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September 29, 2026 · 7:00 PM
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Segment 2
to support employees and make the workplace safer in response to our audit. Secondly, my office also followed up on the 2024 audit of restaurant inspections. Two of the findings were that the Environmental Health Division did not track spending on its food inspections program to publish the inspection for all permitted food facilities in Berkeley. Since the last update in February of this year, the division implemented the recommendation to track and report how food inspection program revenues were used. So that's good news. However, the division has not resumed publishing the food facility inspections data online after it was removed in 2024 from the city's open data portal. The division is preparing to launch the new inspections database, but has postponed the release from September of this year to later in the fall. I'm sorry, from summer to fall of this year. According to the division, full implementation of the remaining open recommendations depends on the release of the new inspections database or council approval to support additional staffing. We will present our next status report to council for this audit next year. Thank you. Thank you, Madam City Auditor. Very good. Okay. All right. So we will now take public comment on non-agenda matters. Just give me a moment here. One, two, three, four, and five. All right. We've drawn five cards in no particular order for the in-person speakers, and then we will take the speakers on Zoom, and each speaker will have one minute. And again, the speakers in no particular order. You can go ahead and come on up are Oliver Davis, Bobo, Lisa Teague, Steve Tracy, and Russell Bates. Please come forward if your name is called. Hi, everyone. Should I start? Please go ahead. Hi, good evening. So my name is Oliver Davis, and I wanted to speak tonight about some issues that our neighborhood in Ocean View is having with the clearing of the Ocean View homeless encampment. And it's a very complicated topic, but I want to address two specific concerns that we have. Since the encampment has been cleared or partially cleared, several new sites have been created, and some of them very close to our kids' preschool. And so I have been following a little bit the situation, and I understand that several sites have been approved for specific people who need some ADA accessibility accommodation. But my question to you tonight is, is it an appropriate location to have those sites be right in front of two preschools for 9th and Camellia? And same thing for Duck's Nest on 4th and Camellia. So my kids play right in front every day, right next to that site. So that's my question. Thank you. So we don't usually go back and forth to answer questions, but we are having a public meeting about this, and I do just want to make sure it's clear for folks that we aren't approving any sites for people to move to. So I know that that's a little bit of a point of confusion. So I just want to make sure that's clear. And my staff will come talk to you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, next speaker, come on up. Good evening. I'm Lisa Teague. I'm here representing the Behavioral Health Commission. I am currently the acting chair of the Berkeley Behavioral Health Commission, and we need your help. We need bodies in the commission, particularly a veteran, a member of the Berkeley Unified School District, and a young person from 18 to 26. I have some flyers. I came equipped that I will hand to you, and you should have received a letter from the Berkeley Mental Health this morning, I think, or yesterday, but I also have copies of that letter to provide to you. So four seconds left. I hope you all can help us firm up our commission numbers. Thank you. Thanks so much. We will take a look. Okay, sorry. Thank you. Hi, I'm a firm believer in think globally, act locally. This is acting locally being here tonight. I want to think about the genocide that's going on in Gaza right now, that they want to move to the West Bank. It's an ongoing situation there. We're not supposed to give weapons to be used offensively, but yet every weapon that's being sent or given to the Zionist entity is being used to oppress, suppress, and kill people, young people, sniper shooting young people in the head. We're getting kind of sick of that, and it might be a good idea, since people are feeling a little friendlier now, is to reconsider the voting against the ceasefire and vote for the ceasefire. Remember, from the river to the sea, make occupied Palestine 48 Zionists free. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. I'm a resident and property owner in Berkeley here to talk about affordable housing, a very hot topic. You are all very focused on, at least you were in February when you approved a project, 2109 Virginia. That project has 15% affordable housing. People might wonder, in a three-story zone, how did an eight-story project get approved? Well, 55 units with 30% affordable, council didn't approve it going to 110 units. The state of California, with their density bonus, superseded that. So let's keep it at the current height zone of three stories, and we get affordable housing, and we get an eight-story building. If it's up-zoned to seven, we get no affordable housing. Thank you. Thank you. I'm listed as Bobo in there as a bad joke, and I'm ceding my time to Stephen Alpert. I'm Dr. Stephen Alpert. The council's vote to protect the bike lanes on Hopkins demonstrates yet again this council's willingness to misrepresent facts and violate city policy. The introduction of that proposal, quote, given new information presented by the fire department, that the pedestrian and bike safety infrastructure on Hopkins Street retains workable emergency access was utterly deceitful, implying that Fire Chief Sprague had reviewed the proposal. A complete street study was never conducted for Hopkins as required by the city's bicycle plan. Page 16, with the heading Complete Streets Corridor Studies, reads, providing a complete network does not require dedicated facilities for all transportation modes on every street. For bikeway planning, Berkeley considers both arterial and collect roads and parallel streets as part of the Complete Streets Corridor. The council's refusal to consider bike lanes on parallel ADA and road streets violated city policy, resulting in a well-deserved lawsuit. Thank you. Thanks for your comment. Okay. Is there, are there any comments online? It looks like there are a few. We do have some hands raised online. This is for non-agenda public comment. Our first speaker is Nathan Mizell. Nathan Mizell? Oh, there we go. Nathan, are you there? Yes, I'm sorry. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay. I'm just non-agenda. It's supposed to be an agenda. Just want to thank the council for their work on appointing a new PAB director. Thank you for appointing someone with a good background. Appreciate the work. Have to go. Thanks. Thanks. That's on the agenda, but you gave your comments, so thank you. Thanks for your comment. All right. Our next speaker is the caller with the phone number ending in 211. You are our next speaker. Hi, this is Ed. I did email you about your guest. It is a monostrous chemical. It is. It does cause not just imperities, but permanent damage to the eyes and to the lungs. My wife, she was a Berkeley High School teacher. She had asthma. Every time in 1969, there was a spray of gas across the city. She almost died. I had to drive her to Alta Bates, save her life. Stop your gas. No way. On the other hand, I do like to bring back our business. Mary Ishii, give me a call. I request a meeting with you in front of everybody to settle our matter with you. We contributed over a million dollars in tax money and business license to the city of Berkeley Treasury. Long time, 62 years in business. Have a good day. I will call again about other issues, Gaza and some other issues. Good night. Thank you. Our next speaker is Maria Sol. Thank you so much. That's why I'm calling in. You have such a packed agenda for this second meeting. I just want to express my gratitude, not necessarily for the outcome, although I am utterly elated, but for the process. Somehow or another, we managed through all of these many months to speak and listen to one another, to express our concerns and think about it, but also feel it and care about it. I am just jubilant that the process of this brought us more together, even if we disagree, and hope that we can continue working peacefully and harmoniously. Thank you very much. Thanks, Maria. Our next speaker is Della Luna. Hello. I wanted to speak about crosswalk and crosswalk safety for pedestrians. As a driver and a pedestrian, I've noticed the uptick in how careful one has to be just to walk in the city of Berkeley. Then specifically, I wanted to speak about the crosswalk at the Ashby BART station across MLK. That one has been under construction for about six months, and it's not clear what's going on, but you've also turned it into a railway construction where it's no longer straight, it's a zigzag. Then the lights that look like railroad crossings are covered, so it's not inoperational, but it has been modified. But now pedestrians are just walking across in the bike lane, the green painted bike lane. No one's using the crosswalk. I just wanted to juxtapose that with this unfinished crosswalk and then other crosswalks that need repainting. I'm sure you all saw there was another incident. I believe it was with a bicycle, and that was a pedestrian on Telegraph. Thanks,.
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Mayor, Councilmember Loonapar, and Councilmember Bartlett for joining me. We're introducing a resolution declaring October 18th to 24th as United Against Hate Week in Berkeley, which is an annual tradition for many years. In Berkeley, I would just encourage folks who can make it, there's a screening of a great film called Minnesota Neighbors, a documentary about Minneapolis' and St. Paul's response to the ICE raids that's being produced here in California with participation from folks in Berkeley. That screening is October 21st, 7 p.m. at the Grand Lake Theater. And then on item 31, I would be happy to contribute $100 from our office account towards the Music in the Elmwood Festival. And then one more request on the consent calendar. We have item 36 on our agenda on the action calendar, which is the Surveillance Technology Ordinance Submission for Mutual Air Support. The Police Accountability Board has reviewed that, is in concurrence with that. They made one slight adjustment where they asked that the language in the policy around audits be incorporated. And so my suggestion and my ask would be that we could move this item to consent, accept the PAB's suggestion to clearly state the Surveillance Technology Ordinance audit requirements in the policy, and direct the Police Department to insert the actual Surveillance Technology Ordinance language about audits verbatim into the policy just to make that completely consistent and clear. I think with that will satisfy PAB's ask, and so I'd ask that we make that adjustment and move the item to consent with permission of my colleagues. So you're making that motion? Yes, to move to consent with that change. Could you repeat the motion for a second? Yeah, it's item 36, it's the move, that action item to consent. The only tweak which was, you'll see it in supplemental one from the Police Accountability Board, they had asked that there be one extra line of language about the audit requirements, which the Police Department also supports. And so I'd like to move the item to consent and then direct the department to insert the actual language from the Surveillance Technology Ordinance about audits to insert that verbatim into the policy so that the ordinance and the policy are consistent when we talk about audits. Okay, so we have a motion on the floor, we have a second. Oh, if it's, the will of the council can be voted on as part of the consent calendar? Yeah. Thank you. There you go. Okay, and actually you're reminding me, thank you very much, that I'm also supposed to read something in change to item number 13. So we had received some emails, Council Member Tregub and I had received some emails with some concerns about item 13, wanting to make sure that the City Council had received the Surveillance Technology Report before we voted on the Surveillance Technology return of the RFP that's coming to Council. And so this slight change really just changes the date so that we'll still get that report in November, and then moving forward it will be in March. So the language has changed to say the first March Surveillance, the first March Surveillance Technology Report submitted following the effective date of the ordinance amending this section shall be submitted at the first regular Council meeting in March 2020, oh, this is eight, is that right? March 2028, and shall cover the period from October 1st, 2026 through December 31st, 2027, so that no period is omitted from annual reporting as a result of the transition to a calendar year reporting period. After review of the Surveillance Technology Report, Council may make modifications to surveillance use policies. Okay, yes, any concerns with that change? Just to confirm, so what that'll do is we'll still have the audit, sorry, we'll still have the Surveillance Technology Report this October. November. This November, sorry, and then we'll pick up again the following year. Yes, yes. Okay, so we don't move, because I know there was concern, we heard from the public that there'd be a gap. Right, so we would have this November and then the following March. Great, thank you. Thank you. Okay, and then one other thing I'm supposed to read into the record is that also for Mary Opler, who is listening online, literally on her way here to Berkeley, I am supposed to read specifically that we are adopting a resolution approving the appointment of Mary Opler as Director of Police Accountability and approving an employment agreement effective October 5th, 2026 at a salary of $230,000. And I do just want to say on a personal note that we're really excited to have you, Mary, if you're listening. It's so important that we have a Director of Police Accountability. There was really strong support from both our community members and also our Council who were involved in the selection process. And I'm really looking forward to having the public meet her. We're going to definitely think of ways that we can make sure she gets out into the community and meets with folks. So thank you very much, Mary. And we will thank Kathy Lee, who may or may not be online, when she actually is departing her position. She's still going to be serving as sort of an advisor to help with the transition. So just so folks know about that. And when she has her final meeting, we will say more about Kathy. Thank you. Okay, go ahead, Council Member Trego. Thank you, Madam Mayor. First, I would like to sincerely thank Kathy Lee for her service to the Office of Police Accountability. And, of course, many other departments within the city. And give a warm welcome to Mary Opler to lead Berkeley's team of devoted community service leaders as the next DPA. I would like to thank my co-sponsors of item 28, as well as those who also choose to give to the restoration of Sinbad's Voyage. It warms my heart to see the swift and passionate community action that has gone into the mural's restoration, which is nearing its completion, I would add. To items 27 and 31, I would like to thank Council Member Taplin for co-sponsorship of his Cal Sailing Club item. I would like to give $100 each from my D13 account to both items, and would like to also thank Council Member Humbert for his music in the Elmwood item. And I would like to thank our police department for applying and receiving additional funding through grants. It takes a lot of time and effort to find, submit, and be successful in qualifying for grants. It is a very meaningful contribution to our city. And speaking of grants, I am very pleased that item 18, the Alameda County Transportation Commission Comprehensive Investment Program 2028 and One Bay Area Grant IV application, is coming before us tonight. It will provide significant funding opportunities to make the Sacramento crossings safer, spanning a significant portion of my district, starting on Channing, and is critical to the work that my office has been doing over the last two years, but this will help complete it. On item 26, Division 2050 plan, I am honored to have been able to be part of the plan. I want to thank the mayor for appointing me to that committee, and I'm excited to see it move forward. And I thank the mayor for bringing forward an asset management plan tonight. I think it's really critical to the success of this effort. Lastly, very grateful to the mayor for adding me onto the resolution in support of Prop 1 and opposing Prop 43. And thank you to staff for working diligently with us and to the police chief as well for being amenable to this very important change in when the next status report will come as part of Prop 14. I'd like to thank my colleagues for all the other important items on the consent calendar. Thank you, Council Member. We're going to go online to Council Member Humbert, and then we'll go Council Member O'Keefe, Kesarwani, Bartlett, then Lunaparra. Thank you, Madam Mayor. On one of my, before I start my comments, I think the clerk has a comment to make about a scrivener's error with respect to one of my consent items. Yes, thank you, Council Member Humbert, and apologies. Just wanted to note for the record that staff enthusiastically but incorrectly added a few co-sponsors to item 31, Music in the Elmwood. That item is from Council Member Humbert, and will be noted such in the record. Those co-sponsors were correctly added to the sister city item. So, again, apologies, and thank you for allowing me to make this statement for the record. Thank you, Madam Clerk. And if anybody would like to join as a co-sponsor, now that it's just me on the item, I'd be grateful. I want to start with some response to Auditor Wong's comments tonight. I want to thank her and her staff for their continued work on the restaurant health inspection and data availability issues. I have to say I'm concerned because I don't think it's acceptable that these critical data remain inaccessible to the public online. I'd like to see this issue fixed by the beginning of the next calendar year at the latest. And if I have the privilege of remaining on this body in the new year, I'd welcome the opportunity to work with staff and my colleagues to bring forward an item as a priority, setting a clear deadline for these data to be restored online in some fashion, even if it's just the PDF postings that Council Member O'Keefe spoke about previously. I mean, that's got to be possible, you know, to take some photographs of documents and post them if we can't do it more elegantly. Item number eight, appointment of Director of Police Accountability, Mary Opler. I want to offer a hearty welcome to her. She's joining as our new Director of Police Accountability. It was a privilege to serve on the initial selection committee where incoming Director Opler really impressed us with her breadth of knowledge and experience and her overall demeanor and commitment and approach to police accountability. I'm really excited to have Director.
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I was mayor actually for like one week when she was out of town. I wasn't literally mayor, whatever. I signed a thing, it was great. Okay, thank you. Council Member Lunafarra, clearly we've been already here too long. Go ahead. Okay, thank you. I am very excited to welcome our new ODPA Director, Mary Opler. As part of the committee that interviewed our candidates for this role, I really enjoyed learning about Mary, their background, and their vision for police accountability in the city. On item 16, I just want to mention that I would love to have a further conversation in the future about the most effective way to combat these issues without enforcement, especially to prevent overdoses and severe medical issues. On item 32, I want to thank Council Member Humber for bringing this item forward. At a time when our government is systematically serving the people of Cuba, it's important for us to reaffirm our solidarity with our sister city of Palma Soriano. On the D13 items, I would like to give both items 27 and 28, $500 from my discretionary fund. And on item 36, now that it's on consent, I'm grateful that the motion included the language recommended by the PAB, and I'm satisfied with the new reporting schedule on item 13. Thanks. Thank you. Yes, thank you to the POP for your feedback. And also, I think, Council Member Humber, you were saying that you are alone now on item 31, is that right? Yes, yes, Madam Mayor, I think that's right. I'm happy to add my name as a co-sponsor as well. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Appreciate it. Okay, very good. Thank you all for your patience. I know we had a lot of comments this evening. We are now going to open for a public comment on consent calendar or information items only. And Madam Mayor, can I confirm that we did move item 36 to consent also? Yes. I just want to make sure. Okay, so for folks who have comments. Yes, I know we changed a lot of things, so I think before we vote, it might be helpful to read it back. Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Please come on up. So I'd like to point out that Celeste Marks and Steve Elbert are going to donate their minutes to me. Okay, great. So you will have three minutes. So, Mayor Ishii, first I'd like to thank you for your work on the Realize Vision 2050 plan. But now I'd like to address the whole council to let them know about the actions of one of the council members in relation to the Realize Vision 2050 plan, item 26 on the agenda tonight. Council member Terry Taplin was one of the project sponsors for this plan, and Ray Yepp served as a task force lead. Ray wrote a letter to the council about the plan, and Council Member Taplin responded. Ray's letter explained, Our comments are based on having been key participants on the initial Vision 2050 effort and the recent updates and having been involved in implementing some of the recommendations in 2021 and 2022. It ended with the note that many of the task force members are available to help with the implementation. We hope that you will factor our comments into your consideration of the referral and its implementation. I was appalled at Council Member Taplin's response. His response was, in full, Dear Ray, I will speak entire for myself. With all due respect, it's not clear to me what you anticipate my takeaway to be from this letter. Neither do I agree with your mischaracterization of previous measures, the successes of which seem lost to you, nor am I persuaded to support the establishment of another working group. Even less so would I subject the city manager or public works director to such. Kind regards. Council Member Taplin's response was dismissive and disrespectful. Ray offered his experience and his time. The council member answered with contempt. On November 12, 2024, the city of Berkeley issued a proclamation to express our gratitude and appreciation to Ray for his expertise, generosity, and many hours of volunteer contributions to the city of Berkeley. If this is how Council Member Taplin treats an honored member of the Realized Vision 2050 Task Force who helped build the very plan the council member sponsored, I can only imagine how he treats constituents who disagree with him. How much longer must Berkeley residents have to put up with this sort of behavior? Council Member Taplin should be stripped of any leadership positions and censured in the strongest possible terms. Thank you. Council Member Taplin, did you.. yeah. I would like to respond. I am actually allowed to disagree with people who write to us. You read part of Ray's letter. I was responding to part of Ray's letter, and I am allowed to disagree and voice that. Thank you. Okay. So I got one more minute, and I would ask that everything on surveillance really deserves discussion and action. And so I'm disappointed that 13 and 36 have been moved to consent, and there will be no discussion of these items. In the environment that we live in and what's happening with our federal government and the news media, I really believe that every single little item, which you may consider little since it's sitting on consent, but to many of us here, anything on surveillance is a big deal, and it deserves discussion and comment and a thorough review. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, Berkeley City Council. Quick comment on item 26. I'm very confused why we have this item that requires a strategic asset management plan be created when we have a $300 million infrastructure bond in front of the voters in November. It seems like something's backwards. It seems like this should have happened before you put $300 million on the ballot. The other item I want to mention is three members of our community worked very diligently and very carefully on creating that Vision 2050, and they were incredibly disrespected by a member of your body, and it was really appalling the way these...
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people were treated, Ray Yep, Margo Schuler, and Larry Henry. And so I want to get it on the record that it was disgusting the way a member of this body treated people who have given their time to a commission and over years dedicated their time to the city of Berkeley. So I want to make that note. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comment in person? All right. There are a couple hands online. All right. Moving to our online speakers. Our first speaker is the caller with the number ending in 211. Caller, you should be able to unmute. Hi. Yeah, I have a really problem with, I'm 16 and 17. You know, since you approved the alcohol on Telegraph or downtown Berkeley, now all of the other shops are 80% of their shelf have alcohol. We have young kids. We have people, we have students. Alcohol destroys the brain. In 18, this kind of us, marijuana, what we called it during my UC golden years, a lot of students, a lot of my classmates, got hooked on marijuana and dropped out. This is poison. Help us to create a great country. We don't have somebody else like Trump ruining the country as we know it. I don't know what you can do, but hopefully you can at least control alcohol and pot, as we called it in the good old days. Thank you. And I'll call you later on. Thank you. Our next speaker is Shreyas Chand. Apologies about the pronunciation. No problem. Thank you so much for the recognition. My name is Shreyas. I'm the Commodore for the Cal Sailing Club. And I just wanted to thank all the council members and the mayor for the recognition of Cal Sailing Club's open house program. We offer seven of these, six to seven of these every year. Our upcoming one on Sunday. We'd love to have you all there and really appreciate the recognition for the low and no cost access to sailing that we're able to provide and for all of your support of our mission. Thank you so much. Thank you, Commodore. Next speaker is Zach Goldberg. Hello. Can you guys hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Awesome. I just moved to Berkeley, and this is actually my first city council meeting. So I'm excited to be here virtually. I just wanted to give a quick support for item 34 for the adoption of the new zoning on San Pablo Avenue. As a young person moving into the city, I think it's. Zach, I'm sorry. I know you're welcome to the city, and we are actually on a comment period for consent calendar and information items only. But you are welcome to give your public comment on item 34 a bit later when we're looking at that item. OK, sounds good. Thank you. All right. Next up is Cheryl Davila, former council member. Next speaker is Cheryl Davila. Cheryl, you should be able to unmute. All right. One more time. Our last speaker is Cheryl Davila. And Cheryl, you have been allowed to speak. If you'd like to unmute and provide your comments. All right. It does not appear as though Cheryl is going to give comments at this time, but there will be another period at the end of the meeting for non-agenda public comments for anyone who's interested and who hasn't already spoken. Thank you. I see someone here in person. Yeah. Oh, I'm speaking about 26. Is that OK? Thank you. I just want to mention about the plan for cycle tracks on both sides of San Pablo. And I find the barrier cycle tracks are not safe. And I have heard from my council member that no one has heard about any dangers from barrier cycle tracks. And I asked the Walk Bike Berkeley advocate if he has, and he told me they're very safe. But when I asked him if they would prevent, have it prevented the fatality on Hopkins, he said he couldn't answer that question. And he did say that they were not safe if there were lots of driveways, but there would be some design mitigations about that. And so I think that we need to bring it to council's attention that they are not safe. And if they are like the ones on Milvia where I had my accident. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. All right. Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar? Actually, can we, Rose, do you mind reading through? We have made so many changes this evening. I just want to make sure it's clear. Certainly. All right. So we've added two urgency items from the mayor, one regarding resolution and support of Prop 1 and the other resolution to oppose Proposition 43, both having to do with voter rights. And item 13, the ordinance regarding amending BMC Chapter 2.99 and surveillance technology. There's been a revision to the ordinance to add reporting language. Item 21, contract regarding window replacement project. That item was removed by the city manager. And then there have been some various relinquishments of funds and co-sponsors on item 27, Cal Saline, item 28, Mural Restoration, item 31, Music in the Elmwood. And last but not least, item 36, which was on the action calendar regarding surveillance technology ordinance submission. That was moved to consent, and language was added to the ordinance to add language from the STO regarding audit requirements to the policy. And that was it. Thank you, Rose. Appreciate you doing that. Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar? So moved. Second. All right. Can we take the roll on that, please? All right. To adopt the consent calendar as amended, Council Member Kesarwani? Yes. Taplin? Aye. Bartlett? Yes. Traigeth? Aye. O'Keefe? Yes. Blackaby? Yes. Munapara? Yes. Humbert? Yes. And Mayor Ishi? Yes. Thank you. All right. Thank you all so much. We're going to take a quick, well, 7.32. I'm going to give us 15 minutes, actually, because, yeah, we're going to have a 15-minute break. Thank you. Recording stopped. All right, we are moving on to the action calendar. We have a number of public hearings this evening, starting with item number 33, which is the California Municipal Finance Authority Bond financing for Ashby Lofts project from the city manager. We actually don't have a presentation, Madam Mayor, but if there's questions, our HHCS director is here, as is our manager of housing community services, Mark Overnst. Thank you so much. Are there any questions? No questions. Okay. Is there a motion to close the public hearing? Let's officially announce it's open, and then we'll see if we have any hands. It is officially open. Thank you, Mayor. Public hearing. But as there are no questions, is there a motion to close the public hearing? So moved. Oh, yeah, that's.. Sorry? Yes, this is the public comment period. The public hearing is now open. If there are no speakers on this item, then we can go ahead and move forward with closing the public hearing. If you'd like to.. We are on item 33, the California Municipal Finance Authority Bond financing for Ashby Lofts project. So if there is someone to speak to this item, please come forward. Hi, I'm Leah Simon-Weisberg from District 2. I'm also on the Housing Advisory Commission. I think this is a great item. Please vote yes. Thank you very much. Apologies, I'm getting ahead of myself. All right, so now, are there any other public comments on this item, item number 33, anyone online? There are no hands raised online from members of the...
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Okay. Oh, you have a public comment on this item? Yeah, I do. Item number 33, correct? Yes. Yeah. Ashby, what's it called? Lofts. Yes. I don't know anything about it because I didn't look at the agenda, but you know, I'm here because Maji is running. So let's get a new representative in District 4. Thank you. And free Palestine. All right. And I actually have a statement I need to read as well, but should I read it now? Yeah, I'll read it now. Okay. We are here this evening to conduct a public hearing pursuant to the Federal Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, or TEFRA. TEFRA requires that a public hearing be held by the governing body of the jurisdiction in which a project to be financed with tax-exempt financing is located, and that the governing body approve the proposed financing. Satellite Affordable Housing Associates has asked that the California Municipal Finance Authority, the CMFA, be the issuer of tax-exempt financing in an amount not to exceed $25 million of tax-exempt revenue bonds to finance and refinance the acquisition, rehabilitation, improvement, and equipping of a 54-unit qualified residential rental project, the project, to be owned and operated by the borrower and located at 2909-29199 Street within the City of Berkeley. The City, the California Municipal Finance Authority, CMFA, is a joint powers authority formed to assist local governments, non-profit organizations, and businesses with the issuance of both taxable and tax-exempt debt. The debt to be issued by the CMFA will be the sole responsibility of the borrower, and the City will have no financial or legal obligations or responsibilities regarding the repayment of the debt. All financing documents will carry disclaimers that the loan is not an obligation of the City. The City will also bear no costs in the issuance of the proposed debt. This is a private loan with the borrower and their bank. It is recommended that the City Council adopt a resolution approving the issuance of bonds by the CMFA for the borrower. Such adoption is solely for the purposes of satisfying the requirements of TEFRA, the Code, and the California Government Code Section 6500. Okay. Now, is there a motion to close the public hearing? Second. Can we take the roll on that, please? To close the public hearing, Council Member Kasarwani? Yes. Taplin? Aye. Bartlett? Yes. Tregub? Aye. O'Keefe? Yes. Blackaby? Yes. Luna-Para? Yes. Humbert? Yes. Mayor Ishii? Yes. Okay. Any comments on this item? Okay. No comments. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Second. Second. Can we take the roll now, please? Okay. To approve the item, Council Member Kasarwani? Yes. Taplin? Aye. Bartlett? Yes. Tregub? Aye. O'Keefe? Yes. Blackaby? Yes. Luna-Para? Yes. Humbert? Yes. And Mayor Ishii? Yes. Okay. Thank you very much. We are going to open the public hearing for item 34, which is the adoption of the San Pablo Avenue specific plan. And we will start us off with a presentation. And just to preview, folks, as they are settling in, we'll have a presentation. Then we will take questions from Council. Then we will do public comment. Then we will take Council comments and deliberations. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Ishii and Council Members. I'm Jordan Klein. I'm Director of Planning and Development. I'm joined here at the staff table by Justin Horner, Principal Planner. Phil Erickson with Community Design and Architecture. And Anne Hirsch, the Land Use Planning Manager. We're so pleased this evening to be advancing for your consideration the San Pablo Avenue specific plan, which is the culmination of a three-year community planning process. San Pablo Avenue is one of Berkeley's most important streets. It runs about two and a third miles through the length of the city, connecting neighborhoods, connecting the city to neighboring cities, and to the East Bay region. It's home to longtime local businesses, cultural institutions, and the people who live and work along it. It's also been shifting over the past decade away from an auto-oriented pattern of commercial and light industrial uses and toward a more vibrant mixed-use district. And this plan is about shaping that change as we go forward so that it works for the people who are here now and for the people who will come. The plan reflects visioning, technical analysis, and a great deal of community engagement, including open houses, community workshops, a walking tour of the corridor, and two community surveys. The Planning Commission received four status updates, and the City Council gave us direction at a work session in November of 2025. And the Planning Commission made its recommendation to you in June of this year. The plan sets out a vision based on three ideas. First, more housing, including affordable housing, along a corridor well served by transit. Second, support for small businesses through more flexible zoning and programs and design standards that help fill ground floor spaces and keep the corridor active and vibrant. And third, great public spaces, wider sidewalks, more trees, safer crossings, and places to gather. Tonight, we're asking City Council to adopt the specific plan and its design standards along with the related general plan and zoning amendments. And with that, I will turn it over to Justin Horner for the presentation. Thank you, Jordan. Let's see. Am I sharing? Successfully sharing? Justin is pulling up some slides for us. Sorry, everyone. Thank you for your patience. Mayor Ishii, members of the City Council, Justin Horner, Planning Department staff, and tonight I'm presenting the San Pablo Avenue specific plan and its accompanying zoning general plan and other plan amendments. Tonight, I will briefly review the specific plan's goal and our outreach and engagement process. I will then review the specific plan's chapters, including the new San Pablo Commercial Zoning District, describe the other plan documents that are amended as part of adoption of the specific plan, and will briefly discuss the CEQA analysis before presenting the staff recommendation. The agenda packet for tonight's meeting includes a lot of items. You are being asked to adopt the San Pablo specific plan itself and the separate San Pablo specific plan design standards document. To implement the specific plan, you are asked to consider amendments to the zoning ordinance and the zoning map, as well as changes to the general plan and the general plan map to ensure conformity with the rezoning. You are also being asked to consider repealing the 33-year-old West Berkeley plan and the 22-year-old San Pablo Avenue Public Improvements Plan. Finally, there are small amendments to the University Avenue Strategic Plan. Now on to the San Pablo Avenue specific plan. But first, a quick explanation of what a general specific plan is. A specific plan is a document that implements the general plan and is focused on a specific geographical area. They're sometimes also called area plans. Specific plans typically cover land uses, development standards, and infrastructure, and can also include programs such as economic development efforts. Subsequent zoning, infrastructure, and other policies must be consistent with an adopted specific plan. We currently have four specific plans. The West Berkeley plan, adopted in 1993, the Southside plan, adopted in 2011 and amended in 2023, the Downtown Area Plan, adopted in 2012, and the Adeline Corridor specific plan, adopted in 2020. Now on to the San Pablo plan. The plan envisions a San Pablo Avenue that is a vibrant mixed-use district that connects neighborhoods, supports a variety of housing and local businesses, and reflects Berkeley's cultural heritage. It aims to increase housing, increase business activity, enhance the public realm, and improve the area's transportation system. As Jordan alluded to, here is a summary of the plan's development process to date and a snapshot of where we are now. The process started in 2023 and consisted of three phases. Initial outreach, policy development, and plan review and adoption. Phase one started in 2023 and included key community leader interviews, targeted intercept surveys, small group meetings, and a community open house where staff received feedback and comments on the general condition of the corridor. Policy development was phase two of the plan. In phase two, staff drafted policies in response to community feedback from phase one. We held pop-ups at various events, a walking tour of the corridor, launched an online community survey that received hundreds of responses, and conducted a community workshop to discuss height, massing, and public open space. Phase three is the drafting of the plan itself. We started with a community meeting for the public review draft of the specific plan in October of last year and held workshops with both the Planning Commission and the City Council in November. We bought the public review draft to the Planning Commission for their feedback in March, and with that feedback, revised the specific plan and held the Planning Commission public hearing in June. So the map on the slide shows the specific plan area, which is indicated in maroon and runs along San Pablo Avenue from Emeryville on the left to Albany on the right. The specific plan area is largely within the West Berkeley Commercial Zoning District, but includes some parcels along University that are included in the University Avenue Commercial Zoning District. The specific plan would rezone the parcels indicated in the slide to a new district, San Pablo Commercial, or CSP, to implement the specific plan's land use policies. The plan is organized into six chapters and includes policies and programs regarding land use, economic development, and streets, transportation, and the public realm. Chapter six, implementation, provides a detailed matrix describing the timeline for each implementable task and the responsible department or agency for each task. The design standards document is a standalone document that connects policies in the plan to actual design standards used in development and design review. I will now briefly summarize each chapter, starting with land use.
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And one of the things that was interesting to us is one of the consistent threads that we heard was make the street a more comfortable place. And almost people might have said things that disagreed about a lot of other issues. But almost everybody said they want better lighting, they want it to be a friendlier street at night. So that really focused on the emphasis of making the streetscape improvements. There was also feedback from some people in the neighborhoods supportive of the housing development that's been happening, but having concern that the people who are living in those new developments aren't really becoming integrated with the neighborhood. They don't come out, we don't see them on the street, we don't meet them. And that's where a lot of the focus on finding opportunities for public space came out of it. And one of the things that's a constraint in the specific plan area is all of the publicly owned space is streets. So the opportunities for parks and things like that were constraining. And that's where the idea of the side street mini plazas on streets that are shorter or don't have that much traffic on them came about. We also met with people in the development community and architects who work on buildings on the street. And besides some comments about zoning related issues, they also agreed about the need for public space and improvement of the public realm of the street. So that issue of public realm really did come across strongly. Thank you very much. My second question, Director Klein, how would you characterize the current West Berkeley plan's impact on economic development since adoption? Yes, Council Member. So the current West Berkeley plan was adopted in 1993 and included a variety of provisions that have been implemented through our zoning ordinance, including strong protections for light industrial businesses and also warehouses and arts and crafts uses, including a requirement that any space that's being, you can't convert a space that's being currently used for one of those uses without replacing it with new light industrial space. And those have been very strong and effective provisions to protect local manufacturing. There have been a number of amendments over the years to those provisions and other provisions of the West Berkeley plan. I would say most recently, this council made a number of efforts to expand and promote research and development uses in West Berkeley. And I think that's what we've seen. A lot of the economic growth that we've seen in West Berkeley under the West Berkeley plan has been life science and other research and development. And so I think, yeah, there've been a number of zoning amendments that this council's desire to advance that have required associated changes to the West Berkeley plan. And so I would say that's evidence that the plan is less relevant to the current economy than it was over 30 years ago when it was adopted. My third question is for the director and also the city manager. What actions by city admin or the council in partnership with the community are required to move forward with the construction of the mini plazas and the establishment of a West Berkeley business improvement district? Do you want to go first? So adopting a plan is an important step towards setting out a vision. And I would say this is a bold vision. Side street plazas would be a real, it would be a change to our transportation network and it would create fantastic new gathering spaces in our community. And so adopting this plan is a critical first step, but it is a first step. And it's, you know, these kinds of major capital improvement projects take time to line up. It takes time to line up the funding for the design and then, and usually there's associated secret work with the design and then, and we do, we end up doing additional community process around that design work. And then we need to line up funding for the construction. You know, I'll give an example. In 2020, this, in 2020, the city council adopted the Adeline Corridor specific plan. We are now at an awesome stage where we have funding for 100% design for an overhaul of Adeline Street, the Adeline Transportation Improvement Project. The city just received $850,000 grant from the federal government that will fund design of new open spaces. And those are major capital projects that are gonna lead to, I think over $100 million of investment in Adeline Street over the next decade. And it's gonna implement the Adeline Corridor plan. And we're really excited to advance that work, but as you can see, it does take time. And so there are many steps ahead of us still to actually achieve the vision that's laid out related to public spaces, especially in capital improvements. For the Business Improvement District, a little less expensive, but still labor intensive and important and requiring a whole, I would say another round of property owner engagement and community development. And that work would still be to come. Thank you. My final question. Thank you all for your patience. How would the different high requirements impact the production and financing of affordable housing? I'm sorry, could you state that again one more time? So among the various recommendations for base heights, how would each of those configurations impact the production and the financing of affordable housing? So I'll take a crack at this and Tim could chime in. Many observers and one of the pieces of news of discussion at the Planning Commission about the decision to set a base height at seven stories versus, for example, five stories, there was much discussion among the Planning Commission members about how that could impact affordable housing production. Because if the base height is set higher, a project needs to include less onsite affordable housing in order to qualify for the state density bonus program. And as Justin mentioned during the presentation, we believe that most projects will likely top out at eight stories on San Pablo Avenue. When you get higher than eight stories, it's construction costs increase dramatically. And so there was a lot of discussion about, well, if we zone it five, then you can include more onsite affordable housing and you can get to eight that way. And that's not an unreasonable policy position to take. That said, we also have a local inclusionary housing requirement. And so even projects that have to, even projects that are qualifying for the state density bonus also have to comply with our local inclusionary requirement. And so a project that's taking advantage of a base height of seven stories may include less onsite affordable housing, but we'll still have to comply with our local inclusionary requirement. And what we see is that projects are more likely to fee out. If they don't have to use, put units onsite in order to take advantage of the density bonus program, they'll often choose to pay the in lieu fee instead. And some commenters we've heard say, we don't want projects to include, to fee out, we want them to use, to put the units onsite. Really there are trade-offs. Onsite units are a great benefit because you get the units right away. They're delivered at the same time as the project. However, there's a lot of advantages to getting funding for our affordable housing trust fund from projects. Margo Ernst, manager of Housing Community Services told me today that our trust fund dollars are leveraged four and a half to one with outside funding, federal and state funding and tax credits. That's really powerful. Also trust fund projects are more likely to hit deeper affordability targets and can often provide housing for particular special needs populations. So there's real advantages to having housing projects being out as well. Thank you, my final question. Thank you all for your patience. How would the different high requirements impact the production and financing of affordable housing? So I'll take a crack at this and Tim can chime in. Many observers and one of the pieces of discussion at the Planning Commission about the decision to set a base height at seven stories versus, for example, five stories, there was much discussion among the Planning Commission members about how that could impact affordable housing production. Because if the base height is set higher, a project needs to include less on-site affordable housing in order to qualify for the state density bonus program. As Justin mentioned during the presentation, we believe that most projects will likely top out at eight stories on San Pablo Avenue. When you get higher than eight stories, construction costs increase dramatically. And so there was a lot of discussion about, well, if we zone at five, then you can include more on-site affordable housing and you can get to eight that way. And that's not an unreasonable policy position to take. That said, we also have a local inclusionary housing requirement. And so even projects that have to, even projects that are qualifying for the state density bonus also have to comply with our local inclusionary requirement. And so a project that's taking advantage of a base height of seven stories may include less on-site affordable housing, but we'll still have to comply with our local inclusionary requirement. And what we see is that projects are more likely to fee out. If they don't have to use, put units on-site in order to take advantage of the density bonus program, they'll often choose to pay the in lieu fee instead. And some commenters we've heard say, we don't want projects to include, to fee out, we want them to use, to put the units on-site. Really there are trade-offs. On-site units are a great benefit because you get the units right away. They're delivered at the same time as the project. However, there's a lot of advantages to getting funding for our affordable housing trust fund from projects. Margo Ernst, manager of Housing Community Services told me today that our trust fund dollars are leveraged four and a half to one with outside funding, federal and state funding and tax credits. That's really powerful. Also trust fund projects are more likely to hit deeper affordability targets and can often provide housing for particular special needs populations. So there's real advantages to having housing projects being out as well. Thank you. My final question, thank you all for your patience. How would the different high requirements impact the production and financing of affordable housing? So I'll take a crack at this and Tim could chime in. Many observers and one of the pieces of discussion at the Planning Commission about the decision to set a base height at seven stories versus, for example, five.
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I have some questions. I'm going to hold them. Questions from Councilmember Luna-Para for either Councilmember Keserwani or our staff. I just have a quick clarifying question for staff. In the staff report, it mentions the local density bonus for the condo projects. Can you speak to how that's incorporated into the plan? Certainly, Councilmember. The local density bonus is included as a pilot in the San Pablo specific plan area and as an implementation step of the plan. The plan calls for the exploration and study of creating a local density bonus in the plan area. This is something that would still have to come back to Council and Council would have to approve, right? Absolutely, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Trego. Thank you. I also have one amendment that I would like to share on the screen. Before I do, I'm just going to provide some motivation for this. I understand that staff is in the process of developing a suite of anti-displacement protections for small businesses along the corridor as part of the corridor zoning update. I also understand, and then in the San Pablo area specific plan, there is, I think, at least in the preliminary description of what could be or conceptually, there is discussion of interventions such as warm shelling, which is the, or at least the issue being that if a commercial storefront is presented as four walls, a floor, and a ceiling without any kinds of utility-ready connections or on-site bathrooms, that is an issue. The two renaissance items that I've worked on that a unanimous Council adopted, both of them as referrals, I know that they are in the process of either being implemented by staff or waiting for our RV process for the Council to prioritize, but I don't want to miss the opportunity as part of this plan to at least get those aspects into consideration. I'm going to share my screen. It's been a long time since I've done this, so I'll make sure I'm sharing the right thing. There we go. It's what is in red, and it just refers to the City Manager consideration of the application within the context of the San Pablo Area Specific Plan, the San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan Design Standards document, and or any associated documents as applicable of commercial anti-displacement provisions being considered as part of the commercial zoning update and provisions of the Renaissance I and Renaissance II referrals previously adopted by the Berkeley City Council. I will note that this language has been reviewed by the Planning Director and the City Attorney, and I will let them speak for themselves, but I don't think there were any flags because this is simply part of the referral, so I just wanted to submit that for the Council's consideration. Thank you. Can you make it bigger, please, so that we can read it a little easier? Okay. I still have dark mode. Dark mode. Okay. I don't actually know how to change dark mode. Okay. Thank you. All right. Figuring. Good. Okay, so a question from Council Member Blackaby. Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you to the team for this great work and this very thoughtful presentation. I have a few questions in a few different areas. I'm just going to bounce around. Remember when we first talked about this last year, there was more of, so there were some requirements for placemaking that are now kind of more incentives than requirements, and Council Member Taplin already talked about the side street plazas and how those might materialize, and I know that would take some work, kind of public-private kind of partnership. The city would probably have a role. The developer might have a role. Can you also talk about the privately-owned public open spaces and how those incentives would work for a developer who's developing a property? Certainly. Thank you, Council Member. As we've all mentioned, there was a tremendous emphasis on trying to improve, you know, to increase the amount of available open space, and, you know, most of that has to happen either on our narrow public spaces or in private development. And so the San Pablo Commercial Zoning District includes two incentives related to this goal. Each development project has a development standard of private usable open space. So depending on the number of units you have or the size of a parcel, you're required to provide a certain amount of private open space on site. What this zoning district includes are incentives that give you additional credit towards that requirement if you utilize them. For example, if you widen the sidewalk in front of your building, then you'll get one and a half feet of credit for every one feet of private open space you're supposed to provide on site. And similarly, you'll get a credit if you provide a privately-owned public open space. The design requirements of which are included in the design document. It has to have a minimum size. You can't just put a little thing in the corner. It has to have a certain size and certain facilities to count as a popo. We had had it as a requirement earlier, and we moved towards an incentive after feedback we received from the city council and the planning commission. Great. And so the basic idea is if you make available more public open space, then you'll be able to take a little bit of the requirement to provide private open space on the person. Okay. Similarly, I think we talked when we talked ahead of the meeting, for sidewalk widening, is there kind of a similar incentive? Again, I'm just curious about all these things that we're trying to do to activate the public spaces, but also kind of that ground floor. Yes, that's exactly right. We have a very similar incentive for that for sidewalk widening. We actually have it currently in the south side plan area. That's where we first utilized it, and we imported that idea into the San Pablo specific plan. And is there anything else around kind of the ground floor activation that is in the similar vein, or those are kind of the best examples? I think we have a reduction of fees for sidewalk responses. I believe there's an economic development program that offers a reduction or waiver of the fees for a sidewalk table permit. So if a business, if a cafe wants to have tables on the sidewalk, we will, and perhaps also the parklet fees, there are economic development strategies that basically aim towards incentivizing activation. Okay, great. Let's talk a little bit about the kind of the objective design standards. Some of the concerns we've heard obviously from constituents is we don't want these just to be these big boxes that kind of show up. And I know in the design standards, again, you would walk me through this, there's some sort of a, depending on the building height, number of these features that you have to kind of incorporate, again, because you share how that part would work. I think there was the certain elements of the facade and some of the articulation. And I think depending on the building height, you might have to do two of those. If it was a bigger building, you have to do three of them. But again, there was just, again, an effort to not prescribe the design, but to encourage some uniqueness in the objective standards. If you could describe that. Certainly. Within the design standards document, there are included for, you know, as we mentioned before, there are design standards for the site itself, for buildings, and also for public open spaces and public facilities. With respect to, say, facade articulation, which I think is the thing that you're specifically talking about, there are five distinct strategies that are pointed out in the design standards document. Recesses along sort of some of the vertical or horizontal, sort of to create just an appearance of, you know, not just a flat wall. Projections, so not just, you know, either projections of a certain size or recessions of a certain size, again, to create some character in the facade. Lines or what we call datum lines, or just sort of visible indications of the height of a building to sort of create, you know, again, not just a flat block, but something that looks like a building that's assembled. Screening devices, so if you're screening a porch or a window, we have some standards around that, and some about ornamentation, so things that you may put in a corner or something you may put at the top along a cornice, and most, a building that's proposed in the zoning district needs to include at least two of those. A tall building needs to include at least three, and so we do give some flexibility to choose among them, but you do need to choose among the ones that we mentioned. So choose wisely. On the design standards, I want to, I'm sorry, on the density, I appreciated Council Member Kesarwani's amendment of the 165 to 100. I just wanted staff to kind of react to that. What's the advantage of maybe bringing that standard down to 100? Council Member Kesarwani had mentioned that it maybe provides more opportunity to do more family housing on the parcel, so you don't have a bunch of studios, but you have more possibility to do two and three bedrooms because that's a dwelling unit, and so if you bring the density down, you can do more of those. Is there any magic to sort of the 165 versus the 100 as we're talking through this here? You know, I think the 145, the 145 dwelling units an acre that was originally proposed by staff was based on a survey of recently approved projects, and it was somewhere, you know, it was not the top of it, but it was somewhere in the middle, right? And Telegraph might have been 200 or something, for example, we talked about, much higher. Yeah, and so, yeah, and so I think we had originally even proposed higher, and the Planning Commission wanted us to come in with a compromise, so we came in a little bit lower, and then when we visited again, they didn't want one at all, and so, you know, I think that from our perspective, you know, the housing element does ask us to assign a minimum residential density.
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be those properties interest in developing those properties in three or five years, then maybe go back and make the reductions in the percentage of affordability or of affordable housing or family housing. I think that was the way that we were conceiving of it. Okay. Well, you know, I appreciate that thought. I have to speak for people who can't afford housing today. They don't have three to five years. So that's why I am such a strong advocate for homes. People sleep in their cars. They sleep in these encampments that we had people give public comment about. So I saw a sign back there that says delay the plan. We waited 11 years to get homes. That's on San Pablo Avenue. Like how much time do we have to take to house people who are living on the edge, who are at risk of getting evicted, risk of becoming homeless, risk of getting displaced? So, you know, I represent the people of West Berkeley, the people of my district, but also the people who would like to be part of our community. I believe in an inclusive, vibrant community for people today and for the future. You can shake your head no. But I am the one who sits on the dais and gets to make the vote and decision tonight. Thank you. So I think that actually Margo is in the audience today and can maybe speak a little bit to my question about demand. Is that okay? I think you're. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, members of the Council. I'm Margo Ernst, the manager for housing and community services. And you were asking about the need for affordable family sized housing. Is that correct? Yes. Oh, and the demand. Yeah, the demand. I think we do have a fairly high demand for, you know, family sized units. And we did, my colleague Anna Cash did remind me back there that we had one of our recent projects that did have family units and it also had studios in one bedrooms that there was a significant demand for those family units and actually a harder time filling the studio in one bedrooms. Thank you. I seem to remember at the Maddell Shirk building, the purple one, that there were a lot of folks that were trying to, families that were trying to fill those three units. Correct. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. And for the way that the, you know, the pricing works on the different sized units, it's the studios in one bedrooms aren't that much less expensive than the two and three bedroom units. And people do have, we have a lot of families that need affordable housing. A lot of people with children. Thank you. Thanks Margo. Okay. All right. Do you want to go? Real quick, we're going to go to Council Member O'Keefe and then we'll come back to you. Okay. Go ahead. Yeah, thank you. Since we're offering amendments during question time, I guess, I did have a small amendment. It was actually very similar to Council Member Tregub's, which I really appreciate. You know, it wasn't, we didn't talk ahead of time, but it's not surprising that we both had the same concern, which is we're doing a lot of work with the commercial, with the corridors zoning update to try to protect small businesses that could be displaced through development. And so I wanted, I also wanted to make sure that we, whatever we end up doing, I've done that yet, but whatever we end up doing, it also applies equally to San Pablo. So I appreciate Council Member Tregub's amendment. I had a sort of an addition to it that I actually shared with him and he's going to put it up on the screen. It's actually a very specific mitigation measure that is taken verbatim from the Planning Commission recommendation for the corridors. And it's down, he's added it down below. It could include but not limit to the evaluation of a business license tax waiver for businesses who are displaced by developmental projects. I thought that was a really good suggestion. And like I said, it's not official yet, but it's part of the Planning Commission's recommendation. So I would like to include it here in the same spirit of Council Member Tregub's amendment to include anything that's considered in part of the CZU or Renaissance. So I just wanted to add that and that's part of, I guess, our proposal now. Thank you so much. And yeah, I know I'm having folks sort of also present things even just because I knew that we had some people making amendments or proposed amendments and I wanted to make sure we were able to ask questions about those and also that the public could see it then and then if they have comments they can comment on it as well. I actually think it's good to do it in this order actually. I appreciate it. Yeah. Okay. And also it's getting late so it's like the later we get the harder it is to think about it all. So yes. Yeah, go ahead. So Mr. Horner, with the first amendment that I gave you around, I didn't give it to you, but that I shared around non-residential buildings going to five stories or 75 feet, can you talk about the CEQA coverage for that change? Yes, certainly. Yeah, that development standard would increase the maximum height from 40 feet and three stories as recommended by the Planning Commission to 75 feet and five stories for non-residential buildings. Staff has been aware of this proposal and considered the potential impacts of the consequential increase in commercial square footage and determine that the analysis in the addendum in the 2023-2031 housing element EIR adequately analyzed the potential impacts not only of the Planning Commission recommendation but the additional amendment that you proposed. The addendum assumed actually a decrease in total commercial use of about 319,600 square feet versus what was analyzed in the housing element EIR. So any increase in commercial use that's attributable to this amendment would at most represent probably an incremental increase over the commercial use analyzed in the housing element EIR. As a result, the housing element analysis of commercial-related impacts continues to serve as a conservative basis for evaluating the amendment. Allowing taller non-residential buildings in a highly urbanized corridor does not change the environmental context evaluated in the housing element EIR and key impact areas such as public services, recreation, are population-driven effects that are tied to residential growth. And so because this amendment does not increase residential capacity, these impact areas remain unchanged from what the housing element EIR already analyzed. And none of the project areas located in the very high fire hazard severity zone, so wildfire impacts would not be more severe than those that have already been studied. Construction-related effects such as noise and soil disturbance have also already been addressed in the housing element EIR and the proposed height adjustment does not change the type of construction activities anticipated or doesn't introduce new environmental effects beyond those already identified. For transportation and vehicle miles traveled, the housing element update still remains applicable. Commercial uses in this corridor benefit from multimodal access and are located entirely within an identified transit priority area. And even with additional commercial square footage, employee VMT would continue to fall well below the 17.72 vehicle miles traveled per employee significance threshold that was identified in the housing element EIR. And at most would only marginally increase it to about 11.7 VMT per employee. So the potential carbon dioxide emissions per service population would remain well under the threshold of 3.7 megatons. So the amendment aligns with the housing element updates environmental framework and remains within the scope of impacts previously evaluated. Okay, thank you very much, Mr. Horner. I have no further questions or comments. Thank you. Any other questions from the Council? I'd love to move to public comment. Thank you. Okay, we are going to move on to public comment. And again, folks, if you are just tuning in, we are on item 34, adoption of San Pablo Avenue specific plan. If you have a public comment on this item, please come forward. If you are having someone cede you a minute, if you could please make sure that's organized beforehand and preferably that person is with you or at least can wave their hand so I can see them easily. All right, we will start with Leah. I started. Yes, Leah Simon-Weisberg, District 2. I teach housing law and have been practicing for almost 35 years. No, I'm not that old. 25 years. The first thing is, is the way to make a housing affordable is you lower the land price. By increasing the number of units that you can put on any property, you're just increasing the value. You should be only allowing affordable housing to have that additional value. That's just basic, and that's what social housing is about. That's why it works in other countries, and that's why it's not working here. This is not ready. The needs to – I keep thinking this is like bread. Don't bake the bread yet. It's not ready. We don't have enough protections. The Rent Board did a study during the pandemic that looked exactly at this and what protections needed to be put in place. I sent it to many of your staff. It's on the Berkeley Rent Board website. One of the things that it talks about is specifically the West Side and all the development that happened around 4th Street and all of the apartments that were built. As a result of that, it's a wider community. We've lost 21% of the Latino community since that project was built. It's wealthier and wider as a result. That has the same thing that's happened in many other cities across the country that have upzoned. In New York, which was the first place to upzone, they had that same thing happen. The areas that upzoned without significant protections and mitigation saw their communities get wider and wealthier. Please read that study. It was done for this area, and it looked at what we'd already done with the West Side and what we already did with the South Side. There is evidence. The plan and.
Segment 10
The corner of Shattuck, the former Poulet, recently obtained approval to build an eight-story building in an area zoned for three stories by including a modest number of below-market-rate units underlying on a density bonus. This is not too much for our community to ask. We also need to create programs to protect and nurture the existing businesses before any upzoning. Thank you for taking the time to reconsider these important choices. Thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today. I'd like to speak about the necessity of more multifamily housing in Berkeley. My name is Lev Marcus. I currently live in Oakland, where I work as a mental health counselor. I'm part of a generation raised in Berkeley that could not afford to stay. My wife and I grew up half a mile apart on Cedar Street. We met at Berkeley High, reconnected through a chance encounter on Telegraph five years ago, and got married at North Bay Community Church last year. My life has been shaped by Berkeley, and I'd like to put down my own roots here through homeownership. Unfortunately, current housing costs have taken single-family homes that are most common in Berkeley completely out of reach for my wife and me. Because many of our Berkeley friends are in a similar predicament, nine of us have joined together with the intention to buy and co-own a multi-unit property where we will live and raise our families in community. There's no other option. We need multi-family, multi-unit properties to make a long-term stable life in Berkeley possible for us. To those worried about how this San Pablo plan would change the character of the neighborhood, like the previous speaker, I contend that the character of a neighborhood lies in its people, and that for the neighborhood to maintain its character, the people who were born there need to have a chance to live there in the future. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Oscar. I am a recent new resident of Berkeley. I actually moved here from another city with really expensive housing, Boston. So I'm quite familiar with the process of development. Plans like this beginning, but then not really going anywhere, and the development's not really happening. I think plans like this are really important. I want to speak in support of them because I agree with Lev before me that communities and character of neighborhoods are built by the people, and in order for people to be there, there needs to be enough housing. And I think this is a good way to do that. Thanks. Thank you. Hi, I'm Zach from D1. San Pablo's been through a lot. I visit family there about twice a week, so I've seen a lot of it kind of up and down. You've got car parks, you've got parking lots, you've got shuttered shops. There's a corner, a university in San Pablo, three out of four of the retail empty. It's got a lot of missing stuff. But I think it's going to survive seven stories. I think it'll even thrive with seven stories. I think a lot of effort went into this plan to make it easier to build, live, open restaurants and stores, visit bars, work and travel safely. And it's a good plan. There is demand. Panoramic North Side filled in three months of opening. And let's just get it done, because the one thing San Pablo can't take more of is neglect. Thank you. Thanks, Zach. Yeah, I'm Tommy. I've been living on Channing Way about a block and a half from San Pablo since 1981. For the past couple of years, I've been watching the erection of a new exciting co-housing complex that's going up on the other side of San Pablo on Channing. It has not been a fun experience at many times, especially with the closed streets and I have to do a detour on my bicycle. But it's been worth it. It's been worth the inconvenience because I'm really excited about having these new neighbors come in. And I love to see more new neighbors like them, people who are paying property taxes to fund our city services and supporting local businesses up and down the corridor and riding the public transit, getting more people on the bus with me up again, San Pablo. So I'm happy to see those new neighbors. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I've been emailing back and forth with my council member, Terry Kaplan, about affordable housing and different ways to approach it. And my little bit of research tells me that 60% of people need help with rent. They need some kind of affordable housing. And so if 60%, say we only had 120,000 people, we'd have 72,000 people needing help in Berkeley. And if there's four people living in a unit, that would be 18,000 units need to be built. So if you're talking about whittling away and giving more and more leeway and more flexibility to developers to take away any kind of affordable housing, this is out of sight. It's just no, we can't even approach it. And you look, every time you take a walk and you see somebody in their tent, which they've just moved, you face it. Thank you. I have two extra minutes from Carla and Claudia. So three, please. Hi, everyone. My name is Donald Simon. I am the president of Save Berkeley Shops. I'm a resident of D8. And I want to talk about this plan because it was described today that its goal was to increase vibrancy in local business activity. And it's really difficult to imagine a more inaccurate statement when you actually read through that 900 page plus plan. The plan itself on page 396 says that it will result in a net loss of 319,000 square feet of commercial space. Think about that. It does not do anything to promote business in this commercial corridor. It does everything to allow business to be replaced solely by residential development only. On the four busy intersections that are referred to as the nodes, there are objective design standards that are said to facilitate more activization and more activation. But there is nothing there that would require businesses at those nodes. Instead, the concept around activation is that would allow business as usual to continue that we see in every Berkeley housing project that's been built in the last 10 years. Where we have no ground floor retail. And instead, what we have are big empty spaces, cold shelves. There's no requirement for warm shelves here. And what we have are lobbies and gyms for the residents of that building. Nothing for the public. These are not public spaces. These are amenities for the tenants. Tell me how that is going to activate these areas to make them lively places to live and to be. The other thing to talk that is most baffling here is that at the last council meeting, you all acknowledged that council's previous approach to upzoning neighborhoods like downtown led to the disaster that we have there with stalled projects. That have decimated the business environment and made them undesirable places to be. I cannot understand how just two weeks later, we're back and you're proposing to upzone in the exact same manner that does nothing to address the stalled project. Nothing that says as we've given you a plan with our community zoning plan where you could say we're not going to allow you to get a demolition permit until you can show us you have the money and the contractor lined up to build what you said you would. How can you direct staff to do something to address a problem and then two weeks later move forward repeating the same mistake without even hearing back with staff about what can be done on it. The last thing is affordable housing. Let's quit calling our ordinance an inclusionary housing ordinance. It is an exclusionary housing ordinance because developers can just pay a fee and they don't have to put any on-site affordable housing. By increasing the heights, you are decreasing the incentive for developers to use the density bonus, which means there will be no on-site housing, which means you will be eradicating businesses not to provide the diverse Berkeley we want, but to provide a gentrified city that I don't believe anybody does. Please reconsider. Thanks, Donald. I have to follow Donald. Okay, so I have my minute and then I have Carla and I think one individual over there. So I have three, but probably I can't make it till three. Sorry, Carol. Who was the? Carol Mersovic and then this. Oh, who's your third person? I just saw two. No, so two and then mine. And then yours. Okay. I thought you meant three people. No, no, no. Thank you. Council should postpone adopting the San Pablo Avenue plan until full attention is given to commercial tenant protection. I've lived there too long to see what has happened on San Pablo and we all know the story of the lighting store who was threatened. They were threatened with doubling their rent to 16,000 a month and they had to leave. This kind of thing is going to happen rampantly. Have you done an AI picture of what you're going to create if it's all eight-story, 10-story buildings and then you have at night those commercial developments that you're talking about raising from three or four stories to eight stories are going to be totally darkened. Who's going to want to walk on the street? Amy Baldwin took pictures of downtown Oakland where there's nothing going on in the street. There's just mass buildings. So it's really important to think about what it's going to look like when you're done. San Pablo Avenue cannot become another center street. There must be clear protections for the city. Empty storefronts must be reimagined and perhaps have fees assessed to create and prevent blight. Clear assistance to protect current businesses such as lease protections and help in temporary relocations. Many of you went to the Cala exhibition where San Pablo Avenue legacy businesses were given their time to show off and this was orchestrated by Robert Rivera and Cala. We have many legacy businesses on San Pablo Avenue that need to be protected and treasured. They are our treasure. The small Japanese American community there is our treasure. So please don't just throw them out.
Segment 11
isn't even a transit-rich corridor now. It doesn't meet the definitions of 79, but it could. And I agree that we should plan it to be conducive to meet SB 79 and want to have enough people that transit really works on that corridor. So if we look at this, 65 feet, but the point of SB 79 is that the affordability criteria are already baked in. And, you know, if you reverse engineer that and say if you take the affordability that's required in SB 79, what would the base zoning have to be to meet that? And surprise, surprise, the number is five stories. So with five stories you're meeting, and it's actually overshooting it, you know, like it wouldn't allow, you know, 65, but 77 feet by the formula. But anyway, so SB 79, I think, is a really good reference point coming down from the state. And so I like, you know, the way Council Member Blackaby phrased it is, put it very eloquently, have a five-story base and let the state density bonus do the work. I think this is really boiling it down in one sentence. And, you know, also, 15 seconds left, it will help you. Okay, I got, thank you, thank you, Laura Babbitt. So the current housing element at first was rejected, kind of an embarrassment for a city like Berkeley to fall flat on that, and then there was some last-minute struggling, tweaking to get it in. But one of the key deficits in that plan was the lack of attention to affirmatively furthering fair housing. And if you start with a seven-story base, and then the housing, essentially the affordable housing gets kind of packaged and segregated, that does not lead you on the right path. It virtually guarantees that you would fail the next housing element. And so I think it really behooves the city to take that very seriously. And again, this is not about what you end up with a smaller or a bigger thing. You always end up with seven to eight stories. The question is just how do you allocate the affordable units and when do you get them? You know, if they're integrated and inclusionary, you get them when these projects get built, not at some later date. And also, I don't think you can look in the rearview mirror for matching grant funding because this has dried up and you cannot make projections in the future. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, I think I have two minutes. Okay. So I didn't expect to speak on this. I did expect to speak on the San Pablo plan, but I didn't think that I would have to ask, talk about the amendment that was suggested here on the 50 feet. As many of you know, I do attend the Planning Commission meetings just like many of our city meetings. And there was the 50 feet that was written by and directed by Charles Kahn, an architect that many of us respect, was very intentional. That is not about residences in the building. It is about making sure that we have the opportunity for businesses in the building and commercial space so that we don't have a big wall walking down the street that we can't see through, that there's no activity, that there's no street activity. So if all of you think about Novia and walking towards University and you walk by that building that used to be Alcocole and is now seven and eight stories, and you walk by a wall and you walk by windows that you can't see through, and these are all things for the residents, and that is not commercial space. There is that tiny commercial space. Do you have a question, Mr. Blackaby, Council Member Blackaby and Luna Parra, while you are talking while I'm trying to explain this to you? Excuse me, could you just address the council as a body, please? Thank you. Right, but they're not listening. You're talking about Alcocole. Let's stop back and forth, please. Go ahead. Okay, so we're talking about that big wall of nothing, and there's no commercial activity and there's no opportunity for businesses. We do have that tiny business at the corner, which is doing quite well, but there's not room for other businesses. So think of this as really as a follow-up of what Donald Simon is talking about, having space for businesses. It is very intentional, that 50 feet, so that businesses can come back and we have lots of activity on San Pablo, and it just doesn't become a blank wall, and we have too much of that already on San Pablo. So that is my main point, and the other thing that really worries me about the plan that we have, that we've been presented tonight, is that it really feels so much like a gentrification plan that is just for the wealthy, and we're not going to get the affordable housing that we need, and we really do need family housing. Thank you. Okay, we are going to take a brief 10-minute break, and then we're going to take the online comments and then go into council deliberations. Thank you. Recording stopped. Okay. Okay, hello everyone. Recording in progress. For your patience. Okay, I do think it's worth mentioning that unfortunately Council Member Luna Parra had to go back home because she's not feeling well, but she will be taking the meeting from home. Rose, do you want to say anything about that? I know she's not quite on yet. Yeah, Council Member Luna Parra has shared with us her intention to continue the meeting at home under the just cause provision of the Brown Act due to illness, so when she does join, we'll go through that script to allow her to participate. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, we are taking public comment online. There are 16 hands raised online, so let's get into it. All right, our first speaker is Donna. Hi, I am ceding my minute to Tony Mester. All right, give us just a second, please. Looking for Tony. Oh, there we go. Yep, got it. Thank you very much. We will save your minute, Donna, for Tony. All right, our next speaker is, I apologize for the pronunciation, Chatin. Chatin. Hi, yeah, my name is Chatin. I live just off of San Pablo Avenue on Dwight Way with my wife and our 10-month-old son. I want to obviously start off by saying we're in a historic housing shortage, and it's urgent that every part of every Bay Area city does its part to build more housing. But I also want to share my personal perspective. I moved to the Bay Area 10 years ago for a job. I built my life here, and I fell in love first with San Francisco and now Berkeley. Berkeley is the city that my son will grow up in, he will call home, and I want him to grow up in a city that he can actually afford to live in. To do that, we have to build a lot more housing than we do today, and that means dense, multifamily housing along San Pablo Avenue, where today a lot of lots are auto shops, parking lots, car washes, and single-story strip malls. I also want my son to grow up near San Pablo Avenue that is bustling and vibrant because of new neighbors, new neighbors that bring more foot traffic, and I urge the council to pass this plan. Thank you. Thanks for your comment. All right, our next speaker is Cheryl Davila, former council member. Yeah, so I'm a 45-year resident of District 2, and the gentrification is real. Every morning I look out my window and I see gentrifiers. I don't have a problem with that, but we need to have affordable housing. We don't need a bazillion-story buildings along the corridor, and we also need to make sure that the businesses thrive because people aren't going to come there just to live there. We need to have businesses to support them and to make sure that you're not creating monster buildings that are fugly. We need to have a community along San Pablo, and you know what? I don't know what outreach happened, but I wasn't aware of any of those meetings or invited, and I know a lot of my neighbors weren't either, so the community input. Thank you. Next up is Zach Goldberg. Hey, this is Zach from D1 again, or D2. I live five minutes away from San Pablo and a ten-minute walk from the University in San Pablo node. I'm fully supportive of this plan. I feel the emotion that the councilwoman from D1 expressed before. When I saw a poster up opposing the plan, it really just made me mad as a millennial whose cohort is priced out of cities like Berkeley everywhere. We need more housing. We need it now. Let's make it easier for developers to build. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Noah. Hi, can folks hear me? Yes. I'm here with my wife, also a Berkeley resident. She's going to cede a minute to me. Hello. Thank you. You have two minutes. Okay. Good evening. My name is Noah Broad. I'm speaking in my personal capacity as a Berkeley resident, but I spent 15 years working on housing, homelessness, and economic development, including with HUD and the Small Business Administration. I've also been part of a development on the corridor, the Berkeley Moshav co-housing project that someone spoke favorably about earlier. I submitted some written comments, so I'm going to be brief. I support adopting the San Pablo plan, but just without the minimum density standard. The plan is well-designed. It reflects a real community effort, and I think it's going to meaningfully change how San Pablo evolves. But the plan that you're replacing tonight was also adopted with a vision for transforming the corridor, and that one didn't necessarily achieve its goals. That's why I'm speaking against the amendment to the agenda that was added a couple days ago, but in favor.
Segment 12
reference point, and to be careful with what is allowed as a matter of right versus requiring administrative use permit or design review. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Sean Hart. Hi, yeah, my name's Sean Hart. I'm a renter here in Berkeley, and I'm strongly in support of seven stories of the speaker just before me called blanket upzoning. I think that's a great phrase. That's exactly what we need. The seven stories of blanket upzoning on San Pablo, and I encourage you to advance it tonight. I think this is a great proposal. There's been some talk about the state density bonus law tonight as well. The governor just signed a law strengthening that, and this would enable Berkeley to take even more advantage of state density bonus. I urge you to vote yes on as much housing and vibrant commercial activity as we can possibly have so rents come down and also renters just have more options to choose from here on San Pablo and everywhere else in the city. Thank you. Thank you. All right, next speaker is the caller with the number ending in 211. Hi, now I have to comment about housing in Berkeley in general. I lived in Berkeley for 63 years and bought housing in Craigmont in 1968 for 28,000 houses today. My concerns are earthquakes. Big, giant earthquakes fall running under our feet. The Heller Fault is called the Sleeping Monster. If this thing goes seven magnitude, that's the quake, which it did in 1868, is overdue by about 20 years. It does. All of this big, deeply built, giant apartment buildings, prefabricated, are going to collapse. We have to consider new engineering in any new apartment building in Berkeley to save lives. It will happen. It runs under Piedmont Avenue. It runs under Arlington. It runs all the way to Fremont. It is a giant, huge earthquake. Everybody was in 1907 who had that San Francisco earthquake that was 200 miles away. It destroyed the Bay Bridge. One big section of the Bay Bridge fell and Cypress Freeway collapsed. Thank you. Thanks for your comment. Your time's up. Our next speaker is Otto Pippinger. Hi, thanks so much for having me. However, I am ceding my minute to Moni. All right, thank you. Moni will have another minute. Thank you. Next up is Kat. Hi there. So one thing I love about living here, and that's a point of pride for Berkeley, is that we have so many more independent businesses and chains, and I'm worried that the existing commercial tenants that give South San Pablo its cultural identity will be pushed out if protections are not mandatory up front. The canary in the coal mine is on life support. More commercial and retail closed in San Pablo in the last 10 years than opened. Everyone loves to put photos of the cute shops at Dwight and San Pablo in their slide decks, but it really shouldn't be allowed because nothing like that ever gets built here. Housing can bring customers, but it doesn't automatically create a lively street. Concrete cold shells tell small indie businesses to go away, but they are a good place to put a Verizon or Chipotle. Commercial units need to be small, warm, and affordable. I don't want to walk down San Pablo passing nothing but Amazon lockers, vape and kratom shops, Waymo loading curbs, ghost kitchens, and empty storefronts in the future. So please do what you can to make sure that that doesn't happen. I also second Martin's suggestion that everyone read The Death and Life of American Cities by Jane Jacobs. Thank you. Thanks Kat. All right, our next speaker is Moni, and Moni, you have three minutes. Hi, my name is Moni Gongo-Batai. The San Pablo specific plan is a pie-in-the-sky proposal that hopes to create something it cannot. Blanket upzoning is based on the false notion that upzoning automatically leads to more housing or more affordability. What it does do is increase the value of the land, pushing out small businesses and affordable housing tenants. How? Upzoning landlords anticipating the possibility of and are approached by corporate developers who can make a much higher offer on their property will double their rent, as they seem to have done to Berkeley Lighting Shop, which is on San Pablo Avenue and just got kicked out, or use some other vehicle to push out their tenants so they can accept a corporate developer offer. In Emeryville, upzoning resulted in a 25% rent increase in overall rents. That was reported by their local paper. As we know from what happened to Center Street, Missing Link, the biotech building at Aquatic Park, we know that corporate developers will buy properties and then sometimes let them sit. They gain profit from their existing properties and get tax benefits from quote-unquote failed ventures. What we get is boarded up buildings and blight. In Oakland, upzoning near the Paramount and Fox Theater resulted in shuttering of businesses and this once vibrant commercial district is now a ghost town. There's precious little retail in the area and little to no foot traffic. Please do not destroy our vibrant San Pablo corridor. Contrary to what one of the city council members said, there is more blight in downtown Berkeley than on San Pablo Avenue, at least where I live. And luxury apartments will not house unhoused folks. I am a decades-long policymaker for the state of California. Take it from someone with experience, rolling out broad policies that are not well thought out like blanket upzoning instead of more targeted upzoning will result in unintended consequences. When the state did this time and again, we got widespread fraud. Take it from a fraud investigator. That's what I do now. Please do not devastate our vibrant corridor frequented by people across Berkeley. I do not know how someone can say that they represent the low-income residents and people of color or people of Berkeley if they have not read Berkeley's own rent board study on upzoning. I'd like to read parts of it. I'm not sure if I have enough time, but I'm going to try. It says upzoning can lead to speculation, increased land values, and displacement. By the same token, upzoning has not led to greater racial integration and opportunities for vulnerable communities. Your time is up. Thank you. Our next speaker is Matt O'Brien. Good evening. It is inconsistent to claim to want to house the homeless now while supporting construction of market-rate apartment towers and developer buyout fees, which delay even further construction of affordable housing. Also, representing these upzoning plans, including the CZU, as addressing past discriminatory housing policies is deceptive, as there is no mechanism to ensure that members of communities discriminated against will live in these homes. It's not as if the new market-rate buildings will be, for example, exclusively for African Americans or Japanese Americans. They will be for whomever can pay five or six grand a month in rent, and with the developer buyout in lieu fees allowing no affordable units in a project, adopting the plan will foster more segregation and gentrification in Berkeley. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Our final speaker is Nancy Rader. Good evening. I support the remarks made tonight by Merrill Siegel and Donald Simon. We're already seeing many apartment buildings going up on San Pablo Avenue. We can meet our housing goals without further gentrifying Berkeley and destroying its character. Please reconsider this plan. Thank you. Thank you. Rose, did you want to.. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. That concludes public comment, and I'd just like to take a moment to do the Just Cause script with Council Member Luna Parra. She'll be joining us remotely under the Just Cause justification in the Brown Act, so we'll just go ahead and go through that. Council Member Luna Parra, are you available? All right. Perfect. Council Member Luna Parra is participating in the meeting remotely pursuant to the Brown Act under the Just Cause justification. A quorum of the Council is participating in person at a single physical location that is identified on the agenda, open to the public within the boundaries of the agency, and meets accessibility requirements. This satisfies the requirements of the Brown Act. Council Member Luna Parra has notified us of her need to participate remotely. Council Member Luna Parra, please provide a general description of the circumstances relating to your need to appear remotely for the remainder of this meeting. Thank you. I'm home because of illness. Thank you. Sorry to hear that. Council Member Luna Parra, please disclose if there is any other individuals 18 years of age or older present at your remote location in the room, and if so, the general nature of your relationship with such individuals. My partner Sam Greenberg is here. That's it. Thank you. Council Member Luna Parra, you are reminded that you must participate through both audio and visual technology. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Feel better. My gosh, we are dropping like flies over here today. Okay, everyone wash your hands. All right, so let's see. We have just done our public comment. We are going to go back here for deliberations and comments from Council Members. I have on here Council Member Kesarwani, then Taplin, then Bartlett, and go ahead. Thank you very much, Madam Mayor, and thank you to the public commenters. I want to say, you know, I want to make it clear, like with the prior controversial item we had, you know, I fully respect differences of opinion about the best approach, especially on this issue of the five stories versus seven stories. I do want to just quickly give the reasoning for why I think seven stories is the right height for this entire corridor. One is, keep in mind, the West Berkeley plan is from 1993, and we are not updating it until more than 30 years later tonight. Hopefully we can take this vote, you know, 2026. So when I think about this plan,.
Segment 13
material to lower the minimum dwelling units per acre from 145 to 100. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Councilmember Taplin. Thank you very much and thank you, Director Klein and Councilmember Kasawani and everyone and Madam Mayor. And I also want to thank my Housing Advisory Commissioner and the Commission Chair and all the businesses that participated in my office's roundtables around this over the years, the St. Pablo merchants, the University Avenue merchants, all the neighbors who participated in my early working group around this and everyone who participated and shared their feedback at the open houses and with city staff. And I'm so happy to see so many of those ideas presented tonight. You know, I am so lucky to not only serve the city and district I grew up in, but the neighborhood that I grew up in and still live in. I think one of the speakers recently moved to my neighborhood, so welcome to my neighborhood. I grew up in sectioning housing. I live cross street from my mom in a tiny studio in a mixed, in a mental housing building with several family units and a tiny studio that is where me and my books live, where I and my books live. And, you know, I spend my entire life on this avenue. I go, I bike on St. Pablo to take my laundry to the laundromat. I go to Michiera like three times a week. I buy plants from the East River Nursery. I get my COVID shots at the Kaiser on 10th. And, you know, all of us who live on both sides of St. Pablo Avenue on this end of the district, we all hang out, Missouri Lounge, Heads and Tails, Acme, Middle East Cafe Market. And, you know, people are talking about their concerns that the new residents won't engage in the community. But if you go to the places where we're engaging, you don't know who lives in what building. If we create this vibrant, you know, I love the part I live on, and I want that for the entire avenue, you know, from Emeryville to Albany. I want all of us to have this beautiful walking experience with these pedestrian plazas for events and markets and everything. And I totally understand the need for protections and things like that. But the way that we create protections is by adopting a plan to do so. So I will be supporting the motion. And I really thought I would be speaking for much longer, but I guess with that. That's OK. It's 1030. So all right. Council Member Bartlett. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I think Council Member Taplin, that was really a wonderful illustration. And Ahensville is good. No, but I'm so sorry. I know it's out of, it's out of. No, but this question about the HCF, I care very deeply about maximizing our housing trust fund dollars so that we can deeply invest in these projects serving vulnerable populations with sensitive needs. And I also support us having the flexibility to also create mixed income residential communities. I think both of these things are important. But when we are able to deeply invest using the HCF, we can have greater determinacy around the populations that we're choosing to serve. And I do think that matters a lot. Thank you. Thank you. OK, Council Member Bartlett, back to you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I thank you for getting that addition. Yeah, it's interesting. This last number of years that I've served in council, this debate has come back over and over. And I've grappled with it every single time. You know, this notion of on-site affordability versus in lieu monies to develop our own affordable housing. And, you know, the trade-offs are varied for each option. And, you know, I think tonight as I grapple with it, I have to confront the emergency that is our community. And I got to get money for the people. And also, to answer the point as well regarding the predictive nature of the five story, and then the people taking advantage of the density bonus to get to seven by having people live inside of it. My understanding and my observation from the new developments that I'm seeing that are 10 stories and so whatever, they're all taking advantage of it as well. They're doing, they're feeing out, if you will, to us. And they're also taking advantage of the density bonus and putting people inside the building. So this, you know, this may be a chance to have our cake and eat it too, if you will, or hogs and tails if you're in the barbecue, which you know I am. And it's a quick aside. You might know this. Paul, you know this, City Manager. What did I get in my SAT test? Barbecue sauce. Barbecue sauce. That's City Manager Joe. Yeah, so again, so all that aside, you know, all that on balance, you know, I'm going to definitely be supporting the seven story measure. I think it is the right thing to do for the people. And I think it does lead to economic integration in spite of the fiat capacity. Thank you, Council Member. OK, we are going to go Council Member Blackabee, then online to Council Member Humbert, and then back in person to Council Member Trickup. So starting with Council Member Blackabee. Great. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just want to thank everyone in the public who commented and thank my colleagues for a really interesting discussion and debate on an issue I know we all really care about, which is how do we provide and produce more housing at all price points for people to be welcome here in Berkeley. I wanted to comment first and offer potentially a friendly amendment to the main motion. Let me share my screen. This is building on some of the business support work that Council Member Trickup and Council Member O'Keefe did, just adding a little more, so I mentioned to Rashi, a little more flair for folks who are office space fans. But just to flesh out a little more of what we were thinking about in the second paragraph. And that's, so the stuff in yellow is stuff we added. So I'm thinking that in addition to the potential business license tax waiver, things like establishing marketing and promotional programs to boost activity to impacted businesses that OED could potentially coordinate with community partners. So if you're a business in an area that's being impacted and you've got construction going on, hey, can we give some extra promotional marketing support to drive foot traffic to those businesses while they're in that period of impact? There's been, we've seen some success at setting up meetings between the folks who are managing construction and impacting businesses to find some potential accommodations to help people in that period. So it's just formalizing some of that and also suggesting that there could be some other policy changes or waivers during some period that might also be there. So it's really just expanding the list of possible solutions to give more color, more ideas for the city manager and team to consider. But it's in the same spirit from Council Member Tregub and Council Member Shoshana O'Keefe, but just adding a few more specific ideas if the mover would be open to this friendly amendment. Yes, Council Member Blackaby, absolutely. I think I want to thank the three of you and thank you, Council Member Blackaby, for these additions, which I think are important to have our city manager look into. And maybe this is now a Halloween costume idea, flair that is amendments to a land use proposal on the Berkeley City Council. I need something. So thank you so much. I accept all of this and we're good. Okay, great. And then I do, you know, look, and I appreciate the discussion about the seven stories by right or the five stories. I, you know, I still think any way we slice it, whether you zone for seven and get some sort of in-lieu fees paid to the housing trust fund, or you zone for five with state density bonus, and you also get money paid to the housing trust fund. We're going to fund the housing trust fund more or less. I do think there is value in having more affordable units on site. And so I'd offer a substitute motion that's the same as the entire base motion that we've just laid on the table, including the friendly amendment, and make one change, which is to change the base to five stories for residential in the hopes that we are still aiming for the seven and eight stories, but we start with the base of five and then let the density bonus do the work. So that's my substitute motion. I'll second that. Although, can I actually, sorry, are you making a friendly amendment or are you making a substitute motion? Can I just, sorry, just making sure, clerk, is that clear to you? Maybe just repeat it for me one more time. So my only amendment is to take the same base motion. Right. And then Rashi, your confirmation to the clerk. Because you're looking for the, go ahead. The only change, but the substitute is that everything from the main motion with the change being the base is now going to be five stories for residential. Correct. It was that next part I didn't know. And sorry, can I just ask for clarity that because they're so similar, I think it just makes sense that we just sever and we vote separately on the height piece instead of having a separate motion. OK, so I think we just still need clarity. So a five-story building that's residential or multi-use, how many feet is that to do the conversion to the non-residential? Under the proposed zoning? Yeah. The, yeah, residential only or mixed use residential, the maximum height is 75 feet and seven stories. So I'd say like 560, for example. So it's 60 feet to do five stories then? So it would be four stories for a non-residential building. OK, and we can make that, we can wrap all that into the severable motion. That we.
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In order to maximize highest and best use, I am going to be arriving at the seven-story variant in terms of the residential height. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to be clear. Were you suggesting any additions? You were mentioning something. No. So thank you. So council member Luna, the response to council member Luna's question, which I think was about this, and maybe I'll just ask staff to reiterate, the local density bonus for condos, that is something that is referred to in a conceptual way, but still needs to be studied before it comes back to the council. Correct. That's correct. It requires more staff analysis, and it would have to go back before the Planning Commission and then come back before City Council before adoption. Yeah. So I am comfortable with not adding language, but I do hope that this is something that staff takes under serious consideration when this comes back. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for clarifying. So okay, now we have Council Member Humbert, Council Member O'Keefe, Council Member Lunaparra, then Council Member Tapp, and then Kester Wining. I'll run you through it just to be clear, because the parliamentarian versus the online view. Okay. Second to 11.30 p.m.? Yeah. Okay. Very good. Council Member Humbert. Would you like me to take the vote? Oh, sorry. Yes. Thank you. Okay. To suspend the rules and extend the meeting to 11.30, Council Member Kester Wining? Yes. Taplin? Aye. Bartlett? Yes. Triga? Aye. O'Keefe? Yes. Blackaby? Yes. Lunaparra? Yes. Humbert? Yes. Amiri Ishi? Yes. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Okay. Council Member Humbert. Okay. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I want to start out with thank yous, of course, to Director Klein, Justin Horner, Phil Erickson, Anne Hirsch, members of the Planning Commission, Council Members Kester Wining and Taplin, and all the members of the public for their engagement on this. I've appreciated the comments made about the Housing Trust Fund. It's really provided a tremendous number of deeply affordable, supportive units in this town, and it's really been valuable. I'm thinking of Council Member Bartlett's Step Up Housing. I'm thinking of the Hope Center. I'm thinking of Jordan Court. I'm thinking of the Maudel-Shirock building, which is just not too far from my district and in Council Member Bartlett's district. These are all really critical housing units for those people who need wraparound services. So, you know, the Housing Trust Fund is doing great, great things, and we're actually able to use the Housing Trust Fund monies to leverage at some really significant percentage and get additional monies added. The biggest unresolved questions, as I see them, are the heights, commercial building heights and minimum density standards, and I'm happy we're kind of winding up. On building heights, of course, you know, there are arguments on both sides. Strong argument that maybe five stories encourages the maximum provision of affordable housing. At the same time, I think there's also an argument for a street as wide as San Pablo supporting taller heights, and that perhaps in the future there will be construction types, like mass timber, that will allow the buildings to go even higher. But so far we haven't seen that in Berkeley. What I do not agree with is this idea that we've heard, that if we allow seven stories on San Pablo, we are automatically required or even obliged to allow that on any commercial corridor in the city. Frankly, I think this is false, and I don't think people should make the argument, whether sincerely or as a scare tactic. Affirmatively furthering fair housing does not mean every single street, with commercial uses or not, needs to have the same building heights across a roadway width. We've already adopted different zoning in downtown, on Southside, along Adeline, and this has not resulted in legal or HCD action against the city with respect to affirmatively furthering fair housing. We already have multiple pieces of state legislation, including AB 2011 and AB 893, which use roadway width as a determining factor for building heights. So I don't think we're going to have any problem if we continue to factor that in. With respect to commercial density, I don't think it makes sense to restrict this to three stories, and I think we're past that. And as far as minimum density standards, I see both sides of it, and I think that council member's suggestion of 100 dwelling units per acre makes sense. I think that's a good place to land. I think it helps encourage family size units. And that's really it. These are, you know, this has been a really interesting discussion. I've really enjoyed hearing from everyone, and I'm waiting to vote on it. And I'm glad that we're going to get there tonight. Thank you. Okay, Council Member O'Keefe. San Pedro is such a nice part of town. Can we all agree? I'm just really glad to be giving it the love that it deserves. It's actually like, it's, you know, it's a really long street. If you look outside of Berkeley, it's one of the longest and most important streets in the East Bay, and there's so much going on. And our segment of it is especially nice. I just wanted to call that out. We've got trees. We've got so many small businesses. We already have a lot of housing. It's just, it's great. So I'm just, I want to start with that. I'm really glad to see we're expanding where housing is allowed. There's a couple lots that we're adding from the Muley. I think that's really great. We're expanding the uses that are allowed. This is just really a good, it's a good plan. It's opening up a lot, a lot of opportunity to make this, make this great part of town even better. I think that's all I have to say about that. In terms of like the nitty gritty, I will be supporting the five story plan. I think, you know, no one is exactly right or wrong in this argument. I think there's good arguments on both sides. I'm personally, I've always been very philosophically drawn to the value of economic integration. I think that's just really important whenever we're building housing. If we can make sure that people of all incomes can live together, that to me is just a value that I want to promote. So that's my reason for voting for the five story limit, but I don't have super large confidence it's going to pass, and that's okay. I think we're going to pass a great plan tonight, and I'm really excited for that. And those are my comments. Thank you very much. Council Member Luna-Para. Thank you. I want to talk some more about this policy question that we're having about on-site units versus 100% affordable housing, because it's a very interesting one, especially as someone with a planning background. This is something that the academic field in housing actually grapples with a lot. There is no single answer as the best form of affordable housing. Low-income folks looking for affordable housing want different things because low-income people are not a monolith. Some want units in a mixed-income building, and some want to live in 100% affordable building that is tailored to their specific needs. Some want the city to help keep them housed in cooperatively managed small sites buildings, and we have heard a lot from community input for all these types of affordable housing. Some would also benefit strongly from permanent supportive housing units for formerly unhoused folks, and we can use the Housing Trust Fund money to pay for all of these. I also want to assure everyone, all the speakers, that this inclusionary fee is not a small amount. Our planning director spoke to it earlier, but a single project can add millions of dollars into the Housing Trust Fund that can help fight displacement and build new units. That's huge. All of this to say that I think on-site affordable units are fantastic, but they are not the only answer, and I think seven stories base height is the right way to embrace this diversity. Thank you. And thank you to planning staff. Thank you, Council Member Lunapara. Council Member Taplin. Thank you very much. In addition to everything we've just heard, I would just offer that as a multimodal person, a representative of transit-dependent persons and households, and as the city's representative on the ACTC, San Pablo Avenue is an inter-regional mixed-use commercial corridor. It's a transit corridor, and we know that with more people riding transit, this will help us increase ridership to save our transit agencies and our transit partners. And I think that, you know, looking at where our emissions are coming from as a city, this is what I feel is the most appropriate base height to achieve our climate goals, our housing goals, and our transit goals. Thank you. Thank you very much. Council Member Kesarwani. No, I'm ready to vote. Okay. Council Member Blackaby. So I will. So we have, let's roll the tape here. This is the final comparison. Okay, so just for clarity. So in the current, in the packet, this is what's coming from Planning Commission Planning Staff. Non-residential, this is page 942, table 23-20445. So non-residential is 40 feet and three stories. Residential is 75 and seven. The main motion from Council Member Kesarwani keeps residential at 75 and seven and changes non-residential to 75 and five, right? Okay. And then my substitute motion moves non-residential to 55 and four stories and residential to 55 and five with the assumption that with the density bonus, again, we get back to seven or eight. So I believe those are the key changes between. The only just quick minor thing is, so technically, Mr. Klein,.
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These items that require a lot of thought at the beginning of the meeting rather than at the end of the meeting and we had the easy stuff on consent at the end that we could just pass and get rid of. And then we have one theater left in our city, the Elmwood. I don't count the Pacific Archives because they're not really showing current film most of the time. But we do have the Elmwood and there is a film that I would like to recommend to all of you and it's probably not going to be an easy film to watch and that is Naza and it opens on the 9th at the Elmwood and it received 25 minutes standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival and I would ask you all to go. Thank you. Thanks Kelly. I support food trucks outside. Sure. All right. Good evening everyone. Esteemed council members, thank you for the opportunity to offer a recommendation for strengthening the housing preference process. As a model Miller Shearick resident, the application process illustrates why organizations paid to conduct outreach for the affordable housing preference policy must be evaluated based on advocacy efforts that continue after someone joins a waiting list. My application was submitted through model Miller Shearick leasing team which consisted of RCD and John Stewart where I was notified via email that applicants positions could change based on preferences they were able to verify. At the interview stage, applicants were told that arriving 30 minutes late would require rescheduling, that only one reschedule was allowed and that a $15 fee per adult had to be paid by money order or cashier's check at the time of the interview. I firmly believe these requirements created loopholes through which an eligible applicant could lose an opportunity despite qualifying for housing preference. Therefore, organizations funded to conduct outreach should serve as applicant advocates helping descendants and other eligible applicants complete applications, gather verification documents, prepare for appointments and fees, and respond promptly when an appointment is missed or paperwork remains incomplete. Their deliverables should include completed and incomplete applications, verified preferences, and reporting on how many applicants ultimately secure housing. A clear handoff between outreach advocates and the leasing team would help applicants navigate through every stage of the housing preference process where no eligible applicants will be left behind. Thank you and I am complete. Thank you for your perfectly timed comment. All right, any other public comments this evening? Okay, is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. A second. I was like, no motion, all right. Okay, can we take the roll on that please? All right, to adjourn Council Member Kezarwani. Yes. Taplin. Aye. Bartlett. Yes. Tregub. Aye. O'Keefe. Yeah. Blackaby. Yes. Munaparath. Yes. Humbert. Yes. Mary Ishii. Yes. We are adjourned. Thanks everybody. Have a good evening. Get home safely. Recording stopped.