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Segment 1

Segment 1

Okay, first order of business is roll call, please.
All right, roll call.
Council member Kesarwani? Here.
Taplin? Present.
Bartlett? Here.
Tregub? Present.
Hahn? Here.
Wengraf? Present.
Lunaparra? Here.
Humbert? Here.
Mayor Arreguin? Present.
Thank you.
Okay, great.
Before we get started with the actual agenda, I would like to inform you of the rules tonight in the council chamber.
To allow for full participation by all members of the community, and to ensure that important city business is able to be completed, we ask that all attendees conduct themselves in an orderly manner and respect the rights of others participating in the meeting.
Please be aware that the city council's rules of decorum prohibit the disruption of the orderly conduct of the council meeting.
A summary of these rules is available in the one-page handout on the table at the rear of the boardroom.
Disruptive behavior includes, but is not limited to, shouting, making disruptive noises, creating or participating in a physical disturbance, speaking out of turn or in violation of applicable rules, preventing or attempting to prevent others who have the floor from speaking, preventing others from observing the meeting, entering into or remaining in an area of the meeting room that is not open to the public, or approaching the council dais without consent.
We ask that you observe these rules so that all members of the public may observe and participate in tonight's meeting.
Thank you.
And now we'll move on to the land acknowledgement statement.
The city of Berkeley recognizes that the community we live in was built on the territory of Huichin, the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people, the ancestors and descendants of the sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County.
This land was and continues to be of great importance to all of the Ohlone tribes and descendants of the Verona Band.
As we begin our meeting tonight, we acknowledge and honor the original inhabitants of Berkeley, the documented 5,000-year history of a vibrant community at the West Berkeley Shell Mound and the Ohlone people who continue to reside in the East Bay.
We recognize that Berkeley's residents have and continue to benefit from the use and occupation of this unceded, stolen land since the city of Berkeley's incorporation in 1878.
As stewards of the laws regulating the city of Berkeley, it is not only vital that we recognize the history of this land, but also recognize that the Ohlone people are present members of Berkeley and other East Bay communities today.
The city of Berkeley will continue to build relationships with the Huichin tribe and create meaningful actions that uphold the intention of this land acknowledgment.
Okay.
Now, it is my absolute honor to present the proclamation tonight to Ray Yip.
And may I please come forward? So, right before this meeting, one of my colleagues said, Ray Yip is a treasure.
And I hope that this proclamation conveys that because I couldn't agree more.
So, honoring Ray Yip on retirement from the Infrastructure and Transportation Commission, whereas Ray Yip was born in the southern area of China, near Canton, and as a young boy emigrated to Stockton, California, where he grew up in a neighborhood of Mexican and Chinese immigrant farm workers.
And whereas Ray excelled in school and graduated with a B.A.
in engineering from the University of California at Davis and a master's degree in civil engineering from Cal State Sacramento.
And whereas Ray enjoyed an extremely successful career in infrastructure management and water, wastewater, and stormwater planning and design, and managed the operations of the Santa Clara Valley Water District for many years.
And whereas after a time in from the private sector, Ray dedicated himself to public service, helping our city.
He served as chair of the Measure M Subcommittee and the chair of the Oversight Committee for Measure T1 and led the Undergrounding Utilities Task Force, as well as the Mayor's Vision 2050 Task Force.
Whereas Ray Yip volunteered as an infrastructure specialist with Berkeley's Public Works Department on special assignments and worked with former Council Member Mayo on efforts to publicize the hazards of transporting back and crude oil by rail.
And whereas Ray Yip served as chair and member of the former Public Works Commission and then as a member of the newly formed Transportation and Infrastructure Commission.
Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Susan Wingraff, on behalf of Jesse Arreguin, Mayor of the City of Berkeley, do hereby honor Ray Yip on his retirement from the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission and express our deep gratitude and appreciation to Ray for his expertise, generosity, and many hours of volunteer contributions to the City of Berkeley.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Mayor Arreguin, Vice Mayor Wingraff, and Council Members.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Vice Mayor Wingraff and Council Members.
This is really an honor, and I appreciate it very much.
I appreciate working with the very talented City staff on many of the things that you just mentioned.
And I've also learned so much from my fellow commissioners and people I've come across with, many of them who are here today, working on those things that you mentioned.
Many of them are here today.
I would like to recognize my wife, Nancy.
My sisters, Rosalind and Helen, and their husbands are here.
Rosalind's son is a member of our Public Works Department, Ken Jeong, who is here.
And former Public Works Director, Liam Garland, who I have the pleasure of working with.
And I don't want to leave anybody out, but there are all these dedicated, close friends that I have.
But I'd like to also recognize Peter Wright, Cal Men's tennis coach.
And to Vice Mayor Wingraff, thank you so much for four years, four terms on Council and a very well-deserved retirement.
I had the chance to work with you very closely on undergrounding and other subjects.
I love Berkeley.
Thank you for making this place a place where ordinary people like me can participate.
Infrastructure is a very complex subject.
Too often, much is said but not enough done.
So I look forward to all of you working to improve Berkeley's infrastructure to achieve what Mayor Ergine has initiated, the Vision 2050 process, to lead us into the future and meet our challenges.
So thank you.
It's indeed an honor.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, we'll move on now to the manager comments.
No comments really I will just add my words of thank you to Ray, that you had.
I spent one graph really has been a great partner for staff and I know I would be remiss in not thanking Ray for from the staff of the city of Berkeley for all of your hard work and all of your partnership and the spirit in which you did it so just wanted to share that with you and thank you Ray.
Thank you.
Let's see now.
We will have public comment on.
Okay.
Yeah, well, we'll hold off for a second.
Enjoy your dinner I understood.
Yes.
Okay.
I believe Councilmember trigger has an adjournment memory tonight.
Yeah, it is with a heavy heart that I asked that we adjourn in memory of Joseph Joe panic Hallie, who has been a treasured member of the Berkeley community, and resided in district four.
And if allowable, I have just a very brief obituary to read.
Joseph Hallie, a devoted father physician and beloved Berkeley community member passed away peacefully one month ago.
Well, yeah, one month ago today on October 12 at his home in Berkeley, after a brave battle with pancreatic cancer, known for his work and commitment to service Joe .
Joe's impact extended beyond his profession.
He was a volunteer, running COVID testing, delivering groceries to local preschools and landscaping to traffic circles on California Street, but drought tolerant plants to beautify the neighborhood and conserve water, something that we, we had an opportunity to feature his work in our first newsletter that we ever did.
He was passionate about civic engagement, spending countless hours canvassing during election seasons and volunteering with the Berkeley schools fund.
He was also a talented guitarist frequently performing at school and community events, where he brought people together with his love of music.
In recognition of his dedication to the community.
This meeting is adjourned in his memory.
I'm not sure if his wife Shoshana is here.
If not, we will let her know that this meeting is being adjourned in his memory.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Okay, we'll move on now to public comment on non agenda matters.
Is there anyone in the room who would like to speak on non agenda matters.
There is and I'll go ahead and draw the cards.
And we've drawn five cards from individuals in the room.
And no particular order, Andrea Henson.
Paul Kayla Blake.
Eat.
Gordon Gilmore.
Rachel Marasa.
Those are the names of the individuals in the room.
speak at the podium here.
Good evening my name is Andrea Henson I'm the executive director of where do we go.
I'm very disturbed by what's going on in Berkeley.
On November 6, Berkeley Police Department visited the bankrupt encampment to tell them that they would be moving since that time.
Other folks from homeless services have come in to give them verbal warning.
I'm a great fan of Michelle Foucault.
He says that there are forms of oppression and domination, which become invisible, the new normal.
Discipline and shifts in modern times from the body to the soul.
We keep talking about all these items and how things are supposed to happen.
In fact, our city manager wrote this wonderful memo to everyone on October 7th about the implementation of Berkeley's new encampment management policy.
And I just want to say that those recommendations are not being followed.
And what that means is there's undue influence and coercion that's occurring in the encampments to our most vulnerable.
We've already seen fascism take hold.
There are some who can be comfortable with what's happening, but the line has been drawn.
And I am on the side of right and human values.
The Berkeley police and homeless services should not be issuing notice if it's not written based on what our city manager has said in the informative memo written about how these encampments should be swept.
And I'll be talking to you all more about it.
I'll write a letter.
Thank you.
Good evening, Paul, Kayla, Blake.
Good evening to all of you.
I'm here, I guess, to amplify what my cohort has just said, but in a briefer term.
I am tired and we should all be tired of hearing how people won't talk to one another.
I am thoroughly disgusted with that.
I want to hear each and every time that I want to talk about it.
I want to hear it.
I want to talk about it.
I've been hearing.
I don't want to talk about it.
I don't want to hear it.
I don't like this person.
I hate that person.
I can't stand this person.
I can't stand any of it.
We need to be talking and we need to be working towards solutions.
We cannot each silo into our holes here.
We're far beyond that.
And the result of that is what we are now facing as a nation and a global presence.
Thank you very much.
Start talking.
Hi.
I'm Gordon Gilmore with the Berkeley Homeless Union.
And I feel that Paul's comments perfectly segue into what I'm going to be saying.
For the past couple of weeks, actually, me and my co-founder, Jessica, have been reaching out to your offices, writing e-mails, attaching documents, writing things to the e-mails, calling in the offices to speak to people, and delivering hard copies to your offices.
And so far, the only response we've gotten is from Cecilia and Jonah and their team.
But we're hoping to enter into dialogue about the Encampment Resolution Fund 3 that was granted to the Homeless Response Team in order to resolve the encampment at 2nd and Cedar.
And we have some concerns from the people living there about how those funds are being implemented, and we'd like to speak to you about it.
Thank you.
As now we're in the beginning of the AAL budget process, the Homeless Services Panel of Experts voted unanimously last Wednesday evening that there needs to be an amount set aside for the staff to begin searching for a shelter, a setting similar to the Horizon-type setting to house the persons at Harrison.
The city is in litigation.
Litigation is costly.
This is going to have to be addressed at one point or another.
The only answer is to provide housing for the individuals there.
And we're in the budget process now.
It will not be cost effective to postpone this.
This needs to be done now.
We are at a time that nationally there is so much divisiveness.
I mean, we have this administration now that we don't know what's going to come down.
So we do need to be united in this.
Thank you.
Good evening.
Very happy to be with you.
And regardless what I wrote today, because I'm very angry.
You would be.
We're losing a lot of money.
People in Berkeley are not having service, the kind of service we offer.
So besides that, you were all tricked not to vote for ceasefire.
It's exactly what they wanted.
That's what AIPAC wanted, to make a lot of young people angry, and they did not vote.
And one moron convicted a criminal as a president, and we don't know what the coming days will bring.
Now, we have to face things in reality.
We have to think.
I come from Egypt.
We have the same mind as they do.
They trick you in doing things that you don't want to do.
As far as the business, Eastview brought millions of dollars of tax money and other to the city of Berkeley.
We don't need a jewelry manufacturer, and Council Partlet should not have done that.
That was a betrayal.
We need to go forward, open aids.
We need to bring tax money to the city, service students, high-tech service to students, and that's Berkeley.
People are crying.
Please, please, finish your comment.
No, you have to finish your comment.
I am finishing.
I am finishing.
Okay? Don't send our tax money to Best Buy.
It's the only place left.
There were 60 companies in the area, you know, 20 years ago.
Now, they're all gone.
Only E is left because they have big head and big pocket.
Thank you very much.
Always good to see you.
I like your smile.
Beautiful.
Thank you.
Okay.
We'll go to speakers on Zoom now.
Former Council Member Cheryl Davila.
Good evening.
It's interesting that folks are still talking about, excuse me, the lack of communication by city officials that were selected, not listening or communicating to their constituents, as well as the employees because, you know, they're not happy either.
So who are you communicating with? Developers? People lining someone's pockets there? I'm not sure, but it seems a little corrupt and colluded.
But you need to listen to the people and talk to the people.
Stop silencing the people.
Sweeping the people.
You need to listen to the people.
You need to listen to your employer, your employees, and your constituents.
And really it's, it's, it's your obligation.
You're the employees of your constituents.
No smirks, please.
Not.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
Russell, can you hear us? Russell.
You should be able to speak now.
Okay.
We'll come back to you.
Okay.
Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can.
Hi, my name is Jessica Prado and I'm just talking here on behalf of the Berkeley homeless union.
So kind of basically to give context of what Gordon is saying.
We dropped off a letter to you guys.
We're trying to basically work with the city in order to properly close the encampment.
So, basically, the letters is asking for.
Since their approach is contingent to them, giving up for me or asking at least receive a fair amount for their vehicle homes.
We're also asking for me to review the shelter rules.
And we're also asking for a clear timeline for when the encampment is going to be close to.
We're also asking for a clear timeline for when the encampment is going to be close to.
And allow for proper ADA.
There has been.
No.
It's going to be provided to this community.
The city of Berkeley obtained dollars from the state in order to help.
So, I just want you to know that.
Thank you.
So please back to us and we can meet as soon as possible.
Thank you.
Next speaker is Russell Bates.
Russell.
You can speak now.
Okay.
I think Russell has two different.
Common lines.
Let's try this one.
Russell, you can speak now.
Hello.
Can you hear me? Yes.
Oh, okay.
Good.
The computer that I'm using, the sound is really on that.
I just want to remind you, it's over 400 days.
Into the genocide going on in Gaza.
And it doesn't look like it's going to be ending anytime soon.
At this point, anything you do, calling for a ceasefire.
It's just way, way, way, way too late.
The massacre is expanding.
The Zionist entity is going crazy.
And one thing that.
I would say to Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Majority of you have it in common.
You support the genocide in Gaza and you're doing nothing to stop it.
I would ask that you would reconsider.
And look into your hearts as well as your minds.
And agree that.
The genocide.
Who happens to be women and children.
Of all the people who are being murdered over there.
Is it's genocide.
It's cultural genocide.
And it needs to be.
Stop.
You need to gather your courage together and stand up.
And say no to genocide.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Next speaker is Dan.
Can you hear me? Yes, we can.
So just picking that piggybacking off of what Russell said.
The peace and justice commission passed a resolution.
On the subject of the genocide.
You all should pass it.
That's all.
Thank you.
That was nine speakers.
Thank you.
Our final speaker is Kelly hammer.
Thank you.
Kelly hammer.
Thank you.
We just had an election.
When I went to bed that night.
I was really worried.
And I'm still worried.
I'm usually a really sound sleeper and I don't remember my dreams, but I did have a dream that night.
And I dreamt that I was called invited.
To join a group, to resist the take over.
That looks like it's going to happen in our government.
So.
Someone up front started explaining that what resistance.

Segment 2

Segment 3

Segment 4

I'm concerned that we're not going to size the system big enough.
Should we actually need it for an emergency? I believe we do have an expert on council now that is familiar with solar.
Igor, I really don't know anything about what you do with solar, but I know you work for solar.
So I hope that we really take a hard look at how we're sizing the system.
So if we need it in an emergency, we'll really have enough power there to take care of people.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Any other people in the audience wish to comment? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to Zoom.
Ben's iPhone.
Yeah, hello, this is Ben Paulus.
I'm the former chair of the Berkeley Energy Commission when that still existed.
I would like to give a strong thumbs up to this project.
I actually had a role in initiating it as a consultant for AVO many years ago.
It's great to see it coming to fruition now.
It looks like JP has structured a good business arrangement that will make it easy to happen and easy to replicate.
I want to underscore one thing Ms.
Schwartz said that this project will actually save money compared to not doing it.
So you get the resilience benefits for free, essentially.
It's good that you're doing two facilities to start, but considering that it's a money-saving opportunity, it seems like it should be replicated at any city facilities.
I see it extended next to school buildings as well, which often serve as shelters and emergencies.
So thank you very much for your progress.
Thank you, Ben.
Okay, seeing no other speakers on Zoom and no speakers in the room, I'll bring it back to the dais.
Yes, Igor.
Well, thank you so much.
I wanted to thank staff on the Berkeley and the AVA side for all your efforts.
It has been a long time in coming, and I'm excited that it is before us tonight.
I wanted to ask staff a few questions.
One, actually, I just wanted to see if I can get a response to Ms.
Hammerquist's comments, and I think the question really is how many hours of capacity will the battery be able to provide at both sides? I also wanted to ask about the long-term plan after this.
Are there other sites that are being considered for future deployment? And lastly, since we have we know this to be true that many jurisdictions, including ours, have in the past been impacted by major delays in energization, in getting approvals, and other soft costs associated by, primarily by, the investor-owned utility delays to approve such projects, especially when it comes to microgrids.
I wanted to understand if there were any roadblocks that you ran into in the process of getting to where we are today.
I will start, and I'll also let JP jump in as well, but I wanted to talk a little bit to the sizing of the resilience benefits at the sites.
Ultimately, the solar will continue to regenerate the battery when the sun is out, so they will be able to continuously have the battery last longer.
We also are looking at, at the corp yard, as I mentioned, there is an existing generator that will also be able to be hooked into this as a sort of a full microgrid system.
Ultimately, these were sized by AVA, and they can talk more about that, but there was a balance between ensuring that it was still cost-effective to the city and ultimately able to provide as much resilience benefit as possible.
In terms of future sites, AVA has mentioned that there could be possibility of doing this in future phases.
However, as I mentioned in the presentation, we did have a list of 30 sites that we submitted to AVA, and they did pretty extensive analysis on our sites.
Unfortunately, many of them fell out due to roof size, condition, solar readiness, and whatnot, but we will continue to look for more possibilities in the future if they do advance future phases.
I appreciate the question around delays and energization.
Luckily, one of the things that we did work on early on in this process was getting the interconnection forms into PG&E in order to ensure that we could be grandfathered into the NEM 2.0 rates.
That was something that was done multiple years ago and gives us until April 2026.
So I'll pass it over to JP for more information.
Thanks, Marna.
Hi, my name is JP Ross, Vice President of Local Development at AVA, and I live in Council Member Weingraf's neighborhood, as mentioned, a Berkeley resident.
So I think Marna answered pretty well what I was going to say.
We have been balancing the costs with the size of the batteries in the PV systems.
We did do some work early on with Arup, who's a consultant who did extensive work in the city of San Francisco evaluating resilience sizing for facilities, and we started with that number for the size of the battery system.
I would also add to Marna's point on the system being able to recharge during the day.
It's a 37 kilowatt PV system at the Live Oak Park, and the battery is about a 77 kilowatt hour battery.
Generally, you get four to five hours of sun per day, so we can kind of recharge that battery about two and a half times over the course of a day.
So to Marna's point, during the daytime, we're going to be producing more energy and we'll be able to recharge that battery during daytime operations, and we kind of approached the system sizing in this program, considering we did have some budgetary constraints with a bit of a battery budget.
We need to be smart about the loads that we're providing during a resilience event to extend the hours of operation.
We'll be working with the city on those plans.
We are considering opportunities to replicate this program going forward, but it's been incredibly complicated to get it across the line, so we are looking forward to getting this first proof of concept completed, and then we will consider other opportunities to replicate and add sites to it.
It's certainly something we'd like to come back to all of our participating cities to discuss.
We do have existing work that we've already started under a separate agreement with the developer to develop the conceptual plans and initiate kind of the bill of materials, the things, the pieces of equipment that we'll need to order for these sites.
The longest lead time equipment tends to be the electrical switch gear, and part of the rationale for getting city approval now is we have some drop deadlines around ordering some of that equipment around the first of the year, which will give us sufficient time to install the systems and to complete that installation.
And in the contract that we have with the developer, there are pretty significant penalties, financial penalties, for missing those deadlines, so that's something that we hold very dear is to make sure that we get these projects installed for the city according to the timelines that we've proposed, and so we've put some contractual protections in place to incentivize the developer to meet those deadlines.
Thank you.
Yes, Igor, did you get all of your questions answered? I did, and I'm happy to make, well, should we close the public here? Maybe we should wait for motions.
Mark? Turn on my mic.
I wanted to enthusiastically thank staff and AVA Community Energy, and I was going to make a quick comment about AVA Community Energy, and I was going to make a motion to to accept and pass the staff recommendation.
Second.
We have to close the public hearing.
Okay, so I was going to make it.
So I'll entertain a motion to close the public hearing.
Second.
Okay, now Council Member Humbert.
Well, I guess I would defer to Council.
Wait, we have to vote on it.
Hold on, we have to vote.
Oh, yeah, right.
To close the public hearing, Council Member Tess Arwani? Yes.
Chaplin? Yes.
Bartlett? Yes.
Tracob? Yes.
Hunt? Yes.
Wengraf? Yes.
Lunapara? Yes.
Humbert? Yes.
Mayor Argeen? Mayor Argeen, can you hear us? No, he can't hear us.
Can you hear me? I vote yes.
Yes.
Oh, great.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, that passes unanimously.
Now, I think Council Member Humbert has the floor.
Yeah, and I want to defer to our solar expert, Council Member Trigub, to make a motion.
Council Member Trigub.
I'm happy to make the motion.
I should probably, just for transparency, also say no, I do not work for solar.
My consulting practice does include a portfolio that includes microgrids.
However, none of the vendors identified in this presentation are clients of mine.
Okay.
I second Council Member Trigub's motion.
Okay, roll call vote, please.
Oh.
You want to? All right.
That's all right.
People want to comment? Oh, I had a question.
Okay, sorry.
Council Member Bartlett, please.
Yeah.
Thank you, Madam Vice Mayor.
And, you know, so Berkeley is home of the nation's first municipal microgrid.
So that's where you connect a building, connect multiple buildings to the same renewable energy circuit.
So this is really a wonderful advancement and going to the next level of soil plus storage.
And next we can connect EVs to it.
We can get, we get some good.
So I'm hoping that we can develop this program and expand it to cover more buildings and more parts of the city.
Thank you.
Council Member Hunt.
Yeah, I just wanted to thank our staff for bringing this opportunity to us.
And of course, I'm happy to have this at Live Oak Park, which is in my district.
And one of the many purposes it serves is it is one of our few evacuation centers.
And we have been trying to upgrade it so that it's earthquake ready.
And you'll want to evacuate people to something that will fall down itself.
And having this solar power opportunity is going to be really important as well when the inevitable calamity arrives, whether it's fire or earthquake.
So I just wanted to say how pleased I am that this is going forward, how glad I am that a critical facility that will be used by people from all over North Berkeley in case of a severe emergency will have use of this.
And I guess my only thought in listening to presentation was what's the catch? Because it kind of seems too good to be true.
But other than just staff time on this, is there really no cost to us? And then just we pay for the electricity? And is that because it's AVA and they have some requirements to provide things like this? Or how are we getting this free lunch? Or did I miss something? Thank you very much for that question.
It is a 25-year contract.
It is required that the cost of this contract is less than what we would pay if we didn't do the work.
That said, it may be not cost effective the first couple years or it is over the entirety of the project.
So just wanted to make sure that that was clear as well.
But it is a great opportunity for us to do this.
And this is one of the few opportunities that is available to still be under the NEM 2.0 rate, which is now expired.
And so we're really happy to move this forward at this time.
The electricity we're already paying for is coming from AVA.
We do get renewable electricity for all of our municipal facilities.
This will be able to bring it even more local.
This will be on our own rooftop.
We will be paying for the electricity that we are producing, but we will not own or operate the equipment.
Okay, well, let's let's vote on this and get you get the ink dried on the contract.
Thank you.
Any other comments from my colleagues? Okay, seeing none.
Roll call, please, Rose.
Okay, to confirm this is to approve the staff recommendation? Yes.
Okay.
Council Member Casarwani? Yes.
Tapwin? Yes.
Bartlett? Yes.
Traigup? Aye.
Han? Yes.
Wengraff? Yes.
Lunapara? Yes.
Humbert? Yes.
Mayor Arreguin? Yes.
Thank you.
Okay.
Motion passes unanimously.
Okay, moving on to item number 16, which is amending the BMC section 9.04.165 Tax Exemption and Research and Development Grants, and I believe we have a presentation.
Yes, but Madam Vice Mayor, I'd like to make some opening comments, then we'll turn it to staff for the presentation.
Please.
Thank you.
Okay.
Well, colleagues, thank you for considering this proposal, which is to amend the Brooklyn Municipal Code to exempt from the taxation of business gross receipts, grants, philanthropic, and government research grants for R&D businesses in the City of Brooklyn.
This builds on legislation we passed in 2019 that my office had introduced, which exempted from gross receipts taxes, the net of government research grants up to $1 million received from research grants.
Eleanor Hollander and Liz Fridman-Cleveland will go into more detail about this proposal and the benefits of this proposal.
This came in consultation with our startup businesses, with our innovation sector, with the Berkeley Startup Cluster, and was developed in a close consultation with the Office of Economic Development.
At its core, this is about how we can grow our city's economy.
We know that during the pandemic, our innovation sector was the fastest growing economic sector in our city.
And so this is about how Berkeley can remain competitive to grow and to bring new research and development businesses to help keep the intellectual capital that is happening on our campus and our lab, to have those businesses co-locate in the City of Berkeley.
That's creating jobs, that's creating economic investment, that's growing to our city's tax base.
And I just want to address, just briefly return it to staff, the misinformation or misunderstanding that's been put out there related to this proposal.
I would argue intentionally by one former candidate for mayor, a former city council member, who used this as a political football to help support her campaign for mayor, and put out a great deal of misinformation and whipped people into a frenzy, and I think really distorted the purposes of this proposal and the benefits of this proposal.
This proposal, and staff can clarify this when they speak, would have an economic impact of $9,000 a year on the city's general fund.
$9,000 a year.
It's not some boondoggle.
It's not going to cost the city lots and lots of money.
This is $9,000 a year that can generate thousands, if not millions of dollars of investment to our city to help grow our tax base.
So, I just really want to address this idea that this is somehow going to be a huge hit to our general fund, and that this is a giveaway to corporations.
No, this is in the public interest to help grow our innovation sector or R&D sector, to build on our existing policy, so that more companies can benefit from this, so that Berkeley can continue to be a center of innovation.
And with that, I want to turn it over to our staff in the Office of Economic Development who have a presentation.
Thank you.
Great.
Good evening, Mayor and Council.
Thank you for the introduction.
My name is Eleanor Hollander.
I'm the Manager of the Office of Economic Development here at the City of Berkeley.
I'm here with my colleague tonight, Liz Redmond-Cleveland.
We're very pleased to provide you a bit of background information and economic context for Item 16 this evening.
My colleague Liz will kick us off.
Thank you.
Thank you, Eleanor.
Good evening, Mayor, Council Members.
Pleasure to be here with you.
As Eleanor stated, I'm Liz Redmond-Cleveland.
In addition to my work in the Office of Economic Development, I manage our partnership with UC Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, the Downtown Berkeley Association, and the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce, which is called the Berkeley Startup Cluster, and you'll hear more about that in a second.
I just wanted to provide some background tonight on some of the questions that have come in and some context about this legislation, as well as our innovation sector.
You're seeing a map here that you can find and dive into on berkeleystartupcluster.com, the startups page.
It shows you the concentrations of startups that you find throughout Berkeley in all of the council districts and across many different sectors.
Our largest hubs are those big red dots in and around the UC Berkeley campus and Downtown Berkeley.
Those are primarily software companies.
And the other big blue dot there is Baker Labs, which houses 35 life science companies in the old Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive space.
And then we also have a number of those blue hubs, those life science or biotech companies in West Berkeley, as well as a lot of activity in the hardware sector.
You're welcome to dive into this, but it's really to show you that we have a vast innovation sector comprising both startups and research and development companies, as well as larger corporations, like many of you are familiar with, like Bayer Pharmaceuticals.
The largest component of this innovation sector, broadly speaking, are these really early stage startups.
These are the one to two, I don't want to call them just kids in a dorm, although there certainly are those.
There's also postdocs, there's professors, there's people that are conducting research and development.
They're coming up with an idea, a prototype, a pilot.
They're trying to figure out if they can find a market.
We're not talking about, in Berkeley, large, big tech corporations like you see in Silicon Valley or San Francisco.
We've run the analysis here as late as last quarter of 2023, and we're in the process of updating this now.
And the vast majority, more than 80 percent of those, are early stage startups.
And that really makes sense because, as the mayor mentioned, we are an incredible birthplace of innovation due to our proximity to UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley Lab.
And in fact, the campus and the lab have spent a lot of time in recent years trying to foster entrepreneurship and make it so those startups really are commercially viable ideas that can grow, whether it be here in Berkeley or elsewhere in the Bay Area.
And so UC Berkeley has the honor of being ranked number one, both last year and this year, for the number of venture-backed startups that it produced.
So, pat yourselves on the back for being in a city that can produce such amazing talent and innovation that makes change in the world and brings in capital.
Because of that amazing engine of talent that we have here and the intellectual property that comes out of those two major federal and state institutions here in the city of Berkeley, back more than a dozen years ago, we launched this partnership with the partners I mentioned earlier, which we refer to as the Berkeley Startup Cluster.
And it has a mission to make Berkeley a more vibrant, accessible, and equitable place for startups to launch and grow.
And I actually paused when I said equitable, because that's not just lip service.
We've painted that word.
We've actually spent a lot of time over the last several years doing things so that this technology that has grown here in Berkeley gives back to the community and invests in our high school students to learn how their STEM skills can apply to local jobs.
We teach the local startups about diversity, equity, inclusion practices in the workplace and how to create a diverse talent pipeline.
In addition to many other fun things we do to nurture the startups, like put on networking events and offer them resources and help them navigate city policies to make their startups more effective and to be able to grow here in Berkeley.
And so to that end, back in 2018, and you might hear from them tonight, a couple of our Berkeley startup advisors, Wes Jackson, the co-founder of Ballotor Bio, and at the time, Jill Foos, who was the founder of another small startup, is now the head of Berkeley Activate, the Mentorship Program for Science-Based Entrepreneurs in the Lab.
They came to us as advisors, and they came to me again, and they shared with us they were paying more taxes to the city of Berkeley for their research and development grant that they got from the federal government than anywhere else.
And they said, is there anything we can do? Because it's a long timeline for us before we're making any money.
We're trying to pay the jobs to the people that work in our company and the equipment we need to test our ideas, and we're not allowed to use this money to pay taxes to the city of Berkeley.
And so it was with that that the Berkeley's municipal code was updated.
Thank you to the approval by council back in 2019.
But at the time, it had a couple restrictions.
And so the R&D grant tax waiver for up to $1 million cumulative was allowed for companies with less than $100,000 in other gross receipts.
And that has been the code on our books for the last five years.
Over that time, our office has approved waiver requests for 21 total companies, which means that on average, we've approved a waiver for an R&D grant for eight companies per year.
That ranges from five or six companies in recent years to as many as 11 companies per year.
We're not talking about large numbers.
And as the mayor mentioned, the amount of business license tax revenue that we've foregone, and I put foregone in quotes because we'll talk about in a second how doing this might actually increase our total pie of business license tax revenue.
But that $45,000 divided by the last five years comes up to about $9,000 per year.
Now, I just want to pause for a second and give you a little bit of context on what kinds of companies we're talking about.
Like, what is the research and development that they're doing and to what end? The first picture you're seeing here is from Acorn Technology.
They're a company that is creating a plant-based, bio-based coating for foods that preserves and prolongs the shelf life of fruits and vegetables to stop world hunger and to prevent us from having to use petroleum-based products on these fruits and vegetables.
The next picture there is of Widesense.
They're improving electric vehicle fleet operations for cities and monitoring vehicle energy performance to have more zero-emission public transport in our cities.
The third company shown here, you might hear from the founder tonight about her bio, is developing a treatment for what age macular degeneration, which is referred to as AMD, and other diseases of the eye that were really catastrophic for people that may no longer be able to see.
And then the last story here is of Squishy Robotics, a company founded with a professor who still works at UC Berkeley that can drop drones into hazmat situations like a chemical spell.
Or a fire, and detect what kind of chemicals are in the air so that the first responders, the people that are going onto the scene, can respond with the appropriate protective equipment and save lives.
There's a lot of things happening.
I won't go into all of them.
But as you can see, these are really novel, early stage ideas that are being developed here in Berkeley.
And that was the intent of the original grant exemption that was passed in 2019.
Now, what I understand the mayor has put forward tonight is to update the Berkeley Municipal Code to exempt taxation from all business gross receipts grants relating to government and philanthropic R&D grants that are in the public interest.
So what would be different then on this versus the current waiver that was approved in 2019? First of all, this would eliminate the lifetime cap of 1 million dollars that can be exempt.
And what we've learned from our Berkeley Startup Cluster advisors and entrepreneurs throughout Berkeley is that it takes a lot more than a million dollars to bring a product to market today.
These hard technology, deep technology, life science sectors that are doing things to solve problems around climate change and human health, they require sometimes millions of dollars before they can determine where their product will meet a market need and actually bring it to a commercial value proposition.
The second thing that will change with the mayor's proposal is to eliminate that restriction that a startup's only eligible for the waiver if they have less than a hundred thousand dollars in other gross receipts.
And so we've had to deny a few companies in recent years from where the vast majority of their income came from the R&D grant, but if they had just over a hundred thousand dollars from other revenue that they generated, say from a a pitch contest that they'd gone to and won a hundred thousand dollar prize or a product that they had tested through a small pilot, they have to be rejected today.
And then third, it adds philanthropic grants in addition to government grants.
And you see here a quote from one of the founders we've worked closely with over the years, Chris Ivan from Perlumi, which is a Berkeley climate tech company, who explains how tight the funding is to bring his product.

Segment 5

Segment 6

used the money to pay the tax.
So then what happens is the founders, I know founders who've had to put money in to the company to pay the tax, and especially for young biotech companies coming out of UC Berkeley or other schools, a lot of these founders, or they just got out of grad school, or they just got out of a postdoc.
And so you're putting a lot of pressure on those founders.
If they can't find a way to pay these taxes.
And so if the founders become insolvent, then the companies die.
And so I just want to provide that perspective.
And that's the reason why I support the proposed changes that were brought forth tonight.
Janice Ching.
Good evening.
Thank you very much for taking my comments.
I agree that it makes sense to encourage companies to come to our city.
But I have four questions about the staff report.
You said that $9,000 a year is what it costs our general fund right now.
And that is with the limits in place.
But with the limits gone, what will it be? And why do we need to go from a million dollar lifetime limit to unlimited? Why not 2 million or 5 million? What other options have been studied? And you say not large big tech companies.
This is, you know, to encourage smaller startups to come.
So is there a size limit to the companies that would qualify? And you talked about equity and giving back to our high schools.
Are there companies, are you requiring them to have underrepresented minorities from the startups? Is there any requirement that the recipients would be public serving? You know, the mayor talked about having more public serving companies.
So I don't see any of these requirements in what you're talking about.
It just sounds like it's sort of a, almost like a free for all.
So you know, I just feel like a lot of questions haven't been answered.
A lot of suppositions have been made, but not a lot of questions have been answered.
Thank you.
Thank you, Janice.
Next speaker is Christopher Crowell.
Thank you, Vice Mayor Wingraf.
Yeah, I'd like to echo what Janice Ching just said there.
This, I'm surprised actually at the enthusiasm of the council.
I really hope you actually have questions.
This is a very poorly presented idea with very little development to explain, for instance, how is the program operated since 2019? What kind of, what kinds of startups has it benefited? Has it benefited or has it not been successful? Because for various reasons, again, why is there not a sense of date that's included to see whether this program actually is successful in the long run? There's just a lack of real financial analysis that wasn't included in the report, as others have commented.
So I, it just leads to, it just, and again, how large can these companies be, and they can still benefit from this as, as Ms.
Ching just said, why don't you have a cutoff? If it's, if 1 million is too little, why not 2 million? There's no discussion.
So any company, any size is potentially no matter, I don't know, Baker Labs might be huge, and they are also going to not have to pay this tax.
And this is happening, I have to say at the same time that every election, I, as a property owner in Berkeley, am asked to pay ever more towards libraries, streets, you know, basic costs that aren't covered by the city budget anymore.
Yet you're giving a break to companies, which may be taking in millions and millions of dollars.
You have examples of people who have called in who may be from small companies.
But it sounds like you're opening the door to large startups that may be very successful, taking in many, many millions.
Just wrap up.
Pay taxes.
And that's very concerning to me as a citizen of Berkeley, and a property owner who's paying, who's being asked increasingly to pay ever more property taxes for basic services in the city of Berkeley.
Now businesses will not have to pay taxes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next speaker is Michelle Liu.
Oh, hi, my name is Michelle Liu, and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Novel Farms.
I'm here to support amending the current tax exemption on R&D grants to remove the limit.
I've been an advisor to the Berkeley Startup Cluster and Novel Farms has invested in its mission to make Berkeley a more vibrant, accessible and equitable place for startups to launch and grow.
I remember after finishing my undergrad and postdoc at UC Berkeley, wishing there were more biotech companies in Berkeley that I could work for.
I chose Berkeley as the home of my small business because as a member of the LGBTQ community, I was fortunate enough to work with the LGBTQ and Asian communities.
I've always felt like I belong here and I wanted more industry option for Cal alumni like me to stay in Berkeley after they graduate.
We are a pre-revenue company trying to bring a difficult technology to market in an effort to transform our food system to be less reliant on industrial animal agriculture.
We are primarily funded through government and philanthropic grants.
All of our grant money is spent on salaries, rent, materials and R&D activities.
The BMC updates are essential, especially for deep tech, biotech and climate change.
We need millions of dollars in non-dilutive funding to develop a scalable solution we can offer the world.
The updates will make it more appealing for my company and companies like mine to stay in Berkeley as we grow.
Please consider eliminating the cap on the R&D grant exemption.
Thank you, Michelle.
Our next speaker is former Council member Cheryl Davila.
Thank you.
Yeah, it's interesting that you want to tax breaks on gross receipts.
That's how everybody does taxes, so I don't understand.
It doesn't make sense to give them tax breaks.
If you want, I agree with you can increase the limit from $1 million to $2 million to $5 million or something like that, but to give them no taxes doesn't make any kind of sense, so I don't agree with that.
Also, again, I want to say that you need to be more equitable on how you do these things and bring public comment into the conversation and let the public input about these things.
You should really have a participatory budget and more participation from the public on these types of things that are impacting the city who claims they don't have money and then they're going to forego money.
How much money are you foregoing? $9,000 doesn't even seem like a legitimate number to even have this conversation about, so it's interesting to say the least.
Free Palestine and the occupation and Zionism on city councils and in government.
Thank you, Carol.
Next speaker is Christy Sharilla.
Hi, good evening.
My name is Christy Sharilla.
I'm the policy manager for the Bay Area for Biocom California.
Biocom California is the state's oldest and largest trade association for biotech and life sciences.
In the Bay Area, we have about 700 members and many of those are in Berkeley.
I don't have too much to add after the economic development team's great presentation, but I do want to emphasize this past year I worked with four cities in the peninsula and then also the city of San Francisco for business license tax and gross receipts tax reforms that were just all in their ballot measures and many of them wrote similar language into their recent ballot measures, which all passed.
So this R&D tax exemption on government funding, which is essentially already a tax on us anyway, these tax exemptions have been written in to many, many cities in the Bay Area and the state as well, and I think Liz mentioned even in the East Coast.
So I just want to say we support this tax exemption and thank you all so much for your hard work on it and have a nice night.
Thank you, Christy.
Next speaker is Mary Orem.
Mary, you should be able to speak now.
Can you unmute, please? Okay, now I have it.
Okay.
I live in Berkeley.
I run a small business here.
I pay business license tax.
It seems to me that, well, I have a degree in statistics and I deal with data and the proposal that's being put forward doesn't have any data attached to it.
The nine thousand dollars from the past years that are estimated has nothing to do with the amount of money that the city is going to forego if they pass this as it's being presented.
There's no limit on the dollar amount.
This is gross receipts, so the higher the dollar amount, the more money that's going to be lost.
It's going to have to be made up somewhere.
My very small business pays over a thousand dollars a year in business license tax.
The things that the people with the startups said about how difficult it is to start a business, it's true for any business.
Whether you're starting a restaurant or a boutique or whatever, I think this needs to be reconsidered and you need the data so people understand what they're getting into.
Thank you, Mary.
Next speaker is Becky O'Malley.
Becky, you should be able to speak.
Yes, I have not very much to say except that I have actually been a manager in a couple of startups, one high-tech and one definitely not.
This amount of money doesn't sound realistic to me as previous speakers have said in terms of what the financial ramifications are of a project like this.
I think at minimum there should be a public hearing that has a reasonable amount of time for presentations from people who know what they're talking about who aren't scheduled to benefit from this change because if you only hear from people who are planning to have a financial reward, you may miss what the cost is to the city budget.
Thank you, Becky.
Next speaker is Jill Fuss.
Hi, good evening.
This is Jill Fuss.
I'm the managing director of Activate Berkeley.
We're a non-profit that runs a fellowship program for scientist entrepreneurs.
We've supported 86 companies since 2015 that have gone on to raise over three billion dollars in follow-on funding.
The company 12 that was mentioned in the presentation was in our very first cohort and is now one of the top 25 employers in Berkeley.
I'd like to say comments in support of this measure.
As has been said, our companies receive grants from federal and state agencies and it's very necessary to support their R&D for these climate tech companies.
We've appreciated the support from the city council these last five years for the previous waiver.
An update is needed.
Some of our companies raised millions of dollars in these grants.
It's very difficult to develop these climate tech technologies.
These waivers will encourage our businesses to stay in Berkeley as they grow.
Unfortunately, only a few of our companies have stayed in Berkeley.
Many of the companies have gone to other cities in the Bay Area that tax their businesses by the number of employees rather than by gross receipts.
Before I took this job, I was an entrepreneur myself.
I know just how hard it is to develop these hard tech technologies.
I was also very involved with the Women Entrepreneurs of Berkeley group for the last 10 years.
I'd like to say let's work together and help these innovative small businesses become the engines of Berkeley's economy and solve some of our biggest global challenges.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next speaker is Andrea Pritchett.
Good evening council members.
I just want to say that I live in West Berkeley and I'm still sort of reeling from the Berkeley Commons campus and the fact that so much of our city has been dominated by labs and research.
I'm really interested that they should serve our community.
We've given up so much and one of the characteristics of this council has been to give away our city.
To give it away to developers who build sky-high housing developments that don't seem to benefit our community.
That in your deliberations, in your negotiations with UC Berkeley, for a pittance, what they pay they get to exploit and expand in our city.
I would love to see some numbers on the biotech.
I'd love to see when you use words like equity.
As a school teacher that means a whole different thing to me than what it seems to mean to biotech companies and what it means for you guys.
But I think a thorough examination and the imposition of real limits and of real, you know, an examination of how this is really going to benefit us because I think we're giving up a lot.
Thank you, Andrea.
Next speaker is Alana.
Hi, good evening everyone.
So I echo much of what has been said from the community members here which is this doesn't make sense.
It doesn't make sense to to spend all this time if the companies are saving $1,100 in taxes.
The numbers just don't add up when they're getting hundreds of thousands.
I know startups.
I've been around lots of startups and there we have lots of small businesses in Berkeley who are innovative, who we need, who our community relies on, who are struggling and there's no support for them.
You claim, you know, equity is one of our values of this city and yet biotech, biotech, biotech is the focused business.
I have friends who own small businesses.
I'm going and talking to small businesses all the time.
They are struggling.
They are struggling because there's no parking for their customers now when there's development happening everywhere and I don't see anything going out of their way for our current small businesses here.
This does not make sense.
The other thing I'd like to point out is many of you said you already know how you're going to vote without even hearing public comment and so we know as a community calling in for years and years that we get.
You really don't care what we say because you're going to make your decision based on what you think is best which doesn't take into the needs of our community and the needs of our small businesses and I really think that we need to shift around.
The other question that arises is how many, I will wrap up and actually you gave the people who were in support of this over two minutes to speak.
They just kept talking and talking, Vice Mayor.
So my last question, I'm wondering is who, because a lot of you just ran campaigns, how many donations did you get from biotech? Thank you.
Thank you Alana.
Next speaker has a phone number ending in 572.
Phone number ending in 572.
Can you unmute please? Hi, our company played a big role in the creation of Silicon Valley.
In fact, Steve Jobs and others were good friends and I meet with them and they all bought their initial equipment from EIDS TV.
So right now we're dealing with a horrible situation where just is not enough money in the country to support everybody.
But on the other hand, we need to do everything to support startup companies and to do whatever we can to bring back business back to America.
After Reagan destroyed it, shift all jobs to Japan, Korea and China and now what we have? We have nothing.
Airbus, we continue our business, you know, save the city a lot of legal hassle that are not needed.
Thank you.
It was very nice to see you all tonight.
Thank you and have a good night.
Okay, that concludes the speakers on Zoom.
Is there anybody else now in the in the chamber who wants to comment? If not, I'll bring the discussion back to the dais.
Igor? Thank you.
So since I've been asked, I have not, to my knowledge, accepted any donations from anyone in biotech.
If there's anyone who works in cleantech that contributed to my campaign, it would have not exceeded $60.
I've met with the Office of Economic Development staff and they shared the following data with me.
Two out of 21 companies that have applied for an R&D grant waiver since 2019 had a 94704 zip code.
$262,477 in grants was waived, resulting in a grand total of $945 forgone from the business license tax revenue over that same five-year period.
Staff is aware of at least three R&D companies that considered space in the downtown area for R&D activities but opted to go elsewhere in the past year.
A few weeks ago, I had the honor of attending an East Bay Manufacturing Summit in Fremont, and as much as it was lovely to go to Fremont and half of their EV charging stations worked once I got there, I would love to actually keep some companies in Berkeley instead.
I appreciate our friends in Ann Arborville.
They're doing a lot of good things, but the reality is that many businesses, many small businesses and entrepreneurs that really offer the best of the creativity and talent that Berkeley represents, they start here and then they move elsewhere because the climate for them to be able to do their work is better elsewhere, and that is not just a loss to them, but it is particularly a loss to us as the Berkeley community.
It is very clear to me that the fiscal benefits and other benefits outweigh the small amount of taxes that we might forego, and I want to also put this in context of what just happened in the national election.
I am I shudder to think how many opportunities that were available through the federal government to apply and receive grants that allow for life-saving research to happen, that allow for research that will ensure that our kids and grandkids will still have a planet that they can call home.
Many of those opportunities are going to dry up, but we have an opportunity to protect those that are doing critical work in that space, and so by the way, I did check with staff.
Bayer would not qualify under this.
This is really intended for small businesses and early stage entrepreneurs.
I support other measures, some of which past councils have worked on, and I look forward to continuing support of them to keep other types of small businesses in Berkeley as well, and I think that we not only can do both, but we have to do both during the dark four years that we are about to enter.
Thank you, Council Member Trago.
Vice Mayor? The Mayor has his hand up.
Yes, Mayor? Thank you very much.
Well, I just want to take this opportunity to thank our amazing staff in the Office of Economic Development for their work with my office on this proposal and all that they do to support our community.
They're a small but mighty team, and really thank you so much for not just helping develop this proposal, but your support of the startup ecosystem in the City of Berkeley.
I want to thank the Berkeley Startup Cluster, the many partners who contribute to development of this proposal.
This was a collaborative process that took into consideration the direct input and lived experience of businesses who want to stay and want to grow in Berkeley, and we want to make Berkeley a center for innovation and not lose that intellectual capital to neighboring communities.
It's also good for our city.
All the social programs that we need, addressing homelessness, building affordable housing, the work we're doing on infrastructure, we need a robust local tax base to be able to support those many robust social programs.
So this is absolutely critical, especially at a time when we're facing a hostile federal administration and we may take away money from local governments like Berkeley who are proud sanctuary cities.
But I just want to clarify, this is exempting from gross receipts, taxes, the taxation of grants, not the taxation of products, the taxation of the grants.
And as some of the businesses said, they can't even pay, they can't even use the taxes to pay the the grants to pay the taxes.
So this is making sure that the grants, the startup capital that they get from the federal government or from philanthropy, that that money is going directly into helping pay payroll, helping do research and development, helping manufacture products, so that we can grow these companies to a scale that they can stay in Berkeley, grow in Berkeley, create thousands of jobs and economic stimulus for our community.
So it's exempting the taxation of the grants.
It's not exempting gross receipts, taxes paid for other purposes and other business generated by those local businesses.
Just to clarify, this builds on and broadens the previous exemption that the City Council passed to allow for more businesses in Berkeley, more economic benefits in Berkeley.
But I just have to say, you know, this is my second to last meeting on the City Council.
And so if you just indulge me a minute, I want to be real about what's been going on around this issue, which I think speaks to a broader issue of the toxicity and polarization of our local government.
There has been a great deal of misinformation, I think, deliberately put out there, trying to represent that this is some sort of giveaway to large corporations and that we're doing this because we, some of us, got support from business owners and, you know, and people in the innovation sector.
That's absolutely not true.
I think we have to call out the fake news and the misinformation and the toxicity when we see it.
It's one thing to have a difference of opinion and to have healthy, strong opinions.
It's another thing to malign.
It's another thing to impugn people's integrity and motives.
And that's just unacceptable.
That's not who we are as a city.
There's a sad state in our city that people can lie, that people can file false charges with state agencies, that they can drag people through the mud, that they can impugn people's integrity.
That's not who we are as a city.
That's not necessary.
That's not what we need at this time of great divisiveness and anger and sadness and polarization in our country.
I call on everyone in our community to rise above it and to be better, to do better, and to make sure that we create a civic culture where everyone is respected and everyone is heard, and that we can have civil and productive discourse.
I've often heard throughout this campaign, oh, the toxicity of the Berkeley City Council.
A lot of it's not the council.
It's the people that come to our meetings and that hijack our meetings and that spew hateful, divisive, counterproductive things.
Let's call that out for what that is.
I need to rise above it.
I'm for this war because I've gotten campaign contributions from some business owner.
That's insane.
To suggest that we're corrupt because we're voting for this.
I'm tired of these conspiracy theories.
I'm tired of this fake news.
Mayor, your connection is not great.
I'm missing some of your words.
Go ahead.
I'll just say that we have to call out this for what it is and call on our community to do better, that the next time something like this comes forward, that people are not lying and whipping up people into a frenzy and spreading misinformation and showing divisiveness in our community.
That's not good.
I just have to say that oftentimes people say we're not listening to the community.
Well, we are listening to you.
We just don't agree with you.
We just don't think your arguments make sense.
Doesn't mean we're not listening to you.
But my job as a representative is to take into the community's input to make a decision that's in the best interest of our community, our city's budget, our city's values, our city's long-term fiscal outlook.
I take that responsibility and I value very strongly but I don't value polarization and toxicity and divisiveness.
That is not who we are as a city.
We need to do better.
What we're doing with this item is supporting our local economy, creating jobs, growing our tax base, and making Berkeley a center for innovation and research as we have since our founding.
That's what this is about, nothing more.
And I'll close with my comments there.
Thank you for indulging me.
Thank you, Mayor.
Yes, Council Member Hummert.
Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Segment 7

And before I deliver my comments, I'd like to ask Mayor Arreguin to add me as a co-sponsor.
Thank you, Mr.
Mayor.
I want to thank you, Mr.
Mayor, and the Office of Economic Development for bringing this forward.
I especially want to thank Eleanor Hollander and Liz Redmond-Cleveland for their work on this.
That presentation, Liz's presentation, I thought was spectacular and compelling.
I think this item is really straightforward, this measure.
We're not giving tax breaks to big businesses that are raking it in through sales.
We're simply saying that our startup businesses, which are meritorious enough to have been given public grants, should not then have to have those grant funds taxed by the city.
Essentially, that's double taxation because these grant funds come from tax monies.
That's their origin.
Especially now, at the time these startups receive these monies, they're in a particularly precarious position usually.
The whole point of government grants is to encourage R&D that has the potential for great benefit to our broader society, economy, and environment.
To then tax those grants not only works against their purpose, but also pushes these startups out of Berkeley.
This means we lose out on even greater potential tax revenue if and when these businesses find commercial success.
That means we also lose out on taxes from rents paid, workers patronizing local businesses, etc.
I support moving forward with this.
Thank you.
Council Member Hahn.
Yes, thank you very much and thank you, Mayor, for your comments.
I wanted to remind folks, because we did have some callers who were bringing up the question of other businesses starting up, and I wanted to remind everybody that I submitted an item recently called First Year Free to provide tax-free, fee-free first year for businesses establishing themselves in Berkeley.
I'm hoping my colleagues will pass that.
It's gone into committee, but I just wanted to remind the public and other people who are listening and watching that just because we take this action for this sector, and remember, there's lots of caps and exceptions to this, this really is for startups and only for money they get from their businesses.
Through government and not-for-profit grants, but I just want to remind folks that we are able to care about more than one thing, and we do, and this First Year Free program, which I hope we will pass, will accrue to any business establishing itself in Berkeley, and it is a way that we can signal that we value and welcome them, and that we also want to give them help in what is, you know, equivalent to their startup phase as well, so just a little reassurance there.
We are taking this action today for this sector, but we have other opportunities to support other sectors, and we can care about more than one thing at a time.
Thank you.
Yes, Council Member Trager.
Thank you, I just wanted to ask the Mayor if I could be added as a co-sponsor alongside of Council Member Humbert.
Yes.
Thank you.
Any other comments? Okay, I just, I want to thank Liz Redmond-Cleveland and Eleanor Holmer and the Mayor for bringing this item forward.
I think one of the most important slides that I saw tonight was the slide comparing costs in other neighboring cities, and I think it is extremely important for us to understand that we as a city need to be competitive with neighboring cities.
Everybody wants these companies, and so I will be enthusiastically supporting this item.
Yes, Council Member Taplin.
Yes, thank you Madam Vice Mayor.
I want to thank the OED staff as well and the Mayor.
I also had a number of questions the first time this came up, or the last time this came up rather, and they were answered by staff through the presentation, and I asked my questions in good faith, and I found that staff answered those questions in good faith, and as someone who represents a district that has a lot of R&D companies, I am deeply supportive of our robust local economy.
I am proud of the work these companies do, and I look forward to remaining competitive against our neighbors in the region and elsewhere.
Thank you.
Okay, there's a motion.
Ivor, you made a motion.
I think there were multiple movers.
I'm happy to make the motion or second.
I made the motion.
Yeah, okay.
I think the Mayor made the motion, and I think there were multiple seconders.
I have Vice Mayor Weingraf.
What's the seconder? What did you say? Rose has the seconder.
Rose has it.
Okay, then I think it's time to vote.
Roshi, do you have a comment? No, I'm ready to vote.
Okay.
Okay, call the roll please.
All right, on the recommendation to adopt first reading of an ordinance, Council Member Keserwani? Yes.
Taplin? Yes.
Bartlett? Yes.
Trigub? Aye.
Han? Yes.
Weingraf? Yes.
Winnipara? Yes.
Humbert? Yes.
Mayor Argin? Yes.
Thank you very much.
That motion passed unanimously, so I think that brings us to the end of our agenda tonight.
All right.
Mayor, what is it that you do when you invoke? I move to suspend the rules and adjourn.
Okay, I'll second that.
Call the roll on that please, Rose.
All right, to adjourn, Council Member Keserwani? Yes.
Taplin? Yes.
Bartlett? Yes.
Trigub? Aye.
Han? Yes.
Weingraf? Yes.
Winnipara? Sorry, yes.
Humbert? Yes.
Mayor Argin? Yes, thank you.
Thank you, everybody.
Good meeting.
Thank you.