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May 19, 2026 · 7:00 PM

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Daniel, Rashi Kesarwani, Cecilia Lunaparra, Ben Bartlett, Cecilia Lunaparra, and Mark Humbert. Now let's welcome the Council Member of the Berkeley City Council, Mr. Ben Bartlett. Mr. Bartlett, welcome. Thank you for being here. Thank you. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Recording in progress. .. .. .. .. .. .. We started the regular meeting, and we did two ceremonial items, and now we're moving on to city manager comments. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just one brief comment, which is that the bicycle plan, as you'll notice, is removed from this agenda. The reason for that is because we had to go through a sequel process, so we'll be doing that over the next couple weeks with a plan to bring it back on June 9th, hopefully. So June 9th is our target date for that. I just wanted to say that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, folks, please take your conversations outside. If you're having a side conversation, please take it outside. People in the first few rows, I can still hear you. Thank you. All right, so we are now moving on to public comment on non-agenda matters. Okay, so we will choose five cards for in-person speakers, and then we'll go to the first five hands raised on the Zoom. And again, this is for comments. Oh, each speaker will only have one minute to speak, and this is for comments that are not, for items that are not on the agenda. So we have Stephen Alpert, Abby Vieira, we have Celeste Marks, and Rohan Prasad, and that's it. We just have four cards for in-person speakers. Stephen Alpert, Abby Vieira, Rohan Prasad, and Celeste Marks. So you can come up in any order, and you'll have one minute. So I have two minutes? Yes, two minutes. Thank you. We cannot accept any new cards at this time. I am Dr. Stephen Alpert. Berkeley residents have reason to be profoundly disappointed and disillusioned by the actions of this council, its committees, and its commissions. Council members proclaim they are pro-housing. It demonstrates clear pro-developer bias. Local business owners were not consulted about the plans to upzone North Shattuck, Solano, or College Avenues. In fact, the council members met with developers first. There was a special meeting on February 24. This council overturned Berkeley's labor standards passed in 2023, which required developers of large projects to provide contractors with fair pay, health insurance, and funds for apprenticeship training. During a planning commission meeting last September, over 40 individuals expressed concerns about the proposed upzoning building heights, that they were excessive. Every commission member then stated the higher heights were not a problem. Foremost, this council needs to stop pushing the utterly false narrative that building market-rate housing will readily produce affordable units. Real-world data directly contradict this. As presented last week, a recent study by Buchholz demonstrated that even under overly optimistic conditions, in our area, it takes over 20 years for newly built market-rate housing to eventually filter down and become affordable. Whereas with historical data, it takes over 100 years. Evidently, these findings were very troublesome to Council Member Humbert, who deceptively tried to .. Just a reminder not to refer to individual council members, just refer to us as a body, please. This is of use to the community, when people try to represent information that's false. These findings were troublesome to Council Member Humbert, who tried to discredit Buchholz, as shown in this composite screenshot of Buchholz.com. Please note the highlighted portions. Thank you for your comment. A reminder that when you come and speak to us as a whole, that you refer to us as a whole body, please. Thank you. Again, when people lie to the community, it's a problem. Thank you very much. You need to listen to the rules that we have in this chamber. Thank you. Hey, how's it going? Good evening. Good evening everyone. My name is Rohan. I'd like to talk about artificial intelligence. Experts say that we are heading towards mass unemployment, the empowerment of dictators and oligarchs, and potentially the annihilation of the human race because of developments across the bay. Our government has done nothing about this. Governor Newsom has struck down AI legislation. The state legislature has been lobbied by corporations like OpenAI. I'd like to call on Governor Newsom to hold a citizens' assembly about AI policy and govern AI like an existential threat, just like we've done for nuclear weapons. Berkeley, I urge you to pass a resolution calling on Governor Newsom to do these actions and be a leader in free speech and democracy like you have before. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, folks, please keep your side conversations outside. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Abby Vieira, and on March 16, I had the great pride and great pleasure of joining City of Berkeley with the Berkeley Rent Board. I was so proud to take on the job because the City of Berkeley has always demonstrated the values that I truly believe in. City of Berkeley has always led by example, and after 18 years of working with marginally housed communities, I was so proud to advocate for one of the most comprehensive rent stabilization ordinances in the country, one that has led by example. Two and a half, three weeks into starting that new job, I received impact notice that I was going to be laid off, just left a job with stable hours, just moved my family, who is all here, they're now looking for pizza elsewhere, just moved them to Berkeley Care, and here I am facing layoff. I'm here to advocate that nobody walk out the door right now in this job market. I think with all of the intelligence that we have, creativity, innovation, with the values we say that we believe in, nobody should be walking out the door in this job market. Thank you so much. Okay, so we'll go to online for again, this is comments that for items that are not on the agenda. We have one minute. First is a phone number ending in 211. Go ahead, Yves. Hi, this is Yves. First of all, it's beautiful to hear Loni Hancock's voice. She was a great mayor. Maybe we should just have women mayors. She was great. She was a great mayor. Okay, my assistant, Citroën, who filed a formal complaint with the state of California's general attorney. City of Berkeley totally betrayed us and tens of thousands of our customers. Read that carefully and also request a meeting with the mayor whenever she has time. The other part of it is our business contributed more than a million dollars to City of Berkeley Tax Treasury. We hired thousands of employees. Our business hired more women than men in our big, great time than all of our competitors. We don't need help. We need action. The rest of them was criminal. We need action. We need a lot of people, not only our business suffering, but also tens of thousands. Next is Cheryl Davila, former council member. Now you're taking 15 minutes after 45 minutes. That's kind of pathetic and sad. You're really wasting people's time having them come to the meeting and then starting the meeting and taking a 15-minute break after a short period of time. Side conversations of the council should also be outside. Actually, you shouldn't even be talking or on your cell phones, which we all do all the time during these meetings, which is also pathetic. Since you've gotten a raise that I initiated by my legislation, you've lowered the amount of time that people are allowed to speak in a meeting. You limited the time for the flock cameras to two hours for public comment in the room and an hour online. I know you're not. Free Palestine, free us all, free us from the fascism of this Berkeley City Council, and they're pathetic. Thank you. Thanks for your comments. Next is a phone number ending in 000. We left copies of the phone number in the front of the council meeting. Please, audience, take copy of this. Sorry, I think you've already spoken during public comment. Next is Della Luna. Yes, thank you. I want to talk today about Zoran Mamdani, a mayor who's only been in office for four months and has already closed a $12 billion deficit for the people nor the workers, $8 billion in aid from the state, an additional $2 billion in pension restructuring, and he has invested in child care for the people, the housing, and city infrastructure. I wanted to highlight this is in only four months, and I think that Zoran Mamdani is showing what is possible, that good governance is possible, that it is possible to care for your constituents and make the city actually work for people, and I think you all have someone to look up to in that regards, but you cannot tell us that it's not possible. I do expect you all to move in that direction because it's possible. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Karen Slaughter. Good afternoon. Good evening. Karen Slaughter here. Good to be able to make it as part of the public speaker. Just wanted to give a quick announcement about the 21st Annual Tommy Smith Youth Track Meet presented by the 100 Black Men of the Bay Area celebrating two decades of promoting athletic excellence. Karen, I'm sorry, but I think that's actually on our consent calendar. Oh, it is? Yeah. I'm a member of the Willard Park Renovation Project as someone who actually played in that park and worked at Willard Park as my first city job. I just wanted to say how beautiful that center came out and how proud all the staff should be and former Councilwoman Lori Drossy should be. I didn't know that there weren't any opportunities to speak on the ceremonial items, but I saw that and I just want to give you all kudos. It's an amazing project. It just really makes me proud. Thank you, Karen. Thank you to all of our working public work staff during Public Works Week. Whenever I see them servicing the trash cans and recycling, they're always smiling and they're always waving back at me in the morning. So I'll hold the rest of my comments to the other item. Thanks, Karen. Good pivot. Last speaker is Denise Jones. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for being here. This is Denise Jones. Again, I'm the director at the Berkley Drop-In Center. Again, I am reaching out for whatever monetary support we can get. The Berkley Drop-In Center was impacted by Proposition No. 1 and the BHSA funding changes. Effective July 1st of 2026, there will be a drop-in center for our community with food, clothing, mailboxes, locker services, and despite the major cuts that are coming, I am currently running the drop-in center with three staff and who will be gone by June 30th, but we still have over 300 clients. That will be without food effective June 31st. Thank you. Thank you. That's it. That's it for non-agenda public comment. Okay. Very good. Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone, for your public comments, and we will now move on to the consent calendar. Council members, do you have any comments on the consent calendar? I will start with Council Member Kaplan. Thank you, Madam Mayor, and good evening, everybody. On Item 1617, I want to thank my co-sponsors and my colleagues for their support this evening, and I encourage all to attend. Thank you. Thank you very much. Council Member, oh, Vice Mayor Trago. Thank you so much. I wanted to comment on a few items on this agenda. First of all, I want to thank all of our co-sponsors for their support on this agenda. First of all, Item 6 and 7, both are joint HomeKey Plus applications, and I'm very excited to see both of these move forward tonight. I would like to thank staff who made this possible. You know, I had the opportunity of sending me to a press conference today where it was announced that countywide there is another major reduction over 10% for the unhoused population and the unsheltered unhoused population, and projects like these are integral to making this possible towards a Bay Area that we can all call home, including in Berkeley. Item 14, recommendation to add three ceremonial street name signs in honor of Daniel Ellsberg on Kittredge. This is in my district, and I am very grateful to the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission for taking this recommendation, and all the community members who first reached out to us to do that, and very excited that this is moving forward tonight. Thank you. Item 15, this is a referral to incorporate food insecurity as a funded category in future community agency grant funding cycles. I would like to thank Councilmember Keserwani for her work and wanted to see if it would be possible to be added as a co-sponsor. Yes, Councilmember Trigger, we'd be delighted to have you. Thank you so much. Items 16 through 18, I want to thank the authors of those items and will contribute $100 out of my G13 account to each of those items. Item 19, which is the Berkeley Rotary Endowment Education and Community Welfare Support, this is going to help the Berkeley Rotary Endowment to raise funds for the RottaCare Health Clinic four-year collegiate scholarship program, supportive housing, and hygiene kit programs. In previous years, these funds were raised together with and through the Taste of Downtown Berkeley event. This year, there was a decision made by the Rotary to move it towards a biannual event, so there will be a bigger and better event in 2027, but the need for this funding still continues, and so I would like to thank the Rotary, and I believe Maria is on the Zoom tonight, who can say a little more, but thank you for continuing to move this really important effort, and would welcome any G13 allocations from my colleagues. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Moving on to Councilmember O'Keefe. Thank you, Mayor. I first want to comment about item 14, I think. Yes. I just want to say Daniel Ellsberg is a personal hero of mine, and I actually, even though I teach computer science, it seems unrelated. I actually find a way to work him into my curriculum every year because the students do not know who he is, and so I just wanted to say I'm really happy to be supporting item 14, and thank you so much for bringing it. And then for the D13 items, I will contribute to all of them, except the one I'm already on, so that means $250. I would love to contribute to the Pints for Paws, item 16, to the track meet. I recently became a track mom, so I'm especially excited about that. $250, and the flea market. Absolutely would love to contribute to that, and I'm already listed as a co-sponsor for item 19, so thank you so much, Councilmember Tragoop, Vice Mayor Tragoop, for allowing me to do that. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Humbert? Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor, and I first have a question about item 13, which is the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission recommendation about the bike plan. I'm wondering if that could be continued to the meeting where we take up the bike plan. I guess that's in June. You certainly could. I think the point of that item was to ask that staff do certain things in the bike plan, and we have considered and done most of those things, so I think it could come tonight as a precursor to that item and say, hey, these are things we want to make sure you include it in the plan, or it could come on the night of the plan either way. I decided to leave it there since it was before the plan, and at least not after. Okay. Yeah, it sounds like there's no need to move it, at least to me. Number 14, Daniel Ellsberg is also one of my personal heroes. I read a lot of his writings before I turned 20. My wife was at a writer's retreat in Point Reyes Station, and the writers are supposed to sign their names in the closet. I walked in the closet where she was going to sign, and there was his name, and it was really a moving experience for me. So thank you for doing this. Number 15, I appreciate, which is the referral to incorporate food insecurity as a funded category in future community agency grant funding cycles. I appreciate Council Member Kesarwani adding me as a co-sponsor on this important item. Food insecurity is a fundamental problem. It's gotten worse after prices have risen with the pandemic and since. The organizations in Berkeley that address this are doing essential, but often behind-the-scenes work, and they must be empowered to participate in our community agency grant funding process. That was an oversight, and I'm glad it's being corrected. Thank you. Council Member Kesarwani. As to item number 16, Pints for Paws, I'm a co-sponsor. Thank you, Council Member Taplin. Such a wonderful organization, Berkeley Humane, and I'd like to contribute $250 for my discretionary account on 16, 17, 18, and 19 would like to contribute $100 each from our discretionary D8 account. Thank you. Thank you very much. Council Member Blackbee. Thanks, Mayor Ishii. Just a couple of comments. Again, I also want to appreciate Council Member Kesarwani and team for item 15, the referral to incorporate food insecurity as a funded category in future community grant funding cycles. Incredibly important, and I'm proud to support that effort. On item 16, would like to relinquish $250. I was proud to co-sponsor item 17, 100 Black Men of the Bay Area's Tommy Smith Youth Track Meet. I wanted to relinquish $500 for that. And then item 18 and 19, Berkeley Flea Market and the Berkeley Rotary Endowment Education Support. Also $250 for each of those. And then I had a couple of questions I wanted to ask on information item number 30 and 31. I think Mr. Oyinkanmi is on the line. I really appreciate getting these quarterly reports on the performance of our investment portfolio that leads in very directly to the conversation we're going to have about the budget later tonight. I'm going to share my screen really quick just to highlight one piece and then ask Henry a quick question because if there's any policy adjustments that we should consider. Just to note, again, there's huge clarity and transparency in terms of the returns we're getting on the investment portfolio. We have about $600- $700 million of assets. Previous councils, I know, have put very particular constraints on what the finance team can do with this pooled money. I also know there's the vagaries of the market and the length of time of various instruments that we have and when they come to maturity. Henry and I have already had a back and forth on this in email. I think my question for the finance team and for Henry is, is there more that we can do on the policy side to relax any of the constraints that are inhibiting returns? I'll just observe that even if we got a half a point better and matched Burbank or a point better and matched San Francisco or San Jose, that's worth several million dollars to the top line on the revenue side. Anyway, question just to Henry is, are there things that we could be doing from a policy side, adjustments we could make that would give you more of the flexibility to aid on bumping that rate up? That's question number one. Question number two is what the assumption is in next year's budget for what we're assuming in terms of revenue from the portfolio? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the question. I just want to give you a little bit of context for this. If you look at the report that we had about a year and a half ago, we're very close to the top at that time. There's a cycle. We buy investments for three, four, five years and we lock them in. When you lock them in, if you look at the reports that we have, because we lock them in at that rate when it was like 0.5 or 0.75, like just 75 basis point. But now if you look at the same report, I think there's an exhibit E1 or something in there. It tells you 10 of all the investments that we locked in at 0.1 to 0.75 percent are all going to be maturing this year, within the next six months. And the market is at about 3.5 to 4.2. So we are going to buy those investments after they mature and we are going to be at the top of it by the time, maybe next two years, we're going to be like probably at the high top of that ladder. So it's always cyclical because of the investment timing and when we lock them in. So that's number one. And then from a bigger picture, yes, we are trying to see if there's anything we can do. I mean, the markets are very volatile now. So this is probably not the time to be changing stuff. So we're looking at it in terms of standardized. And so if you look at the revenues projection that we did for next year, we are taking into this account that, yeah, we're going to have more revenues for next year than we had this year. And that's one of the reasons why if you look at the investments, the earnings that we are assuming we are going to get, it's probably going to be about 10 to 11 million, even though we have less money to invest because we have a budget deficit so we don't have enough cash. But even with that, we're still going to have more revenues and our rates are going to go up because we're going to be able to lock in these higher rates once these 10 or 11, I think we have about 14 maturities that are coming within the next six months. And once those maturities are coming in, we are going to be buying at a higher rate of about 3 to 4 to 5%. So we are going to be at the top of that cycle again while everybody else goes down. And then once we start maturing again, then everybody will come up again. So that it's always been a cycle in terms of the way we lock those investments. Great. Thanks. At the same time, we're looking at we are going to council to see whether we should change our investment report. Me and you have been having this conversation. So we've been talking about what can we do on the margins, what are the things that we can do that can help us unlock some of the things that we had. You were right. We couldn't do so many things we couldn't do. So we are trying to see whether there's anything that council can help.

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The 100 Black Men Youth Track Meet. I just want to once again invite folks out there, and thanks again for the partnership with UC Berkeley and the City of Berkeley and the sponsors of this ad. Thank you. Thanks, Kieran. We miss you, City of Berkeley. Next is a caller. Phone number ends in 2-1-1. Daniel Osberg was a great man. He also was a friend of mine. He was a great friend of mine. He was a great friend of mine. He was a great friend of mine. He was a great friend of mine. Our phone number ends in 2-1-1. Our phone number ends in 2-1-1. Daniel Osberg was a great man. He also was a friend. I talked with him. He was just quite unique. He was a beautiful man, too. Very good looking. And he actually, we need him today more than ever. Because the big plan, he brought that monasterity in the White House to start World War III. Doomsday clock right now is the closest effort to midnight. We are in horrible, horrible shape. Meanwhile, let's live in peace while we have life in the world, Berkeley and everywhere. So let's work together. Mayor, give me a call. Have a beautiful and good night. Greatest city in the world. Thank you. Good night. Thank you. Next is Tina Echeverry. Okay, I'm unmuted. Well, first of all, thank you very much for putting this on your agenda tonight. I am Tina Echeverry. I'm the treasurer of Berkeley Rotary Endowment. And we have organized as a major fundraiser every year the Taste of Downtown Berkeley, where we try to showcase the restaurants along Shattuck Avenue. However, we've moved it to a biannual event, so the next one is in 2027. However, we still have major financial projects going, service needs. We have 14 scholarships that we give to Berkeley High students, and these are four-year college scholarships. So there's a major need financially to support these students from Berkeley High School. We give them to students that are low-income in their family and usually first to college. And not only is it a scholarship, but we mentor them for the full four years. Thank you. We also have the RotaCare Free Clinic. Tina, thank you so much. I'm sorry, your time's up. Next is Demarcus Williams. Hello, everyone. My name is Demarcus Williams, and I run the risk of sounding redundant, but I'm actually the chair of the Tommy Smith Youth Track Meet, and it's just wonderful to be in your presence. On this evening, I just really want to thank everyone for their participation, all the council members who are donating. There's been a lot of talk about food, right? And one element that is pretty unique to this track meet is we actually feed all of the athletes. So there's going to be over 4,000 meals given out for free to these young athletes. This is a community event and not your traditional track meet. Tommy Smith, who has dedicated his life to being a humanitarian, will actually be present. So I really want to stress the opportunity for you to come out to that meet and join he and the rest of the 100 black men in that epic ceremonial parade and really see where your funds and your efforts are going to be able to make an impact on so many people. We have nearly 50 teams and over 1,000 athletes coming out to compete. Thank you so much. Thanks, everyone, for your public comments. I think that's our final one. All right. Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar? Second. All right. Is there any opposition to approving the consent calendar? OK, we will approve that by unanimous consent. Our consent calendar is approved. Thank you all. OK. Sorry. Oh, yes. All right. There it is. Ceremonial thing of the gavel. OK, so we are now moving on to our action calendar. We have a number of public hearings this evening. And I'm going to start us off with number 20 to reestablishment of the downtown Berkeley property based business improvement district. Now, this is kind of an unusual item in the way in which we have to go about it. But I will explain to you all the sort of process. And I will start it off. We're going to start it off with Eleanor. Actually, I'm going to pass it over to you and then I can talk more about the process. Sure thing. Thanks. Can you guys hear me OK? Good evening, mayor and council. I'm Eleanor Hollander. I'm the manager of the Office of Economic Development here at the city of Berkeley. And tonight I have the pleasure of introducing an item we've actually talked about two other times before. This is our third meeting regarding the renewal of the downtown property based business improvement district. As many of you know, the downtown pivot is managed by the DBA, the downtown Berkeley Association. And it provides cleaning and hospitality and marketing services for Berkeley's downtown commercial district. The downtown bid was first established in 2011 for a five year term and renewed in 2016 for a 10 year term. And the item before us tonight proposes to renew the district for another 10 year period through 2036. The authorizing legislation for renewing a property based business improvement district in California requires a council to conduct a public hearing. And upon conclusion, if no majority protests exist after the tabulation of the assessment ballots, then you have the privilege of considering the resolution to reestablish the downtown PBID. And if the district is adopted, we'll also consider a contract with the DBA for 10 years to administer the management district plan of the. How many acronyms can I say of the PBID? I just wanted to say one thing. Speaking of the DBA and the downtown Berkeley Association, I wanted to extend a special thank you to John Caner, the DBA CEO, for his dedicated service and partnership of this district since 2011. Thank you. Did I miss anything, Mr. Clark, in the process that I should make sure I mentioned? So we're going to go look at the ballots, but I'll turn it back to you, Mayor. That concludes my remarks. Yes. Thank you very much. So we've already opened the public hearing. We're going to take council questions now on this item. Then we'll take public comment. Then council will vote to close the public hearing. The ballots will be counted in the gym, which is over by the parking lot. The public may view the process. And after the tabulation ends, the city of Clark prepares and signs the certification. And we will reconvene the item to accept the certified results and consider the rest of the item, which includes adopting two resolutions. One approving the potentially I guess it depends on what happens with the ballots, but potentially approving the downtown property based bid for the next 10 years and approving the contract, the DBA to implement the bid. And so what is going to happen is they will go and count, but we will move on to the next item. So just so folks understand, we're doing a little bit of crossover tonight. Okay. So with that, are there any council questions? Okay. Is there any public comment on this item? We are on item number 20, which is reestablishment of the downtown Berkeley property based business improvement district. Yes. If you have public comment, come on up. My name is Tim Southwick. We've been a landowner and business operator on Shattuck Avenue for over 50 years. And 10 years ago, we signed up for this project. And we have about $140,000 invested in this project. And the one main reason we like what they do, they're trying very hard. We like them. We like everything they're doing. But we signed up for it for graffiti. And our main issue is the BART station, the BART tunnels that go into the BART station. They're filthy. The graffiti is crazy. They're not cleaning it up. So I have an idea. I'll opt out of the next 10 years. Actually, I don't like 10 years, five years. I'll opt out of it. And our company will take it upon themselves to get rid of that graffiti. It's awful. It's an expensive project. They say BART's going to come by and do it. Ten years, they didn't come by and do it. So the downtown association, if they had a chance to do it, they didn't do it. I drive by every day and I see this. I can't stand it. We're going to invest the money, our money, to clean up the tunnels that go down. Just figure people that come from out of town that walk up those stairs to go to the University of California, and all they see is this damn graffiti. You can't believe it. And I'm going to clean it up, but I need your permission. I need your permission to opt out because I think this ballot is going to pass, which is fine. I don't have any problem with that. But I want to opt out because cleaning up this graffiti is going to be a big project. And so I hope the council will allow me to do it. And you'll see a clean BART station that you don't have to worry about. Thank you. Thanks for your comment. Hello, all. My name is Tom Parrish. I am the vice chair of the board of the Downtown Berkeley Association, and I just wanted to speak to the value of the Downtown P-BID and the Downtown Berkeley Association for what it does to keep downtown clean and safe. And as the manager of four properties for Berkeley Repertory Theater Downtown, I can attest to the value of those services. Thank you. Thanks, Tom. Thanks for coming. Any other public comment? Oh, yes. Good evening, council members. I'm Tim Southwood, Jr. You've heard my father this evening, and I just want to tell you that I applaud what John Koehner and the Downtown Association has done since 2011. However, as my father said, we're in support of the measure. The term is too long. Ten years is too long. I'm in favor of reducing the term to five years. We're committed to clean up all of the graffiti and everything that the Downtown Association does, but I implore you to look very carefully at the term of the P-BID. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any other public comments online? It looks like we have two hands raised. First is phone number ending in 211. Hi. I had a very good discussion with Eleanor Hollander a few years ago. You know what the subject of the discussion was. She left. She really left. Reminding her of that. What we need to do, why in the hell do we have all of this empty, vacant retail spaces all over Telegraph, Shattuck, and Babel, University Avenue, when this could be thriving businesses? Why don't the city do what they did years ago, but fine these landlords? What the hell are they doing using our own land, our own city, to drive business out of town? Please consider that very carefully. Again, Eleanor, hi. Thank you. Perhaps we could meet sometime soon. You'd be a very good person to have a talk with. Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you. Next is Cheryl Davila, former council member. Excuse me. This is a no-bid contract. I see $33,558,899 million for this 10-year contract. That is so ridiculous. I'm sure you could do better when you're facing a $30 million deficit. Come on now. This is ridiculous. I don't even know if they do that great of a job. And if they did, if you're going to pay them that much, they should. Because that's a lot of money. And it's a lot of money that really is not justifiable at this day and time. Just like all the other actions that you do are not justifiable at this day and time. You haven't done anything about the arms embargo. You haven't said no to fascism, racism, Zionism. And the genocide continues. But you guys aren't remorseful. But hopefully you won't be here for that long because it is an election year. And please do vote, everyone. Vote Pamela Price for DA. Butch Ware for governor. His name wasn't on it because it was an orchestrated attack to keep his name off. So write Ware in on the ballot. And stop talking while I'm talking. At least try to pretend like you're paying attention. It's really sad how you guys play games. And you know what? I noticed that also people have told me that when I speak, you don't have me on camera when I'm in the room at the podium. What kind of shenanigans is that? Everybody should be treated equally. Thanks for your comments. Any other public comments? That's it. Okay. Very good. Thank you all so much. So can we have a motion to close the public hearing? Wait, I'm sorry. Give me one second. Yeah, I was going to say we did council questions, but what's not on my list is comments. I'm sorry. I was going to say we did council questions, but what's not on my list is comments. On the bed itself. So I think we should take comments and then we'll close. Well, we could close and then take comments. Doesn't really matter. Does there a motion to close? Second. Is there any opposition to closing the public hearing? Okay. We will close the public hearing then. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Mr. Hollander and everyone. I just want to say, you know, this isn't my district, but I have had the pleasure and honor of getting to know the folks in DBA and work with them. And, you know, some of us have partnered on things over the years. And John, I want to thank you so much. And I want to say thank you to Matt Jervis and everybody, the ambassadors, Tom from the rep. And I mean, you all are more than welcome to do the whole city. If you could find a way to do that, well, we'd be happy to have you. But I want to just thank you all for what you do for the downtown and for your advocacy for all of our commercial districts. And just I, you know, it's your vote and it's your just for the record. We're not spending any money. This is their money that they're spending. So thank you for doing that as well. And whatever you all decide, I just hope we can continue working together. Thank you. Yeah. Councilor, Vice Mayor Trageb. Thank you so much. First of all, to the gentleman who spoke about concerns with the graffiti at the BART station. My chief of staff is here. We're happy to connect you with the BART director and our staff point of contact there. I want to just echo Council Member Tapley's comments. One in in the 23 months that I have been in office as the downtown representative, one of my most joyful and proudest parts of the job. Was spending a lot of time at with John and his entire team, whether it's at downtown Berkeley Association, monthly meetings are one on ones. And just in general, the downtown Berkeley community is so fortunate to have you at the helm, John, as well as all the members of the DBA team, some of whom are here tonight. And just very excited to hopefully be able to move this forward for 10 more years. Thank you very much. Any other comments from council members? I just want to add my thanks. John is just an incredible advocate for the downtown. He's been an amazing partner on so many different projects. And my office has been really focused on supporting our business districts and just generally our local businesses. And John's advocacy and making sure we have vibrant storefronts, supported businesses, clean streets, and also serving our in-house population is just really, it's admirable. So, John, just please know that I really see all the work that you do. And just totally based on my own experiences, I was recently I had guests visiting and they saw a glass bottle that had broken in a traffic light. And literally, we walked on the block, came back and the glass had been picked up. And I just think that that really just illustrates so beautifully how much work that people are doing to keep our streets clean. So, thank you so much to your ambassadors and all the work that's going into the work that you're doing. We want to continue to make sure that our downtown businesses and all of our business districts are being supported. So, thank you all very much. Okay. So, we've already closed the public hearing. The ballots are going to be counted in the gym. And then we will return back to this item. So, in the meantime, thank you very much, Eleanor. And in the meantime, we will move on to item 21, which is the proposed FY2027, FY2028 biannual budget and proposed biannual budget public hearing number one. I sort of want to give us five minutes just so you can have staff come in and get settled and we can take a quick stretch break. So, we will be back in five. Recording stopped. Recording in progress. Okay. Thank you, everyone, so much for your patience. We are going to open the public hearing for item number 21, which is the proposed FY2027 and FY2028 biannual budget and proposed biannual budget public hearing number one. I will pass it over to our city manager and ask that everyone quiet down, please. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you, Mayor. As you all know, we have a significant structural budget deficit. We've talked about it quite a number of times with the Budget and Finance Committee. We've talked about it with all of the city staff a number of times. You've seen the reports that are in front of you tonight. So, tonight, we will go through both the budget balancing plan, which focuses mostly on the general fund part of the budget. But we will also cover the full budget, all funds and all positions. And so, it's a fairly long presentation. We'll try to not belabor it too much. But we do want to do it justice and speak about it in a fairly high level of detail. This is our first budget hearing with you. Our goal is that we would bring this back June 23rd for adoption. And there would be iterative steps between now and then with the Budget and Finance Committee and coming back here as well. And so, presenting the budget tonight will be a fairly long presentation. And so, presenting the budget tonight will be Budget Manager Maricar Dupaya and our Deputy City Manager David White. We also have all of our department heads either here in the room or online if there's more detailed questions about those budgets. So, with that, I will pass it over to Maricar to start us off. Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Thank you. So, tonight we are going to present the proposed Fiscal Year 27 and 28 biannual budget to the full Council. First, we're going to give you the big picture situational overview. Then, we're going to go and move on to the summary of our general fund. Thank you. After that, we'll move on to all funds, which is our overall budget for the City for the next two years. We're going to talk about our proposed 27-28 staffing, next steps, and, of course, discussion. Fiscal context, impacts, and unknowns. We've mentioned this several times, but it's worth repeating that we are experiencing a structural deficit not only in the general fund, but also in other funds. Some examples of that are parking, marina, and our CIP. There's rising costs in personnel, pension, health care, and liability insurance, and that's nothing new. There's labor negotiations that are unknowns. Inflation, which is coming back with a vengeance. Reliance on one-time sources. We're also waiting still on our year-end results for Fiscal Year 26. We have deferred maintenance and significant unfunded infrastructure needs, which we just talked about in our special meeting. Increased service demands and community expectations, and the November 2026 ballot measures. I want to pause a little bit here and talk about not just the two local ones that we discussed earlier today at the special meeting, which is the gold bond for infrastructure as well as the use tax and sales tax, but there's also a state ballot that has garnered enough signatures and will be on the ballot this November, and it's called the Local Taxpayer Protection, and that has three components. The first one is it's not going to require two-thirds supermajority vote to pass any citizen initiative tax measures. There's also going to be a really strict restriction on property transfer taxes, and it cannot go above state level rates. And lastly, the third component is it will repeal any property taxes that were passed two years prior. And last but certainly not least on this list is our state and federal revenue limitations, as well as our chaotic economic and political uncertainty. So I've heard this asked before. Have we faced deficits before, and how did we avoid large-scale reductions? This slide is specifically to address that, and the short answer is yes, we have. So from fiscal year 17 through 2026, we took about a 10-year look back, and city costs grew faster than revenues, so average growth of the last 10 years, 8% growth in expenses and 6.5% growth in revenue, and that's actually skewing the average a little bit because in fiscal year 2022, we had that one large anomaly of our property transfer taxes reaching $40 million, so that was like a 24% increase in our general fund revenue. COVID-19 shifted our economic landscape for the city and for the whole world globe, actually. The city balanced our budgets by using temporary one-time measures. This is not an exhaustive list, but some examples of those balancing measures were using ARPA funds, the property transfer taxes that I just spoke of, hiring freezes, project deferrals, use of fund balances, reserves, and transfer in from other funds. Now, these approaches never address the underlying structural deficit of the general fund. And although budgets were on paper technically balanced, expenses continued to outpace revenues. This slide goes into more details of the type of balancing measure that we did for those 10 years. So for 2018-19, we had a deficit of about $10 million, and that was resolved by resetting property transfer tax baseline. Originally, at that time, it was $12.5 million. It got reset to $10 million so that we could have $2.5 million more for operating. Transfers from other funds increased, transfers to other funds decreased. In 2021, $40 million was the estimated deficit, and that was addressed through hiring freezes, no capital investments, and the use of our reserves, $11 million. In 2022, $27 million, and that was when we utilized $23 million of that, of the ARPA funds, deferment of large capital projects, equipment purchases, and new projects. In 2023, $22 million, we used fund balance and salary savings for vacancies. 2024, $12 million, the same balancing measures. 2025, $17 million, we used the same balancing measures, but we also added the use of the Section 115 trusts and taking a workers' comp holiday, meaning that the general fund did not contribute into the workers' comp fund. Fiscal year 2026, the most recent one that we addressed, $29 million. There was an increase in the general fund revenue projection. There was a use of the Section 115 trusts again, our workers' comp fund, IT cost allocation, small sites reallocation, and the freezing of 45 vacant positions, which will come into the conversation later on. For the 27 and 28 budget development process, we knew that we were going to have a structural deficit. However, we wanted to approach developing the general fund baseline a little bit differently than in the past. So what we've done, instead of just copying prior adopted budgets, we actually looked at actual expenditures, looked back about four years, and asked the departments not just to look at the four years' actuals, but look ahead to see what their actual needs are. And that's how we developed the baseline budget. Hopefully, this will eliminate inefficiencies and replace outdated budgets. And this was based on data-driven spending patterns and the real costs of services. The updated general fund baseline for overtime, hourly, and non-personnel expenses reflects this approach. For the baseline, our personnel assumptions includes the following. There is a cost-of-living increase for miscellaneous employees, but for fiscal year 2027 only, because it reflects current MOU. There is no COLA in fiscal year 2028 at all. This is subject to change depending on labor negotiations. There are step and pay band increases for all eligible employees. All add-pays associated with employees and specific classifications are there in the projection. Increases to all benefits, and the majority of that is from health and pension costs. A good example is our health costs increased 10% from 2026.

Segment 5

Segment 6

Council members of the Berkeley City Council are here today to discuss the proposed budget balancing plan. The proposed budget balancing plan was proposed by the Berkeley City Council last year as a last resort, and they only identified field positions as a last resort, with focus on preserving core services and to support long-term fiscal health. The budget balancing plan, which David spoke about, includes 183 FTEs. However, this proposed budget includes 150 FTEs reduction. 45 of that is vacant from the prior fiscal year 26 budget balancing measure, and 85 vacant, plus 20 filled in this biennium. The remaining 33 FTEs from the 183 total are preserved. And what we mean by that is that 15 of those 33 FTEs are vacant, and 18 are filled. And they are preserved by using the one-time resources that I spoke about in prior slides, ensuring that these positions are funded in fiscal year 2027. And we're allocating this cost to the sales and use tax. For fiscal year 2028, the revenue is included in the projection, but however, if the measure does not pass in November, additional reduction will be required in the mid-annual budget update to balance. The next three slides really just gives you a more detailed look at the cumulative reduction in force, and this is broken down by position. This includes 183 positions that I spoke about earlier, and this is cumulative with fiscal year 26 and 27 and 28. This is actually also included in the financial summaries that was part of this item for tonight. Mayor, did you want to pause here for questions? Because this presentation is so long, I wanted to pause during certain parts of it to allow us to ask some questions, so we're not just asking 100 questions each at the end of the night. Does anyone have questions? I'm going to start with Councilmember Chaplin. Yes, thank you very much. I have four questions for budget, fire, PD, and PRW. FY20 assumes the passage of the sales tax. Do we have any draft projections of what things will look like if it doesn't? It's okay if we don't have those. I just want to know if we do. If the sales tax doesn't pass, do we have any draft numbers of what deeper cuts you might have to make? Do we have any kind of scenarios that we might need? We are currently allocating in fiscal year 27 $9.4 million of programs and services between police, fire, parks, recreation, and waterfront. That goes up to about $9.6 million for fiscal year 2028. If the sales tax measure does not pass, assuming all else remains unchanged, we would have $9.6 million of proposed budget reductions to address in fiscal year 28. Thank you. For PD, Chief Lewis, I'm wondering if you can describe some of the work that the special units do and how CSB interacts with the community. You said public works as well. PRW. PRW, sorry. Maybe if you want to start heading up this way. As you know, our patrol personnel do the immediate response to calls for service. All those other units that we mentioned, the bike force, the community services bureau, the detective division, they're the ones that do the follow-on investigation or relieve the immediate tension that the patrol officers would face if they had to handle those calls for service. It allows us to engage with the business districts, the community, and ensure we have a proper follow-up of investigations. Thank you. For fire, can you talk about the street trauma prevention program and the neighborhood utility of the CERT trainings? Sorry, what was the second part of the question? The second part was the neighborhood utility of the CERT trainings. Street trauma prevention program, I think everybody's somewhat familiar with. It's a novel program started here. I think it's the first in the nation where we're trying to integrate the fire department into the Vision Zero process for the city and look at how we can achieve what are two righteous goals, both reducing street trauma and death and also maintaining or improving response time so we don't see an increase in injury and morbidity on the emergency response side. Let's see. CERT. It's a longstanding community education program that helps prepare individuals and drive neighborhood preparedness for all types of disasters. Essentially operating under the idea that people are going to be on their own for 72 to 96 hours following a major disaster. There should be a personal preparedness plan and neighbors should come together to prepare for that period of time. Thank you. For Director Ferris, can you give us a sense of the number of community center and pool hours that would be reduced and how many families might be impacted by camp and after school reductions? I think we had, you know, it depends on how you divide it up, but we had planned on one scenario means that we'd close the pool on weekends, reducing after school spots by, I think it was 35 or 45 and reducing a variety of summer kind of low income camp spots and a variety of other programmatic changes. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Moving on to Council Member Blackaby. Thanks Madam Mayor and thanks everyone for being here. Just to be really clear about the next fiscal year budget, so Station 4 and the 9 fire department personnel and the 15 police officers and 6 dispatchers that had been considered to have been reduced in the initial balancing plan, those are retained. I just want to be crystal clear about that in the process so folks know. That's correct, along with 3 positions in the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department that will continue to maintain pool hours. We know what's at stake and we know this is an option that's been considered, but for the next fiscal year those are all retained. One kind of global question, maybe this is for the City Manager, you know, what we're seeing is certainly not unique to Berkeley. We're seeing a lot of local jurisdictions, we're seeing the county, we're seeing the City of San Francisco that are struggling with these really big structural deficits. Is there anything, you know, are there any other trends or things that are going on that we can look at there that apply and how does that affect how we balance our budget here? Basically, how much of this is local to Berkeley and how much is other effects that we're trying to deal with? Well, as you point out rightly, this is a phenomenon that we're seeing in a lot of other jurisdictions as you said, ranging from San Francisco to Oakland to Alameda County to Hayward, San Leandro. We're seeing it happen all over and, you know, there's different reasons for the deficits in different places. I think as the staff described here today, part of it on our side is expenditures going up higher than revenues driven by a lot of different forces, whether that's inflation related to whatever's going on, COVID related, or in this case we're anticipating more, you know, Iran war and oil price related increases, and so there are a lot of different reasons but we're seeing similar deficits all over the Bay Area and in the private sector too. On the homeless services side, it feels like one of the big elephants in the room when it comes to the budget is just what, if anything, is happening with Measure W from the county and when we can expect funds or do we have any visibility? I find it incredibly difficult to budget when we don't really know what's happening there. Could you speak a little to that? I can, but not with a lot of comfort. Unfortunately, we also don't have a lot of insight into when the county's going to release various tranches and types of Measure W resources. You all have done, collectively as a council, a good job advocating to the county for Berkeley's needs. We also, on the staff side, talk to staff in the county a lot, and so we do have good and open lines of communication. I think partly they're just still figuring it out on the county side also. Would we expect that when the funds come that they are supplementary or could some of that actually replace city spending? Does that free up city spending or how are we thinking about that? Well, it's a good question and we have really tried to make the case to the county on both of those sides of that equation. One, you heard today, and you know that we have this fiscal cliff issue with the motels, and that has been something that we have really highlighted with the county to say we respect and appreciate that we want to do more and create more programs and housing opportunities, but at the same time we need to be thoughtful and cognizant of not adding to the problem by letting programs that we already have established and know work cease to exist. And so we've made that case quite clearly to them. You all have helped make that case also, so they're very aware of it and I'm hopeful that they'll take that into account when they start figuring out how exactly they're going to put forward their Measure W funds. Great. Two more things and then I'll be done. On the fire side with Chief Sprague, some of the feedback we've gotten certainly from residents in addition to obviously opposing the closing of the fire station, which I share, I could not vote for a budget to close station for, but folks are asking about, you know, we passed Measure GG in 2008, we passed Measure FF in 2020, but the fire department is also significantly supported by the general fund. Just help us understand the sources of funding and why we can't just rely on FF and GG to fund kind of the overall fire department efforts and why general fund is an important part of that. So the fire department, I think, fairly uniquely is 30% funded by special funds. So our general fund budget has now about 90% of it pays for sworn staff operating out of firehouses, whereas most of the administrative functions have been shifted to these special funds over the years, primarily because they've either stopped and then been restarted when these special funds were passed by the voters or services were expanded by the voters that are paid for exclusively by these special funds. So when we're talking about a general fund deficit and reduction in the general fund, there's not a lot of positions that are possible to cut that don't directly impact service delivery. Does that answer your question? Yeah, so 30% of your budget is from the special funds but 70% is still from the general fund. Correct. So that's part of what's happening is the majority of your funding still comes from the general fund. It does, but because all those administrative services have been pushed to special funds, 90% of that general fund allocation is paying for people that are in the firehouses delivering service. Got it. Okay, last one. A PRW question. It's actually a PRW to fire connected question. We've talked about this before. I noticed one small bullet point in the PRW slide was reduction in spending on fire fuel work. Obviously that's important to D6. Can you talk about that? How sizable is that and is that something we could figure out a way to at least restore some of? The reduction typically in the last couple budget cycles we've gotten $450,000 to do visitation management and tree removal in the right-of-way in the hills. This year with the cut we'll probably eliminate all the tree removal. My city feels comfortable that we have done a lot of good work over the last 8 to 10 years in the right-of-way. Money started coming in in 2016. We're in pretty good shape there. I think we're proposing not to cut the $223,000. We'll go into vegetation removal in the hills. That might look different in fiscal 28 than 27. It would be the same. Thank you. Council Member O'Keefe. Thank you. I think this question is for the WDC city manager or maybe Chief Sprague. I was wondering if you could speak a little more about how the decision was made to target Station 4 for potential closure. There's no good firehouse to close. Each firehouse has a huge impact. It's the second slowest station. Station 7 on Shasta is the slowest station, but it's so isolated. One, if we close that station, response times would be so much longer. Also, I can only cover it from one side, from the west, from Station 4. Station 4 is the second slowest station. I can cover it from 3 sides. 7 can come down the hill. Station 2 can come from downtown. Station 6 can come from the west. If there was a station to close, you want to close a lower volume station because all those calls don't go away. They have to be redistributed to other companies. Then you look at how can I fill that hole, fill the gap that's left. Do you have an estimate on how much longer it would take the average response? Unfortunately, we don't have that type of technology at our fingertips. I was wondering if any alternatives like did you consider perhaps trying to save the same amount of money by distributing the staff reductions in a different way like a brownout model or reductions across the board rather than closing a station? Closing a fire station to us is kind of a nuclear option. We looked at every other scenario. Brownouts, keep in mind, that's savings via overtime. You're not saving full staff costs there. You're only saving the difference between what it costs per person to staff full-time and what it costs to backfill that vacancy with overtime. It's a much lower savings. In order to reach the $3.5 million target, we'd have to close upwards of two fire stations a day with the brownout model, which just isn't feasible. Second to last question. How many residents in the high fire zone are currently served by station 4? I don't need an exact number, but do you have a sense? I can get it. I'm not sure. Some. I wouldn't want to venture to guess, but thousands for sure. Thank you for those answers. This is very concerning. I didn't know you shared the concern, but it's just good for the public and for us to get an understanding of how this decision was made. Thank you. I just would like to clarify also for the record, this is more of a procedural question. We're not going to vote on this budget tonight. We're far away from that. Let's say this was the proposal that we voted on. The idea of closing the station is a projected outcome for the next fiscal year. Is it true to say that if we did pass this proposal or something like it, that we would have another chance to vote on actually closing the station the following year? It comes back. If you could help us understand that process. I'm not sure. The short answer is that our hope is that the sales and use tax in November passes and we don't have to have that conversation. That's the plan. If that fails and we're back here having that conversation, we would immediately start planning on what would that look like. Then we would be having another series of budget and finance committee meetings where we're talking about that, budget hearings here, preparing for what's the fiscal year 28 budget look like. We'd have to decide that obviously between November and June. The council would get another chance to weigh in on that? Correct. I'm not comfortable voting on a budget that would actually close the fire station, but I understand this is a projection sort of a loose plan for next year and hopefully we'll have to figure that out. That's helpful to have that clarified procedurally. Thank you so much. And just to reinforce the city manager's point and the point Mayor Carr made about our budget projections, the fiscal year 28 revenues assume the sales and use tax measure passes. Of course, yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Vice Mayor Tragob. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I have five questions. Some of these I've asked before in committee, but I thought it would be valuable for the public's benefit to ask them here. Others are new. Three of them are related to HHCS, specifically mental health and behavioral health. I don't know who the appropriate person would be who is available to answer these, but I will just step through these. I wanted to ask about the impacts of moving certain funding for mental health and public health to the county. Specifically, I just need the percentage. Generally, what percentage of the funding streams come from the general fund versus those that are passed through the county or other revenue sources? I am certainly not advocating closing any department. Just to be clear, since we have received some questions from constituents, if we were to move all of our public health functions to the county, would that even be possible and would it save any money? Could you speak to that? The first part of your question, are you asking specifically what percentage general fund supports public health and mental health? I believe our fiscal manager is also online. Hi. I'm online and I'm working on those calculations right now. I can try to provide them sometime during this meeting. I can say at a high level, Council Member, that part of your question was, what would the process be? It would be a complicated process where we would have to get authority from the state and authority from work out an agreement with the county. As you are alluding to, there is general fund subsidy in public health, mental health, and environmental health. One of the questions that would be asked of all of us is, if we were to transition the public health division to the county, what part of that city subsidy would go along with it, if any? We would just have to be clear eyed that if the answer was none, then we'd be understanding, here's what we're not funding anymore. The budget and finance manager can speak a little bit to that later on in the meeting about how much that is. If you want, we can come back with more detail about specifically what programs we're talking about. Thank you for my understanding based on past conversations is any savings would be somewhat minuscule as a proportion of the overall budget to fund mental and behavioral health. I just wanted to confirm that. My next question is around the operational impact of discontinuing the global crisis and the county picking up that function. If I am walking in the district, as I do every day, and I see a mental health call, or a mental health situation, do I have options available to me around calls for service other than PD? Or do I call 911 or the non-emergency line, depending on what the issue is? Mobile crisis services would go to the county. My understanding is that the county would be your option there. This is probably a longer conversation around how would the public be informed what number to call if they want a call to go to the county. Moving on, I wanted to ask what direct or indirect impacts to behavioral and mental health services there might be as a result of the governor's May revise. Specifically, are there aspects, I know it just came out, really this is a question of to the extent you've had a chance to look, does it impact any of the projections positively or negatively? Yeah, the May revise budget just came out so we haven't taken that into account and it's not finalized. Especially as it pertains to behavioral health monies. Thank you. This is my penultimate question. Can you speak broadly? This might be for David. When it comes to revenue generating positions that may be at risk of being caught, how are projections being made in terms of the potential opportunity costs of then not having staff available to apply for certain grants or to realize additional revenue generating opportunities? I'll start off with in developing the budget balancing plan and looking at our revenue projections, we did not anticipate any impact for revenue projections from the budget balancing plan. However, there is reduced staffing that is proposed in the budget balancing plan that will impact our ability to go after grants. We're trying to preserve some resources to maintain our flexibility to do so, but it won't be as broad as it is today. In terms of other revenue opportunities, as we mentioned, there are two positions in the finance department. They're vacant today. They're vacant for some time, but if they were filled, they certainly could enhance our ability to generate revenue as well. Those are some of the things that we're looking at. Thank you. My last question is around later on this agenda, we will be voting on potential fee increases. You're going to have some of my time. Can you just confirm that the current budget assumptions does not factor in those fee increases? If that is the case, what may be the impacts directly or indirectly on the budget projections if we do not approve the recommended fee increases tonight? The fiscal 2027 fees that we'll be discussing later are not included in our proposed budget. Therefore, if they do pass and we start receiving revenue, we will then have a better idea and that will be implemented in the 2028 new annual budget update. Thank you. Those are all my questions. We have a couple of Councilmembers left. I want to remind folks we're only a third of the way done with this presentation. If you could keep your comments brief, we will keep getting back to it. Councilmember Bartlett. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you for this very sobering and, of course, very alarming budget. I have a question about the fire station closure. Mr. Sprague, are you here still? This is regarding the fire station closure. How does the budget training work? I'm thinking about the measure FFs of the world and the things we've worked hard to provide what felt like direct funding to BFT. The budget reduction exercise was there's a general fund deficit, so cut 10 or 12.5% from the general fund. We looked at there is some cost shifting that we did due to UC funds, Measure GG and Measure FF, but we were very careful to stay within the confines of how those measures were written. Alternatively, we could have legally gone in and taken the full 6 million out of those measures, but then our feeling was we were kind of going back on the promises that we made to the voters when they passed those measures for expanded services. If we were to use those funds and supplant general fund dollars, if that makes sense. I think so. I think that made sense, actually. I'll have to watch it later and break it down again. Very disturbing. Is the HECS person here online? Yes, I'm here. Regarding the significant cuts to your department, I'm wondering if any of those cuts are restored via the proposed bond measures and sales tax measure that we are contemplating putting for our voters. I don't believe any of our I'll defer to you on that. Mr. White, would you know that? Regarding the HECS officers who were cut into the plan, does the sales tax and the bond measure restore any of those or any of the services performed therein? The sales tax measure only supports within the police department, the officers and dispatchers, fire station four, and then three, position and parks, recreation and waterfront to preserve those services.

Segment 7

The Berkeley City Council Meeting of the Berkeley City Council. And we're going to be talking about the work that's being done in terms of community programs. Okay. And I guess all for now. Thank you. Thank you very much. Was there another? Council member Lunaparra, did you? No? Okay. Thanks. Okay. I want to get back to the presentation and I also am wondering if the tally is done so that we can finish that off so folks can leave. They just need to get over here and confirm it. Yeah, they have to, you know, put it all together. Do the certification form and everything and they'll bring it over here for me to sign. We also need to open the other public hearings before 10 p.m. Yeah. Okay. So what I want to do is I'm going to say first I'm going to open all of the public hearings for the remaining items. That is item 20. Do you need me to read them all or can I just? 22. The animal care services fee schedule. 23. The neighborhood services code enforcement fee schedule. 24. Changes to the environmental fee health fee schedule. 25. Fees, health, housing and community services facility rental fees. 26. Changes to selected recreational recreation facilities and program fees. 27. Changes to the planning and development fee schedule. 28. Repeal and reenact Berkeley Municipal Code chapter 14.52 to adjust the go Berkeley parking management program. 30. Changes to the parking permit fee schedule. 31. Change parking permit fees establish a new schedule for parking violations fines and late payment penalties and rescind resolution number 7, 1, 6, 2, 7, dash and S and 29 0 waste plan checks and compliance inspections fees. Those are now all opens before 10 o'clock so and finish another third. Go ahead. So this next section is focusing on the general fund. We wanted to show you the trajectory of the general fund from the baseline development all the way to what we're proposing right now as a proposed budget. So for 2027 the baseline the revenue projection was 297.2 million personnel expenditure at the time was 225.5 million non-personnel came in at 105 million a total expenditure of 329.5 million so we were looking at a deficit of 32.3 million dollars. Do we need to stop right here? The fiscal year 20 yeah go back thank you. Okay that's fine and where the fiscal year 2027 proposed what we are presenting to you today tonight is a revenue of 314.9 million dollars and the total expenditure of 313.9 million were actually have a surplus of 981 thousand dollars and the proposed surplus is subject to change obviously as the budget is refined. The current estimate reflects a combination of the revised revenue projection from February 2026 a routine budget cleanup that occurs working with departments. We added a one-time general fund resources to the revenue as well as an increase in indirect cost charges and implementing the budget balancing items. This slide talks about the same thing but for fiscal year 2027 the baseline revenue at the time was 302.3 million the total expenditure came in at 335.6 million and we were looking at a deficit of 33.2 million dollars after the revised revenue the budget balancing and typical budget process cleanup the proposed includes a revenue of 320.3 million dollars total expenditure at 319.6 million with a surplus of almost 700 thousand dollars so this slide talks about what change from 2027 and 2028 baseline versus 2027 and 2028 proposed and it breaks it down a little bit more than the prior slides and what this really talks about is this is all personnel and it goes tells you the increases from those major cost drivers under the personnel category so health and retiree other pensions salaries workers compensation and overtime and it really just highlights that the bulk of our reduction came from our personnel costs general fund revenue by category so this is a breakdown of the revenues that we receive we receive we have a lot of revenue sources from the general fund so we categorize some of them but the takeaway from this is that our number one revenue source that goes into the general fund is property related taxes which comes in at about 45 percent and the other revenue are coming from business license tax sales tax utility users tax vehicle in lieu and interest income which totals another 31 percent those are our top revenue generating which is why I spent a little bit of time earlier talking about the state measure that might be on the ballot this November this slide shows a breakdown of our expenditure by department so the city the city clerks budget shows a million dollars more than what was in the budget balancing plan that's because we kept that one million dollars to preserve it for the known increases in our property and liability insurance the city manager budget decreased more than what was in the budget balancing plan because we are moving the whole budget for the animal services to its own fund for the 115 animal shelter fund and the one departmental increased because we are transferring out money from the general fund to fund 115 and also just a slight note that the library does not get any typically does not get any general fund allocation and the rent board gets an annual fixed amount of $370,000 the proposed general fund expenditure by department and this really just breaks down our biggest cost driver for the general fund and it's no surprise that it's public safety then HHCS there's also general government which is administrative our legal department so that's city manager mayor council HR IT city audit all the charter offices finance and then departmental is also a big cost driver and that typically is transfer out from the general fund to other funds one of the example of that is $13 million or so that we transfer annually from to the CIP fund for $4.1 million of annual baseline and the $8 million plus CPI for the PCI improvement this is just another look of the proposed general fund by expenditure but it's broken down by category so I wanted to point out that the biggest driver again is salaries can you guys hear me the salaries and the next point is I wanted to point out that the capital outlay is significantly smaller than prior years and that's because this budget cycle we did not have any one time allocation to capital projects that stems from the general fund some of you who's been here before are familiar with the term tier one where we would have general fund funding available and we would allocate those to one time programs or projects this time around we did not have that opportunity in this proposed budget thanks this is another one of our little pauses does anyone have any questions council member thank you I just have a quick question about the vacancy tax and if that's in the other tax section I just didn't see it on the list yes it's in the other taxes is the vacancy tax underperform or overperform this year like where is it on the our finance director can speak more specifically I understand for this fiscal year we had I think 2 million dollars budgeted and right now we've collected about 400,000 was the last time I checked I haven't seen the most recent monthly numbers if director has anything updated he can speak more specifically it's underperforming is that because property owners aren't paying it that have vacant units or because there are less vacant units than previously combination of both this is the first time we're building it and we are partnering with the rainboard the rainboard send us and so we've been having issues with maybe the building itself and the collection piece but this is the first time we're doing it and so we are in the middle of looking at one of the reasons why are we not building enough or if the assumptions we had was wrong whether the information we had about how or whether the rental people are actually doing their renting we're not having enough we can see as we thought they would have but we're looking at it to review why it's not performing as we proposed thank you thank you councilmember taplin thank you and for my edification can you clarify how slash why there be a surplus if we have a structural deficit clarify what again how there would be a surplus if we have a deficit do you want me to answer that so we started off with a general fund deficit however after we did a budget balancing measure plus the application of the one time use of the twelve point zero four five billion dollar one time revenue and the changes in indirect cost charges among other things we ended up with a very small amount of of no longer a deficit but a surplus thank you had we considered using that to replenish some of the one time borrowing that we did or so-called one time borrowing that we previously done from let's say the pension trust or the workers comp fund no no we didn't councilmember we as budget manager said we're concerned about some expenses coming in higher than we thought for example the insurance came in I don't know quite a lot higher than budgeted and we think there's going to be some other ones behind that one right so we want that for to account for volatility exactly yes to address some of those issues the challenges and unknowns that we talked about earlier thank you very much thank you councilmember back be two questions first around the sales tax so our fiscal twenty-eight proposed revenue that assumes a full year of the sales tax is that right correct okay so without the sales tax and we again we think that's around eight or nine million I think that's nine point six four okay so just looking at fiscal twenty-seven versus twenty-eight revenue without the sales tax our fiscal twenty-eight revenue would actually be three eleven in fiscal twenty-seven revenues three fourteen so without the sales tax we're actually projecting a reduction in revenue year over year do we know kind of what's driving that is that a henry question if henry's there i'm just curious year over year what's what's happening to cause us to project a reduction in revenue if there's any one or two particular things we we know where all the projections that we have for the next five years there's just a marginal rate of revenues like about two point three three percent where there's no reduction in revenues from for the next five years that we have the just marginal rate of return is what we have so for twenty-seven I think we're projecting we change that and then it's like three ten for twenty-eight or three eleven and then it's three eighteen for twenty-nine and it's three twenty-five for twenty-thirty so all our five-year projections like about two to three percent increase in revenues okay I was just observing on that slide between fiscal twenty-seven fiscal twenty-eight if you subtract out the sales tax in fiscal twenty-eight it looks like anyway just take a look at that that's a really good observation and yes because in twenty twenty-seven we incorporated in the revenue the one time twelve point zero five million dollar for the one time use correct and that's not included in twenty twenty-eight yes last thing non-personal expenditures so even after again we've gone through this exercise we're trying to reduce where we can baseline to proposed in both twenty-seven twenty-eight like non-personal expenditures or forecast increase is that where we're seeing the things like increased insurance and some of these like you know everything else is coming down you know personal expenditures are down seven percent total expenditures are down four point seven percent but non-personal expenditures are up a million dollars even after this sort of budget balancing exercise just curious again what's driving yeah what's driving that if we know our non-departmental because we did move some we increased our general fund non-departmental again to offset some of the animal services move we also increased our non-departmental to predict some UAL costs due to because UAL costs is a fixed cost no matter how many staffing how many FTEs we have so we did a very rough estimate of how much we would still need to pay even if we lose FTEs and there's other various things that we added there's this unexpected insurance I know there's other things in twenty twenty-seven and twenty-eight even though we in the baseline we treated up what we have budgeted in the past for insurance then US estimate we received is still about half a million dollars more than the increase that we have already implemented in our twenty twenty-seven budget and this is for things like seismic fire you know just correct okay thank you thank you so much I'm sorry I have in my rush to continue us on I didn't get to ask two questions for both chiefs one of the question is maybe chief or David can you clarify which of the specialty units will shrink and which ones will end I just wasn't clear on that slide yes so most of our units are already working at reduced staffing just from attrition we've had over the years we would get to the place where we'd have to make the assessment about whether we just continue to shrink them and try to keep them all open but relatively ineffectual or close one together we haven't got to the point where we've really laid out what that exact decision making would be thank you I appreciate that and then for chief spray can you just speak to just follow up on what council member Tappan was asking about the street trauma prevention position like how has that been working is there currently anyone in that seat can you just talk a little bit about that please sure yeah it's it's a filled position Ron is here in the audience and it is it's an exciting program because it's new because this is an issue across the country where fire departments and Vision Zero employees in public works and advocates in the community are kind of coming into conflict often when everybody's focused on saving lives but it's a difficult situation so we're trying to create a program that can deconflict that bring people together that find themselves at odds in this situation and the work that's coming out of STP and that Rania is doing is novel it's from everything I'll put it this way until Rania came I was the only one that had time to think about this stuff in our department so there's just nobody to do this work so she's helping move things forward that are as simple as adopting a modified speed hump that allows us to pass that many other jurisdictions already have in place to as complex as having numerous groups of Cal students work on a variety of different projects around technology community perception so all kinds of interesting work is really starting to flow out of that program right now and unfortunately all that would stop because it would go back to just me being able to focus on it when I have time. Did I answer your question? I appreciate that. That's helpful. In the theme of making this an even more confusing meeting we are going to pause this really quickly so that we can take care of this item that we had not finished earlier now that we have gotten the tabulation of the votes and was the city clerk were you able to prepare and sign the notification? Yes so the city received 175 ballots the staff reviewed and tabulated those ballots 170 of which were valid they are weighted by the proportional financial obligation of the affected property how much of the assessment that they'll pay and the weighted tabulation of the ballots is yes 81.53% and no 18.47% so the bid can be renewed so there's the two actions on item 20 there's the resolution reestablishing the downtown bid for a 10 year period and then the second resolution authorizing the city manager to execute the contract with the DBA for the 10 year period as well. Thank you. Did you have another comment? That's it. Is there a second from Councilmember Keserwani? Were you going to say something? All right. Very good. Can we please take the roll on this? To approve the recommendations to reestablish the downtown Berkeley property based business improvement district Councilmember Keserwani? Yes. Taplin? Aye. Bartlett? Aye. O'Keefe? Yes. Blackabay? Yes. Lunapara? Yes. Humber? Yes. And Mayor Ishii? Yes. All right. So thanks everyone. All right. Back to the budget. Sorry everyone. I know this is very confusing. All right. Let's finish off the last third of this unless you have another question right now. And this is something that's been on my mind for a while trying to just kind of quantitatively think about the assessment of, you know, position cuts, right, position eliminations, et cetera, versus the cost, I guess the medical kind of wear and tear on the body from overtime or early retirement or burnout. I'm trying to just have you thought about that? Are there people that think about those numbers? Well, it's an interesting point because it's the same thing we discussed. If we cut our staffing levels to a minimum just to fill minimum staffing, then any absence requires overtime to fill it. That's what we're experiencing in our communications center right now. And we do see a lot more end of career workers comp related injuries or stress related injuries as a result of it. We see what we experience is some degradation in the quality of service we can provide by the officers because they're tired. The communication center's tired. The officers are tired. So absolutely that's a real factor that we look at when we look at how we address the budget deficit with the money we have to save, which is in personnel. Is there some sort of Berkeley inspired smart ratio of sort of overtime balance with not adequate staffing, but some sort of marginal balance between available staff and amount of overtime that functions kind of well? We know a couple things to be true. One is that even at a set staffing level, you have 10 to 15 percent that are gone for injury, vacation, training time off, and whatever. So that's one allowance you have to consider. The other thing that we know is that the balance of the cost for an FTE and the salary savings you might experience by not hiring, which then has to be filled by a position doing minimum staffing for overtime creates an automatic deficit, a structural deficit in the way that our system works. We know a couple other things too, which is that we have been able to work within our budget. So our patrol division, which is the largest financial driver of our overtime, that's our biggest division, the division that has the minimum staffing, they are able to work year over year pretty close to at their budget. So we know that there's just a certain cost of business of unexpected calls, needs for training, wellness needs for the officers that cause you to have some amount of overtime, the unpredictability of it. In other situations, like our communications center, we are over 300% over our budget because of how decimated we are in staffing in that unit. And those things are harder to absorb. And so as you're looking at how you can, like I said, look at salary savings to cover or reduce your minimum staffing or the way you staff a unit, when you know you have a bare minimum that is required to do the work, if you get too close to that margin, then you force overtime, which has a negative health effect, negative service effect, and also raises up your overall cost. Is that a similar sort of understanding around the dispatch personnel? Because they're stretched as well. Do they do overtime, or how does that work? Yeah, we have a significant amount of overtime that's mandated for our communications center. They have been understaffed for a very long time, working under very hard conditions. That is, like I said, they're 300% over their normal budget because of how narrow that margin is. Thank you. All right, let's finish off this last chunk, please. So this next section is talking about all funds, so not just general funds, but it does include our general funds. It's broken down by categories. So capital project funds is at $34 million for 2027. For 2028, it's at $34.3 million. Debt service is at $7.5 million for both. Enterprise funds, which is one of our biggest funding sources for the City, comes in at $137.2 million for 2027 and $140 million for 2028. And general funds is $327.7 in 2027 and $333.2 in 2028. I want to pause here to explain for those of you who can recall that the general fund revenue we mentioned earlier is like $314 in 2027 and $320 in 2028. This general fund, all funds, includes the whole general fund family, and so that includes funds anywhere from Measure U1 as well as our payroll deduction trust. So the whole general fund family is included in here. That's why there's a discrepancy in the number. The grant funds is at $42.5 for 2027 and $42 for 2028. Our ISF, our internal service funds, at $51.7 million in 2027 and $51.7 in 2028. Other funds at $15.4 both in 2027 and 2028. And special funds is at $155.8 in 2027 and $148 in 2028, totaling $772 million in 2027 and $773 million in 2028. This is just the same information but broken down just to see the bulk of our all fund sources. The number one source is coming from the general fund at 42%, and coming in next is our special funds at 20%, enterprise funds at 18%. So those three funding sources alone combine 80% of all of our funding sources for the City of Berkeley. We're now moving on to the expenditure side of all funds, and this is broken down by department. So this is a little bit different. I just wanted to show how vast the services we provide in our funding sources instead of just focusing on the general fund. So in general fund, the number one expense source was public safety in terms of department, but now it's flipped a little bit. Public works is 26%, HHCS is at 18%, police is at 12%, non-departmentals at 11%, and general government at 10%, fire at 8%, and PRW at 6%. This slide shows the difference between baseline and proposed. So for 27 baseline, it was $832.2 million and the proposed here is at $5.2 million. So that's a huge increase of about $73 million. For fiscal year 2028, the baseline all funds was at $848.1 million and in the proposed budget, it is $865.3. So that's a difference of $17.2 million. So I just want to address the examples of the increases in the non-personnel. So we opened up the budget to the departments after developing the baseline.

Segment 8

Because they know their funds that they manage best. There's Measure O, it's $27 million. There's also a capital programs that have been budgeted. That's why there's a huge increase in non-personnel. For example, Measure FF Streets is a good example. There's a $29 million addition from baseline to proposed. Another one is for another $14.5 million just in overall capital projects. Some of the decreases come from fiscal year 2027-28, the CIP fund. It's about $2 million decrease. We talked about their stressed fund. So Public Works did a really good job cost shifting that fund 501 personnel cost to other appropriate funding sources. Do we need to pause? We're not going to pause. So this is the next section is about staffing. We kind of touched on this during the first part of this presentation. But this breaks it down more into detail of what we are looking at. So the full-time equivalent total is 1,604 or 1,605 FTEs. The largest departments are Public Works, Police, HHCS, and Fire. The general fund supports 663 FTEs or 41% and all of the other funds support 941 FTEs totaling 59%. This total of 1,605 almost includes the Library and the Land Board. Excluding these two and we only talk about charter offices and city manager managed departments, the total goes down to about 1,445 FTEs. This next slide shows historical, not just the proposed. And as you can see we had 1,504 FTEs in 2024 and in 2027-28 we, with a proposed budget, we had 1,604. I want to point out that the highest increase in our FTE came between from 2022 to 2023, where our workforce increased by 8.7 percent or 127 or 128 FTEs. The 2027 and 2028 proposed staffing level decreased by 9.3 percent for 164.3 FTEs compared to 2026. This proposed budget, as mentioned earlier, reflects a reduction of 150 FTEs from the budget balancing plan and the 33 FTEs from the 183 total that we mentioned is preserved for the meantime. So that concludes our presentation. So we're going to talk about next steps and discussion. So before we go into discussion, we just wanted to briefly talk about timeline and expectations. So we're here today to talk about, we presented the proposed budget. On May 28th, we are going back to Budget and Finance Policy Committee to talk about the CIP, the five-year CIP, and also the Mayor's budget recommendations. On June 9th, we are going back to the full Council to present the five-year CIP. June 16th is a potential discontinued discussion in front of all of you regarding both the biannual budget and the five-year CIP, because by that time you would have all seen and heard. We would have presented them. And then hopefully June 23rd, we are going to adopt the 2720 biannual budget and the five-year CIP. And just looking ahead, July 1st, the fiscal year 2027 begins and the budget balancing plan that's adopted, whatever form that is, will take into effect. And July 2nd, employees being impacted by the adopted budget receives notices. So we're now ready for a discussion of the proposed budget. Thank you. Thank you. I think we actually have questions first. So are there any other questions for this last section of the budget? I will start with Council Vice Mayor Trago. Thank you. This is just a request on slide 36. No, I'm sorry, on whichever, I guess slide 34, when you talked about the discrepancy between the general fund and the general fund plus family of other funds. If it might be possible to share a breakdown of all of those funds, I would be interested in seeing a tabulation of that. It might have been in the budget book, and if so, I apologize, I didn't see it there. Also on slide 37, the accounting of how non-personnel expenditures increased from the baseline to proposed. I would benefit from seeing a graphical representation of the cost shifting to get there. Thank you. Sorry. We'll get it. Okay. Yeah, thank you. For sure. I wasn't sure if you wanted to address that. All right. And was there another question? Okay. Anyone else? Questions? No. Okay. All right. We will go on to our public comment on this item. If you have public comments on item number 21, which is the proposed FY 2027 and FY 2028 biannual budget and proposed biannual budget public hearing number one, please come on up. Come on up. Yeah, I think I have a couple of minutes over here. Okay. One, two. Is there a third minute? There's one online. There's one online. The last name is Nigel Kofsky. Okay. Theodore. Theodore, are you okay with giving your minute? I'm going to assume yes. Go ahead. Okay. Good evening. Honorable mayor and members of the city council. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Justin pitcher and I'm a recreation program supervisor in the parks, recreation and waterfront department here to speak tonight in my capacity as president of public employees union. Local one asked me before you night is the first reading of the budget. It has been a long way to get here. But at the same time, our work has just begun. My representational unit stands to lose 20 positions, 5 of which are currently filled. Proposed cuts include 1 in engineering, 2 in mental health, 1 in the waterfront and 1 in the fire department subject to bumping. Many of our team are here in solidary tonight. Earlier tonight, you heard from 1 of our members, Abby from the rent board, who stands to lose a position through the bumping process, having received an impact notice just weeks after joining the city team. I want to reiterate that the city decided to fill this position and Abby brought her family to Berkeley, giving up stable employment to serve our amazing community with an implied insurance that the city intended to fill the position. We are on the cutting edge of making a difference across Berkeley. Her program will cease to exist with the elimination of her position as chief Sprague has indicated that he has no other staffing to shift the program to the city is in the current process of applying for a grant that would fund this program over the next 4 years, starting in July of 2021. Eliminating this program now is very short sighted. These are but 2 stories of public service that will be lost in the budget elimination process. All budget reductions have an immediate impact on the services we provide across the city. As you can imagine, this is a trying time to be a member of the city of Berkeley team. As you can imagine, this is a trying time to be a member of the city of Berkeley team. Tensions are high. Uncertainty is next level and express feelings make some days at the office unbearable for those of us that continue to give our all to fulfill the duties of our assignments and more. We're an amazing group of dedicated individuals who serve our constituents day in and day out around the clock. As we progress over the next 6 weeks, and we work hand in hand with the council to ultimately adopt a budget in time for the June 30th deadline, we ask that the council acts with care for all of us, especially those who provide the services that are on the table for elimination. Through the budget and finance committee process, the unions continue to uphold its commitment to being a partner in balancing the budget. Furthermore, we are grateful for the partnership forged by the esteemed city manager through his union leadership budget meetings and are looking forward to continuing that partnership with each of you keep an eye out in your email for our meeting requests. Well, each of us is a civil servant. We're also members of society, members of families and upstanding citizens who stand to lose a lot through these reductions. Tonight, the council celebrated the work that many of our members provide. We are the managers and supervisors that make public works happen. We are the engineers that built Willard Clubhouse. We are the analysts and admin and fiscal services managers that have made the hard recommendations to make these cuts that are impacting city services. We all are the boots on the ground that engage with our community every single day. In closing, I urge the city council to look at each of your employees as real people and not a statistic on a budget spreadsheet. Think of our families and those we support in each hard decision ahead, plan to work within our means and work today to protect services tomorrow. We can't change the past, but we can prepare for a more stable Berkeley tomorrow. And on behalf of the hardworking members of Public Employees Union, Local 1 AFSCME, I thank you for your time. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Leah Simon-Weisberg. I live in District 2. I serve on the Housing Advisory Commission. I'm here tonight because there are several projects in District 2 that are ready for funding from the small sites. We don't have enough money for any of those sites, and so we have housing that is being put at risk. Last year, last time we did the budget, you know, when you look at the coverage, we talked a lot about small sites. We didn't have the money was not placed in that, and now we've not been able to have fun projects. I think I know you're balancing a lot of different things, but I think just to echo the situation that the county is placing us in and that they are not ensuring that we can fund programs that we know work and we're going to lose them. The same thing is happening with small sites. It's a program that really, really works, but you have to actually fund it. Please, please protect what we have and, if possible, add so we actually have enough for the projects. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have one volunteer to cede her time to me. Thank you. I'm Rebecca Webb, and I am the chapter president of the clerical chapter, and I'm here representing both the maintenance and clerical chapters today. Can you talk into the mic? Sorry. Sure. You can hold it up. Yeah, there you go. When we first received the proposed budget in March, we breathed a sigh of relief because we saw that none of our people were going to be out the door. As you recently heard, that's not true for all of the units. But that sigh of relief was kind of short-lived when we look at the list and saw that what we were losing is 50 5-0 positions in our unit alone. That's about 10 percent of our workforce, and that represents your laborers, your landscape gardeners, your 9-1-1 dispatchers, your 3-1-1 customer service. One of my personal favorites, your payroll clerks, your all a whole slew of boots on the ground employees. And that's just a hard pill to swallow that we're going to be losing those positions because that we know means that that work now lands on the people who are still here. And we did hear our city manager tell us in an all staff meeting that it is understood that you cannot do more with less. But that is that that's easier said than done because we are the ones who are seeing people face-to-face and the community expects just as much out of us today as they did yesterday, the day before and tomorrow. We're not going to get any less 9-1-1 calls, we're not going to get any less 3-1-1 calls, we're not going to get any less potholes or any less blades of grass that need to be cut. All of this work needs to be done. And it will be on the backs of people. As you saw, the majority of where we have to cut is in the budget. One of the things that I really want to touch on that is important for you to make sense of is that this really does the buck stops here. We are all stewards. Everyone who collects a paycheck, is there someone who will cede a minute to me? Thank you, a minute over here. Thank you so much. Everyone who receives a paycheck in the city of Berkeley, thank you payroll clerks, is stewards of our resources and our assets. But really the buck stops with you all on where those resources are led. I oftentimes will see items on the agenda that, to your point, a million here, a million there, there's a half a million here. Where is that going? And sometimes I see in the rationale, not much more than, because we need it. Really? If I had said that to my mom in the 10th grade when I wanted to go to Great America, can you give me 50 bucks? Why? Because I need it. That wouldn't have flown very far. That's it. That's it. You really please pay attention to what is before you and what you're spending on, because that is your decision, whether you approve or don't approve of the actions that are brought before you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good evening, Council. My name is Christina Oatfield. I serve on the planning commission, although I'm just here speaking on behalf of myself tonight. While listening to the staff presentations and prior speakers, I'm appreciating how challenging the budget situation is and how the city is between a rock and a hard place. But I am here to ask that the council try to come up with a restoration of at least some of the funds that were previously cut from the small sites program to fund basically anti-displacement strategies for vulnerable residents. I've been involved in this for a long time. I work with affordable housing organizations in various jurisdictions around the state and I've seen over and over again how local government dollars can be used to leverage other fundings to acquire and rehabilitate properties with vulnerable tenants. So I hope we can continue to invest in that strategy. Thank you. Council members, I know expert on the budget, but I can say this. It's really jarring to hear that there's not going to be a warming center. That's just it's just not what it is. How much does it cost to pick up the bodies? Because that's what you're talking about. It's a total abdication. And I have to say that it really chaffs to see $3 million allocated for the Dwight and Telegraph. How can you possibly spend $3 million on that triangle? And yet nothing, not a dollar to people when it's freezing cold, when they're wet, when they're hypothermic, when they're dying in the street. And I don't understand because I heard the chief say that there's a staffing crisis. I've heard you guys worrying about money and so forth. By eliminating all non-police responses, I'm sorry, all by eliminating, we have no non-police response to calls for service that don't require police. You've got the Community Services Bureau, they're responding to non-criminal calls. We did this through the reimagining process. We said that what you have in your budget, it says that the only response to mental health emergencies and wellness checks will be police. That's the absolute most expensive alternative you could choose. That is the, that's just a total waste of money. You could have actual people, actually trained, who actually are trained in this field to respond with care and with, you know, thrift. So please justify some of your choices because it's making no sense to those of us who live in this town and palace people in need every day. What are you doing? Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Matt Gustafson. I'm a resident of District 2 and I work with the Bay Area Community Land Trust. I'm here to advocate for the Small Sites Program to be adequately funded in FY27-28 budget. Berkeley's naturally affordable so-called housing stock is rapidly shrinking. According to the California Housing Partnership, since 2020, Berkeley's lost around 1,000 homes affordable to low-income households in this town. 1,000. Berkeley's Small Sites Program was built to preserve these homes and to transform them, not just to preserve them as affordable, but to transform them into community-controlled social housing, really. And the program is working. We're grateful that the Council's funded this important program in the past. And I just want to say that the allocation that's currently coming from Housing Trust Fund this year is not really enough. The program is built for projects of 5 to 25 units. Right now, it could support maybe a 5 to 7-unit project at most. There's residents of a 23-unit property in District 2. Some of them were here earlier tonight and they had to go home, but there's not enough money to purchase that property right now. So, please fund Small Sites. Thank you. Thanks, Matt. Hello. Good evening. My neighbor, Lisa, is ceding her time to me. Good evening, Council and Mayor. My name is Angela, and I'm here to ask the Council to fund Small Sites, a critical program to preserve and create naturally-occurring affordable housing. I'm a part-time staff with City of Berkeley Recreation at the Adventure Playground. I've loved working there for the last year. I'm also a resident in District 2 at Addison Court Housing Cooperative, which is just two blocks across the street, a limited-equity housing co-op that the city helped grant an initial loan 30 years ago. We house income tiers from 50% to 80% AMI and diverse ages from 1 to 83 years old, and some of our elders have moved out, allowing for a new generation to come in, like me. We maintain affordability through collective decision-making, real-life mutual aid and care for our neighbors through life changes, resident labor to maintain our 100-year-old garden departments, which are really cute. Thank you to Lisa standing over there, who is our longest-term resident and one of the founders when the previous landlord needed to sell. She had our 80th birthday party around the block at BK Studio and is a big reason our buildings are so beautiful and sustainably maintained, as a maintenance gardener by trade and former gardener teacher in town. We also maintain affordability due to our 99-year ground lease with the Northern California Land Trust. Recently, I've joined the staff with Matt at the Bay Area Community Land Trust and the skills I've gained in living in cooperative living here and in Illinois. There's hundreds of projects around the country maintaining affordable housing and caring for our neighbors and for the communities we truly live in, and we can invest in it because we have permanence and love our neighbors and the people we live with. And now I can support other low-income tenants in Berkeley to buy their property and learn how to collectively manage it and stay in place. Please appropriately fund and support the small-size program before long-time community members and naturally occurring affordable housing becomes displaced. Thank you. I always have to lower the microphone here. I'm sorry? Oh, okay. Yes. Two minutes. Thank you very much. My name is Michel Tueti. I know a lot of you in some way or another. I am one of the organizers for the Firewise groups as well as HelpBerkeley.org. I am not here to advocate for specific programs, but to talk maybe more about process. My corporate career was in more than 30 years in startups. In startups, we typically have a runway of approximately two years, sometimes less, sometimes more. We constantly have to make priority decisions that involve people and involve money. And when we hear the employees and the union reps and everybody discuss the consequences of these decisions, it's always very difficult. What we do, however, is we use a very different budget management system in those organizations. That's priority-based. It's called priority-based budgeting. And that's the only way that we're able to actually manage the constant changes that we have to affect to be able to reorient companies that have a very short runway ahead of them. Now, in 2013, the auditor of the city of Berkeley commissioned a study by the Gelman School of Public Policy that recommended the use of a hybrid version of priority-based budgeting for the city of Berkeley. When you look at what it would enable, it would make a very significant difference. You have time to adopt a system such as this one over the next couple of years because the decisions you're making today over the next couple of months are going to have to carry through. But by using priority-based budgeting, you can actually use strategy to be able to make changes to allocations rather than looking at a 10 to 12 percent cut across the budget. Thank you very much. Thank you. Carol Morozovic, Chair of the Homeless Services Panel of Experts, speaking to our unanimous recommendations. First, I want to state that there will be additional revenue that will be coming in in late 2027 when city Measure W kicks in, and if we can get past these hurdles. We vigorously oppose ending, terminating the emergency shelter. Staff's position is that there is no location. However, the city manager has produced a list of locations to you of city-owned properties that can be used for a shelter. And as far as the monies, contracts can be renegotiated for the leases at the various motels that are going on. And as we have calculated, a 10 percent reduction would result in $370,000 to the $358,000. I have two minutes. I have one from Ron Tory. One from Kelly. And one from Kelly Hammergren. Thank you. We recommended continuing to fund the DBA social workers. It's less than a half. It's $40,000. You see unhoused people lined up all over downtown without outreach. We would like to see this continue to be funded, but we want more vigorous coordination with the city and better case management. We do believe that the community services bureau has performed an important function because they actually respond a lot to the public and puts a human face on policing. And they hear complaints about the homeless and mitigate those concerns. And otherwise, they're just going to go bombard the city manager with more complaints. Also, BFD, the mobile crisis team was already operating a skeleton crew. This investigation by the federal department of justice and the federal litigation is extremely important. It holds the county responsible. We need to hold their feet to the fire on these services. This investigation, which included persons from Berkeley and mental health crisis, showed that people were being disproportionately, particularly black males, sent to Santa Rita jail and John George. And this requires community based services. And we need to be very aggressive to make sure that Berkeley gets the services that is required under this under this settlement agreement. We concurred with with the pathways reduction, and we asked that the city spend a little more money on consultants going back to the mobile crisis. Again, this involves community based services, which is mobile crisis, crisis residential and and peer respites. And we need to make sure that we get our fair share at the county dime. Thank you. Thanks, Carol. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next item on our agenda. The proposed by 2027 and FY 2028 by a new budget and proposed by an old budget public hearing. Number one. Okay, first speaker is. Ben Nash. Yes, good evening. My name is Ben Nash. I represent district 3 on the parks, recreation and waterfront Commission. I'd like to present some highlights from the commission's 1st annual state of the parks report, which we hope you'll read in full. I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we are a city that has a lot of equity and strain already limited facilities and programs. We recognize the city's difficult fiscal situation, which is why the commission recommends several long term strategies. Most importantly, a parks impact. Berkeley is expected to add thousands of new residents in the coming years. Yet we already fall below state parkland standards are considered critically underserved under state law. In addition, we would like to acknowledge that the city is committed to supporting the development of parks, parks facilities, a well designed parks impact fee is fundamentally pro housing. It would ensure that new development contributes to the infrastructure needed to support a dense global city. These fees do not burn existing taxpayers and can include exemptions for affordable housing. We encourage the council to fund Nexus study for future parks impact fee, which would not commit the council to adopting the fee, but would provide the information necessary to seriously evaluate this. Next is Andy cats. Good evening Andy cats chair of the Community Health Commission, speaking on behalf of our unanimous recommendations to recognize the difficult fiscal constraints, we asked for three things. First retain the heart to heart program with at least one FTE, or require a real transition plan to a community based organization before any position is cut. The heart to heart is not duplicated by FQH seeds. It is the community bridge that connects black Latino low income and uninsured residents in south and west Berkeley to care they would otherwise never access the health status report documents a 10 year life expectancy gap between flatland and hills neighborhoods, driven largely by cardiovascular disease. This program is how we close it, but eliminating the program.

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How can we ensure that the program could disrupt the experience learned in continuity with community partners? Second, retain at least one FTE for public health emergency preparedness. And third, we express deep concern about the unhoused population and all who are served by behavioral health programs. These cuts fall hardest on residents with nowhere else to turn. Thank you. Next is John Koehner. Hi, John Koehner, Downtown Berkeley Association. As I spoke at the budget committee, the homeless outreach position, specialist position that has been co-funded by the city started off as a 50-50 match. And over the last four or five years, we now contribute $50,000 and the city $40,000. It's not clear at all that we can afford to continue that going forward. And I know there's a lot of pressure, but this money is levered with the Downtown Berkeley Association. And as Carol said, this position is really important for the downtown. So thank you for your consideration. Bye. Thanks, John. Next is Tom Parrish. Hi, I'm Tom Parrish. I'm a resident of District 6 and an arts leader in Berkeley. I'm calling in to advocate for maintaining funding for the civic arts grant program. Cutting civic arts funding is a bad fiscal decision and could cause the city to lose more revenue than the amount of expense savings. According to the Berkeley Creative Economy Economic Impact Analysis from December 2025 by CBL Economics, civic arts funding has a high return on investment. Every dollar of civic arts funding catalyzed $197 in total economic impact across the city. The creative economy is a generator of property tax, sales tax, transient occupancy tax, and other forms of revenue. And in 2024, Berkeley's creative economy helped generate $10.7 million in tax revenue, representing 3.9% of the city's tax base. Maintaining or growing funding for the creative economy is critical for both the recovery of this sector and the fiscal growth of the city of Berkeley. Thank you. Thanks, Tom. OK, that's all. OK, thank you very much. We are going to go to comments from my council colleagues, starting with Council Member Taplin. Thank you very much. And thank you to everyone who spoke. I especially want to thank our labor partners and our city workers. I want to thank the budget team and city admin and the Budget and Finance Committee. Madam Mayor, I think I want to close at the last council meeting where I budgeted and financed, but you did ask us to come prepared to share our budget priorities. Is that correct? I did. Yes. Thank you. Thanks for remembering. Of course. Of course. I write down everything you say. Just it's just me. I didn't want to I didn't want to preface what I'm going to say by sharing. I think, you know, we all remember a time when the city could do all kinds of amazing things. And that was because we have amazing organizations and community partners and staff and leaders. And we were able to subsidize parking at the marina, subsidize the kite festival, subsidize events, pick up people's fees, make generous contributions to people doing really great work in the community. And I think we did that because we believed in the work they were all doing. We want to make people happy. We want to invest and hold our public spaces in a way that could really flourish and resonate and embody our values. And I think we did that as long as we could in a way that perhaps we are now being confronted with a need to reevaluate how to not just keep what we have, but get back to a place where we can do more. And that is going to be very difficult, but I do think that we are all committed and dedicated to do that if we can keep focus and persevere through these tough seas that we find ourselves on. So to answer the priorities question, I'll just go through these. First and foremost, and to the extent possible, my priority is further minimizing or even, if at all, possibly preventing reductions to the city workforce and disruptions of core city-provided services and critical city-run programs. The Capital Improvement Program, the Marina Fund, Waterfront Projects, and Parks and Recreation Programs. Sorry? Slowly. Capital Improvement Program, the Marina Fund, and Waterfront Projects, and Parks and Recreation Programs. Keeping Station 4 open, sustaining the street travel and prevention program, and CERT trainings, and retention of the fire crew positions created by the SAFER grant. And the maintenance of the Community Services Bureau operations and special units like the Bike Force, the Flex Teams, and community safety partnership programs like Live Free. And that's my list, and I have some more time left. And I think that, you know, I do want to call out what the person said about priority-based budgeting. That resonates with me. I think it's easier said than done. There are 9 of us. There are 8 districts. We have a very large, involved community that has a vast array of economic needs, and we have a lot of disparities. But I think that we have to keep the balance of subsidy and investment with fiscal viability, because we can't fund programs that we don't have workforce or revenue to sustain. So, moving forward, I want to offer my commitment to my colleagues and our city admin and everyone to getting us out of this mess. And, you know, I'm proud of myself for not blaming everyone who came before us. But we're here now, and I am cautiously optimistic that we will find ourselves in a place where we can not just keep what we have, but give even more than we have before. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Bartlett. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And just to quickly note my priorities here for you. It's more thematic. There's a couple of specifics. But essentially, you know, recognize we're going into a turbulent time. There's really no way around this. We have to go through it. You know, the pension funding formulas and the health care costs, the President just took out a trillion dollars out of health care in this country. You know, so what we see is going to get a lot worse. And so my priorities are the catch-all is to defend the weak. So that takes take care of seniors, small sites, mental health departments, outreach people, a warming center. I can't sign in there. I can't believe I missed that one. A warming center. Okay, so good. And police and fire, obviously. And so that's sort of catch-all. Just make sure our quality of life does not degenerate. We have to step over people starving in the streets in front of us. Thank you, Council Member. Vice Mayor Trago. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. That was wrong. Council Member Humbert. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I want to thank the city manager, the deputy city manager and their staff. And I also want to thank staff in the finance department, especially budget manager Depaya. And I also want to thank everyone who spoke here tonight. Very moving statements, particularly by our city employees. I found them very moving. We have a difficult budget situation, to put it mildly, to deal with this year. It's something that has been decades in the making, unfortunately, between the economy, the federal and state pullbacks, which, as Council Member Bartlett said, are just going to get worse, at least on the federal level. And one-time fixes that have run out. We're having to look at some devastating cuts. Tonight, my personal goal has been mainly to listen and hear everyone's concerns and suggestions and carry these forward with me as we consider what adjustments we may want to make to the budget proposed by staff. In terms of my personal priorities, I would say public safety and fire. I would say preserving as many jobs as possible, and particularly retaining positions or the proposed one position to be cut in OED, because I think long-term, OED is going to help us grow our tax base. They've been doing it at heroic jobs, so I want to put in a pitch for OED. I want to make sure that we still have adequate neighborhood services. And given what's happening just globally, we need to focus on cybersecurity, frankly. I think we need to really bear down on that in our budget. But that's all I have, really, at the moment. So thank you, everybody who spoke here tonight. Thank you so much, Council Member. Vice Mayor Trakop. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I want to echo what has already been said by my colleagues. I want to thank the City Manager and his team for working with us to propose a budget that reflects these times. In a way, this is a budget that meets the moment that we are in. That does not make it at all easy. We can no longer afford to continue the status quo, because doing so would just continue to backdate the pain and make the shared pain even harder in the future. That said, there's an enormous amount of shared sacrifice that has already been made. The budget is a reflection of our values. It is one of the most consequential votes that we will take on the Council. I know that whatever this budget looks like in the next month, this will by far be the most challenging vote that I hope to ever have to take in my Council career. No one runs or wishes to serve to try to prioritize which programs to cut. That is quite inimical to the reasons that we all run and serve. However, due to a variety of reasons, we must exercise a kind of priority-based budgeting. I do appreciate the Mayor asking us to come up with priorities. Broadly, I will name mine. This was ingrained in me on day one of my first job. I mentioned this, I think, on the first day that I took office. The people are our greatest resource. Anything we can do to protect the jobs of as many people as we can. Thank you for sharing who is behind these 3-1-1 and 9-1-1 calls that I too have had to make as I walk around the District. This is not to the exclusion or minimization of many other worthy and worthwhile programs. These are my three go-to-the-mat priorities. I will move to extend time. What time is it? Is there any opposition? We have a bunch of stuff still to do. Are we going to do all of those? No, we are not. No, we are going to try to get through as many as we can. I don't want to get into it too much, but I do want to say that I really don't want us going super late on these items. I just feel like we are not in the right space to make good decisions. I think it is better if we end by 1130. That is my push for the 1130. Is there any opposition to approving an extension to 1130? No opposition. We will move to 1130. Thank you very much. Council Member, you have 41 seconds. Go ahead. Your priorities, please. My priority is trying to retain the Field 1 FTE position within the Economic Development Department for the reasons my colleague, Council Member Humbert, already said. These are vital to the downtown and all commercial districts in its revenue generating. Trying to find a way to find the $40,000 match to the DBA and then the street trauma prevention program would be my third within the top three priorities. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, moving on to Council Member O'Keefe. I want to start by thanking city manager, deputy city manager, budget team, all of the department heads who came and spoke and also who worked hard to come up with. I know each department came up with its own proposals for cuts, and I know that was very painful and hard work. So I just want to thank everybody, everybody who is part of this fun process. I really want to acknowledge that many of our city employees will be losing their jobs. And that is a deeply painful reality, especially given inflation and the job market right now and the rising cost of living. I just really want it. I know we've all we're all naming that and I'm going to name that too, because it's really important to just give some space for that reality. Unfortunately, it's our responsibility to make decisions that preserve the longtime financial stability of the city. It's a really heavy and profound responsibility that I know we all feel. I do want to say as a District 5 Council Member and also from a perspective of citywide prepared emergency preparedness, I have really, really profound concerns about the prospect of closing Fire Station 4 if the tax measure does not pass. And I want to emphasize that is a hypothetical closing, but it is something that's being discussed. The Berkeley Hills, of which I represent part of, faces unique wildfire risks, constrained evacuation routes, steep terrain, narrow streets. And we can all remember, and I know Chief Sprague included the lessons from the 1991 firestorm. And the area around Station 4, which I happen to represent, has one of the oldest populations in the city. And so this is, these are people who are more prone to emergent health problems and also more vulnerable in the event of a wildfire. So, you know, this is really a matter of life and death. So as we move forward, my only, my main priority is just to remain focused on protecting all of the residents of Fire Station 4. My main priority is just to remain focused on protecting all of the services that are most fundamental to public safety, most specifically preserving the fire and other public safety positions. I would add the street trauma position. I would prioritize that. And beyond that, I just, I want to make sure we get a permanently balanced budget, so we can move forward with protecting the long term stability and resilience of our city. Thank you, Council Member. Moving on to Council Member Blackabee. Thanks, Madam Mayor. I'll try and be quick. I just want to associate myself with the comments on my colleagues, with our appreciation for all the staff work that's gone into this from the city manager on down. I'll just say, Mari Car, I don't know how you keep all the facts and figures in your head. It's amazing. Your eyes look like they're glazing over, but we appreciate everything you've done. And Dave as well for just walking us through this through countless budget meetings as well as tonight. So thank you. I'll say, look, I mean, everything is important. We all we value so much the work that our city staff does. I also know that, you know, when I was elected, I think I was elected with the knowledge that our most important priority is keeping people safe. People want to live in Berkeley and they want to be in a place where they feel safe. That is still kind of my North Star. Public safety is still, for me, the number one priority. As I mentioned before, I mean, there's just no way I could vote for a budget that closed Station 4. Along with Council Member O'Keefe, you know, they're responsibly representing the Berkeley Hills. Station 4 is important to that. Station 7 is so important to that, given the wildfire safety that we face. So I appreciate the fact that we're not being faced with that now. I know that's still hanging out as a future prospect, but I appreciate that that's off the table for the next fiscal year at a minimum and hopefully for good. I also appreciate the fact that we're able to retain the 15 police members and six dispatchers that were initially considered for reduction. I'd also ask for the potential of maintaining some of the CERT funding and some of the fuel reduction funding we talked about before. This all, to me, goes in that public safety bucket, and to me, that's preeminent. That's just the basic expectation of a citizen in this city is that they pay taxes and they should be safe in their city. I think that goes without saying. Second, I think, is just the expectation that we have an infrastructure that works. You know, you count on the sewers, the storm drains, you count on the streets and the sidewalks. And we've got a big backlog and a lot of work to do on the street and sidewalk side, so we can't lose sight of that over the coming year. We've got to make a huge amount of progress there. I know there's not much, again, that we're proposing reduction in that area, which is good. But, again, just in terms of priorities, it's safety and infrastructure, to me, are the basics that people just expect of their municipal government. So we need to deliver on that. Going forward, and this has less to do with this budget and more about years in the future, you know, we've talked, and I continue to harp on, and my questions tonight are on revenue, around business stimulation, and I agree with my colleagues, the OED function, the mighty team that does so much work. You know, we've got to do a better job of keeping the innovation economy going. All the companies that are starting on the campus at UC Berkeley, making sure they have a place here in Berkeley, that's going to be critical to the future of our city, is being a place where those people want to create jobs, hire people, bring people to live here, bring people to work here, supporting our retail small business in commercial corridors. We know that there have been folks that have been challenged in those areas. Just the business climate and being a hospitable place where people want to do work and people want to live to do those jobs, that's so critical to the future of our tech space. I'd also say unsticking some of the stalled housing projects is part and parcel of that. Again, none of these are going to affect this year's budget, but they start to make things a little bit easier as we go, if we can work on those priorities. The other thing I'll say on the staff side, and I appreciate and have been moved by the stories, because you're right, these are not just numbers, these are people behind the numbers, and we will miss folks who we lose, and we will expect a lot from the people who stay. It's not fair to expect more from the same, but it also, to me, is a function where technology also becomes important. How do we provide our employees with the tools that will make them more productive? We'll help them get more done in the same amount of time. We'll help maybe receive some of those service requests that come from residents at all hours of the night. But just how can technology, again, be a force multiplier for the people that are continuing to work here and provide excellent service, not customer service, to Cecilia Lupara's point, but service to residents that they expect. So those are things that I'm thinking about, and I appreciate, again, the effort that's gotten us here and look forward to helping to move this across the finish line in as expeditious and effective a way as we can. Thank you. Thank you very much, Council Member. Council Member Casarwani. Thank you very much, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Mr. White and Ms. Dupaya, for your lengthy and detailed presentation. And thank you to my colleagues for your comments. Thank you to the members of the public who gave public comment on their priorities. You know, I think it's already been said that this has been a very difficult budget process and will continue to be. And, you know, I do want to say that I'm really proud that we are looking at a combination of strategies in a way that I think and I hope will continue to align with our values. You know, I asked us to do the community survey on the sales tax because I knew that the level of reduction and what it would feel like in our community to cut $30 million from our budget would not be acceptable. You know, it's not acceptable to me to cut that deeply. And I want the community to recognize that is why we have polled for this sales tax to raise, you know, an approximately $9.4 million to save, if I have the numbers correct, 33 positions, some of which are filled, and those are public safety positions. That's the staffing for Fire Station 4 that we're hearing a lot of concern about. That's the staffing for programs that serve low-income and vulnerable populations. And so to me, that is making sure that what we are doing here aligns with our values to take care of those populations, to make sure that the response time when people call 911 and they need, you know, the types of services that we send out from Fire Station 4, that that can be available. And, you know, I want to focus on the budget, but we have a number of items here tonight that will also raise fee levels to be in line with costs, something that we have not been doing regularly. We need to continue to do that, and so I'm pleased to see that those are before us. And, of course, in addition to raising revenues, we have this difficult decision, you know, $9.4 million still leaves a substantial gap that we have to find a way to close. And so that is where I know you have proposed eliminating a lot of vacant positions. I wanted to ask Mr. White, I don't know if you have the answer right now, are there vacant positions that have not been proposed for elimination? Okay, so I want to look at that the next time we come to budget and finance, if you can have that available, because the reason why I want to know what those positions are is because, you know, we have folks here tonight, we have folks who are worried about getting laid off, you know, 20 filled positions that are proposed for elimination. So I want to make sure that that's the right call. I don't want to do that if we can find vacant positions and save those folks, because, you know, this is, you know, one city, one team. And so that's my commitment that we have to look at that. And I think there's sort of this other category that we haven't talked a lot about, which is, you know, what can we do smarter? I had mentioned at the last budget and finance committee that I was at that I want to hear how we are monitoring our contracts. You know, we haven't heard in this budget process which contracts are underperforming that we should not continue. And so I think we need to be thinking about that. You know, I also have a council item that's going to be heard at budget and finance to require competitive procurement across all city departments to ensure that we are getting the best value for all goods and services, including professional services, which our city auditor said we have not been doing. You know, we need to do all of these things so that we are being as cost effective as we can. And, you know, I know a lot of effort has been put in, but I think there's more we can be doing around the contracts. And so I want to have those conversations. And in terms of priority, you know, I would agree on preserving the filled position in the Office of Economic Development. This is the community development project coordinator. But, you know, when we say that we'd like to be able to save things, you have to cut something else. You have to find the funds to do that. So, you know, respectfully to the folks asking for more funding for small sites, you know, it's my understanding, and I think it is yours as well, that we have put out a request for proposal for $2.5 million for small sites. And I'm really grateful that I reduced the allocation for small sites in the last budget, because I understand that we have had structural deficits for years, and we have to make hard choices. We can't always do the full amount that everybody is asking for all the time. Sometimes being a leader means knowing when to say no. So I'm really grateful we've had this hearing. I think we do, you know, really want to emphasize we need to look at the vacant positions that are still in the budget and know what those classifications are and what the fully loaded costs are. And if I can get the org charts of where they are in each department, that will also be helpful.

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