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Segment 1

Okay, let's get started, everyone.
Are you ready? Okay, I'm calling to order the Berkeley City Council meeting.
Today is Tuesday, March 10th, 2026.
It is 6.04 p.m.
Clerk, can you please take the roll? Okay, Councilmember Kesarwani? Here.
Taplin? Present.
Bartlett? Here.
Tregub? Present.
O'Keefe? Here.
Blackabee? Here.
Lunaparra? Here.
Humbert? Present.
And Marish? Here.
All present.
Okay, I just realized it is the first meeting of the month.
And I did not warn one of you that it was your turn to say the land acknowledgement statement, so I will do it this evening.
So every beginning of the month we read the land acknowledgement statement, so I will read that to you all this evening.
The City of Berkeley recognizes that the community we live in was built on the territory of Huchun, with ancestral and unceded lands 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 Lijian tribe and to create meaningful actions that uphold the intention of this land acknowledgment.
We are now moving on to ceremonial items.
So I will call up our first recipients of the ceremonial item for YouthWorks.
YouthWorks folks, you're welcome to come on up here.
You can come right up to this podium over here.
All right.
Okay.
So today is YouthWorks Day, whereas the overarching objective of Berkeley YouthWorks program is to ensure that all youth and young adults in Berkeley have access to educational resources and culturally responsive training, that they acquire essential life skills for self-sufficiency, and that they succeed in their professional endeavors, careers, and adult lives, and whereas the City of Berkeley recognizes that investing in young people is vital to the ongoing health, vibrancy, and success of our community.
Since 1970, YouthWorks has provided opportunities to Berkeley youth who have experienced socioeconomic and educational inequalities, including but not limited to impacts by the justice system, experiencing foster care, or being young parents, and whereas YouthWorks has empowered generations of Berkeley youth by providing meaningful employment, mentorship, and career development opportunities, fostering skills that prepare participants for lifelong success, and whereas YouthWorks participants have contributed thousands of service hours supporting local organizations, businesses, and city departments, and initiated projects that enhance the quality of life throughout Berkeley, and whereas YouthWorks has championed equity and inclusion by offering employment opportunities to youth from diverse backgrounds, helping to bridge gaps and build a stronger, more united Berkeley, and whereas the City of Berkeley values the ongoing partnerships between the community, city departments, and YouthWorks in shaping a brighter future for all.
Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Adina Ishii, Mayor of the City of Berkeley, celebrate and honor the achievements of YouthWorks participants, alumni, staff, and supporters.
I encourage all residents to recognize the profound impact of youth employment, and to continue investing in programs that empower the next generations of leaders in our city, and do hereby declare March 12, 2026 to be YouthWorks Day.
Did you want to share a few words? Yeah, I think three of us are gonna talk now.
Good evening, everyone.
My name is Kaylee Robinson, and I'm a YouthWorks employee.
I worked for two years at my elementary school, Rosa Parks.
Before every summer, YouthWorks held paid trainings to help us learn professionalism and leadership skills.
Here, I learned how to do things like conflict resolution, which I wouldn't have learned at school, or hadn't learned yet.
This also took the burden off my parents at home to prepare me for work.
Now, I know that I want to be an educator in my future, and have money to put towards college.
YouthWorks has helped me, and many other young people, find jobs when we otherwise would have struggled to.
It has provided a crucial stepping stone between high school and employment.
Young people are our future, and work experience is one of the most important steps on the path to adulthood.
Good afternoon, City Council.
My name is Ayanna Flores.
This past winter, I was a YouthWorks intern working at La Pena Cultural Center.
Prior to working at La Pena, I actually was couch surfing and homeless, and I came here to attend UC Berkeley, and YouthWorks was the first job, after applying to over 200, that I was able to succeed.
As a low-income student, it was through YouthWorks that I was able to fully fund my first semester of college, and it's now through YouthWorks and working at La Pena that I've found a goal in working in law and activism, and that wouldn't be possible without the chances that this city and these programs offer.
So, I would just like to say thank you to City Council, to the employers that I had through YouthWorks and La Pena, and to everyone who made my own dreams, as well as the dreams of many young people possible.
My experience at YouthWorks has been great, and it has impacted me, like, in really, like, positive ways, because thanks to the experience that I have gained, I have found, like, ways to to be, like, ways in more professional, how it is being working in more professional jobs, and also, thanks to YouthWorks, I have found ways of how, how far, I have found ways of what type of jobs I see myself doing in the future, and I think YouthWorks makes an impact in youth people, because they provide, like, internships and jobs in, like, different work areas, and I think this is, like, a really good opportunity for young people, so, it seems they can't, they can't set young people in places that they might see themselves, like, doing in the future.
Also, like, a really great opportunity to start, like, making connections and experience, as well.
Good work.
Good work, yeah! Yeah! I know that, I know that! Woo! Yeah! Right.
Love it.
Super proud of our, of our young people.
Thank you for coming and sharing your stories.
Okay, so, we have another, did you want to read this one? Do you want me to do this? I'll read it, okay.
Alright, so, we also have a proclamation for Debra Major.
Is Debra here? Come on up! Hello! Recognizing Debra Major as the recipient of the Berkeley Poetry Festival's 23rd Annual Lifetime Achievement Award.
Woo! Yeah! Whereas, Debra Major is an American poet, spoken word performer, novelist, essayist, editor, recording artist, actress, mother, grandmother, aunt, niece, cousin, and friend, as well as a grandchild of immigrants, documented and undocumented.
And whereas, as the third Poet Laureate of San Francisco from 2002 to 2004, she initiated the program City Reflections, War and Peace on Our Streets, received Italy's Regina Coppola International Literary Award in 2022, the California Arts Council Writing Fellowship, Spoken Word Literary Arts Fellowship, and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association's first Novelist Award for an Open Weave.
And whereas, she's the author of eight poetry collections, Word Time, City Lights, Calthea's Daughter, Willow Books, Brachia Aperte, apologies if I'm mispronouncing it, Multimedia, Edizioni, and then we became City Lights, Where River Meets Ocean, also City Lights, With More Than Tongue, Creative Arts, Street Smarts, Curbstone, and Traveling Women with Opal Palmer Edisa, Jukebox Press, and two novels, Brown Glass Windows, Curbstone, and Open Weave, Seal Press.
And whereas, she was part of Daughters of Yem, a poetry performance group with Opal Palmer Edisa for over 20 years, was a featured poet and actress in First Voices, Soul of the City, performed commissioned poems for Dimensions Dance Theater, premiered her poetry play Classic Black Voices of 19th Century African Americans in San Francisco, and wrote poetry for Trade Roots and Symphony with Spoken Word and Chorus.
Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Adina Ishii, Mayor of the City of Berkeley, do hereby recognize Deborah Major as the recipient of the Berkeley Poetry Festival's 23rd Annual Lifetime Achievement Award.
Some day, I would like a really long proclamation like that.
But today's not the day.
My name is MK Chavez, and I'm here to accept the award on behalf of Deborah Major.
Good evening, Mayor Ishii and council members.
On behalf of the Berkeley Poetry Festival, it's my honor to accept this proclamation, recognizing the extraordinary work of Deborah Major.
Deborah Major spent decades reminding us that poetry is not separate from the life of a city.
It is one of the ways a city learns to listen to itself.
Through her writing, teaching, and cultural leadership, she has helped shape the literary and civic imagination of the Bay Area and far beyond.
She was born and raised in Berkeley, and I'll share that she is incredibly thrilled to be honored.
Her work carries the rhythms of history, justice, and possibility.
She writes in a way that insists our stories matter and that our language can be a tool for liberation as much as it can be for beauty.
We are deeply grateful to the city of Berkeley for recognizing a poet whose work reflects the values that so many of us hold dear.
Community, creativity, and courage to imagine a more just world.
Thank you for honoring Deborah Major, and thank you for honoring poetry itself as an essential part of our civic life.
We're thrilled that you continue to support the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and we hope that you will come and celebrate with us on March 22nd at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley.
There will be cake.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Council Member, thank you very much, Council Member Taflin, for bringing that forward to our office, too.
I think that came from your office.
Yes, which makes sense.
He's a poet, if you didn't know, so.
Okay, so we are now moving on to city manager comments.
Are there any comments, Mr.
City Manager? No comments, Madam Mayor.
Thank you.
Okay, we will now take public comments on non-actually, no, I'm going to actually have our auditor come up next, and then we will move on to public comment on non-agenda matters.
I think our agenda should actually include that.
I don't know why it doesn't.
Yeah, I just have to remember to put it in.
Go ahead.
Okay, thank you so much, and good evening.
I'm here with Caitlin Palmer, Audit Manager, and Katie Weissau, Auditor, is online.
I'm here to present our audit on city contracts.
On February 19th, we released an audit of the non-competitive contracts in the City of Berkeley.
Today, I will go over why we did this audit.
Sorry, accidentally pressed.
Okay, today we're going to go over why we did this audit, our findings and recommendations, and management response.
We did this audit because competition among vendors helps ensure that the city is getting the best value and the best fit for the goods and services it purchases.
While competition is not always feasible or appropriate, it is especially important to pursue competition as much as possible as the city currently faces a budget deficit.
Competition can also help prevent fraud and increase fairness.
Although we found no evidence of misconduct in Berkeley during our audit, contract corruption cases in neighboring jurisdictions show the importance of having an open, competitive contracting process.
Our objectives were to determine how Berkeley uses non-competitive contracts, and secondly, why Berkeley used these contracts when competition was possible.
We mostly looked at the contracts executed in fiscal year 2024.
We also looked at a sample of the 100 largest contracts, the active largest contracts.
We manually reviewed over 300 contract PDFs and records online to determine if they were competitive because this information was not tracked in the city's financial system.
We also manually reviewed every waiver of competition because there was no automated reports available.
Thank you to Katie for doing that work.
We defined competitive contracts to include those with either informal or formal competition, ranging from calling vendors for quotes to formal invitation for bids.
The city's purchasing manual state formal competition is required for service contracts over $50,000, goods over $100,000, and construction over $200,000.
Non-competitive contracts are authorized by the city manager through waivers of competition, those below that amount.
City council can also authorize non-competitive contracts.
There are also a few other non-competitive processes, such as for leases and legal service contracts.
As this graphic shows, in fiscal year 2024, there were 94 contracts with a total value of $43 million that did not go through competition.
Caveat, we did not assess whether each contract should have gone through competition.
Okay, what did we find? Our first finding is that Berkeley spent millions of dollars on non-competitive contracts when competition was likely possible.
When we reviewed the city's largest contracts, most of them had evidence of competition or met criteria for exceptions, but two recycling contracts did not.
In fiscal year 2022, Berkeley executed contracts with the Ecology Center and Community Conservation Centers.
Together, the contracts were $41 million for the first five years with an optional five-year extension, which would bring the total to almost $85 million.
Although competition is a best practice and is required for service contracts over $50,000, neither the city charter or the Berkeley Municipal Code explicitly require service contracts like these to be competitive.
In neighboring cities like Oakland and San Francisco, their city codes explicitly require competition for service contracts.
Let's now look at waivers.
During the audit, the purchasing manual allowed contracts to waive competition when they were sole source, competition was found to be inadequate, or there was an emergency.
However, the form that the staff uses to request a waiver had different criteria than the city's purchasing manual for when waivers are justified.
This may have made it hard for staff to know when it was appropriate to use a waiver.
Of the 53 waivers approved in fiscal year 2024, 38% did not clearly meet the criteria in the purchasing manual.
This means the city likely could have pursued competition in these contracts.
In our report, we highlight a few examples of waivers that likely did not meet the purchasing manual criteria.
I'm just going to point out one example of a contract for classification and compensation studies, which we found three waivers with three different vendors that all cited a dire situation as the rationale for the waiver.
While there may be an urgent need for these services, there's no documented evidence that it was an emergency.
Also, having three different vendors, to me, means that competition was likely possible.
City council can also authorize non-competitive contracts for community-based organizations.
Last year, council passed a resolution to establish a more open process to offer emergency funding to community-based organizations.
We also found that Berkeley's process to prevent conflicts of interest is limited.
Some staff and officials are required by state law to disclose financial interests, but not to disclose all relationships that may bias a decision.
In San Francisco, in addition to the Form 700, they require city officers and employees to publicly disclose any personal, professional, or business relationships with anyone involved in a government decision they make.
Although we found areas for improvement, we found no evidence of misconduct in Berkeley during our audit.
The city can use amendments to increase the dollar amounts without new competition.
So, a contract can start below the $50,000 threshold without competition, and then later amended without competition, as long as city council approves that.
When we reviewed a sample of these contracts, on average, amendments added over $218,000 to each contract, and 70% of them lasted for over five years.
We also identified three city attorney contracts for legal services, which grew by over 20% of the original amount.
The city charter and the BMC does give the city attorney the authority to enter into legal services contracts, and the amendments do not require city council approval, which can limit oversight.
Additionally, the BMC does not discuss competition for service contracts beyond setting thresholds for formal competition.
So, we're finally to our second finding, and that is that paper contracts, unclear guidance, and short staffing led to delays and overuse of non-competitive contracts.
During our audit period, most of Berkeley's contracts were still reviewed and signed on paper and hand-delivered for approvals.
This created delays and made it difficult to track contracts, which led to some being misplaced.
Berkeley also did not have a comprehensive digital contract management system able to track competition and notify staff of contract expirations.
While the city has begun using DocuSign for digital signatures, there is no software to manage the full contracting review process.
We also found that the purchasing manual was missing procurement policy elements, such as definitions and a process for debarring contractors who violate city law.
Prior to May 2025, contract training for staff was also inconsistent.
However, between May and July of 2025, the finance department did conduct five contract trainings.
Lastly, we found that the general services division has had repeated vacancies in key positions in the last five years, making it difficult to improve the contract process.
The general services manager position has been vacant since November of 2024, and the contract administrator position was vacant for almost a year until April 2025.
So, we made 13 recommendations to help the city address the risks we found, including for the city to add explicit competition requirements to the municipal code for service contracts, and pursue open competition for the recycling contracts.
We recommend that the city update the purchasing manual and contract forms for consistency and expand training for staff.
We also recommend the city adopt a comprehensive and integrated electronic contract management system.
City management agreed or partially agreed to our findings and recommendations and provided an action plan to address our recommendations.
We have still need to confirm to what extent any recommendations have been implemented after our audit release date.
I just want to take a moment to thank city management, including the finance department, for their cooperation on this audit.
And in addition to city management, public works, the city attorney's office, and other city staff, and my staff as well for their contributions on this audit.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Madam Auditor.
There's lots to chew on here.
Are there any questions from my council colleagues? Comments? Sure.
Yeah, I would ask, actually, if our city manager could speak to some of the changes that have been made.
Sure.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Thank you, Madam Auditor and staff for this audit.
I won't read through them all, but if you go to the audit report on page 25, you'll see all the management responses.
And you can see in there that, as the auditor said, we have agreed or partially agreed with them.
And in fact, have already implemented several of them, some in November and some June, July.
So I would just encourage people to read through that.
You can see where we stand on the management response, both in where we agree and partially agree, and where we have implemented and have a date and plan to implement.
So just would point people there.
Thank you.
Did you have a question, Council Member? Okay, go ahead.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Madam Auditor, excellent work, as usual.
I'm curious if you ran across this in your work.
Is there any sort of interplay with the Barrier Study recommendations, the Berkeley Inclusion and Diversity Index, the Bendex, as some call it? Because so much of this was about, you know, city contracting, city contractors, and allowing new persons and new entities that are, you know, overlooked by the city to apply for these contracts.
I'm wondering if there's any interplay with that at all.
Yeah, this, the focus was on the competition elements of it.
And we do acknowledge that without adequate competition and without opening, you know, having adequate participants in the system, you're not going to get the level of diversity that's optimal.
So that is something that is very important for us to address as a city.
Caitlin, did you have anything you wanted to add? Yeah.
One of our final recommendations was to ensure that responsibility is assigned to implement the Bendex recommendations, to ensure that the city makes progress towards implementing those and promoting fairness in contract awards.
Okay, thank you.
Did anyone have any comments on this? Okay.
Vice Mayor Lunapara.
Thank you.
I just really wanted to thank the auditor and her staff for this work and for everything that you put into it.
So thank you so much.
And yeah, how comprehensive it was.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Moving on to Council Member Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I want to thank Auditor Wong and Council Member Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I want to thank Auditor Wong and your whole team for all the work that you put into this report.
And I understand that it was a lot of meticulous work in putting this together, and I truly appreciate the dedication and care that went into it.
Given our dire budget situation, digging into our contracts and trying to find areas for efficiency and savings that competition would bring is incredibly important.
So thank you so much for this really good work.
Thank you.
Council Member Buckbee.
Thanks, Madam Mayor.
Thank you again to the auditor and her team for this audit.
Thanks also to the city manager and staff for their responsiveness and already responding to recommendations and starting to implement them, which we really appreciate.
I'd just like to offer as a member of the Budget and Finance Committee that it would be my hope, and we'll talk to maybe at a future budget meeting, that once we get through this budget process, which I know will be very time consuming in terms of our meeting schedule, but I'd love to add this to the agenda of kind of our next meeting after we kind of approve the budget this year, just to do a deeper dive and then figure out if there are other policy changes we need to consider beyond what staff is already doing.
That would be a great opportunity for us to spend more time with it, spend more time with you, and then think about it as a committee.
So we'll have an opportunity to add future agenda items at our next budget meeting, but it would be my hope we could consider this sometime in July after we get through the June budget.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Council Member O'Keefe.
I just want to add my thanks to the auditor and her team for this really important thorough audit.
Clearly a lot of work went into it, and it's very important.
So thank you.
I just want to signal my personal interest in looking at bidding out the recycling contracts.
I think that was a really important finding, and I hope we look at it more.
Thank you.
Council Member Trakop.
Thank you.
I wish to also echo my sincere gratitude to the City Auditor and your team.
I appreciate this report, a number of very substantive items here, and some great recommendations that warrant a deeper look.
So I look forward to having a deeper dive on this at a future council meeting, or in committee, or one-on-one.
I also wish to thank the City Manager's Office, as well as the City Attorney, for already working diligently to resolve a number of these recommendations.
I do wish to note that Recommendation 1.2, which is a recommendation.

Segment 2

To the City Council to work with City Management and the City Attorney to propose updates to BMC Chapter 7.18.
That is a City Council action item, and I certainly would be interested in, at a time when it can be scheduled, likely post-budget.
I'm very interested in continuing to dig into this.
I will note, I sincerely understand that a number of these recommendations, to fully implement them, it will require some significant budget adjustments at a challenging time for the city budgetarily.
And I'm also thinking about the opportunities there around the possibility of not, or the reduced likelihood of potentially leaving money on the table.
And so when we have an opportunity to resolve some of these, I will call them sticky wickets, we may actually then put ourselves in a better position, a more advantageous budgetary position for the future.
Thank you so much for this report.
Thank you.
Councilmember Casarwani.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
I just want to echo the thanks, Madam City Auditor and your team, for this very important audit.
I have really tried to make sure that when I'm putting budget referrals forward that we try to use an RFP process, because it's very important that we are open and transparent in giving, especially when we're doing it from the City Council.
As your report noted, giving all community-based organizations who may be qualified the opportunity to compete and receive funding.
And I think on these larger contracts, like the recycling contract and other contracts, we have to make sure that we are just safeguarding the public's resources, especially in this budgetary environment.
But I think in any kind of fiscal environment, it's very important that the procurement process is the only way to ensure that we are being fair about how we are making these decisions in terms of who wins these multi-million dollar contracts.
And without that, I have to be honest, there is the appearance of some kind of nefarious process.
That's why we have to be open and transparent about it.
If we just award a contract without a process, do a sole source when we know that there is the option to have an open and transparent process, that's not good government, in my opinion.
And so I think this audit is very important.
I appreciate that the City Manager is going to be, has started implementing these recommendations, and I want to make sure that we implement them all so that we can have better processes.
I also want to note, you know, some of these contracts that started below the threshold for an open process then had funds added, and then they went above the threshold.
So we have to have controls, I think, in all cases.
And there could be instances, you know, when there's an emergency situation, I understand, we need to move quickly and have a sole source.
But, you know, that was really not the case in many of these instances.
So thank you again, Auditor, for this report.
Thank you.
I also just want to add my thanks and say thank you.
I know it took a long time to go through this, so thank you to your team and also to the City staff who I know are working to implement those, and thank you to our City Manager for being so on top of it.
So, appreciate you.
Yeah, thank you.
I do want to allow folks, if anyone wanted to give comment on this item, I know it's not on consent and it's not on action, so I did just want to give some time for public comment.
So, go ahead.
I'm going to give you each a minute.
Thank you very much.
Again, I just want to commend the Auditor for this report.
I think this is great.
As an average taxpayer, I care about this because I'm worried about my taxes going up to cover these deficits.
And so I'm also really heartened to hear about the comments from the Council Members and Council Member Kesarwani in particular.
And I'm glad that the City Management has agreed with most of these recommendations, it sounds like.
So that's really good.
I will say, as a taxpayer, I was a little disheartening to hear about $85 million with no bid.
Hopefully, that's the end that we'll see of that.
And I just hope all of you will stay on it to make sure that we follow through with these recommendations.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Madam Mayor, City Council, Martin Bork, Executive Director at the Ecology Center, I just wanted to offer any additional information you might have about the contracting process with the Ecology Center in this last cycle and the many cycles before that.
The Ecology Center has had open, very transparent, long and in-depth contract negotiations with City over and over and over.
Sometimes one-year contract extensions, two-year contract extensions.
In an industry where 10- and 20-year contracts are the norm because of the amount of capital investment and operational intensity of the contracts.
Each time that has come forward to Council and to staff, it's been thoroughly vetted with third-party verification of our proposals, deep, open book, transparent negotiations, and we feel that the City has gotten excellent results through these contracts.
Thanks, Martin.
I just want to offer you, if anyone wants to reach out, I'd be happy to give you more information.
Thank you.
Good evening, Council.
Auditor of the world, the best.
You know, we have the best auditor in the world in Jimmy Wong.
Seriously.
Amazing work.
I just wanted to speak briefly.
My name is Moni Law.
I'm speaking in my personal capacity as an individual as a resident of Berkeley, Go Bears, Class of 82.
Firms owned by people of color and women lost out on millions as contracts flowed disproportionately to white men.
Quote, unquote, 2021, Berkeley side, November 21, 2021.
I want to thank also Council Member Ben Bartlett, who worked fiercely on this issue.
2016 to 2019, the Mason Tillman Associates report covered four-year process.
That study showed that business owned by white men were awarded over 80% of all city contracts, and black businesses were underutilized with only 2.7% of the business.
So my heart aches when people say, why is there such a low number of black people in Berkeley? We don't feel as welcome, and people need their businesses supported.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, Moni.
I will take public comment online as well, if there's anyone else who wants to make public comment on this report.
So this is for public comment on the auditor's report only.
If you're on Zoom, please raise your hand only to speak on the auditor's report.
Okay.
First is a phone number ending in 211.
Actually, I called for public comment, so I'm going to mute myself and wait for public comment.
Okay.
Thank you.
Again, this is public comment only on the auditor's report.
So we have Della Luna as the next speaker.
Yes.
I wanted to say that as a constituent, I was saddened to hear how much of the auditor's work was done by hand and meticulously digging through records.
I am sad that that's the state of 2026 in the city of Berkeley.
I feel like just what the auditor described, that type of record keeping kind of leads to this type of behavior amongst the departments or different parts of the city.
So I'm really glad this work is being done, but it also feels like it could have been circumvented.
I guess I'm also just saying that you have to make the systems more robust in the reporting.
And then I also want to say that the same audit should be done with the housing developers and their contracts and their applications need to be vetted by third parties and not just accept everything they say, especially in the affordable housing developers, because it seems like the same issue isn't happening in other areas as well.
Thanks.
Thanks for your comment.
Next is Jeff.
Jeff Lomax.
Yes, thank you.
And again, big thanks to Jenny for her work here.
It's very important.
I want to second the previous comment about the lack of public transparency on these documents in general.
Council member, it's not, I think what we need is you need the public posting of the documents, the contracts, they should be available and tied to a number of these contracts are reporting requirements or deliverables, which also are very difficult to connect the dots on.
So, really, essentially, all these contracts should contain a mini public docket.
This is not money.
This is not a lot of resources.
It's just being organized and transparent.
So that those of us who are interested in these issues and interrogate them frequently can get the information we're entitled to without having to go to a public records mechanism, which is often the mechanism we have to use unfortunately, which wastes more time and resources.
So, make it transparent, make it clear, make it public.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And then we have Nina Wilson to talk on the auditor's report.
Nina, you should be able to unmute.
Greetings to you all.
This is Nina Wilson from healthy black families nonprofit located in the Adeline quarter in Berkeley.
I think it's really imperative and I think Jenny for her report on this kind of rigor is necessary, especially if we're holding a banner for equity in our community.
The displacement of black people from the city, the lack of opportunity in the workforce contribute to that and these contracts could be a viable method for black folks to get grounded and economically stable in the city.
Not only should we be looking at these contracts with this kind of rigor, but we should also be setting equity priorities around these contracts in the city to ensure that equity is happening.
What gets measured gets accomplished.
Thank you.
Thank you, Nina.
That's the last speaker.
Very good.
Okay.
Well, thank you all so much.
I really appreciate it again.
And we are going to move on in our agenda.
We are going to go to public comment on non agenda matters.
Okay, so we'll pick five cards for in person speakers and then the first five hands raised online will be the those will be our 10 non agenda speakers.
And the five in person speakers and you can come up in any order.
So please just come up.
Line up when your name is called.
Have Stephen Alpert.
Kit Sagan or looks like Tim O'Brien.
Andrea Pritchett.
Stephen Shuler.
Good evening.
I'm Dr.
Stephen Alpert.
I have forwarded links to some recent publications addressing housing affordability.
Also, the officials, the titles of these publications are shown in this poster.
Using real world data, these things demonstrate it takes decades for newly built market rate housing to eventually filter down to become affordable.
Council members have commented that Bickerson's failed to acknowledge the 15 to 30% of lower income units and new projects mandated by state density bonus law.
At the March 2nd meeting of the land use housing and economic development committee, council member Kesawani introduced.
Supporting affordable housing for families, which advocates removing the small amount of onsite lower income units required by state density bonus and set out to build solely market rate units.
This proposal supported by council member is based on faulty recommendation, faulty assumptions and should be outright rejected.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Two weeks from now, you will be considering flock contracts, extending the one you have and adding to them.
You really need to recognize that no matter what you put in contracts, you will not have actual control over the data that flock will have stored on their servers.
And there are many ways in which that data can go to ice or other malign federal actors.
Warrants signed by a judge, an individual outside Berkeley who's employed by an agency that BBT trusts can get data and pass it along.
A mistake in a system setting controlled by flock, an individual and flock employee who has access to the software and database.
And you really, really must not discount the possibility of the secret FISA warrant, which a judge can issue to a FISA judge can issue that will go directly to flock and you will not be told about it.
Thank you.
Hi, everyone.
My name is Stephen Schuyler and I live in Kittredge Street, downtown Berkeley area.
And about a year and a half ago, there was a big push by the zoning board to approve a lot of high rise buildings in my area.
I live a block and a half from all of them.
And so now we find ourselves in an opposite problem.
We've all decided to either abandon their project or one of them on Center Street has decided to put it on hold for three to five years because of the tariffs and maybe ICE is going to come and arrest all of their workers.
And they've disconnected all the utilities.
And all of the businesses are gone.
And if my research is correct, maybe my numbers are a little off, but I looked online.
It's going to cost about $2000 a foot to reconnect the utilities.
And if they just abandoned that project, too, it's going to leave it on the city's onus to pick it back up.
Thank you.
Hi, my name's Tim O'Brien.
This week we lost longtime Berkeley resident and titan of the 60s counterculture country Joe McDonald.
Although he was a hero of the anti-war movement, which I realize is out of vogue with this current city council, I'm hoping the city can find a way to commemorate his passing.
Such a move I feel is well within the wheelhouse of this council as it's an entirely performative gesture that requires no substantive action, political courage, or personal sacrifice.
And so, if your handlers from the JCRC and the real estate lobby allow it, I hope you all can find your way to honor the legacy of a great American.
A legacy of social justice so far in Berkeley's past that, like the anti-apartheid campaign for South Africa and the free speech movement before it, you can all safely pay lip service to it without doing anything meaningful to advance it.
Thank you.
Good evening, council members.
My name's Andrea Pritchett, and I filed a complaint with the police accountability board last June after having been manhandled by some police officers because I was trying to video them beating an unhoused man on the street.
I recently received this from the chief.
I carefully reviewed the complaint, including the complete investigation conducted by the Internal Affairs Bureau, the investigative findings provided by the Office of the Director of Police Accountability, which also included a report of the review by the police accountability board.
Sadly, I didn't cooperate with an Internal Affairs Bureau investigation, so I'm really curious to know what the chief used to reach her conclusion, that none of my allegations were sustained or even considered founded.
But interestingly, I never got anything from the PAB.
I never got anything from the director.
Our accountability mechanism is inoperable, dysfunctional, and for you to continue to give more weapons to the police that are unaccountable is irresponsible.
Thanks, Andrea.
Thanks.
This is a non-agenda item, right? Sorry.
Your card has to be down.
We have to have a card now.
Sorry.
I forgot.
So the first commenter online is phone number ending in 2-1-1.
Good evening.
My assistant, Roy, handed you some documents.
Please read them.
Respond.
You should respond.
Our business, EIDSTV, has been in business for 52 years.
We did over $200 million worth of sales.
We contributed over $1 million to the city of Berkeley finances, insurance tax, and license fees.
I wish, I hope, Eleanor Holland will answer my call.
I called the city many times.
We had very friendly talks a while ago, but she never returned my call.
Read me right now.
I do need to email.
And by the way, go down Telegraph.
Go down University.
Go down San Pablo.
Go down Shattuck.
Blocks are closed, shut down.
Businesses.
Bad, mega landlords destroyed these businesses.
We need to bring the good life to Berkeley again.
Mayor, EG, please give me a call.
And business work bring Berkeley great again.
Thank you.
Next is Eric.
Eric, you should be able to unmute.
Hello.
My name is Eric.
I'm from the project Streets of Equality here in Berkeley.
I wanted to talk to the council and the Madam Mayor about the horrible conditions of pro bag that we are allowing in this city.
Not only has construction gotten just completely unruly, but we are allowing them now to not only block sidewalks, but block the bicycle lanes that we have paid for.
This is outrageous to me as a citizen of Berkeley and even more outrageous as a disabled citizen of Berkeley.
We are not coming up with the standards that this city is known for.
We are having in the disabled community to find different ways around everything.
And it is almost every week.
Adeline Street has been shut down for months now.
You can hardly get to the East Bay Center for the blind on certain roads.
And I just don't know where to go anymore.
I don't know what to do.
It's absolutely outrageous.
Thank you.
Thanks for your comment.
Okay.
Next is Della Luna.
Della Luna, you should be able to.
Yes.
I want to talk about a serious issue on the Berkeley streets.
Right now, it is incredibly dangerous to walk as a pedestrian on the streets.
It's also really dangerous to drive.
I wanted to speak about the pedestrian lights that were put up.
I think, in theory, they are good.
But right now, the way they work, when the pedestrian pushes the lights, the lights start blinking at six different spots across the intersection.
And that split second, that actually distracts the driver.
And the lights need to start blinking from where the pedestrian pushes the button, and then radiate out from there, and then start blinking everywhere.
And I want to speak about the walkway, the pedestrian crosswalk at the Ashby BART.
That was under construction, and the improvements were being made, and there were signs, and there were cones.
And then all of that went away.
And before, the new crosswalk and the new system had put reflectors and lights, and before it got finished.
So, like, one crew finished, and the next crew didn't come.
There was a lag there, and someone just got hit in that crosswalk.
So, I think that this is something that the Public Safety Commission can work on to close those gaps.
Thank you very much for your comment.
Next is virtual meetings.
I'm sorry, this is Wendy Elston.
I just wanted to ask you, and now that you have the city auditor's report in mind to look at all of those recommendations in light of the flock contract coming to you in two weeks, is I think that they should be applied.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That's the last one.
That's nine.
We could pull one more card.
Moni, did you want to make, I don't know if Moni's still here.
Oh, well, we have Celeste Marks.
Oh.
Well, Moni didn't put a card in.
Sorry.
She didn't do a card.
Oh, sorry.
But I'm going to let her go, because she came up.
There you go.
Thank you, Celeste.
Thanks, Celeste.
Last Monday, I was with Marsha Poole an hour before she had just passed away, and I know that you're honoring her.
She's an icon of Berkeley.
She's one of the legends.
I'm doing a film called Legends of Berkeley, and I told her I'm going to film her about her busting a trafficking situation in Berkeley.
It's a pretty famous story.
If you don't know about it, you'll learn about Marsha Poole, and I just want to give honor to her memory.
And the other thing was dangerous intersections.
Thank whoever in the city that put together the sidewalk covering and clearing, because a Cal student got hit by a car, and she had been complaining about how the street had no marking of bright colors, so people couldn't see as they turned on college.
So we need to do that and more intersections, because too many people are getting hit, and I'm a pedestrian, and I often run across the crosswalk.
So please, drivers out there, please be careful and don't hit anyone.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
So we are now moving on to public comment by employee unions.
Are there any employee unions present? There's one online.
Berkeley CSU PTRLA.
Where'd you go? Should be able to unmute there.
Hi.
Good evening.
This is Jocelyn Goldsmith-Desena from the SEIU 1021 CSU PTRLA chapter.
Can you hear me okay? Yes.
Okay, great.
I'm just going to apologize in advance if you all hear me coughing, because I'm getting over being sick.
I am a public health worker at the WIC office, and I'm also a board certified lactation consultant, and the COPE coordinator for the CSU PTRLA chapter of SEIU 1021.
And I'm speaking tonight on behalf of our entire officer board.
We urge the Berkeley City Council to oppose the three proposed items that would reduce police oversight and accountability in the city of Berkeley, with particular attention to item 17 this evening.
The proposed amendments to reporting and permissive processes for the use of chemical agents, helicopters, and police dogs are presented under the pretense of efficiency.
In reality, they would eliminate critical layers of oversight and transparency by removing officer accounts in the report.
This is not a matter of efficiency, it's a matter of public trust.
Excuse me.
Weakening reporting and review requirements risks eroding the confidence that residents and workers place in the Berkeley Police Department, and in the city's commitment to accountability.
We are particularly alarmed by the proposal to lift the ban on the use of pepper spray and smoke for crowd control, as well as tear gas for special operations.
Reauthorizing the use of chemical agents that have been well documented to have harmful impact does not make our community safer.
Such measures would roll back reforms that were adopted in response to the over militarization of policing in cities across the country.
Reversing these reforms sends a troubling message at a time when many communities are calling for greater transparency in public safety practices.
As officers of a union representing members who work in the city of Berkeley, we strongly oppose these items.
We, like you, want our colleagues in public safety roles to be safe and supported as they carry out challenging and sometimes dangerous work.
But safety cannot come at the expense of accountability or community well-being.
We believe our colleagues should be equipped with tools and training that protect them and the public, not measures that risk causing unnecessary harm to the very people we serve.
As workers in the city of Berkeley, we are deeply concerned about expanding access to these weapons and reducing oversight around their use.
We strongly urge you to consider the broader national context of rising mistrust in government institutions and increasing concern about state violence.
Now is the time to strengthen transparency and community trust, not weaken it.
So we, the officer board of CSU PTRLA chapter of SEIU 1021 respectfully ask you to vote no on item 17 tonight.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Are there any other unions on? Okay.
All right.
We will move on then.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
So we are moving on to our consent calendar.
I normally would give us a little stretch break, but I think we've got a lot of things to cover.
So let's keep moving.
Are there any comments from my council member colleagues? I imagine there are a bunch.
Yeah.
We need to accept this material.
Expecting.
Yeah.
Council member Tracob.
I would like to.
Can I make a motion to accept both the urgency item and the supplemental? Yes, they both required two thirds vote.
So.
I move to accept the urgent item, which is a resolution condemning the.
On Iran and expressing support for for Chileans impacted by this crisis as well as.

Segment 3

our Supplemental Number 3 to Agenda Item 10, which is a Resolution Opposing the Bureau of Land Management, Oil and Gas Leasing and Drilling on California Public Lands and Parks.
Second.
Is there any opposition to adding both of these items? I think we need to take a roll call vote for the..
Sure.
Yes.
Okay, to accept both items, Council Member Kesarwani.
To accept the items, yes.
Yes.
Taplin.
Yes.
Bartlett.
Yes.
Tregub.
Yes.
Aye.
O'Keefe.
Yes.
Lackabay.
Yes.
Lunaparra.
Yes.
Humbert.
Yes.
And Marischi.
Yes.
Okay.
Those are accepted and the urgent item is added to the consent calendar.
Thank you.
Going to Council Member O'Keefe.
I did not expect to be first.
Um, actually, if you don't want to be first, I can also, I'd also like to move something else to the side to do that.
Okay.
So, um, one of our old business items, um, item 18 was the City of Berkeley's 2026 State and Federal Legislative Platform, which basically we took everything that you all said last time and we put it onto this one document, but I wanted it to be public so that people could see it.
Um, and then there was a friendly amendment that's being proposed that we also add, uh, support legislative and budgetary efforts to create a not-for-profit utility service to replace investor-owned utility programs, reduce the rate payer burden imposed by investor-owned utilities, and support community choice energy under the infrastructure policy priorities.
Um, and so I'd like to add that as well and then ask that we move that over to the, um, to the consent calendar.
Is there a second? Just need a second.
We don't need a second.
Sorry.
Yeah, so can we take a roll on that please? If you could just move it to consent, you don't have to vote.
Okay.
Great.
You can move it to consent if there's no objection.
Yeah, there's no objection.
Is there an objection? Okay, so that will save us a little bit of time.
Very good.
Okay, now Council Member Keith.
Thanks.
Um, yeah, I just have a bunch of disparate comments.
I want to make sure I got them all.
Um, I want to start by thanking Council Member Taplin for adding North Shattuck to the entertainment zone.
I was going to ask him for that, but he put it in the supplemental, so thank you so much.
Um, party in North Shattuck soon.
Um, I would like to, um, ask if I could co-sponsor item 10, Council Member Trager.
The one we just..
I would be deeply honored.
Great, thank you.
Um, good item.
And then I would like to be recorded as donating $250 to item 12.
And then, okay, those are the smaller things.
And then the larger thing I want to say regarding the AI items, I did actually want to go, um, early because I wanted to clear up any confusion there might be.
Uh, these, there's two AI items.
They are, uh, not in any way in opposition, so I had a couple people kind of speculating about that, and I just wanted to clear it up.
Um, I'm, uh, I wrote one, uh, Council Members Bartlett and Tragoop wrote another one, and, uh, what did I say? I said the wrong names.
Anyway, Bartlett and Tragoop wrote the other one, and, um, it's all good.
I think, I think what happened was both office, or all these offices, kind of saw a need for something to be, um, done in this area, and we all kind of did it at the same time.
Uh, I see my item.
I'll just speak about my item.
Um, uh, it's really designed to be much more, kind of, smaller and more practical than, I believe, the other item.
I'll, I'll let you guys describe it on your own.
I really felt like, um, just from discussing the issue with the City Manager, it seemed like, you know, this is a very new, pretty much lawless technology.
We don't understand it that well.
People are using it.
People should be using it in some context.
It's, it can be a really powerful tool for a lot of jobs, but, uh, we just, it seemed like it would be a good idea.
The City Manager and I agreed, uh, that there should be some sort of official City guidance for how to use it properly, because a lot of people, I think, feel really lost.
Like, what are the rules? There's some very, um, important issues of, like, maintaining privacy.
Um, people, we don't really, you know, I think it's important the City staff understands, don't just put a bunch of people's names into chat GPT, right? Like, that's not, um, uh, you know, we don't really understand where it goes, um, and that's, that's certainly problematic.
So things like that, it just seemed prudent to have a couple of clear guidelines about how best to use this, and so my item is just really trying to do that, and I think, um, like I said, I'll let the other Council Members speak to their item, which is a little, I think, just a little more, more, um, visionary than mine.
So I just want to assure, nobody has to choose between them.
I think I'm planning, I'm happy to support both, and thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Um, Council Member Chaplin.
Thank you, and good evening.
Um, on item seven, the Entertainment Zones, I'd like to thank my co-sponsors, Vice Mayor Ninopara, Council Members Castromani and Blackaby, the members of the Land Use and Economic Development Committee, as well as my fellow members of the Knight Council, and as Councilor O'Keefe mentioned, um, in the sub-two, uh, we have included North Strattec among the recommended stakeholder, uh, merchant stakeholders.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Blackaby.
Thanks, Madam Mayor.
Um, I'll just tick through a few of these items as well.
Um, thanks to Council Member Chaplin for authoring the Entertainment Zone Ordinance, allowing me to co-sponsor.
Um, I support, uh, entertainment and nightlife, even though I may not be the most, uh, avid, uh, partaker of it, but I appreciate it, and I, the importance to the City.
Um, having a couple of kids, uh, kind of limits your opportunities, but I like, I like, uh, the way this is going.
Uh, wanted to support, um, and thank, uh, Council Member, um, Bartlett and Traigub, and also, um, Council Member O'Keefe for their AI items.
Thanks to Council Member O'Keefe for incorporating a few edits, um, that I suggested on her item.
Um, my main takeaway is, it is important to have guardrails.
It is important to have a framework, but I also want to make sure that City staff feel encouraged to do a little experimenting safely, um, because I think there is a lot of opportunity, as long as we're responsible with it, especially at a period of time where we have real budgetary limitations and constraints.
Um, we need to find some other ways where we can scale, uh, and this may be one of those things as we move forward, um, carefully and responsibly.
So, a lot of the stuff that, uh, I worked with Council Member O'Keefe on was making sure we're sharing best practices internally.
If one department discovers, uh, some really interesting application of it, we should share that with other departments, because there's probably a need for that across the organization.
Um, and then we just continue to revisit the framework, continue to revisit the, the rules on a regular basis, because as we know, this is moving really quickly, and so whatever we adopt tonight, uh, may look a lot different in, uh, six months, let alone six weeks or six days.
So, again, but I just want to credit them for their leadership on this, and I think it's really important that we're taking this step.
Um, on the, um, on the micromobility regulatory framework, thank you to Council Member Traigub for authoring it.
Thank you, uh, for allowing me to co-sponsor it.
This is a really important, uh, thing in many of our districts, just making sure that, um, micromobility devices are better regulated, that there is more safety, that there's more, um, uh, onus on the providers of the, of the micromobility devices, as well as the riders, to take responsibility.
Uh, we need to figure this out, because, again, it is an important transportation solution, but in its current state, it is causing real hazards on sidewalks and on streets.
Uh, a lot of us have constituents who, um, find it very difficult to navigate, um, sidewalks and streets with the devices, and we need to figure this out, as quickly as we can.
So, I appreciate Council Member Traigub's, um, authorship of this, and allowing me to ride along, as it were.
Um, also, Council Member Traigub, I believe I'm a co-sponsor on number 10.
Is that right? Just to..
You are.
Okay.
I was going to add you, but..
Thank you.
Sorry, okay.
Oh, you can, you can add, but thank you for authoring this, as well, on the opposing the, uh, oil and gas leasing on California public lands.
Uh, on item 12, um, on the Berkeley Free Clinic, I'd like to record our offices, um, uh, relinquishing $250 towards the item.
Thank you to Council Member, uh, Vice Mayor Lunapara for authoring this item, and on item 13, um, thank you so much, as we're thinking about, um, housing zoning questions and concerns across the city, that we're making sure we're looking at other high resource areas, not just the corridors, as we're moving forward.
And so, Council Member Humbert's, um, item to look at what might be possible on Telegraph, on Claremont, and other places around the city.
I just, again, appreciate, um, your authoring that, and your leadership on that.
And that's it for now.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Traigub.
Uh, thank you, Madam Mayor.
Um, uh, first of all, on item two, which is the re-establishment of the Downtown Berkeley Property and Business Improvement District, would, would like to thank, um, Eleanor and the entire Economic Development Team, uh, as well as, um, the City Manager and Deputy City Manager, David White, who, um, attends the monthly, um, Downtown Berkeley Association meetings, uh, and, of course, uh, would be very remiss in not thanking John Koehner, who is, uh, sitting right here, um, excited to see this, um, move forward.
Um, Downtown Berkeley may have its challenges that we're working through, but it is a downtown that is on the rise.
Um, next, um, I would like to, um, I would like to thank, uh, Council Member Kaplan, uh, for his Entertainment Zone item.
Uh, uh, it was a very popular item, so while I did not get a chance to be a co-sponsor of this one, I'm excited to support it and, uh, continue to partner, uh, with your office on next steps.
Um, I'm very proud of Berkeley for taking a thoughtful and proactive approach to artificial intelligence.
AI is already here and evolving rapidly.
Whether we welcome it or not, it is shaping how we live and work.
Our responsibility as a city is to educate ourselves, protect our workers, and thoughtfully explore how this technology can serve the public good.
Even when the path forward is complex, it is important that we try to stay ahead of these developments rather than simply react to them later.
And in that spirit, I'm proud to be respectable, respectively, an author and a co-sponsor of two AI items before us tonight.
Item eight, uh, with Council Member Bartlett, uh, the Berkeley Rule, uh, the Artificial Intelligence Municipal Framework, as well as item 11, um, by Council Member O'Keefe, uh, Citywide Guidelines on Artificial Intelligence.
Um, on the, uh, our referral, uh, item nine, Strengthening Berkeley's Micromobility Regulatory Framework to Improve Public Safety, AD Accessibility, and Operator Accountability, I would like to, um, in addition to thanking FITES for their positive recommendation, um, and Council Member Blackaby for a stock partnership, uh, I'd like to express my deepest gratitude to our public works staff, especially Wahid Amiri for, uh, his tremendous help in developing the micromobility safety item before us tonight, as well as his team that we worked with closely.
Um, I know that, um, this is only one step, and it is not lost on me that probably in the foreseeable future, I will still have to continue to move, uh, scooters out of the way if they're parked illegally, uh, but I'm prepared to do so whenever I see that in my district, while also working on, uh, meaningful policies such as this one, uh, and I would like to, uh, just briefly on item 10, uh, uh, make sure we are adding, uh, Council Members, uh, Blackaby and O'Keefe as co-sponsors, and, um, I think there was a question, uh, if, if there, if there was someone else interested, I, uh, perhaps Vice Mayor Lunaparra, I just couldn't remember if there was a conversation, but would be happy to add you.
We do have a spot available, um, and, um, appreciate your support for admitting these amendments, uh, into the item, um, uh, and lastly, item 12, Berkeley Free Clinic critical renovations, um, I would like to relinquish $150 from my G-13 account, uh, with gratitude to the Vice Mayor for this item, um, and her co-sponsors.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Can I just respond quickly? I would love to be added to item 10.
Thanks.
Consider it done.
Okay, thank you.
All right, moving on, Council Member Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Um, I'd like to, uh, as on item number 12, the Berkeley Free Clinic critical renovations item brought by Council Member Lunaparra, I'd like to contribute, um, $250 from our office account, uh, D-8's office account, and with respect to, um, item number 13, which is pitch the project to increase Telegraph and Claremont housing, I'd like to add Council Member Kesarwani as a co-sponsor with her permission, um, and I want to say with respect to this item, my proposal to increase the housing on Telegraph and certain places up in the Claremont, I want to thank planning staff and the City's, City Attorney's Office for their assistance in preparing the item.
I also want to thank the Land Use Committee for their excellent input, which I was happy to incorporate, and also thank my colleagues on the Agenda Committee for being open to putting this on consent.
I just want to make a note of a couple of minor changes to the item that were provided in the supplemental that we filed.
The first is that I wanted to make sure that staff had flexibility within the item's direction around base heights to make sure we are studying what height options will enable us to optimize the provision of affordable housing, so we're not just automatically defaulting to a certain base height if it won't actually result in more housing, and might in fact reduce provision of inclusionary units.
And second, also to specify that the staff work would include any general plan amendments and attendant work that may be necessary.
I think this was implied in the original item, but with input from the City Attorney's Office, I wanted to make it explicit.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Vice Mayor Lunapara.
Thank you.
First, I was proud to author this urgency item condemning the Trump administration's illegal declaration of war in Iran, and expressing the City Council's support for our constituents impacted by this crisis.
I'm also very excited to co-sponsor the Entertainment Zone item.
I want to thank Council Member Taplin for developing this item and inviting me to co-sponsor.
Data shows that our communities are safest and small businesses are the most profitable with increased foot traffic, so I look forward to seeing how these changes increase the number of street events on Telegraph and Durant and Southside.
I was also proud to author item 12, the discretionary item supporting critical renovations at the Berkeley Free Clinic's new location in West Berkeley.
The Berkeley Free Clinic has served as a cornerstone of community health for over five decades, and I'm really happy that we're able to provide them with some much-needed financial support this evening.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
And Council Member Bartlett.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I'm just running through this packed agenda here.
I'm very excited about item three, the Ashby-Bart East Lot Transit-Oriented Development RFP framework.
So this is wonderful.
So at long last, the City is poised to release its RFP to get people applying to fulfill our dreams at the East Lot, Ashby-Bart.
Really excited about that, all these years.
The entertainment zone ordinance.
Thank you, Council Member Taplin, for this.
I understand that the Lauren District, the South Berkeley District, could not be in due to the geographic spacing of our booze halls.
So I do want to flag this for the staff, if anyone's listening.
I see you over there.
I see you over there.
When they look through this, could they possibly find a way to get us in there, too? We used to have, for years, illegal street parties in South Berkeley.
It was wonderful on the sidewalk.
So we know how to do it.
We can have a good time.
We know how to have a good time.
Trust us.
The Berkeley rule, and this is my item here, worked on it really hard, came out of conversations with the City Manager.
Looks like there was a scattershot approach evolving.
We're going to hit it by vendors.
And so we thought it'd be interesting to kind of not let AI happen to us, but let us happen AI.
And so essentially, this is an effort to articulate community vision, community values, and implant that into the industry.
And let's see what comes out of that.
And I also want to thank Council Member Keefe, and I'm a co-sponsor on your wonderful item with you and Mr.
Blackaby on a more regulatory approach to the industry.
Thank you for that.
We're providing leadership, and it must need a time.
Trust me.
$250, please, to my office, to the Berkeley Free Clinic.
Thank you, Vice Mayor Lenapara, for that.
You do great work over there.
I really do.
And then I want to thank Council Member Humbert for your excellent work on the pitch item.
This is very delicate work.
Here's to you, Madam Mayor.
Very delicate work here to increase housing equity everywhere in Berkeley.
And thank you.
I'm happy to help you in every single way.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Casarwani.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
I also wanted to just chime in and recognize item three, the request for proposal framework for the Ashby East lot.
This is very exciting, and we look forward to both BART stations breaking ground soon.
Item number seven, I want to thank Council Member Taplin for the entertainment zone item.
I was very pleased to co-sponsor that.
And item number 12, Council Member Lenapara, I'd like to be recorded as donating $100 for the Berkeley Free Clinic critical renovations.
And then finally, item 13, I want to thank Council Member Humbert.
Well, I guess you're all authors.
Thank all of you, the Mayor and Council Member Bartlett, for this item to rezone Telegraph and Claremont.
And I'm very pleased to be able to co-sponsor that item.
That's it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Just going to add my excitement about the Ashby BART East lot RFP and applaud the addition of the universal design standards and 25% affordability going to units reserved for people with disabilities.
So very excited about that.
And I don't think it's clarified on there, so for Berkeley Free Clinic, I know I'm listed as a co-sponsor, but $250 from my office.
Okay, very good.
We are now going to move on to public comment for consent calendar items and information items only.
Come on up.
Good evening, Council.
John Keener, Downtown Berkeley Association.
I want to thank Council and staff for the work and the renewing of the Downtown Berkeley P-BED, and particularly Council Member Tregub and his partnership and the City Manager and all the staff.
This is a 10-year renewal.
We did five for the first time in 2012, and then 2017, another 10 years.
It's about a 20% rate increase, about 8% to 9% is structural cost changes, and then about 12% we're doing a safety ambassador program, which we rolled out in January, because that was a key issue.
We talked to over 500 stakeholders in the downtown.
There's an ability within five years for the Board also to trigger perhaps another 10% for a larger economic development and retail attraction role.
I also just want to thank you, particularly Council Member Taplin for the economic zone works.
We fully, fully support that.
As I spoke earlier, we need to support events, joyous events in the downtown.
So thank you all very much.
Thank you.
I think it's set for two minutes.
It should be one, right? And I'm sorry, in the back, could you please take your conversation outside? Thank you.
Okay.
Good evening, Mayor Ishii, members of the Council.
My name is Daniel Swofford.
I'm the Executive Director of the North Shattuck Association Business Improvement District.
I just wanted to come out in person and thank Council Member Taplin and other members of the Subcommittee on Entertainment Zones for the vision and for the effort and for the encouragement to get more people out to support our small business community.
The district is wholeheartedly behind the initiative and will be there as a true partner with this.
So thank you for that.
And just incidentally, in the spirit of entertainment zones, I invite you to come to North Shattuck and walk down the street.
New street banners just went up, showcasing 13 different Berkeley artists from all over the city to create a wonderful outdoor gallery.
So those are the kind of things you can do when walking and getting into different restaurants and bars and just really celebrating community in the way that so many of us are excited to do this spring and summer.
So appreciate you all.
Thank you.
My name is Cherie King and I do tennis tournaments at San Pablo Park.
Last year I have had a contract with the Park and Rec for over 10 years and have generated a number of $400,000.
This year I generated $66,000.
Because I am the officer of Operation Pride, I also do tennis lessons and I also support the Park and Rec goals and objectives.
What's important about doing tournaments is that I represent the United States Tennis Association.
I am on the board.
I have done tournaments.
I've received the tournament of the year twice.
And what happens is when you bring a tournament to town, they spend money.
I did a tournament last weekend and I had 27 kids and 50 parents came to see their children play.
I do one every year.
I have a small after school program and that after school program is a low income program.
And I'll just say I changed that to fit your budget program.
Because what it does is..
Thank you.
Thanks so much.
Was that related to the entertainment zones item? You know, I need to practice the one minute.
No worries.
I know it's tough.
Thank you for coming.
I appreciate your public comment.
Thank you.
Good evening all.
My name is Tom Parrish.
I'm the Managing Director of Berkeley Repertory Theater and a member of the Board of the Downtown Berkeley Association.
And I'm here to voice my support for the renewal of the Property-Based Improvement District downtown as well as the entertainment zones.
And thank you all for your efforts to increase the vitality of our city.
Thanks.
Thanks, Tom.
Hello.
I'm David Mayeri.
I'm the CEO of the UC Theater.
I'm here to support item number two as well as item number seven.
Both of them I think are very important for different reasons.
The watching John's work over the last 10 years in the downtown period, it really has brought a great sense of community.
Kept the streets clean.
Goodwill ambassadors there to answer questions and really help to foster a great sense of community.
Regarding the entertainment zones, it's a great opportunity to revitalize different areas of the city, to create this outdoor activity.
It'll generate revenue for small businesses, create safer streets, and just generally I think improve Berkeley as a place for people to go out, enjoy, and hang and have a good time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Quiet in the line.
Okay.
Hello everyone.
My name is Sahar Maliki and I'm a resident.
So I wanted to comment on one of the resolutions that I think was put on the consent table.
As an Iranian American, I just wanted to express my disappointment as a voice of Iranian people.
I know that they are not for this consent table, this resolution.
I think that the reasons that were expressed was financial and peace.
I think that Iranian people want to be helped.
There was a massacre occurred in Iran about two months ago and they look at it as a help from outside.
They don't look at this as a war against them.
Also as an American, I think that this may help to peace in the long run.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi.
Carol Morozovic speaking in my individual capacity because I'm not authorized by the Peace and Justice Commission, but I'm unable to reach the author of the item who is Iranian.
Last night we actually voted on a recommendation on Iran and I will read that out.
Adopt a resolution reaffirming the commitment of the city of Berkeley to international peace, opposing the war in Iran, an unconstitutional war initiated unilaterally by the U.S.
President without congressional authorization, and expressing solidarity with the people of Iran and the right to self-determination.
I did add the friendly amendment about the unconstitutionality.
We did pass this last night.
I am going to add, actually, I was lobbied most of the day to not vote for this and that council would never pass an item like this.
It's going to be interesting when I share it with the Commission.
Thank you.
Thank you.
About that urgency item, is it already passed? There was no opposition, so it's passed by consent already or you will be swayed by our..
Okay.
Oh yeah.
So I wrote a resolution to end the war before it starts about Iran.
Must have been 12 years or so ago because it was in the crosshairs of the project for a new American..
Yes, century.
And it was..
This is very mild compared to that one and yet that one passed unanimously.
And look, Berkeley did it.
Berkeley staved off the war on Iran for all these years.
It's very important to take this stand and I have many Iranian friends who live here who would be in favor of it, who are in favor of stopping the war because of all the suffering that war causes.
And of course, it's more complicated than that.
So you know that the 85 seconds to midnight, the doomsday clock, the war on Iran will affect all of us.
Thank you.
Well, I just wanted to offer my hearty support to anything that's going to the Berkeley Free Clinic.
That is a beloved institution.
I think they do great work and you know it's still my hope that we will have a special care unit.
Still my hope that one day we will find those ambulances, those beautiful wheelchair accessible transport bins.
And I believe that we should continue in whatever way we can to build out the philosophy of the Berkeley Free Clinic, which was about community collaboration, which was about not calling the police, but providing care.
And I continue to ride my bike through the streets of this town.
I continue to see people who are in great distress and have no idea who to call.
And if anybody on this council can advise me, I'd love to hear it.
Because right now we have fire trucks and police.

Segment 4

Put somebody to sit down with a cup of coffee and talk to somebody.
Offer them some care, some transport, some love.
Thank you.
Thanks Andrea.
My name is Rithwick.
I just wanted to quickly express support for the AI items and I guess I feel positive that Berkeley can lead in terms of AI policy.
I'm also a recent graduate from the University of California here and I studied and researched both AI implementation and policymaking.
Berkeley is internationally regarded as maybe the number one place to study both of those topics.
And so I also think looking at the economic dashboard packet here, which encourages city-university connections, I think having advice from staff, professors, students from the university could mean a lot for the implementation and execution of those two AI policies.
Okay.
And Mayor, we have 12 speakers online.
So we'll go to the first speaker.
That's Meryl Siegel.
Is it possible to speak about AI too? No, I'm sorry Phoebe, you had your time.
Meryl Siegel.
I saw your shirt though.
I think your shirt says it.
Well, I don't need to stop all the way.
Narrow applications are okay.
Thanks.
Meryl Siegel, you should be able to speak.
Thank you.
Regarding the entertainment zone ordinance, it is really great, but there's a complication.
And I was requesting that the city council remove the item from consent and put it to action.
And the reason why is that the city right now is in a $30 million budget deficit.
But because this item would require staff time, and there is no real urgent need for this measure.
And because it's still not possible to understand the effects of this measure on the San Pablo Avenue specific plan, because the way it's written right now, it's like maybe the part of San Pablo Avenue that's south of University Avenue will be included, but the rest of San Pablo won't, but there will be a Gilman district.
I appreciate the thought that went into this measure, but- Thanks, Meryl.
Phoebe, can I just say one- I'm sorry, Meryl, your time's up.
Thank you.
Okay, next speaker is listed as Iran.
Good evening, council members.
I stand by Sahar earlier.
I want to announce that I'm deeply opposed to the Iran resolution item, and request that it be pulled from the consent calendar and moved to the action calendar for full public discussion.
As an Iranian-American who lived under that regime for 27 years, and has first-degree and second-degree family members currently living in Iran, I'm telling you, and on behalf of all Iranian people, this is not peace.
This is not war against Iran.
Iranian people want this help.
This is war against a fascist theocracy that murdered, brutally, 40,000 people.
Innocent people.
Unarmed people.
And whoever voted for this, standing by that fascist theocracy, I want you to understand the gravity of this matter, and don't just fall for any propaganda that you see.
Thank you.
Next speaker is Mohsen Houshmand.
Oh, where'd he go? Ah, there he is.
Mohsen? Hi.
Hi, everybody.
So, I want to confirm the Iran icons and Sahar speaking regarding the Iran war.
It's not the war against Iran.
It's a war against the fascist regime, and I oppose those resolutions, and I highly appreciate if I request it be pulled from the consent calendar and moved to the action calendar for full public discussion.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Marjan Hafezi.
Good evening.
Thank you for taking my comment.
I also want to oppose this resolution, just because living inside Iran and living the conditions with execution, torture, political prisoners, systematic oppression of women, thousands of young people have been killed.
So, why are we even suggesting this humanitarian act to stop? If any of us live under those conditions, that is what we would want people to do for us.
Ninety million people are asking for help, and here, thousand miles away from Iran, we sit here and take the authority to speak for those 90 million people.
So, please, no on this resolution.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Eric Nearsborough, Borough.
Hello, Council Members and Madam Mayor.
I wanted to talk about the agenda number nine.
Igor Trego and Blackabee is author of Micromobility Accountability.
I'm legally blind.
My fiance is totally blind.
We work with guide dogs.
The scooter epidemic, and I'm going to call it an epidemic, because it's a major issue here in this city.
We are literally falling over scooters every day.
If we don't bring our guide dogs with us and just choose to use our canes, we are putting ourselves at risk for injury.
Not only us, but all of our fellow disabled people, all of our fellow aging people.
This is a problem.
We need a solution.
And I believe that Igor and Blackabee have that solution.
We need to make sure that these companies are held accountable.
Thank you.
Let's see.
They spoke, and they spoke.
And they spoke.
Next is Katrin.
You're unmuted.
You should be able to speak.
Katrin, are you there? Yes.
Can you hear me? Yes.
Yes, we can.
Okay.
I am also an Iranian, and I'm here to share an Iranian perspective about the current crisis in Iran.
I'm deeply opposed to the resolution that was done yesterday about Iran.
The people of Iran are in a war with the regime, and that was happening for 47 years.
The regime of Iran has maintained a posture of hostility toward Western countries and has supported destabilizing activities and terrorism in the region and beyond.
What we are witnessing today is the culmination of a long struggle between the Iranian people and the ruling regime.
In the recent events, this situation has developed into a severe humanitarian crisis that requires immediate international attention.
We urge observers to set aside partisan political biases and recognize this situation for what it is, a humanitarian crisis that demands serious international concern and response.
Thank you.
I, as an Iranian – yes.
Thank you.
Sorry, your time is up, but thank you for your comment.
Next is Sue Smith.
Hi.
I actually have a couple of friends that want to speak, and they're not – they're having trouble getting their Zoom hands recognized.
What can they do? Well, there's a long list, so we haven't – maybe we just haven't got to them yet.
Okay.
Okay.
Then my comment is I, too, agree with the scooter issue.
I'm 75 years old and I am terrified that walking on the sidewalk in our dimly lit streets, I'm going to bump into one and fall and break bones.
We hope you can find a solution.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next speaker is Mojgan Madizadeh.
You should be able to unmute.
Can you hear me? Yes, now we can hear you.
Hi.
Thank you for taking my call.
I just want to share a perspective that is often missing from discussion, like the resolution being introduced tonight.
The regime that rules Iran is not reformable.
For more than four decades, it has survived by repression, violence, and deception.
It doesn't respond to goodwill or appeasement.
It responds only to strength.
I remain in close contact with family members in Iran.
What they are describing is deeply troubling.
The regime has evacuated almost all of its bases and is placing missile launchers in heavy populated areas.
Missile launchers in heavy populated areas, holding meetings in hospitals, and storing weapons in schools, effectively using civilians as human shields.
This is the reality people inside Iran are living with.
Many of us have disagreements with the president's domestic policies.
But we must be honest about the stakes here.
The current confrontation is not simply about geopolitics.
It's also about protecting the Iranian people and defending our national security and the security of our allies.
Thank you for your comments.
I'm sorry.
Your time is up.
Next is David.
David, you should be on mute.
Hi.
Yes.
I'm actually – I went to Berkeley and lived in Berkeley.
And Berkeley is always known for human rights, from South Africa to Nicaragua and so forth.
But I think right now the council is on the wrong side of the history.
And people, especially Loni Parra's other representative, you've got to live under Sharia law to really understand us.
Two months ago, not only did they kill 40,000 people, a few years ago they killed on their women's rights freedom that was all over.
They shoot people in their head, in their eyes.
They executed people in the hospital.
This is a 9-11 moment for us.
This is a bin Laden coming in, he says, anyone who comes out is going to get shot.
Anyone who's arrested is going to get shot.
They call them savagery.
And no one in Iran, the 90 million people, they're unarmed.
It's like in North Korea.
And the internet is blocked.
If you want to do something right, say how you can have internet, because they're jamming the satellite signal.
You're in the wrong side of the history today.
And I send you guys a ticket to go to Taliban in Afghanistan or in IRGC to see it, how the Sharia law works, as a woman, as a sister, as a mother.
Thank you very much for your comment.
Your time is up.
Next is Megan Naseri.
Thank you, council members.
Me too.
I would like to roger all my fellow countrymen and women out there.
On January 8 and 9, 2026, millions of Iranians took it to the streets and the regime responded with extreme violence.
In less than 48 hours, more than 33,000 protesters were massacred and 1,000 more were imprisoned and executed.
Yet the Secretary General of the United Nations remained silent and instead congratulated the regime on its anniversary.
This is very similar to what you're doing now.
Millions of Iranians protesting empty-handed under internet blackouts.
They cannot defeat a heavily armed regime alone.
Targeted military action is not only a moral responsibility, it's an opportunity to help Iranian people free themselves from a regime that threatens both citizens and global security.
And while this suffering continues, we see vigils in the Bay Area.
Morning.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate your comment.
Next is Alana Auerbach.
Good evening, everyone.
I encourage you to donate more funds to the Berkeley Free Clinic, please.
It is a treasure, a treasure in our community.
I want to support, no surprise, your emergency item.
Wherever anybody thinks about the horrors that are happening to so many people right now, this war is illegal and it is unconstitutional.
So no matter what you think, what your politics are, those are the facts.
So we must oppose it.
We must support our waning democracy.
Please know, Iranians are not a monolith.
I know people in Iran.
I know people here in our community who are highly opposed to the thousands of people who have been murdered and who are suffering right now because of this war, because of the expansion of basically the gossification of the world.
You need to oppose this war.
Alana, thank you.
Your time's up.
Next is Jeff Lomax.
Thank you.
I must say, I feel like there's a real internal inconsistency in terms of when we choose to speak out or not speak out on issues of international affairs.
And in the case this evening, I'm swayed by the comments of Iranians who have constituted the majority of the views here.
So I would just like to understand more explicitly why we sort of pick and choose our issues on international affairs.
It's like I say, I see no consistency.
And I think that's in itself a problem and needs to be addressed in terms of why we're doing these types of statements under certain conditions and not under others.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Zoom user.
Zoom user, you should be able to unmute.
Thank you, Councilman.
I agree with my country, Iranian.
I think the free and brave of this great land have sacrificed so much that they should try to do the right thing.
Iran has been in a war with occupying regime, whereas it pays foreign gunmen to come in with the help of automatic anti-air machine gun, mow down a decent citizen and 40,000 plus.
It's easy to sit down in the United States comfortably and to be totally disconnected with the emotional effect that is going on.
If this does not stop, then God help the Iranian because there will be massive suicide due to the depression.
There's no way this can be tolerated.
This issue has been created by superpower because Iran was doing so good, and it is our jobs to make sure that it's ended.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is a phone number ending in 211.
As many of you know, I've been in Berkeley for 62 years.
Beautiful town, beautiful city.
I miss that.
It's no longer the case.
The fact is, we lost a lot of businesses in Berkeley because the structure of the city, parking meters are driving right away.
Our business was rated number three.
The Iron Mace is an important number of people visiting our four stores, three in Berkeley and one in San Francisco.
As far as the Iran situation, no way in hell does Trump or his or Netanyahu have any right because the victims now are innocent civilians.
I don't care about the Iranian government.
Yes, they're horrible.
I don't care how they treat women.
In Egypt, University of Cairo, my friends, females wear bikini in Cairo University swimming pool.
We're very different.
I think we should take religion out of all societies.
Thank you very much, and I will call you again.
I'll talk again.
Take care.
Thank you.
Next speaker is Sunny.
Sunny, you should be able to unmute.
Oh, hi.
I will wish everyone there Happy Women's Day.
It's a great honor that you're all celebrating the Women's Day and you have the freedom.
But the same freedom is missing in Iran for the women.
If you have seen the recent Iranian soccer team where they were playing in Australia, they got asylum there because they were scared to death.
Once they go back to Iran, they might be persecuted or they might be murdered.
So this is a reality, guys.
So let's not talk about politics like Democrats or Republicans, right? The important thing is the regime is fanatic.
They have been executing a lot of Iranians.
It has been there and verified.
So you need to understand and balance that.
Where are all the Palestinian people? You know, the Iranian are also humans.
No, you need to show the support.
Forget about who.
Thanks for your comment.
Your time's up.
Next is a caller with a number ending in 060.
Should be able to unmute.
Star six to unmute.
Oh, there.
They're gone.
Next is Nageen.
Hi, everyone.
Thank you for having us tonight.
I'm also Iranian-American, and I wanted to just make a couple of points really quickly.
One is that with all the horrific things that has been happening in Iran since December, it's very troubling for the diaspora about, like, to see what the media coverage, to see what the media coverage, lack of media coverage, or if there is media coverage is completely skewed.
The American people are confused.
And the other point that I wanted to make is the problems that are happening in Iran, they're not thousand miles away.
They are very soon, if it's not stopped, they're going to reach here at home.
I grew up in Iran, and many like myself, we know what kind of a mind frame and ideology this regime has.
And I think everyone in the United States, Republican and Democrat and independent, this should be a bipartisan goal to eliminate this regime, because their goal and ideology is to eliminate us.
Thank you for your comments.
Thank you.
Next is Stephanie.
Stephanie, you should be able to unmute.
Hello, can you hear me? Yes.
Apologies for the name.
Actually, on Zoom, I signed in the wrong way.
My name is Bob Aksani.
I'm actually a commissioner on the City of Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission.
I was the author of the resolution that we discussed last night at the commission meeting and was adopted to be recommended to the City Council.
What I wanted to say is that a lot of the comments you're hearing – I was able to join for the last five minutes – is really essentially, frankly, a trauma response.
A lot of the comments from the Iranian population to what the Islamic Republic has done to the program.
This war is illegal, as stated in the resolution.
There was no congressional authorization obtained.
Therefore, it's an unconstitutional war.
Thank you.
Thanks for your comments.
Next is Kelly Hammer.
Hello.
I'll just make this quick.
Looking at history, when has U.S.
interference with another government made it better? Yes.
I think that we're hearing comments thinking that our interference is going to make things better for them, but so many times, the U.S.
interference has made things so much worse for the citizens of nations, and we've done that over and over around the world.
And so other than World War II, I can't think of a time when we've actually made things better.
Thank you.
Thanks, Kelly.
That was the final speaker on scene.
Okay.
I see that Vice Mayor Lenapara has her light on.
Thank you.
I just want to clear up some misconceptions about the resolution.
It opposes the Trump administration's elite circumvention of Congress and expresses support for the freedom and sovereignty and self-determination of all people, and including specifically the people of Iran.
It does not comment on the current government of Iran, and Trump's attack on our constitution will do nothing but make the possibility of a democratic Iran more unlikely.
I'm grateful to the Iranian members of the community who helped us draft this item.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
You know, I didn't vote for the resolution in the Gaza conflict because the community was not consensus on that matter, and here I'm hearing the same consensus.
I'm going to abstain.
Council Member Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor, and I want to say that listening here tonight to the Iranian Americans who've commented, you know, I have great sympathy for them, and I have no love for the horrific regime in Iran that came to power in 1979, but our resolution does not support that horrific regime.
It very clearly and concisely condemns the illegal nature of the war, which was not authorized by the U.S.
Congress, which holds the power to declare war.
I mean, I think it's as clear as a glass of clear water that Trump is acting unconstitutionally, and that's the nature of the resolution.
I support, again, the horrific regime in Iran.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council Member Keefe.
Yeah, I'll just say briefly, I'm also going to abstain on the resolution, but I do just want to make it clear that I respect the resolution.
I agree with it, frankly.
I have a policy of, that I've stated publicly many times, of not voting on things that have to do with international relations.
That's just a personal preference, but I wish everyone the best, and I wish for peace in Iran and the Middle East.
Thank you very much.
Folks, please.
Okay, so we are now voting on the consent calendar, so is there a motion to approve the consent calendar? So moved.
A second? Second.
Okay.
Let's take the roll.
I think that's okay.
To approve the consent calendar with the abstentions noted.
Council Member Kastarwani.
Yes.
Kaplan.
Yes.
Bartlett.
Yes.
Traeger.
Aye.
O'Keefe.
Yes.
Blackabay.
Yes.
Lunapara.
Yes.
Humbert.
Yes.
And Mary Ishii.
Yes.
Okay, motion carries.
Motion carries.
We are going to take a brief break because it's been two hours and we need to stretch, and then we'll move on to the action calendar.
We've got some public hearings coming up, and it'll give some time for folks to set up as well, so thanks.
Recording stopped.
Recording started.
Recording stopped.
Recording started.

Segment 5

Welcome to the meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Welcome to the meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Welcome to the meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Welcome to the meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Welcome to the meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Welcome to the meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Welcome to the meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Welcome to the meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Welcome to the meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Welcome to the meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Welcome to the meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Welcome to the meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
I'm joined here at the staff table by Anne Hirsch, the Land Use Planning Manager, Justin Horner, Principal Planner on the Policy Team, and Faye Mingham, Assistant Planner, who will be presenting on this item.
Take it away.
Thanks.
Thank you, Mayor Ishii and members of the City Council.
My name is Faye Mingham, Assistant Planner with the Land Use Planning Division.
Tonight I'll present proposed amendments to Title 23 of the Berkeley Municipal Code to update the regulation of non-conforming lot coverage, floor area ratio, residential uses in the R1, R2, R and MUR zoning districts.
I'll begin with a summary of background, followed by the current effects, and then we'll present the proposed ordinance amendments, and then after our recommendation.
The middle housing zoning changes were adopted on July 8, 2025.
Middle housing expanded the development potential in the affected zoning districts and established new objective development standards that cannot be exceeded.
Projects that meet these objective development standards can be approved ministerially through a zoning certificate.
Since adoption, middle housing project applications have been submitted.
Upon review, staff identified minor inconsistencies in the zoning ordinance that require fixing.
The problem staff identified in Section 23.324.050 is a pathway that requires a use permit for non-conforming structures that otherwise conform with development standards.
BMC Section 23.324.050 contains provisions for the maintenance, replacement, removal, expansion, and alteration of non-conforming structures and buildings.
Non-conforming buildings are pre-existing and do not conform with zoning.
A building may be non-conforming if it projects into the setback or exceeds maximum height or lot coverage, for example.
This section requires a use permit for additions and alterations to buildings with non-conforming lot coverage, FAR, and density.
The section conflicts with the policy intent of middle housing by requiring a use permit for residential additions and alterations that meet the objective standards but do not conform with the new minimum density.
This type of project is intended to be approved with a zoning certificate.
It also conflicts by allowing projects to exceed maximum FAR and lot coverage standards with a use permit.
It was not the intention of middle housing to require existing projects to meet minimum density when they proposed to add square footage, nor was it intended to allow projects to exceed development standards in any case.
To correct these inconsistencies, the proposed amendment exempts residential uses in the middle housing zoning districts from the provisions of this section, thereby removing the use permit pathways for non-conforming lot coverage, FAR, and density.
At its January 21, 2026 meeting, the Planning Commission agreed that this BMC section conflicts with the policy intent of middle housing.
The Planning Commission recommended the amendments for adoption by City Council and added language intending to prevent non-conforming projects from further exacerbating non-conformities.
However, this language inadvertently preserves the discretionary approval pathway by implying that a project that does increase or exacerbate a non-conformity could apply for a use permit to exceed maximum lot coverage.
Staff believes that this outcome was not the Planning Commission's intent because it continues to provide discretionary approval pathways for middle housing projects.
For these reasons, staff's recommendation excludes the Planning Commission's language addition.
Staff recommend that the City Council conduct a public hearing and adopt the first reading of an ordinance to amend BMC section 23.324.050.
Thank you.
I'm here for your questions.
Thank you very much.
We've opened the public hearing, but are there any questions from my council colleagues? Council Member Kisarwani? Yes, so if I understand correctly, are you saying that there is no pathway to pursue middle housing with a non-conforming structure, sort of non-conforming standards through a use permit? That's not possible with the amendments you're proposing? Correct.
If I understand correctly, yes.
Middle housing is approved with a zoning certificate if they meet the development standards.
Okay, so just so I understand correctly, so if it's an existing structure that's non-conforming and all of the additions are conforming with the middle housing development standards, you will still issue the zoning certificate, and that's what the cleanup is doing? Yes.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, any other questions? Okay, are there any comments on this item? We are on item number 14, amendments to BMC title 23 to update the regulation of non-conforming wall coverage, floor area ratio, and density for residential uses in selected zoning districts.
Okay, anyone in line? No comment.
Very good.
Is there a motion to close the public hearing? Second.
Do we need to take roll? No.
Any opposition? Okay, we have closed the public hearing.
Very good.
Are there any comments from my council colleagues? Move the item.
Okay.
Is there any opposition to approving this item? I do have a question, because I think where I'm hung up on is prior to the middle housing ordinance, somebody could come and propose something non-conforming and have the option to go to ZAB.
So we are, I just want to be clear, we are taking away that option for people.
They cannot do a non-conforming middle housing project now.
You can only do it with the middle housing development standards.
Correct? There's no, there's no option to go to ZAB in these zones if you want to do middle housing.
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
Sorry, so did you have any other? Ready to vote, that's fine.
Okay.
I did have one follow-up question.
If a middle housing proposal uses the density bonus, however unlikely that may be, then would they go to ZAB for a non-conforming? No.
How would that work? It would just be approved through the planning department? Yes, it would.
Yes, correct.
Okay, thank you.
Sometimes questions bring up questions, so it's good.
It's good we asked that.
Okay, very good.
Thanks everyone.
Is there any opposition to approving this? Okay, motion is approved.
Thank you very much.
All right, we are now moving to item 18, amendments to the Berkeley Elections Reform Act regarding the return of unspent public matching funds, reuse of campaign materials, campaign expenditures, and cost of living adjustments.
And I think Sam is on the line to present, is that correct? Yes, Madam Mayor, and I believe Chair Saganor is present as well.
Yes, Kit is here.
Does she want to? Oh, are you presenting? I'm sorry.
So Secretary Harvey had asked me to introduce the motion, and then he would give more detail.
Okay, sounds good.
Sorry about that.
That's fine.
So Kit Saganor, I'm the outgoing chair of the Fair Campaign Practices Commission that was established by the Berkeley Election Reform Act to ensure that municipal campaigns comply with campaign finance regulations.
In using BERA and applying it in real life, we've encountered passages that don't quite function as intended.
So we expanded and we impaneled an ad hoc committee that worked intensively with our staff secretary, Sam Harvey, Stephen Hylas, and Lauren Packard to craft language for the amendments that the commission adopted by unanimous vote and that we are presenting here to you.
Secretary Harvey will summarize the amendment and answer any questions, but I'd just like to point out that the amendments to Section 530 were sparked by a candidate wanting to know if he would be compliant if he used plastic long signs that he had from an earlier campaign.
We had to tell him that it was not permitted BERA, which was an environmentally unfortunate conclusion we had to come to because of the way BERA was at the time.
So I think you will be pleased to see in these amendments that we worked out a way to keep the process fair without forcing a campaign to throw away materials and replace them with new identical materials.
And there are some other amendments here that Secretary Harvey will talk about with you.
And, of course, any questions you have of me, I'd be happy to answer them.
Thank you, Chair Saganor, and good evening, Madam Mayor and Members of Council.
There are four proposed amendments before you.
As a reminder, in order to amend BERA, amendments must first be approved by CPC by a two-thirds vote and then subsequently approved by the Council by a two-thirds vote as well.
The First Amendment applies a rule that already applies to city candidates in Berkeley because it exists in state law.
But it would incorporate BERA so that it could be directly enforced by the FCPC.
This is known as the one bank account rule.
It provides that all candidate campaign insurances must be made from the campaign account, including the candidate's own money, with some exception for initial filing fees.
And so by incorporating this into BERA, it's not a substantive change for city candidates, but it would provide a more direct, explicit hook for FCPC enforcement.
The second change is the timeline by which candidates who participate in the city's public financing program must return any unspent matching funds following the election.
Currently, participating candidates receive matching funds at a six-to-one ratio and then must return any unspent funds by 60 days after election.
So for the 2024 election, 60 days fell on January 4th, 2025.
Now, the voting cycle immediately following the election ends on December 31st.
So candidates now have this sort of December 31st deadline and then a subsequent deadline a couple of days later.
Importantly, the clerk is required to meet immediately once he determines that any candidate who participated in the public financing program has failed to return any matching funds.
The proposal here is to move that deadline to return matching funds to December 31st to match the close of that ending campaign cycle.
This means that whether or not matching funds were returned would be reported on the report for that cycle, which is due the following month, to kind of clarify the timeline, make it easier for city staff to more readily determine whether a campaign hasn't returned any matching funds.
And then the third change here is the one the chair mentioned, which is the reuse of campaign materials.
We had a candidate who was a participating candidate in the public matching funds program, and we had to tell him that essentially when a candidate wishes to reuse old materials, those have to be treated as a contribution from your old campaign to your new campaign.
And under the city's public financing rules, campaign committees are prohibited from making contributions to another committee.
And then there's also a $60 contribution limit.
So this amendment would carve out an exception where a candidate could reuse old campaign signs, mailers, posters, door hangers, and similar items.
Now, in order to not receive an unfair advantage, not be able to receive either double dip, basically a double benefit of the public matching funds, the candidate would have to pay to be a fair market value of those items to offset that unfair advantage.
And so this would apply both to a candidate who is currently participating in the public matching program, as well as someone who had participated in the past or if they participate in the past as well as are currently participating.
And then the fourth change is a cleanup.
It's intended to be a non-substantive cleanup to some of the rounding language regarding how certain numbers that are routinely adjusted for cost of living are rounded just to streamline that.
So those are the four changes.
I'm happy to answer questions that Council may have.
Thank you.
A question from Council Member Humbert.
Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor.
And I do have one question, but I want to express my thanks to Secretary Harvey, Chair Saganor, outgoing Chair Saganor, and members of the FCPC for their detailed work.
They always do good work, in my experience.
I sat for a short time on the commission.
I believe that these are elections, which, of course, are always a political contest, and so I'm really happy to support these changes.
I do have a question, and that's, you know, sort of the way campaigns work.
Somebody affiliated with the campaign goes out and buys donuts out of his or her own pocket.
One bank account rule prohibit the campaign from reimbursing that campaign worker.
That's just an example.
It's fairly typical that, you know, that there might be expenditures by folks that are part of the campaign that then get reimbursed.
Is that an issue? Or is that a change in the rules? It might be a change in the rules, substitutively, for the re-referral of how the rules were converted in a state law.
So, it applies to candidates.
Certainly, if the campaign worker goes out and spends their own money, and they're not the candidate for that campaign contribution, generally, I think reimbursements do have an effect on the bank account rule.
But I don't think this amendment before you would put it in currency.
I guess, then, my question is, would it prohibit that sort of reimbursement at the campaign account made by someone who was with the campaign? You know, I don't know exactly how that would happen.
I haven't thought about it.
If I can, in what you and that change that already exists, I think that the Council Member's question is one that we can still get answered later, given that this is already in place.
But I'm also curious about that, because my understanding is that reimbursement allows..
Okay.
Council Member Trago.
Thank you.
Whether it stands for today or not is probably an issue.
But since the cost of living adjustment round, I wanted to clarify if the FCPT has action on any living adjustments under BEC last year for the 2026 election.
Yes, the FCPT updates every..
The City Clerk posted..
This has been updated for the 2026.
Posted to the City Clerk's website.
We brought the item to the FCPT, and it was, I think, January 25.
So, the FCPT updates every year for the 2026 election.
So, living adjustments for the beginning of the odd year in between the election years.
Okay.
And just to clarify, reimbursements on the reimbursement question, you know, not permitted for candidates..
All right.
Very good.
So, we have already opened the public hearing.
We just took council questions.
So, I will now open for public comment.
Is there any public comment on this item? Coming up.
So, I think Sam already addressed most of this, but my name is Seth Wick.
I'm one of the commissioners on the FCPC.
I just wanted to help clarify a little bit.
The intention behind the reuse section covers anyone who was a participating candidate previously and is now either a participating candidate or not, as well as if someone was previously not a participating candidate but now is a participating candidate, it's used to back the city for a reuse of material with matching funds.
That's implied in the way this is written, but I just thought I would clarify that.
Public comment on this item? Item number 15, Berkeley Election Reform Act regarding the return of unspent public matching funds, reuse of campaign materials, campaign expenditures, and cost of living adjustments.
Comments? No hands raised online.
Okay.
I will hear a motion.
I want to hear a motion to close the public hearing.
So moved.
Actually, can I still ask a question before we close? Okay.
Actually, the last comment prompted my question.
So, Sam, I'm trying to understand why a candidate wanted to reuse campaign signs or other material that could only be done matching funds.
So, does that mean then that it has to first raise an appropriate number of contributions to go up to the FTC and then wait for those matching funds?.

Segment 6

What is the effect of matching funds to transfer into their account before they can type up a fair market valuation? We would not have to do that.
It's the practical effect of actually paying the city directly is that it would essentially negate or deduct from the disbursement of the amount of funds they do receive as a result of participating in the program, regardless of whether they've received them or not yet.
Okay, so they can put it in the campaign.
Thank you.
I think it would be very hard to track that.
Anyone on the other public comment? There was a motion to close the public hearing.
There was a second.
Is there any opposition to closing the public hearing? Okay, the public hearing is closed.
Any comments? Move adoption.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You just want to say much for your work on this.
I do appreciate that we're able to use old materials because I think it's better than wasting them, especially when some of these materials are plastic.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And Sam, thank you also for your work as well.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Item is approved.
All right we are moving on to item 16 appeal of special assessment.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We'll then go through like we did before.
Council questions, public comment, closing the public hearing, having council comments, and then a vote.
So, thank you.
Thank you, Mayor.
Good evening.
Appellant, if you would like to sit so you don't have to stand during the presentation, it's up to you, but you'll have a little.
Okay.
Thank you.
Good evening again council members.
Jordan director of planning development.
I'm joined here at the staff table by David Lopez, the city's official Jeff Jensen assistant building official, and David Montez, a building inspector.
Thank you.
And I do have.
Deputy fire chief Colin Arnold on the zoom available to help answer any questions related to fire code or their activities in response to this.
So, as the mayor mentioned.
So, I'm going to start by giving you some background about staff's recommendation.
In spring of 2024, the city began hearing from neighbors.
Of 2750 cedar street complaints of unpermitted and illegal construction.
The subject property is a parcel with existing hazardous conditions located in a geological survey landslide zone.
It's located in a high fire hazard severity zone.
The site has steep slope.
It has an existing failing retaining wall with soil visibly eroding onto the building area.
And it's an L shaped parcel with limited access.
Upon inspection, we did observe that construction work was being undertaken without required permits.
In general, any unpermitted construction is considered unsafe.
The primary purpose of the building permitting process, including inspection and review of permits, is to ensure safety.
The primary purpose of the building permitting process, including inspection and review of plans, is to ensure is to protect public health, safety and welfare and to ensure buildings are constructed in a safe, durable and compliant manner.
In this case, legal construction was being performed on a parcel with hazardous conditions in close proximity to neighboring properties at a time when destructive wildfires had been experienced in other locations in California.
In an area which had experienced a serious landslide just the year before in 2023.
The architect, Mr.
Michael Tolleson, was adamant that the construction being performed was exempt from permit.
His interpretation of the code was incorrect and it was not accepted by the building official.
It is the building officials responsibility to interpret the building code and the building officials interpretation is supported by the International Code Council.
Their disagreement over the code interpretation is very explicitly covered in a staff report.
I won't go over it here in detail, but Mr.
Lopez and Mr.
Jensen are available to speak to that point if you have any questions.
They're going to apply for a building permit and multiple rounds of correspondence.
The city very clearly communicated to the app that a use permit was required to demolish the existing structure and to build a new structure and that the submitted drawings were inadequate for issuance of a building permit.
The architect refused to provide the proper plans and documents in order to justify code compliance.
In fact, the architect repeatedly threatened, verbally and in writing, that he would proceed to construction without building permits.
And ultimately, he did just that.
The city notified on multiple occasions that the illegal construction work being performed required permits, including a use permit.
From April through October of 2024, a city building inspector, primarily Mr.
Montes, performed 11 inspections of the property.
The planning development department issued six stop work orders, six orders to correct and two citations.
The fire department also had an inspector conduct multiple inspections during that time who also observed code violations.
The owners and architect ignored all the orders and citations.
Need to build without permits.
When the architect was not going to halt construction, the city requested an administrative warrant from Alameda County to protect the property and evade the illegal construction.
The city made the decision to evade the construction and granted us the warrant.
Subsequently, the city ordered the owner to remove all construction by October 25, 2024.
And we made it clear in that order that if they failed to do so, we would evade the illegal construction ourselves.
And we made it very clear that if we were forced to conduct the abatement ourselves, it would ultimately be at the expense of the owner.
The owner did not meet the deadline, exercised the warrant to evade the illegal construction, and stored the removed material on the property.
The abatement was completed on October 31, 2024.
It was performed by a licensed contractor with the Public Works Department.
In removing the unpermitted structure, the city incurred costs of $2831.
And we now seek to place a lien on the property to recover these costs.
We have slides with additional information, including a timeline and photographs upon request.
Of course, we're open to any questions you may have regarding this matter.
We strongly recommend that you dismiss the appeal.
Thank you very much.
We will now hear from the appellant for 7 minutes.
You don't have to take this whole set.
It's just to clarify.
You can have 7 minutes to speak.
Go ahead.
Thank you.
Okay.
For the record, this is RE B2024-02077, March 10th, 2026.
Would you mind speaking into the mic? You can adjust it so you can speak more directly to it.
See what I'm reading.
So I'm trying to do.
If you just tilt that top part up, we'll be able to hear you better.
There you go.
Yeah.
That's better.
Thank you.
Okay.
Item 1.
I'm Michael Tolleson, architect in California, 35 years.
License C-22075.
Documents for this summary include the 12-page lien appeal and the 7-page response to all court declarations by staff.
The following summary and digital copies of all documents are available upon request to Michael at MichaelTolleson.com.
Where CRC 105.2 is used herein is synonymous with R105.2.
Period.
Summary 2.
We believe our case has been made in our written statements and expect that they have been written in detail.
The following summary documents include supplements addressing staff errors and false statements in court declarations recently received.
Period.
Three.
Appeals seeks to resolve the body of misinformation currently infecting our efforts to repair and improve and exhibit legally, partially demolished family residence that has been in a deteriorating state since previous owners passing more than a decade ago.
Period.
Four.
The context of the dispute stems from staff failures to allow CRC 105.2 to be exempt from permit or even possess an awareness of its existence in city code.
We inform staff of our intention to use CRC 105.2 prior to commencement of work without reply.
Given the delays caused by the city's plan checking and the multiple departures of staff by resignation, reassignment, dismissal, and instructions by the council to impede review, we have chosen to use CRC 105.2 to begin temporary work to the allowed extent possible and to prevent further deterioration.
Staff has failed to respond to CRC 105.2 in any way and you will find it absent from any staff reply.
Period.
Five.
CRC 105.2 allows the construction of accessory structures of 120 square feet and decks of 200 square feet without permit, which may be combined and places no limit on the number of these modules.
We determined that we could construct three temporary modules of 120 square feet each, which would become incorporated into the completed framing of the proposed rehabilitated single-family residence upon final permit approval.
Period.
Six.
To ensure safety and craftsmanship, the architect provided continuous special inspection on a full daily basis as cited in CRC Chapter 17 for the entire duration of construction.
As well, the architect and owner, who is a structural engineer, were in daily communication.
To be sure the construction was always safe and always compliant.
Period.
The professional discussion that should have accompanied our approach has been undermined by staff, inspectors, neighbors, and even council members.
We have documented and responded thoroughly to the outlandish and hysterical misinformation used to describe our professional positions in physical implementation.
Period.
Eight.
We are requesting that the lien be removed, in addition to administrative fees already removed, and that reimbursed compensation be provided.
In request for separate punitive damages against the city, we are offering to construct the original one-bedroom, one-bath residence under the by-right laws referenced by Council Member Wengraf, included in our written statement.
This would eliminate any rational position to the two-bedroom, two-bath version in the same footprint and the same volume as we have proposed.
The Council has the authority to allow by-right approval tonight by our current permit, but our current permit will be issued regardless as an entitlement.
Note, importantly, that our plans for a future ADU are not a subject of this appeal.
Period.
Nine.
We have made every effort to provide creative solutions for the city, including temporarily dismantling the roof and walls and panels and offering to cover all work with fire-resistant tarps, only to have our cooperation overrun by city subcontractors without allowing us to complete our compromise commissions or secure bids.
Staff never informed the fire department of these solutions, and fire has failed to reply to three separate queries.
Period.
Ten.
As shown in photographic dating and court documents, the city provided neither a legal warrant nor a final inspection required by law prior to demolition, which we could easily argue makes the lien illegal.
We have chosen to continue our professional efforts, including responding to all questions in writing if requiring technical review.
Period.
Eleven.
Paul Mack, structural engineer and owner, is full of city endangerment, not ours.
The city weakened the concrete retaining walls as the end result of the deck demolition.
The wood deck, which is the distress deck, acts as a structural diaphragm.
The structural diaphragm acts in combination with the cripple walls and concrete retaining wall to form a CBC slash DMC code-recommended structural lateral force system.
It serves as a rigid lateral force-resistive system to withstand and resist any lateral loads from the slope and any seismic or wind loads acting on the structure.
The city's actions to remove the wood deck is a required structural system, removing or degrading the performance of the retaining walls.
Period.
Items 12, if needed.
Questions, if additional.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
So, are there any council questions? Is that a question? Council member, go ahead.
Thanks, Madam Mayor.
Thanks to the staff.
Thanks to the appellant for being here.
First question to the appellant.
Was your intention from the beginning to rebuild a primary? Could you speak up just a little bit? Sure.
Was it your intent from the beginning to rebuild a primary structure on that existing footprint? Yes, in both square footage and in volume.
We had made interior alterations in our proposal.
Okay.
So, it wasn't, you were not building an accessory unit.
You were building a primary unit.
No, we were building an accessory unit, which cleverly could be combined with the forthcoming framing, create the entire.
The key thing was the structure, which has been deteriorating for 10 years or more.
And our concern was, we're not going to have anything to reuse if we keep the structure in the way it is with the delays caused by the city.
So, our intention was to construct as much as we could legally.
And then when we got our permit for the proposal, we could connect them effectively into the total package, which would be then inspected in a normal way.
As I read the CRCR 105.2, this is about units like sheds, tool sheds, playhouses, garden structures.
This isn't going to be for a primary residence or a series of them to be combined.
It has an interim period in which it abides by 105.2.
And then the inspection for framing would be complete once we had our permit in hand.
Importantly, it does not suffer additional damage.
And we promised to use as much reuse material as possible.
Do you have other projects in your history where you've substituted your own for the building official and basically said, my reading of this regulation is X, Y, Z.
Therefore, go do it because that's my interpretation.
We have building for a reason, right, which is to interpret the code and have consistency in the city around safety and quality of construction.
104.1 of the code says that the building official needs to incorporate the intent and purpose of the specific code, which I have done.
I have built the tallest legal single family residence in the state, in Los Angeles, using every exception in the code to do it, all of which was legal.
I've done something kind of similar here.
Maybe a little more clever, but working with the inspectors to show them what I had used and working with the Los Angeles building department for the application of all of those.
I should say there were variances involved in those projects.
We don't see variances needed here.
I'm going through the timeline that came, again, in support.
It looks like there were multiple rounds of plan check and revision that you participated in, at least five initially, before construction began.
Yes, because I was getting responses.
You got responses and responded back and forth to those responses, right? There was an interactive process with you and the building department.
There was an interactive process, but the city never engaged in that.
Sorry, I just want to prevent us from going back and forth too much.
Did you have other questions? Okay, go ahead.
Yeah.
On the timeline, so you received the first stop work order on September 18th, right? You received that stop work order? I'd like to get that to you to make sure that I'm accurate.
I did receive them.
I don't believe it was six.
I believe it was four.
Okay.
But that's real.
All right, so you got one on 9-18.
And then what was your response to that stop work order? Again, I'll give these to you in writing, because I think they need to be read.
I've sent you a lot of information.
The answer is, did you stop work or not? No, but I informed the inspector that I was not going to stop work, and he failed to address 105.2.
Did you get a second stop work order on the 19th of September? That's correct, with my same response to him.
Okay.
Finally, I got so frustrated by their failure to reply to my responses that I insisted that we have a meeting.
During the meeting, only three of the attendees bothered to read my responses, and that is part of the problem.
Okay.
You got a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a stop work order over the span of the following month.
At any point did you stop work in response to those orders? No, because the reasons he cited were that the structure was unsafe.
The structure has never been unsafe.
The structure was legal and safe according to 105.2.
And then you had the meeting with city officials on the 16th of October where you were informed that it was an unpermitted structure after six stop work orders and that the city was going to seek abatement.
And we stopped, and we started removing structure, and we panelized it, and we laid it flat, and we offered to put tarps over it, which your fire resisted.
We got no response to that.
Fire tells me they never received that information, and my options were appropriate given those conditions.
We had a warrant.
We weren't given a warrant before the contractors came out and demolished everything.
You had, as I understand it, again, at least a couple of weeks' notice before that demolition occurred, right? This was not like a surprise, middle of the night, 24 hours.
It was a surprise because we expected a warrant.
We stopped work when the contractors got there.
Right, so you had six stop work orders where you hadn't stopped.
We had to demolish the structure ourselves, removing wood, reusing as much as possible, taking precautions for fire, all these things we were doing as we had been legally all along.
We did not receive a warrant until November 7th.
Check that date.
We stopped when the contractors arrived on October 1st.
All right.
My read of the timeline is you had six stop work orders.
You had a meeting with the city.
I will double check the timeline and give it.
Sorry, can you let him finish his questions? Go ahead.
We're repeating ourselves.
Okay.
I want to confirm that you had multiple opportunities here.
Not according to the code.
That's your interpretation of the code.
The building inspector gave you an interpretation of the code.
Okay.
I don't want to, sorry, I really don't want to engage in this back and forth in this way.
I think it's pretty clear that there were plenty of warnings that were given and you chose to adhere to them.
And so I'd like to move forward unless there are any other substantive questions.
Did you ever consult with the property owner during this process? Yes.
When you'd gotten.
And so he was sort of also.
He's the owner.
He's my client.
He's my.
Owner by private agreements.
I mean.
Based.
We still do.
Okay.
I have worked with him for 40 years.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
Okay.
Is there any public.
Okay.
Come on up.
And sir, if you could make room for this public comment.
I think he's going to sit in the reserve seating.
Isn't he.
He's going to speak here at the podium.
I'm curious.
As to how many of you counsel person.
Understood what he said.
I know you understand.
Okay.
Just show hands.
1, 2, 3.
Okay.
Yeah.
Did you have a comment? Okay.
You don't.
Go ahead.
Start off by saying, having worked as a city planner before.
The first thing I realized.
First day on the job.
And.
I memorized the code basically.
You could ask me anything in the code.
And what I realize.
Is that when people would come in.
When they would ask for something or be curious about things, I'm talking about local people, not developers, because they get all that stuff and they have their people to work it out.
And I didn't really know.
So I realized that.
The code.
Covers what it covers.
But there's another code.
That's not a part of what's in what's written.
Right planners.
The code does not cover everything.
And so what I realized that there's 2 codes.
And I said, wow, there's 2 codes.
There's one that's not.
If you're clever and he used the word clever and that's what made me think.
And I need to come up here and say this.
Is that.
You're trying to get to a destination.
But there are ways to get.
The code covers one.
But there are other ways to get to it.
And that's why I asked the question.
I want to understand.
Maybe talking about a different thing.
Thanks for your to the same place.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Is there anyone online who has public comment.
For this item.
There's one hand raised online.
Maria soul.
Oh, hi.
This was a lot of fun.
For so many years.
Excuse me.
And what that.
And I've been in for so long codes change.
And they change.
Due to the creative.
Experience of trying to make sure things are safe.
But as he said, addressing it differently.
And I understand.
That we are taking responsibility as a city.
But I know that there's been.
I know that there's been.
An alternative building, for instance.
And it took years.
For California to accept straw.
You know, but they do.
If it's done.
So I just want to speak to the fact that.
You know, many ways to address what it is.
And I know that every code and or inspector.
In my experience.
And sometimes just.
Creative possibilities deserve to be at least.
Otherwise we're just following the letter of the law.
Rather than what the purpose is.
So thank you.
Thank you, Maria.
Any other comments online? Okay.
All right.
So I would like to see if there's a motion to close the public hearing.
Question.
Okay, go ahead.
Thank you.
First of all.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for.
Appeals on this body and on.
Never once prior to this, have I been asked to provide my.
But for the record, I will.
May not be a licensed architect or planner, but I spent 14 years.
Conducting a clear safety.
And.
Quite familiar with.
Understanding codes or asking questions.
That clarify the code, if I don't understand something, so.
Just.
Direct line.
And.
In so far as.
Okay.
To.
Can you speak to.
Page nine.
Of the report.
It says the Berkeley building code has an amendment.
And clarify, is this a local amendment? X.
Applications.
Applicable state and local code.
Yes, applications are applicable in local codes.
Thank you.
Okay.
Is there, so there was a motion to.
Hearing there was a.
Is there any opposition to closing hearing? Okay, the public hearing is closed.
Are there any council comments? Council member Humbert.
Yes, thank you, madam mayor.
I read carefully through the file in this map.
And I read carefully.
To the presentations here tonight.
And I believe that the appeal of the special assessment tax lien.
Is utterly lacking.
And that the lien was fairly justified.
The arguments made by appellant are.

Segment 7

Building Codes and Taking Proportion in the Interests of Public Safety.
I will be voting to deny the appeal.
Comments from Council? Yes, Council Member Blackabee.
I agree with Council Member Humbert.
I mean, I think this is a pretty clear record.
I think that BAF went above and beyond in terms of the process, the communication, in terms of noticing.
Multiple meetings, multiple personnel.
I'll also note, as someone who represents this area, it's also happening in extreme fire weather, the time when the building departments also asked construction to cease.
We haven't brought up yet, but that's another talk about health and safety issue.
That's a health and safety issue.
So, you know, I appreciate everyone's but I don't, I just don't see that for it.
So I move that we adopt the staff recommendation and deny the appeal.
Second.
Thank you, I do just want to say thank you very much to the staff.
It does take a hours to go through all of this documentation and the appeals and quite frankly, I feel very frustrated at this good use of our time.
So I do want to thank the staff.
Of course everyone has a appeal and you have had your time to do if there's any opposition to the motion that's on the floor to reject the appeal.
All right, the motion is passed and the appeal is rejected.
Okay, so we are now moving on to item number 17, Resolution ending Berkeley Police Department's temporary reporting requirements.
So I ask Council Member Keserwani to present her.
Thank you very much Madam Mayor, I'm referencing the supplemental packet 2 report that I submitted and I want to thank my colleague also submitted supplementals and I expect that we should be able to land on this.
I want to thank the Public Safety Policy Committee for reviewing this item.
We had a lot of public comment there.
I want to thank the Police Department for being available then and tonight to provide more information.
The purpose of this item, the reason I put it forward last fall was to seek to update our procedures and I have a couple of other items that will be coming to the Council that seek to do the same thing.
Some practices given a transparency hub, which provides information daily about use of force.
So we felt that the original report that was submitted in 1997 was no longer needed, but I appreciate the process and the discussion that we've had around this item because as a result, we did add a referral to improve the transparency hub so that we have definitions of the various use of force levels, and we were able to get more information about the use of force levels and how they are being used and how they are being used in the future.
I also want to thank the Police Accountability Board because they did write us a letter.
I think I've included this as an attachment.
And, to make it more accessible, we do want to do that.
And I also want to thank the Police Accountability Board because they did write us a letter.
I think I've included this as an attachment.
And I also want to thank the Police Accountability Board because they did write us a letter.
I think I've included this as an attachment.
And they're recommending that we incorporate the reporting of the use of pepper spray in the Military Equipment Report to maintain the narrative reports of pepper spray utilization.
And I think that is a reasonable to do that in an existing that the Department is doing.
So, you know, the desire here is not to reduce the amount of public information that's available, but streamline it so that it makes more sense.
There are other uses of force that didn't get this sort of pepper spray separate treatment.
So it seemed like it didn't make a whole lot of sense to stick to that 1987 resolution approach.
So, in any case, I think that the mayor has some amendments, which I'm fine with.
I know we're going to discuss further.
Maybe there'll be some further refinement, but look forward to the discussion.
Thank you very much.
Yes, thank you very much, Council Member.
Actually, did you want to comment, Vice Mayor? OK.
All right.
I will go first.
So I'm going to pull up on our screen.
So this is a supplemental that has been brought forward by myself, Council Member Blackaby, Council Member Traigub and Council Member O'Keefe.
And since then, we've also made some adjustments as well.
So I'd like to I just have a few talking that I want to address.
So.
Excuse me.
All right.
So well, first, of course, thank you very much for your item.
And also to Vice Mayor Lunapara, thank you to the PAB.
I know we have both our our interim interim Jose Murillo, who's here.
And so thank you very much to PAB and ODPA for your letters and suggestions.
And thank you so much to the chief and to Arlo for for us, because we've had a number of different conversations to get here.
Streamlining, of course, is really important.
We don't want to be duplicating efforts.
And of course, we didn't want to lose anything.
And so that's a really a big reason why we did some things through.
And, you know, for me at a time like this, when our federal government is doing everything they can to prevent transparency and put pressure on our communities, ensuring transparency at the local level just becomes more important.
So I'm really grateful to everyone who's been kind of putting in their thoughts here, because I think that that's what's going to make this better.
So our supplemental tonight is two main things.
First, we codified into the resolution what should be reported on the transparency hub so that the public can have the most up to date information about how our police department is using pepper spray.
And second, we're requesting that our city manager come back with an item to reincorporate pepper spray into the annual military equipment report, which was the recommendation from the PAB.
And both of these points really are intended to promote transparency while still acknowledging the burden that unnecessary paperwork had departments.
So I have.
Great.
So we so one change that is just to have this sent to the city manager.
This is just different from what we already submitted, just to be clear.
Yeah.
And then after a conversation with our police department, there was concern about, you know, if there were some technological issues for the reason why it might take longer for it to get on to the transparency hub.
So we've adjusted it to 14 days to allow for that.
I think there was some confusion that of the phrasing the officer involved.
It's the officer's role.
So we just clarified that language, not the officer's name specifically that that wasn't currently that didn't currently exist in the report.
And then again, city manager, and then the bottom of this is the resolution.
So, in this language here, it actually more clearly lays out what would be included onto the transparency hub because we believe that this will help to include the information that was on the report, but put it onto the transparency hub.
Just to make sure that it's accessible and again, that would be within those 14 days.
And so this was done in collaboration with the council members that are on this item, but also with our chief and Arlo.
So, thank you all very much for your for your input and your feedback and conversation about this.
So, did you want to go next? Yeah, thank you.
I go to explain the differences so that we're not saying the same thing over and over again.
We also also wanted to account into the transparency hub.
My office found discrepancy between the council and notification.
Multiple people talking to me, so I'm sorry, and I think my mic was on.
Go ahead.
My office founded between the council notification and the data and between the annual military equipment report and what is posted to the transparency hub.
And so, for that reason, I think that the provision to report to the transparency hub will be essential for maintaining accuracy and accountability.
We also codify the referral that came out of the public safeties recommending and section 2 is critical for council and the public to understand what this means in quantifiable terms to know how much money we can get back into the police department budget or general fund.
And then section basically requires that the that this go into once the referral has been passed, has been implemented.
So this includes an opt in notification system for the transparency hub.
And the narrative is being uploaded into the military equipment ordinance.
Okay, very good.
Thank you for sharing that.
What I want to do is actually just maybe we should just take public comment and we can come back and discuss.
So let's take public comment on this item.
Hi, good evening.
It's been a long day.
George, can you speak in the mic, please? Yes, ma'am.
Oh, I have only one question.
Okay.
Um, my name is George Lippman.
I'm speaking on behalf of the peace and commission and the police department.
Can you hold this up over here to the, to the council, maybe on this.
So, so yesterday, peace and justice commission approved a report entitled social justice implications of proposed use of controlled weapons and other policing tools.
The commission included in its recommendations that council retain the 1997 requirement for public reporting of each use of pepper spray.
The PAB letter calling for the continuation of their requirement, which demonstrates that while the proposed resolution is predicated on the existence of redundant reporting.
The other reports cited in the resolution lack narrative information and or are inaccessible.
We appreciate the changes that have come through today in the direction of increasing transparency.
But peace and justice adds that if the Berkeley police department or even to expand pepper spray use.
It is to their benefit that the community under the context of its usage, at least significant narrative sections in the current use report, which is going around an example of it.
Are not reflected in some of the new versions that have been proposed.
One is the nature of the incident and the summary and justification of distributes the council and excerpted version of a.
So you can judge for yourselves how valuable these narrative elements could be, especially for the PAB and ODP is is understanding.
In fact, the narrative is the most important part of the use report and submission is what causes commissioners and community members the most concern.
It's the use report and its loss would make the report useless.
Thanks to the oversight process.
Thank you.
Yeah, great job.
Thank you.
This resolution is being put forward in the guise of streamlining.
Of making technical adjustments to this, but what it's really about is the normalization of pepper spraying.
That's that's what it's all about is normalization and put that in the context of other things being proposed about this of tear gas of flock cameras that are going to result in more.
Kidnappings of ice.
Dogs of aircraft and this is this is not about streamlining.
This is about normalization of attacks.
On workers on immigrants.
And us, and it needs stopped.
Thank you.
Good evening, Madam Mayor.
My name is Jason Martins.
First, I just want to say I support the no power as amendments to the item.
Second, I just want to say I find it somewhat problematic.
This as a burden.
On the police.
I feel like.
The people who are subjected to per spray a dangerous chemical weapon and that should be.
I just want to say I support the no power as amendments to the item.
I just want to say I find it somewhat problematic.
This as a burden.
I feel like.
It's not very important amount of money that is related to the reporting here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You know, I was on a police accountability board.
Yeah, he's relegated back there as an afterthought.
You might think of bringing him up.
As an alternative.
I mean, this is a weapon that's very dynamic in situations.
Sometimes there's pepper spray.
Supposedly there's somebody who's attacking an officer.
Sometimes it works times.
It doesn't.
Sometimes people have underlying mental health condition, respiratory problems that could be actually Donna spring.
And that it would be life.
This is a potentially lethal way in about so.
So that is why the community is concerned that it's casual use.
Yes, there are places in this country.
They use it very, very casually.
That normalizes the, as the man just said, they want to just make it kind of casual every day.
Because in 97 were that if an officer did, they had to report on was it effective? What was happening? What motivated its use? Did they provide medical attention? And what was the outcome? That information is crucial.
Do we want this weapon? We were this close to banning it in 97.
That's how the level of concern was.
We have to understand that police pepper spray is not the same as what you buy in the store.
Spray is highly concentrated.
It is very dangerous stuff.
Because we don't have effective oversight in this to give the police more weapons and to make them less accountable for their use is dangerous.
It's an assault on the community, and I don't understand what's motivating it and cost saving measure for police.
Are we have so little value is our health and well being.
There are lives are very lives are put up and compared to a cost saving.
But the whole point of the police was to keep us safe.
We need those narratives.
We need to be able to evaluate if is an increase in pepper sprays use.
We need to be able to evaluate.
It's impact on the community and its impact on the people who are subject to it.
So, yes, please, Luna.
Paws I think it's the minimum.
We could do so.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Good evening.
Over the last, over the next few weeks, we're going to just see a lot of police accountability measures.
And as someone who has lived in this city, dealt with the police in, I guess, racial, racially biased ways.
It is important to make sure that we understand something like the transparency hub, which is created by BPD and not by, let's say, the police accountability board or other members of the public.
Something that we can't use as a baseline and that we have to make sure that we can create protections in order to support people not being enabled to use any methods of work, regardless if they're lethal or not lethal.
So, yes, let's support our constituents.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Good evening.
And pepper spray, as you probably know, is a chemical.
It's a weapon and it's banned for use in war by Article 1.5 of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
It causes burning of the lungs, less lethal, but in some cases it has been lethal.
Streamlining is a slippery slope.
We agree that we don't want to duplicate.
We don't want to lose accountability.
The transparency hub isn't transparent.
No, it is not.
And how is our department using pepper spray? We want to have as much information as possible, not limited, not narrow it.
I do believe that we could do much better if we're concerned about the true public safety of Berkeleyans.
We are at risk right now of being under attack by ICE and others.
The proud boys, I've seen them in the park.
I've talked to them when they come to town and they mean harm.
Thanks for me.
And we need to protect each other.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I know that this item is being talked about in terms of efficiency.
But I know that I'm coming up at the next city council meeting that could lead to a lot more of these reports and would probably make it, if you consider this a burden, burdensome.
I would ask the city council to remember that OC, a chemical weapon, it's very dangerous.
And while you might think that the benefits of increased use of this weapon by police will outweigh the risks it poses to the community, you've heard all these community members come up here today and that's not what they feel.
And that's not where our values lie.
And I know that you have different values, but the overwhelming consensus here is that members of the community care more about the transparency and safety from these reports than about the marginal increase in public safety you believe will come from this.
Thanks for your comment.
Hi, my name is Paul.
I live very close to here.
This is absolute foolishness.
I've gone to every single public safety meeting about this.
Everyone has spoken unanimously against this measure.
And this is just the first of the whole series y'all are pushing through and the author of this legislation.
This is a question I hope you bring up sort of vaguely and very disingenuously referred to that.
This is a measure along with the smoke and the tear gas that these measures are needed because, yes, ice is a threat.
And maybe I guess the police could use this against them as though that's how policing works.
You guys know nothing of accountability and you're moving so far away from it and it's happening so fast and it's crazy.
So, cut it out.
Thank you.
Just want to generate this one minute.
One minute.
One minute.
Okay.
I just want to quickly say that, you know, there's a lot of good police in police departments throughout.
And what we are when we do hear things, it's, you know, the bad things.
It's not the good police are doing the bad things.
It's the bad ones.
Right.
So, you know, there's probably a lot of good police on the force.
And so maybe some of this is not being said.
A concern about the ones who won't for way.
So, you know, maybe, maybe you all think some of you may think we're out of the woods on some of this police stuff, but.
We still have a long way to go.
So, just, you know, you may want to be concerned about that kind of thing and and what can you do to forestall some bad use.
Okay.
Thank you.
Is there any public comment online for this item.
Okay, so this public comment on item 17 regarding pepper spray reporting.
If you'd like to speak on this item and you're on.
Zoom, please raise your hand now.
And it looks like we have 1213 speakers with raised hands.
Thank you council members the resolution before you absurdly suggest that by increasing police use with a chemical agent while decrease these accountability by limiting publicly available.
The police department will run more efficiently.
How much time or money will this intervention save the city? I can't say, because the resolution failed to include any meaningful regression analysis or commodification of time to ensure Berkeley taxpayers could understand it's true fiscal and social impact.
Folks, this is Paul.
The proposal suggests a sample size of only 3 to 4 events per annum.
That's the 1st red flag highlighting the weakness and pointlessness of this resolution.
It also tells me this council is still struggling to shift away from legislating in a vacuum of incident based management and towards a more resilient, transparent accountability for police conduct and effectiveness.
Outside the office, I am hard pressed to find any civilian who believes the use of chemical agents by law enforcement Vanessa.
Thanks for your next is a speaker.
With the name listed as virtual meetings.
Hello, my name is with speaking up behalf of the Berkeley friends meeting to speak in favor of passage of a combination of council member resolution and the mayor's resolution supported signed out by 4.
It was co sponsors, and in particular, the addition of the narrative report access, having the 14 days for the transparency.
Hub to be the publicly accessible deadline, not just when it's input in, but when the public can see it.
And most importantly, that any rescission of the 1997.
Reporting requirement does not take place until council acts on the amendment of the police control ordinance, which I think is the last part of your.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Alana hour back.
Have any of y'all been pepper sprayed before.
Anybody police level.
Yeah, so chief, you can probably attest that it is a harmful and intense and it's a weapon.
We have all spent.
There's been a handful of incidents where it's been used in the past, several years, 453 times.
We have spent more time on this as a community, then for the past three years that the police would have had to spend on their quote duplicative reports.
So, who are we centering here.
Would you all, and I'm talking to the council here are meant to be centering the community, the community does not want less reporting on this.
We don't want it it's the cops have to spend an extra four or five hours a year reporting.
It's okay.
Please don't do this.
Thank you.
Okay, next is Bella Luna.
Yes, I want to say thanks to the members of the board here that made suggestions or amendments.
Those amendments, because we don't need this ordinance.
It doesn't need to be passed.
It's completely pointless and, like, the former caller said, the amount of time we've already this is already surpassed what you're allegedly saving.
But I want to talk about the transparency hub and 1, the URL the website for the transparency hub is a parody.
It's like a joke.
It needs to be more streamlined URL can be purchased for $20 and you can direct your website to that.
Something simple and easy to find.
Furthermore, if you go to the city of Berkeley website, there is no link to the transparency board.
You can go to the police department's website again, no link to the transparency hub.
If you're being so transparent, why is it so hard to find the transparency hub.
There's even a link that says data about pullovers and calls for service you click on that is the hub.
No, it's not.
Thanks.
Next is Nathan myself.
Hello Madam Mayor and Council this is Nathan my cell.
There is a full scale attack in this city on police oversight, and frankly on democracy itself.
But as a regard to this item, I support the supplemental submitted by Councilman Luna para in portions of the marriage supplemental as well.
I hope that this council can strike some reasonable compromise keeps the narrative of this.
Really the question we're asking is not will the police have less time to do whatever they do, but whether on a handful occasions a year.
Officers are willing to write two paragraphs about the use of a chemical weapon upon potentially citizens in the city.
So, if that's not important to us anymore and city of Berkeley fine.
If those things don't matter and how we treat people require officers to write two paragraphs and help us maintain some semblance of oversight.
Thank you.
Thank you, Nathan.
Next is why Ella.
I'm Rayla I live in the South side, and I wanted to say that police officers, engineers, doctors, nurses, teachers are some of the most important jobs that impact impact people's lives.

Segment 8

And that no one would agree to lessen the requirements for being a teacher or being a doctor.
So I don't understand why anyone would consider doing that for a police force, which is historically, currently, generally, has been used and has physical and systematic authority over civilians.
Yeah, and also I support Councilmember Lunaparra's supplemental.
Thank you.
Next is Christopher Cole.
Thank you.
Yeah, at a time that the Police Accountability Board is in some free fall, you all just let go the director recently, and I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but we also know that 2 of the senior members resigned recently.
So, at a time that the Police Accountability Board is in free fall, and the Berkeley voters, as we're setting up that board, indicated a strong interest in seeing accountability of the police department.
This is not the time to be reducing the needed oversight, especially over such horrific weapons as these chemical sprays, K-9 units, helicopters, I'm sorry, supplementals that are turned in at the last minute.
It's very difficult for the members of the public to really take that in.
Many people thankfully did.
I hope that what Parra proposed is better than what Councilmember Casarwani put forward originally, but thank you.
Next is Barb Atwell.
Hi, my name is Barb Atwell.
I'm a resident of Berkeley District 1, and I represent the Berkeley Friends Meeting, also known as the Quakers.
We urge the Council to adopt the Police Accountability Board's recommendation to continue pepper spray reporting, including the amendments that were shown today.
Rescinding the report requirement does not make this more modern.
Transparency and police account matter, and we do not want to make the police, sorry, do not make the police use of pepper spray a secret.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Next is Kelly Mergrin.
Can you hear me okay? Yes.
Okay.
I agree with many of the comments that are made here tonight.
I wish we weren't doing this at all.
I think Luna Parr's is the best.
I'm looking at the City website, and if you don't know what you're looking for, or even if you do know what you're looking for, you can't find the Transparency Hub by even going to the search magnifying glass on the City website.
So, you know, we're really not getting the kind of information that we used to, we're going to get.
And when I do find the Transparency Hub, it doesn't give the kind of narrative that you would expect.
So, you know, I don't think we really have a good solution to understand why we're making these changes when there's so little pepper spray supposedly used.
Thanks, Kelly.
Next is Makayla.
Hi, I understand behind the supplement just now introduced, but I also agree with the previous commenter that it's not necessary because the resolution as a whole, as also supported, said by the Police Accountability Board is necessary.
And like, she said, it is only going to normalize violence against civilians and a lack of accountability and lack of oversight.
And what you're saying that this is going to increase efficiency and modernization completely negates the weight of the burden that should be felt by the City of Berkeley and by its Police Department and the weight of its responsibility and what it owes to the people of Berkeley as it should be held accountable to them and as it currently is being held accountable through these requirements.
And you have the chance here today to show that you understand.
Makayla, thanks for your for your comment.
Next is Marilyn Cleveland.
Thank you.
I appreciate the item.
I support having robust reporting of all uses of pepper spray and I appreciate the work that's been done on this.
It appears that the Mayor's proposed amended resolution with the amendments proposed by Council Member Lunapara best meets that need with the deadline for pepper spray reporting to be completed by the end of the year.
And I would like to ask the Council to consider whether or not to include pepper spray reporting to be publicly accessible in the transparency hub and to include a narrative report.
Rescission of the old report should not take effect until the Council acts on the amendment to the controlled equipment ordinance in order to include pepper spray within that ordinance reporting requirement.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, next is Sam.
Can you all hear me? Yes.
Hi.
I do not support rescinding this.
The existing reporting requirements are already the bare minimum and the transparency hub is insufficient difficult to navigate and vague as several people have already said.
The reporting requirement is not redundant because it provides additional information where state law is insufficient.
This is additionally coming at a time when the City Council recently fired the head of Berkeley's civilian police oversight office and following the resignation of several police accountability board members, setting an uncooperative and untransparent police force.
I hope you guys reconsider this.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Julie Dickey.
Yeah, hi, can you hear me? Yes.
Yes.
I can't hear you.
So I am not in favor of pepper spray at all.
It's a weapon, and I think we don't need to be normalizing weapons.
We've got enough weapons going on across the world.
I think that if I have this thing in place, you've got to keep the narrative and make the transparency hub transparent.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, next is Maria.
So, yeah, I just, you know, I spent a day today mostly crying because we have militarized in the name of safety and, you know, I want to so one way of making sure I can just to kill everybody else.
It's like, we've got to stop.
We have got to stop and look at what we're choosing.
Let's choose the escalation.
Let's choose transparency and accountability and responsibility.
Let's choose peace.
Let's choose peace.
It's here.
We can have it if we quit picking up weapons and making it the thing to do, because it doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
It works.
It doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
If it's not good and proports to keep me safe.
It doesn't.
It doesn't.
If it hurts someone else, and this needs to stop.
Please let there be peace.
Please.
Let's reimagine with the world can be and stop doing what the doing presently.
Hello, can you hear me? Yeah, I just want you guys to think about the timing of this resolution.
It's upsetting that as we would be brought forward at all, but especially it's upsetting right now, given what's going on in the country.
I just urge you to listen to all of your constituents who are begging you to vote.
No, we're your community and we're asking for this.
And I just, I just urge you guys to listen to us.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That's it.
Okay, there are a number of different supplementals here.
1 thing I do want to add is that on our supplemental I neglected to mention that we added on there that we wanted to include if 1st aid was administered.
So I forgot to mention that.
And so thank you.
Council member for for bringing that up and can I answer a follow up question? Yeah, point that in there.
And maybe if you're able to repost those latest amendments, because my understanding was, we didn't have the ability to provide that information on the transparency hub.
Is that correct? Is that what you're requesting? Madam mayor? So, okay, I'm going to let the chief respond, but we had a conversation about.
Oh, okay.
Please go ahead.
Yeah, for sure.
And maybe just to set the stage a little bit.
I'm very proud of the transparency hub.
I don't know of another jurisdiction that has a hub of that kind that shares that kind of information in real time to that level of detail.
However, comma, we're not going to rest on that.
And we know there's a lot of things we can continue to build into the transparency hub.
And the whole goal is to be able to share as much information as we can about the work that we do while also balancing privacy rights and safety of the community as well.
So, to answer the question specifically about the capabilities of transparency hub, the whole purpose is for it to be automated so that the human piece is taken out of it.
As calls come in and they're into our CAD system and records are created, use of force reports are documented, that there is a direct link behind the scenes to then upload that into the transparency hub.
Right now, the way the blue team or the use of force reporting system works, there's not a box that talks about first aid.
And some of the other suggestions around more information.
In the future, we want to look at a lot of things, putting more detail in a lot of the calls.
But for specifically for the first aid piece, we will have to check with the vendor and ask them to rework the system to allow us to have that space to do the first aid piece.
So, certainly it's something we could explore, but right now in our current existing system, someone would have to manually enter that first aid piece into the hub.
Okay, so Madam Mayor, could you just go back to the wording that you are proposing for that then? Sure, so in the resolution.
Yeah, I mean, keep in mind this is a referral.
So the city manager would look into and they have to come back to us and let us know how this would all work.
So, oh, sorry, let me scroll and read.
I think you had like a bulleted list, right, of what you are proposing.
Yes, so it's here.
So, yeah, I'm sorry, it's fleeting off of it.
Yeah, just go back.
I just want to see the sentence.
Okay, that's perfect.
Just like that.
Just give me a moment.
I just want to just take a look at what that says.
Sure.
And so while you're doing that, I'm going to actually ask a question about.
Okay, so actually, can I just finish my thought on this? Go ahead.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
So, yeah, I think the issue is if this is asking, this resolution is worded so that we have to include the administration of first aid.
I'm just worried if we don't have the capability to do that.
So for D, if we could just say the administration of first aid, I feel like if that clause could just have some caveat there, you know, to the extent practicable or something, it seems like everything else is fine.
Everything else can go in now, right? Yeah, and I would share that it would be my desire to have that included, and certainly it seems like it would be something that the vendor could do, and that information would appear or could very easily appear in the military equipment ordinance report.
I will also point out that our by policy officers who deploy OC are required by policy to get first aid for the individual.
So it's a it's a piece of the policy that requires it.
So it's the box should always be checked.
Yes.
And that's I mean, I still think that's important.
Understood.
So so I'd like to actually ask our city attorney if she can weigh in on the on the wording piece here.
What one of the conversations that we're having is if we can include something in here, since it's a referral that may not be possible right this this moment because they need to check in with the with the company to make sure it's possible.
I'm going to turn it over to Sam Harvey, who is on Zoom, and he can address.
Thank you.
Sure.
I think you could put some language just caveating, you know, maybe as its own number bullet, you know, work with the vendor to determine whether administrative administration first day can be included as a as a checkbox or category.
That's fine.
That's fine with me.
OK.
OK.
So Madam Mayor, are you proposing to just add that into D then and work with the vendor to ensure that the administration of first aid can be included or something like that.
Then I think I'm fine with that.
And the 14 days seems reasonable.
Chief, did you have anything further? No, I was just going to suggest you could expect that we put in their direction to us to include it in the military equipment report.
And as well as the transparency hub, if the capabilities allow.
So, sorry, say that one more time.
I'm sorry.
Council members, can you please go ahead? Can you say that one more time yet to include the administration of first aid in the military equipment ordinance and the transparency hub if the capabilities allow? So, Madam Mayor, there's I think you have a section above about the controlled equipment.
Oh, it's below.
Reminds of the controlled equipment ordinance include you could say including could comma including administration of first aid.
And then I think we've covered it.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Work with the vendors are different at the administration of first aid is.
Chief, you had a nice phrase.
Feasible no capabilities.
Feasible or capable.
Yeah, maybe just say it's feasible.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
I do recommend language in the resolution itself.
Clarify section 3 that those changes to the transparency of our referral.
As written right now, it simply says that those changes shall be made.
And if the intent is just to refer to the same manager to make those changes.
I recommend that that's that be amended to say.
Okay, thank you.
I do recommend that that be amended to say.
Refer to the same manager to ensure that the transparency of can be.
You know, the following can be included in the transparency.
Thank you.
I'm sorry.
Can you tell me where that is? This would be under the 3rd now, therefore clause.
Yeah, I mean, I think.
Maybe at the beginning of subsection of subsection 3.
Madam mayor, can I just ask a clarifying question? I think maybe a threshold question is, do you intend this change to just be reflected in the resolution? Which is how it's currently structured or do you prefer to come back? As a referral, if it's your intent to just have it be adopted tonight.
With the changes that you're proposing, that's how it's already structured.
I see the city manager wants to say something.
I concur with the city attorney.
My reading of it is that it's not a referral, but that it's adopting a resolution effectuating these changes.
So, to the attorney opposed is.
Is I always read this to be not a referral, but the resolution to do these things.
Yeah, I.
I think that the way it's written is, is how we intended it to.
I'm a little confused.
So, I think there may have been some confusion because you use the word referral.
So, it doesn't sound like you're intending it as a referral.
Yes.
Okay.
Number 3 is a directive.
Except for D.
If feasible, D might not.
If D is a referral, it might not fit with the rest of number 3 in the result class.
So, it would be cleaner to remove it.
Is that what we're saying? It could be part of the motion.
A referral could be part of the motion.
It doesn't have to be in the resolution.
Right.
So, so technical.
So, okay.
So, we can, we can, we could remove D and then just say, and also pass this resolution and also refer to the city manager to work with the vendor, determine if the administration for a city is feasible to include in the transparency hub.
Yes.
Thank you.
Okay.
Okay, so going back, the question that I was on.
Council member Luna Parra is supplemental.
I'm just curious for this automating the opt in notification for the transparency hub chief or could you speak to what that would entail if that's possible or is this another thing we'd need to work with the vendor on? Yes, the transparency hub is built on like a web platform from a different vendor and so we're limited by the features that they offer.
That's not one that I'm aware of.
Okay, thank you very much.
And I'm sorry, go ahead.
Council member Blackaby.
Yeah, I just want to step back one second as we're kind of hashing all this out.
As we're making any of these changes to the hub and to the annual report, can you remind us like all of this data, the process that actually happens at the moment or in the wake of an incident.
Nothing changes with respect to the information the officer collects the officer reports that goes up to the chain of command, like we're not, I just want to be clear just again I'm thinking through all this.
So, as we collect the documentation from the officer and talk about the incident.
Nothing changes we're still collecting exactly the same data.
Now that we were before that we were before, like it's like we have, whether or not first aid is rendered the narrative, and that goes up through the whole chain of command comes to you and ultimately comes to the city manager.
Yes, so just to be clear, nothing in this resolution changes authorized uses pepper spray.
Right.
They still have every use has to comply with policy 303.
Every use that occurs.
It has to has to be reported and recorded according to policy 300, which requires that documentation.
So, it's not just the information that's collected.
It's all that information that is on the report is collected by one camera footage that then goes through the full supervisory chain and is reviewed to make sure it's within policy all the way through the process.
And in the past when was the transparency hub when these reports came and you notified council.
It didn't automatically become public in the same way that it does is it as it will as it was published on the transparency hub, right, like there was always kind of intervening step when it came back to council.
Yeah, we shared with the PRC at the time, share with council, and, and there was that time.
Right.
And if you happen to be at the meeting when it was discussed, then you heard it, or at the council meeting, if it was discussed, but now everyone is accessible to everyone via the hub.
Okay.
Yes, I mean, I like the spirit is what we're trying to make sure as much of that documented in the same report that the officers filled out before and that they are now being filled out now, and it is going up to the training and the intent and the spirit is let's try and get as much of that into the hub as we can, whatever technical limitations we have.
In some ways, it would be more real time than it ever was, because in the past, it would be filtered through the PRC or the pub or, you know, and in this case, and it will still continue to be reported in the military equipment, the annual, the annual report.
Right.
Okay.
So I just want to be clear that, like, we're, you know, we are trying to maintain and in some ways, actually make more timely this information than we've had previously because we didn't have a transparency hub previously.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
I have a couple of questions.
First, I have.
This is to the mayor, I'm still confused as to why the name of the officer is being removed from the resolution.
If the current report does have the name of the officer.
My understanding is that the current report does not contain the name of the officer.
So the OC paper report from 1997 had a line for the officer filling out the report, but the transparency hub intentionally does not have officer names for all the uses of force.
That's not the information is not published and was part of the meet and confer process under policy 300 when it was established that as force data was released annually and released to the public, that we would not be able to track back exactly.
Who is a complaint process in place for individual complaints about uses of force publicly available in that manner.
Thank you.
Did that answer your question? Kind of it, but it is currently publicly available.
That's correct that 1997 report that came before.
300 discussion, there probably should have been an edit made to the report that policy 300 update.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, my next question for the police department is around the transparency.
The 24 military equipment report says that there was.
Can you explain this discrepancy.
Okay, my next question for the police department is around the transparency.
Shins spray the 2024 military equipment report says that there was.
Okay, my next question for the police department is around the transparency.
Can you explain this discrepancy.
Okay, my next question for the police department is around the transparency.
Okay, my next question for the police department is around the transparency.
Yeah, no, I just would be hopeful if you shared that we took a look at the hub we'd be happy to take a look at that and report back to Council.
So it's not a use of force.
So it's not not in the use of force.
But if you go to the call for service, you'll see the call for service for animal bite call.
But it was not a it was not that kind of use of force.
Right.
And so certainly, you know, there's there's a lot of instances like that where an officer received a threat in that manner and may use and that.
And so that, you know, maybe the exact instance that that led to that reporting.
We have to look at that.
Okay, thank you.
I think this is showing exactly why we need a narrative in these and why some of why these would be why it's important for these to be duplicative sometimes.
Yeah, the military equipment report one we just found more recently.
The 1987 directive requires that the pepper spray report be posted as an off agenda memo.
But this stopped in 2021.
Can you explain? Yeah, thank you for raising that.
That's on me.
So the first one I did when I became chief came as an off agenda memo.
It was basically a memo form with the report following it.
The next time one came through, I just forwarded the report to both PAB and the council.
I didn't put it on the header of off agenda memo.
Okay, thanks.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
I want to sound.
Okay, that's fine.
Thank you.
Do you mind briefly going over the nation from the PAB.
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
So the PAB recommendation was to the council in their February 23rd correspondence, which is included in the material in terms of the recommendation itself is to reintroduce into the military equipment report.
The PAB recommendation was to remove the handheld pepper spray.
It was one of the edits that aligned it with state policy.
It removed handheld pepper spray specifically, which was included in the police equipment report in the previous version of it.
It was one of the edits that aligned it with state policy.
So that's where the PAB recommendation comes into making sure that there's still the information that certain details are still communicated, but it doesn't necessarily have to be across 3 different platforms.
Streamlining streamlining into a single location is what the board supports as long as we keep continuing that same level of detail as it's being proposed today.
Okay, thank you.
And I'm just wondering if any of that information may be lost.
If we remove it, just talking a little more about the over.
Yeah, in terms of my experience with the notification process, and I've been with the city since 2022, so I've had a good amount of receiving those notifications for us.
I'm not the greatest of example acknowledge that, but it helps us in terms of our policy and practices review as mandated by the charter, because it gives us that context to it.
I'm a fan of the transparency hub, but sometimes the numbers themselves don't always explain everything.
So having that context is useful to give us that contextual.
Great, that's really helpful.
Thank you.
I have one more question for the police department.
Would it still be possible.
To send out kind of an alert to the.

Segment 9

I'm going to go ahead and open it up to the public.
No, I wouldn't support that.
The purpose of Nixle is very clear.
It's for emergency responses, street closures, dangerous situations.
We're very intentional about not overusing Nixle so people don't stop looking at it.
It's for something that requires.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Item is a referral and which one isn't a referral.
Do you mind just clarifying that again because I'm.
I'm so confused now.
I think that is what you said.
I mean, I thought what I thought I heard was that this letter D to visit 3D.
The administration the 1st day, because it's not clear that we can actually do that with the system for the city manager to analyze what the software company to see.
Is that something we can do? That's a referral to come back.
The rest of this is a directive to do.
So, Madam Mayor, I would just recommend in your resolution to delete D.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
I couldn't see that you had done that.
And then I don't think we need to type it in.
Of course, we can, but we can just simply state that that concept of, of including the 1st aid detail be referred to the city manager.
Okay, thank you.
Is this something that needs to have a 2nd thing, or would it be in effect immediately once we send the resolutions take effect immediately? Okay.
So, in this case, we would just be replacing the.
There'd be no, no time where night where neither apply.
Okay.
Those are my questions.
Thank you.
Okay, council member Bartlett.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
And those are the questions involving really, really wonderfully answered by all the parties here.
I was curious and this goes back to the sort of the it component, right? I'm still trying to wrap my head around the various sort of points of conflict.
Right? And there's, there's legal, maybe some liability policy.
And there's obviously use friction, right? So, I'm just kind of wondering just for the chief here.
Do you feel that the current provider of either 1, your police reporting interface and then the transparency of interface are are the latest the latest out there.
Yeah, I would say that our use of force reporting system is 1 of the industry standards for that product.
And it's likely that they can fix this for us or this checkbox for us.
I don't think that company hasn't been lacking and I don't know of a lot of other agencies using other products that far surpass it.
This is that we use ArcGIS for the transparency hub again is an is an industry standard, you know, emerging 1 of the cutting edge technologies in this area and it can do a lot and we ask a lot of that hub.
We're able to bring in all kinds of different data from the background and display it in a way that can be both downloaded as large files of complete data, but also filtered, you know, and really allow the user to do their own analysis with it.
So, I would say that both of those technologies are producing what we need, whether they can get into the weeds around all the things we want without a human intervention or change in structure.
I don't know, but we're certainly open to exploring those.
Okay, and the use of confer is interesting too, as opposed to the boundaries, right? Is there any of this that we are discussing tonight implicate use, sorry, meet and confer? If we were to make some change around a more public producing an officer's name, I would expect that the union would expect to meet and confer as a change of conditions and would suggest that that could cause them some safety issues.
Okay.
That's it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I want to dig in more about if we were to adjust the narrative.
So, right now, the council receives an annual report, right? And that does include the narrative.
And if we lost that, can you speak to what, if any, opportunities there may be for individual members of the council to request a narrative specific to if they go on the transparency hub and get the information? Basically, that line record.
Are there opportunities, if we lose the annual report, to request detail level information consistent with what a narrative reporting would provide? Yeah, just a couple points to that.
One, I really appreciated the PAB's perspective on this, and they've shared with us a couple times, that they find great oversight value in the OC reporting that they got on the annual report.
And that they felt like that was sufficient for them as a launching point to determine whether or not they wanted to do a policy review.
I will say the military equipment narrative report would not go away unless the transparency hub rose up to be qualified enough to give you the same level of detail that we wanted to provide.
So the information is going to exist still in reporting that was on the OC paper report is either going to be on the military equipment ordinance report or the hub or both until we can raise them up to a level that the sufficient information for the council's information is available.
I think all of you have received notifications from the city manager for communication around this.
I share as much as I can for the private sites involved in sharing, and we can exhibit more public documents to do that.
And I would say just to provide more information if it's confidential for me.
No other questions? Okay, thank you.
I think that's enough for now.
Thank you.
Okay, Councilor Herkey.
Or you see it on the transparency hub, and you contacted us and said we want additional information.
Certainly everything that would appear on the military equipment ordinance in the annual report, we would absolutely be able to freely share.
If we started to get into other details or infected an investigation or something like that, that's where we wouldn't be able to provide the details.
Certainly there's some information you could give us.
We could share everything that would be releasable in the annual report.
We could share in the immediate.
I'm trying to not overburden staff.
Of course.
Not my original question.
So am I correct? I'm so impressed with Council Member Lunapark.
I think not exactly.
Okay.
So I'm going to ask a couple of questions.
There are 2 different labels.
Level O.C.
And one is level 3.
I believe there's also O.C.
because it matched up with things we've gotten that were described as.
Can you explain why? Okay.
I'm going to ask Council Member Lunapark to speak to that.
So we can update.
I think that's and I just want to say just in terms of.
I'm supporting the.
Bill supporting that.
Council Member Lunapark had a line about that.
Consistency of labeling and I really would like to be part.
Yeah, whatever I want that.
Okay.
I was just looking through supplemental.
Pull things out, but I think makes sense here.
I'm also interested in.
Adding into our verbal referral that we're planning on making.
Include.
All is.
Okay.
So.
Force.
Happens there's a lot of detail in there that would be confidential.
It talks about what hospital they might go to talks about.
And things like that.
So.
In order for it.
Relate the narrative into the transparency hub and have it.
Stop level of.
It's possible.
Create another box, but then.
So I'm hesitant to say that we're just going to roll.
If they can create a box for administering first aid, I'm concerned about.
I mean, I'm sure they can create a box for the narrative, but that's why we.
I have some hesitancy around that.
Right? I remember you saying that and I'm just trying to understand how we can kind of throw the needle here.
So, but.
I think.
Okay.
Thank you.
So it's.
That.
Just the one that public.
Yeah, they dare to contain information about what they were arrested for.
Confidential pieces of information within that.
So.
Surround it where.
And there.
Wanted for robbery.
As in the report, it might have.
On those pieces of information and so it's a, it's, it's by nature, a summarized version of.
In the narrative, that's what we would want to produce.
So.
It's not.
Somebody's name.
It's not.
It's not like.
Or, you know, what, what was the situation that.
Like, to me, that doesn't need to be extremely detail.
So.
You're hoping to yeah, I guess I just don't really understand the problem.
Okay.
That has all this confidential information to, to whittle it down.
The public is what we produce.
The blue team report is intention.
An internal process that's accessible to the path if they're doing.
Force complaint, they see, they see the blue team.
It's part of our review process, whether it's.
It's part of our review process, whether it's.
It's information often that has confidence.
If what would be on the military equipment organs can instead be put on the transparency hub is that that's what we're discussing.
That's the ultimate goal.
But right.
And so the.
I.
Maybe I can, I can reveal it review.
Okay.
I don't know what we would.
To satisfy.
If I'd rather have a good narrative in the military equipment report while we figure out we can do on the transparency hub or not, but that 1.
Intervention that I, I guess, I guess I just, I don't understand the answer that.
Okay.
Do you want us to take like a mini break so we can just go so that I can just check in with our city attorney but.
Want to ask a question.
And as this is as we try to read my mind, my mind around.
George Lipman.
That's probably got my name at the bottom.
Okay.
Is that.
Is that a typical was that a typical report.
Expect as we talk about these, I'm just you talking about the part that you circled.
Not that part.
Just just the narrative in total.
Okay.
I'm just going to.
For an ongoing criminal investment.
What happened and where and why would the escalation.
Another question.
Okay, thank you.
Just give us.
Okay.
I'm just going to share about the wording here and then we'll come back.
So take a bio break.
Everyone take a stretch.
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Recording in progress.
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Okay.
Sorry about that, everyone.
So I'm going to back on the screen.
We're going to talk about this again.
Okay.
So.
The clarification was that the piece that is the referral.
Is this the city manager to.
Present an amendment to BMC chapter 2.1 0 0 to this city council council.
This is the controlled equipment ordinance piece.
So that has to be a referral.
That's why this is all extra confusing.
Okay.
So this is still a resolution.
So it's still a resolution, but we change the language at the bottom.
To just.
This I just changed this just now.
So I think this is clear.
Refer to the city manager.
To prevent present an amendment to the BMC chapter.
This is what I was just talking about.
The controlled equipment ordinance piece, Okay.
So that's what I was just talking about.
So that's what we have.
But the other two pieces that we were just talking about.
Was.
Was on the, yeah, was also to see if it's possible to.
Automate the opt in notifications so that we can have folks like our, our office of director of police accountability.
And to be alerted.
So that's what we're trying to figure out.
And we're trying to figure out how to include that as well.
And we were talking about the details of that.
I understand that, that that's.
That we have to kind of figure out, like, again, what, I mean, that's why it's written in here as like, if it's to try to figure out how to do that with the vendor.
Okay.
And then, and then the piece also that I think needs to be added is.
The piece around consistency and labeling.
So I will.
Take this.
From council from vice Marilyn apparels as well.
Yeah, there was a section, I think, in.
Council member.
Item that talked about.
Explaining the use of force levels.
Better on the transparency hub.
Yeah.
Maybe if it just directed us to.
Ensure late label.
Yeah.
I think force levels are clearly labeled.
I think, and I think it already says that already.
That would, that's how I would read that expectation that that doubled.
Lane labeling.
Would be covered by that.
I think it's here.
It's like, this is the referral.
So this one enhance the definitions for the various use of force levels and clearly identify pepper spray uses level 3.
And then.
I think it also says access to open data portal information on chemical agents use.
I guess.
I wanted to make sure that.
Included in the resolution itself with the wording.
So I will.
Add that.
Try and make it the new new for.
You can get the new D a new D.
That's your list of what's in the hub.
Yeah.
Okay.
1110.
20 second.
All right.
Is there any opposition to.
To.
1115, did you say 1120? Is that what you said? Yeah.
Okay.
1120.
I just wanted to make sure.
Okay.
No opposition looks like.
Okay.
Okay, I think we've.
Adjusted this.
Let me just adjust this.
First aid.
Or.
And.
Opt in notifications.
Okay.
Notifications.
Okay.
All right.
I think we've got it.
All right.
Now.
I'm going to actually just move my own item.
So.
Second.
She didn't.
Yeah, I, I'm, I'm going to move.
Move my supplemental with.
Okay.
So I'm going to ask council member Kessler wanting.
Including this referral to the city manager.
Which is right here.
To subject pepper spray to the control equipment ordinance and also work with the vendor to determine if reporting requirements are met.
Okay.
There are a number of hands raised.
Okay.
Did you have? Yeah.
Yeah, I was wondering if we could add a date certain to.
The controlled equipment ordinance referral, just so that we know exactly when that's going to.
No, but I'll take it as a short term amendment, which means we'll work on it over the next 90 days.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you all.
I appreciate it.
I know it's a sausage making, but I feel like we're in a good place.
So thank you very much.
All right.
Oh, yes.
I just want to raise, you know, I.
I like.
I'm glad that we have a plan for getting the narrative report.
Thank you.
I just want to raise, you know, I.
I like, I'm glad that we have a plan for getting the narrative report.
On the hub.
I do I am still bothered by this inconsistency that would.
That would result in because there are other kinds of uses for that.
And so, you know, I'm just wondering if we could get that done.
I think it would be beyond the scope of this.
What we're doing tonight to do any more than this.
But I just want to name an intention.
I would like to work with maybe.
Once we have a new permanent director to work with them to look at maybe even bringing in more narrative.
Not for everything, but for some of the really rare and very intense uses of force in the spirit of transparency, of course, and also consistency because I'm bothered by the inconsistency here.
That's I was bothered by it.
I'm glad that council member.
So, as an ultimate goal, I would like us to have, you know, lots of transparency and have it be consistent.
It makes sense.
And so that's sort of a goal.
I just wanted to state that goal and I'll be, you know, picking that up when the time is right.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you.
So, you know, to picking that up when the time is right, thank you.
Appreciate that.
Yeah, absolutely.

Segment 10

Council member Kesarwani.
On the motion as stated by the mayor for the county.
Okay, thank you all really appreciate.
Appreciate you and your patients and everyone for their public comments and for everyone who presented to us.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Any other questions or comments on items not listed on the agenda? Isn't this two minutes at the end of the meeting? No? Okay.
Okay, generally thank you.
Thank you.
I think you've heard enough in terms of flock.
You've heard all the concerns about privacy.
Yesterday there was an article from the business insider that addressed accuracy as to flock and started out with a description of a man in Ohio who there was a misread on the article business and police records lawsuits and local news coverage across the country and found that the Toledo episode is an isolated dozen incident misreads by readers or a lack of verification resulted in people who hadn't committed crimes being stopped at gun point sent to jail or mauled by a police dog among other things .
I'm going to stop sharing my screen because there's a lot more questions.
Okay.
Okay.
So council members, as I heard your discussion, I'm really kind of concerned because what I heard the police chief talking about is the need to kind of get to them before they do something really bad.
And I think that's a really important point.
We need to be able to communicate a police officer with the use of force that they might as well be ice with masks on their faces that we need to statistically be able to identify which are more prone to use violence than others.
And now that's called early warning.
That's how you get to them before they do something really bad.
We need to be able to use force to get to them before they do something really bad.
So when we have a records act, we're supposed to have access to police reports, descriptions, and we cannot be, what can I say, persuaded or just have this kind of institutional drift to suggest that somebody who's been the victim of a pepper spray should have their identity concealed for their privacy? That's like disappearing people.
I also want to say that I went through, I just really want to understand what it's like to file a complaint with the PAB.
The PAB, the chief officers, they don't return phone calls.
But there's not one shred of paper, they had some kind of meeting or something without the person who's filed the complaint.
And I was given no indication of what their findings were.
And on the basis of those findings, apparently the chief officer's finding, on an allegation that I never alleged, I never made.
I never said that their body warmth camera policy was a problem.
That wasn't the problem.
The problem is that they physically manhandled me and prevented me from observing and from recording.
And if I can have that other minute, I'd like to tell you about this, that we don't have a system for holding the leadership of the police department accountable.
How do we do that? You know, oh, my gosh, it must be a personnel.
The officer who put their hands on me must have done something wrong.
Or maybe we should look at the policy.
Maybe that's the problem.
But what about the cop who generated the operational plan for that homeless encampment sweep that included prevent people from observing? What if those were just doing what they were told? And what if those cops were given an illegal order? We don't have a mechanism for rooting that out and exposing that and dealing with it.
And so as you pursue this militarism policy with more phones and more surveillance, what we're trying to tell you is that, you know, you're going to need more breaks.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm going to wait another one minute.
Okay.
Houston, everything, briefing, and then you have to get the report, and then that's where you see everything.
So maybe it's a little bit of a common practice in some places.
But, you know, I don't have the bandwidth to try to get into this, but you guys have to deal with it.
About the order here, I think it was a little bit brick.
To have the public speak and then have you guys try to figure out what they were saying.
You have to get the city attorney to help you figure it out.
We should have heard all of that and then taken notes and then give some comments.
That sort of thing.
I have a personal PR that I need to follow up with the city manager.
If you can help me by setting up a time where we can meet, 6-418.
Really would like to get your insight and help me come up with, you know, we can come up with a solution.
Thank you.
Is there anyone online for off-agenda public comment? Yes, we have a few.
This is for an agenda.
Public comments, phone number ending in two.
Five hands raised.
Hi.
First of all, pepper spray caused permanent damage to the lungs and eyes.
Especially the eyes.
How can you replace anybody's eyes? It should be banned.
Second, a teen file that is who was raped, you can't have sex with a 13-year-old girl.
He was raping the 13-year-old girls and that's why he went to your office.
And that is criminal acts against American laws, international laws.
And believe me, I studied nuclear physics, nuclear engineering for decades.
We're in World War III soon.
This man is crazy.
He's mentally ill.
He's totally unfit to be a president.
And look what is the result.
Now he's going to jail.
He's going to jail.
He's going to jail.
And look what is the result.
Now Iran needs to be here in America.
And that is really sad.
Innocent people are dying.
By the way, before you go to sleep tonight, please listen to the song, imagine.
Imagine no religion.
Imagine no country, no religion too.
Thank you so much.
Next is Nathan.
Hi, council.
Just quickly here.
Thank you.
I just wanted to make attention to the PAB's meeting and the letter they intend to send you in regards to the department's unilateral decision policy 300, the use of force policy in this city.
It is a sad reality that we now have a department that believes they can outright ignore council's own mandated policy in this city.
But that is the result of what has taken place over the last year to 18 months in our city.
That letter details how despite the PAB informing them that the use of force policy was adopted by council in June of 2020, they still unilaterally changed the policy and to my knowledge not reposted it publicly yet.
So I'm going to be writing to you about this.
The PAB is going to send you a letter.
And I'm going to be sending it to you, because I don't think that's the way to go in regards to the importance of democracy in our city.
» Next is caller ending in two.
No.
Daniel Brownson.
Daniel Brownson.
» Hi.
Can you hear me? » Yes.
» So I think it's honestly unfortunate that the police department's support for using pepper spray, which is actually a severe use of force, is some sort of huge burden on the police department.
Because it was only used four times.
And like, yeah, we kind of do want it to be at least a little, you know, a little bit more effective.
But it's absolutely not re-legalize the use of tear gas in Berkeley.
You know, what is it mainly used for? What's the likely protest coming up when the feds finally stick ice on us? » Thank you, Daniel.
» Next is Rayla.
» Thank you.
» Thank you.
» So I did hear the officer's name in the reports, the reports that are available to the public.
I did hear, I believe, the chief's note about the union or something like that of the police.
And I understand that could be heard.
» Thank you.
» I did hear the officer who had many, many reports of misconduct.
And he kind of was allowed to go on doing that without any repercussions.
And I think, like, that is evidence that this kind of public record is really important for accountability in situations.
So thank you.
» Thank you.
» I just have a question about the transparency hub website added to the city of Berkeley website, a direct link to it.
And the police website, too, the police department's website, there's currently a chief, but there's no link to the transparency hub.
And I think that having that direct link, it should just be, one, required.
» Thank you.
» And there's no reason to not have it connected, right, since we're talking about transparency.
And as much as the chief and the police department like to talk about the hub, we need to actually have access to the hub.
And the URL just needs to be simple, and it needs to be linked directly to the city of Berkeley website.
Thank you.
» And then the last question is, is there any reason to not have the transparency hub? » Yeah, I just want to draw attention to the fact that this is all nice with the transparency hub, but transparency doesn't really do anything when the cops continually violate the existing use of force guidelines.
Not only has the BPD issued their own revisions, not approved by you all, to the use of force guidelines, but it's also nice to have the transparency hub.
In 2014, they used illegal overhead baton strikes.
They attacked crowds of protesters.
They used tear gas against their own policy, which stated that it could only be in controlled situations.
So it's nice to have this transparency hub, but it's better to not have the weapons who are using them .
» » Thank you.
» » » » » » » » » » ».