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Segment 1

Good evening everyone.
I'm calling to order the Berkeley City Council meeting.
Today is Tuesday, April 14th, 2026 and it is 6.05 p.m.
Can you please take the roll clerk? Okay.
Council member Kesarwani? Here.
Taplin? Council member Taplin? I see he's on.
I saw him.
Let's see.
We can contact him.
Let's see.
Council member Bartlett is currently absent.
Council member Tregub? Present.
O'Keefe? Here.
Blackabay? Here.
Lunaparra? Here.
Humbert? Present.
And Mayor Ishii? Here.
Council member Taplin, are you present on the Zoom? Can you hear us? Okay.
Well, we'll see if he if he's able to join.
There's a quorum present and council member Kesarwani is participating under the just, participating remotely under the Just Cause Exception in the Brown Act.
A quorum of the council is participating in person at the physical meeting location that was noticed.
Council member Kesarwani, if you could provide a general description of the circumstances relating to your need to appear remotely, but please do not disclose any medical diagnosis, disability or other confidential medical information.
My reason is a family care need.
Okay.
And council member Taplin is here.
Council member Taplin, if you could provide a brief general description of the circumstances relating to your need to appear remotely, such as a contagious illness, family caregiving need.
Can you hear us? Okay.
Council member Kesarwani, if you could publicly disclose whether there are any individuals 18 years of age or older present in the room from which you are participating and if so their relationship to you.
There are no individuals present in the room in which I'm participating in.
Okay.
And council members Kesarwani and Taplin will participate through both audio and visual technology for the duration of the meeting.
Council member Taplin, are you able to to hear us? Yes.
Can you hear me? Okay.
If you could provide a brief description of your circumstances relating to your need to appear remotely, such as family caregiving need or contagious illness or something similar as allowed by the Brown Act.
Family caregiving need.
Thank you very much.
And if you, council member Taplin, could publicly disclose if there is anybody 18 years of age or older in the room from which you are participating and if so the nature of their relationship to you.
There is none.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
We can proceed, Madam Mayor.
Thank you so much, Mr.
City Clerk.
We are in the first meeting of April and so we will read the land acknowledgement.
We're taking turns as council members reading the land acknowledgement and this time it is Council Member Brent Blackabee's turn.
Great.
Thanks, Madam Mayor.
This is the land acknowledgement statement.
The City of Berkeley recognizes that the community we live in was built on the territory of Huichin, the ancestral and unseated land of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people, the ancestors and descendants of the sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County.
This land was and continues to be of great importance to all of the Ohlone tribes and descendants of the Verona Band.
As we begin our meeting tonight, we acknowledge and honor the original inhabitants of Berkeley, the documented 5,000-year history of a vibrant community at the West Berkeley Shell Mound, and the Ohlone people who continue to reside in the East Bay.
We recognize that Berkeley's residents have and continue to benefit from the use and occupation of this unseated stolen land since the City of Berkeley's incorporation in 1878.
As stewards of the laws regulating the City of Berkeley, it is not only vital that we recognize the history of this land, but also recognize that the Ohlone people are present members of Berkeley and other East Bay communities today.
The City of Berkeley will continue to build relationships with the Lijian tribe and to create meaningful actions that uphold the intention of this land acknowledgement.
Thank you so much, Councilmember.
So for our ceremonial items this evening, we have two adjournments in memory.
We are actually going to start with Cynthia Brantley Pierce first, who is a community activist, and I believe we have one of our Councilmembers is going to read something for that.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
It is my honor to read our adjournment in memory of Cynthia Brantley Pierce.
We are adjourning tonight's meeting in memory of Cynthia Brantley Pierce.
If folks are here for her, you're welcome to come up to the podium to receive it, if you'd like.
And Cynthia was born April 15, 1964.
As tomorrow marks her 62nd birthday, we hold her memory close this evening in celebration of a life defined by purpose and passion.
Many here know of Cindy as a formidable political fundraiser who helped power the campaigns of California State Senator Lonnie Hancock, Assemblymember Nancy Skinner, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, and East Bay Regional Parks District Director Elizabeth Echols.
She dedicated her career to closing the gender gap in our legislatures, championing pro-choice Democratic women, and playing a pivotal role in the early success of Close the Gap California, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing women in the California legislature.
More recently, and despite her cancer diagnosis in 2019, Cindy's commitment to our democracy never wavered.
She volunteered regularly with the local chapter of Flip the Vote and turned her 60th birthday celebration into a massive fundraiser for the cause that drew hundreds to her beautiful backyard.
Closer to home, she was a staunch supporter of the Berkeley Public Schools, lending her expertise to the PTAs at Berkeley Arts Magnet, King Middle School, and Berkeley High, while also fighting for the passage of local bond measures to support the school district.
Perhaps the greatest testament to Cindy's legacy is her children, Clayton and Will, who are in the chambers tonight.
They carry her spirit and passions forward through their own work, Clayton as a lawyer with the ACLU working on voter rights, and Will working with the Movement Voter Project.
Cindy was a devoted mother, wife, sister, daughter, and dear friend to many of us.
She was a community builder and a tireless advocate for change.
We honor and celebrate her exceptional life and will miss her dearly.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, and I think we have a couple of folks who are going to speak.
Only two of us are going to speak now, but I was asked to be one of them because I think Cindy might have been, well, she and I worked together for a number of years, and I think she had just moved here, and I was one of her first clients.
She, of course, became a friend and a force to be reckoned with in this entire community.
As Rashi said, Cynthia lived a life of passion and purpose, and she was the most focused person I ever knew.
She had two great passions, really.
One was that women's voices be heard and represented when decisions were made about the community, and the other was her family and her, I'll say, her extended family and community.
She had several houses on one lot, something we're looking at doing now more of in Berkeley, with family members living there.
It was beautiful.
It was a community, and many people involved in Berkeley's future were there.
I hope, I'm really honored to be here.
I hope her family understands how much she loved them and how much all of us love her and them as they continue their journeys in our community.
Good evening.
My name is Betsy Cotton, and I'm the former executive director for Close the Gap California, an organization focused on creating gender parity in the state legislature by 2028.
I'm honored to have the opportunity to speak tonight about my colleague and friend, Cynthia Brantley Pierce, who was one of our organization's early fundraisers and instrumental in propelling the organization forward.
Cynthia was also the go-to fundraiser for Democratic pro-choice women in the Bay Area.
There was no one better at political fundraising than Cynthia.
She was smart, organized, and most importantly, knew how to get a crowd in the room.
There was no saying no to Cynthia.
I'm particularly grateful that Cynthia chose to share her talents with Close the Gap.
We were a young organization with a big mission to get to gender parity in the California legislature.
In recent years, gender representation in the California legislature had slipped dramatically to less than 25%, and we were determined to reverse this trend.
With Cynthia taking charge of our fundraising, Close the Gap grew exponentially, allowing the organization to hire much-needed recruiters and get our name out across the state, and it paid off.
California has now reached gender parity in the state senate.
We were on track to achieve gender parity in the state assembly in 2026.
None of this could be achieved without Cynthia's skill and leadership.
I had the opportunity to work with Cynthia last year on a gubernatorial event between her treatments.
She got to work and made the event a huge success, showing up with a large network of women from the community she's developed over the years.
I'm struck by the impact of deeply principled change makers like Cynthia, who spend their lives working to make the world a better place.
I know that all of us in the East Bay and across the Bay Area will miss her example of professionalism, commitment, passion, and most of all, friendship.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And Mayor, I see that Council Member Bartlett has joined, so we just need to do the just cause exemption script for Council Member Bartlett as well.
Council Member Bartlett is participating remotely under the just cause exception, and Council Member Bartlett, if you could provide a brief description of the circumstances relating to your need to appear remotely at this time.
Yes, under doctor's orders, I'm remanded to the home.
Okay, and could you disclose if there is anybody 18 years of age or older in the room with you, and if so, what is their relationship to you? There's a professional nanny in the adjacent room with my six-year-old.
Okay, thank you very much.
We can proceed.
Thank you.
We have another adjournment in memory that Council Member Trageb will read.
Thank you so much to Council Member Keserwani for reading the previous one.
Go ahead, Council Member, for Winston Burton.
And so, Winston's family or friends, if you're here, you're welcome to also come up to the podium.
Thank you.
Winston Edward Burton, a devoted father, community advocate, and lifelong educator, passed away on January 26th at age 77 after a long battle with diabetes.
A proud father of three, grandfather of four, and great-grandfather of two, Winston loved his family deeply and dedicated his life to serving others, especially those on the margins of the Berkeley community.
Born in Philadelphia, and I'll never forget his storied reminder whenever I did anything wrong or not up to standard, that you can take me out of Philly, but you can't take Philly out of me, he would say.
He began his career as a cab driver before becoming an electronics instructor and pioneering workforce training program.
From launching a program for single mothers in electronics to developing employment initiatives for displaced workers, refugees, and unhoused individuals, his work spanned decades and changed countless lives.
After moving to the Bay Area in 1982, Winston dedicated himself to expanding opportunity for others.
He began with Advocates for Women in Hayward, then in 1983, developed and led the Refugee Employment Program for Catholic Charities of Oakland.
In 1988, he became Employment Coordinator and Program Director at BOSS, Building Opportunities for Self-Sustainability, where he focused on creating job training and employment pathways for unhoused individuals across Alameda County, work that reflected his lifelong commitment to dignity, equity, and community impact.
Winston also became a leader in community service, working with organizations like BOSS, but also serving on numerous local boards, including the Berkeley Public Library Board of Trustees and the NWACP Berkeley Chapter, where I got to work with him when he was its president.
He was also a musician in his youth, a devoted sports fan, a beloved organizer of family and community gatherings.
He believed in bringing people together across differences with honesty, humor, and respect.
He is survived by his three sons, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and extended family who are here today, and all of whom carry forward his legacy of compassion, equity, and community.
May his soul rest in power.
May his legacy continue to inspire the Berkeley community, our beloved Berkeley community that he loved so dearly.
Thank you.
My dad taught me a lot of things, but most of all, he taught me to never give up, and that nothing is ever easy.
He would fight with a DMV or Kaiser for hours on hold, and always stay on the line rather than receiving a callback because it was faster.
Very persistent, immovable, like a stone in a riverbed.
He taught me how important it was to stay level-headed in every situation, or as he called it, the middle path.
Here are a few of my favorite parables, he would say, that are now instilled in me, and hopefully they will stay with all of you as well.
Anytime I was frustrated or anxious about something, he would tell me, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, or his version, by the yard is hard, but an inch is a cinch.
Neither too high or too low.
Sometimes when you stop, the faster you go.
If you're trying to get ahead, don't let the sun catch you lying in the bed.
Or my favorite, and most calcified within my conscious being, once a job is once begun, do it well until it's done.
Be it big, or be it small, do it well, or not at all.
Last but not least, his favorite and shortest quote, obstacle, popsicle.
For a long time, I didn't understand the meaning of this, but as I grow older, to me it means no excuses.
All I ask is you remember my father for the man he was, and what he has done for you and the community.
Thank you.
Thank you all so much.
I appreciate everyone's being respectful while we do the ceremonial matters.
It's very sad when we lose people in our community, especially those who have been so involved.
We will now move on to City Manager comments.
I don't have any comments tonight, Madam Mayor.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right, we will now take public comment on non-agenda matters.
Okay, so we'll pick five cards here in person, and then we'll go to the first five hands raised on the Zoom, and each speaker will have one minute each.
Again, this is only for items that are not on the agenda.
Can we confirm that people online can hear us? You can hear? Okay, all right, thank you.
For, it's on, no, if it's on the agenda, you don't need a card.
Okay, so the, the five in-person speakers, and you can come up in any order.
We have Ravi Bath, we have Arant, P.J.
Singh, Amrik Singh, and Jared Essig.
So you can come up in any order to talk on items that are not on the agenda, and you have one minute each.
If you, if you could, you can come and line up here if, if you'd like to.
Good evening, Madam Mayor, City Council members.
I'm here again to talk about how important it is to tell stories.
With cartoon stories, wonderful individuals are being celebrated because they've done such a great job, and I'm here to request that when we celebrate, we need to make sure that we celebrate those individuals who have accurate stories.
Stories is what makes us who we are, and I am requesting you to consider how Gullah Bugaiway was named.
It's very disheartening to our community, and I have spent 14 months finding the evidence which doesn't support the narrative that was presented to the City, and we are willing to share the evidence, and we want to work with you to restore this history.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Come on up if your name was called, and if your name was called, you can also line up over here.
Honourable Mayor and members of the Council, my name is Ravi Bhatt.
I'm here to express the sentiments of my community that has been disheartened by the City's decision of naming portion of Shattuck Avenue as Gullah Bugaiway, and request the City correct the historical inaccuracy.
The current designation is based on the narrative that portrays Gullah Bugaiway as a social activist who suffered discrimination as an immigrant from India.
However, factual documentation suggests a different history.
Our research indicates that she was the spouse of Vashna Bugaiway, a colonial supply, and lived a life of significant privilege and social life with substantial property and market investments.
Furthermore, noting the recent resolution to name the park recently dedicated to Cesar Chavez, I request that the City apply the same standard.
I urge you to rename Gullah Bugaiway after an individual who authentically devoted their life to fighting discrimination.
Thank you.
Thanks so much.
Good afternoon, City Councillors, Mayor, City Manager.
My name is Jared Essig.
I'm here to speak to you about accessibility for government services.
You know, I was here, you know, about a decade ago, and I recently came back, and I looked for a map of Berkeley, and it was very hard to find.
This is available in your visitor center in Addison, but it took me two hours to find this.
I went to City Hall, I went to the Civic Center on Center Street, and no one even knew where the visitor center was.
Someone looked it up eventually and pointed me there.
Eventually, I got a map of Berkeley, but then I came back and looked for the location and the agenda for the City Council meeting, and also both in the City Hall and Civic Center, no one knew what the agenda was or where the meeting was.
In fact, you don't even have a city employee in the lobby.
You have a security contractor, and they did a very good job, actually, but you need a city employee as a concierge or ombudsman.
Otherwise, it's not accessible, and I question whether you even meet California accessibility laws.
This might be in the legal assembly, for all I know.
Thank you so much.
Our last speaker.
Thank you.
I stand with PJ and Rabindra Vars' comments.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, so that was okay.
Now we'll go to the speakers with their hands raised.
This is for public comments for items not on the agenda.
We have three hands raised.
First is Joseph.
People think Temple OS is a joke because of the graphics, but as a matter of fact, that's God's plan.
I have to explain this over and over, right? Why does he get graphics, right? No, God wants a 640 by 480 forever, and only 16 colors, though, because let me explain the logic.
My mom taught preschool, and they used to do crayon colorings, right? And she said it's kind of weird.
As soon as the kids made something with colors, for some reason, they'd take a black crayon and put it all over, and you'd get a really ugly thing covered with black.
And she just said, she just was wondering, maybe it's a feeling of power or something, you know, black is a, you can't overwrite the other colors and stuff.
But so, like, inevitably, when you give the kids a black crayon, they're gonna, like, cover the whole thing with black.
And so she used to take away the black crayon.
And that's kind of the logic here.
God's favorite game is Donkey Kong, right? So, like, it's like, dude, you give them that high resolution and stuff, and what do they do? We also have another, the next raised hand is also a speaker named Joseph.
Joseph, you should be on mute.
Hello, can you hear me? Yes.
Yes, my name is Joseph Fuad Rafiklu.
I am a proud Azerbaijani immigrant, and I would like to talk to you about a problem that has been plaguing our city.
My family owns a Medicare business, where we help facilitate Medicare to people who need it.
And our city is being overrun by Armenian rats, who come in and use fake Medicare businesses to destroy our systems and take over our country.
We need to stop the Armenian.
Okay, next is Della Luna.
Yeah, I guess I'll start by speaking on that.
I wish whoever was in charge of that could be faster on getting those bogus calls out of here, because they can be offensive and racist quite easily.
I wanted to speak about the pedestrian crosswalk at the Ashby Bar.
Construction started, I guess, finished over six weeks ago, but all the cones were taken down, and the crosswalk has not been painted or finished.
And I'm requesting that you put construction cones back to indicate that there is a crosswalk for the drivers.
I feel like pedestrians are quite confident in that space, but the drivers not seeing the crosswalk is quite dangerous for the pedestrians.
Secondly, at the last meeting, there was a lot of trying to direct public comment or speed it up, but that is part of the process.
And this body needs to acknowledge that when you put something on the agenda, that means you're going to listen to public comment.
So it doesn't have to be directed or redirected or get everyone in line faster, faster, faster.
All of that is unnecessary.
If there's no time for something, then put it on another agenda.
And changing what gets put on the agenda will impact the public comment, rather than trying to speed direct it one by one, every person.
That energy should not happen in the meeting.
Thank you.
And then we have Pauline.
Pauline, you should be able to unmute.
Hi.
Thank you very much, Honorable Mayor and City Council.
My name is Pauline Bondano-Cross, and I'm the Executive Director of Community Health Education Institute.
I wanted to comment on item 13 on the voting this evening.
Item 13 will not be on the agenda.
We'll be taking up comments on the consent calendar soon.
Oh, okay.
Thank you.
That's it.
All right.
Thank you.
We are now going to move on to public comment by employee unions, which happens as the first regular meeting of the month.
And I believe I saw Amory.
I brought a few friends with me in case I need some more time.
Five minutes is the max for this portion.
Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to speak.
My name is Amory Langmohm, and I'm the President of the Berkeley Firefighters Local 1227.
Tonight, I want to use my time to speak on the notice of proposed position eliminations I received last Friday.
In total, 20 positions have been proposed for elimination, along with the closer of Fire Station 4.
I want to make the case tonight for why this is an incredibly dangerous position for the city to take.
I also want to highlight something that should not be lost in this conversation.
Over the last 18 years, the citizens of Berkeley have given the city a clear mandate to fund public safety.
They passed two dedicated fire department tax measures, Measure GG in 2008 and Measure FF in 2020, bringing in nearly $16.2 million annually.
That is the public telling the city repeatedly that they value this service.
Tonight's proposal moves in opposition of the direction of that mandate.
These cuts rolled the department back 20 years.
These proposed cuts don't just reduce the fire department, they roll it back 20 years in a city that has grown dramatically in every direction since then.
The call volume in the same period of time has gone from 11,000 incidents per year to 17,500.
The city is growing, and we are moving backward.
Berkeley is the second most densely populated city in California's top 50, behind only San Francisco.
We are adding 500 new housing units every year, roughly 1% of total housing stock annually.
Population swells to over 150,000 when UC is in session.

Segment 2

That's more people, more calls, more incidents, fewer firefighters.
Station 4 is not a low-volume luxury.
Engine 4 ran 1,538 calls in 2025.
That includes 28 fires, 966 medical emergencies, and 17 cardiac arrests.
47 percent of the time citywide, there are multiple simultaneous incidents.
Units are already committed when the next call drops.
Engines 2, 5, and 6 are already at or above recommended maximum call limit.
Station 4's 1,538 annual calls don't disappear when you close it.
They get pushed on to companies that are already maxed out.
The life safety math.
Every minute of delay and cardiac arrest reduces survival by 7 to 10 percent.
Modern home fires reach flashover in 9 to 6 minutes.
Fires double in size every 30 to 60 seconds.
Traumatic injuries response over 20, 12, I'm sorry, 12 minutes are linked to nearly double the fatality rate compared to response under 7 minutes.
These are not abstractions.
Engine 4 responded to 17 cardiac arrests last year alone.
The city's own experts said the resource, we need to add resources, not cut them.
In 2023, the city paid for an independent standards of coverage study.
City hits conclusion, Berkeley Fire Department is organized for yesterday's mission and is struggling to meet today's demand.
Their recommendation, add four-person staffing to at least four of seven engine companies and both truck companies.
Four-person crews complete fire ground tasks 5.1 minutes faster, 25 percent faster on life safety tasks like fire attack and search and rescue.
The bottom line, the citizens of Berkeley have voted twice in 18 years to fund the department.
They have given the city a 16.2 million a year mandate.
I'm asking the city to reject the proposed position eliminations and the closure of fire station four and track the city manager to find another path forward.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Is there anyone else here from the union that wants to speak? Or maybe sometimes folks are online.
Representatives.
Thank you.
Thank you all for being here.
Okay.
We're moving on to the consent calendar.
So I will start off to see if my council colleagues have comments.
Starting with Council Member Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
And I'm making reference to the item on the action calendar number 18, which is a Mills Act contract for 2845 Woolsey, which was continued for March 24, 2026, the agenda for that meeting.
I'd like to request unanimous support for the item being returned to the consent calendar.
Based on conversations with staff, I feel comfortable with the Mills Act contract being approved.
The application came in before the pause and the LPC's lack of action appears to have been the result of some absences, as well as uncertainty created by the pause and how to dispose of Mills Act applications already in progress.
For fairness's sake, I think it's reasonable to approve this one understanding that once all outstanding applications received before the cutoff are processed, we won't be reviewing or approving any more for the foreseeable future.
So I'd ask unanimous consent to place that back on consent.
Thank you.
I see no opposition to that, so.
Okay, we will move that to consent then.
Thank you.
And then I have just one more comment on the consent calendar.
$250 contribution to number 15, which is sponsored by Council Member Bartlett, the celebration for Sylvia Mendez, the spring cultural celebration.
$250 from our office account.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Moving on to Council Member Bacowbi.
Thanks, Madam Mayor.
Just two brief comments.
Similarly, on item 14, the Kala Art relinquishment, we'd like to relinquish $250 from the District 6 account.
And item 15 on the Sylvia Mendez spring cultural celebration, similarly, we want to relinquish $250.
And I wanted to thank Council Member Kessarwani and team for bringing item 13, the referral to establish a citywide local density bonus program, facilitate lower cost ownership homes, the condo item.
I'm really interested in hearing back from staff on what might be possible there.
And I wanted to thank Council Member Kessarwani for bringing it.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Traigub.
Thank you so much, Madam Mayor.
Thank you to city staff for all your work to bring a number of items on consent.
I'm very happy to support item number four, which is a downtown Berkeley Association bid renewal, this vital or funding allocation, gap funding allocation.
This vital organization is making so much good happen in our beloved downtown from continuously keeping up with our businesses and property owners to keeping our downtown clean and cared for to relentlessly and creatively beautifying it.
Thank you so much, John and the entire DBA staff, as well as our economic development department for your ongoing support and help on item 12, which is to start a process to rename Cesar Chavez Park.
I'm happy to support this item.
I believe it creates a path for thoughtful community engagement while ensuring that we continue to honor the legacy of farm workers and their essential contributions.
And I think of farm workers like the father of my life partner, a Manong who immigrated from the Philippines to start a life here for him and his family and support them.
On item 14, I would like to thank council member Kesarwani and my co-sponsors for this item, which relates to making it easier to move stout projects, including in our downtown forward.
I'm supporting this item because it is our duty to explore all viable solutions to make sure that our precious downtown properties are not sitting vacant and abandoned.
This is a referral and I look forward to staff returning with the information that the referral requests.
This process will, I think, continue to benefit from all the thoughtful community engagement that we received and I look forward to seeing it when it comes back.
On items 14 and 15, I'm happy to contribute $150 from my council office budget to support these important community initiatives.
And lastly, on item 17, which is support for amendments to the Berkeley Green Code.
I am grateful to council member Lunapara and Taplin as my co-sponsors and I'm grateful to staff, particularly Jordan and the Office of Environmental Sustainability for your work in this item.
These amendments will help ensure that Berkeley continues to be a climate leader when it comes to green buildings, including both new and existing construction.
It also includes opportunities to streamline the permitting of green features such as heat pumps and to make it easier for residents and builders alike to adopt more sustainable technologies.
I'm pleased to see this item moving forward in a way that advances our sustainability goals while also making implementation more practical and accessible.
And I'm grateful to those who have called in or written in in support of this item, including the Sierra Club.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Council member Lunapara.
Thank you.
I would like to donate $150 to item 14 and $250 to item 15.
And thank you to the authors.
I also want to thank Mayor Ishii and the community for their work on item 12 to rename the Cesar Chavez Park and align our holiday with the states and thank Vice Mayor Trego for his work on the green building codes.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Council member Casarwani.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
I'd like to be recorded as donating $100 to CALA and $100 for the Sylvia Mendez Spring Celebration.
And I just wanted to thank my colleagues for their support of the local density bonus item to promote condo development.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Council member Bartlett.
Hi, so please excuse the background noise.
I'd like to $150 to item 14, the CALA Arts Center, a beautiful place.
Item 13, I'm really happy about the local density bonus for affordable condominium ownership.
We heard that at the Landers Committee that I chair, and I'm really pleased with the outcome.
And thank you for putting this forward, Council member Casarwani.
I'd like to, of course, thank you all for supporting the Sylvia Mendez Cultural Celebration.
It's a bilingual school.
This is a really good party every year.
So I'm going to, of course, add $250 to that for myself.
Oh, I guess I have $1,000 for me.
Going to confirm this $1,000 for my budget here for this one.
And then also Dolores Cooper is a stalwart member of the community.
This is item 16.
And so the people came forward and asked us to consider naming this plaza over there after Dolores Cooper.
Dolores Cooper, of course, is the longtime head of Juneteenth and has really made maximum use of that location.
And so it'd be a wonderful treasure if the commission decides to name it after her.
And then last but not least, I do want to call out, I couldn't speak earlier, Winston Burton was a lifelong friend of mine from childhood.
And he was a wonderful human being, a powerful advocate, a true Berkeley original.
And he will be missed.
And if your family's listening or still there, my prayers go out to you.
And I just saw him in the hospital just four months ago.
And I was really stunned that he didn't come out of it the right way.
And my prayers are with you.
God bless, Winston.
Thank you, Council Member.
Council Member O'Keefe.
Thank you.
Just briefly, I would like to be recorded as donating $200 for items 14 and 15, both seem worthy causes.
And my only other comment is I really want to thank Council Member Castellawani for item 13.
I think this is a really important policy hole, for lack of a better word, that this is a very important correction to be made.
So thank you so much for bringing that item.
I'm happy to support it.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Humbert, did you have something else you wanted to add? Yes.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I missed number 14.
But Callaw, I guess is how you pronounce it, Art 2026, and would like to donate $250 from my office account to that item.
Thank you.
I'd also like to add $250 from my account for item number 14 and thank Council Member Kaplan for bringing it.
And I thank you to Council Member Bartlett for bringing item 15 for the Sylvia Mendez Cultural Celebration and also donate $250 from my office's discretionary funds for that item as well.
Oh, I missed Council Member Kaplan.
Go ahead, Council Member.
Thank you very much.
I was a little late there.
I would also like to relinquish 500 for item 15.
Thanks.
Thank you very much.
And also, since I know some of the folks are here, I really want to thank everyone who we'd have conversations with about Cesar Chavez and the renaming of the various different holidays and sites within our city.
We've had many community conversations over the last week and I'm very grateful to everyone who's weighed in and given us their thoughts.
So thank you very much.
I know this has been a really challenging situation for the community, so thank you.
Okay, with that I will see if there's any public comment on consent calendar and information items only.
Come on up.
Come forward, line up along the wall there and you can come forward to speak.
Yes, one minute per speaker.
Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council Members, and City Manager.
I'm here, I'm go by Duran.
I'm here to talk about item 13, local density bonus program.
And I believe you cannot legally establish a new local density bonus program while the Mayor and the Council actually actively enable a documented density fraud at a 24-25 Durand.
I'd like to understand why you insist pass and uphold the permit while I was here and testified that there's a material fraud in terms of how they apply the permit with 19 units.
You give the high density bonus while in reality there's only 15 operation safety limit existing at the cost of the tenant's life safety with preventable emergencies taking place already.
Thank you, thanks for your comment.
Good evening, everybody.
My name is Ursula Schultz and I'm a Berkeley resident and I'm speaking on item 13.
And the one thing I think is very useful about the recent projects with density bonuses is they require a minimum amount of reduced cost housing.
The problem I see with the in-lieu fee is it just reiterates the red lining that was there before.
Because what's going to happen, you're suggesting that these fees go to the Ashby BART station.
I'm sorry, can you hear me? Yes.
And I don't think it's beneficial to the working families who need housing in high resource districts or the small business employees who would like to live near their jobs.
And the fees go elsewhere.
Also there's a percentage of the fees that are administratively consumed.
So the condominiums stay exclusive and the previously redlined neighborhoods remain so.
Building market rate condominiums, you got it.
Thank you.
I'm requesting two extra minutes.
John and Harvey.
Sorry, I couldn't see who's who was the second person.
Harvey.
Oh okay, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Good evening, my name is Michael Apte.
I'm a Berkeley resident speaking to item 13.
The proposed city-wide local density bonus for condominium development.
This proposal asks the council to allow condominium developers anywhere in Berkeley to elect to pay in-lieu fees instead of building any affordable housing on site.
For every unit in the project, not some units, all of them, I want to raise three specific concerns.
First, where the affordable housing goes.
The proposal directs those fees into the city's housing trust fund to be spent on affordable housing elsewhere.
It explicitly names SB East parking lot in West Berkeley as a destination.
West Berkeley is a historically lower income, historically underserved neighborhood.
So the structural outcome is this.
The market rate condominium development in Berkeley's wealthiest neighborhoods generates zero on-site affordable housing, while the affordable units get redirected to lower income areas.
The wealthy neighborhoods get exclusive market rate condominiums.
The affordable housing goes where it always has.
Second, whether the affordable housing gets built at all.
This is the part of the proposal I found most troubling.
Nowhere in item 13 is there a specific dollar commitment, a minimum funding requirement, or a binding timeline for how the collective fees must be deployed.
The proposal says fees can fund affordable housing elsewhere.
Can, not shall, not must.
The council would be authorizing developers to avoid all on-site affordability applications in exchange for fees whose actual deployment to affordable housing is entirely discretionary.
Third, what the data tells us.
Berkeley's own Reno records show us that in the last completed eight-year housing cycle, we built 228 percent of our market rate housing target, only 28 percent of our low-income target.
We do not have a market rate production problem.
We have an affordable housing delivery failure.
A citywide policy that allows market rate condo developers to avoid on- site affordable units in exchange for discretionary fees of unspecified destination does not address that failure.
It institutionalizes it.
Council member Keshel Wani has been a strong advocate for housing equity in this city.
I respect that commitment, but I would ask her and this council to reconcile tonight's proposal with it.
Genuine equity means affordable housing built in high resource neighborhoods, not discretionary fees that may or may not fund housing somewhere else someday.
This proposal should not pass as written.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi everyone.
Donald Simon, three minutes please.
Thank you all, and I do mean thank you, because after meeting with a lot of you, you have a pretty thankless job.
You're responsible for the whole city, and it seems like no matter what you do, somebody's going to give you heck for it, and you've got to put up with a lot of stuff, and I think we saw a little bit of that earlier today.
So, I do not mean this to be critical.
I hope that it will be insightful.
You've heard from others already about a glaring deficiency in this condo density bonus proposal, and I want to make sure it's very, very clear as to what the outcome is if you push this forward.
You all identify as progressives, which is appropriate.
This is Berkeley, California.
You have rightfully identified the sins of the past where practices such as redlining enforced a segregationist housing system where the wealthy live over here and the poor live over here, and I know this is the last thing you want, but if this thing goes forward, you will be creating the new Jim Crow of housing segregation right here in Berkeley.
Now, why is that? Because in some meetings, I've seen that it's not clearly understood.
The state has set a policy that to advance fair housing, to promote the desegregation where we all live together as one, which is what everybody in Berkeley wants.
They don't want this continued ghettoization where the low-income are over here and the wealthy are over there.
The state has set a policy with the state density bonus that gives developers what they want, which is the ability to build more than twice as high as what cities allow, but in exchange for that, they have to provide affordable units, but every time you raise height limits, whether it's with this density bonus or the CZU, you obviate and take away that incentive because the developers get the height they want without having to include any on-site affordable units.
Now, I understand that puts money into the city budget in times when we're running short.
I understand that you think that it's going to increase property taxes, but it should not be done by reinforcing the housing segregation that got us into this problem to begin with.
We need to provide the mixing of people living together, and the only way history shows in Berkeley that you get lower-income people living in market-rate housing projects is when developers use the state density bonus, just as Patrick Kennedy is doing in the project on Virginia Street that he just recently approved.
This was presented as a way to get the stalled projects in downtown going, so why is it being presented now as something that would be applied citywide? If you go forward with directing staff to develop an ordinance along these lines or a proposal on these lines, you are going to reinforce the very housing segregation that you have stated it is your intention to eliminate and that we all would back you on, and so I'm asking you, on behalf of Save Berkeley Shops and on behalf of myself as a Berkeley resident that has lived in this area, if you forward this, limit it to the downtown that it was designed to help accelerate, and do not allow it elsewhere.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next speaker, please.
Hi, my name is Joel Meyerson, a Berkeley resident.
Let's describe this local density bonus in simple terms that are not false comparisons to the state density bonus.
Currently, if a developer wants to build in Berkeley and not include any on-site affordable housing, they need to pay an in-lieu fee based on the size of the project.
Bigger the project, the higher the fee.
Under the new plan, they get to pay the same fee, but they get to build a project that is at least twice as big and not include any affordable housing.
Effectively, this cuts the fee in half and doubles the size of the project, and the developer gets a number of concessions and a literally unlimited number of waivers, like waiving the height limit or whatever.
This is not a density bonus.
It is a density giveaway and a backdoor rezoning plan.
This plan should not even be being considered, much less being sent to the city manager.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I vigorously support the Land Use Policy Committee's recommendation to refer to the city manager to have affordable housing on-site through below-market-rate condos.
This is necessary for both apartments and for condos to have economic diversity and other diversity in our community.
And once that is done, no action should be taken until we have identified, the city has identified, a formula to design so that there are below-market-rate condos on-site.
Thank you.
I'm going to cede the rest of my time to Meryl Siegel.
Thank you.
Good evening, Council Members.
Thank you for this time.
I just concur with the very eloquent speakers that spoke about the density bonus.
I, too, see that if this change called the local density bonus goes through, it will further segregate our city.
And I don't think any one of you want to be involved in that kind of re-segregation or re-redlining of our city.
Furthermore, I just wanted to say something about middle housing.
We passed the middle housing, and this would also be a boon to middle housing.
In other words, people who are now making middle incomes could possibly afford to own something.
Can you imagine how wonderful that would be for people? I can, because I was one of those people who could not afford anything when I had started my career.
So, I really suggest that you take another look at this, think about ways that those condos can create affordable condos.
I think it would be a wonderful gift you could give to the City of Berkeley.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Christopher Cole, West Berkeley.
I won't repeat everything you've already heard.
I am actually shocked that this is on the consent calendar, and that none of you have raised any of these concerns that the people you have just heard have raised.
Very viable issues.
And it's not appropriate that this comes back in six months after the staff has gone off and developed it.
These issues should be developed on the action calendar now, today, before you approve sending it off.
This is horrendous that you were doing this without even adequate public input.
I guess that's all I have to say.
You've heard, it's like, how will this program, why is this program for downtown? Is it for downtown? Is it a citywide program? The affordable housing will likely decrease if this program is passed.
But the only way we're getting housing now, affordable housing, is through the density bonus, right? Or am I wrong? And this, and why, again, is this should not be on the consent calendar.
There's so many issues that are unresolved.
And you're going to send this to the City of Berkeley, and you're going to send this to the city manager, and the staff's going to spend staff time building this program.
Thank you.
Hi, council members and mayor.
My name is Mayumi Hamanaka, and with Ellen Lake, we are co-executive director for Color Art Institute.
We're just here tonight to thank your support, and your support really helped us to do our programs, which supports local young artists and teens and adults who are really eager to create art and engage with the art and community.
So thank you.
Not too much more to add, except for a big thanks from me, too, for supporting Color Art Institute.
It's our 52nd year, and we've been in Berkeley since 1979 in the old Heinz Ketchup Factory building, supporting arts and culture in West Berkeley and all over Berkeley and beyond.
And so it means a lot for all of you to support our organization, and a special thanks to council member Terry Toplin and to all of you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks for coming.
Good evening.
My name is Santiago Casal.
I'm one of the founders of Latinos and Negros in Berkeley, and I'm also the founder and director of the Cesar Chavez de la Huerta tribute site and solar calendar at Chavez Park.
All names that are going to change.
I'd like to read this statement.
As part of the commemorative committee that originally spearheaded the naming of Chavez Park over 30 years ago, we sincerely appreciate the mayor's item request to engage with the Chavez Huerta commemoration period partners in Latinos and Negros de Berkeley regarding the renaming of Chavez Park after the toxic news of March 18th and the abusive harm caused by Cesar Chavez.
Most importantly, as outlined in the mayor's direction to the city manager and the Parks and Recreation Commission, we also support the name change continuing to honor the legacy of labor organizing and solidarity among farm workers and recognizing them as the backbone of America.
Gracias.
My name is Beatriz Leyva Cutler, and I'm part of the commemoration committee and also former Berkeley school board member.
We're a sanctuary city embracing and advocating for our immigrant community, and we are proud of our farmers markets which enliven and nourish our city every Saturday, Tuesday, and Thursday for decades.
We support and are committed to the renaming to reflect this outcome.
The farm worker movement continues.
Please let us know if you have any questions regarding the commemorative committee which broadly represents the city, BOSD,.

Segment 3

Land Use Committee on the Community.
Gracias.
Muchas gracias.
Thank you.
Council members, I'm asking you to move number 13 to the action calendar and the reason why is when we talked at the land use committees, a lot of people understood that there are issues that need to be addressed and that, as I explained, there are flaws in the report that was presented to you.
So my concern is that everybody's saying, oh this is great, we're going to put it on, we're going to do consent, but nobody is asking the questions that haven't been asked and that's what I want to talk about.
The purpose of the local density laws that were in the report and adopted by other cities was to increase affordable housing and that's what was in there and yet this one takes it away.
It doesn't address the issues that seniors and family will not want to move to downtown Berkeley or what I call Cal Central.
It's geared for the upper middle class single from outside the city because they're the only ones who can afford market rate.
Will it be used for absentee landlords who will then buy it and then raise rents? What happens if it doesn't get built? Is the city going to take away their permits? They haven't so far.
Is there a penalty if it converts to a rental? Those and more need to be put in an amended referral that you can't do because you're keeping it on the action calendar.
What the real issue is here, are you guys, excuse me, are you intending for equity? Are you intending for inclusiveness? This is based on a flawed report.
I'm asking you to take it off the consent calendar and talk about it and ask all those questions that you haven't asked.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi my name is Chrissy Hoffman.
I think I'm here regarding item number 20 which says amendments to BMC title landmark preservation commission to revise procedures.
Sorry I think that that is on the action calendar.
So we're right now on consent calendar and information items.
Oh okay gotcha.
So if you.
Okay thank you.
Yep thank you.
Hi John Kane or downtown Berkeley association.
We've had no condos in downtown developed in the last 30 years.
We've had 2,000 new rental units.
We have 3,000 more in the pipeline.
All student rental housing.
We love the students but we need economic diversity in the downtown.
We need people to move out of their homes in the hills and the flats.
We need young professionals so they can build equity.
We need economic diversity.
We need to support our arts district.
We need to support our restaurants and shops.
Please support item 13 so people can have home ownership in our downtown.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I see you smiling when you hear support.
I've been following the city since the olden days.
You know since I was younger.
And in those olden days in Luffy was the nexus studies were on a five percent return on investment.
That's how they were calculated.
But now we're looking at 20 percent return on investment for construction as kind of being the bottom line and 30 percent being even better for investors.
Better investment.
So if we were looking at the density bonus for only the downtown I would probably be agreeable to that.
But citywide I think it's a huge mistake.
And just like so many others have said this is really the new redlining and ghettoization.
And as one person suggested there should be a sunset if it's passed at all.
Thank you.
Are there folks online who have public comment on consent calendar information items? We currently have seven hands raised.
This is public comments on consent and information items.
First speaker is David Shear.
Hi.
I want to speak in favor of item 13 if my children will let me.
This is a smart and innovative program.
We are talking about tens of millions of dollars that will be spent on homeless services.
That will be spent leveraging state and federal funds to build affordable housing.
That will be spent on things like the small sites program.
That will be spent filling in the gaps.
Some of the gaps created by our crippling structural deficit.
This proposal will create hundreds if not thousands of more affordable for sale units so that people can have some stability in their lives instead of being tenants for the rest of their lives.
And I think a lot of folks are going to drive home tonight and walk into homes that cost $1.5 million, $2 million.
And they should think about the fact that they are talking about how building homes that cost half that is somehow comparable to a redlining engine.
I think that's outrageous.
And I think that this is a really great proposal.
And I appreciate it.
And thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Next is Justin Randall.
Hi, everybody.
My name is Justin Randall.
I'm serving as co-president of the PTA at Sylvia Mendez.
And so I just wanted to thank you all.
Council Member Ben Bartlett has been supporting our celebration for the last, well, this is our fourth year.
And everybody has been very supportive of this at the city council level for our last few years.
And this is a great way for us to have a spring event where we're able to celebrate the different cultures that are not necessarily related to heritage, but also just the many different ways that the members of our community express themselves.
And so if you guys are available, please come through April 26, between 11 and 2, we'd love to see you at Sylvia Mendez.
We're still currently under construction, but it's still a great time to come and see what the Sylvia Mendez community has to offer.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for the invitation.
Next is Pauline.
Pauline, you should be able to unmute.
Hi, my name is Pauline Bondano.
I'm the director of Community Health Education Institute.
And I wanted to comment on item 13.
Council Members, I appreciate your time and attention and your hard work right now.
I believe item 13 will not increase low income housing.
As has been said before, it's market rate housing.
And we desperately need low income housing in many areas of Berkeley, not just market rate housing.
I think there are so many unanswered questions that have come up in this session with council, that this needs to come off the consent calendar.
And we need to answer some of these questions first.
And think about, you know, how are we representing the people of Berkeley and all of their needs? Are we really providing them with housing that they're going to be able to afford? And I'm going to thank you for consideration of this.
Thank you.
Next is Matt O'Brien.
Yes, thank you.
Many have expressed their opposition to having the in-lieu fee for these condo projects, because it will foster ghettoization and apartment buildings full of people who can spend $4,000 and $5,000 a month, or, you know, pay market rate mortgages.
And then there would be other buildings that just have low income people, and they're in a different part of the city.
And so the ghettoization and the false argument that addresses previous discriminatory housing policies is a problem.
And so the public starts thinking, gosh, why are they doing this? And many have concluded that it's just another sort of giveaway to the real estate interest to make up for the failures of all the stalled projects, the boarded projects, the boarded up dead zone on Center Street.
And we think that we want affordable housing.
We don't want our city council to just be pleasing the real estate interest.
We understand, you know, they have a lot of money and a lot of influence, but we want our city council to work for the public.
We want affordable.
I appreciate your comment.
Next is Della Luna.
Yes, I would like to request that item 13 be pulled from the consent calendar and put on the action calendar.
After hearing that this is now being proposed citywide, suddenly that seems like a surprise.
And before anything would be proposed citywide, there should be more discussion on it.
And that has not happened.
And I think that even with the area that it's in, even if it were for students, there still are low income students.
So it doesn't seem reasonable to move the low income units to another part of the city, presumably, or, you know, through the funds.
And I think that's it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, next is Valued Customer.
I'm Valued Customer, also known as Martin Nicholas.
I'm CEO of the Chavez Park Conservancy, and I'd like to support the statement by Santiago Custal and Beatrice Lever Cutler in support of a process to change the name of Cesar Chavez Park.
I hope this goes forward fairly speedily, because it's very itchy to have the name Cesar Chavez Park Conservancy when you really don't want that name anymore.
So we hope that this goes forward in a speedy way.
I also have a couple of things I want to say about items two and three, which hire out our animal services to Emeryville and Albany.
It's got to bring in $1.2 million to animal services.
That's terrific.
I hope that that money is used to hire additional staff for animal services.
The couple of times that I've called Berkeley Animal Services, I've been told, oh, I can't really help you.
We're running three different cities.
I think your time's up.
Okay, next is David Song.
Good evening, Council Members.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak.
I don't want to restate what has already been stated about the item 13 on the consent calendar.
I do support that item being pulled and there being more discussion.
Affordable housing is tough.
We all understand that.
We all want affordable housing and it's tough to make it happen.
But we've got to put our energy into figuring out how to make that happen.
And we need to figure out how to get affordable housing into some of these neighborhoods that it's been pointed out we're guilty of redlining in the 40s and we're trying to figure out ways of addressing, creating more opportunities.
This is not about that.
This is not about that.
This is going to provide market rate condominiums and or rentals in wealthy neighborhoods.
And it'll create more money for the fund, which will then go out and purchase lots and build housing in less wealthy neighborhoods in Berkeley.
That is not what we're trying to do.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak.
Thank you.
Okay, that's all of the speakers on the Zoom.
Thank you very much.
I see that Council Member Kesarwani has her hand raised.
Yes, thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
I want to thank the public commenters for your feedback.
And I do want to note, as has been noted, this is a referral of a concept that will come back to the Council so that we can review the details and have more community input at that point.
I also want to note that this item was heard by the Land Use Committee, where we did hear from the public as well at that point.
And we accepted, I think, all of the amendments that were proposed in that committee.
I want to thank the members of the Council who serve on that committee who provided very helpful input.
I also want to thank the co-sponsors of this item, Madam Mayor, Council Member Tragoob, and I believe Council Member Bartlett, you would also like to join this item, correct? As a co-sponsor? Okay.
So, Clerk, if you could record that.
And thank you very much, everyone.
Thank you.
Okay.
Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar? So moved.
Second.
Second.
Okay.
Thank you.
Can we take the roll, please, Clerk? Okay.
To approve the consent calendar, Council Member Kesarwani? Yes.
Taplin? Yes.
Bartlett? Yes.
Yes.
Tragoob? Aye.
O'Keefe? Yes.
Blackabay? Yes.
Lunapara? Yes.
Humber? Yes.
And Mayor Ishii? Yes.
Okay.
The consent calendar is adopted.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
All right.
We are moving on to the action calendar.
Let me just scroll down.
We already, by the way, moved item number 18, which was the Mills contract item, to consent, which we just passed.
So I am not sure if anyone was here for that, but wanted to make sure you knew that that passed.
Okay.
Did you want to still give a public comment or no? Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
Okay.
Very good.
And so on here as new business, actually, I really would like us to take a stretch break.
We're going to take a 10-minute stretch break, and that will allow the city attorney's office also to set up.
So 10-minute stretch break.
Thank you.
Okay.
Hello.
I think we're ready to return.
Okay, folks.
Julie, Kelly, Carol.
Okay.
Please have a seat.
Thank you.
All right.
So we are now on the action calendar for new business.
So I will pass it over to the city attorney's office for the proposed..
Excuse me.
Hello.
Thank you.
For the proposed resolution limiting use of city property to authorized uses that further city purposes and protect access to city services.
All right.
Passing it over.
Just trying to share my screen here.
No worries.
Would you like me to read my introduction now since maybe that will give you a little bit more time? It would be wonderful if you introduce it, and then we'll launch into the rest of it.
Sure.
That sounds good.
So in light of the invasions and military-like surges of federal immigration authorities in American cities last October and since then, the city council unanimously directed the city manager to identify city-owned and controlled properties and to coordinate with the city attorney to develop a policy or ordinance that would ensure city properties and facilities are only used for city purposes and those purposes approved by the city manager or their designee.
We asked them to draft an administrative policy or ordinance to ensure that city property is used for city purposes, restricting the use of city-owned property for civil immigration enforcement, staging areas, processing locations, or operation bases absent lawful court orders.
This policy, which is now passed in counties and cities across the Bay Area and the country, is often termed ice-free zones.
We are pleased to say that the city attorney is presenting a resolution limiting use of city property to authorize uses that further city purposes and protect access to city services for our consideration.
We're trying to start the first slide here, but for some reason it's appearing on my computer but not up there.
Okay, no worries.
There we go.
All right.
Thank you.
It's working now.
Good evening.
My name is Katrina Island and I am the interim assistant city attorney.
I'm here this evening to present on the proposed resolution limiting use of city property.
As the mayor just gave background on, this item is from a referral in October of 2025 referring to the city attorney's office, the drafting of a potential policy.
I'm going to go through some of the main features of the policy and its purposes and some main takeaways.
So first importantly, what would the resolution do? So primarily what it would do is prohibit exclusive use of city property without city authorization.
And so that term is defined in the resolution.
So it wouldn't be any use.
It would be limited to exclusive uses which essentially prohibit others from using the property.
It would not apply to sort of traditional uses and ways in which city property has always been open to the public.
So this is a sort of narrow restriction on exclusive use without city authorization.
And what it would do is it would bar city employees and other city officials from approving exclusive uses of city property that would either disrupt city operations or discourage access to city services unless that proposed use furthers a city purpose.
So that is, this all sounds kind of complicated, but essentially it would make it so the kinds of uses that someone might propose to the city and ask for authorization that would discourage residents from being able to access city services or in other ways disrupt city operations in ways that would harm the city, that the city will not authorize those uses unless there's some other important city purpose that that use furthers.
And in essence, the resolution also has findings and those findings are that civil immigration enforcement disrupts city operations and discourages access to city services and that such enforcement operations are not a city purpose.
And so in putting all that together, in effect, it prohibits authorizing exclusive use of city property for things like immigration enforcement, staging areas or operation spaces where they would be essentially taking over or trying to exclusively use city property for their own purposes.
And finally, what the resolution would do was direct the city manager to post clear signage on certain lots, identifying them as city property and specifying that unauthorized uses are not permitted.
And so this would apply to certain city properties that aren't otherwise access restricted and where it may not be clear to the public that it's a city property and that in order to use it, you would need to seek city authorization.
So turning to the next slide, essentially, as the mayor mentioned, really the purpose of the resolution is to preserve city properties for city programs and services or to further other city purposes that are specifically authorized by the city, putting more control and making very clear what purposes are and aren't authorized.
It would protect access to city services by preventing approval of certain kinds of outside uses that could disrupt city operations or discourage access.
And importantly, the purpose is also just established guidance and clarity for when city officials may or may not authorize exclusive use of city property.
So the important takeaways on this are that this is a purpose-based and use-based resolution.
It governs approval for the type of use and exclusive uses in particular.
It's not about general presence or activity and it's not targeting the identity of any particular user.
It's really about the purpose of the use.
It applies generally to any exclusive uses that would interfere with the city operations or access to services and do not facilitate a city purpose.
And that's a broad range of potential things.
Civil immigration enforcement, takeovers of property is only one such example.
It's designed to preserve the city's own use of its own assets, preserve the city's resources, and to facilitate effective service delivery.
And it ensures consistent application of existing principles and clarifies authorization requirements and works in concert with the city's other related policies.
So with that, that is the presentation, the short of it, and I'm happy to answer any questions.
Thank you very much.
Are there any questions from my council colleagues? I can't see our other council members online, so if you could just keep an eye out for me, Mr.
City Clerk.
Yeah, I don't see any hands.
Okay.
Council Member Blackabay, did you have a question? Yeah, one quick question.
Thanks to the city attorney's office for this work.
And it all makes a lot of sense.
I understand kind of the how we approached it this way and tackle it this way.
My main question is this issue of exclusive versus non-exclusive access.
And are there times, for example, if it's not a parking lot and it's not a city building and it's not exclusive, so it's, you know, gathering at a park or something like that.
What kind of ability do we have to regulate that use if it's not exclusive in a facility like that? I think that any use that is not exclusive would be outside of the scope of this particular resolution.
And I think if it's the kind of use that would typically not require a permit, because there's certain things that already, you know, under city policy already require a permit.
So there could be some regulation of that if it's not exclusive.
There could be some regulation of that if folks were to be using a property in a way that currently requires a permit and we're not doing, you know, we're doing so without a permit.
But otherwise, if it's a non-exclusive use, it would be outside of the scope of this particular policy.
Got it.
So we couldn't sort of say, hey, no, you can't gather in that part of the park.
You're not, you know, you're not impinging on other people's right necessarily to use the park, but we couldn't instruct people that they can't, that we couldn't instruct immigration personnel or any other personnel that they could not use that space under this policy.
That's right.
The resolution doesn't generally restrict federal activity in public spaces and public areas.
You know, it specifically does state that the city doesn't interfere with or obstruct lawful immigration enforcement.
So it wouldn't allow us to say, you know, you see an officer in a particular public place and say that they were not allowed to be there.
Now, we do have our sanctuary city ordinance, which does regulate the entry of officials into private city spaces.
So non-public areas of the city and the sanctuary city ordinance would continue to regulate that access.
So like, I wish we could, you know, I wish we could say that.
And our concern is it's, we would run afoul of constitutional issues if we, is that where we start to cross a line that would be, that would put us at risk? I think there are important reasons to keep the resolution to exclusive uses and sort of take over of public property.
And, you know, generally, you know, local jurisdictions are not permitted to actually interfere with the federal government's lawful undertaking of its activities.
We can choose not to use our resources.
To facilitate that.
So even if they're using city property in a non-exclusive way, we can't, we couldn't instruct them otherwise.
That would definitely be outside of the scope of this resolution.
Thanks for helping me clarify.
Thank you.
And just to take that one step further, just to make sure.
So if they took over a space at like a park, it would require a permit, essentially.
If that particular use already would require a permit under city law, this wouldn't change that.
But this would, you know, we're trying to make clear that any use of our property in these ways would require a city authorization.
And this, what this resolution regulates is city officials and employees decisions around that authorization.
So this directs city employees and city officials not to grant that authorization, should it be sought.
Thank you.
There are a lot of conversations going on on this side.
If you have a conversation, if you could just please take it outside.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you very much for your answer.
Council Member Humbert.
Yeah, I just have a quick question.
It's kind of a hypothetical.
I remember in Los Angeles, the federal immigration authorities were using Lafayette Park as kind of a staging ground and it became sort of a battlefield and they were kind of marching in phalanxes through the park and rousting people.
Is that something that we could, under this ordinance or under our permitting regulations, do something about? So it depends on the nature of the property and sort of the nature of the activities, the undertaking.
I think sort of general enforcement activity in a public place is not something that this resolution would reach.
Even if there were sort of like multiple officers or multiple operations in a particular area, this resolution wouldn't reach sort of preventing immigration enforcement from happening in a public place, on a public street, or in a public park or sidewalk.
And so it's important to understand the sort of relatively narrow scope of the resolution.
I think in Los Angeles, there were some questions at various times about what constituted federal property that federal officials could sort of stage on their own federal property.
But I think a lot of these policies around the country are cropping up in response to situations where without the authorization of a particular jurisdiction, immigration officials took over parking lots, took over areas, and sort of use them for their own purposes without the city's authorization.
That's what this would be designed to get at.
Thank you.
Another question, Council Member Trich? Yeah, thank you so much.
I'm aware that Alameda County is also considering a policy, and I'm curious if you could speak to just to the extent that you're able, if this particular architecture of regulation, how is it similar, or does it differ from other jurisdictions contemplating this? That's a good question.
There are various jurisdictions in the Bay Area and across the country that have adopted policies that relate to this subject generally.
Alameda County is one of them.
The City and County of San Francisco is another.
The County of Santa Clara, there are various jurisdictions that have adopted policies that are sort of designed or sort of get at the...

Segment 4

The idea of ensuring that there is requiring authorization for the certain uses of city property.
This policy is very closely aligned to the San Francisco model that similarly is very purpose-based, use-based, and purpose-based.
Some other jurisdictions have sort of executive orders, they're very state executive orders, and other jurisdictions have policies that very directly say it is the board's policy or the county's policy not to permit staging areas or particular types of enforcement activity on city property, and they are more direct in disallowing that.
This particular resolution is not limited to any particular type of activity.
It's a regulation of uses of city property that are inconsistent with city purposes and would cause disruptions, and that kind of immigration enforcement activity is only one such example, and there could be many others as well.
Thank you.
Okay, so any other questions before we move on? Okay, I see no questions.
Can I take public comment on this item? Any public comment on item number 19? Anyone online? There's no hands raised.
Okay, any comments on this from my council colleagues? Oh, I have some comments.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, I just I want to thank the city attorney and Katrina as well, and the city manager and their staffs for bringing this forward pursuant to council request.
I think it's very important that we make clear that our city facilities are generally safe and welcoming for all, and don't invite inconsistent, inappropriate uses, and that we ensure that they're not being used for activities specifically that harm anyone or undermine public trust.
So I'm proud to support this this evening.
I think the approach is really a wise one, and thank you again to everybody who worked on this.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Blackaby.
I'll be brief.
Thanks again to the city attorney's office for bringing this forward and for crafting it in a way that's going to, I think, again, pass the legal and constitutional muster that we need, being thoughtful about that.
So and again, making a statement that is very much in line with our sanctuary policy, and we're continuing to look for other ways that we can strengthen our sanctuary policy and kind of standardize and, you know, basically lay out our rights as a city and how we're protecting our people.
So thank you for writing this and I move adoption of the resolution.
Second.
Thank you.
Council Member Linapa.
Thank you.
I just really wanted to thank our team at the city attorney's office for their work.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you.
Vice Mayor Traga.
So sorry.
I just want to associate myself with the previous colleague's comments.
Thank you so much to the legal team.
And I'm very proud that Berkeley is moving forward with this.
This is very much part and parcel, a statement of our values.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And I also just want to add my comments to say thank you for your work.
And also, I know, Paul, I appreciate your input as well.
I think this is just another opportunity that the city attorney's office had to also work with the public.
And I really want to thank you for for hearing the feedback as well.
And thank you to Julie Sinai from my office, who I know did a lot of work to keep moving the ball forward and and get feedback from the community.
I see this really as just one tool in our tool belt.
There are many things that we've looked at, and I really want to thank the community.
Our sanctuary city task force has been meeting monthly.
And this is something that came up during during those conversations as well.
So thank you so much to the community.
Thank you.
OK, so we have a motion on the floor.
If we could take the role, please.
OK.
Council member.
Yes.
Kaplan.
Yes.
Bartlett.
Yes.
Traeger.
I.
OK.
Yeah.
Yes.
Blackaby.
Yes.
Luna Parra.
Yes.
Humber.
Yes.
And Mary.
Yes.
OK.
Motion carries.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for your presentation.
We will now move on to item number 20, which is amendments to BMC title three point two four.
Landmarks Preservation Commission to revise procedures for designating landmarks, historic historic districts and structures of merit and incorporate technical edits.
And we will hear first a presentation from our city staff.
Oh, we might need more chairs, actually.
And then we will hear a presentation from our landmarks commission and chair.
Fay, if you could raise your hand on the online, that will help them find you.
And then from there, we will take council questions here from here from the public and then we'll come back and do a discussion.
Did you want to say something? Just wondering if we need to vote to accept my supplemental item three on this.
Yes.
Thank you very much.
We do need to do that.
I, I move to accept my staff is in the back and hopefully they can come take care of this.
Public.
And for the council members online, I believe that your sub three is actually already posted on the on the on the page.
Yeah, thank you.
And I move to accept supplemental three.
Second.
OK, can we vote on that, please? To accept the revised materials from Vice Mayor Trigger for item 20.
Council member Casarwani.
Council member Casarwani to accept the supplemental materials.
She's there.
Well, we'll come back.
Council member Taplin.
Yes.
Bartlett.
Yes.
I.
Yeah, sure.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
And council member Casarwani.
Yes.
Okay, the motion carries materials are accepted for consideration.
OK, thank you very much.
All right.
I will turn it over to Jordan.
Thank you, Mayor.
Good evening, council members.
Jordan Klein, director of planning development.
I'm joined here at the staff table by Fay Mingham, assistant planner and her planning manager and Justin Horner, principal planner on the policy team.
And also here with us is Denise Hall Montgomery, who is the chair of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
In November, city council adopted a referral to ask staff to make amendments to the DMC to adjust the threshold to the number of signatures required to initiate a landmark designation and also consider establishing a limitation on designations for properties with active SB three thirty applications.
And so we in crafting those amendments, we also made a number of other changes that we're proposing this evening.
And so that's the item before you tonight.
And I'm going to turn it over to Fay for a presentation.
Thank you, Mayor Ishii and members of the city council.
Tonight, I will present proposed amendments to the landmarks preservation ordinance to respond to the council referral and supplemental materials adopted on November 10th, 2025.
The proposed amendments revise procedures to designate historic landmarks and incorporate technical edits.
I will begin with a summary of current effects and background, followed by the proposed ordinance amendments after I will share staff's recommendation and will be available for questions.
Currently, a landmark designation can be initiated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the City Council, the Planning Commission, the Civic Arts Commission, an application from the property owner or an application from at least 50 residents of the city.
Similarly, appeals of landmarks decisions can be brought to the city council by the same entities.
The landmarks ordinance has seen few updates since its adoption in the 1970s.
Many of the procedures have remained unchanged and require updating.
Outdated provisions of the ordinance pose administrative challenges relating to public hearing notice, notice of decision issuance and permit review.
Many of these procedures are out of alignment with the zoning adjustments board and the city's sunshine ordinance.
Additionally, fees for landmark designation initiation have not been updated since 1985.
These fees are currently set in the ordinance, which requires an ordinance amendment whenever a fee is updated.
The November 10th, 2025 council referral direct staff to update the procedures for initiating landmark designation and appeals on the basis that the 50 signature threshold is too low.
The referral and supplemental materials proposed revised designation and appeals procedures by way of an increased signature threshold with options dependent upon owner consent.
In addition to the increased signature threshold supplemental to propose a 5 year stay of landmark initiation for development proposals vested under S.
B.
3.
30.
The referral noted that some landmark designation attempts conflict with the intent of state housing laws meant to streamline the approval of housing projects such as S.
B.
3.
30.
The proposal does not reflect the intent of state housing laws.
A development application vested under S.
B.
3.
30 walks in the zoning design and preservation standards that are applicable at the time a complete application is filed.
S.
B.
3.
30 ensures that future changes to landmark status zoning or other regulations would not affect the projects vested housing development proposal.
The proposal does not reflect the intent of state housing law meant to streamline the approval of housing projects vested under S.
B.
3.
30.
The proposal does not reflect the intent of state housing development proposal.
The proposal does not reflect the intent of state housing development proposal.
The commission's recommendations are included in the staff report as an attachment.
The LPC's comments prompted staff to review the California Office of Historic Preservation's guidelines for landmarks ordinances as well as the certified local government program requirements.
Upon review, staff have not identified any conflicts in the proposed changes with the SHPO's guidelines, nor do the proposed changes constitute the amendment or removal of any qualifying criteria for the CLG program.
In response to the referred options for consideration, staff have proposed two versions of BMC section 3.24.120, designation initiation, and 3.24.300 appeals to reflect the two policy options for signature thresholds.
Alternative one includes two thresholds for initiation with 200 required signatures with owner consent and 400 signatures without owner consent.
Alternative two includes a singular signature threshold at 200 signatures regardless of owner consent.
Both versions of section 3.24.120 include an exemption which requires a five-year delay of landmark initiation for SB 3.30 projects.
For both alternatives, designation initiation powers are maintained for the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the City Council, the Planning Commission, the Civic Arts Commission, and the property owner.
The proposed amendments to appeals reflect the referral's recommendations and mirror the changes proposed to designation procedures in the previously discussed section.
The proposed technical edits are summarized on the table on the screen.
These edits consist of typo corrections, sentence capitalization, updates for consistency with the City's Commissioner's and Board Member's Manual, and the removal of language that is no longer relevant since adoption of the ordinance in the 1970s.
For some sections, staff proposed organizational changes like renumbering for consistency and clarity, and procedural updates to align the Landmarks Preservation Commission practices with the Zoning Adjustments Board and the City's Sunshine Laws.
Some sections have proposed technical edits to codify existing practice.
For example, bringing LPC decisions to City Council for certification.
Other sections contain proposed amendments to align landmarks fees with Land Use Division's fee schedule.
These proposed edits remove the fees set in the ordinance and reference the Council adopted fee schedule instead.
This fee schedule can be more easily updated and is used to set all other Land Use Division fees.
Staff recommends that the City Council adopt the first reading of an ordinance to amend BMC Title 3.24 to revise procedures for designating landmarks, historic districts, and structures of merit, and to incorporate technical edits.
That concludes my presentation.
Thank you.
Thank you, Faye.
All right, I think we have a presentation also from our Chair, Denise Hall Montgomery.
Press again.
Okay, there we go.
Presto.
All right.
My name is Denise Hall Montgomery.
I'm the Chair of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
And thank you, Council, for taking the time to hear from the Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Our commissioners serve in this role as professionals dedicated to safeguarding some of our city's most important historic properties.
As commissioners, we convened as a panel to reflect on our experience over the years.
We found strong alignment with the City Council's goal of minimizing the risk of retaliation, whether from neighbors or those opposed to development, against individuals who initiate landmark applications.
A key part of this balance is determining an appropriate threshold for signatures when an application is not initiated by City Council, the Commission, or the Civic Arts Commission.
After careful discussion, we recommend setting the threshold at 100 signatures.
This represents a meaningful increase, doubling the current requirement while still remaining achievable.
Gathering 100 signatures is a significant undertaking.
It requires time, effort, and direct engagement with community members, particularly given the need for individuals to provide personal information.
We are concerned that raising the requirement to 200 or 400 signatures is not grounded in practical experience.
These higher numbers appear arbitrary and risk creating unintended consequences.
Most notably, they could effectively eliminate the ability for community members to initiate landmark applications altogether, leaving that authority only to official bodies named in the landmark's code.
This seems to us to be at odds with Berkeley's long tradition of participatory democracy.
Regarding the owner-initiated path, LPC recommends that the process remains unchanged and so does not require public signatures as proposed in packet number 2.
Or at least as we understood packet number 2.
It was a little confusing to us.
Regarding SB 330, LPC has at times been placed in the middle of differing interpretations between the City Attorney and the Planning Department about when a property may or may not be landmarked during the permitting process.
Since we have received clear guidance from the City Council that properties are not eligible for landmarking while an SB 330 permit is active, we will follow that policy.
In that vein, LPC recommends that incorporating SB 330 requirements directly into the ordinance complicates the text and also could create unintended consequences, which I'll go into in just a minute.
We recommended that stating the relevant policy in the application in the City website is a cleaner way to get the result that we're looking for.
So part of our concern about putting the language directly into the ordinance is that the proposal is to simply restrict landmarking designations for five years following the preliminary use permit application.
And it lacks the necessary accountability measures as applied to SB 330 projects generally.
Specifically, we are concerned that the current proposal does not require the submission of a complete use permit or building permit application.
And it does not mandate that construction begin within a certain timeframe.
And it risks inviting bad faith applications intended solely to block landmark initiations.
And finally, allows any new preliminary application to restart the five-year clock indefinitely.
So those are our recommendations.
Those are our concerns.
And thank you for your consideration and your commitment to thoughtful, balanced policy.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for the presentation.
And I will see if my council colleagues have any questions to start with.
Council Member Humbert, do you have questions? Well, I don't have questions.
I wanted to present our SUP.
Oh, yes.
Thank you.
No, you're right.
You should do that.
Please, go ahead.
Okay.
And I would ask Council Member Casarwani, since I'm a Luddite, to put up the SUP on the screen.
Thank you.
And we prepared this SUP after getting some really helpful feedback from the Landmarks Commission as well as folks from Baja.
So this SUP, and I can just read it.
The landmark preservation ordinance amendments in Item 20 would create the possibility of indefinitely chaining together five-year exceptions to landmark initiation procedures through the submittal and resubmittal of SB 330 pre-development applications.
And that would be highly unusual, I think.
I'm kind of paraphrasing here.
But to avoid that, we've added the proposed sections, additions to Section C.
These exceptions would serve to foreclose the possibility while ensuring that active development applications and entitled projects would continue to benefit from the protections provided by SB 330.
So we would add two subsections to BMC Chapter 3.24.120 Section C.
The first one, the general language, any such designation shall not be processed for five years following the receipt of a preliminary development application under SB 330 by the City of Berkeley unless initiated by the property owner.
One, this five-year exception period is established at the time of the preliminary development application submittal pursuant to SB 330, the Housing Crisis Act of 2019, and may only be applied once for any property.
Any subsequent preliminary development application submitted pursuant to SB 330 shall be subject to limitations on landmarking in SB 330.
Two, following the submittal of a formal zoning application, any landmarking designation request shall not be processed for as long as the application is active or as long as the resulting permits and entitlements are valid, whichever is longer pursuant to SB 330.
And in response to some additional comments that we received from Isaac Warschauer very recently, and they were good points and we accepted them, his concern, and we've heard this from others as well, his concern was that a property owner might simply use this five-year period to demolish a residential property, as I understand it, and then build a non-residential property using this opportunity that 330 really wouldn't give them, wasn't intended to give them.
So we would add this additional language to our SUP, and I will move to add it later.
If the property owner submits a formal zoning application for a wholly non-residential project on the subject property during the five-year exception period, the exception period shall immediately terminate and the processing of any landmark designation may resume.
So thank you.
That's our presentation of our supplemental with some additional language.
Thank you very much, and I'd also like that Vice Mayor Traigub introduce his supplementals as well.
Thank you very much.
So it is what you see before you.
So apologies, it's not on the screen.
But at the outset, I'll just say that it is my, it appears that my suggestions are fairly similar to the Council Member Humbert Casarani proposal in some way.
I think both came out as a result of additional conversations that we had with members of the LPC and with Baja.
I think the, so I will just read into the record the suggested exception language in Supplemental 3, and that reads, any such designation shall not be processed following the receipt of a preliminary development application under SB 330 by the City of Berkeley unless initiated by the property owner of record.
This exception shall expire, A, if the preliminary development application is withdrawn, or B, 30 months after the final approval of the housing development project for which the preliminary development application was submitted.
The two and a half years comes from SB 330 directly, which it appears for market rate housing, that is the period of pendency in the application.
So the five years may create a perverse incentive to attempt to entitle the, do the SB 330 application without, but then if the application is not acted upon, still have an additional two and a half years during which landmarking is disallowed.
So it conforms that provision in SB 340 around timeline.
The difference between Supplemental 2 that I also submitted in Supplemental 3 is really based on a close reading of the proposal by the City Attorney's Office, which I'm grateful for their close reading, and they suggested additional amendments to ensure that this language complies with all applicable provisions of SB 340, not just the one specific to the timeline.
I think we probably may be able to meet in the middle and potentially combine some of these proposals.
Thank you.
Okay, questions from my council colleagues on the supplementals or either presentation? Yes, Council Member Brockaby.
So two questions, one either for the City Attorney or for planning staff.
The Chair of the Landmarks Commission had referenced the idea of rather than putting the SB 330 language in the ordinance to have it on the website and on the application itself.
What's kind of the pro and con of putting it in the ordinance versus not putting it in the ordinance? I would observe that I think there's some ambiguity in the government code as to what municipalities are permitted to do in terms of landmark designation.
And so for a project with an active, for a property with an active SB 330 application.
And therefore, if the City Council wants to establish it as policy that the city will not accept or process applications for initiations of designation for properties with an active SB 330, I think it's valuable for Council to codify that position.
Stating it on a website or in an application, I think doesn't effectively establish it as official city policy in the way that codifying it by ordinance would do.
Could it leave us open for something where the person, the applicant, you know, says, well, you know, it's not illegal.
I'm just curious.
I'm just, again, I'm trying to think about the edge cases here.
I would just echo what the planning director mentioned that I think having it codified just makes the implementation easier and more clear and straightforward for everyone involved.
Okay.
Great.
And my other question is back on the signature hundred or 200 or 400 right number.
Is there a, is there a clock under which you've got to collect the signatures or is it pretty open ended in terms of the time.
In the ordinance, there is no time threshold.
Okay.
Theoretically, they could be collected over any period of time.
So that that also like, okay, so I mean, I'm a little less concerned of setting.
I mean, again, we don't want to set in a ridiculously high number, but at least it's not adding extra urgency in terms of a time clock that like if you don't reach that number, you can take extra time to reach that number without penalty.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Council member than a path.
Thank you.
I wanted to ask how other cities do this.
Like, are there any other cities that how to other cities in our area do that similar processes.
Sure.
So, in our research to prep to prepare for this, we looked into a dozen or more other cities and how they initiate landmark designation and it varies widely across the state.
For example, in Sacramento, I believe it is the planning staff who initiates a landmark designation in San Francisco, a member of the public can initiate a designation and has then reviewed by staff and the LPC before the designation is formally initiated.
Based on our research.
There were not any other jurisdictions that had a signature threshold for petition.
This is something unique to Berkeley, but it varies.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you very much council member Keith.
I was about to not have this question but now I based on that answer I still do.
So okay, my question.
I accept a shrug as an answer.
I don't know if this is a fair to ask you but I have this curiosity.
It's about the signature threshold.
I don't have a sense of what is reasonable, like I just I don't, I don't know.
I'm hearing I see 200 sounds good to me I definitely am in favor of raising it, I think it's it's too low right now I think we can see that from evidence but you know I'm hearing a suggestion that we do only raise it to 100 and I would personally like to raise it to something that was achievable, if there was broad support.
And I guess I'm wondering if you feel comfortable opining on this is is 200 reasonable or is it very hard to meet.
But if you, if you.

Segment 5

I don't know, it's not a fair question, but I'm curious what your thoughts are.
Yeah, it's really tough to answer that because as Faye mentioned, there's not other communities to look at.
I think a notable point here is that about a third of the initiations that we've seen over the last few years have been in response to SB 330 applications.
So I think that's an argument that it's too low.
But that doesn't really help you land on what the right number is and what's achievable.
Okay, well, thanks for trying.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Vice Mayor Tregub, did you have a question? Yeah, thank you.
So I thought that some of these questions that my office received might also just for transparency and everyone's certification be helpful if I just ask them in daylight to the city attorney.
So the question, the first question is, is a preliminary Is a preliminary development application would run after 180 days without a complete development application for SB 340 or does it simply expire? And then the second question is if you could apply in SB 330 and I I grant that I actually didn't realize this nuance until I took a closer reading of the law.
So a hundred per if the SB 340 project was 100% affordable housing, it would actually be protected for three and a half years or 42 months after final approval.
Can you speak to how the language that was suggested by the CAO and incorporated in Supplemental 3 still addresses that, or if any additional changes are needed? I think I need to look at the question that you sent me.
I hadn't really had a chance to look at it.
So let me think about it and may need to talk to my team as well.
Okay, thank you.
I'll give you an answer.
Did you have another question? I'll wait for an answer on those two, but I think we can go to other things.
Sure.
Yeah, Council Member Humber, did you have questions? Yeah, I do.
Just one very quick follow-up really to Council Member Blackabee's question about whether or not to include the requirement merely simply in the application.
And this would be directed to the City Attorney who's now working on another legal issue, but this should be relatively easy to answer.
I think my concern about including it in the application and simply putting it on the website is that that doesn't constitute law.
That might be, in my view, and maybe I'm wrong, sort of an underground regulation, you know, promulgating rules and policies informally.
And I think that invites a lot of, you know, potential challenges.
Is that, is, what are your thoughts about that? I definitely think it's a cleaner practice to have it codified instead of having to refer to some other document or website.
Okay, thank you.
And the less, the more clarity you have, the less opportunities for misunderstanding it, misinterpretation.
So I definitely think it's a better practice to have it codified.
Okay.
I have questions for the supplemental authors.
I'm just, I'm curious if you are both amenable to the one-time only per SB 330 application, only allowing for one time? Which I think is in the Keserwani-Humber one.
So you're asking me? So I guess I'm asking you.
Yes.
I just mean, I have other questions for the..
Yes, I'm comfortable with that.
Okay.
And I'm also curious to know, 30 months, by the way, is two and a half years.
I feel like there's so many numbers being thrown around, I just want to say that out loud.
And if you could all speak to why two and a half versus five years, I just wasn't sure if like two and a half was not enough, or I know that two and a half aligns with the state, but perhaps Council Member Hubbard can address that first.
Yeah, I think, you know, sort of generally, we know how long projects take, and there are many delays, they're permitting delays, they're financing delays, and two and a half years may simply just not be enough.
I think five years is an appropriate timeline for, you know, that level of protection, but then only, you know, then only the one time.
Because I am concerned about a project kind of going on for too long and not being built, and I hear what your point is, for sure, I may want to make sure there is enough time for a project to be, it's until the project is complete or until their final..
Until they submit a formal application as opposed to just a preliminary application.
Once a formal application is submitted, then, you know, then it's a new game.
Thank you.
Yeah, go ahead, Council Member.
And I would just say on my end, when I first submitted my supplemental for the, as part of the referral, I was taking, I mean, in the intervening months, I've been able to take a much closer reading of SB 330.
But at the time, five years was just something that appeared on its face to be a reasonable time period, but was not based on anything other than my perception of what is reasonable.
And that is how I came to the conclusion that 2.5 years for a, at least in the case of a not 100% affordable residential project, might be a more objective standard in congruence with SB 330's provisions.
Okay, thank you.
Any other questions from folks? Okay.
All right.
Well, we will go to public comment then on this item.
So we are going to..
May I? Sorry? Oh, yes.
Please, go ahead.
I think I can provide some clarity on your question.
The team was able to look at the government code section, which doesn't, it turns out it doesn't use the term withdrawn, but rather expire to cover when proponents, when the proponent doesn't submit a complete application.
And we have some proposed language that you could maybe read from the day as to clarify the issue.
I can send that via email if that's..
Yeah, it would be helpful to see that language, I think.
So thank you.
Okay.
All right.
We are taking public comment on item number 20, amendments to BMC Title 3.24, et cetera, et cetera.
Okay, Kelly Hammagren.
I attended the April 6th LPC meeting.
I attended online and listened to the entire discussion that evening.
And that was quite a remarkable meeting.
And I do have a minute from the back.
So you can change the clock.
So Berkeley is a certified local government.
The staff made it sound like they dotted all their I's and crossed their T's and did everything.
But when I listened to that meeting, and they were asked if they ever contacted the State Office of Historic Preservation or talked to a State Historic Officer, they didn't do that.
And so I think you all need to know that, that they did not do all of the work that seems to be implied from the presentation here this evening.
I heard a question about, do we have a ridiculous number? And I'd say 400 is a ridiculous number.
It's placed there to make it difficult, if not impossible, to landmark.
And in comparing Berkeley to other cities, we so often talk about Berkeley being a special place.
And Berkeley is a special place.
And it doesn't matter whether I'm in Minnesota, or whether I'm in Palm Desert, or whether I'm in Munich, Germany, as what happened a few years ago.
And I said I was from Berkeley.
People have a vision of Berkeley, no matter where they are in the world.
And so landmarking this city is different than landmarking other cities.
And we shouldn't be comparing it to other cities.
This is important that we not erase the history that started here.
Thank you.
Thanks, Kelly.
Hi, my name is Chrissy Hoffman.
And finally, at the right time, I am really supporting the proposal of 100 signatures that Ms.
Montgomery here.
Thank you so much.
I was also at that meeting as one of two people present in person.
I would like to invite everybody here to start coming to more of these meetings.
I think that Berkeley is an exceptional place as well.
And I think that the City Council and all of the experts that are on various different panels and commissions are here to help the quality of life, to help thriving in Berkeley.
It needs to be holistic, there needs to be a balance between preservation and development.
And to keep the quality of life is equally as important as providing housing that is affordable or middle market or expensive, whatever that may be.
And so I think that 100 signatures makes sense to me.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm Julie Nachtwey.
And when I moved to Berkeley, I heard about Julia Morgan.
I learned about Maybeck.
I learned about John Hudson Thomas.
And I learned that Berkeley with the university since before the turn of the century had had turned out so many outstanding architects and so many incredible buildings and structures.
And these are known across the Bay Area and across the state of California as being a signature for Berkeley respecting these architectural heritage that we have.
And I definitely support Denise Hall.
You choose people that you want to be in charge of something, you let them be the specialist, and you have a fantastic specialist here, and you need to listen to her because isn't that why you appropriately have somebody in charge of the landmark commission? It seems like more than 100 signatures seems unreasonable to me.
And so I hope you'll think that is true.
I could if I should give me another minute if you that's fine if it's okay with you as the mayor.
Okay.
So I just wanted to say that it seems like trying to undo this ordinance is kind of like an underhanded way for developers to make preservation of our historical architecture much harder.
And why do they want to weaken the provisions of Berkeley's much loved architectural heritage? So you follow the money.
So it's more profitable to demolish Berkeley's architectural gems and build apartment towers than it is to respect and work with what I think Denise Hall and the Landmark Preservation Commission try to establish.
So I respect her.
I respect her committee, her commission, and you guys for following her guidelines, I hope.
That's it.
Thank you, Julie.
Good evening, Council.
My name is Claudia Honka.
I am very concerned about this proposal when since 1970, no issues regarding landmarking have been changed or taken place.
And now that we have corridor zoning that's being proposed in one of Berkeley's most historic commercial districts and neighborhoods, now all of a sudden we're looking at making changes to zoning to the landmarking requirements when nothing's been done since the 70s.
I find it a little ironic that those two are happening simultaneously.
I do support the lower number of signatures as proposed by the Landmarks Preservation Commission and I'm very disappointed in..
Thanks.
Thank you.
You can pull up the mic so you can see.
This is actually a question for the chair.
There is a speaker, there is a participant on Zoom named Layla Moncharch who wishes to yield a minute of time to me.
If she could raise her hand.
Is she online? I'm Layla Moncharch.
Do you need just two because someone from the audience is going to be giving you..
Layla, would you like to yield your minute to the speaker? You should be able to unmute.
Yes, I cede my time to Isaac Warshower.
Okay, you can have three minutes.
One from the audience, one from online.
Go ahead.
Thank you.
My name is Isaac Warshower.
I'm here to represent the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association.
I'm sure you've seen my name and some of you have met with me.
I've been trying to advocate for common sense measures when it comes to the problem identified by council.
I very much appreciate the feedback that the council has made so far.
I'd like to make some general points about preservation and also make some points about the signature threshold.
I think there are three misconceptions that float around or mischaracterizations that float around with relation to preservation.
One is that preservation and landmarking puts things in amber.
That's simply untrue.
In fact, with state law, the limitations that it places on housing are actually quite small and can't even affect density in many cases on a parcel.
It's really about making sure that the historic nature of the structures on the site factor in to proposals in the future.
The second is that if a property isn't landmarked yet and clearly isn't worthy of being landmarked, the real reason for that is that there's been very little comprehensive planning in preservation.
Often, preservationists are forced to focus on the most threatened buildings, which also happen to be the buildings that have planned developments.
That's where the conflict emerges.
It doesn't imply that preservationists are cynically pursuing preservation.
It's just that it's a triage-like approach to the process.
Third, it's that rights of property owners should take precedence over efforts to landmark buildings.
That runs in the face of principles of land use planning in general, which are that there are resources, commons, resources that we share that need to be managed collectively.
In historic preservation, historic resources aren't just one of those.
They should be managed for the collective good and that the individual property owner doesn't really have the incentive to manage those on behalf of the public.
The last point I'd like to make is that focusing on increasing signature requirements is a really flawed strategy to addressing landmark efforts that cover for NIMBYism.
In fact, landmark petitions that easily reach, say, 400 signatures are actually precisely those that are most likely to really have an underlying impetus that's driven by larger political divisions and not by real preservation concerns.
It's those efforts by local community historians and archivists, some of which Baja has worked with, that would truly be sort of shut out of the process by an inordinately large signature requirement.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Okay, is there anyone online who would like to make a public comment on item number 20, which is the amendments to BMC Title 3.24? Oh, another person in person.
Okay, go ahead.
I'm Steve Fenikhan.
I'm a member of the Landmarks Commission, speaking as an individual.
I want to associate myself with our Chair's remarks tonight, which were very cogent, and I want to say that the Commission voted unanimously in favor of the recommendations that she was presenting.
On the signature requirement, we did recommend 100.
I do want to say there is not a huge deluge of landmark applications.
I've been on the Commission for nearly nine years, and some years we've had zero landmarks, two, three, four.
Even recently, with a lot of development, there have not been that many applications, and I noted when I came into the room this evening, I went through a gauntlet of signature gatherers.
I didn't ask them what they were gathering signatures for, but it's really hard to get signatures even in Berkeley, so 100 is a reasonable number.
Thanks so much.
Are folks online raising their hands for comments? Yes, we have five hands raised.
First is Bryce Nesbitt.
Hello, this is Bryce Nesbitt.
I have two points.
One, absolute support that the fact that you managed to collect a certain number of signatures is not a good predictor of merit of a landmark application, so absolutely echoing what the Baja Chair said there.
I think you need to find a better method.
Second, there's an opportunity in some cases to move a building to a place where it is at a better home, so you have a development application, there's some incompatible structures with that development on the block, but in recent years, the threshold for moving a building in terms of the number of permits and city process have made that all but impossible to actually achieve, and so you'll lose a structure that you could have preserved because of city processes, and so I think a good pair, if you're going to take this action, is to look at permitting reform for moving of structures of merit.
Nobody moves an unworthy structure.
Okay, next is Matt O'Brien.
Yes, I'd like to point out that Berkeley is one of the oldest cities in the Bay Area and as such has architecture that other cities don't have.
You can't find it in Orinda, El Cerrito, Cupertino, and it seems that we're not, our city officials, our city councils don't really appreciate that or don't understand that the residents really appreciate that, and so this seems to be an effort to encourage demolition of these gems because money can be made, and so the public has a perception that our city council is fostering sort of this frenzy of greed and allowing the real estate industry to make a lot of money at the expense of the quality of life and the beauty of the city itself, and the residents are not in agreement with a lot of these efforts that the city council is taking that fosters a lot of money to be made by the real estate industry but leaves the residents poorly.
Next is Arlene Silk.
Arlene, you should be able to unmute.
You unmuted me, Matt O'Brien.
I think you got to unmute.
Okay, there I am.
I'm here tonight because I was, I chaired the very first public hearing of the Landmark Commission in 1975, December 15th, when we designated the first nine landmarks, and by the way, they were all public buildings, every one of them.
There were four churches, Old City Hall, which I see Council Member Bartlett has behind him, our beautiful building, and 50 signatures are really, really hard to get.
It's not as though you stand in front of a supermarket and collect them, and I'm really, I suppose I support what Denise Montgomery and the Landmark Commission proposed to raise to 100, but if it's raised any higher, essentially, you're gutting the landmark ordinance and you're gutting preservation at Berkeley, and by the way, we land the ordinance really carefully because it was brand new, and we held our first public hearing in Old City Council chambers.
Okay, okay.
Next is Janice.
Thank you.
I appreciate the conversation around the timing of the lapse applications, as this is a common problem that we're seeing more and more that applications are put forward and then they are allowed to lapse, so I appreciate that it's, that Council Member Trey Group or Vice Chair is trying to reduce that, and I don't understand why we would want to double the time frame established by the state, and secondly, I agree that 100 signatures seems like a reasonable amount and that 400 signatures would prevent any landmark proposal from being put forward, so I hope that you'll consider the two and a half years on the lapse applications.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Moni.
Good evening, Mayor, Council, and community members.
I am speaking to support the 100 signatures as a reasonable number.
That is much more difficult for a small group like GAFA, which is quite a formidable organization, but small versus multi-millionaire developers.
Secondly, the five-year period kind of stalling landmarks and making it very unclear whether we're going to protect our history is harmful, counterproductive, and not essential to the growth of this city in a beautiful way that it should, which is to preserve our historic buildings.
I've been to a meeting for a historic landmark of a building on my street.
I didn't know its history until the Landmark Commission went through the fact that it was a Chinese community that was around the corner from where I live, and there are all these historic aspects to that property which were protected as a result of our legislation, so I urge you to ensure that the Julian Morgan buildings, the Maybex, and all the others that are so special in Berkeley are protected and not to develop.
Thank you.
Next is a phone number ending in 2-1-1.
As I mentioned before, I've been in Berkeley for 60 years.
Our beautiful old city of Berkeley is dead.
It is dead.
All the mobile theaters are gone.
All the city hall is run by a bunch of corrupt mega landlords, private equity firms, and money-making machines.
All of these new buildings are built very cheap.
I have a PhD in mechanical engineering as well.
This building is all going to collapse in seven-plus magnitude earthquake.
Wake up, everybody.
We don't really have a good situation at all, not just the landmarks.
All the landmarks are gone.
All the movie theaters are gone.
What the hell is going on with the city hall? Corruption and incompetence.
Have a good night.
Thank you.
Next is Rebecca Mervish.
What up, Council? I don't know what the right number of signatures is, but I have a feeling it's probably easier to get signatures, like, not during this exact election season where there's lots of people getting signatures.
That is just my guess.
Thank you.
Thanks, Rebecca.
That's it.
That's the last speaker.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
Thank you very much to all of the public commenters.
I will now open it up for my colleagues.
Okay, go ahead, Council Member Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
My button doesn't work for some reason.
My comments are somewhat lengthy.
I'll try to get through them as quickly as I can.
I want to thank Council Member Kesarwani for bringing this forward to begin with.
I think these are overdue reforms to help prevent abuse of the landmarking process, encourage housing development, and help conserve city resources.
There have been multiple recent instances where landmark initiations have come before Council where I believe the most basic criteria for a landmark were not met, and it was clear that the initiations only took place as a response to proposed housing development, and we heard about the percentage from the planning director and department earlier, one out of three recently, the past few years.
I strongly believe that landmark preservation should be about broadly shared public benefits, not the preferences of a narrow group, or purely for the sake of the buildings themselves.
When we landmark a building, it should be an expression of the high value we collectively place in that historic resource and the way it contributes to our city.
Right now, roughly the same group of 50 people, that's equivalent to 0.04% of the city's population, can initiate landmarks, forcing the Landmarks Preservation Commission, staff, the City Council, and the people trying to build homes into a protracted process.
I think that's anti-democratic, I think it undermines the city's housing production goals, and it frankly cheapens the entire concept of landmarking, and what it's supposed to represent.
And even with Councilmember Casarwani's proposal, we're still talking about 0.3% of the city's population being able to initiate a landmark.
Put another way, even under 400 signature threshold, and I'm not necessarily wedded to that number, this means that only one in roughly every 300 people in Berkeley needs to think a building is worth landmarking to initiate it.
And this is before we consider that the LPC and City Council can themselves initiate landmarks.
If even 100 people attended an LPC meeting to ask a certain building be landmarked, I think the LPC would at least look into it.
And I guess I would ask Chair Hall-Montgomery, if you got that kind of a response, would the LPC itself consider initiating a landmark application? Of course.
Yeah.
So if we had 100 people who were really excited about a building, I think there's a ready route, even if we pass this, to achieve landmark status, or at least to get the process going.
So the notion that this proposal is somehow foreclosing a public process doesn't seem correct to me, and nothing about this proposal fundamentally decreases the opportunities for public involvement or input.
With respect to the exception to the landmark initiation project following the submittal of an SB 330 application, I appreciated the feedback that we received from the LPC and from Mr.
Warschauer and Baja, and we took some of those things into account and put them in our supplemental.
Looking over Council Member Tragrub's multiple supplementals, I think I now have an understanding of his approach, but I would still tend to favor the approach I put forward with Council Member Kesarwani.
I would prefer to.

Segment 6

I am delighted to grant a longer local exception period, because I know that economic cycles can, at times, significantly delay movement on a project.
We've seen that lately, and it's kind of an unhappy result, but it happens.
And because I also like the local protections for proposed projects beyond five years to be tied to the actual submittal of a formal application.
And, you know, for smaller developers, for mom-and-pops, you know, who aren't used to dealing with city procedures and permitting, you know, things can take a long time.
And so I don't think five years is unreasonable at all.
I think that Councilmember Tregub's approach is also broadly reasonable, but I'm disfavored toward it, partially because it would automatically have the protection lapse at the 30-month mark.
Two-and-a-half years, Madam Mayor, regardless of the state of the entitlements.
For example, if the staff in ZAB granted an extension, it seems the protection would still lapse under Vice Mayor Tregub's version.
Whereas under ours, the protection would last as long as the entitlement.
Anything less, I think, would be actually preempted by state law.
So under the Tregub version, we would still potentially see staff needing to process landmark applications that could not actually be enforced.
I also understand the inclination to align the exception period to the length of time.
I just have another paragraph that the pre-application remains valid.
But I generally prefer to leave the longer protection, especially to account for smaller, missing middle projects, for example, where the applicants may be mom-and-pops, as I mentioned.
I think that having the full five-year protection from a pre-app be a one-time-per-property exception helps both to give people adequate time, and to discourage people from game-playing and using frivolous SB 330 pre-applications to prevent a worthy landmarking.
So that's where I come down.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yes, going to Vice Mayor Tregub.
Thank you.
I'm going to try to share screen.
And then just so you know, Council Member Bartlett, I see you as well.
Okay.
So this is for additional discussion with the city attorney.
I would like to introduce into the record this additional two words in red suggested by the city attorney.
So it would now say, yeah, how is this? And I will read it into the record just so that everyone is on the same page.
So exception, any such designation shall not be processed following the receipt of a preliminary development application under SB 330 by the city of Berkeley, unless initiated by the property owner of record.
This exception shall expire, A, if the preliminary development application is withdrawn or expires, or B, 30 months after the final approval of the housing development project for which the preliminary development application was submitted.
I think on this dais and in general, I do my best to balance the three Ps of housing production, protection, preservation.
And yes, we can argue preservation of naturally occurring affordable housing, what that means.
But I digress.
I think I am most comfortable with the end.
And by the way, I appreciate Council Member Humbert and Kassarani's efforts to try to find the appropriate balance.
And I broadly agree with the thrust of the rest of their proposal, including limiting the exception to one time.
I do believe that going beyond alignment with the confines of SB 330 introduces some risk and introduces some objective or some additional subjectivity.
It also may make the work of staff harder.
It may be marginally harder, but trying to keep track of the different timelines, one provided by the state and another provided by us locally, may challenge the effort to try to objectively administer this ordinance.
I am sympathetic to how long it takes to move a preliminary application to a full SB 330 application.
But again, this is a balancing act, and I feel quite comfortable with the language introduced that was amended at the suggestion of the City Attorney's Office, which would be what you see on the screen.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council Member Bartlett, I can't see you anymore, but I know you had your hand up.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you, my colleagues, for these really interesting and thoughtful suggestions.
You know, it is a balancing act, and I, for one, am curious about the signature piece.
So can the signatures be gathered electronically? Can anyone tell me that? No.
Okay, so here's the issue.
So, you know, I grew up as an organizer, and I've collected signatures and done things like that throughout my entire life.
And, you know, I see that being overly burdensome once you get past 100 persons or 125 or so.
Like, my neighbor's house is beautiful.
It's from the 1800s.
It's a wonderful, incredible structure.
And, you know, I can't see these little ladies over here going around getting, you know, going door-to-door like street soldiers and organizers to get these signatures once you get past a certain number.
And I think it kind of thwarts democracy in many ways.
And again, there's a balancing act because it has been abused.
We know this.
We've covered this together as a body before.
But I'm leaning towards a softer number, around 100 signatures, 125, 100.
And the development timeline, you know, looking at the realistic economic outlook around for the near future and the credit markets, et cetera, it seems kind of sort of ill-advised to rush the development timeline on these very expensive projects.
So I tend to agree with the five-year mark that I heard from Humber and Keserwani.
Those are my thoughts.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Also, we have Council Member De La Parra.
I have a question for Council Member Triga.
Do you mind pulling up your language again quickly? Sorry.
Thank you.
Shouldn't we have ‑‑ shouldn't there be, like, a clause that says which of the two is favored? Like, this exception shall expire, A, if this, or B, if this, whichever is sooner or later? Or is it just ‑‑ like, how does the planning department decide which one of these satisfies this requirement? Does that make sense? Yeah.
I have no problem with adding that, but I wanted to defer to the city attorney.
I think it would be either.
If either occurs, is that right? Yes, I'm seeing nods.
In that case, I'm wondering if we can add whichever is later to avoid what Council Member Humbert was talking about, is if the application is extended by ZAB, then it can still be covered under this exception.
Up to five years? Sure, yeah.
Yeah.
I would be open to that, to try to, you know, have a pathway to some commonality here.
Okay.
Thanks.
Okay.
Any other comments from my council colleagues? Okay.
So, I'm sorry, I'm not sure I'm completely clear on what you were saying.
So, B instead of 30 months would be five years after the final approval, or is there something you had mentioned earlier about two and a half years and then something for ZAB? I just want to make sure I understand.
That's a question for me.
Yeah.
Well, probably the clearest way to deal with this is to say whichever is sooner, just in the language.
I've been thinking about how to make this align with the five years proposed by in Council Member Humbert's referral, and I'm not finding a way to do that.
But if someone has ideas, I'm open.
Okay.
All right.
So, it doesn't sound like you have a particular time frame in mind then.
Is that correct? Is this what you meant? I was wondering if we could clarify.
I would prefer for it to say whichever is later, but I did want to just be clear about which way we would be favoring.
I see some movement at the staff table.
Yeah, I think it might be helpful to give you a little bit of background about the SB 330 preliminary application versus complete application process, because I think A and B in these cases might be mutually exclusive, actually.
Yes.
So, the preliminary development application is what vests the rights for the project.
What we receive is the application and effectively a project concept.
Once that information is submitted and it's consistent with the submittal checklist, we issue a letter that identifies the vesting date for which we've received all the materials.
From that date, the applicant has 180 days to file the formal application, which is the fully developed application that would go before the Zoning Adjustments Board.
That obviously has a longer timeline because there's more exhaustive review, interagency coordination, conditions of approval, and there's more variability in terms of that timeline processing.
And just to clarify, can you speak to where does this two and a half, five years fall in this process? So I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Council Member Tragoop, but I think you're identifying the two and a half years from the date of the, what would be the formal application approval.
Is that correct? The government code establishes once you, so you have 180 days after the submittal of the preliminary application to submit the complete application.
Then it's kind of an indeterminate number between that point and when the property, the project is approved or entitled, receives its entitlement.
That starts the 30-month clock by which the permit needs to be exercised beyond which the vested rights expire.
Got it.
Or five years, depending on which we agree on.
Right, that 30 months is actually from the government code under SB 330.
And so Council Member Tragoop's proposal is to match the time period guaranteed under state law.
The Councillor Wanih-Hubbard proposal is to extend that to five years from the date of the preliminary application, but then also extending through the life of the entitlement, I believe.
Thank you.
I think that was helpful.
Okay, in that case, so I would really love for someone to make a motion so that we can work off of something here.
I'd like to move this conversation forward and kind of get clarity because I know there are a few different areas of contention.
Sorry, Council Member Chaplin, did you have your hand raised? Sure, for the purpose of the discussion, I'm happy to move the Councillor Wanih-Hubbard supplemental.
But I was hoping to ask a question.
Sure, thank you.
Is there a second? I'll second.
Thank you.
Okay, go ahead.
What was your question? And thank you all so much.
I was just wondering if someone could restate what benefit there would be to having a shorter window of protection than that established by state law? I think that's a question for Vice Mayor Trigub.
Correct.
The benefits of a shorter time period.
There's no shorter level of protection than what is established in state law under my item.
It completely matches state law.
Right, but could you speak to why you'd want it to stay with state law as opposed to being five years? To reduce the ability of someone to game the system and just submit a preliminary SB340 application, then exercise the final application.
But, and I'm not talking about having challenges in financing a project, I'm talking about just deliberately using that to foreclose the opportunity to landmark the property in the future.
But then not build a residential project on it.
Okay.
Does that answer your question, Council Member Taplin? Partially.
It's just not clear what our mechanism would be to address some of the market reality that Council Members Bartlett and Humbert spoke to earlier.
Okay.
Thank you.
I have Council Member Humbert and then I have Council Member Kisarwani.
Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor.
It's a question, clarification question to Council Member Taplin, who moved the Humbert-Kisarwani supplemental.
My question is, did you mean to move the Humbert-Kisarwani alternative in the staff proposal along with our supplemental, along with the additional language that I read into the record to prevent game playing? Yes.
And was that also what you were seconding? Okay.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Kisarwani.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
I want to thank the planning staff for bringing the response to this referral back relatively quickly.
And thank you to the public commenters.
I think the fact that a third of the landmark initiations have been the result of SB 330 applications speaks for itself.
I do want to remind folks that gathering signatures is not the only way to initiate a grant application.
And with the threshold of 50 signatures, you know, we were seeing, you know, almost the same group of people for a number of these applications.
And so that is why we looked at increasing the signature threshold.
I do want to remind folks that gathering signatures is not the only way to initiate landmarking.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission, as has been noted, can initiate a landmarking themselves if, you know, if a particular site comes to their attention.
The City Council can do so.
If, you know, for instance, there's a site or a property in a district and the Council Member becomes aware of the need to landmark it, they can do it that way.
And also the property owner.
Importantly, the property owner can also initiate it.
What we are trying to guard against is a group of residents, you know, relatively small group right now with 50 initiating it.
And then initiating a lot of staff work and staff time that, you know, ultimately with some of those applications that came before the Council were in conflict with the vested rights under SB 330.
And we couldn't actually enforce the landmarking, even if they warranted a landmarking, which I think in both cases they did not.
So I just wanted to offer that perspective.
Having said that, you know, I know Council Member O'Keefe sort of asked the question, you know, how many signatures is a good one? And I did hear Council Member Bartlett sort of say that, you know, even getting 125 signatures can be difficult.
So, you know, I recognize with Council Member Chaplin's motion, it is locking in all of the Kesserwani signature concepts and the Kesserwani-Humbert supplemental.
So I am open to, you know, hearing from more colleagues about the signature thresholds in particular as we land this.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Yeah, I would also like for us to kind of get, let's just narrow down what we're going to do with the signatures and then we can talk about this two and a half versus five years piece.
I will say that for myself, I understand that there are many different ways to initiate this process and it doesn't have to be through signature gathering.
I also heard what folks were saying about this being a democratic process and this being the City of Berkeley, you know, appreciating that.
So I understand that.
I do feel like this 200 to 400 is quite high, but I would be amenable to something along the lines of like 150 and 300 or something like that, because it's interesting, Rebecca, who called in earlier, she does signature gathering.
Like, that's a huge part of the work she's doing and she knows how challenging it is.
And also with no time constraints, there is the ability to gather signatures.
I understand that that can be hard, but I'm just going to say I would be favorable of 150 to 300.
And just to clarify, that's 150 with support from the property owner and 300 without.
OK, so Council Member Trakop, you're next.
Thank you.
If we're going to separate out the discussion between timeline and signatures, which I support, I will say I do have a little bit of misgiving around having a dual track for signature numbers.
I feel like anything that introduces additional, you know, just requirements for staff time, now staff has to monitor to see whether the property owner is supportive or not.
I would support a number closer to 100 or 150.
I don't do as much signature gathering as Rebecca, but I do enough signature gathering to be sympathetic to the challenges of collecting even 100 signatures.
I do believe that 50 is too few.
I think 100 or 150 is probably the right number.
And I think with the SB 330 application, which we will talk about in a little bit, I think it's just going to reduce the concerns that led to probably, you know, the Council having to act on this to begin with.
OK, thank you.
Council Member O'Keefe.
OK, thank you.
And thank you, Council Member Trujillo, for saying that, because I was going to say the same thing, but for different reasoning.
So let me I'll just articulate my position.
I actually really do want to have one one number of signatures.
Also, I don't I'm not interested in differentiating between owner consent and my reasoning.
I appreciate your reasoning, but my reasoning is sort of like if we step back and think about the theory of what we're doing, like the legal theory, historic resources are a public good.
It's not really about ownership.
It's something that's for all of us.
And so if you look at it that way, it doesn't really make sense to like let the owner basically like count for 200 signatures.
Like they're just one other person.
Yeah, they get limited, but I don't know.
It's a public good.
So I actually am more comfortable with one single number.
I'm not going to I don't want to bargain over 50 here and there.
I think 200 is fine.
That's what I would propose if I was Queen Verde.
And I know it can't I hear the arguments that it's high, but I do take the points.
Two points have been made that address that.
One is that there are other ways.
I think I appreciated Council Member Humbert's point that if, you know, they get close, but not quite, that indicates a strong public interest.
And the process can be initiated other ways.
And also that there's no time limit.
I think, you know, if you have enough time, you can get 200 signatures.
It's not it's not as onerous as thinking about doing that within a certain amount of time, which is what we're used to with, you know, things that go on the ballot, things like that.
So I really want to see one number and I would say 200.
But if people want to do 150 or something, that's fine.
As I said before, I don't really know what the right numbers.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Backerby.
Thank you.
I just want to echo one number and I'm in the 150 to 200 range.
One number across the board.
OK, where are we? Sorry.
Council Member Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I, you know, Council Member O'Keefe makes a legitimate point.
You know, this is for the public good, but it's for the public good that imposes a private cost on the owner of the property.
And so that's that's a different kettle of fish than if there are different situations where the owner agrees versus where the owner fails to agree.
And in response to Council Member Vice Mayor Tragoob's point that it's difficult to to determine whether the owner consents.
I don't think that's true.
I think all you need is an attestation or the owner's signature.
So that's that's easy enough.
I don't think it's a problem for administration.
And I would tend to agree with the mayor's suggestion of 150 and 300 that that makes sense to me.
I think, you know, moderating our proposed figures in that regard makes a lot of sense.
OK, thank you.
Council Member Linapaia.
Thank you.
I, I agree with Council Member Tragoob and Council Member O'Keefe on the on the two different numbers, but for different reasons than both of you.
I think the owner can can initiate a landmark on their own.
They don't they don't need to gather signatures.
So I don't really think that there's a point in having this whole other number if the if the owner can initiate it on their own.
And in terms of the number of signatures, I would like I'm indifferent from 200 to 400, but would like to see at least 200.
OK, so I wanted to address this point of two different things.
So two different numbers.
And so.
So, yes, it's true.
One of the things I was struggling with this this afternoon morning was that.
Yes, it's true that someone who's the owner could initiate, but that also involves work on their behalf.
And so to me, that the reason for two is actually to to say, I acknowledge that I'm going to have to have an additional burden of keep maintaining this property and keeping it up.
And so, you know, I'm consenting to acknowledging that that's going to be a piece of it.
And and also I, as an as a landlord, I may not have the ability to go through the whole process myself and therefore it should be easier.
So that's that's why I'm OK with the two different numbers, just to clarify.
And then there are folks online.
So I'm going to go council member Taplin, Keserwani and then back to Humbert again.
Thank you.
I would like to amend my motion such that the signature threshold is 200 across whether there's owner consent or not.
200 signatures across period.
And I accept that.
And I don't, you know, I don't love imposing additional costs, but that seems like a logical way to synthesize what I think I'm hearing on the dais.
OK, thank you.
Council member Keserwani.
Thank you very much.
So I really appreciate hearing everyone's various perspectives on this.
You know, I just want to bring it back to the referral that I authored.
We included a number of case studies there in which we deemed that the attempt to landmark was done in bad faith.
One of those attempts was somebody's single family home that they wanted to remodel so that they had space for their elderly mom and they had their neighbors initiate a landmarking that was unwarranted with 50 signatures.
So I don't think it is appropriate to have the same number.
We cannot have a group of neighbors who are upset about a remodel gather signatures and prevent somebody from being able to house their elderly mom.
That is the motivation for having a differentiated signature threshold when you can't get the property owner's consent.
So, you know, I would respectfully request that we we go to what the mayor had proposed, which is 300 signatures.
If you cannot get that property owner's consent and 150 if you can.
And the thing is, I hear what people are saying that the property owner can go ahead and do it on their own.
They may not want to.
They may not believe that their home is worthy of landmarking.
But when the neighbors suggest that it is, and they decide, oh, okay, I'm okay with it.
I think we should have a lower threshold then.
If a bunch of neighbors decide, hey, we think your house is worthy of landmarking, because we don't like the remodel you proposed, I think they should have to go and get more signatures double the number than if the property owner was supportive.
That is the motivation.
So I just want to respectfully request that my colleagues think about that and consider the 150.
If you can't get the property owner's consent and 300.
I'm sorry, 150, if you can, if you can get the property owner's consent and 300, if you cannot.
Okay, thank you.
So we're coming back here to Council Member Humbert and then Council Member O'Keefe.
I'm going to reset this again.
I think it's not working.
Yeah, I'm going to defer to Council Member O'Keefe and let her go first.
But I put a jelly bean in my mouth, thinking I wasn't ready.

Segment 7

I just want to respond quickly to Councilmember Kesarwani.
I appreciate that argument.
It's certainly a compelling scenario.
I just want to remind us that we, you know, we're raising it from 50, which is pretty easy to do, to 200, which has already been at least considered as possibly too high a threshold even under normal circumstances.
So I think that it's a compelling argument, but I'm gonna personally stick with the 200 threshold because it's just hard for me to imagine finding 200 people to be so vindictive as to as to use it in such bad faith as was described.
You know, if it was 50, that's a reasonable thing to imagine, and of course it did happen, but 200 is high enough that I think we're really preventing the sort of bad faith weaponization.
I think it meets that goal.
Thank you.
I want to let Councilmember Bartlett speak and then I'll come back to you, Councilmember Humbert.
He hasn't weighed in yet on the signature numbers.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Question, when we talk about the the property owner's consent, are we making consideration as to whether the property owner is like a normal person or a business entity? I think it doesn't hire either way.
I think it's a worthy consideration.
Sorry, you were saying you think that should be a consideration? Yeah.
Yes, I think that's a worthy consideration because, I mean, the chances of, you know, some Chinese-owned LLC that's buying up all the block consenting to this is going to be nil, right? But my neighbor, who's a sweet lady, she might be into it, right? So I'm wondering in terms of just, you know, market realities and also, you know, our policy of creating, you know, local ownership, right? I think that should be a consideration in this topic.
And I still say that, you know, a proper number for an ordinary person to succeed with work at getting signatures is in that, you know, 100 to 150 range, possibly 200 with unlimited timetable and true passion, but 200 is going to be really hard as well.
Okay, Council Member Humbert.
Sure, that's fine.
Yeah, so just taking a look at what everyone has said, it seems that there's some coalescing around this 200 number across whether someone is, whether you have the consent from the property owner or not.
So I'm going to just say that out loud.
I understand that that's what's also on the motion.
I would like to address this two and a half versus five years piece as well.
So if we could quickly go through that just because it's 934 and I know we can get this done.
So who would like to speak on that? We already know where you stand, Council Member Trajkub.
You're looking at me? You want to know what I think? Oh shit, I had, sorry, I had a, I had thoughts about this and they've left my brain.
I know I was leaning towards, they're both reasonable, they're both like reasonable approaches to solve the same problem.
So it's hard to sort of pick one.
I was leaning towards the Humbert-Kastorwani proposal because, I did get kind of called out.
Let me, give me a minute.
Let me, I don't want to.
Sure, that's fine.
Let me think.
Anyone else want to address? Okay, Council Member Bartlett.
I'm sorry, was my hand still raised? Sorry about that.
Okay, yes, Council Member Chaplin.
Yeah, thank you.
I would support the five years.
I think this phenomenon we're seeing is very real where the economic winds shift and people get their rug pulled out and projects stall and things escalate and I, with the scale of projects we're likely to see with these, I have more confidence and faith that we'll be seeing good faith builders.
Thank you.
Okay, Council Member Keefe, back to you.
Yeah, I didn't have a really groundbreaking reason.
I think it just, the sort of the one-time aspect of it, I think solved the problem and it, and I appreciated that it was a little more forgiving.
I think I was moved by Council Member Humbert's argument that, you know, weird things happen and we should try to make space, make it as, we don't want people to like have it like time out early and the five years seems fine to me and I think they've just solved the problem that we're looking to solve in a different way.
So if I have to pick, I pick that one.
Although Vice Mayor Trigubes is also very good.
Okay, thank you.
Yes, Council Member Keserwani.
So yeah, so I just, I want to say that, you know, I wanted to give my rationale for the differentiation on whether you have the property owner or not, but I can live with the 200, you know, because I want us to land something and be able to have some dessert or a drink and go to bed.
So I just wanted to say that and I, of course, I support my five years and then, and extending it through the life of the, of the, I don't know what the term is.
I think it's called the life of the entitlement, I should say.
So, and I believe that's all in Council Member Taplin's motion.
So I think we're ready to vote, but I don't want to get ahead of anyone who might still be in the queue.
Totally, yeah.
I think that folks here are fine with this number.
Go ahead, Council Member Humberg.
Yeah, I was wondering if I might ask Council Member Taplin to accept a friendly amendment to have, you know, if we're going to, it sounds like we're heading for a result here, whether to have staff report back in a year about our experience with the administration of the new modifications to the ordinance.
Yes, I will accept that.
I will also accept that.
Thank you.
Very good.
Okay, Council Member Jacob, or Vice Mayor Jacob.
Thank you.
I appreciate all the erudite work that has been done and to try to get closer to consensus on this.
I can accept the five years with the one-time proviso on the property.
I have, I continue and I recognize that it was, in fact, my referral that suggested 200 across the board, albeit that was in response to the original item.
Based on the testimony that I heard today, I continue to feel, or I no longer feel comfortable with 200.
I feel much more comfortable with something like 150.
I respect if my colleagues want to stay at 200.
I will just not be able to vote for this.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And then also for the motion makers, I know that there was some language that Council Member Trageb had brought up that the City Attorney had recommended, so I just want to make sure that besides the numbers themselves, because I know we're not talking about the 30 months, we're talking about five years, but I just want to make sure that that would be included.
I don't think so because it doesn't fit into our language.
I guess I'd ask Council Member Kesarwani.
Okay.
I'm sorry, don't worry about it.
That's fine.
Okay.
All right.
There is a motion on the floor.
Are there any other comments? Okay.
All right.
Can we take the roll, please? Okay.
So this is the staff recommendation with the supplemental changes from Council Member Kesarwani and Humbert, and also including the language introduced by Council Member Humbert this evening with the change to have it be 200 signatures as a single standard and a request for a report in one year on the status of the new regulations.
So that's the motion that we have.
Council Member Kesarwani? Yes.
Kaplan? Yes.
Bartlett? Yes.
Graham? Abstain.
O'Keefe? Yes.
Blackabay? Yes.
Lunapara? Yes.
Humbert? Yes.
And Mayor Ishii? Yes.
Okay.
Motion carries.
Okay.
Thank you all so much.
I know that was a lot of sausage making.
I really appreciate all of you very much, staff, and then, of course, our Chair.
Thank you very much for being here and for the public comment.
Okay.
So that was our final action item, but we will take public comment on items not listed on the agenda, starting with Carol.
So speaking of signature gathering, today I saw a signature gatherer for a petition gathering signatures on the side of the Chase Bank.
I looked at, by recruiting people, by giving them energy drinks and similar other drinks that were lined up on the table, this has gotten some media attention.
I looked at the text, which he was very, seemed to be very annoyed by my review in the text.
It appeared to be the competing proposition for the billionaire's tax.
This is illegal.
I mean, the penal code states money or valuable compensation.
Obviously, to receive a signature, you're not going to give somebody a suitcase, a briefcase with $50,000 in it.
You're going to give them a $4 or $5 energy drink.
So I did go to the City Clerk's office.
They referred me to the DA.
I went to the Police Department, and the Police Department said, if it's not money, they're not going to go there.
I thought we should have.
Thank you.
The city should get the documentation.
Thanks, Carol.
Appreciate you bringing that.
Hello.
Kelly Hammergren again.
I found the comment at the beginning of the evening from our Fire Department and our unions very concerning.
And I know we have a budget deficit, and I took a quick scan of what's going to come to the Budget Committee on Thursday.
And I mentioned, I have mentioned before, and I'd like to mention again, that when I attended the Planning Department, Planning Commission meeting, and Jordan Klein, as the Director of Planning Department, spoke and explained the goals of the department.
He said how the Planning Department didn't have to work with the constraints of the rest of the city because of the way we have handled their budget, is that we have, that 74% of their budget goes to permits, and that comes to them directly.
So they don't have the constraints, and they can hire as they wish, where the rest of the city, that depends on the general fund, has to pay attention and has to come under those constraints.
And I think it's time that we reevaluate how the Planning Department is budgeted, and that they face the same constraints as the rest of the city, and that we are not sacrificing our emergency services for a department that says they don't have to abide by the constraints of the rest of the city.
And so they may have, I think they almost forgot that I was in the audience because I was the only person that stayed to the end of the meeting.
But those were the comments, and I ask all of you that you start paying attention.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Are there any public comments on items not listed on the agenda online? There's one hand raised.
That's phone number ending in 211.
Caller with phone number ending in 211, you should be able to unmute.
Hi.
Now I need to talk about this horrible situation we have in Iran.
Iran is a great country.
Ancient civilization.
Five years, 5,000 years of civilization.
So as Trump said, that is a war crime.
That's a criminal.
The word sematic refers to language.
The Johns Hopkins University made a DNA study on Israelis and Palestinians.
Israelis came 0 to 2.
Old Hebrews.
Palestinians 78%.
We need peace.
Netanyahu is a criminal.
He's been dreaming to bomb Iran for years.
He's a thief.
He's a criminal.
And no difference to kill people because of their religion than to kill them because of their color.
Imagine the Palestinians are black and Israelis are killing them because they're black.
Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are brother language, a brother religion, and the fairy tales mentioned Egypt.
They are fairy tales.
There is no God.
You guys are just getting screwed by everybody.
Have a good night.
Thank you.
Okay.
Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved.
Second.
Can we take the roll, please? Okay.
To adjourn, Council Member Kastorwani? Yes.
Kaplan? Yes.
Bartlett? Yes.
Trigos? Aye.
O'Keefe? Yes.
Blackabee? Yes.
Zunipara? Yes.
Humbert? Yes.
And Mariachi? Yes.
Okay.
We're adjourned.
We're adjourned.
Thanks, everyone.