really appreciate all of your work to put together a lot of different opinions.
So I'm comfortable with moving forward with 3B, but I do really want to emphasize the importance of prioritizing transit reliability and and speed.
I think that even 10%, a 10% increase can, is really debilitating for people who rely on it.
I also think if possible, we should create a full design where we can choose to implement a bus lane in a relatively easy manner in the future, if we think that that's necessary, without having to do a huge infrastructure redesign.
So that's something I would advocate for.
And finally, and possibly most importantly, we really need to close that slip lane so badly.
And so I would appreciate that being part of the motion.
I think a couple different designs of how we could close the slip lane would be, would be ideal.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
Council Member Bartlett.
Thank you, and wonderful work here.
You know, I inherited this part of my district in the last election, a little over a year ago.
So to get caught up and talk to everyone over there, and you have a really strong group of merchants there, and service providers, dentists, things like that.
And, you know, they are nervous, because we do have really, bless you, we do have really soft retail throughout the city.
And each month is risky.
And so I do think that you have done a great job with ameliorating those concerns, and achieving the trade-offs to keep these people open for business while you remove the parking for their customers, right? But leaving enough for them to operate.
And job well done.
So I support the recommendation wholeheartedly, and I do support closing the slipway on Dwight.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council Member O'Keefe.
All right, I'm going to try to be brief, because I'm tired.
I'm worried I'm going to be shitty, and no one's going to agree with me.
But I'm just going to say a couple things.
I don't like this.
It's beautifully engineered.
No, it's not.
You guys did great work.
But I hate Temescal.
I hate it so much.
And I'm not the only one.
And I understand the disagreement, and that's.

Segment 11

I'm going to vote against this.
I'm sorry.
I probably get to one.
That's fine, but I could never live with myself if I voted for this type of social pressure.
I just want to respond to one thing Councilmember Humbert said.
Yes, Temescal, yes, you slow down and that is good and it is safer, I'm sure.
And that's totally appropriate for a couple blocks where there's a lot of pedestrian activity and commerce.
But Telegraph is an arterial for cars and we're talking about taking that slow, frustrating, difficult progress and extending it all the way up Telegraph and we're losing a car arterial.
That street is actually, it's important for cars.
And I am a proponent of bike boulevards.
The argument that can bikes just be sent on to bike boulevards was dismissed in this staff report in a way that I don't agree with, but once again, we can disagree.
But I just, I think it would be better to make Telegraph safer for pedestrians.
Absolutely.
Without making it impossible for cars to get anywhere fast on it and still make other excellent, safe bike infrastructure that could get people anywhere they wanted to go.
And that is what I think.
And that is okay.
If nobody else thinks that, that's how I feel.
Thank you for listening.
Okay, Councilmember Traiga, I have to extend again.
So just folks, please make your comments brief.
I move to extend another 10 minutes.
I second.
Can we just make it 15 because I don't want to have to.
Yes, 15.
Okay.
I'm in my motion.
No, we don't.
Let's everyone finish our comments.
Go ahead, please.
I move to extend to 1215 a.m.
Councilmember Kisarwani.
Fine.
Yes, Bartlett.
Yes.
Traiga.
Yes, to 315 a.m.
Yes, Humber enthusiastically.
Yes, because I'm really happy about getting this done and Mary.
Yes.
Okay.
All right.
Here we go.
Go ahead.
Councilmember.
Please.
Okay.
I'm Councilmember.
I can confirm what you said.
Nowadays, I feel younger when I take the 6 bus around that time in the evening, but it, it is.
It's a wonderful community building experience.
So, I.
Yeah, but just to echo without belaboring points that have been made already.
I did have some concerns about the 10% increase in travel time by bus, but I, I think those have been largely resolved just from the, you know, hearing from staff and thank you.
Thank you.
Did I.
I too would love, and I fully support and I'm on record supporting a dedicated bus lane for the six blocks of telegraph nearest campus.
And I wish it could be extended beyond.
So, if, if I was voting with my heart of hearts, it would be options, one or two, but I think 3d is a really just elegant compromise that does its best.
And I think it's also very respectful of community input that has been received.
I look forward to supporting staff and AC transit with whatever they can come up with to fully resolve the increase in travel time.
I would like to associate myself with comments that have been made by council member and and perhaps others about supporting full closure of the slip lane on white and telegraph.
And lastly, I, you know, I just want to say a few months ago.
I started meeting with members of the disability community around just how they experience crossing busy arterials, and I, it opened my eyes, and while there are.
These are recommendations that they have made that are not specific to any particular alternative.
I will continue to just, you know, engage with staff to make sure that we are able to, when we make these improvements, we don't inadvertently create a situation that is more dangerous.
For members of that community.
Thank you.
With that, I'm ready to vote.
Thank you.
Okay.
Council member customer money hasn't gone yet so I'm going to let her go first and then back to council member and then I have very brief comments and then we can take a look.
Thank you for the presentation at this late hour and just express my support for this.
And, you know, for me, it just comes down to that evaluation matrix that you have on one of these slides.
And it seems like concept 3B achieves all of our objectives, but for the, the travel time and reliability.
And I know that.
So that's something you will continue to work on.
Okay.
Okay.
That's all I have.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Councilman.
Thank you.
I want to make a motion to move forward with option 3B with additions to the direction that the final design a prioritizes decreasing transit travel time.
Okay, so briefly, just want to say thank you again for all of your community outreach, especially to all the different communities.
I love that you went door to door businesses, students, disability communities, zero waste fire, et cetera.
Awesome.
Totally support decreasing or reducing the transit delay.
That's really important to me as well as well as the closure of the triangle slip lane.
Thank you all so much for being here.
So late in the evening.
Please take the role.
Clerk.
Okay.
No, but you guys really did a nice job.
Thank you.
Thank you.
On the motion council member Kester one.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Okay.
Thank you, everyone.
Okay, wait, we're not over though.
So we still have something else we have to do.
So, all right.
Thank you all.
So, so now we were supposed to have done that the 80 item.
We're not doing that item, but we still need to leave it open in case anyone has public comment on item number 32, which is amendments to title 21 subdivisions to allow separate sale of 80 years.
Any public comment.
Okay.
Any public comment online.
This is only public comment on the 80 you item.
There's one raised hand.
Okay.
Hi, good evening.
As many of, you know, I spent decades that you see Berkeley as a professor in physics and we definitely are facing catastrophic catastrophic global warming.
We need more of walking this car.
Also, I'm very, very proud to say that my company paid the city of about million dollars during our golden years of great business in business license as well as just tax revenue.
Thank you very much.
Have a good night.
And you're wonderful people would thank you.
Thank you.
Anyone else on a, you know, okay.
All right, great.
And finally, is there any public comment for items not listed on the agenda.
Anybody in person.
Okay.
Anybody online public comment items not list on the agenda.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
I'm so grateful for all of my colleagues.
We didn't always agree on everything type, but we came out of the end and we're still smiling.
So I am just very thankful for all of you.
Thank you so much to staff for saying setting up.
Okay, to adjourn council member Kisarwani yes Kaplan.
Yes, Bartlett.
Yes.
Okay, yes.
No.
Number.
Yes.
Yes.
Meeting is adjourned.
Midnight right before midnight.
Thank you everyone.