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October 27, 2026 · 7:00 PM
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- October 28, 2026
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Segment 1
Okay, everyone. Well, welcome back. It's a minute later, and I'm calling to order the Berkeley City Council meeting. Today is Tuesday, October 27th, 2026, and it is 6:01 p.m. Can we start off with the roll, please? Okay. Councilmember, let's see, let me make sure. Councilmember Kesarwani, I don't see. Okay. Councilmember Kesarwani is currently absent. Councilmember Taplin? Present. Is here. Bartlett? Currently absent. Tregub? Present. O'Keefe? I'm here. Blackaby? Here. Lunaparra? Here. Humbert? Present. And Mayor Ishii? Here. Okay. Quorum is present. Thank you very much. Okay, so we have some ceremonial matters this evening, and I'd like to start us off with the Ava Community Energy presentation. Hi, welcome. Come on up. Okay. I have been told you have 10 minutes, inclusive of questions for the presentation. I will move quickly. Thank you so much, Mayor Ishii and Councilmembers, for the time this evening to present on Ava Community Energy. I'm going to wait for the slides to get popped up, I guess. Is that perfect? Great. And you can go to the next slide when you're ready. Perfect. Okay, so I've got about 10 slides. I will keep it to under 10 minutes to leave some time for questions. My name is Howard Chang. I'm the CEO for Ava Community Energy, and we are your nonprofit local power provider for electricity generation services. The reason why I'm here today is to present on our inaugural impact report, which is the first time we've issued this over the last 10 years or so. It just provides a little bit of background on who Ava is, how we operate, and some key achievements since launching. Next slide, please. Great. So here you have just a map of our territory. You may recall that we launched originally as East Bay Community Energy when we just served Alameda County. And over the years, we've expanded into San Joaquin County, hence the renaming to Ava Community Energy, serving from Alameda to the Valley. We are what's called a community choice aggregator. Again, we are structured as a joint powers authority representing 18 members across the service area, and we are the default electricity generation service provider, 18 members in total. And thank you to Councilmember Trigub for serving on our board. Specifically, your engagement and leadership is very much appreciated, and Councilmember Lunaparra as the alternate as well. I know you're not oftentimes called upon to sit there, given his presence, but appreciate when you do stand in. Go to the next slide, please. So what is a community choice aggregator? I'm not going to read through this entire slide. I'll keep this one a little briefer, but we are structured as a JPA. Typically, when you think about electricity utility, you think about an investor-owned utility. PG&E obviously has been the historical electricity provider in this area. In some areas, such as the City of Alameda, they have a publicly owned utility, and another example of that is SMUD. And then, of course, we have other types of public agencies such as AC Transit and EBMUD. And Ava is a little unique to all of those. We are the electricity generation service provider. Our existence gives our customers some level of choice in who they get their electricity from. In the next slide, I'll elaborate a little bit on that. So we specifically are providing your wholesale electricity power. We're choosing that, we're procuring that on your behalf, and we're providing electricity and energy services and products as well. PG&E actually continues to be your delivery service provider, so they're managing your wires, your lines, transmission, distribution, and meters. All customers can get a PG&E bill, and if you look closely at that bill, you'll see that there are line items related to Ava Community Energy charges for the wholesale energy that's provided, generation services that are provided. All customers do have the option to opt out of our service and return to PG&E service, though as you can see in the stats on the right, we retain about 96% of all customers because we tend to be more affordable and greener by nature in terms of what products we procure. We serve a total of about 760,000 accounts. That's a population of a little over 2 million people. One couple of the stats I'll point out here is we have provided over $180 million in savings to our customers since we've launched, and we've reinvested over $100 million as well through our local service territory through procurement of both power as well as other sort of goods contracts. Next slide, please. The other aspect of choice that we always provide our customers is two electricity products we call Bright Choice and Renewable 100. Berkeley is defaulted into the Renewable 100 plan. About a third of our members choose that plan to default to. It's at a modest premium for PG&E, but is 100% renewable energy on a net annual basis. There's also a product called Bright Choice. That product, at least in 2025, is roughly 55% renewable energy and has some additional mix of large hydro, nuclear power, as well as some market power, which is generally unspecified, predominantly natural gas, and that's been at a half percent discount relative to PG&E. You can see in the bottom right, their power content is roughly 33% renewable energy, a lot of nuclear, a lot of natural gas in that mix. Next slide, please. This is a complicated slide. I tend to get a little bit complex at times. I'm just going to give a few high-level points on this. One is that generation services, the services that Ava provides, are about one-third of the bill. PG&E's delivery services are about two-thirds of the bill. We know that affordability has been significant challenges over the last five-plus years as prices have increased. A lot of that is wildfire hardening related. Obviously, here in California, unfortunately, we all know the risks and damage of wildfire. A lot of that increase in cost has been driven by that. On the generation side of the bill, which is our side of the bill, there is also volatility there. Obviously, year to year with different energy products and what we're procuring, a lot of that is driven by how hot the temperatures are or how cold the temperatures are, driving load spikes. And of course, some of that is driven off of the specific energy products that we're choosing. What we have here is just a historical graph of what energy rates have been on the generation side of the bill. In '22 to '25 period, you have seen some spikes. In '26, it's come back down. One technical piece I'll just highlight here is for generation costs, there's the orange portion, which is Ava-specific charge, and then the yellow portion, which is called PCIA, the Power Charge Indifference Adjustment. That's an exit fee that customers continue to pay to the IOUs, to PG&E in this case. When we speak about discount and our costs, we're always talking about all the generation-related costs that are there to be fully transparent to our customers. Next slide, please. I'm not going to read through all these numbers, but just a quick sort of summary of some stats within Berkeley. We serve about 55,000 accounts with a participation rate about 97%, and we provide about $5.5 million of savings to customers over time. You can see about 10% of customers have solar, about 10% have EVs, and the pie chart's kind of break down the various customer segments there. Next slide. There's three more slides that I'll just quickly breeze through. I'm not going to read through all of this, but I did want to provide it for reference. This slide is a summary of some of the clean energy infrastructure investments that we've made in the community, as well as grants. I'll highlight maybe two. One is AVA's Critical Municipal Facilities Program. That's where we're building solar and storage at eight different municipal sites throughout the territory. Berkeley is one of the four cities that we've launched that first phase of work with. We're wrapping up the Live Oak Rec Center installation right now as a Berkeley resident myself, really, really thrilled and excited for that local investment and what we're able to do there. The last bullet I'll highlight is we have secured CAL eVIP funding for a variety of local fast chargers and Level 2 chargers throughout Berkeley. Next slide. These are three programs that are actively out in market. You can find more information on these in our website. We've got a program called Smart Home Charging, which is for folks that charge their EVs at home. There's an upfront and ongoing incentive oriented towards participating in that program. There's our AVA Bike Electric Program, which is actually up to $13 million in funding that we just extended to add some more funding to that program. It's very, very popular. And the last one is our Smart Home Battery and Resilience Hubs Program, which is providing an incentive for solar and storage installations at residential homes. This is the very last slide after this. Again, a little bit of an eye chart here, but just there's a wide variety of electricity products and services that we provide to our customers. This is a smattering of them. I'll highlight that we've provided over $100,000 incentives for residential customers to have heat pump water heaters installed at their homes. We know that there's an active Air District ruling that's sort of in flight right now, so we're continuing to evaluate different mechanisms to support building electrification. Another one I'll highlight is over 900 AVA Bike Electric e-bike rebates that we've provided, and we have quite a bit of participation in our Smart Home Charging program as well at over 200 customers. So really excited about these different types of offerings and different ways to engage with customers. The last slide is just a call out for a link to the hard copy impact report, which I believe you all have in front of you, but there's a link for soft copy for those that want to reference it. That's it for me. Thank you so much for the time. Thank you so much. That was very efficient and really informative. I really appreciate the work that you all are doing, and I especially want to highlight your electric bike program and encourage anyone here who's interested in maybe able to apply to this program to take a look at the Ava Energy website. And so great to see so many Berkeley shops are involved in that program as well. Anyone have questions from council members? No. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming and presenting to us, and for the impact report, and for your great work. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Did you think of a question? Go ahead. Referring back to the slide where you mentioned the money is reinvested in the community, I'm curious if you could tell us more about that. Sure. So there's a wide variety of examples there, but certainly the programs that we reference are one form of that direct engagement with our customers, both at the residential and commercial scale, the different types of incentive programs that we have. Too many to name right now, but I gave you some examples of the bullets there. We also procure wholesale energy locally, so we have within our service territory a large wholesale wind project in the Altamont Pass. We also have a large solar farm in Livermore, in the Livermore area. So there's different forms of local procurement actually in the form of energy, as well as other sort of goods and services. We try to procure as much locally as possible. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much. Okay. Mayor, Councilmember Kesarwani has joined the meeting, so we just need to do the remote participation script real quick. So Councilmember Kesarwani is participating in the meeting remotely pursuant to the Brown Act under the just cause justification. A quorum of the council is participating in person at the meeting location noticed on the agenda. And Councilmember Kesarwani, please provide a general description of the circumstances relating to your need to appear remotely, but please do not disclose any medical diagnosis, disability, or other confidential medical information. Yes, my need to appear remotely relates to illness. Okay, thank you. And Councilmember Kesarwani, please disclose if there are any individuals 18 years of age or older present at your remote location in the room with you and the nature of their relationship to you. There's no one in the room with me. Okay, thank you. And Councilmember Kesarwani will participate through both audio and visual technology for the duration of the meeting. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much, Mr. City Clerk. All right, so our next ceremonial matter this evening is an adjournment in memory and proclamation honoring—excuse me—honoring the life of Nikki Williams, Executive Director Emeritus of BYA. If you are here for this item, feel free to come up here to the podium. I think her son is here. Hello. Good evening. Thank you so much for coming. Okay. Thank you. Honoring the life and legacy of Nikki Williams. Whereas the City of Berkeley pauses with a profound sense of loss and deep gratitude to honor the extraordinary life of Mrs. Nikki Williams, Executive Director Emeritus of Berkeley Youth Alternatives, BYA, who departed this life on the morning of Thursday, August 13, 2026. And whereas under her visionary leadership, BYA expanded far beyond traditional boundaries, pioneering a holistic wraparound approach that integrated educational support, behavioral health, counseling, family stability, and basic needs under one umbrella to ensure every young person had the comprehensive tools required to thrive. And whereas her tireless dedication transformed BYA into a vital, trusted anchor institution in Berkeley, leaving an indelible imprint on thousands of individual lives and building a resilient foundation that continues to strengthen our entire community today. Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Adina Ishii, Mayor of the City of Berkeley, do hereby recognize and honor the remarkable legacy of Nikki Williams, celebrating her monumental contributions to youth empowerment and community healing. Her city extends its deepest heartfelt condolences to her family, loved ones, and the entire BYA community as we gather to remember her vibrant spirit and lasting impact. Thank you. Thank you. Would you like to say a few words? Yes, and I understand I have 10 minutes. Is that right? We gave Abe 10 minutes. So, Mayor Ishii, members of the City Council and the Berkeley community, thank you so much. On behalf of my family, this is a profound honor for my mom. And, you know, as I reflect on my mother's life, I keep coming back to a few memories that capture who she was. I remember her sitting in council meetings late into the evening, sometimes until 2 a.m. in the morning, and determined to make sure that contracts supporting her kids and programs were approved. I also remember one meeting when she became so frustrated with the city manager, Phil Kamalar, over funding for her programs that she threatened him. I had to quickly whisk her away before things escalated. I think Phil and my mom and I had a great chuckle about that years later. I also remember her going to council members, you know, one by one, making her case, advocating fiercely for the children, youth, and families we served. She was a tough lady, did like to hear the word no. But my fondest memories of my mom are not here in City Hall or in the city corridors. They're of walking into the kitchen at Berkeley Youth Alternatives and finding her preparing snacks for the kids and seeing her with a young person, offering encouragement, counseling them through life's challenges, and quite honestly, giving them some tough love. She'd tell them to stop whining, stay focused, and keep pushing forward because she believed in them, even when they or others didn't believe in themselves. That was my mother. She was a fighter with an enormous heart and very high expectations. She could be tough, demanding, relentless, but everything she did came from her heart. She didn't simply have a job; she had a calling. And she loved what she called her work, and she continued doing it until she physically could no longer do so. My mother understood something profound. Every young person deserves someone who refuses to give up on them. And for countless young people in Berkeley, she was that someone. So tonight, as you adjourn this meeting in her honor, I hope we remember not only what she accomplished. But the lives she touched and the young people whose futures she helped to really change. Mom, your work isn't done, but your legacy lives on. So I want to thank our family and friends who came. Thank you so much for being here. My mom's church family, Berkeley Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, for their continuous support of our family. And I want to thank you, Mayor, Ben, Terry, other members of the council, and my dear friend Julie Sinai, who put all this together. Thank you for this beautiful honor. Thank you. If anyone from the group would like to come take a photo with us, you can. Do you want to join us for the photo? There's so many folks coming to support her. How are you? Doctor. Beautiful. Doctor, you put that to say you were. Introduce myself. Sure, sure, sure. How are you? Good. Thank you all so much for coming, and thank you. I'm proud that we're able to adjourn in memory of Nikki Williams, and for those who did not know, that was Kevin Williams, her son, who also ran UIA. So thank you. Thank you so much. All right, we are moving on to our city manager comments, and on deck is our city auditor, who is here. So, thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just have one thing, which is on your consent calendar tonight, I need to remove item 22B, which is the city manager companion report for the ordinance discovering special events, and I would request that you refer 22A back to the agenda and rules committee to schedule for a future date. We have some more work to do with the stakeholder groups to make sure we're really aligned on this, and I just want a little bit more time. Thank you very much. And I'm sorry, Mr. City Clerk, can you remind me to pull it and move it? Do we need a vote to do so? You can do that as part of the action on the consent calendar. Okay. So whoever moves for the consent calendar, if you're so inclined, you can request that as well. All right. Very good. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. All right, Madam City Auditor. All right. Good evening, everyone. Tonight's agenda includes two items that I want to talk about. Item number 25, which is on the consent calendar, amending the municipal code to require competition for service contracts. And there's also an information item on the Public Works Department's progress implementing recommendations from our 2025 leases follow-up report. So first, I just wanted to say, item 25, I'm happy to see the proposed amendment to the Berkeley Municipal Code, which will require procurement through competitive solicitation for all service contracts. These are city contracts for professional services and other services greater than $100,000. This item addresses two key recommendations from our non-competitive contracts audit, which was released in February. Competition among contractors helps to ensure that the city is accountable for public funds spent on contracts and can get the best value and best fit for Berkeley residents. Best value and fit not only considers cost, but ensures that contractors are qualified, skilled, and aligned with Berkeley values. By having a public, transparent process, the public and potential vendors know what the city is prioritizing for that solicitation. Having this process codified in the municipal code does not preclude current vendors from participating, but also encourages new vendors to also participate. What did our audit find? While the city has already—the city does have an internal established process for competition, such as requests for proposals, requests for qualifications, invitation for bids, etc., we did identify several large contracts that did not go through the competitive process. This could be because neither the city charter nor the municipal code explicitly requires service contracts to be competitive. In the audit, we did recommend City Council update this section to require competition for service contracts that City Council approves. Since our audit, secondly, our audit also found that city attorney contracts for legal services did not go to City Council for approval, so we also recommended regular reporting to increase transparency of spending on legal services contracts. I'm really glad to see the proposed item today on number 25 also does request the City Attorney's Office to report to Council on legal services contracts and amendments. I just want to thank Councilmember Kesarwani for authoring this item, and Mayor Ishii, and Councilmember Taplin, and Councilmember Bartlett for co-sponsoring and taking this important step to promote accountability, transparency, and fairness in city contracting. And just quickly on leases, in 2025, in January, we released a report to revisit our office's 2009 audit of city leases. In this report, we assessed the implementation status of recommendations from that audit, and we found that the city still faced many of the same issues 16 years later. Since the last update, which was a year ago, October 2025, the department has partly implemented our recommendation to assess if existing systems can be used to finalize the inventory of city leases by identifying a new property management software. According to Public Works, the software is estimated to be implemented in three months. This action can improve strategic management of city-owned property. Thank you to Public Works for moving that forward. While there has been progress, there still has been—there's still seven out of eight recommendations that has no change in status, and we look forward to seeing more progress on those recommendations, including having a complete central inventory of leases. By the next update, which is one year from now in fall 2027. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam City Auditor. Thank you very much. Is there any public comment on non-agenda matters? Okay, so we'll pick five cards for the in-person commenters, and then we will go to the first five hands raised on the Zoom. So the first five for in person are.. We have Steve Tracy, looks like Londell Porter, Carol Morosovic, Jennifer Cogley, and Cantrell Killens. You can come up in any order. Those are the in-person speakers for non-agenda public comment. Good evening. I'm a Berkeley resident and property owner. There is a rumor going around that Chief Sprague is resigning. And this causes me great concern, as there are two measures on the ballot that depend on consistency and stability in the fire department. So I'm calling on either Chief Sprague or the city manager or council to please issue a public statement before the election, as this is a material event that should be announced before the election. Thank you. Hello. Good evening, Mayor, City Council members. I'm here on behalf of the BCVI team in full support of extending our contract until December. Thank you. All right. Good evening to Madam Mayor and to the council. I'm here on behalf of Live Free. We already know that you all are determined to make the amendments on the contract. Thank you, Mayor, for the $200,000 allocation. We know that at that time that was like giving us a million dollars, considering the budget crisis. We also just want to speak to the fact that we want to remain in the city of Berkeley. We want to continue to be a part of the public safety conversation. We want to continue to be present. We want to make sure that our presence is felt. We are doing great work within the city of Berkeley and want to continue to do so. We are raising money. I came here not to advise you all to vote yes on something that you probably will already, but to personally invite you all to our fundraising event on November 7th, which is put together by our neighbors, and it'll be right in front of our corridor. We're hoping to see folks out. This is a community event, so to all the public who's listening, please come out November 7th, 1 to 6 p.m., 3356 Adeline Street, Berkeley. Thank you. I will see you there. Hello, Council. My name is Jennifer Cogley, and I'm representing Bayer Healthcare in West Berkeley. Bayer is Berkeley's largest private sector employer. The majority of our 850 employees are people of color, and the majority of our people do not have college degrees. We provide quality jobs for people who are making treatments. I'm here because the conditions on Grayson Street have deteriorated so much that some of our vendors are refusing to use that road to bring us the items we need. To make medicines, we need policies that ensure our public rights-of-way can still be used for their intended purposes. Council, please help us serve our patients by addressing critical safety issues on our streets in Berkeley. Thank you. Have you considered various homeless bans? I want to bring to your attention at a bus stop last week, I started just talking to somebody, and it turned out that he has worked as a chef for UC Berkeley for 11 years now. But a few years back, he and his wife, as a CNA, were living outside in a vehicle for a couple of years. And there are individuals like that. As someone told Council a couple of years ago, he moved to Berkeley to be an engineer at Lawrence Livermore and lived the first seven years in his vehicle. We have people working at jobs. I met a fitness instructor. We have people with their kids in the school district. We have immigrants that are living outside. We have a whole array of people. These are all individuals. And I do, as to the previous speaker, these issues do have to be concerned. Everything has to be addressed, but we have to consider all the individual considerations rather than a broad sweeping ban. Thank you. Okay, we'll go to the speakers online. The first speaker is Della Luna. Oop, where'd she go? Yes, I wanted to speak about the roadways. I've spoken a couple times about the crosswalk at Ashby at MLK at the BART, and you all, there's a sign that has, like, way too many. My whole point is that you're creating a lot of distractions for drivers. So there's a sign there, and it feels like there's a whole haiku written on the sign to explain this new type of crosswalk that suddenly exists that looks like a railroad crossing. The sign says, Stop on the red or something, but then the lights flash yellow. And then, so it's confusing for drivers. You're creating a lot of distraction for drivers in that particular area. Additionally, like the painting of the curbs red, you're using the wrong color red. You're using fire engine red, and that's, like, alert for, like, fire trucks. And when you paint the road, it's usually, it's a typical more of a brick-colored red, so it's less distracting to the drivers. And I think you've created a lot of painting and, like, putting things in the roadway, and it's just creating a lot of confusion, and pedestrians have a false sense of confidence. Thank you. Next is David. Good evening. My name is David Hoffmaier. I live in District 1, and my three-year-old attends Duck's Nest Preschool in that district. As you may know, Councilmember Kesarwani has authored a resolution with co-sponsors Councilmembers Taplin and Blackaby to establish an encampment buffer zone around licensed preschools and daycares. We understand there were legitimate reasons to defer that item to a special session on November 17th, but the delay makes it all the more important that the Council pass the resolution on the 17th. Young children are vulnerable in real time to the health and safety conditions that encampments bring, and West Berkeley has seen how quickly encampments can grow. I also note that a 4 p.m. meeting is hard for parents of young children to attend, so please give full weight to the voices of the many parents who have spoken and written on this issue. Finally, to give the resolution practical effect, the City Manager will need to amend AR 10.2 as directed by the resolution. I urge the City Manager to do that promptly once the Council acts so the buffer can take real-world effect to protect children like mine. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Maria Sol. Oh, hello everyone. Another Tuesday. So much to do and so few. Speaking of which, I'd like to ask us to really encourage more participation, generically, even though it adds to a lot of voices to listen to. But we've got to come together and work things out. So we need more commissioners on our commissions. I'm also very concerned about the sudden closure of Bonita House, and it's really of great concern. And then also, please don't forget, I know you don't, but please remember more the seniors, the ADA, the disabled people, and women when it comes to considering what is safe and secure and amenable to the survival of everyone. Thank you very much. Thank you, Maria. Next is a caller with a phone number ending in 211. Hi, this is Ed. Good evening. I'd just like to bring two points very quickly. Number one, this Eric Garcetti, when he refused to do ceasefire in Gaza resolution, while San Francisco, Richmond, Oakland, San Jose did it, really brought this monstrous situation who haven't country. Our country being destroyed. Anyway, besides that, there is no reason in hell to have a new employee from Pacifica who took over the Berkeley housing place, put her foot in Jesse Arreguín's mouth, and to keep our business from starting six years ago, what have done over probably five million dollars, probably city would have benefited a lot. Wake up, everybody. Put your position ahead of body system which have taken over the city of Berkeley for many years. Thank you, I'll call again. Next is Jessica Prado. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, I just wanted to address the buffer zone policy that is being planned out. I just want to bring the issue that, you know, this is another reactionary homeless policy that Rashi Kesarwani has drafted. We need real solutions that don't divide our community. And right now this policy is dividing the community between the students, the people that are unhoused, the neighbors. That's not the solution. And also you're not considering that, yes, disabled people also have to be considered part of your policy. Otherwise we're just going to end up in court again, and I don't think that's what the city wants. So I am telling you now that please consider that this policy needs to have an accommodation, because we are going to request an accommodation to the policy, and then you will have to answer that. And right now you're also limiting more spaces where people can camp. There's only 15% of the city where people can actually camp at this moment. With this policy, that's going to limit the spaces even further. And the city is not providing any kind of alternative. You're just limiting the spaces where people can be. So at the moment, it looks like you guys are just passing a citywide camping ban when— Thank you. Thanks for your comment. Okay, that's the last speaker. Sorry? Okay. All right, moving on. We are going to the consent calendar. Council members, are there any comments on the consent calendar? Let's see if our parliamentarian works today. Oh yes, thank you very much. Ah, first we have an urgency item. Do you want to speak to it? Sure. Thank you. The federal government, the Department of Commerce and the Census Bureau proposed changes, significant changes, to the census that would disproportionately affect Berkeley residents in being accurately counted in the next census. So this is a— Letter requested and drafted by staff to oppose these changes and ask the federal government to allow for more time for comment. So I would like to add Councilmember Tregub as a co-sponsor and also move that we accept this item to the consent calendar. Second. Thank you very much. Okay. Calling the roll and adding the item to the agenda. Councilmember Kesarwani? Yes. Taplin? Aye. Bartlett? Yes. Tregub? Aye. O'Keefe? Yes. Blackaby? Yes. Lunaparra? Yeah. Humbert? Yes. And Mayor Ishii? Yes. Okay. Motion carries. Item added to the agenda. Just for the public, it's also—there's copies of it on the back table. It's also posted on the online agenda for this meeting. It's available to the public. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Very good. Any comments on the consent calendar? Nobody. Okay. Councilmember O'Keefe. Nobody wanted to be first. Yeah, I'm happy to comment because I actually have two items on there. They're both the same items. We're doing the same thing. I am the—I don't know if you guys know this because it doesn't come up very often, but I'm the council representative to the Board of Library Trustees, and so we have two items, items 28 and 29, which are appointing new members. So I just want to let you guys know we've been very busy over the last year. We hired a new director, Rebecca Alcala Veraflor, and then immediately had to pivot to fill two vacancies on our board of five. So it was— It was a long process. We had over 20 people apply, which really makes me feel so good about how invested the community is in our library system, and we picked two really good people, Hongta and Court. I don't think—are either of you here? I don't think so, but we're very happy with our choices and welcome them, and thank you very much. Thank you so much, Councilmember. Councilmember Humbert. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I've just got a few comments. I want to highlight item number five, which is the contract to provide some additional funding to Live Free USA. I'm really happy about this grant funding for this really important and effective organization. Let's see, find my next comment. Item number 14, which is authorizing the city manager to submit a local highway safety improvement program to improve some intersections along Shattuck, University, Bancroft, and Oxford. I'm excited about the potential for this grant application to help make these intersections safer for pedestrians. Item number 21, to rename the park at the northern end of the Berkeley waterfront as César E. Chávez Park. I want to thank the Parks, Recreation, Waterfront Commission and the members of the naming committee for all their hard work and for building consensus on what I think is a fine and appropriate renaming of this park, César E. Chávez. And I think I have one more. Number 26, which is Councilmember Bartlett's item for the Berkeley Flea Market End of the Season Fall Festival Halloween Celebration event. I'd like to contribute $200 from my office account. And item number 27, which is also Councilmember Bartlett item, the Harriet Tubman Terrace residents low-income housing Bay Cruise lunch event. That sounds like fun. I'd like to contribute $200 to that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Moving on to Councilmember Lunaparra. Thank you. I want to thank the Disability Commission and city staff for their work on ProWAG. I'm excited that this is moving forward and that staff are going to work on this to make sure that our disabled community have equitable street realm that they can move around. I want to thank the Latina community in Berkeley for all of their work and to rename the northern end of the Berkeley waterfront. I am excited for this and really thankful for everyone's work and coming together after such a difficult moment for us. And then I would like to allocate $150 from my discretionary fund to items 26 and 27 from Councilmember Bartlett and thank him for authoring. Thanks. Thank you so much. The parliamentarian is, like, totally on the fritz right now, so I know Councilmember Blackaby is on here, but— I don't know if it will continue to work, so go ahead. Thank you. Thanks, Madam Mayor. I wanted to thank the auditor for her information report on the city leases audit, and just wanted to remark that how important it is that we do track these leases, and looking forward to having the software system come online in the next three months. We do have 66, at least, at last count from the presentation, different leases that the city administers across a lot of different departments, and just having more visibility and kind of centralized management of all that I think will make all of us more comfortable to make sure that, as again, we're looking to maximize revenues moving forward, that we're getting the most out of the leases and making sure that we're following up on leases that are expired or that need to be renewed. So I just want to thank the auditor for bringing it, and looking forward to next year's look back, and hopefully we'll be in much better position with the software in place to help us manage the leases. As Councilmember Luna Parra mentioned on item 28-20B, just want to thank again the Commission on Disability for all their work on this important, on the PROWAG guidelines, and appreciate staff's working with the commission and incorporating a lot of that work in what they're doing going forward. On item 21, share again the thoughts of colleagues that really happy with the new name of our Berkeley Waterfront Park. I want to thank the renaming commission. I want to thank the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission for all of that, finding a name that honors the history of the farmworker movement in California and honors the farmworkers who grow and harvest our food. So, sí se puede. And then on items 26 and 27, similarly would like to contribute $200 from our office account towards those two items. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Tregub. Thank you, Madam Mayor. We have an agenda tonight that is rich with impactful items, and I want to express my deep gratitude to everyone who worked on them, starting with our incredible staff, leadership team, and all of our community stakeholders. I am thrilled about Item 14, authorizing the city manager to submit a local Highway Safety Improvement Program, Cycle 14, grant application to improve safety at 30 signalized intersections along Shattuck, University, Bancroft, and Oxford. Of course, many, but not all, are in my district, and a number of constituents have commented to us about the need to improve everything from traffic signal timing to other improvements needed at those critical, very active, and lively locations. So thank you for bringing this item forward. As has been mentioned by my colleagues, I wanted to just echo my gratitude to—I see Chair Fisher here, members of the Commission on Disability, for their incredible work on PROWAG. Accessibility should be a fundamental consideration in how we design, maintain, and construct our public spaces for people with disabilities, older adults, and residents with mobility challenges. An inaccessible sidewalk or construction zone can mean losing access to essential destinations. So I look forward to seeing clear expectations incorporated into city contracts, with continued input from that commission and other stakeholders. And I know we are on our way there. On Item 21, I'll just echo the comments of my colleagues, C.C. Poeti. On items 23 and 24, I would like to thank the Zero Waste Commission staff and all who have weighed in. This is, and I really want to thank my commissioner, Commissioner Mondragon, who has updated my office and me personally for the past year on this work in regard to allocating the ability for compliance with green codes in new construction. This actually came out of a discussion that I remember the Zoning Adjustments Board was having back when I was on it, and here we are three years later with an ordinance in place. So thank you so much, and thank you to our staff for implementing that. Lastly, I would like to contribute $100 each from my G14 account for items 26 and 27, and would like to thank Councilmember Lunaparra for her urgency item. Thank you very much. I also wanted to comment on item 21 and just thank very much the Latinos Unidos renaming committee for all of the work that they did to solicit community feedback on the new name for the park. I know some folks have some concerns, and I know that also our city staff will be having conversations with the UFW about the use of CC, which apparently is trademarked. Very shocking to me. And anyway, so we will get updates if there's any issues that will come back to us for a conversation. And I do just want to thank folks again. I know that this was a really devastating reason to have to rename our park, and so I'm grateful to everyone who came together and found a positive way to move forward and still honored the work of the movement. I also wanted to briefly comment on the Westlaw item, which I think is item number— I'm not sure which number it is. Oh, number two, which is a waiver of sanctuary city ordinance for Westlaw contract, just in case anyone had any concerns about that. Westlaw is a program that basically all law firms use to get legal information, to look up old cases and the laws, and it is a company that is also used by an immigration enforcement agency. And so, just so folks kind of understand why it's being waived, it's just that is the reason. So I just wanted to highlight that for folks in case they had any concerns. And I'd also like to give $100 from my office budget to item 26 and also $100 to item 27. And, oh, and thank you so much to staff and also our disability commission for their work on PROWAG together. So thank you all very much for that. Okay. Are there any— sorry. Oh yes, thank you. Councilmember Kesarwani. Thank you very much, Madam—.
Segment 2
Mayor, I want to echo the comments of others for item number 21. I just want to thank all of the groups and individuals who were involved, specifically Latinos Unidos and the Parks Commission for their work. It's really gratifying that we can come together to rename this park, Sí Se Puede Park. Item number 25 is my item to require a procurement process when the city is seeking to acquire services. This is in response to a very important audit that was released by our city auditor's office earlier this year. And I do just want to clarify, because we received a letter from the Ecology Center about this item. When we do procurement for professional services, when you look at the ordinance language here, it says that the contract award shall be based on, quote, demonstrated competence and qualifications for the types of services to be performed at fair and reasonable prices. So it's not just the lowest price. We will, and it's very important to consider competence and qualifications. So I just want to make that clear, that we're going to have a transparent process to find the most qualified service provider at the best price. And I think this is a very important reform to make sure that we are using public dollars as effectively and efficiently as possible, and that everyone has an equal opportunity to compete to win those contracts. And then finally, I would also like to be recorded as donating $100 to item number 26 for the Berkeley Flea Market event and item number 27 for Harriet Tubman Terrace. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I think that Council—well, actually, you haven't gone yet, so I'm going to let Councilmember Bartlet go, and then Councilmember Kief wants to add on. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I want to thank everyone for donating to the two events, the flea market and the Harriet Tubman. Really awesome events. Really feel thankful. And regarding 25, this is the— Councilmember Kesarwani just spoke to the competitive procurement process. So I think this one is very important because 10 years ago we passed a measure to increase, I guess, diversity among contractors in the city. They call it the Bindex, the Berkeley Inclusion Diversity Index. I didn't name it Bindex. They called it Bindex. And so, you know, in this time, as the city manager will tell you, we’ve worked hard to implement it. We have new structures within the process. The departments had to know about it. However, this will help jumpstart that process. It will help fulfill it so that we can, you know, take a second before we rubber stamp these other roles. We give out contracts all the time: engineering, technology, cleaning, things like that, to let someone else get a shot at achieving their dreams. So it’s a very important measure. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Councilmember O’Keefe, did you have something you wanted to add? Yeah, thank you. I was so excited about my library item, I forgot to do the other things. I’d like to be recorded as donating $150 to items 26 and 27 each, and I’m a huge Dr. Allen fan, so I don’t know if you’re here, but— so that’s all. Thanks so much. Thank you. Okay. Did you press yours? Oh, sorry, Councilmember Taplin. Okay. Thank you. I would like to be recorded as relinquishing $100 to items 26 and 27 each. Thank you. Thank you. What were you saying, Mr. City Clerk? Just for the— for items 20… 23 and 24, just for the record that we'd be adopting 23B and 24B. Those are the items to, if that's the will of the council, because we have to pick one to adopt as part of the motion. Right. So whoever makes the motion would need to specify. And that 22A is being referred. That's right. Thank you. We still have to take public comment, so we'll take that first and then we'll come back to this. All right. Very good. So is there any public comment on consent calendar or information items only? Welcome. Hello. Oh, we thought we had two minutes. Is it one? You can, if only one. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, if you're combining your comment, you can do two. I don't know who's planning on speaking. Very fast. Okay. Because you can give your minutes to her if you need more time, is my point. Yeah, I think we did time at two minutes, so maybe you need to give us a minute. Okay, we'll do our best. Okay. Good evening, Mayor Ishii and Councilmembers. My name is Natasha Beery, and thank you for your support for Item 21 on the consent calendar to rename the northern end of the waterfront park with the inspiring and uplifting name, Cise Puede. As you know, following the April referral from the Mayor and City Council, we formed a citywide committee composed of representatives from multiple constituencies, including representatives, many of them here, from Latinos Unidos, la Colectiva Latina, the Parks Tribute Site, the Multicultural Institute, the Ecology Center, as well as park user groups and educational and civic representatives. We conducted a deliberative process that was based on the successful model used by the Berkeley Unified School District, one with which I'm very familiar in my former role as Director of Community Relations for BUSD. We met multiple times and then provided a rationale to the PRW Commission. They voted unanimously last month to support our consensus recommendation to the park. Denise, you can give them one minute from—I think they're sharing their minutes here. Yeah, yeah. Good. And we thank you for your support for the meaningful, uplifting, and enduring new name, Cise Puede Park. There, I only used 15 extra seconds. And now, [unclear]. Yes. My name is Beatriz Leyva Cutler, member of the commemorative committee, renaming committee, and the school board director. The phrase Sí Se Puede has been adopted not only by farmworkers and the labor movement, but by many individuals and groups working towards positive social change. We are proud of our process and the wide support for the consensus of the name Sí Se Puede. Roger Miller, the PRW senior management analyst, has already spoken to UFW representative attorney, and they are open to Berkeley being the first municipality to obtain an approved use of the phrase Sí Se Puede. The application is in process, and we are pleased that the UFW has given the provisional approval for our city to use Sí Se Puede. The park's renaming is only part of our efforts, as we include the reconceptualization of the tribute site, the solar observatory at the park, and educating visitors about the farmworker movement, as we have had for the past 20-plus years. And we plan to promote the citywide farmworker commemorative period with BUSD classrooms at the tribute site, calendar site at BCC and UC Berkeley, and across the community of Berkeley during the spring of 2027, with the new park's name providing inspiration to everyone. Thank you for your support for the name Sí Se Puede Park. It captures the heart and hope of the farmworker movement, as well as movements across the world, and an essential spirit of Berkeley that Sí Se Puede. Yes, we can. We can work towards a better future for all. Gracias. Thank you. Thank you all. Hi, I'm Philip Monred, Councilmember Tregub's appointee to the Zero Waste Commission, and I'd like to, on behalf of the commission, I'd like to speak in support of items 22 through 24 of the consent agenda. But as a point of procedure that I hope doesn't count against my time, I believe I heard a comment from the city manager about pulling this, in which case I would like to speak to the issue of pulling it as opposed to support, just simply supporting it. Yeah, you may speak to polling it. Okay. These proposals were adopted after much study and multiple drafts by a unanimous vote of the Zero Waste Commission in October 2025, and the city manager's complementary report to the commission's report unequivocally supported it. So if it has to be delayed, I hope that— Sorry, can someone give him a minute? I would like to hear the rest of his statement. Thank you. Okay, go ahead. I would urge that the commission be consulted as to what are the nature of the additional issues that need to be addressed, and I'm very hopeful and confident that they will be in line with the spirit of the referrals. Thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Hi. Thank you, Mayor and Councilmembers. My name is Sandra Curtis. I'm a longtime Berkeley resident, Zero Waste Commissioner for Brent, and I know you're going to decide about the 22 to 24, but I would just like to reinforce that the current regulations, as you're considering this, the current regulations regarding planning, conducting, and cleaning up after special events do not adequately advance the city's zero waste goals, nor do such regulations have an enforcement component that guides special events, event planners, and their vendors towards constructive recycling, composting, and waste reduction behavior. Item 22 strengthens the regulations and will help special events to model the environmental stewardship that we want to do here in the city. So thank you for thinking about that as you're considering this. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks. Good evening. Jack Meezes, Berkeley resident. I yield my time to Steve Sherman, Zero Waste Chair. Thank you. Good evening, Stephen Sherman, Chair of the Zero Waste Commission. The commission has proposed several items regarding enforcement mechanisms for recycling, composting, and waste reduction at special events and within building codes. Please support items 22, whether currently or as may get revised, through 24. Item 25 dovetails with an advisory position that the commission will be presenting soon in a written report to Council. The recommendation will be for Council to direct the Zero Waste Commission to recommend to staff and Council qualification and evaluation criteria within procurement documents for certain major zero waste services, such as composting, processing, and recycling collection and processing, for consistency with the city's zero waste goals, services, and policies. The commission should be enabled by the Council to engage upfront in the two most fundamental aspects of public management and oversight of the solid waste management system, namely procurement of major service providers and proposed adjustments to the rate structure. That way, we can help the $60 million per year solid waste enterprise to have greater financial accountability and transparency to Berkeley residents and local businesses, all of whom are rate payers. And then we can be able to help safeguard Berkeley's excellent recycling and composting programs with attention to Berkeley's values, such as local economic development, local control, social justice, and high environmental standards. On the specifics of 25 directly, please consider, with respect to the recycling contracts, please consider that the industry standard for contract length is substantially longer than five to seven years. To allow for cost controls and proper amortization schedules for collection vehicles and processing equipment. Thank you for your support for Zero Waste Commission referrals. Thank you so much. Carol Murasevic, I would like to stand in support of the work of Live Free, funded in item five, the Harry Tubman residence in IM 27, and the requirement for competitive procurement contracts, which is deeply needed. And I cede the rest of my time to Rena Fisher. Thank you. Rena, would you like the handheld mic? Sure. I can't get under that table. That's— so she has her own minute on top of those 39 seconds, please. Thank you. So if there's another minute that was ceded— Yes, is there another minute for you that you have? Okay, sorry. So it's two minutes. Thank you. Thanks. So, Honorable Mayor and Councilmembers, I'm Rena Fisher, Chairperson of the Commission on Disability. Once Public Works moved item 20 forward, the Public Right-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines, PROWAG, it moved quickly and collaboratively with the Commission on Disability. We had substantive input on the construction zone guidelines, which now explicitly incorporate PROWAG into the document. And there is good reason. ProWAG is considered best practice by all who have weighed in, including, most importantly, by every court that has ruled on the subject of accessibility in the past several years. A few important challenges remain. First, reporting and enforcement. The city's approach continues to rely almost entirely on community members to identify and report violations during construction, reporting when we encounter dangerous and inaccessible routes. The city needs proactive inspection, not complaint-driven enforcement. The new guidelines should also incorporate clear enforcement mechanisms, including the specifics for holding noncompliant contractors accountable. The most important remaining challenge is contract language. This is where the entire process began in 2025. The Commission on Disabilities' principal recommendation was straightforward: incorporate boilerplate ProWAG language into city contracts affecting the public right-of-way, making ProWAG enforceable contractual obligations. The city has now accepted this recommendation in principle. That's important progress. But taking another six to eight months to write boilerplate language seems unacceptable. The timeline is unnecessarily long, and in the meantime, there will be more and more public works contracts, significantly thanks to Measure FF funding. These contracts will govern construction for many, many months. Perpetuating the problem everyone seeks to correct, including pro-waging contracts must be prioritized. Six to eight months to write boilerplate language and models already exist is just unnecessary. We appreciate the progress and collaboration undertaken. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, Dr. Monique Allen, excuse me, with Community Services United Berkeley Flea Market. Prestigious council members, Madam Mayor Ishii, and City Manager Budenhagen, thank you so much for your generous contribution to CSU Berkeley Flea Market for support on item number 26. The first D13 helped us with our successful grand reopening this past June, and now this D13 will help us with our final on-site celebrations before the rainy season is upon us. We thank you for all showing up individually to support the market, our entertainers, as well as our vendors. We have procured many community partners and are planning to have a fabulous 2027 outdoor events for South and West Berkeley marginalized communities to enjoy and benefit from. Thank you all again for your continued dedication and commitment to community. Thank you. Madam Mayor, City Council members, I'm Martin Burke, Executive Director at the Ecology Center. We support items 21 through 24, including the events item, and hope these are necessary but insufficient items to meet the goals of the city's 2025 Zero Waste Strategic Plan. We also support items 16 and 21 that remind us why we have such ambitious zero waste goals. Over the last 50 years, the Ecology Center has provided leadership, vision, exceptional service, transparency, and value in helping the city meet zero waste, climate, health, and other environmental and social justice goals. We appreciate the intent of item 25 and have offered additional safeguards and flexibility recommendations to improve procurement practices. We hope you will consider these in the implementation of the item. We're grateful for the opportunity to serve our community and look forward to working with you in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Martin. I have an extra minute. So, in item number, I guess it's two, the West, the waiver, that's really, to me, and I could imagine to a lot of people that might not know this is on the agenda, a pretty scary thing. And I'm wondering, like, why you can't use a different organization that doesn't contract with ICE and bad players, especially in this climate of 47. All that's going on with ICE and all these other Homeland Security, it's not a good thing. And I just don't understand, like, how you could do that and why you would do that, especially right now during this time. And, yeah, that's just crazy. And all the things that you all do, you would think that this wouldn't be one of them, especially now. And I wasn't here for public comment. I'm not on agenda items, but it's really clear to me that this city doesn't—it's kind of hypocritical because you didn't want to do FLOC because they cooperate with ICE, yet this is going to happen, and it's on the consent calendar. What sense does that make? Because they can always utilize their, you know, capabilities to do the wrong thing. And I don't understand why you would put people in jeopardy like that. It's really sad to me that you would do that, and free Palestine. Mr. Chair, I actually addressed that earlier. Okay. Good evening, Councilmembers, Mayor Ishii. My name is Rebecca Alcalá-Graflor. I am the new library director at the Berkeley Public Library. Thank you for that. I'm here just to thank you. Councilmember O'Keefe for bringing forward the appointment of two new board members of our Board of Library Trustees, Court Jackson and Hongzi Yu, who I know will be a tremendous addition to the board, and I look forward to working with them. And I appreciate your support and the community member support of the Berkeley Public Library. Thank you. Thank you. Good to see you here. Anyone online for consent calendar information items only? Yes. Three hands currently raised. We have—oh, four. First is a caller with the number ending in 211. Hi. Hi. Berkeley Marina is one of the beauty and the pride of Berkeley, the beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. We should all do it. It also brings very, very important memory in my mind. In 1968, while I was grad student finishing my PhD in nuclear engineering at Cal, Mossad, Israeli Mossad, almost killed me. They tried to kidnap me from my house on Garber Street and to kill me, and I survived, as they killed the beautiful Lady Samira Musa, Egyptian mother of nuclear physics. Please go, everybody, in the Lawrence Museum Hall of Science. Google search Samira Musa tribute from Lawrence Museum. Thank you, and our caller again. Thank you. Next is a username called Valued Customer. Yeah, that's me. My name is Martin Nickelhaus. I am the CEO of the Chavez Park Conservancy. I'm speaking on item 21. I love the political slogan Si Se Puede. I've chanted it hundreds of times back in the day, but it's not in the public domain. It's a trademark that's federally registered by the United Farm Workers Union, and for the city to use that, it needs the consent of the Farm Workers Union. We've been told that the city has a preliminary consent, which means it does not have written consent. I've corresponded with the attorneys for the Farm Workers Union, and I've been told as late as yesterday that there is no agreement at this time with the City of Berkeley for the use of the mark. It's similar to the use of the name Dolores Huerta, which we wanted to use a long time ago, but then we found out that Dolores Huerta doesn't give consent for the use of that name. At this time, the Farm Workers Union has not given consent for the use of that name. I'm going to stop, but thank you for your comment. And I commented earlier that the way that this procedure works, or the process works, is that the City Council would say, you know, we're interested in having it be that name, and then we will have conversations with UFW to make sure that that's okay. And then if it's not okay, we'll come back and have a conversation about it. And if it is okay, then we'll be able to move forward. So just so you know what the process looks like. Thanks, Marty. Next is Kelly Hammergren. On item 2, the waiver of the sanctuary city. Do you mean to tell me that in the entire Bay Area there is no other law firm that can provide services to the City of Berkeley? It seems like we shouldn't have to forego our sanctuary city status to contract with Westlaw that also serves ICE. And I did hear your comments earlier. On 20, pro-WAG. This has been going on since May 2025. And to think that it may take another eight months to finish this, the city should be embarrassed. And number 25, I think this is really an excellent item from Kesarwani, and I think that the legal department should have the same conditions as every other department in the city. And I did hear the discussions at the meeting, but I still believe that the legal department should have the same comply with competitive procurement. Thanks, Kelly. Your time's up. And Westlaw is not a law firm. It is a company that you can look up laws on. It's like every law student and most law firms use Westlaw or LexisNexis to look up the laws, and it's something that is also used by USCIS. So it's not that it's a law firm that we're contracting with. So just to clarify for folks. Okay. Any other public comments? Last speaker is Maria Sol. Basic seems it's always more cost effective to prevent harm than to repair the damage. So that definitely applies to being there for children so that they don't get involved with guns and violence. It also takes so much to house people, so we want to protect the housing that already exists, area, you know, etc. And of course, to have ethical and reliable construction people in contracts so that we're not wasting so much money with bloated and ineffective things. And when it comes to the right of way, who of us has the more right of way? We need to develop courtesy and cooperation. And if Czepoe doesn't work, better together definitely does. I suggest that as an alternative name. Bless all of you and thank you. Thanks, Maria. Okay, that's it. Okay, very good. All right. Would someone like to make a motion? I know there are multiple pieces that are in here. Would someone like to attempt to make a motion with assistance from the city clerk? Actually, Madam Mayor, I don't want to make a motion, but can I just make a quick comment? Sure. Thank you very much, Madam Mayor. I just wanted to respond to my Zero Waste Commissioner's comment about the duration of recycling contracts under this procurement item. We actually had a very robust debate at the Budget and Finance Committee with Alternate Commissioner Tregub and Councilmember Blackaby. I said commissioner, I apologize. Councilmember Tregub, you did a lot of commissions, though, in the past. So, and Councilmember Blackaby, about duration of contracts and whether that should be specified in the ordinance. And ultimately, because some contracts have a duration that is longer than five to seven years, we do leave it general and we simply refer to the purchasing manual because we were thinking about the recycling contract that has been for 10 years. So I did just want to clarify that, that flexibility to have a different length of term was built into the ordinance. But I thought there was a very important discussion about that issue at the committee. So that's all, and thank you, and I'm ready to vote. I can make the motion to approve the consent calendar, but on those items where we have an alternative, I believe we always want to move the companion report, correct? The city clerk is giving me a shrug, but I think— Yes, that's right. It depends on— It's up to us, but I believe that that is the will of the council. Yes, and with removing 22, I believe is the one that our city manager brought up, and including the urgency item, is that right? Yes. Councilmember Kesarwani. Okay, so removing item 22 completely, A and B. Removing item 22A and referring—I'm sorry, removing item 22B and referring item 22A to the Agenda and Rules Committee to be scheduled for when the staff item comes back. Okay, okay. So referring 22A to Agenda and Rules and adopting 23B and 24B. Those are both the companion reports, and including the urgency ordinance or the urgency item. 20B also. Okay. Oh, referring 20B as well. Oh, adopting. Okay. Oh, that was just another B that we had. Okay, 20B. I apologize. Okay, I think—is that clear enough? I appreciate you taking a stab at it. Thank you, Councilmember. Okay, and we have a second over here with Councilmember Blackaby. So can we take the roll on that, please? Sure. To approve the consent calendar, including the urgency item and approving items 20B, 23B, and 24B, referring item 22A to the Agenda and Rules Committee for scheduling. Councilmember Kesarwani. Taplin. Aye. Bartlett. Yes. Tregub. Aye. O'Keefe. Yes. Blackaby. Yes. Lunaparra. Yes. Humbert. Yes. And Mayor Ishii. Yes. Okay. Consent calendar is approved as amended. Good job, everyone. Yay. Thank you. Thanks so much. Okay. All right. So we are going to take a 10-minute break just so we can have a turnover. Recording in progress. Thank you. Too quick. Recording stopped. Recording in progress. We are back, council members. Okay. Hello. Mr. City Manager, did you want to introduce this one? I do. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I do because I'm really excited about it. This is really, you know, almost nine years of public process. You know, a strong council referral from almost a decade ago. A ton of work from staff in a lot of departments. A ton of community engagement and feedback that have gone into what I think of in many ways is righting historic wrongs. If you think about 60 years ago, people, mostly Black people, being displaced from South Berkeley when the Bart station was built, Ashby BART. And fast forward to today, where we're bringing before you the developer selection, and I'm also very excited about this development group to build a 100% affordable project, upon which we layer the preference policy that you all passed at the last meeting, which really preferences people who were pushed out of Berkeley because of the BART. So that whole full circle picture is coming to fruition tonight in a big way, which I feel very proud of as your city manager. And there's a lot of detail that they'll go through in these slides. There's a lot of more people to thank, but, you know, the city is spending something like $8 million from Measure O on this project and, you know, having 341 bedrooms. For people that are all affordable, and hopefully many will come back who had to leave, who were forced out. I'm just feel excited and proud, as I said. So I just wanted to say that before we go, and I will hand it off to our Housing Community Services Manager, Margot Hurst. Yeah, thank you. So good evening, Mayor Ishii and members of the Council. To echo the City Manager's comments, we are really excited to be here tonight for this important project milestone. Sorry, can you pull it closer to you? Sure. Thank you. How's this? Is that coming through? Okay. So again, we're really excited to be here tonight for this important project milestone, and I'd like to start by introducing my colleagues at the table this evening. So we have Jenny Wyatt, who's our Affordable Housing Program Manager, to my left. And then in the far right, we have Anjanette Scott, who is HCS's Housing Development Supervisor. To my immediate right is Kelly DeWolf, the Housing Development Specialist and Project Manager for the East Lot RFP process. And online, we also have Kirsten Dissinger, our consultant with Street Level Advisors, and so she'll be available to assist with any questions later after the presentation. So next slide, please. Oh no, actually, sorry. Can you go back to the previous slide? So we're here tonight with a recommendation to enter into an exclusive negotiating rights agreement with the selected development team for the Ashby East Lot, and to also approve their allocation of the predevelopment loan. And as a reminder, the Ashby BART station transit-oriented development site was split into two different sites, and they're both shown on this slide: the Ashby East and the Ashby West lots. BART conducted a solicitation for the Ashby West lot last year, where the Adeline Alliance Partners development team was selected. So they conducted that solicitation similar to the North Berkeley BART site because they remain the owner of those two sites, and they are presently the owner of the East lot. But through an exchange agreement, which I'm going to talk a little bit more about later, the city will become the eventual owner of the East lot. And next slide, please. So as shown on this slide, the East lot is a 1.9-acre parcel with access to Adeline Street, and it's bordered by Tremont and Woolsey. And next slide, please. So I'm going to go over some key points in the timeline leading up to tonight, and getting to this stage in the process is the culmination of a nearly nine-year community-engaged process that started in 2018 with both the passage of Assembly Bill 2923 that gave BART the ability to set its own transit-oriented development zoning standards on BART-owned property, and also the passage of Berkeley's Measure O affordable housing bond that brought in $135 million for the development of affordable housing. Fifty-six million in Measure O and other housing trust fund dollars, primarily mitigation fees, were committed to the two BART station developments in order to increase affordable housing across both transit-oriented developments. And as the city manager mentioned in the introduction, of that 56 million, about 8 million is designated for the Ashby East lot. And in 2020, the city and BART entered into an MOU that established the framework for the development of the Ashby and North Berkeley BART stations. This process included extensive community engagement and brought forth the city and BART's joint vision and priorities document, which was and is one of the key guiding documents for the development of both BART stations. In 2025, when BART and the city executed the exchange agreement, it paved the way for solicitations at both the West and East lots. In October of 2025, City Council held a work session to discuss the contents of the Ashby East lot request for proposals, and then in March of this year, City Council authorized the issuance of the RFP, which was released in April. Next slide, please. So I want to acknowledge that many of you, our current council members, have been involved in this process since the beginning, and others of you became involved midstream but with full engagement. And in addition to your leadership throughout this process, I also want to acknowledge and appreciate many others who participated in the process, including the city manager's office. A team of folks from the City Attorney's Office, staff from the Planning Department and Health, Housing, and Community Services Department, and many across these three departments are actually here tonight as well, staff and representatives from BART, community members and stakeholders. And I will talk a little bit about the opportunities and ways in which the community members and stakeholders have participated in a future slide. I'd like to acknowledge the Ashby East Lot Evaluation Panel, which was comprised of four city staff, one BART representative, and two community representatives who provided so much thoughtful, engaged feedback, comments, and valuable time towards the selection of this development team. And of course, the development teams who have invested significant time and effort in responding to the Ashby East Lot request for proposals. The goal throughout this RFP process has been to identify a development team and project that responds to the needs and priorities of the community while making thoughtful use of this important public site and honoring South Berkeley's rich history. Next slide, please. So I'd like to take a moment here, kind of at the beginning of the presentation, to highlight the community engagement opportunities for the East Lot that built on the foundation and the extensive work that was done by the Community Advisory Group earlier in the process. So prior to issuing the RFP, we held a stakeholder meeting in the summer of 2025. Which was followed by the two council meetings that I mentioned earlier, where the community had an opportunity to weigh in on the RFP contents and the process. Ahead of reviewing the proposals, we assembled a community reparative framework committee that established criteria for evaluating the reparative framework element of the proposals. And earlier this month, we held a community meeting at the South Berkeley Senior Center, where the top two development teams gave presentations to share their vision with the community. I also want to note that tonight is an important step, but it's not the end of the community process. There will be additional opportunities for community input as the project moves forward. Now I'd like to pass the baton to Kelly DeWolf, who will be presenting the remaining of tonight's presentation. Thank you, Margo. Good evening, Mayor Ishii and members of Council. I'll begin tonight by briefly giving an overview of the solicitation process. After staff released the request for proposals in April, the city held a networking reception for interested parties to learn more about the city and community priorities for the East Lot, as well as the criteria for the RFP. The city received six strong proposals in July, and the evaluation panel met and reviewed presentations from design and financial consultants on the proposals. The panel deliberated at three meetings over the course of the next month, bringing the list down to two shortlisted teams. These two team finalists were interviewed by the panel and presented their qualifications. to the public on October 1st. At the developer finalist presentation event, the community had an opportunity to provide feedback on the two teams via an online survey. Staff compiled the survey results and shared them with the evaluation panel, who deliberated and made a final decision on a recommended team earlier this month. Next, we will give more details on the two proposals, the panel's recommendations, and next steps for the East Lot development process. Next slide, please. This is an overview of the priorities that were outlined in the joint vision and priorities and the exchange agreement documents between the city and BART. These documents were developed as a result of the years-long community process that Margo mentioned with the community advisory group. A minimum of 300 bedrooms is the first threshold requirement for the East Lot, and one reason the focus on bedrooms instead of units is to ensure.
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Flexibility in housing types. Another threshold requirement for the East Lot was a minimum of 35% affordability. The RFP included a goal of 50% of affordable units. A community and city goal was to prioritize proposals that incorporated a thoughtful and meaningful reparative framework that addressed historical harms caused by displacement and its impacts on African American residents and businesses. This included a requirement for some portion of proceeds to be contributed toward the South Berkeley Community Benefits Fund. Additionally, points were awarded to proposals that demonstrated a creative approach to universal design and provided a 25% set-aside for residents with disability. Next slide, please. In addition to these key community priorities and requirements, the panel also scored written proposals according to a few other standards. Panelists looked for proposals that met East Lot design standards and that provided required amounts of open space. Panelists were also looking for teams who had experience with larger-scale multi-phase projects, transit-oriented developments, and demonstrated experience with incorporating community feedback into the design of past projects. Teams that had experience with ground leases and public-private partnerships, and who prepared financial proposals and financial offers that were reasonable and feasible. Next slide, please. These are the two shortlisted teams that the evaluation panel selected. The first team, the Saha team, was led by Satellite Affordable Housing Associates and includes also Habitat for Humanity, East Bay Silicon Valley, and Deborah Matthews Development Consulting. Saha's design team consists of the lead architect firm Paya Talk, Hood Design Studio, and its universal design team, Architecture for the Blind and the Ideas Center. And Jeffrey Holt and Associates as its for-sale architect. Its service providers consisted of Toolworks, East Bay Innovations, along with SAHA's own in-house service provider. The second team, the related team, includes Related California partnered with the Kelsey. Its design team is led by Mithun, the Art of Access as its universal design partner, with Yes Community Architects, and the Kelsey was also presented as its service provider. Next slide, please. In total, the teams were scored in three major areas. The bulk of the points that were awarded to the proposals were for the city and community priorities described in the previous slides, which were presented in the written proposals and could be scored up to a maximum of 80 points. The two finalist teams were also scored on their interviews, which were scored up to 12 points, and on their public presentations, which were scored up to 8 points based on their ability to present qualifications and proposals to the evaluation panel and to the public. Next slide, please. The city is happy to announce that the evaluation team is presenting the SAHA team as the recommended developer for the Ashby E slot. The evaluation panel noted that both teams had very strong proposals. Both teams presented a 100% affordable proposal, and both teams also presented a 25% set-aside for people with disabilities. The SAHA team presented a proposal with one multifamily rental building and 12 affordable for-sale townhomes, which would be available for residents earning up to 80% of the area median income. Whereas the related team focused on two rental buildings, one available for families and one available for seniors. In terms of unit counts, you'll notice that the unit counts offered by the related team has a slightly higher unit count at 250 units than the Sahaw teams units offered at 174 units. But the bedroom counts were very similar. This is because the related team proposal focused more on smaller unit sizes for the senior rental building, but both bedroom numbers were very similar and offer a similar density between the two projects. The rental housing proposed would have affordability levels capping at 60% of the area median income. Next slide, please. Both teams had extremely strong proposals that met the minimum threshold criteria for the site and highly experienced teams. The evaluation panel is therefore suggesting tonight that Council authorize the related team as an alternate team in case negotiations are at any point terminated with the recommended team. The evaluation panel scored the Sahaw team very highly based on its alignment with design priorities, including generous open space, deep local knowledge of the South Berkeley community, and leadership with an experienced nonprofit developer. Support for the recommended team from the community was also reflected in the survey results. The evaluation panel was excited to see the team's proposal also included opportunities for affordable homeownership, which was a priority for Council and the community, and a thoughtful and well-developed representative framework that included plans for incorporation of historically and culturally relevant artwork, education on the history of redlining in South Berkeley, economic opportunities for South Berkeley residents, and local hiring practices for the development itself. Next slide, please. On the SAHA team, SAHA will serve as the lead developer with a 95% interest in the rental project and will partner with Deborah Matthews Consulting, who will have a 5% interest. Habitat will be responsible for the homeownership portion of the project and will be responsible for the management and sale of the townhomes. The lead architect firm is Pyatok, and the universal design team is Architecture for the Blind in the IDEA Center. Next slide, please. I wanted to also share with you some of the past project experience for the SAHA team. On the left, we have the Flickerbird Homes, which is a family rental and a mixed-use project that is in partnership with the Native American Health Center that provides medical, dental, behavioral health, and social programs, along with family housing, and also provides a cultural community center. Encora Place on the right is a transit-oriented development that has won multiple awards for its design, planning, and development, located in the Fruitvale neighborhood in Oakland. Both of these developments located in Oakland demonstrate the SAHA team's experience with similar projects of similar scale and use to the project that the city anticipates on the East Lot. Next slide, please. On this slide, we're showing two of the City of Berkeley projects that the SAHA team has completed or are soon to complete. On the left is the Grinnell, which is located in West Berkeley, completed in 2024, a transit-oriented, independent, inclusive living project. And on the right is the Catalyst, BUSD workforce housing project, which is soon to be complete. It's about 90% complete and is anticipated to be complete in early 2027, and this is in collaboration with the Berkeley Unified School District. Next slide, please. After Council's decision tonight, city staff will be tasked with negotiations with the recommended development team, which will authorize the city manager to sign an exclusive negotiating rights agreement with the development team, which will kick off an exclusive negotiating rights agreement period anticipated to last up to 12 months. Concurrently, the development team will engage the local community around the design and vision for the project. The negotiation period will determine the terms of the ground lease, and these terms will go to Council for approval when the period is complete. The land exchange, which was authorized by Council last October, and subsequent declaration of the land as surplus would take place at some point before construction loan closing, depending on the preferences of the city and the development team. At the earliest, the development team anticipates construction closing in December of 2031. Next slide, please. I just wanted to recap the recommended actions for Council tonight and the recommended adoption of two resolutions for this item. And there are three major recommendations as part of those two resolutions. The first is that the city manager enter into an ENRA with the SAHA team, and authorizing the city manager to enter into an ENRA with the related team as a backup should the negotiations be terminated with the chosen development team. The reason for this recommendation is because this was also a strong team, and if for any reason the negotiation with the chosen team doesn't work out, this would put us in a position to move quickly and efficiently and to keep the process moving forward instead of needing to restart. The final recommendation is to authorize the previously reserved $1 million pre-development loan for the Ashby East lot for the recommended development team. The team anticipates using the full $8 million in funding reserved for the East lot to support development activities later on in the process. And this concludes my presentation. Thank you so much for your time. Our team would be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you all so much. Really appreciate the presentation and just all of the time and energy and, you know, listening that went into this process. It's so incredibly important. Certainly biased as Ben's favorite D3 resident, but I just want to see if anyone has any questions to start. No? Okay. Well, we will take public comment on this item, and for folks who are just tuning in, we're on item number 30, Ashby BART East lot developer selection for exclusive negotiation and reservation of pre-development funding. All right. Good. Come on up. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. My name is James Conlin. I'm the Associate Director of Real Estate Development at Satellite Affordable Housing Associates, and I just wanted to come up and say a couple words on behalf of our team, who's also here tonight: Saha, Habitat for Humanity East Bay Silicon Valley, and Deborah Matthews Development Consulting. We're all very honored by the selection panel's recommendation to move forward with our team for the Ashby East lot project, and we appreciate Council's consideration. And as a South Berkeley-based organization, this is an especially meaningful opportunity for us. Saha's offices are in the neighborhood, just a couple blocks away from the project, and, yeah, our team is just very excited to bring new affordable rental and affordable homeownership opportunities to the neighborhood, and we're looking forward to working with the city and engaging with the community to develop the plans together. Thank you. Thank you. My non-agenda. Sorry, we're talking about item number 30. It has something to do with this, so I wanted to make a little comment before I spoke about something else. My question is, have you checked out Saha's code enforcement violations and fire department violations and lawsuits against them, as well as problems with the tenants and many, many other things? And have you considered any of that? Because it's been going on for years. Thank you. Are there other public comments online? So we're not taking public comment on item 30, Ashby Bart East Lot developer selection. If you're on the Zoom and you want to speak, please raise your hand. We have one hand raised, Maria Sol. Okay. So I know I'm not perfect and I know nothing is, and I know that if I see that there's room for improvement, I would really, really, really like to be able to do that. So Saha is housing a bazillion people that are very grateful, including me, and I'm hoping that they don't get too big to fail and that they might be more open to exactly what that last woman spoke to, which is dialogue, not combat, you know, a combat or conflict, but how can we all help each other improve? Because They're providing such a useful function, and yet sometimes, and Igor knows this, they do not pay attention to critical safety and security issues. So, can we all help each other help each other, please? This is my constant bottom line principle. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Are there any comments from my councilmember colleagues? I want to start with Councilmember Bartlett, please. Thank you, Madam Mayor, and I want to thank the city manager for your comments and thank the team for your wonderful work, and thank the applicants, who I'm happy to support tonight, for your diligent package. You know, this piece of land, you know, was a place of a thriving ecosystem. We heard the story before. These are homeowners. They're business owners. They had an economic vitality that was unceremoniously ripped away from them. And so, so much of this last number of years, and I was involved on the planning commission before I was elected, so for me it's like my entire adult life has been involved in working on this. And all these conversations, all this decade-plus of community meetings and things, you know, the notion of repair keeps coming up, right? Repairative frameworks and, you know, repair, repair, repair. And, you know, I've had to temper people's notion of repair repeatedly because I said before, replacing someone's house with a government apartment is not repair, right? And so this site, unlike the other site, the west side, the east lot, is different in that we actually own it. The city owns it, and we can really, you know, have our way with it. And so, in this instance, this council put forward some concepts. To be new people involved, local people who could bring their expertise and local knowledge and duty of care to the community, with an emphasis on accessibility, noting the Ed Roberts Campus people, and specifically honing in on the economic aspects of repair, making truly reparative framework. And so this team here has brought all these elements to bear. I couldn't be more proud. You are local. You're different. You're new. Talking to Ms. Matthews, you know, getting a chance to fulfill your dreams here, it's fantastic to see it. And you've got the best designers for the disabled community, and most importantly to myself and to the people who I truly represent, you brought ownership there. And that ownership, while it may seem small, 12 townhouses, but the building is only 350 units, right, apartments or people. So 12 townhouses in a cash-strapped environment, I know it's a creative force on your part and commitment to true economic repair, and I'm so happy and so proud of you. And this is a really important day for me, and I'm really thankful for all the work you've done, and I support you 110%. Thank you. I know folks are trying to press their buttons and it's not working. I think it was Councilmember Tregub first. Okay, and then Councilmember Humbert, and then Councilmember Blackaby. This is one of the proudest moments for me on this council in my relatively short time here, because to Councilmember, as Councilmember Bartlett mentioned, the work started long ago, and I am thinking back, and I am going to—there will probably be tears in my eyes when I say this. I think back on when we wrote and then passed the measure, the $135 million housing bond known as Measure O in 2018, and then the Measure O committee that I chaired worked with the council and with staff to make a recommendation, of which $8 million was allocated to this project. And what we're seeing now is the fulfillment of that promise to redress the historic wrongs that were done to a critical community in South Berkeley. So I'm really excited about this. I'm excited that both the finalist and the runner-up have an incredible depth of talent, and that both have just a very local tie-in to that community. And I congratulate everyone who has spent countless hours helping. This beloved community get to the point where we can start moving forward. I know that there's still a process before ground is broken and a process still before these units are made ready for occupancy. And I know that the need is going to be much greater than the number of units and bedrooms that are provided. But this is a critical first step, and I am just incredibly proud of the work and honored to be here tonight. It's very special for me, and thank you so much. Thank you, Councilmember Humbert. Thank you, Madam Mayor. My comments may actually exceed in length those of Councilmember Tregub's, which would be kind of unusual. I am incredibly pleased, thankful, and proud of our city that we've reached this critical milestone for the Ashby Bart East Lot project. It's very near where my district intersects with Councilmember Bartlett's. I have a real personal investment in this. There are so many people to thank for all their work. It's such a team effort, and I really want to read some names and laud them and thank them and recognize them: HHCS Director Gilman and HHCS staff, especially Kelly DeWolf, Jenny Winant, Margot Ernst, Planning Director Klein and planning staff, especially Uttara Ramakrishnan, City Manager Paul Buddenhagen and his staff, City Attorney Brown and her staff, street-level advisors for their work on the selection framework, former Mayor and now State Senator Jesse Arreguín for his work to get this off the ground, and again to Senator Arreguín and then BART Director, now Congresswoman LaTifa Simon and their teams for their work on negotiations, the evaluation panelists, including members from BART, city staff, and South Berkeley residents, BART's property development team. Thank you to all the responding teams who submitted, including Related, Kelsey, who were a strong alternate, but especially, of course, to our selected team, including Habitat for Humanity, East Bay Silicon Valley, Debbie D. Matthews Consulting, and of course, Saha, who has been a key city partner for many years. Thank you to Equity for Black Berkeley, the Center for Independent Living, the Ed Roberts Campus, and other community organizations that participated in developing the RFP and the selection process. A big thanks to all the people who participated in stakeholder meetings and the city's processes. Thank you to the late Mabel Howard, who fought on behalf of the South Berkeley community to get BART tracks put underground, and to Mabel's daughter, the artist Mildred Howard, whose sculpture at Ashby Station honors her mother's fight. And finally, a huge thanks to Councilmember and former Vice Mayor Ben Bartlett for all the energy, dedication, persistence, and creativity he has exhibited in moving this project to this point in time. Thank you, Ben. Please forgive me if I missed anybody. I thank all of you who had any role in this whatsoever. The project is so important to Berkeley's efforts to provide affordable homes and enliven the Ashby BART area and heal the historic fabric, or at least move in that direction, of the neighborhood while also attempting to move toward righting historic wrongs. I think we're all very glad to have BART, of course, and thankful to the visionaries who achieved our regional transit system. But at the same time, we can't whitewash the fact that BART's construction displaced many Berkeley families and local businesses, and that this burden was borne most severely by Berkeley's Black community. Many people were not adequately compensated at all for these losses, and the wounds BART's construction left in the physical and social fabric are still there. This is one step to begin healing those wounds. They don't repair them, as Councilmember Bartlett said, but it's a move in the right direction, both with respect to replacing lost homes to the extent we ever can, and endeavoring to make sure those impacted or their descendants are made, you know, if not whole, you know, are provided with some benefits. And then, of course, it bears repeating that this project would bring desperately needed affordable, and I'm really excited to say at least some affordable ownership housing to the neighborhood. So again, a huge thank you to all involved, and I'm really excited to see this moving forward. It's wonderful. Thanks. Thank you so much, Councilmember Blackaby. Thank you, Madam Mayor, and let me just add my thanks. I'll be brief, but thank you to our really talented city staff who've brought this forward from HHCS, from planning, from the city manager's office, from the city attorney's team for helping us, you know, wrangle this process and end up with an end product. Product that we're really proud of. Thank you to the SAHA team, Deborah Matthews, for being the successful bidder. We're really looking forward to what you bring us and what we can do together. And thank you to Councilmember Bartlett for his leadership and really being a fighter for this project and for South Berkeley. This is going to make a material difference, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes. I am a little more of a numbers guy, and so I did want to kind of go back and just comment. I was really amazed by the proposal we came back. If you look at what we set for expectations and then what comes back in the proposal, you know, we're meeting the 25% requirement for setting aside for people with disabilities. You know, we'd set a goal of 300 bedrooms, and we're bringing 341 bedrooms with this project. We had set a 35% requirement for affordable housing. We set a stretch goal for 50%. And I remember the conversation at the council, like, well, you know, we want to get as much as we can, but we want to make sure that we can make this pencil and make sure the economics work. Not only did we get 35, not only did we get 50, we end up with 100% affordable, which I think is just a remarkable achievement and so important. And then, you know, I think we'd had a discussion about interest in having not just rental housing, but ownership housing. And we have 12 affordable ownership units that are coming online when there was not even a requirement to have produced it, but that's what we have in this project. So I just really impressed and thankful for all the work here. This is exactly the kind of public-private partnership we need. This is exactly the kind of affordable housing we know we need to build, and more of it, and as fast as we can. So I really hope that this is really a model for us moving forward, that we can do more of these in more places and find opportunities. Again, you know, we know that housing at all price points is useful, but in particular that we can actually deliver affordable housing is really impressive. So thank you. Thank you. I see that Councilmember Kesarwani has her hand raised. Thank you very much, Madam Mayor. Thank you for this presentation tonight, and congratulations. Councilmember, you've frozen. Perhaps we will come back to her. Does anyone else have comments? I don't know. Oh, let me— oh, no. Okay. Councilmember? I don't know. It's saying it's unstable. Let me try to move to see if I can get to a stronger location. But maybe you should go to somebody else while I try to fix that. Councilmember, did you want to give comments while Councilmember Kesarwani works out her technical difficulties? Thank you. This will be brief, so hopefully she can move pretty quickly. I wanted to echo how inspiring this is and how moved and relieved I am that this process has been so successful. And I want to say congrats to you, Deborah. I remember, you know, when I participated on the walking tour, the history tour that day, and, you know, in the future your work, your legacy, together with four of Vice Mayor Bartlett's, will be part of the next walking tour. So thank you so much for your work, and I'm honored I get to play the small role I'm playing in this tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Kesarwani, do you want to try again? Okay, yes, hopefully this will work. So I started by, you know, thanking staff, and I want to congratulate the team that won SAHA, Habitat for Humanity, and Deborah Matthews. I'm really excited by your proposal. And I also, you know, there was a slide, unfortunately it's not in the staff report, but there was a slide calling out all of the staff professional teams that were involved in this. So there's HHCS staff, planning staff, city attorney's office, folks on the BART side that negotiated, and there are probably others. Maybe staff can pull up that slide again because this has been, you know, a long effort beginning in 2018. And because I was around, I just want to remind us the Ashby development started at the same time as the North Berkeley BART development, and the reason why it has taken so much longer—well, it's not that much longer, but it took a little longer—is because these two parcels are very complex, right? You have the west lot, it's an unusual shape, right, and then you have this east lot. So our staff, and, you know, with the help of outside consultants who are experts on real estate, had to negotiate with BART. We had the Ashby air rights were also a part of this, and so we had to negotiate, and that is why we now hold this east lot. That is why it is now City of Berkeley property. So that is also part of this, all of that negotiation to be able to have this property where we can now—you know, I think BART has been a very good partner to us, but this lot is really ours as a city, and so we put out our request for proposal that included— The desire for the home ownership component, and that is why, you know, Saha included that in their proposal, and it's really gratifying that they have been selected and we will have that component of this project. And I think, so anyhow, so I think that's really all I wanted to say is just I just wanted to lift up all of the work that has gone into this. And as was noted in the presentation, there's more work to come. And we know with a 100% affordable housing development like this one, as important as it is and as needed as it is, it requires more than just the city's commitment. And we made a major commitment with Measure O funds and housing trust fund dollars, but we know they'll be relying on that funding stack, and so that will take some time to put together. But hopefully that can happen expeditiously, and, you know, I hope to be able to attend that ribbon cutting soon. So thank you very much again, and really pleased to be able to vote on this. Thank you, Councilmember Lunaparra. Thank you. My comments would be repetitive of all of my colleagues' incredible comments, so I'm going to keep it short. I'm just very grateful to staff for all of your work and to the community members who have put so much time into this, and really proud of our city that we're moving forward with this. I think, along with many people who have seen this work start for many years now, I was very surprised to see the 100% affordable housing on this site, and I think it's really exciting. So thank you. Thank you, Councilmember O'Keefe. Yeah, same as Councilmember Lunaparra, I'll just, you know, plus one to everything that's been said and just add that, you know, there's not that many wins in this line of work, and this feels like a really big, really big win. And I agree, it's just incredible that this is happening, and it's a win I'm, like, excited to vote for, but I did not do anything to make this happen, so I just want to echo again, thank you so much to all the staff time and all the time put in from the community. It's just really incredible, and I'm just so happy to be a part of it. Thank you. I'll also add my thanks to everyone that was listed and involved, and also just wanted to highlight the fact that for both of the finalist teams, that there are folks there that are local to the City of Berkeley, and I think that's also really special. It shows the commitment that people have to the city and bringing us good projects that will really do us proud. And I do want to thank everyone who submitted, and, you know, for both teams, I know that this project is really going to be excellent. So I want to say thank you so much as a D3 resident, as mayor of this city. This is something that we can all be very proud of today. So thank you all very much. And with that, I will call for a vote. All right, I will entertain a motion. I move to approve the staff recommendations. Second. Okay. Can we take the roll on that, please? Okay, to approve the recommendation for the Ashby East Lot developer, there's two resolutions associated with that action. Councilmember Kesarwani? Yes. Taplin? Aye. Bartlett. Yes. Tregub. Aye. O'Keefe. Yes. Blackaby. Yes. Lunaparra. Yes. Humbert. Yes. And Mayor Ishii. Yes. Okay, motion carries. Thank you. Thank you all so much. All right. Is there any public comment for items not listed on the agenda? That's right. Oh yes, come on up. Aye. Mayor, City Council, I wanted to know why you were continuing to allow SAHA to build in Berkeley when they have so many violations, code violations, fire department violations, lawsuits, including of their own employees going on, and no one is doing anything about it. I have contacted your office months ago. I am a SAHA tenant. I'm also disabled. There has been numerous harassment, numerous problems. Ceilings caving in. I know of someone who has ridiculous cockroach issues. Three people's ceilings caved in in my building. You would think we live in a dump. This is the city of Berkeley, and no one is addressing this. I've had code enforcement come out for a year. This is my second building that I've had to have code enforcement come out for over a year. It's my second apartment in the same building. They do non-permitted work. I have pictures and videos. I have stacks and stacks of paperwork. I don't understand why the city of Berkeley, which is so proactive and is, you know, so for affordable housing, that they're doing nothing about this. Thank you. Thanks for your comment. We have two speakers online. First is Kelly Hammerman. Can you hear me? Kelly, you're echoing. Why don't you take the other person first? Okay. Did it end now? I think so. Yes. Echo's gone. Okay. Yes, go ahead. All right. So on the 17th at 4 o'clock, you're going to have the special meeting on the proposed homeless ordinance. And you usually, I don't know that any of you ever really take my book recommendations, but this was the book that we had for book club this month. We discussed it today, and it's called The Man in the Dog Park: Coming Up Close to Homelessness. It's a really excellent book, and it turns the framing from what we usually think of from our perspective to the person who's homeless. And it's really, it's a short read. It's only like 186 pages. So Kathy Small and Ross Moore are the co-authors, and I would just highly recommend that you pick it up before the 17th, The Man in the Dog Park. Okay. And the next non-agenda speaker is Della Luna. Yes. I wanted to speak again about this, the crosswalk at Ashby BART on MLK. I don't think that the drivers— Was considered, or like the rules of the roadway. And so if one's approaching that light, the new pedestrian walkway, and there's four cars in front of you, and then the lights start flashing yellow, there's four cars in front of you that could either stop or slow down, which then there's three cars that could rear-end those cars in front of them. So I think that that's kind of like the stacking of traffic, and how when I'm driving through that, I have to be aware of what every driver is doing around me. And so then plus the lights, and then plus the sign, and that all takes priority over looking for a pedestrian. And I believe you all have put too many things on the roadway, and you're actually distracting the driver. And I just think it should be reconsidered. There's too much going on there in that pedestrian crossway. It now looks like a railroad crossing, but there's been no education about how to cross there either. So the pedestrians just stand there. They don't know if they should go. Thanks for your comment. Your time is up. Okay. Anyone else? That's it. Okay. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Okay. Second. Can we take the roll, please? You guys, sorry. Okay. To adjourn, Councilmember Kesarwani? Yes. Taplin? Aye. Bartlett? Yes. Tregub? Aye. O'Keefe? Yes. Blackaby? Yes. Lunaparra? Yes. Humbert? Yes. And Mayor Ishii? Yes. Okay. Meeting is adjourned. Thank you all very much. Recording stopped.