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Segment 1

Okay.
Hello, everyone.
Good evening.
It doesn't feel like evening, does it? It's so hot and sunny out.
Okay, so I'm just trying to scroll to the top of my agenda.
I'm going to call to order the special meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Today is Tuesday, March 17th, 2026.
It's 6.07 p.m.
and happy St.
Patrick's Day to you all.
Clerk, can you please take the roll? Okay.
Council member Kesarwani? Here.
Taplin? Present.
Bartlett is currently absent.
Tregub? Present.
O'Keefe? Here.
Lackabay? Here.
Lunaparra? Here.
Humbert? Present.
And Mayor Ishii? Here.
Okay, quorum is present.
Okay, folks, please, if you're out there, please take your conversations outside if you're gonna have a conversation.
Thank you.
Okay, so we only have one item on the agenda because it is a special meeting this evening, which is the presentation and discussion of community survey results and direction regarding potential ballot measures for the November 3rd, 2026 general municipal election.
So I'm going to pass it over to our deputy city manager, David White.
Yep.
Take it away.
Thank you.
Good evening, Mayor and City Council.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here this evening.
Just for some logistics, so alongside, I have Kerry Arradondo, our assistant to the city manager.
Online, we will have our public works director and deputy director, Terrence Davis and Waheed Amiri and Scott Ferris, our director of Parks and Recreation and Waterfront will be here very shortly.
And also part of our presentation will be delivered online from Lake Street partners, David Mermin and Emma Scotty.
So before you, you have the agenda for this evening's presentation, we're going to set the context and do a little background on how we fund our infrastructure and the gravity of our infrastructure needs and we did cover some of this territory when we spoke with you in December.
Then we are going to transition it over to David Mermin and the team to provide the results of the community survey that we launched in early mid-February of this year.
And that community survey was designed with Council's direction to accomplish two objectives.
One, we investigated the support of Berkeley voters for a $300 million and $200 million general obligation infrastructure bond.
And then also pursuant to Council's direction in January of this year, we also sought input from Berkeley voters on their support for a potential general fund sales and use tax measure to help address the city's general fund deficit.
After we talk about the results of the survey, we're going to talk a little bit about the extensive community engagement effort that is underway, which is being spearheaded and shepherded by our Department of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront, our Fire Department, as well as our Public Works Department.
We will not talk about a lot of the results of that community engagement right now because we are saving that until we can complete the community engagement process.
And we come back to you in May with the results of what that is producing for us.
And then we'll talk a little bit about next steps and timelines, about what the way ahead is, and then seeking Council input and direction on recommended actions and next steps.
So let's talk a little bit about how we fund infrastructure.
And clearly the main takeaway from this slide is we do not devote enough resources to address the totality of our infrastructure needs.
We are an older community and our infrastructure is clearly aging.
In terms of looking at the buckets on this slide, from the general fund, we contribute really revenue or resources to two main areas.
About three million dollars goes towards our facilities, parks, sidewalks, transportation, as well as paying for debt service.
And then we transfer a total of about 9.9 million dollars.
There is an inflation adjustment that occurs on that figure, goes towards streets.
And that's the results of Council's action a few years ago to really help address our aging street network.
We do have one-time resources that come into our infrastructure toolbox.
That comes from property transfer tax as well as interest income.
But that's volatile.
And over the years we have not been able to transfer all the resources to address capital that we may otherwise like because the general fund has needed those resources to sustain operations.
And then we have resources that are restricted by use.
Those goes towards our sewer system, our streets, stormwater, streetlights, and marina.
And then about why we're here tonight.
So we've been able to have been very lucky to receive voter support on a number of initiatives over the years to address infrastructure.
And the most recent item that we've been able to bring forward is Measure T1.
And we realized with the sunset of Measure T1 and that all those resources are allocated and going to be fully deployed in the next one to two years, we realized that there aren't the resources there to address infrastructure in the way that the community would expect as well as Council.
What we've also been able to do, and this slide does a really good job of highlighting, is that we've been very aggressive in pursuing grant opportunities when they arise.
And the one statistic I would point out on this chart is with 100 million dollars of T1 funding, we've been able to leverage that with 83 million dollars of grants.
And that work is continuous for us.
In fact, just the other day, maybe a week ago, we received notice from the state that we were able to secure a grant to help address our mental health facility on MLK.
And as we won't be talking a lot about the project list this evening, but one of the items we address in the project list is leveraging that potential grant resource with grant funds and just want to deliver the message that we will continue to be aggressive in that endeavor and activity.
So this is just another slide to help really encapsulate the depth of the need that we have from an infrastructure perspective.
So we have an unfunded need of about 1.87 billion dollars, and that really is an unbelievable large number when you think about it.
And when you looked at our last five-year CIP, we believe we calculated about an average spend of about 39 million dollars per year towards our infrastructure.
That is woefully inadequate to address the totality of our need.
So again, understanding the T1 resources are fully deployed, understanding the depth of this need, you know, we took a step back and wanted to think about what would another bond based on council's direction to explore this? What could it do? What could it be? And how would we develop a list of projects? So we took a step back.
We gave great consideration to how we've invested resources historically.
We thought about community use of our facilities, how to ensure equitable access.
We thought about our public safety infrastructure and apparatus and how to shore that up so we can be responsive to the community.
We thought about projects that could be leveraged with grant funds.
We thought about project delivery and project readiness, and all of that allowed us to come together with a preliminary list of projects, and there were a little more than 30 in that preliminary list, that really defined itself into these three main buckets.
So the first bucket was community facilities and quality of life, which included improvements to parks, playgrounds, restrooms, aquatic facilities, dog parks, community and cultural centers, and waterfront areas.
The second bucket was public safety, which was really focused and targeted on the modernization of fire stations, and that really was partially derived and directed from the City Council that adopted a referral and giving us that guidance, as well as resources that are needed to address our 9-1-1 dispatch facility.
And then the third bucket was critical infrastructure and accessibility, which was all about seismic upgrades, replacement of public facilities, ADA improvements, and programs such as our 50-50 sidewalk program.
And what was really critical in designing all of these projects is that we also really tried to hold on to a lens of climate resiliency, understanding that we're in a profound period of our time where we need to be prepared for the weather, we're experiencing it today, and so a lot of the projects that were developed were also thought through that lens to ensure that we can be efficient and resilient as we move forward.
So now I would like to turn it over to David Mermin and his team to talk about the results of the survey.
And again, as I mentioned before, that survey was really designed to probe a couple of main areas, the infrastructure bond, as well as the sales and use tax that was given direction to us by Council.
David, it's all yours.
Thanks so much.
Can you all hear and see me? All right? Yep.
Great.
So glad to be here once again.
I am traveling this week, so I couldn't join you in person, although I am a Berkeley resident, as well as having done the work on this survey for the City of Berkeley.
And as many of you know, we have conducted a series of these community surveys over the years, tracking overall levels of concern about different issues, awareness and support for the work that the City is doing, and then very specifically to test potential ballot measures and, in many cases, revenue measures, some of which, of course, were summarized and, of course, placed on the ballot in previous years.
This new survey, I'm not going to go through.
There's a longer report.
I believe it's been submitted for everyone to look at, but we are going to just go through the highlights here of the key findings related to this question of an infrastructure bond measure that could be placed on the ballot here in Berkeley, and then one additional measure that was mentioned in the survey, as well.
And I want to also mention our senior analyst on the team here, Emma Scotty, who's very much engaged in producing the data you see here and the results.
So I will put on the screen here our summary slides.
And again, this is excerpted from the longer report that many of you have.
And these are findings from a community survey.
It was conducted among likely voters in the City of Berkeley, 500 sample size, which gives us a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent.
So you can look at the numbers with that in mind.
And we're in the field in the second half of February of this year.
And mostly we'll be reporting here the top-line results, but we do have lots of crosstabs and other analysis in terms of how different groups of voters in the City broke down on these various questions.
So this is just a summary of the methodology of the things I just said about when we fielded and margin of error and so forth.
Just again, all of these crosstabs are available in the full report, but showing you some of the breakdown again.
This is likely voters in the City of Berkeley people expect to vote and turn out in 2026 November election.
And so all of those folks are represented proportionally in the survey relative to their proportion in the electorate of likely voters.
So here's the overview of the key findings that we learned here from this survey that was in the field last month.
We tested the infrastructure measure, the GO Bond, as it's referred to here, at a couple of different funding levels.
We also tested the sales tax ballot measure.
They were both with different results, but both in a good position to pass in the sense that the yes vote, the number of voters to say I'd like you to vote yes on that measure, is above the threshold that would be needed for the bond measure, which requires two-thirds to pass.
We're measuring that currently getting about 70 percent support from Berkeley voters on the initial ballot.
First time we ask it, just laying out some ballot language to describe what the bond is and asking people if they would vote yes or no.
Also, a key takeaway on the bond is that we tested two different dollar amounts and we split the sample.
So people in the survey heard only one of those versions all the way through, either 200 or 300 million.
And I'll show you the difference in that.
But the bottom line is there was essentially no difference.
And if anything, the larger amount, which includes a higher level of tax increase, actually tested slightly better than the smaller amount in terms of having more support from the voters.
And we'll show you those numbers.
We also tested a sales tax measure to fund ongoing budget needs.
And that was lower in terms of its total yes vote in the survey, but only meeting a 50 percent threshold to pass.
It is also above that threshold at 60 percent yes in our initial test.
We also found, in some broader general questions, that Berkeley voters are fairly satisfied with the city and the direction of things in the city, believing it's going in the right direction and that the city in general is doing a good or excellent job providing services.
There is a wide range of opinions on this, but both of those measures have improved in the sense that the level of satisfaction in the city is a little higher than the last time we measured it two years ago.
And in a higher proportion, also saying that the city is doing a good or excellent job providing services.
And then we also asked about priorities within these areas of infrastructure funding in particular, and many of the priorities that we tested related to safety, in particular, protecting infrastructure from climate change, as mentioned in the overall presentation, specifically issues related to emergency services, such as 9-1-1 dispatch and fire stations, improving earthquake and seismic protections, and repairing streets and sidewalks in particular for pedestrian safety, all of which got higher levels of priority from the voters out of a list of many, many things that they prioritize, but those are some of the highest.
So from there, let me walk you through some of the numbers that we got in these total top lines, and then obviously happy to take questions or thoughts from the council or others on this.
So this is the overall direction of the city of Berkeley.
And it's just to note that this is a, it has improved, as I said, there was a, we've been now measuring this for 14 years in the city of Berkeley.
Some version of this question is the city going the right or wrong direction.
And we have an uptick over the last previous measure of this in May of 2024, when we had 47% of the voters saying the city's going the right direction versus 29 saying wrong direction.
Now it is 56% going in the right direction and 22% in the wrong direction.
And that is a significant increase over that period of two years in the positive response on this question.
We also asked, as noted about the job performance of the city and providing services to its residents.
This is a four point scale, excellent, good, just fair or poor.
And the proportion saying good or excellent has slightly increased over the last two years.
It's now 56%.
That is a steady increase from five years ago in 2021, when it was at a somewhat lower point of 51.
This has always been a majority, but it is a slightly higher majority this year.
56% good or excellent versus 39% just fair or poor.
Then we wanted, before asking about the ballot measures, we also asked about the general priorities in terms of infrastructure for the city.
And these are all basically items.
We didn't cover every possible thing the city can invest in, but we covered the areas that might be considered for this infrastructure measure to see which ones were the highest priorities.
And we asked people to choose.
So now these percentages add up to more than 100%, because people were allowed to choose more than one.
And then we, you know, equalized the responses so that nobody had more weight than anyone else.
But there are people who voted for multiple things.
So we have percentages over 100% here.
And again, we're looking for the relative priority.
If you had to choose between these things, which ones would be the highest priority for you? And two of them emerged clearly at the top of this list, which are safeguarding critical infrastructure from the threats of climate change, including flooding and wildfires at 35%, and increasing Berkeley's safety and accessibility by improving sidewalks, curb ramps, and pathways.
Those two things, different versions of safety and protection, both at the top of this list, followed by a second tier of things that are also clearly important to voters, reducing pollution flowing to the bay and flood risk by installing green infrastructure, improving parks, playgrounds, recreation, and replacing public safety facilities that are at the end of their useful life.
All of those getting more than 20% picking them as one of their top priorities.
And then somewhat lower, the more specific, location-specific areas here of improving the waterfront and the civic center.
Still have some support, but lower relative in priority compared to those broader ones.
Then we get to the actual ballot measure.
And again, we tried to ask it in a form that resembled what people would see on a ballot, as we have done previously in measuring potential ballot measures for the city.
And we find a fairly strong support in the city for passing a general obligation bond to invest in a series of infrastructure things.
And we specified here investing in fire stations, emergency response, parks and recreation, climate change resiliency, and public buildings and infrastructure.
And we had, we'll get to the two versions in a minute, but overall, this is the combined split sample across the whole city.
Our total result was 70% voting yes.
And we also measured intensity of support.
So you have 39% saying strongly yes.
So some of that 70% would need to be consolidated if this measure were to pass, but it does look like it's currently 70%, 7 out of 10 voters in the city saying, I would either vote for or lean yes on voting for that measure.
Only 13% saying they would vote or lean no.
It's a wide margin in favor of yes, but it does importantly cross that two thirds threshold being over 67%.
And then you have 16% saying I'm undecided and not sure which way they would lean on that infrastructure measure.
So that's the total combined.
And obviously it does reach over the threshold.
This is the experiment we did with the size of the measure.
And this was interesting because we would expect, given that there was a tax associated with this, a tax level, that the one with the lower amount might be slightly more popular because it would have a lower, it doesn't include a lower tax increase.
Turns out, however, that there is essentially no difference in the total yes vote.
And if anything, the larger measure at the $300 million threshold tests slightly better, slightly higher vote support.
Now this is well within the margin of error.
As far as we know, there's essentially no difference here, but 71% for the $300 million bond measure and 70% voting yes for the $200 million bond measure and 12 or 14% voting no.
Similar amounts undecided.
So it does not appear to be particularly sensitive to the level, at least in this range of the size of the bond.
So that was the, so this was the combined at 70%, yes.
This was the split sample of the two different dollar amounts.
And then we asked another, we then tested some arguments.
And in the full report, you see that the language in these arguments, but basically the idea was we wanted to see what happened when people learned more and heard more about the infrastructure measure.
And we tested a, it's a stress test essentially of the support because it's both an argument in favor and an argument against.
And we wanted to see, okay, if people hear arguments from both sides of this issue, would their vote ship? And it does shift a little and it does shift slightly down.
So it started at 70% overall.
After that argument back and forth, we get equal time to the yes and no arguments.
The yes vote saying these are important infrastructure needs and we need to invest and it will produce benefits for all of us in Berkeley.
And the no argument essentially saying this costs too much.
We can, we need to find the money elsewhere.
We can't afford tax increases at this time.
And so hearing those two arguments, here's where people ended up.
Still two thirds voting yes, just barely over the threshold, 67%.
18% voting no and still 14% undecided.
So if any proportion of those undecideds were to break toward a yes, it would once again be well over the threshold.
But it's close, but certainly in a position to pass with 67% voting yes after those arguments.
And that does reinforce that this is a fairly robust finding in favor of people supporting the measure of Berkeley voters supporting this ballot measure.
The other measure we tested on this community survey had to do with the sales tax.
And this was not for those infrastructure investments, but more broadly to address the city's structural budget deficit with all of the increases in costs for programs and the fact that the revenues are not keeping up.
So the idea was to see if voters would support increasing the sales tax by half a percent.
And in this version of it, we simply said, here's what it would be invested in.
And here's what the cost would be.
Would you vote yes or no? And 60% would vote yes on a sales tax increase to invest in these budget needs for the city.
That is, again, it's lower than the support for the infrastructure bond, but it is well above the 50% threshold that would be needed to pass.
29% say they would vote no, but that is a substantial 31 point margin in favor.
And you do have 11% who say they would be undecided.
This is a pattern that suggests that this would be likely to pass given just the simple information of what's on the ballot for a sales tax measure.
And again, we stress tested this by testing arguments in favor and opposed about the favor and favor argument, arguing about what the needs are for the city and the importance of investing in these budget needs.
And the no argument, again, raising the question of, does this cost too much? Is there other money that could be used? And specifically suggesting that a sales tax would be regressive.
So they heard those strong arguments in favor and opposed.
And again, overall support dips a little bit from that initial measure of 60%, but it's still well over a majority at 58% yes.
After hearing those arguments pro and con, 29% say they would vote no, 13% in the poll are undecided as to whether they would vote yes or no on the sales tax.
So again, this would suggest it's in a good position to pass.
And even if you undecided to vote no on this case, it would still be well over the 50% threshold.
And then finally we tested a series back to the infrastructure question.
We tested a series of priorities in terms of what was most important.
We had the broader priorities up top.
Now we asked about very specific things to invest in with an infrastructure measure.
Once voters understood, we're talking about an actual measure that might produce a revenue that could be used for these infrastructure investments.
And in this case, rather than choose, everyone was able to rate each item on the list.
And then they had a scale, five levels of how important it was, extremely important being the highest level.
And we're rank ordering here the things in terms of the percent who rated them extremely important.
And there were four things in particular that had the highest percentages of people saying they are extremely important to me to invest in that.
Number one was renovating the 911 dispatch center to handle higher call volumes and modernize critical infrastructure, 29%.
Say that is extremely important.
That was the number one on this long battery of potential investments.
Second highest was making the fire station citywide safer and more energy efficient by replacing fire stations and no longer able to meet demands.
And notably when we said replacing fire stations that has to a little higher than repairing fire stations.
So that was notable and that was a high priority for Berkeley voters.
Also tied with that as the second highest priority was improving safety and accessibility by repairing cracked and uneven sidewalks and upgrading curb ramps, 27%, extremely important for that one.
And then also on the top tier here, just a couple of points lower in terms of extremely important is upgrading the deteriorating public restrooms at Berkeley parks.
And in this case, it was upgrading and repairing rather than building new public restrooms that tested a little bit higher, upgrading a little bit higher than building new ones.
Now, this is the full list just to show the range of things that we tested specifically that could be investments out of the infrastructure bond.
But those four noted at the top did have the highest overall as well as the highest extremely important rating.
But you see several other things, not too far below that, repairing the fire stations, earthquake protections, waterfront paths, repairing public buildings, which does include the civic center.
Remember when we limited the buildings just to the civic center, that rated lower.
When we say more broadly repair public buildings, including the civic center, that did better.
So all of those are in fairly high levels, but those top four or five stand out above the others in terms of what voters are most focused on in terms of investments.
And that's the summary of the findings.
But happy to take questions or other feedback after this presentation.
Thank you, David.
I feel like I'm gonna have to call you both something different to differentiate.
A lot of David's here, but we're used to it.
David and I are in similar generations.
We've grown up with a lot of David's, so I'm sure we're used to it.
Okay, very good.
Do I have any questions from our council members? Do you wanna pause and focus on the survey before we finish or? I'm sorry.
Yes, if you wanna go ahead.
Okay.
So we'll be real quick.
So in addition to the community survey, I wanna give a lot of credit to Director Farris who's in the audience, Director Davis, Chief Sprague, Carrie to my left, and I don't know how many staff to thank, but there are many in our Parks, Recreation, Waterfront Department, Public Works, and Fire Department that have worked really, really hard to implement a very robust community engagement campaign.
And what this slide highlights for you is the breadth of the work that they've engaged in.
They've been in front of six city commissions.
And I'm really encouraged by that because I've started to see commissions develop reports for council to provide advice on how to move forward with the general obligation bond.
Four community focus groups.
We have one more that's going to be occurring this week.
Four, sorry, four community focus groups and then four joint district community meetings.
And we have one more joint district community meeting this week.
And then we've developed the city webpage as well as an email to receive input from the community.
And all of this, right, all the results of all this community engagement, the results of the community survey are going to inform us bringing back the list to you in May that hopefully we'll get blessings to move forward with.
And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second.
So when you look at the timeline and next steps, and so we engaged in embarked on this journey in December of last year, and that was kicked off with the work session that we brought before you.
And following that, we brought on Lake Street partners to help us with the community survey.
And as I mentioned, staff developed a very robust community engagement campaign.
And that's what brought us forward to this day here today in which we're bringing forward the results of that first survey.
And undoubtedly, they're very encouraging.
Subsequent to the direction we received tonight, our goal is to come back before council in the May timeframe.
If we get direction to move forward with a second survey, which is one of our recommended actions, we would bring those results back in front of you.
In addition to that, it is our goal and our interest in bringing forward a refined project list.
Again, reflecting the input of the community survey, reflecting the input of the community engagement effort that's underway.
In addition to that, we are refining the cost estimates that are developed for those projects, as well as considering the staffing organization and the staffing architecture that needs to be in place to deliver a bond of this magnitude efficiently and successfully.
And our hope is in that May study session, we would get direction on that final project list, which will also help inform our city attorney's office.
It is an integral role in helping to develop the ballot language.

Segment 2

Ultimately, we'd like to bring in front of you in the June time frame of this year.
So that kind of outlines sort of where we are today and where we're headed.
I'll now turn to the conclusion, which is our recommended actions.
We have three actions that we would like to bring before you this evening.
The first one is to give us direction to actually develop the final ballot language for the 300 million general obligation bond, to develop the draft ballot language for the sales and use tax, and then to give us direction to go back out and do a second community survey.
And I want to point out what that second community survey would consist of.
One, we would actually like to test the actual ballot language that would be on the ballot itself.
It's really important for us to get that feedback.
And secondly, in taking direction from the Council, one of the things that you were interested in was seeing the interaction of these measures with other measures that could be on the ballot.
And so obviously, as time has passed, we're getting better clarity on what are some of the items that could actually be on the ballot.
And so we would like to integrate that into a second community survey to see where things shank out after that.
That concludes our presentation.
And as David Mermin said, he's available on his team for questions as well as myself and other staff that are either online or in audience.
Thank you.
Very good.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Back to questions.
Does anyone have any questions? Oh, this says one, but doesn't say who it is.
So I'm not sure.
Perhaps.
Okay, I'll take Council Member Trach up first.
I don't want to go second.
Thank you so much for the presentation.
I have three questions.
I think all of them are for David.
David Mermin.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
As far as in after, I guess, what's called the battery of positive and negative statements, the measure is at 67% in your experience.
What kind of factors and what might influence that kind of polling and how a measure does on the ballot, whether directionally it goes up or down? So what factors influence whether it goes up or down? And also, in your experience, how often does it go up versus down? That's question number one.
Maybe I will start with that.
So three things that we think that play a role in that keeping in mind, as always, and the posters are always going to say this, right? But there is this is a snapshot in time.
We took this survey in February of 2026, elections in November of 2026.
Things happen, right? There are events.
There is news.
Since we took this poll, the country started a war overseas, right? Lots of things can change and affect the environment, right, in which people are making their decisions.
We don't know that a war overseas can affect how people vote on infrastructure in Berkeley, but sometimes things like that do, right, and other things in the environment in terms of what people are voting on in the election.
So there's that.
The second thing that can influence is exactly what the specific language on the ballot is.
Berkeley voters are well-educated, attentive, relative to most voters in a lot of other places.
They tend to read the measure.
They tend to have very specific reactions to the very specific things that they are presented with, and that's one of the reasons we're recommending a second survey where we have actual language to test that would read exactly as the voters would see it.
And sometimes there's an element in there that either boosts or undercuts the level of support.
And then the third, there's the question of the specific ballot environment.
So it's the broader environment of the world and politics, but there's the specific environment of what else people are voting on on the ballot, which is another reason to have a second survey to have a better, clearer sense of exactly what voters will be looking at on that ballot in Alameda County, in Berkeley.
Which other revenue measures in particular they might be asked to vote on, that kind of, you know, you can get an effect where people feel like, wow, I voted for three or four taxes already.
Am I ready to vote for another one? So we do want to see how that might play out relative to support.
And since, of course, the support here is slightly above, but just slightly above the threshold it would need to pass, you know, it's important, right, whether it goes up or down as your question indicates.
In the past, the last thing I would say is that in the past, in the city of Berkeley, we have more often than not seen the level increase from when we polled in the early in the year and in winter and spring to the fall ballot.
But there have been a couple of years where that wasn't the case, where there were either shifts in the environment or a lot of other revenue measures.
And for instance, in 2022, as many of you know, there were a couple of revenue measures in the city.
Those were measured ahead of time.
They ended up getting about the level of vote that was expected in the poll, but they did not increase.
And as a result, actually fell a couple of points short of passage.
So it has rarely gone, I haven't seen this type of measure, which is generally investments in the city go down, particularly in Berkeley, but we have seen it kind of hold steady or erode within a couple of points, and that would matter in this case.
So those are a couple of things to look at.
Thank you.
And then I have two, I think, related questions.
In the slide deck, you first ask about top priorities, and then later on, you have a more granular slide.
And there seems to be a bit of a mismatch, specifically, you know, I think you call this out, the buildings adjacent to Civic Center Park fall lower in the more high level survey, but they are formally within the top tier range.
And maybe you answered this by saying in the latter case, all buildings or seismic for all buildings is included, including those adjacent to Civic Center Park.
But I was hoping you could speak to that more, because I did see some other mismatches there, specifically around, you know, parks or dog parks.
Yeah, why? What do the asks mean in the second bar chart? Right, so these were slightly different questions to the one thing, right? But the first question was, here are six or seven broad areas for infrastructure investment.
You please choose and tell us which one or two of these is most important to you, right? So people couldn't, even if they cared about Civic Center buildings or dog parks or whatever, they couldn't say, but they cared more about fire stations and sidewalk safety.
They couldn't choose both, they had to pick, right? And when they were forced to pick, they picked what we identify as the sort of safety related items, emergency services, as well as the sidewalks.
And so that's one difference.
And then the second difference, and I think this was, we deliberately designed this in, because we were curious about the, we noticed then back and forth about the Civic Center investment.
In the past, when we just said, fix these buildings in the Civic Center, and it was in that set of choices.
It's just, you know, people might be happy to do that, but they clearly didn't think it was as high a priority, right? Because those other items.
Then in the longer list, they were able to read each of those and for each one say, how important is it to you? Now, keep in mind that infrastructure, that piece of repairing buildings, but not at the top, but it wasn't at the bottom either.
It was sort of in the middle.
And it was framed, the description was different.
The description said, we're going to invest in public buildings around the city.
That are used for various kinds of services, including the Civic Center, and I mentioned 2 or 3 other things.
So, those were the 2 differences, and I think account for that 1.
And I think you can see in areas like parks, some of those differences as well.
Like, when we got very narrow as to, we're going to fix, we're going to provide dog parks.
Fine, but that is not my highest priority, right? It's fine.
Right, so it wound up lower on that relative list, but when we said more broadly, we want to invest in parks, it was something people care about.
So.
And then we had when we said specifically bathrooms and fix those, it's actually 1 of the highest.
Right, so by having that granular breakdown, we're able to see a little more what people mean when they say, yes, I want to improve the parks.
But focus on these areas as compared to those.
So that's just useful and again, that doesn't mean you can only do the 3 things that voters care most about, but it does suggest that in.
Describing and listing the priorities and talking about what the, what the city's priorities are for this investment that you might want to note the things that the voters care most about.
Thank you and then what do the asterisks mean? Yeah, so in that, let me go down here.
Those, we, whenever we split sample, so you remember we did the split sample.
In the bond measure, we had 2 different dollar amounts.
And that literally means people randomly get either 1 version or the other version of the question.
And we can then, that allows us to basically get 2 questions for the price of 1.
And people, and we can also compare and so in that list of projects, partly for time, but also to do some experiments with language.
We split some of those questions.
So, for instance, we had replaced fire station 1 item there that was replaced.
You know, address the fire stations that are outdated by replacing them.
Versus address the fire stations that are outdated by repairing them.
So, we split sample people heard only 1 of the others, so they didn't know that they were hearing 2 versions.
They just heard 1.
But by testing it that way, we could then measure on both and it turns out if you heard replace fire stations, your 5 points higher and saying extremely important.
And if you heard repair fire stations, so that produces that recommendation and to say.
Replacing is better language when you're talking about what what needs to.
What needs to be done with the fire stations and likewise on park restrooms.
That's also got an asterisk because we split sample.
We had a version that said upgrade them and fix them.
And another 1 that said, add new ones and add new ones was kind of in the lower half of the priorities for the upgrade and fix the existing park restrooms was quite high.
So, that was another interesting experiment that we did with the split sample.
Thank you.
So much.
Thank you.
So I'm going to go council member.
O'Keefe council member and then go to council member Humbert.
So go ahead.
Council member.
Okay.
Thank you.
I was wondering, I guess this is for the deputy city manager.
Whoever wants to answer.
If you could stay a little bit about how each of these, the bond measure and also the sales tax measure could address our structural deficit.
I think it's more straightforward to the sales tax, but if you could comment on that, and then I'm also curious.
How the bond measure might change things I can start and then pass it off.
So.
The sales and use tax increase of a half cent.
Is estimated to bring in around 9Million dollars a year and.
Currently, our structural deficit is somewhere in the neighborhood of 27 to 30Million dollars for 27 and again for 28.
and so we're in the process now of putting together budget reduction scenarios.
That include a lot of the reduction of a lot of staff positions, some filled some vacant and spread throughout the whole city, including public safety.
And so, where this measure, where the half cent sales tax increase to pass, we would be able to mitigate some of the reductions to our public safety units, both in police and in fire on the 300Million dollar.
General obligation bond for infrastructure, that's not so much focused on like a budget reduction.
Although, of course, we would be hiring engineers and a lot of staff to do the work, because it is a lot of work and part of our budget deficit challenge in public works includes shifting a lot of people off of general fund and into special funds.
And so, if we add more special fund dollars through this measure to address the infrastructure needs that we have, we would be able to offset some of those staff challenges.
I would say I don't want to add a little bit to that.
And I would just add, particularly around the infrastructure bond, 1 of the things that we're very attuned to is that because of the age of our facilities, if we cannot invest in them, we're going to be subject to facility closure service disruptions.
And so I can give just some really tangible examples, like, right now, we don't have a hot water heater at South Berkley Senior Center, right? It's completely embarrassing and inappropriate, but these are the things that we're falling behind on.
And this bond will allow us to invest not in all of our infrastructure, but will allow us to adjust certain facilities and get us on the pathway of being proactive in certain regards.
So that's just a really poignant example in my mind and as a city manager said, as we're looking at these budget reductions, which is about 10% of our general fund.
So it's a very heavy burden.
So, I think that's a really good example of what we're trying to do.
I think that's a really good example of what we're trying to do as a city and this sales tax measure gives us the capacity to think about what can be preserved in order to keep the city operating at a level that this council and the community expects.
Great, thank you.
That's really helpful.
I have a question about the bond and sales tax measures again for both the bond and sales tax measures.
How should these both pass? How would the tax burden on our citizens compare with that of neighboring cities? So, we haven't completed analysis of, so we can look at it from the perspective of this fiscal year.
So, for example, we're about in line right with next to Oakland and Albany in terms of their ballot for this upcoming election.
So we know we're about in line right with next to Oakland and Albany in terms of what are.
What a total property tax bill looks like, and we can sort of do some hypothetical modeling of what a bond would look like the 300Million dollar bond is about $22 per 100,000 of assessed value.
So, that's just a little bit more in the property tax bill.
I can add a little just a little bit more on the sales and use tax, but so we're at 10 and a quarter percent and this would put us kind of in line with cities that are around us.
So, Oakland's at 10.75.
The city of Albany's at 10.75, Stanley, and 10.75.
So, it kind of puts us in that range.
That's great.
Thank you.
I have more questions.
I'll just, I'll do myself to three.
Oh, yeah, it's kind of a fun one.
Given that the support didn't really change or even arguably went up when we went from 200 to 300Million, I was wondering if a higher number was considered or will be considered just, you know, what's the, how far can we take this? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's hard to say from a public opinion point of view, which is we don't know.
And it is generally historically when we have tested higher dollar amounts with a higher tax increase that has tended to be somewhat, you know, reduce the support.
Gradually, depending on how high you go.
It's probable that it would.
And, of course, since this is just a few points above the threshold, even though there does appear to be an appetite for this.
Higher level 300Million over 200Million, there's certainly clear recommendation here that 300Million would be fine.
But the answer is we don't know.
We wanted to test versions that we thought were realistic and that was just a joint decision as we were working this together with the city staff as to what were the likely levels to test.
Because we, unfortunately, with one survey instrument, you can't test the whole range.
It gets very, very complicated and messes up the.
Accuracy and sample if you do that too much.
Can I ask if.
I mean, it sounds like we're going to pull again.
So is there any interest or are we just like, I mean, how did we come up with a 300Million? Maybe that's a bigger question.
I don't need an extensive answer.
I mean, if you all want us to test test at a higher rate, we certainly could if we felt like 300Million dollars was.
It felt like a lot.
And also, you know, when you think about.
$22 per 100,000 of assessed value, that seems kind of a reasonable amount.
It's not like a science.
I'm not suggesting we should.
I was just kind of curious what the process was and if that's being contemplated still.
Actually, sorry, I have one more question.
It's for David M.
In the results, I'm curious if there were any demographics or parts of town or any sort of human patterns that showed a difference in support levels like a particular part of town or renters or anything like that that showed a significant statistical difference.
There's a very long answer to that question, which is mostly provided in the report for the simple tables and breakdowns of that.
We'll try to get back here.
The short version is that the variation, I think, was less than we normally see in the sense that the levels of support were fairly consistent across the major regions of the city.
With a sample this size, you can't break down individual council districts or that level of granularity, but we did broadly do a sort of Berkeley Hills, Central South, Central and South together, and then the West Berkeley is kind of three broad areas.
And notably, there were not huge differences in the levels of support.
And actually, even though the hills tend to have more homeowners, higher property values, they were not particularly more resistant to the increase.
In fact, we're more supportive of certain aspects of the increase compared to the rest of the city, but it was pretty solid across the board.
And then other demographics, it is often the case that younger voters and renters are a little more supportive of property taxes, and they don't pay them as directly.
There was a little bit of that pattern, but it was not a particularly big difference in that.
And then modest differences by gender, race, and some of the other measures, but nothing that was like.
Jumped out as being, wow, here's a group that is super, super, super excited to do this, or a group that was particularly opposed.
There's a very small group of Republicans in Berkeley who are too small, too small to break out on their own, but they generally tend to be against.
That's not surprising.
Thanks.
Yeah.
And I appreciate you saying that renters don't pay property taxes directly because it's a common.
Common misunderstanding that they don't pay property taxes, and it is factored into the rent, so I appreciate you being clear about that.
Those are all my questions.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
Moving on to Council Member Blackaby and Council Member Humbert.
Great.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
In some ways, I might pick up a little bit from where Council Member O'Keefe left off to ask the Deputy City Manager.
We've had a, I think, had a similar kind of back and forth in the Budget Committee, big picture, looking at the fact, like on slide three, that we've got this $1.87 billion kind of overall backlog on the infrastructure.
And you sort of identified how much we're investing in any given fiscal year through available funding, through FF funds, through the T1 spend down.
I was just sort of doing back of the envelope, which is a little dangerous, but somewhere on the order of $60 to $70 million each year, we're kind of investing in infrastructure investment.
And the capital backlog continues to grow, even with that level of investment.
Is that fair to say? Yeah, you know, I went, I want to credit Ray Yap.
He shared with me a report that was presented to the Council a couple of years ago, looking at asset management and how we're maintaining our assets.
And I don't have the statistics in the front of my mind, but it was interesting that when you really drill down and look at specific categories like parks and public facilities, these numbers in terms of what we're looking at, spending on those buildings is even lower than this aggregate 2% amount, which is really what's driving the increase in the deferred and unfunded liabilities.
Yeah, because again, no one I think here is suggesting, hey, let's go for more.
But I'm also thinking about, you know, what should we be thinking is the ideal target, like 20 years from now, like if we're a $1.87 billion backlog now, what are we trying to, what are we trying to get? Like, what's a healthy, so I almost think of this as like in the national debt perspective, we always are going to carry some amount of national debt.
It's just a question of how big it is.
I guess as a city, we're always going to cover some sort of infrastructure, carry some sort of infrastructure backlog.
But $1.8 billion seems like a lot.
So I guess my question is, it's more like putting this in the context of like, are we trying to drive this number down? Is this bond part of the solution to driving it down? And if so, how much do we need to be investing on an annual basis to be driving that number down? And so it's just like I said, it looked like we're investing somewhere like $50 to $60 billion, sorry, $50 to $60 million on an annual basis.
We're not quite keeping pace, like we're falling a little bit farther behind each time.
So if we invest, if we have this bond online, which I think is about $20 million a year, something like that, if it's $100 million of bonds over five years, $20 million.
So I just at least want us to try and square this, like, is this number going to help us at least flatten the curve, if not start driving that down? I don't know if we have a good read on that.
So I don't have a direct answer.
I don't think this number is going to flatten the curve to the point at which we will, we could consider the amount that we're investing in our facilities is adequate.
This is a start.
This is getting us on the right path.
I think when you think about the city 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years down the road, you know, I think about one of the referrals that council brought forward to us, which is needing to develop a long term vision for, you know, how are we going to not just go after this bond, but how are we going to regularly build into our financial model? A proactive strategic approach that allows us to continually go out to voters and have a plan of how we're going to address our facilities.
I think when we have that plan well defined for you, we'll have a better answer to that question because it's a very complex question.
What I can honestly say, though, is that, you know, investing in our facilities really addresses a number of different important boxes.
One is obviously with aging infrastructure, there's liability and there's costs with that.
There's an incredible amount of staff time that goes into addressing emergencies as they arise because we're addressing emergencies as they arise.
We're spending more money than we should be spending by having a more efficient, up to date, effective facility.
So, I want to have a specific answer for you.
I don't have the number for you, but I can tell you that this is the beginning and that there's a continual path that we have to come up with in terms of what we need to do over a longer period of time.
I love seeing this in context, so I'm eager to continue that conversation in future meetings, just to kind of anchor this.
In the big picture, we add this brick to the wall.
How are we doing in terms of making progress on this? One other quick thing to add, and this is probably an obvious point, but just to make it is that the longer we defer the maintenance on all these projects, the more expensive they become.
And so, there is a cost efficiency and a benefit to addressing them earlier rather than later.
It's no regrets move to say we've got to get after it.
It's just a question of how much more do we have to get after it over time.
Okay, thank you.
Back to David Mermin.
So, we tested the sales tax and the bond measure together in this poll.
When we were asking people questions about what they thought about the bond measure, So, we tested the sales tax and the bond measure together in this poll.
When we were asking people questions about it, were they thinking about them together, or were they really thinking about them independently? And I guess we'll get to this in the second survey, if we ask you to do it.
But is there a chance that when we pulled this and did the research on this, people were thinking about one or the other and weren't necessarily thinking that, hey, the city is going to come ask for both a bond and a sales tax increase? And how might that affect the response over time? So, we were asking about them independently, right? We were asking people, just consider this measure on its own, and then we framed the question that way.
Having said that, we also had to choose an order here, and the order we chose was to do the infrastructure measure first because it was more complicated and had more items related to it that we wanted to test.
So, because of that, that came first, and that was sort of the centerpiece.
Therefore, when people were responding on the sales tax, they did, in fact, have in their head the infrastructure, even though we said, all right, now just consider this separately.
We know that they had heard the infrastructure measure first, and it's possible that affected their—you know, that their ordering effects are common, as you know, in the research.
What we will do in a follow-up survey, what we recommend doing, is that we would take the things that we know to be on the ballot or very likely to be on the ballot in the fall that are revenue-related and ask them in the order that they were—or like they are expected to appear on the actual ballot.
So that we're simulating whatever it is—you know, as they go through their ballot, people say, okay, I've seen the state measure, and I've seen the housing bond, and I've seen the transportation—you know, the Bay Area Transportation Rescue and the, you know, and the Alameda County, whatever they're doing.
And now I get to Berkeley, and then they will have seen those other things in November when they come to vote.
So we want to test it in that context.
And likewise, if the city goes ahead with both of these in whatever order, we can, you know, talk about how we would test that appropriately in this follow-up survey.
But that's how we did it this time.
So, in this instance, there might have—the drag was there for the sales tax.
Like, they will— If there was any drag from, like, oh, I'm hearing more taxes, it would have brought the sales tax down.
Potentially, that has a couple of points of fact.
We don't—we didn't do an experiment to test, so we don't know.
But it's plausible that there was a little drag on that.
Okay.
And then, just to follow up on Councilmember Trageb's questions about the Civic Center buildings, again, I'm supportive of investment there to, again, for the retrofit, for the rebuilding of that infrastructure, for the maintenance of that infrastructure, and kind of bringing those buildings back into use over time.
And I know there was some commentary in the more extended poll research about how to frame it.
Could you just kind of characterize, you know, how—what's our strongest kind of argument around that, just as we're thinking about it, in terms of how people, you know, view that infrastructure? Mr.
Trageb's argument for infrastructure? For that piece, the Civic Center pieces.
Like, because, again— Yeah, I think for the Civic Center, it is—if you say, we're going to rebuild the buildings in the Civic Center, that is not—that does not appear to be the most exciting part of it.

Segment 3

This meeting is being recorded and will be available to the public at the end of the meeting.
I want to start by saying that this is a process for voters.
It's not that they're against it, it's just that they don't rate it as high, right? Relatively speaking.
When you say we have a lot of buildings that need repairs in the city to be able to provide services that people need, and these include for quality of life and for safety, we need to make those improvements, that does that.
And so that looks like the way to describe what means, you know, what could be invested in, you know.
And we're not offering any opinion here about how you would actually allocate or what the, you know, the specific mix.
Obviously for the experts on the actual infrastructure to do, but in terms of how it would be framed or described to the voters, it does appear that sort of envelope around the Civic Center is a better way to say it than just, hey, we're going to fix this particular set of buildings.
Okay, thank you.
Thanks, Madam Mayor.
Thank you.
Is it any cooler outside than it is inside? Does anyone know? Because I'd love to be able to open the doors so we don't pass out.
It's very hot in here.
Okay, so going on to Council Member Humbert, thank you for your patience.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
And I've really appreciated the questions that my fellow council members have posed so far.
I just have a couple, and this is for Dave W.
and Paul B.
as opposed to Dave M.
As we write the bond measure language, do we have a fair degree of latitude to determine how locked in the city is on the amount of bond money that goes to each category of project and or what specific projects are funded? What level of flexibility do we have in that regard? It's an important question, and I may ask for a little help from our city attorney here too, but one of the things we've definitely talked about as staff is the need to have some level of flexibility built into this measure.
We do want to have these projects identified.
But if, for example, one of the projects, the two that we were just talking about, Old City Hall and the Veterans Building, we've got a $16 million grant into FEMA to do those projects.
If we got that grant and we needed less money for this project, we would want to have the flexibility to transfer it over to another project.
So we do need to figure out a way to build in some flexibility so that we're not locked into projects in a way that constrain us from actually doing good work for the city.
And obviously, we work closely with our city attorney colleagues to come up with what that, ooh, midnight would look like, and maybe Assistant City Attorney Harvey could help with that.
Sure.
So as a general matter, the bond measures are required to describe the purpose to which the funds will be used.
In practice, the city will describe the types of projects that that will go to.
So there is some flexibility provided that the ultimate use of the funds matches the description in the ballot language.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I had a second question, but you've answered that as well.
I appreciate it.
That's all I have.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Bartlett.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
And thank you, David and David, for your work once again.
One question.
This goes to, I guess, the David Berman, the pollster.
So I and your parole, I assume.
I'm just wondering.
I assume you controlled for the for the timing of the election.
It's not a presidential year, so it obviously is, but more conservative audience, right? I'm sure you control for that, right? Yes, this is that's an astute question.
Council member should be lifted some polls in the past and you're correct that we want to simulate the likely electorate for this election year.
So that is why this is not a survey of all adults are all citizens, or even all voters in the city of Berkeley.
It is a survey of.
Those we expect to turn out and vote in a midterm general election, 2026, based on their history, their vote history on the on the file.
Okay, and that's why it explains some of the topics, right? The sidewalks challenges faced by seniors, right? Sidewalks.
It does skew a little older compared to the overall population of the city.
Yes, and whenever you do a likely better survey, particularly that somewhat lower turnout, then they are going to have more seniors relatively in the.
In your sample fire, right? Okay.
And then the other thing is this regarding us is probably for everyone.
You know, many times they challenge us about how we are going to spend these things, right? And so our reputation is really good.
The soda tax really got it going.
I see some people here and people didn't believe us that we would spend the money that we said we would.
And because the threshold for the general fund is somewhat lower than specialized spending.
And so we form committees and we actually follow through on what we promise in these measures.
So it's really important that as we design the language and we form the committee afterwards, we honor our commitment because that's our that's our brand here.
Our neighbors respect that and they and they expect it.
Thank you.
I'm going to go back to council member.
Is that your button? Thank you so much.
I do have a couple more questions.
One of them was a follow up to something council member Black could be asked.
And this is for.
I don't know who it's for, actually.
So if I understood correctly, the second survey is going to model the ballot more precisely to assess drag.
But how can the ballot be modeled in that way? If it's not going to be clear at that time, what all is going to be on the ballot and in which order? Well, I'll take all that from a survey design perspective in the staff may have other comments.
I believe it's true.
We won't know exactly everything that will be on, but we will be much closer to knowing we're talking about fielding.
I believe in the later part of April.
And as these things come online and the different governmental.
Agencies go through their process of getting these metrics placed on the ballot.
I think we will.
We will assess it as closely as we can what is anticipated likely to be on it.
We, you know, to the extent that there are things that could happen before the actual deadlines.
That, you know, it's possible we can't anticipate everything.
At the same time, you, there's a timeline, of course, for the city.
To place your measures on, and you need to get your data before making this final decision.
So that's that's the window where we're shooting for.
And we will endeavor to get the best.
Estimate from those in the know as to what is likely to appear on the November balance.
So we can simulate it as closely as we can.
Okay, thank you.
And then, in terms of the order, would there be a B testing to, you know, we could test again.
We should decide the drawback there is that your sample is cut in half.
And if it turns out 1 version is passing, the other is not.
You have a little less confidence because the version that's passing, it's only after sample.
So, you know, your margin of error is a little higher.
So that's the trade off with what we tried to do was that kind of experiment in this 1st survey.
To figure out things like language and what's prioritized and what's not.
So, I think we would generally not do as much of that 2nd time around, but it is it is something that is tool.
We still have and we could decide to do so.
Okay, thank you.
And my last question is at least.
Is there an opportunity to dig in more deeply into arguments that talk about the opportunity to do that? So, my last question is, at least at this time is for that 2nd survey.
Is there an opportunity to dig in more deeply into arguments that talk about the opportunity costs of not passing a ballot measure? For instance, the opportunity cost of not restoring the Madele Chirac City Hall building and continuing to pay 300 to 400 K to the to be USD, I think per year.
Again, this might be too granular, but will there be some consideration to what we might be losing or if we don't pass it and potential benefits on the flip side of approving this method? I will say that in the current version of the survey where we tested, I didn't go through all the language that was in these arguments.
Head to head, but it's in the report.
We did, in fact, in the positive argument, the argument in favor of voting yes test.
It was a sentence or half a sentence that basically said, if we don't not investing in these.
Fixes now means greater costs in the future because they continue to deteriorate.
So that is a capsule version of that argument.
We could test a longer version of it.
There's going to be some, but we're going to have the time is going to be tight on that 2nd survey.
Assuming we go forward with it, given that we have to test multiple measures.
To simulate the ballot, so we'll have to decide in terms of priority if we want to take another bite at the arguments.
Perhaps further language as you suggest, but that again is an option and we'll have to decide on that within the limitations of the length and budget for the server.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you very much.
I have 2 questions and then I think I think everyone else has asked their questions already.
Can you speak more to the strategy around refining the list? I'm concerned about losing some projects that would be important for equity, like South Berkeley green space, or in terms of long term need, like the projects, the Marina that will cost us much more if we don't address them.
Or, you know, even what has been mentioned earlier about civic center buildings where we could be utilizing a match.
So, I think naturally we want the input and feedback from council and there's not going to be this will be part art, part science, right? So we are digesting the input we got from the survey.
It's an important piece of data for us.
As I mentioned, we're doing all this community engagement and staff are taking in all that input and feedback.
We're seeing the reports come from various commissions and really importantly, we're going to be updating the costs associated with the projects that have been identified and thinking about what we need from a staffing perspective.
So, we're going to take all this in totality and try to develop the most robust list that we possibly can that ensures we're addressing climate resiliency, that we're centered on equity and thinking about how we respond from a public safety perspective.
So, there are going to be hard choices.
There's no doubt about it, but we're going to do our best to be as balanced as we possibly can in the list that we ultimately bring forward to the council.
Thank you.
I really appreciate that.
I think this is something that I struggle with politics in general is that we use polling results from people who are most likely voters, which means they're more likely to be more affluent, have more resources generally.
And so that also determines the projects that we do inherently.
So, I just want to bring that up as we're talking about this.
And can also I would love if we can also share with the public the relationship between measure T1 and this bond when it comes to our residents bills, because my understanding is that T1 is sunsetting.
So, what will that look like? So, I can when we come back, I can bring forward a chart that was prepared by our financial advisor that helped to show sort of the perspective of everything that we've issued in the past and sort of what's been paid off and then what it looks like going forward with what this new measure would be with what's still authorized to issue or what's already existing.
So, the number we gave you about $22.14 per $100,000 of assessed value that represents the new bond.
When we look in totality and include existing authorizations, don't quote me specifically, but the total assessment rate would be on average about $44 per 100,000.
And I can be more precise when we come back to the council, but that was about the number.
Okay, that's great.
I think we just want to make sure folks understand what at the end of the day, their bills will look like.
I think that'll be important to our residents.
So, although it's great to see so much support.
So, okay.
Yeah.
And I would just add what was just to kind of amplify what was important about those numbers is that when we looked over a longer period of time, going back to about 1993, we were well below the peak assessment value of when we've issued bonds in the past and well within the average.
So, it was nice to see that because of the growth in our assessed value, we're able to work within a responsible threshold.
We're not reaching the peak.
We're certainly not at the lowest point, but we're within a decent range.
Totally.
And I remember looking at those graphs as well.
And I still know that folks are really sensitive to affordability right now.
It's an important issue for a lot of people that I'm speaking with.
So, just want us to be conscious of it.
Okay, very good.
Well, let's move on to the public comment then please.
Is there any public comment for this item and please just come up to the podium up here.
I see some hands raised.
Okay.
Any order is fine.
Yeah.
Good evening.
I'm Dr.
Stephen Alpert, resident of District 5.
I'm Dr.
Celeste Marks back again, and I'm going to say exactly the same thing.
Your sample is way too small to draw meaningful conclusions.
We want you to be able to make meaningful conclusions.
Thank you.
I'm Dr.
Celeste Marks back again, and I'm going to say exactly the same thing.
Your sample is way too small to draw meaningful conclusions.
We want results that reflect the attitudes and the demographics balance.
Maybe a randomized study, you know, so that added a little character, but mostly increases sample size.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm Gordon Wozniak.
I was formerly in the council.
I want to thank staff.
I think it was an excellent report.
I want to maybe amplify a couple of things.
There's a context I think you have to be a little worried about is taxes have been going up, mainly because of parcel tax, not due to the debt service tax.
In fact, as David said, over the last 30 years, the debt service tax has gone down by 50%.
And so it's not what's really driving people's taxes.
The other thing I think you have to have in a context, which I don't know if you can deal with this in a survey or it's just campaign literature, is Berkeley only gets about a third of the ad valorem taxes, and it only gets about 40% of the parcel taxes.
There are a lot of other entities that cause your taxes to go up, and yet, because it's listed as Berkeley property taxes, everybody thinks the city gets it all, which is nonsense.
It's just not correct.
And the other thing that I think is a powerful selling point, which is mentioned in T1, is leverage.
If you can get grant leverage on existing money, you want to make that a big selling point.
And the last thing I think is what's really unique about the T1 bond measures is that the city's been very good at leveraging that tax dollars.
You want to hammer on that, because even conservative Republicans should appreciate that.
So I think there's a lot of good things, there's a lot of good stories, and you should tell them, not just focus on the dry stuff of what buildings are being built and stuff like that.
Thank you, and thank you to the Vice Mayor.
Hello, I'm Linda Alberti.
I live..
Feel free to address your mic so we can hear you better.
Is that better? I live by Nielsen and Gilman Streets, and I was concerned about the end sampling of the survey.
I thought it was too small.
And then another thing I'm concerned about is sidewalk safety and things like that.
My neighbors got together, we ended up just doing our sidewalks and having to pay for all of it ourselves, because the wait list to get something through the city was ridiculously long.
I don't know if we can do Adapt-a-Sidewalk program.
We have elders going up and down the streets, and they're just not safe.
I worry about falls, and also I worry about mindfulness with spending our money, like the Hopkins Corridor.
I don't know how much money was wasted on that, down by Monterey Market and all that with the bike lanes.
I'm hoping that they can be more mindful with how the money gets spent for future projects.
And I do appreciate you.
It's a positive change under your leadership, so thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks for your comment.
So I believe that Carol will give me another minute.
Thank you.
Am I close enough to the mic? It's okay? Am I close enough? Yeah, I would prefer if someone could..
Yeah, that would be great.
Even that, I think.
Better? Yeah, thanks.
All right.
Good evening, mayor and council members.
I'm speaking on behalf of the Commission on Disability and to the city's request for feedback on priorities and gaps in the bond measure.
It's clear that Berkeley's infrastructure needs are significantly underfunded.
I'm going to skip.
Right now, our central concern is the structure of the proposed bond.
Accessibility is at risk of being fully acknowledged in principle, but underfunded in practice.
In the proposed funding structure, accessibility appears inside the broad category that addresses critical infrastructure and accessibility.
That $100 million pot of money, the red pot, includes proposed major seismic upgrades to the three civic center buildings.
You put a shovel near a foundation and you really don't know what the cost of the project is.
In addition, that same pot of money includes modernization of the three civic buildings.
Again, very, very costly projects.
Capital improvements at the sidewalks and the list of accessibility projects, which includes removing trip hazards, improving the sidewalks, funding the 50-50 program, fixing crosswalks, have to compete against.
At the same time, that priority was in a statistical tie with funding fire safety.
It's what people all across the city want.
So don't have it compete with these intensely expensive structural projects.
Have a set-aside pot of money within the $100 million, a percentage that guarantees addressing these critical improvements.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks for your comment.
I love the enthusiasm from the audience too.
Thank you.
Hi.
I just wanted to thank the city council for making hard decisions in order to provide the services that Berkeley needs.
But I want to specifically highlight the fact that the 0.5% sales tax is very regressive.
I'm sure you all know this.
0.5% seems like a small amount and it seems like it's just going to bring us in line with the near cities, but that has a real impact on people living in the city.
And I was encouraged to hear talk earlier of potentially looking at an increase in the value of the bond measure.
I hope you will consider in the future using methods that are less regressive in order to raise funds.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hello, Ronnie Hancock.
Like Gordon, I was a council member once.
I know the choices are hard.
I do want to speak very strongly tonight, though, in favor of the whole city project, which is the downtown and the civic center.
These buildings, especially the buildings of the civic center are important historic owned infrastructure by the city.
They have history and they have architectural merit.
They anchor that whole part of the community.
We have the educational testing building.
We have, you know, 2180, we have the beautiful, beautifully refurbished high school.
We need to have this at all put together.
We can bring back city offices as was explained.
Thank you.
Does anyone want to give her a minute? Oh, you're giving you're giving you're being given a minute.
Yes.
If you want to continue, we have to get the seismic upgrade done.
And I really thank the city manager and staff for the FEMA application.
And there may be other things we could go after as well.
But we would save money if we bought the city buildings back.
And many of us really love what the Berkeley Historical Society has done and would love to see a permanent place for that.
Other cities have done this.
San Francisco, when its city hall was upgraded, Pasadena, even Jerry Brown and his first administration.
Upgraded the vacant state capital, which was unusable because of seismic issues.
So we, I think, can do this and would be very proud of it for generations.
It's somebody said to me today there.
We have all of the it feels like all the previous mayors here.
It's a tough following the former mayor.
You know, she was the first woman elected mayor.
So, anyway, you guys, I want to say, first of all, I'm very impressed with the process you're going through.
I'm really the staff, you know, what's going on at the time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So anyway, you guys, I want to say, first of all, I'm very impressed with the process you're going through.
I'm really the staff, you know, and what they're doing and how you're analyzing this and how you're looking at this.
I think it's absolutely right, the right direction.
And I really want to encourage you.
One of the things that worries me a little bit is the fact that you're going to do a second poll, and I really, really want to see you do a second poll but I don't know if it's going to be enough.
I think you might even consider, believe it or not, doing two more polls.
You know, one more to try to figure out exactly what you think you would shape into it and what should be in that $300 million.
And then I think you need to focus on the arguments because I think how you present your arguments is going to be essential.
Now, if you can do it in one poll, great.
Then I'm saying I don't want you to spend money just to be spending money.
But I think it's very important, the messaging and how we present it.
Because this community is so, so wonderful and so rich.
And we'll reach out and fund things and do things if they believe it's in their right interests.
Thank you.
You're very welcome.
Thank you very much.
Hi, I'm Anne Harlow, president of the Berkeley Historical Society and Museum, currently occupying part of the Veterans Building and slated to occupy part of the Old City Hall.
We, the museum, have made a lot of progress in becoming more recognized and appreciated in the community, partly with the help of some of you.
But it's rather embarrassing when someone actually visits and sees the condition the building's in and if they notice that it's got a sign that says, you know, this building is seismically unsafe.
It falls under both the community facility and quality of life category and the critical infrastructure and safety.
Let's see, so I'd really like to see you allocate enough money so that the City Hall project can be completed.
Thank you.
Oh, someone is giving you a minute.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I suggest $325 million.
It's exactly half of the $650 million that failed a few years ago when there's been inflation.
Also, in April 2028 will be Berkeley's 150th birthday.
And if you could somehow make it happen that there's at least, you know, enough progress that there could be some sort of ceremonial, this is going to be what this building is going to be in another few years, including the council will be meeting back here again.
There will be all these other meeting spaces for other groups.
I'm hoping the so-called council chambers could be a multi-use room.
I'm thinking, well, maybe if you need your dais, there could be a partition of some sort.
I think I'm out of time.
I like the idea.
Thank you.
Good evening, City Council.
David Flores here, District 2 resident and Executive Director of Berkeley Community Media.
I just want to say great job with the survey that the staff did.
I went to two of the events, and they provide a lot of time for folks to ask questions and get information.
But I just want to echo what some of the stuff I've been hearing here, too, of just, you know, if we could just get at least the seismic retrofit on some of these old buildings just because the longer we leave it, the more expensive it's going to get.
And, you know, the price of that compared to some of the other projects that I saw on there is significantly less.
So, in my opinion, it would be a little more doable.
But, honestly, I get that it's going to be in conflict with some of these other stuff.
So it's a big decision you guys have to make.
I appreciate you all taking the time and listening to all of us and taking community input.
And I really do believe in the vision of a revitalized civic center.
I could see a really beautiful, you know, spending the whole afternoon in the downtown area for restaurants and then events and community engagement.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Is there any public comment online for our item? I think there's lots.
Yes.
Currently have 11 hands raised.
The first commenter is Chad.
Okay.
I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to the next person to speak.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.

Segment 4

Is there someone nearby that has the meeting open? Is that any better? Much better.
Great.
So what I wanted to talk about was I am totally against all this polling.
I think there's too much of it.
It's going too in-depth.
I used to go down.
I like the public.
And I would go down to the harbour and I would just watch the sea lions.
And I remember one time there was an unhoused group of us.
And it wasn't a good situation at all.
Chad, you're cutting in and out very badly.
If you want to call back later, we can try to let you comment then.
Or with a different device or something.
Yeah.
Next is Wandi.
Wandi, you should be able to speak.
I see you're unmuted.
Wandi, you should be able to provide comments.
I want to leave a chat connection.
So sorry.
For some reason, our second public commenter also was – we couldn't understand what they were saying.
I'm hoping this is not a tech issue and maybe they're together in the same room or something.
Possibly.
Let's try David Scheer.
Hi.
I was very pleasantly surprised to see the right track, wrong track numbers on this survey.
There can be a lot of negativity in our public discourse.
And so often the most negative voices are the loudest voices.
The public comments that we usually get are overwhelmingly not tenants, not students, not young parents.
So this survey, which is a scientific survey, they do the whole country, they do 1500 people.
I hope that this shows where the voters in the city actually are.
And I hope that you keep this in mind when you're getting yelled at about corridor upzoning or street safety or any of the many other things that people like to yell at you about.
The loudest voices in the community are not the same thing as the community.
They don't represent the community.
You guys and the people who put you into office represent the community.
That's all I got.
Thank you.
Thank you, David.
Next is Hiram.
Hello.
Yes, go ahead.
How are you? Yeah, I was just wanting to say that I agree with the gentleman in the green shirt who commented earlier that we should have more polls.
I'm a big proponent of putting on as many polls as we possibly can.
Thank you.
Everyone's laughing because it's St.
Patrick's Day.
So a lot of us are wearing green shirts right now.
Thank you.
I think he meant former Mayor Bates, right? Next is a caller with a phone number ending in 405.
Two questions.
Who's going to perform an audit on a billion-dollar event? Certainly an opportunity for shaky hands.
Second, in the polling question, was a question, how do you feel about incurring a debt of $20,000 per household or more than $5,000 per man, woman, and child? Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you for your comments.
Next is Charlie.
Charlie should be able to unmute.
Okay.
All right.
We are getting some interesting public comment today.
Next is Corey.
Corey, you should be able to speak.
Yes.
Can you hear me? Yes.
Yes, we can.
Great.
Thanks very much for the work done so far.
Very much appreciate it.
I noticed that the survey was only looking at tax on assessed value and not on square footage of parcels.
As a resident who just bought a house in Berkeley a few years ago, several of my neighbors have property tax bills that are 20% of what I pay.
And so from an equity perspective, it would be ideal to consider looking at taxes from a square footage as opposed to an assessed value perspective so that we can make sure that every homeowner in Berkeley pays their fair share for this tax.
Thanks for your consideration.
Okay.
Thank you.
Next is Kelly Hammergren.
Hey.
So looking at the survey results, can you hear me okay? Yep.
We can hear you.
Okay.
I'd say the city benefits from short memories and not paying attention.
I've been looking over my property tax bill and much of the stuff in the list we are already paying for through special taxes.
Berkeley has a higher ratio of employees to residents than any other city I checked in the Bay Area and up and down the state.
And we still drop a considerable amount of money on consultants.
I'd like to know how the sidewalk funding in this proposed bond measure is supposed to line up with measure FF for streets.
There should be around $14 million available for sidewalks.
And please note that the oversight committee for FF has only met twice and the last meeting was canceled.
And on the 24th.
Thank you.
Thanks for your public comment.
Next is Arlene.
Arlene, you should be able to unmute.
Arlene.
I'm speaking to urge you to include the money for the bond measure for the retrofit of old city hall and the veterans building.
You know, our city hall was built in 1909 and our city, the city then spent some money on the same architects that built San Francisco city hall, which is beautifully restored.
And not only could we save money by not having to rent the school district property, but we could use it for events.
And the old city hall is as much a symbol of Berkeley as the Campanile is for the university.
The downtown Berkeley association has been working on this for six years now to restore the civic centers.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Arlene.
I do want us to take like a very brief, like 10 minutes stretch break.
Okay.
So we will folks who are online, please hold.
We will be back in 10.
Thank you.
Recording stopped.
Hello.
Oh, here we are.
Okay.
Recording in progress.
All right.
Thank you so much, everyone for your patience.
That was a very long 10 minutes.
I know.
Um, but we are coming back to our online public comment.
So I'm thank you so much for everyone who has spoken so far and I will have our city clerk, um, help me out with this.
Next up is Carolyn.
Carolyn, you should be able to unmute.
Hello.
Can you hear me? Yes.
Thank you.
I am an, I am a resident of council member Blackabee's district.
I agree 100% with Lonnie and Harlow and Arlene silk.
Those buildings should be preserved.
Second, any further survey should be defensible based on a statistical sample blessed by a qualified statistician whose name and qualifications are made public doing anything less than that makes this whole process lack legitimacy.
I know there's no margin for error that's been reported and any decisions made based on a sample that was not statistically valid is indefensible.
Thirdly, a city manager unprepared to explain much less defend the amount of a bond measure is simply astonishing.
We need much better from our public servants.
I mean, you should be asking for economic modeling for the various bond measure amounts.
Thank you.
Thanks, Carolyn.
Next up is Christine.
Hi, um, so my name is Christine Uren.
I live really near civic center parks.
I walk by it quite often.
And I just want to say that I think that the veterans building and the old city hall are just beautiful buildings to look at.
I really enjoy seeing them and walking by them.
So I hope that they can be restored and made seismically safe and used.
And I also think the Berkeley Historical Society does some really great important work for us learning about our past and fighting white supremacy, really.
I mean, I found out a lot about the history of different groups in Berkeley, and just in the Bay Area that I didn't know.
And also just, you know, small but important stories about our history.
And I hope we can we can keep that going and preserve these buildings and help the society.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Next is Isaac.
Good evening, Council.
My name is Isaac Warshower.
I'm a resident of District 8.
And I'm on the Board of Directors for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association.
I'm also a parent of a three-year-old Berkeleyan, and a Berkeleyan expected in about two months.
And I just wanted to speak about the value of restoring a civic center and retrofitting the old city hall, Model Shirek Building and Veterans Memorial Building.
Now is an opportunity to continue with the planning and the implementation of these projects.
And if we wait too long, it may become too late, and it will only be more expensive.
And we should do this for the coming generations.
These buildings are irreplaceable.
The Civic Center itself is the beating heart of Berkeley and an irreplaceable place, and we should do the best to make sure it remains there for my children and for the children of everyone else in Berkeley.
Thank you.
Thank you, Isaac, and congratulations to your family.
Thank you.
Next is Toni.
Who is our current Director of Public Works is leaving us on Friday, which gives us no permanent Director of Public Works as leadership for an infrastructure bond.
This is a terrible thing.
We have burned through five Public Works Directors in the last 15 years, and we have to look hard at why we're doing this and what we expect of these folks.
We need a chief engineer very badly.
We have a drainage plan, and nobody is talking about funding the drainage plan.
A flood is a terrible thing.
It can wipe out floods in the future, can wipe out private property all the way up to Sacramento Street in one fell swoop.
And so we can no longer depend on gravity to drain the city of Berkeley.
We are going to have to build pumps, drainage pumps, one on the Potter drain and one on the Keyberry drain.
Next is Jeff Lomax.
To the City Council Class of 2024, between new parcel taxes most of you endorsed that year, between the 6.4% 2025 parcel tax increase, you unanimously approved on consent with no compelling explanation.
Between the new 2026 parcel taxes, some of you have endorsed, and between this $700 million in total borrowing you are proposing now, you are on track for a total of $1.5 million for a 25% increase in property taxes for the average home in Berkeley over your four-year term.
Congratulations, you are on record-setting territory for unaffordability.
Thanks, Jeff.
Next is Mark.
You should be able to unmute.
Jay, can you hear me? Do you have a comment regarding the ballot measure polling? I just wanted to say this meeting has been going on too long, man.
You guys think you're going to shut it down soon? I got to go to bed, man.
My kids are bothering me.
Thank you for your comments.
Next is Layla.
You are on track for a 25% increase in property taxes for the average home in Berkeley over your four-year term.
Congratulations- Hello? Oh, okay.
She's listening to the streaming that's behind.
Layla, turn off your web stream and- Good evening.
Can you hear me? Yes.
My voice got changed.
That's all right.
Do you have a comment regarding the ballot measure polling? Yes.
Turn off the volume on your- Layla, can you turn off the volume on your stream that you're watching, please? Because it's echoing and we can't hear you.
Next is Layla.
Okay.
You're asking me to do what? To mute the stream that you're listening to because we can't hear you.
You are on track for a 25% increase in property taxes for the average home in Berkeley- Okay, Layla, we're going to come back to you.
We'll come right back to you, but- Hello? Okay.
Let's go to Greg.
Greg, you should be able to unmute.
Hey, how are you? I just wanted to touch on- All right.
Let's go to the caller with a number ending in 211.
Okay.
You should be able to unmute.
Hi.
As a 60-year resident of the city of Berkeley, I miss all of the movie theaters.
All of them are gone.
Natural History on Shattuck, California Theater on Cateridge, Oak Theater on Solano.
We need to get them back.
We need to get some movie theaters back.
People get addicted to TV.
Second, with the heat we're going through as a physicist, we're in for a really, really bad time.
I think the human civilization would last much longer than the end of this century, even if that.
The last thing I'd like to mention, that monstrosity in the White House, we have to- We may not even have an election.
These men have done everything possible against the law of the country, against international laws- We need to stand up.
Okay.
Just going to unmute.
Okay.
Thanks.
Thanks for your comment.
Just a reminder for folks who are online, we're taking comments right now on the report that we had for our special meeting, which is the item.
It's only one item, which is the presentation discussion of community survey results.
Okay.
Next speaker is Yarrow.
Public comment is not usually like this.
For those of you who have not been to a meeting, it's never like this, so I don't know what's happening.
Next is Morton.
Yes, hello.
Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you.
Next, we'll go back to Leila.
Oh, where did Leila go? Okay.
Okay.
Can you hear me? Yes.
Good evening.
I'm Leila Moncharch.
I'm the president of Baja, and I have- Baja has told you so much about the architecture that I'm going to tell you something a little different for tonight.
I want you to know that I grew up in Berkeley.
I came here in 1951, right after the war.
I want you to really understand that our parents and our teachers took us into City Hall, and they did it often.
Part of the reason was they wanted us to understand how important government was and how important democracy was.
It was always very impressive because the building was so impressive.
We learned a lot about what government means in those days.
It doesn't mean meeting in a cafeteria.
It doesn't mean meeting someplace that's going to change or be different from time to time.
It means being in a place that's in the center of a city and is really impressive.
That building was built to be very impressive.
There's some messaging here.
I urge you, and Baja urges you- Thanks, Leila.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
That's all the speakers.
Okay.
Great.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
Thanks, everyone.
Can we go to comments now from my council colleagues? Do you have any comments? Okay.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Council Member Kastorwani.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor, and thank you, Mr.
White, for the presentation and Mr.
Mermin for your presentation as well.
Did somebody with- Actually, is Mr.
Mermin still with us or no? He's here.
Yeah.
Oh, he is on the Zoom.
Okay.
Mr.
Mermin, just given some of the comments that we heard, can you just explain why the poll of sampling 500 people is representative and how that works statistically? Yeah.
That's a valid question, and it's counterintuitive to think that 500 people can represent many thousands of people, but that is, in fact, how sampling works and statistics works, and, in fact, all of the survey research that's done in the country, most of them are done with samples of several hundred, occasionally 1,000 or 2,000 for large national projects.
But for a city the size of Berkeley, a very typical survey sample size would be 500 because that provides statistically, assuming you do it accurately, and that's a very important point, is that it does require expertise to sample representatively and accurately.
But if we do so with a random sample of the likely voter universe, it is statistically true that with 95 percent certainty that the true result, if you interviewed every voter in Berkeley, is within 4.4 percent of the result we got on the survey.
Now, there are other sources of error besides the sample size, and we work very hard to control that.
So it is never a certainty, but this is the most efficient, cost-effective way to obtain a representative universe of likely voters to assess the level of support across the entire universe of likely voters in the city of Berkeley, and that is a very reasonable sample size.
And everyone who does this work in this field of survey research would recognize this as a legitimate sample size.
Okay, thank you very much.
And then, Mr.
Budenhagen, to the point that was raised by former Mayor Bates about an additional survey, I think you already spoke to this during the Q&A, and I actually didn't intend to ask this many questions, because I know this is the comment time, but I think it helps to further the discussion.
I just wanted to ask, I know that we're going to do additional polling.
Will you be able to, can you speak to what we will poll on further at this point? Sure, thank you for the question, Council Member.
So the follow-up poll, one of the things we want to do, we did not test against potential other ballot measures that people would be seeing on their ballots.
So, and I think David Merriman talked a little bit about this, but we do want to try to get a sense of how people would view these two issues in light of seeing a regional sales tax measure, or whatever other measures we think might be likely to be on the ballot.
So that's like one big reason why we want to do it.
And then also to kind of refine the language and understand better what people really care about, so that we can come back to you with these second poll results, and then really hone in on what we want to come forward with, both from the perspective of ballot language and projects.
Okay.
Okay, my mic is still on.
So, and it sounds like it would be too much to get into arguments, right, because it's hard to do that if we don't exactly know what projects we would be pursuing.
So I think we'll have to see how things progress on that.
So I just wanted to voice my position on this.
In terms of the bond measure, you know, given the polling that 200 million polls the same as 300 million, I think we should pursue the higher number.
And I want to appreciate, Mr.
White, your comments about how the amount per $100,000 of assessed value is roughly in line with where we have been in the past.
That chart, we probably have seen it in the past, but I don't know that when you reference going back to 1993, that's not in the material for tonight, right? Okay, but I think it's something we've looked at before.
And maybe as, I just want to suggest, as we continue this conversation, it might be good to bring that table back so that we can continue to remind ourselves and the community where we are with costs.
Because I do hear, I think the mayor spoke to the affordability concerns and people, you know, make.

Segment 5

I'm taking the very valid and reasonable point that if you did buy your home more recently, your assessed value is much higher than people who bought a long time ago.
So I think we do want to be cognizant of those costs.
I also think that if we have bonding capacity that is underutilized, that we are doing a disservice to the city.
Because as we know, we have over a billion dollars of deferred maintenance on infrastructure.
And so what I see us hopefully being able to do if this $300 million bond measure passes is being able to take a bite out of some of that aging infrastructure.
And so to that point of which projects to pursue, I do think we'd need to be..
Because, you know, some of us have a memory of prior bond measures that didn't meet the two-thirds threshold.
So I think we do have to keep in mind that we're just right at the cusp there.
This could..
It seems like the polling is telling us it could go either way depending on the nature of the campaign, the nature of the projects that are chosen, and the nature of the arguments that are made for and against.
And so I do think we should pay close attention to which projects are polling strongly because our need is so great.
So I think we should focus on those projects.
And it seems like we'll be honing in on that even more.
It seems like we have some of that info already.
And I did want to speak to..
Because we did hear in public comment folks talking about the importance of the Civic Center area.
I think we..
I think that's something we can pull on, right, in our next round to get a better sense of that.
But I do want to say from the polling that we got, it seems like public buildings is a better approach than focusing solely on the Civic Center buildings.
And then, you know, if we do get the FEMA loan or we do get other funding for those Civic Center buildings, hopefully we will have to figure that out in the ballot language, right, of how we can be flexible in uses.
I also think, you know, given the measure T-1 infrastructure bond experience of construction cost escalation, you know, I don't know if we're going to have a situation where certain projects have a greater cost escalation than others.
I don't know if that's something that happens.
But I think we also need to think about a little bit of flexibility in that case as well for cost overruns.
So, okay, that's the bond measure.
And then on the sales tax, you know, I had done the item earlier this year to ask us to poll on this when it became clear that our budget deficit is, you know, roughly $30 million.
And what that means in terms of the types of cuts we'll have to make.
So I am in support of putting that on the ballot.
And I was very pleased to see that it looks like it would pass all things.
Oh, I didn't realize I was on a timer.
Oh, okay.
I'm basically wrapped up.
So, you know, it looks like that one is in a good position to pass.
And I think that would just give us we're still going to have very hard decisions to make.
This measure wouldn't even go on the ballot till November.
We have to pass a budget by June 30th.
But it may give us some flexibility moving forward to protect some of our vital services and staff.
So that's all I have.
Thank you again for the presentation.
I'm glad we're having this conversation early so that we can be in a good position come the summer to draft ballot language.
Thanks.
And since we're already talking about this, I would like to make the motion to approve the recommendation.
Thank you.
Okay.
So we have a number of comments.
I saw Council Member Humbert's hand go up and then Council Member Buckley.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I want to thank everybody who was involved with this whole process.
It's a whole lot of work.
Paul Budenhagen, Dave White, Scott Ferris, the Finance Department, others who helped develop these lists of projects and cost estimates.
I want to thank Dave Mermin, Lake Research Partners, and our Fire Chief and Police Chief in their departments for contributing to this.
I want to say this report and proposal offer a lot of positive news for the city.
I'm happy to hear that perceptions of the city's direction and service levels are moving in the right direction.
That's heartening and at least modestly positive.
Overall, of course, we want to get these numbers higher, but it seems like we're on a good trajectory, notwithstanding a very chaotic national and global situation.
The numbers for a potential bond measure likewise seem very good.
I'd be in favor of the 300 rather than the 200 since there's not a statistical significance as between them.
I'd like to strongly favor keeping the exact funding amounts open so that we have room to maneuver in terms of just how much goes to various categories of project.
Flexibility seems really a cardinal thing.
I also want to make sure we're leaving room to maneuver when it comes to geographic equity.
I know that my district, District 8, is a high resource area within the city that has historically benefited from public investment, but I do think it's important that as we work to ensure that we have a bond measure that residents can support citywide, that we at least have some project-specific funds going to every district.
I'd like to make sure we have a high degree of flexibility in that regard.
There are no specific projects I don't think listed in District 8 or 7, and I'd want to make sure those can be in the mix.
I think improvements to Fire Station 3 on Russell, right in the Elmwood, modest improvements to Monkey Island Park, and I think Councilmember Lunapar may address this, a new pocket park at Dwight and Waring would be modest, a modest investment, I think.
I also want to say we absolutely need to be more specific in the bond measure about where the funding would go if we have to be.
Then we simply set percentage floors for key categories if that's possible.
What the public has indicated are its highest priorities.
Then we can assure people that there will be a floor on the amount that will go to those things, but if the highest priorities turn out to be more expensive, we still have some wiggle room.
Flexibility, I think, is critical within limits.
Sales tax measure, totally in favor of that, prepared to move forward with that.
Since it's a simpler measure, I think there's even less need for additional polling.
Thanks a lot, everybody, for all the good work on this.
Thank you, Councilmember.
Councilmember Bacoby? Thanks, Madam Mayor.
I'll be really brief.
I just want to thank staff for all your work on this, on the great report.
Thanks to David Mermin, who I've worked with in a previous life, and it's good to see you here and see the work here and really respect the end product here.
I agree with my colleagues.
I'm pleasantly surprised by the results.
I know we still have room to go to sort of earn that trust and sort of make sure that we can get this over the finish line, because I think it is important to make these investments.
To that end, I think a common thread as we're moving forward with the budget and moving forward with this is just continued transparency, continue to be very clear on goals and progress, and just kind of earning that trust from people who know that they can trust us to be good stewards with their money.
We're making smart investments, and we're getting the returns that we set out.
So I just think that ongoing discipline of being clear, setting goals, reporting back, and showing that progress is really important.
The conversation we had earlier about the overall context of the total infrastructure deficit, the total liability that we owe, and just making sure that we're thinking about how this is tracking towards bringing that down measurably.
I am interested in continuing that conversation, because it's concerning if we continue to invest, but that number keeps getting bigger.
How can we kind of curb that? And I want to make sure that we're making an impact on that.
And lastly, I'll just say I do not love the fact that we need to consider increasing the sales tax.
I agree with other public commenters.
I mean, it is among the more regressive things that we can do.
I also realize kind of the need of where we're at, and I understand that there is room to move there relative to other jurisdictions.
I'll say that's just the least favorite of the options.
I think investing in infrastructure and a bond, obviously, that is widespread and is borne proportionally by people who can afford to bear that, I think is important.
But again, I recognize the need, and I will certainly support the sales tax, but just wanted to comment on that piece.
But again, thanks to staff, and thank you for bringing this forward.
I'm eager to move this ahead.
It's really important that we get this right as we head into November.
So, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Traga.
Thank you so much for this presentation.
It's just really also appreciate all the community members that have come out.
I really appreciated the opportunity last week to join Vice Mayor Lunapara during our joint D4 and 7 listening session in D8 at the beautiful Willard Community Center.
This is all very helpful as we consider which projects to include in a potential bond measure, and I appreciate having a clear and consistent understanding of how priorities are being evaluated across categories so that we can confidently make decisions about what rises to the top.
As my colleague Council Member Keefe pointed out, it's important we look at this bond measure holistically, especially as multiple measures may be coming forward and voters will be evaluating them together.
I see a real opportunity here to communicate the full value of these investments, including the opportunity costs of not investing in them.
Investing in our city facilities can, and I think will, reduce ongoing expenses like external rentals and create long-term community and revenue benefits.
I also want to highlight that voters clearly care about protecting the Bay, including reducing pollution flowing into it and addressing flood risks to storm drain upgrades and green infrastructure, alongside safeguarding critical infrastructure from climate risks like flooding and wildfires.
As we shape the bond, it's important that these priorities are reflected in a visible and meaningful way in our project selection.
I strongly support going for the higher bond amount, especially given inflation and broader global uncertainty, especially if we could ensure that we are well-positioned for matching grants, which is critical to maximizing these investments.
Like my colleagues, I am a reluctant yes, but still very much a yes, in support of putting a half-cent sales tax measure, because the costs of, frankly, not doing so will be devastating to the city.
And finally, as the District 4 representative, of course, I would be remiss not to say this.
I want to underscore the importance of investing in our civic center institutions, which have long been a pillar of our democracy and civic life.
I know that we will not be able to reopen them overnight, but the costs of continuing to neglect them will accumulate, and we cannot afford to have demolition by neglect of these storied institutions.
We should also ensure that key community priorities, such as green infrastructure and parks, are clearly reflected in the project mix we are considering.
From a strategic standpoint, we need to be mindful that voter support can shift between polling and the ballot, and that clarity, trust, and strong communication will be critical.
I was taking copious mental notes when Tom, former Mayor Bates, was speaking, because he knows how to get ballot measures passed.
I don't know if we have just the resources and the time available to do multiple additional surveys, and that's why what goes on this survey will be crucial.
But I have trust in the work of this pollster.
It does a great job, and overall, this is a strong foundation, and I appreciate the work as we move towards shaping a responsible and compelling bond measure, as well as a potential house and sales tax measure increase.
Thank you.
Vice Mayor Minopara.
Thank you.
I want to thank staff for all their work on this and the polling team.
This is really incredible and valuable work, so thank you.
Similarly to my colleagues, I've heard from community members about the concerns about the regressive nature of a sales tax and a property tax on assessed value, and I really hear that, and I worry even more about the even more regressive nature of the effects of the long-term budget cuts that we're facing.
So I'll be supporting the staff recommendation.
I also wanted to add on to Councilmember Hubbard's comments.
I don't want to get too much into the specific projects, given the scope of this meeting, but I heard from some constituents, both at our neighborhood group meeting and separately, the goal of building a pocket park or any kind of more permanent infrastructure at the closed slip lane on Dwight and Piedmont.
This is a parks poor, very dense neighborhood, and I'd love to see that being added to the list of potential projects funded by the measure.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember Taplin.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor, and thanks to the team and to my colleagues and the people who spoke tonight.
I don't have that much to say.
I just want to say thank you for the presentation and all the work that's gone into this so far.
Councilmember Trager's remarks pretty much captured what I was going to say.
I would just add that as one of the West Berkeley Council members, it's really important to me to keep a sharp focus on the equity priorities, parks, stormwater projects, and the waterfront.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember O'Keefe.
Just a couple of things.
Regarding the sales tax measure, I just want to say I'm kind of a psychotic penny pincher, and I had no idea that our sales tax rate was less than the surrounding cities until this came up.
I appreciate the argument that it's regressive, but at the same time, unless I'm just really out of touch, I don't think many people know that.
Therefore, I think we've kind of been leaving money on the table, literally, by not having done this sooner.
Given that it could potentially plug a third of our structural deficit, I could not be more in favor of the sales tax measure.
I just really want to say that as emphatically as I can.
I appreciate Vice Mayor Lunaparo's point that not funding city services is extremely regressive.
That was a really, really excellent thing to point out.
Very excited about that.
Regarding the bond measure, I don't have anything more to say except that it's a huge amount of work, and thank you so much to city staff for everything that's gone into this and will continue to go into this.
You guys are doing a great job.
It's a huge amount of money, so the fact that the process is so carefully thought out and so much time is being spent on it is really appropriate, and you guys are doing a great job.
I just want to say it was nice to see that at least the majority of people think that the city is going in the right direction.
That felt really good.
I think that is also indicated in the high level of support.
I think people seem really willing to invest their money in the city, and it shows they have a lot of pride in the city, and they should because the city is amazing.
This is the best place to live on the whole planet Earth, and everybody knows it.
I think these poll results really show that, and I just wanted to highlight that and just feel good about that.
This is very exciting.
Good job, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember.
Councilmember Bartlett.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I do want to just join myself to all the previous comments.
Regarding the district equity, the T1 formula was really good, the way that was rolled out.
We could do that again, I think, to make sure that the resources are rolled out evenly and fairly and equitably.
I want to give a plug for downtown because it is necessary.
I realize the real price tag for downtown development is much higher than the money we would get from this, but it at least gets us on the way.
We do need a really real vibrant civic center square like other cities with a water fountain, too, like a water-based fountain.
I say this every time.
Finally, I want to say it's really nice to get the vote of confidence from people.
They like the work we're doing.
They're supporting us, and they have faith in what we're doing, and it's really wonderful to see.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Thank you.
Councilmember Taplin, did you want to add something? Yes, thank you very much.
I also wanted to put in a plug for Francis Hardware, which is really the heart of the St.
Helens Park neighborhood.
Not only is it a wonderful community center, it's also meant to serve as an evacuation center in the event of an emergency.
I think for our city buildings, it's important that we prioritize those that fulfill a range of needs for the community and for the city.
It was one of our flagship projects that had to be shelved from T1, and it's very important to me to demonstrate the city's ability to finish projects that we promised to undergo.
Thank you.
Thank you all.
Thanks so much for your comments.
I really want to thank the city manager's office.
Paul, David, also Carrie, who's our silent partner up here with David, would love to hear you present next time.
I know you did a lot of work on this, so thank you very much.
And I also know that a lot of grants have been applied for by you.
So when we talk about leveraging funding for grants, I just want everyone to know that Carrie does a lot of that work.
So big shout out there.
Thank you all for putting this presentation together and just for the heavy lifting of working with the lake team to put this poll together.
I really want to acknowledge how challenging it is to balance all these different priorities, districts and needs.
There's a lot of thought that goes into this.
And so thank you.
And thank you also to everyone from the city staff who worked on organizing this and facilitating the conversation.
So Scott Ferris, I know you're here.
But other folks have been involved with those conversations as well around the city, around the GO bond.
And I also want to thank the community for participating in the community meetings and the survey.
I don't know who you are out there who took the survey, but thank you for taking it.
And thanks for your confidence.
And really big shout out to our Realize Vision 2050 Task Force.
In the past year, we had many conversations with folks in our city throughout a variety of different specialties who gave thoughts and inputs.
And I really want to let you know that that was very helpful.
In terms of projects, I know folks have pet projects that they really care about.
And I just also want to encourage all of us, my council colleagues, to remember that these projects benefit everybody in the city.
When we're supporting something in downtown or Francis Albright, our residents go to places throughout the city.
So just want to keep us united in our thinking about how this supports Berkeley as a whole.
And also, just a second, what some folks have also mentioned about making sure we really want to have strong accountability in here.
I love that that's something I know we're already talking about.
In my office, we really value community engagement also and encouraging folks to engage with local government.
Infrastructure is really the backbone of our city.
If we have, like I like to say, 100-year-old infrastructure, basically, and with over $1.5 billion of deferred needs, you can see the need versus what we have.
There's a big difference.
So this bond is really needed to ensure that our infrastructure is maintained and also that we're prepared for the future.
We talk a lot about climate change here in this city, and this is our way that we're really preparing for it.
So we really need our community to come together to help fund these projects.
For every year that we don't adequately invest in our infrastructure, the deferred costs increase exponentially.
And I think that's an important part.
I want folks to know about that.
This $300 million will allow us to leverage additional grant opportunities, as I mentioned.
And also, I want to mention a couple of things that I wanted to pull out.
So given that Berkeley is the birthplace of the disability rights movement, I'd like to make sure that accessibility is incorporated throughout our projects.
And just generally, I want to second what Berkeley residents are saying about accessibility being important.
I was pleased to see that over 70% of the folks polled understand the need to support infrastructure generally.
One of my favorite things about being mayor is getting to learn about all of the different projects that are happening in the city.
I've gotten many tours from Public Works and our Parks Department, and also done ride-alongs with Police and Fire and a sit-along with Dispatch.
And that's really allowed me to see the amazing things that are happening throughout our city.
And so I really want to make sure folks understand how much work is happening all around us that you may not notice day to day as you're going about your business.
But I get a chance to see that specifically, and it's an incredible honor.
There's always room for improvement, but I'm very glad to see that the confidence from the community is strong in us and our direction.
56% of folks polled said they think that Berkeley is heading in the right direction.
And I really want to thank my council colleagues, because I think that us working together through really challenging situations in a civil and respectful way is really reflected by these numbers.
So thank you all so much for the work that you're doing to show our residents what a highly functioning, progressive city can look like.
So thank you very much.
And thank you so much for the presentation this evening.
So I know we have a motion on the floor.
I will ask that we please take the roll.
Okay, on the motion to approve the recommendation to direct the city manager to prepare draft ballot language and authorize a second community survey.
Councilmember Kester wine.
Yes.
Tappan.
Yes.
Bartlett.
Yes.
Trega.
I.
Okay.
Yes, lack of me.
Yes, Luna para.
Yes.
Humber.
Yes.
And Mary she.
Yes.
Okay, motion carries.
Thank you all so much.
Really grateful.
Okay, so we have finished our one item on the meeting.
So, I will entertain a motion to adjourn.
So I'll move.
Okay, so we have a motion to adjourn.
So I'll move.
I'll second.
And do we need to take the role again? Yeah, because we have someone online.
Can we take the role again on this? Okay.
To adjourn Councilmember Kester wanting.
Yes.
Tappan.
Yes.
Bartlett.
Trego.
Hi.
Yes.
Black to be.
Yes.
Luna para.
Yes.
Humber.
Yes.
And Mary she.
Yes.
Okay.
All right.
Meeting's adjourned.
Thanks, everyone.