Hello.

Oh, there it goes.

It's working now.

Very good.

All right.

Hi, everyone.

Good evening.

I'm calling to order the Berkeley City Council meeting.

Today is Tuesday, February 24th, 2026, and it is 6.03 p.m.

Clerk, can you please take the roll?

Okay.

Councilmember Castroani is absent.

Present.

Here.

Trago.

Oh, Keith.

Here.

Wackaby.

Here.

Lunapara.

Here.

Umbert Rosen and Mayor Ishi.

Here.

Okay, quorum is present.

Very good.

Thank you very much.

So on our ceremonial calendar, we have a number of different things.

The first being that today, well, February 2026 is Heart Month.

So the American Heart Association made a request, and I believe Mary might be here.

Mary Kirsten.

Ah, come on up.

Oh, I'm sorry, Maya.

Misread it.

Come on up.

Welcome.

Commemorating American Heart Month, 2026, whereas cardiac arrest is a leading cause of death worldwide with 350,000 cardiac arrests occurring yearly outside of hospitals in the United States, resulting in approximately 10% of people surviving.

And whereas often the first people to witness out of hospital cardiac arrests are family members, making this the first and most crucial link for survival.

And whereas immediate cardiopulmonary resuscitation can double or even triple a person's chance of survival, yet only about 41% of people who experience cardiac arrest receive immediate CPR from someone nearby, and fewer than 12% receive aid from an automated external defibrillator, AAD, before advanced help arrives.

And whereas for adults and teens, hands on, hands hands only CPR, calling 9 11 and pushing hard and fast in the center of the chest can double or triple the chance of survival while infants and children require CPR with rescue breaths to restore oxygen and circulation.

And whereas studies show that women are less likely to receive CPR than men due to miseducation and lack of awareness resulting in the American Heart Association.

Um the American Heart Association has set a bold goal to double survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest by 2030 through its national nation of lifesavers initiative.

And now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Adina Ishi, Mayor of the City of Berkeley, do hereby declare February 2026 to be American Heart Month.

Would you like to say a few words?

I would, thank you.

Um, so hi, my name is Maya Gertzen, and I'm a senior development director with the American Heart Association.

Thank you so much for recognizing February as American Heart Month this year, and for supporting our mission of saving lives from heart disease and stroke.

This year we're once again focused on building a nation of lifesavers and spreading the powerful message that you are the first responder until help arrives, so that all of us can be prepared to react to a cardiac emergency by calling 911 and knowing how to perform CPR.

As the mayor mentioned, over 350,000 people experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest every year in this country, and 90% of those are fatal.

So we have a bold goal to um double cardiac arrest survival by the year 2030.

So as a Berkeley resident, as a parent of two BUSD students, and a member of the Heart Association's Bay Area team, I urge the people of Berkeley to learn CPR.

I can I learned, and so can you.

Thank you.

As a former soda tax commissioner, I appreciate your help on that.

And I'm also someone who learned adult child and infant CPR.

So very important tools that we should all have.

Who knows?

We may need it someday.

All right.

Next, there is a proclamation and adjournment in memory that was requested by Councilmember Bartless's office.

And so I will pass it over to him so he can read the proclamation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

And I see Johnna's family's here.

Mary, how are you?

Good to see you.

Johnna was a dear friend of mine and uh and my neighbor and my constant um co-creator, if you will, like she was many people and our tenure together these last nine years, and um, really sad to see her go.

And um, she's in my prayers, and so are you.

We talked the last time, right?

Again, and um miss her a lot.

I'm gonna read this for you for the community and Jana's name and uh it's not in here, but let's just say for the record, Johnna was Italian nobility.

She was a duchess or a countess.

Which one was it?

She was a countess, and the title was in her, we have different fathers and her I'm potato famine Irish, I used to tease her, and uh the her family title was granted in the 1100s, so it's a very old Italian home family.

Wow, amazing.

I mean, the life and legacy of Gianna Ranuzzi, born whereas, born October 30th, 1950 in Los Angeles, California, Gianna led a life defined by creativity, cultural exchange, public service, and deep community engagement.

And whereas she received her early education from our Lady of Good Counsel, Catholic Church and School, spent her formative years on her family's ranch in Montana, earned a degree in Italian literature from the University of Montana, then studying abroad in Taiwan, she taught English and completed Montessori training, which she was on my daughter, by the way, uh in Italy under Maria Montessori's final student, as Maria Montessori's final student.

And whereas she made Berkeley her home by cultivating a life rooted in creativity, travel, and entrepreneurship, although a transformative jewelry business that connected artisans from China, Guatemala, Cuba, Algeria, Italy, and beyond to Berkeley.

And whereas Johnna became a vital steward of Berkeley's cultural life with her work on Telegraph Avenue and the Telegraph Area Business Association, notably serving as a promoter and manager of the Berkeley World Music Music Festival.

And whereas committed to Berkeley's civic engagement by serving on the board of Lacant Homeown Association and LeCont Neighborhood Association as president for many years, which we know.

Expresses deep gratitude for her extraordinary contributions to the cultural, artistic, and civic life of our community, and extends heartfelt condolences to her family, friends, and all those whose lives she enriched.

You're here.

Okay.

Thank you all very much.

I appreciate you all being here and listening, especially these stories about people's lives.

I think it's it's really important to know who's in our community and these people, you know, who impact us every day.

Um Councilmember Trago has also asked that we take a moment of silence tonight to mark the lives lost in the four years since Ukraine uh was invaded.

Today is the anniversary of the war in Ukraine, and so if we can also just take a moment of silence as well.

Thank you all.

That concludes our ceremonial matters for this evening.

I will see if the city manager has any comments.

No comments, madam mayor.

Thank you.

And I will now see if our city auditor has any comments this evening.

Hey, good evening.

Uh mayor and council.

I just want to wish everyone a happy lunar new year.

And tonight I wanted to just give a brief update on item 24, the restaurant inspections audit follow-up.

Of our eight recommendations, two are now fully implemented.

So thank you so much for that work.

This includes a recommendation for the division to create a plan to ensure timely response to complaints involving alleged foodborne illness.

The division has strengthened its policy for addressing these complaints by clarifying the turnaround time and staff responsibilities to ensure complaints are received and prioritized within one business day.

Four recommendations are now partly implemented, and one highlight is that the division is now using program-specific codes to track revenues and expenditures related to food facility inspections.

During our audit, we found that that information was not able to be tracked because of the way that the system was designed.

So our team will reassess the recommendation once that report is available in 2026.

Later in 2026.

Another highlight is that in response to our recommendation about updating the restaurant inspections data, the division has strengthened its requirements for data management and monitoring, and the division estimates their new database will be live in June 2026.

So I'm really looking forward to that.

In our next follow-up, we will check whether they can produce an accurate list of facilities that prior that is prioritized by the last inspection date.

And the division has also taken steps in response to developing a plan to start window placards.

According to the division, their recent fee study helps to clarify the resources needed for this placarding program.

So I'm really excited that we can start looking at one day having placards in Berkeley.

And the training has been completed, so they can they can help support the design of an evidence-based plaque reading program.

But that will need additional time and effort in ensuring that the program is the best fit for Berkeley.

And finally, the division um has not yet uploaded the inspections data online after it was taken down.

The division updated its webpage to include instructions for requesting individual inspection reports from the environmental health division, and they are estimating that the data will be back online in summer of 2026.

So I just want to thank the environmental health division for this update.

And thank you very much.

And I believe there's um there's another one of my reports that will hopefully get moved to action so we can discuss um performance measures.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Um we will now take public comment on non-agenda matters.

Five cards, the car in, you can come up speak in any order.

You'll have one minute per person.

Uh Margot Murtaugh, Steven Alpert, James Arnold, Celeste Marks, Rhonda Gruska.

Your name?

So there folks, if you heard your name called can stand up.

Good evening.

I'm Dr.

Stephen Alpert.

Last night the council voted to deny an appeal of two local building trades to reject a proposal, the 20-story project at 2425 Durant.

The basis for that appeal was that developer Mark Rhodes and Laconia Development asserted that concessions and state density bonus law permit them to bypass Berkeley's hard hat ordinance.

That measure passed in May of 2023 requires developers of large projects to provide health insurance, apprenticeship training, and fair prevailing rate pay to construction workers.

Lawyers for the trade councils argued that allowing developers to bypass local standards and was a misuse of density bonus law, and that no other developer statewide has previously used the vague concessions in density bonus law to negate local building standards and pay less to construction workers.

Council members all proudly proclaim that you are pro-housing, but by your actions yesterday, instead you clearly demonstrate you are pro-development.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Rhonda Grushka.

I'm here to serve council member Blackabee with an intent to recall notice.

I'm sorry, but uh public comment isn't supposed to be used to address a specific council member.

It's meant to be used to address the council at large.

So if you have a comment.

I'll let you all know that I'm here to serve a recall, intend to recall.

I have a copy for the city clerk.

I have a copy for the council member.

Um today is the 24th of February.

Um my manner of service is in person.

Um I have my name, I have my address, my zip code, the state, and the time and date of submission.

Let's look at the clock here.

It looks like it's about what would everyone say 62.

Um, so anyway, just trying to dot all the I's cross all the T's because I have been here before.

Um, and just making sure I'm following proper protocol.

So that's why I'm here.

Um, and that's why I'm speaking tonight to make sure there's no confusion about why I'm here.

So, thank you very much.

Okay, thank you.

Did you did you get that, Rose?

I just wanted to make sure you could hear someone was feeding their time.

I gave her name to me, Lola Zerkley.

Remember, she's a hard number.

Yes, I guess.

Sorry, it can be hard to hear from this far away, so go ahead.

Um, hello.

My name is Lola Zerpley.

I'm a student at UC Berkeley, as well as a resident of Southside Berkeley, living at the intersection of Derby and Warring, also known as Zachary's Corner, named after the young boy who sadly died walking across the intersection in 2009, 17 years ago.

Since 2011, there have been 11 reported accidents involving that intersection, including pedestrians being hit by a car, one of which was in 2024.

It was an eighty-four-year-old man hit by an AC transit bus.

On Tuesday, February 10th, I was hit by a car walking in the crosswalk across that very same intersection.

Hit at an intersection that is known to the city of Berkeley as high injury.

Yet there's been nothing done to fix it.

I'm sorry.

I understand that there have been some plans to change that intersection.

That would be done at the end of 2027, making it 18 years since Zachary was hit.

I'm gonna continue.

If that's okay.

Someone is seeding you some time.

Go ahead.

Okay, thank you.

Um, giving a full other year of opportunity for a person to be hit when we fully know that at this point it is not an if but a when.

And when that occurs, it will fall in the city's hands and it will be the city's fault.

Because by now it is very clear that none of these accidents should have happened.

If the city had put in even a blinking pedestrian light in the meantime, and at the very least, repainted the crosswalk that has now been faded for many years, then accidents including mine could have been prevented.

I am lucky and I understand that.

I'm lucky to be up here angry, angry that I have immense back pain and multiple X-rays and MRI show that I have spinal invertebrate damage, that I will have to deal with and pay for.

I know that I'm lucky to be alive, but being alive should not be the bare minimum expectation when crossing the street in your own neighborhood.

I'm angry that the city that I love allowed an accident that should not have happened.

I'm not asking you, I'm telling you, there needs to be an immediate change.

Whether that be a pedestrian blinking light or something more, but it needs to be done now and not in a year.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm so sorry that happened to you, and I really appreciate you being here and sharing that with us today.

Okay, been here once before about animal rights and cow killing.

And I'm telling y'all, you open up another campus burger on uh Hay Street, and you can go to my website, Animal Rights 74.wordpress.com, and you can learn about why you're not supposed to do that.

You got a city of Berkeley, and you got a damn government.

And you should say we don't want no more animal killers.

We got enough animal killers in the city of Berkeley.

And you open a new restaurant in Berkeley, you open a vegetarian uh hamburger spa, veggie burger spot.

And you get with it because people can't change their diets on their own, they need scientists to change what's in a uh food for the get sick, changing their diets on their own.

Listen to chat GPT, change they die and they get our independence, they go bond or get other health problems or whatever.

And I'll tell you all your government is supposed to step up and uh regulate the uh animal killer out of existence, or a place it with uh uh ethical food.

Thank you.

Uh there's one online commenter, and that's a phone number ending in 211.

Hi, good evening.

So our company manager handed you some paper today.

Please read it all.

A bit of update.

Well, obviously, Darren Early wanted the place printed by black tenants on African American tennis on you, which is what happened with the help of a council and bot it.

That's shamful.

That's shamful.

I went to Florida State University during the horrible time when black people treated like no words.

So at the same time, we're hiring a new attorney, and we're using our claim against the city for one million point two to five million dollars.

This does not belong to this city.

Shame a new councilman that ignored us.

Shame on the mayor who had this.

She went against his wish and demand.

He also went, I mean her boss, Liam Garland.

He was very good man.

Liam Rowland was very good man.

Oh, there's another one.

Uh Maria Sol.

Yes, thank you very much.

And I think we need a moment of silence to disagree.

It's all that we're trying to do, given the disparity and complexity and diversity.

This beautiful community, but I'm wanting to address housing because while we heard last week of the 19th really indicate to me the affordability money for a blanket, I'm really most concerned about the people that I was with today that are already in buildings that are being collected by management companies like the Howard Mabel and Alcatraz and Sacramento, their elevators have been down for a month.

The people in wheelchairs are trapped, and they can't get out.

So let's take care of what we've done.

Thanks, Maria.

All right, thank you.

Um that was just seven speakers.

We do have a couple more cards in here.

Um we have uh, and this is only for people who haven't spoken already.

Uh Lola Zir Zirpoly.

She spoke.

Okay.

Uh Richard Woods.

So, okay, well, all right.

Um, but that that concludes non-agenda public comments.

Thank you.

Okay, we will move on now to our consent calendar.

Um so at this time, if there are any council members who have comments on consent, can you please press your button?

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Luna Para.

Thank you.

Um item 19 resolution urging Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz to enact an eviction moratorium to prevent displacement during the ongoing ICBP terror campaign.

Um, I want to thank my co-sponsors, Councilmember Bartlett, Trigob, and Blackbee for their support.

Um, and Red Board Chair Sally Alpert for his partnership in drafting the initial item that we passed at the four by four committee.

Um, we introduced this item at the urging of members of the Minneapolis and St.

Paul City Councils, um, which both unanimously passed their own resolutions in January.

Essentially, um eviction moratoriums in the state of Minnesota operate differently than in California, where the state has to authorize um an eviction moratorium for it to be put in place.

Um I would also like to give $200 to items 16 and 17, respectively.

Thank you to those authors.

Um, and I also want to mark that February 19th is the day of remembrance of the internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans under Executive Order 9066, um, signed by President Roosevelt in 1942.

And it's important to take a moment to honor um those who were stripped of their rights at this time.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Appreciate you bringing in the ancestors.

Um, can we move on to Councilmember Blackbee, please?

Thanks, Madam Mayor.

Um, as the auditor mentioned, um, I'd ask colleagues if we could move item 25, which was the information report on performance metrics and move that as the first item on the action calendar.

So if I had support from a couple of colleagues to do that, I appreciate that.

I will I support I think that's three total.

So we're good.

Thank you.

And look forward to talking about that in a moment.

I'd like to add uh 250 from our office account to the Waterside Workshops Community Spring Fling and item 16.

Um thank you for bringing that forward to uh Mary Shee and Councilmember Taplin.

Um and then on item 17, similarly 250 dollars for the Berkeley United School District of Historical Study, thanks to Councilmember Bartlett for bringing that forward.

Um and then brief comment on um information items 22 and 23, which was the investment returns on the city portfolio from Q4 and Q1.

Um just note, and we've been having some discussions um in the budget committee and in other places about um you know ways to um identify uh additional revenue at the same time we're heading into this sort of major budget crunch and had some conversations with finance staff.

I'll note that um the reports mentioned that our return is about 117 basis points in the recent quarter, 127 basis points in the Q4 quarter below the state benchmark, uh, partially based on the duration of what we hold in the portfolio, but also I think some policies that we've set as a council in past years that also constrain what the finance team um can do.

And so I look forward to looking at that and as a potential source of additional revenue if we can again sort of uh give the finance team more tools to invest our portfolio carefully, but also uh in a way that's gonna generate a larger return over time.

So I think that's gonna be an important thing that we look at in the budget committee and in other places as we go forward.

Uh and that's my comments.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Councilmember.

Moving on to Councilmember Taplin.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Good evening, everyone.

On item 17, I would like to be recorded as relinquishing 500.

And I request uh to be added as a co-sponsor if Councilmember or thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Um moving on to Councilmember Traegu.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

On item 16.

I wish to relinquish 250 from my G13 account for Waterside Workshops Communities Spring Fling, uh, and thank the mayor for bringing forward this item on item 17.

I wish to again relinquish 250 from my G13 account to support the BUSD historical study, and would be honored to be added in as a co-sponsor with the permission of the author, and my gratitude for this item.

On item 18, uh, I would like to thank the land use housing and economic development committee, the four by four committee, and my co-sponsors, councilmember Bartlett and Councilmember Taplin, for this referral, which would remove an on-site manager exemption loophole for certain multifamily properties that are adjacent to each other and or share the same common area, uh, which has been an issue in some properties, not just around habitability and level of services provided to the tenants, but also has at times become led to trash being uh pulled outside without any collection because there's no on-site manager, which has become an ISOR at best and sometimes has led to cold enforcement in actions in such properties on item 19.

I would like to thank Vice Mayor Luna Parra for this resolution, and um, it was an honor to be a co-sponsor to this item.

And those are my comments.

Thanks so much.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Moving on to Councilmember Bartlett, uh, thank you, Madam Mayor.

Uh I'd like to um contribute $250 dollars to item 16, the Waterside Workshops um spring fling Fling.

Uh thank you for bringing that up, Adam Mayor and Councilmore Taplin.

It's a lot of fun.

And then I'd like to um uh thank uh Councilmember, I thank the Vice Mayor for your item around the eviction moratorium uh request uh in Minnesota.

I think evictions are bad everywhere all the time.

Um that's one good chance to put it out there in the ether.

Uh and I'd like to thank everyone for item 17.

This is the um this is the the BUSD effort to achieve a reparations sort of framework.

And so this this um comes with because people are asking for support to help the college kids do the research on it.

Um history part, so happy to help.

Uh, and it does and it is so it's close to home.

Uh, because I gotta tell you um it's with great tragedy that uh I must tell you that uh we did fail in delivering reparations um that this office authored and this council passed.

Um years ago, it is not happening.

And well, I'm unable to deliver that.

Uh at least I can support our neighbors in the BUST in uh making it happen.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Councilmember.

Councilmember O'Keefe.

Oh, I'd like to be recorded at uh as donating two hundred and fifty dollars to item 16 and also to item 17.

Thank you very much.

Um council member, oh, sorry, the parliamentarian is glitching.

I'm gonna go with Councilmember Humbert.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um, I'd like to donate uh 250 dollars on item 16 to the wonderful waterside workshops for their community spring fling.

They do such good work.

Um thank you to uh the mayor and council member taplin for for bringing this one on 17 um 250 dollars also um of our um office budget to the uh to supporting the research for the uh historical study.

I think that's very important, and then number 19.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Lunaparra for authoring this and and to all the co-sponsors.

I think it's critically critically important to provide some relief to tenants in Minneapolis in the wake of the terror campaign.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Uh speaking of going back to Vice Mayor Lunapar.

Thank you.

I actually I wanted to change my um my discretionary fund donation to item 17 to 500, please.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you all so much.

Um I have a few comments as well.

Um I really want to express my appreciation to city staff for working in partnership with the Association of Bay Area Area Governments, ABAG, and the San Francisco Estuary Partnership, SFEP, in partnership with the cities of Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville, and Oakland to secure two million two hundred and forty thousand dollars, of which two hundred and twenty-three thousand dollars will be for Berkeley over two and a half years for the East Bay Crescent sub-regional vulnerability assessment and shoreline adaptation planning project.

Adaptation to sea level rise is a challenge, and we must face across that we must face across all of our jurisdictions.

So always like to highlight when staff bring in more funding into our city.

Um and of course, I want to thank the Waterside Workshop and for all the work that they do to support our community, and thank you to all the council members who contributed to item 16, their spring fling, and of course to Councilmember Taplin, who um brought this item with me and and also it's of course in his district.

Um, thank you to Councilmember Bartlett for allowing me also to be on item number 17, which is the BUSD historical study, and my office is relinquishing 250 dollars to this study.

And um, this is particularly important since I was on the BUSD reparations task force and was involved in the community group that from 2020 to the time where we actually got the uh the task force uh advocated for that task force to exist.

And one of the um parts of the report, the request that came out of it was this historical study.

So it's very exciting to see that the district is moving forward on this and that we're able to contribute to that effort.

Um lastly, I want to express appreciation for the Safe Streets Oversight Committee and the Department of Public Works for all the work they've been doing to ensure the voter-approved measure FF tax dollars are being utilized effectively and efficiently.

This accountability is baked into the tax measure, and I look forward to seeing future presentations and execution of the project of projects under measure FF.

We really think it's important to bring it back to folks and make sure they know that we're using this money wisely.

So thank you all very much.

And I will now um open us up for public comment.

If there's any public comment on consent calendar information items only, Carol, come on up.

So because I heard the budget referenced, uh I am wondering how AB 339 is going to impact our budget.

I mean, this is clearly between staff and council uh council uh and the unions.

Uh but given that this is uh relates to our contractors, whether they're new contractors or contractors that are have up for renewal of contracts.

It seems as if it might be wise to involve commissions to the extent that that's feasible.

Um, what's some advisory input in terms of the contractors that we've been working with?

Thank you.

Thanks, Carol.

Hi, Rebecca Grove, uh director of Waterside Workshops.

Just here to say thank you all for supporting our spring fling.

We are launching our street level cycles cycling club.

So if you want to join a cycling club, they'll be taking off uh at 8 a.m.

And then our cookout uh starts at noon, and the mayor's gonna speak.

We're doing tsunami uh preparedness and awareness as well.

Collaborated with that off of the emergency prepared at office.

So thanks again.

It's great, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Um anyone online for public comment for consent consent calendar information items only.

Okay.

There's one raised hand for public comments on Zoom.

It's a phone number ending in 000.

Hi, good evening.

Now let's talk about uh uh the situation, you know.

The city should be uh for immigrants.

Immigrants did this uh made this country.

Well, 1.3 million Americans died from COVID because Trump first administration he denied it.

They called it China Hawkes or called it all kind of things.

Immigrants built this country, the man who brought us uh vaccine, one's Greek American Madonna one.

Uh is uh sorry, is this Lebanese American something on consent calendar or information items?

Yes, uh consent item number 19.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So we need right now we have a monastery in the White House.

As I said before, now you're going after Migrants.

It's going after everybody, me, you, and everybody.

It is a totally disgusting situation.

Have a good night.

Thank you.

Anyone else online?

Nope, that's it.

Okay, very good.

Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?

So moved.

Second.

Is there any opposition to approving the consent calendar?

All right, I'll have us all marked as eyes and the consent calendar has been approved.

Thank you all very much.

All right, moving on to our action calendar.

So we have moved an item from the uh excuse me, from the information items onto the action calendar.

Um, so I will ask our auditor.

I know you're getting set up right now, but if you can also present whenever you're ready.

All right, good evening, and thank you for having me here today.

On February 5th, my office released a special report titled A Guide to Measuring Performance in the City of Berkeley.

I will provide an overview of that report, including the report purpose, research process, and opportunities for management consideration on Berkeley's performance measures from the report.

So, our purpose.

We developed this report in response to a request from Council Member Blackabee asking our office to conduct benchmarking and best practice research on outcome-based budget metrics.

This was following a related item he authored, requesting the city manager to develop 10 to 20 measurable goals and metrics that reflect key priorities in the city.

Our purpose was to provide a framework for developing quality performance measures in Berkeley.

What is a performance measure?

Those of you who are not in the world that I, you know, in on this information, the a performance measure is really just a qualitative or quantitative assessment of an agency's work.

In other words, performance measures can tell you how much or how well a program or service is doing.

This can help prioritize the limited resources on specific goals during a budget deficit period.

The report also summarizes best practice research and information from other cities.

It also provides opportunities for management consideration and regarding performance measurement in Berkeley.

The report provides a framework for developing these measures.

What does this mean?

Well, this starts with identifying the people served by a department or program as well as that population's needs.

Understanding who the primary audience is helps to clarify what success should look like.

Departments should then identify desired outcomes based on those needs and determine how to measure those outcomes.

One question to ask during this process is how will people know whether something is successful?

Further steps include developing a data collection process for outcomes, establishing baselines and targets, as well as a reporting method.

This process should result in clear, measurable outcomes representing the issues that matter most to the Berkeley community.

A comprehensive process to develop quality measures can take some time.

I want to make sure to acknowledge that, and may require additional resources.

However, identifying one or two measures in each department that addresses the most important priorities and impacts could be a great starting point to this work.

For more information on how to implement this framework, you can take a look at our report on our website.

The report also provides an overview of performance measurement in Berkeley.

The city first reported on performance measures in fiscal year 2022 budget book and continue to report measures into following budgets.

The budget book is the most centralized location to access performance measurement data currently in Berkeley.

We selected three city departments to highlight given the limited amount of time we just looked at three city or three departments.

IT, Parks, REC, and Waterfront, and police.

The report includes tables showing their performance reporting from the past three budgets.

We also interviewed leadership from these departments to understand their process for measuring performance.

Our analysis includes a review of other cities as well, where we identified common themes and how other cities measure and report performance.

There's some common performance measures reported in other cities.

For example, one common measure in other IT departments is the number or percent of service requests completed in a given time frame.

Other parks departments often measure the customer satisfaction rating for parks or recreation programming.

A common measure in other police departments is the average response times for emergency services.

Berkeley police report average 911 call response times in their annual report, though this is not included in the budget book.

So we're seeing things in other places, but having it in a centralized place could be helpful.

We provide other examples of common measures in our report.

We also found common themes in how other cities report their data.

For example, some most cities use standardized reporting periods and report performance at least annually.

Most cities also include this data from previous years in their budget books.

Some benchmark cities also follow an innovative process known as outcome-based budgeting, which means they make budget decisions and allocate resources based on key goals or outcomes.

Lastly, we identified opportunities for management consideration based on best practices and insights from comparable cities.

First, management could consider organizing and streamlining performance measure reporting efforts.

Maintaining the same measures over time and using standard reporting periods could support comparability across years.

Additionally, the city could revisit the strategic plan goals and alignment of these performance measures.

Finally, management could explore outcome-based budgeting.

While this process typically requires additional resources, departments could implement outcome-based budgeting on a smaller scale.

For example, departments could develop more outcome-oriented measures and relate those measures to their overall goals, and they could also assess how much of their budget is allocated towards achieving those goals.

Over time, this work can strengthen the connection between resources, activities, and results.

We'd like to thank the department staff and leadership in IT, police, and parks, rec and waterfront for their assistance in this report.

Thank you to Councilmember Blackaby for this request, and to my team, Kendall Coochley and Aaron Mullen, and we're happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for your presentation.

I'm glad you're able to give a more in-depth look into your audit.

I know that we have some questions, so I'll go to Councilmember Brackabee.

Thanks, Madam Mayor, and thanks to the auditor and your team for doing this really important work in such a short time frame.

I know it's not a full audit, it was just some guideposts for us to follow.

So I appreciate your partnership and support.

In December, as the auditor mentioned, our office authored an item called setting measurable goals and metrics for key city priorities, emphasizing the importance of creating performance measures that reflect what matters most to our residents and clearly demonstrate both the impact of city government and overall quality of life in our community.

We've started the process of moving it through the committee process.

I appreciate the feedback by the health life enrichment equity and community committee.

We'll be bringing the item back in the coming weeks to the council, so you'll see it.

But we've got some good feedback from that process as well.

The research in this report from the auditor, benchmarking our practices against computer cities, outlining best practices and performance measurement overall and offering forward-looking recommendations provides a strong foundation for this work.

It's going to be an invaluable resource for staff as we move forward toward a more data-driven, transparent and outcomes focused budgeting process.

I also want to thank the city manager and his team.

We've already had a wide range of conversations on this topic, and as we're moving into the budget period, I know that a lot of this work is already beginning, and so I just want to appreciate what the city manager is doing and his willingness to embark with us on this journey.

A couple questions for the auditor.

You mentioned it before, I mean, this could be a very broad project.

I don't think any of us wants this to be a boil the ocean kind of project.

We really, especially in the short term, want to get to something that's usable quickly.

And you'd kind of mentioned that as you looked at each of the departments, there's you know, a given department may have a lot of different performance metrics that they're looking at, but the idea here at some point is to bubble up a few things from each department that becomes something that the city can look at.

Just wanted you to maybe kind of comment on that.

Is that the right way maybe to be thinking about this?

Because again, I I don't think any of us wanted this to be a two-year exercise.

This is let's get something that's usable sooner.

Yeah, I I think we, you know.

I studied performance measurement and metrics back in grad school, and I did some of this work when I was in New York City, and so to do a really robust effort, it does take more time and more effort and more resources.

Um for the time being is to really look at what's, you know, what's one or two metrics that can really help you not only capture the work you do, but communicate that work to the public.

You know, as I mentioned in the police department, being able to communicate what those 911 response times are, and that that was something that we actually looked at in a previous audit on uh response times, and through that we're able to communicate when we were not hitting the targets, and that also can sometimes jeopardize additional funding.

So I think honing in on one or two metrics in each department, of course, some departments are much bigger, so they're gonna they're gonna need more metrics to really tell their story and be able to share what they do.

But I think at the very um at the start, really honing in on one or two is can be really helpful.

Um, like there may also be things that we value as a community that may not be directly tied to a department specifically, it may just be that we want to, well, this one may not be a good example, but we want to build more units of affordable housing.

We may not have the direct ability to do that.

We can set the circumstances uh and the process in place to move it, but at some point, market forces and other things.

Is there also some value in having a few of those other things, or was your recommendation sort of sticking towards um something that's more directly tied to department output?

I I think it really depends on what is the value for this community, and sometimes, as you know, a metric is not directly tied to just one department or not specifically within one department's control.

Um and sometimes there are external forces that are not within the control as well.

So I think it's a really a matter of deciding what is of most importance and being able to track that if the metric is not something that is going to be, you know, that that government is not able to actually address, then it's probably a nice to have, but not something that will, you know, be meaningful ultimately.

This is about um designing meaningful metrics so that you can really show what what and and being able to tease out what is within a department's control and what what isn't, you know, that's a whole nother exercise, too.

So again, a lot of this will take more effort and more energy, um, but I'm just I'm hopeful that you know that conversation is happening going forward.

Great.

Um you mentioned a few jurisdictions in the report.

I mean, are there any are there any particular jurisdictions that we would hold up and say, wow, we want to be like X?

I mean, are we think it's kind of a mix and different people are doing it well in different ways?

I mean, but is there are there one or two that we should just try and emulate, or is this kind of breaking some ground here?

Yeah, we didn't look at this in that level of detail.

I mean, Kendall did a a lot of really great research throughout this, um, but I think I think it really depends on what specific metric you're looking at.

Um, you know, I think and different uh different uh jurisdictions also report out on their metrics differently.

Some I think Oakland has a data dashboard, um, but you know, is that right?

They have a data dashboard.

Casadina.

Oh, Pasadena, I'm sorry, has the the data dashboard.

I think Oakland has their budget in a in a, you know, uh in a dashboard so that you can look at look at it that way.

So there are other jurisdictions um that report it out in different ways, but I think at the at the I think one of the things that I think we can really add value to is just capturing the same metrics over time, so then you can see the trend line and you can see, oh, how has something changed?

Um when you add a new metric, but then you don't um include the data from the previous metric, then you can't really see what the differences are in the trends.

So um yeah, I think if we had more time, we would we would get you a lot more information.

Yeah.

Going back to the earlier conversation we had about with on the health report.

I mean, what I love about this is we're looking, we're looking, we're trying to go and trace this all the way through the outcomes, like like not just what are we doing, but what's actually happening as a result of the work, and that's what I really love about this.

Um couple last things just for the city manager.

Um from the auditors report, the great thing is um already many, if not all departments are doing some amount of this work, which is fantastic.

And so I think the question for the city manager is you know, is that kind of a good foundation to build upon?

It's not necessarily that we're reinventing the wheel, it's just that we're trying to elevate and synthesize.

I mean, is that the right way we think about it?

It is, and each of the departments is currently working on delivering um up to five outcome measures to me to be able to look at those and kind of you know go through them and pick a couple for each department.

So that'd be twenty-four.

There's 12 departments that we can report on regularly and as you're saying, try to connect them up to okay.

Here's what we're doing, and here's the result of our people better off as a result of it.

Awesome.

Okay.

Last thing, and back to the scope and scale question.

I know again, we want to do this right.

We want to be transparent, we want to be outcome-oriented, um, but we also know that we wanna let's start somewhere and not again over overthink it and let's kind of put something in place just to get moving.

Any thoughts on sort of the scale scope, you know, question about this?

Couple of thoughts.

One we want to be mindful of um in a budget environment where we're reducing uh revenue, we're reducing uh cutting expenses.

We have to be thoughtful about how much more work we are giving to staff and like what's the trade-off between giving staff assignments to come up with outcome measures as opposed to giving them assignments to actually do the work.

Um so being thoughtful about that balance is one thing.

Um another is uh, this is connected to that, but being careful about selecting outcomes that we're not trying to create new data for.

Um, like if if we're not currently collecting this data, that's probably not a good place for us to start because that's a longer term sort of project.

It may be an important thing, and those are things we can surface, but I think we should start with like we collect tons of data and let's focus on within that data what's most important and what can we track over time and report.

Um, that again makes uh life better for people.

Great.

Thank you.

Um again, I just appreciate the collaboration and um the spirit with which I think everyone's moved forward here.

Again, just being transparent, outcome oriented, accountable, something that, you know, I know we've all heard from constituents and the to the extent that we can sort of demonstrate that and live those values and have a way of uh communicating, I think is really gonna put us in a better position, especially as we're going through tough budget times.

We're gonna have to, you know, communicate some of the trade-offs that may be being made when it comes to costs and services.

So thanks, Otter, thanks to city manager, and thanks mayor for giving us a little time to talk through this.

Thank you very much.

Um Councilmember Bartlett has some questions as well.

Thank you, madam mayor.

Um, and thank you, Council Blackby for calling for this, and thank you, Madam Auditor and team for delivering another great report.

Uh question just about the outcomes-based budgeting.

Um, is that related to the pay for success models or is it more just a reporting framework?

Can you uh can you elaborate on on that model that you're describing?

Yeah, so pay for success, um, we passed something to this effect a while ago.

It's related to sort of you the the contractor wins if they succeed in our goal, right?

So it's like impact bonds.

And there are similar languages, there's similar language around outcomes-based models.

I'm just curious if um if that's related in your in your research at all.

Yeah, I I'll have to do a little more research on this other model that you're describing, but the outcome-based modeling is really aimed at, you know, there are a variety of different types of um measures that you can look at, and you can look at outputs, for example, but that it may not necessarily be the same as outcome-based.

And so one of the, you know, when I studied this and did some of this work previously, looking at it from an outcome-based perspective is obviously much better because you're really looking at what is the ultimate outcome that you're trying to achieve.

What is the goal and what are you trying to achieve?

Um, and outputs can sometimes get you to a portion there, it can give you a piece of data, but it may not necessarily get you to the actual outcome you're trying to achieve.

So it sounds like this model might be related in some way, and I'm happy to discuss more at a future meeting.

Thank you.

Councilmember Treka.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Uh appreciate you and Councilmember Blackabi's um efforts and moving this up for um so we can discuss it, and thank you so much, um, Madam Auditor, for this report.

Um several of my questions did also get uh asked by Councilmember Blackaby, um, so I'm not going to ask them.

Um uh just uh very broad strokes.

Um I appreciate uh the reports um honing in on the three recommendations, particularly I appreciate the focus on performance-based budgeting.

This is something that um I used to do in um my first career, um, and I found it to be very beneficial.

And one thing that I remember that was kind of ingrained in that is looking at the critical few.

What are these um cross-cutting metrics that are objective and um uh really help us see the trend lines but are um so high level that um they um provide meaningful data while not distracting um us from having a lot of noise in the data or a lot of different other metrics?

So I I just had um two questions.

Um I just talked about these uh roll-ups.

Um I was wondering, Madam Auditor, if you have any recommendations for us um as the city uh potentially moves to um doing uh more cross-cutting uh metrics, um, looking at these critical few um uh data points.

Um but there's going to be a gap because this this will be a change in methodology, perhaps, or at least a change in presentation of the data.

Um are there any best practices uh you might recommend or that other jurisdictions are using around um how do you go back and uh fill in those gaps when you adjust to a new measurement system?

So that's one question.

Um and the second one is uh just um any um best practices around um having uh departments um together um cross-cutting metrics that are meaningful uh for the city for the to the council to the city manager um while also um providing meaning to the departments themselves as they uh have information that wells up into these cross-cutting metrics.

Yeah, thank you for your questions, Councilmember Tregoub.

So you're uh on the first point with regards to um filling in the gap when you have new data, or you I think what you were asking is perhaps you get new data or new measure.

Um, you know, that's why it's really important to really think through what are the most important measures and think about how you might be able to make sure that that measure is consistently tracked across um future years.

Obviously, you can't we can't see the the total future, but um really thinking through okay what what programs have been in existence in the past and in the present, and what do we think might be going on in the future, and then tracking that all the way through.

So again, um, you know, I've talked about this, really doing a robust dive into this area is gonna take time and effort and energy.

And so um, you know, obviously, and obviously you're gonna have situations in which you get new information and new measures, and you just have to adjust for that.

So it's not going to be perfect, you might get some additional new things that come up, but I think um really sitting down engaging staff, um, and so that's the part that is gonna take more effort.

Who are the folks that are working on the ground um in um collecting this information or or delivering the actual service um and and so ensuring that you're identifying the right measures um is gonna take some time and effort.

But and then your second question about um cross-cutting measures, that is something that I think you know.

I'm I'm seeing a lot more engagement on the measures, um, uh at least you know, during this budget cycle, and so I'm really glad to see that um there's sharing of information across different departments, and so I think just learning about what other departments are capturing in terms of their measures, and knowing that some might affect your department and being cognizant of what other departments are capturing is gonna be really important, um, and then communicating that information so that you're understanding how those measures can cut across from one department to another.

So I think it's just you know, making sure there's adequate communication and um adequate transparency and information.

Thank you very much.

Any other questions from my council colleagues?

Is there any public comment on this item?

Hi, you can hear me.

Hi, Mayor and Council.

My name's Steve Cromer.

Um appreciate uh Councilmember Black of you bringing this so we could talk about it, and really appreciate the report, Jenny.

It's uh great to see this.

It's a little bit of deja vu.

I think Brent, I mean, um Councilmember Merklett, you're the only person that was on the dias when I stood up here like eight years ago and said, why can't we be radical, radical Berkeley and do radical transparency?

And I've always felt bad about that because I thought it was sort of stupid, but now it's here we are back, and it's like it's great to see that there's this effort to um again follow up on it, but I think a lot of citizens like myself feel like we want more information so we can just see what decisions are being made and what's the basis for it, and communication from you all to staff that's clear and open, and then to auditor to the auditor can come back, it could all work together, it's like gears in a system, right?

She can help you with all assessing what's what's the first and earliest measures, and you can all help work this all out.

So that's the that's the big picture.

Thanks for that.

Um, we all hear about the structural deficit.

So there's like the oh no, no, oh no structural deficit.

Well, the first thing anybody else does with a structural deficit is prioritize.

And I realize uh Paul, it's more information they have to collect to help do that prioritization, but some stuff's probably gonna have to like get shoved off the thing, and if this is gonna give you all tools to support that.

Like here's a clear way to say how you're gonna prioritize further.

I was honored to be asked to be one of the people that reviewed your bond issue coming by um BERCS Director Scott Ferris, and you're you did a great job, uh Terry and and uh Mayor Ishi.

Um, and we looked through a bunch of stuff there.

My question was, how are we gonna prove any of this is working?

How are we gonna bake into your bond issue and the the money you're gonna ask for us from the ratepayers?

What's how are we gonna know what's working, what's not?

We haven't we're in this situation because we haven't done that very well in the last in the past, and everyone recognizes that for 50 60 years, we haven't done this.

So it's a great time to to start it's just a start um last week long way to go but yeah great thank you appreciate it.

Thank you.

Good evening my name's you and thank you for this opportunity to speak um I just want to I came up here because I wanted to strongly support uh the recommendations of this report and I want to commend uh Auditor Wong as well as well as Councilmember Blackbee and the other council members that are um supporting this effort uh again from my view uh performance metrics are not a nice to have I mean they're a must have they're essential it blows my mind that you know what this is even a discussion point actually uh we should be having these well baked already for uh what's it an 800 million dollar budget um I mean and I think it's especially essential now for sound decision making with BOTA concerns about tax increases where I'm just dreading the new taxes that are coming down the pike here uh likely um and the quality of versus the quality and cost of public services and there's a limit to how much you can just keep asking uh property owners to keep coughing up more and more and more without uh services improving um so I I think it's really important for the voters as well as for you in terms of decision making and trade-offs uh three suggestions as you move forward with this um a the metrics should really focus on outcomes and cost efficiency not not just activity I noticed like in the in the report the parks department has an ac has a metric that is number of community meetings attended I mean fine that that that's good at some level but really the outcome we want is you know cleanliness of parks and and things like that we want really uh citizen oriented uh metrics uh likewise um number of uh miles of street paved dollars per mile of street paved how does it compare to Pleasanton which has very nice roads I would say not that I want to live in Pleasanton but you know I I do when I go there and see the roads like wow why can't we do that?

Um so the that's the first one the second one is that benchmark against pure cities just as I said Pasadena I've seen their dashboard it's pretty neat actually they really have a nice system up there.

And finally uh I think this is mentioned by Auditor Wong as well as Councilmember Blackaby let's not try and boil the ocean.

Let's start with something small maybe just three departments like things that matter to citizens are public safety and interesting so yeah let's start with a few thank you.

Thank you very much.

Is there other public comment on this item here in person?

Or perhaps online is there a public comment okay very good well um are there any comments from my council colleagues.

Yes.

Vice Mayor thank you um I just really want to thank the auditor and her team for this work um and I'm excited to continue working on it.

Just thank you and also Councilmember Blackaby for bringing it forward.

Okay.

Any other comments council colleagues okay I also want to appreciate your report thank you very much and also thank you to our city manager for for working to implement already some of these pieces so thank you.

All right we are moving on to oh actually we should move on to the next item but I do want us to take like a 10 minute stretch break so um we will be back in in 10 minutes with item number 20 and that will also give them time to set up so thank you.

Oh, it's a good idea.

And Hello, okay.

We are on, we're live.

All right, everyone, thank you very much for your patience.

We are starting back the Berkeley City Council meeting, and we're moving on to excuse me, item number twenty, amendments to Title Twenty-One, the substance subdivisions ordinance and title twenty-three, zoning ordinance, to implement Senate Bill SB six eighty-four.

I will pass it over to Jordan Klein.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Ishii and good evening, Council members.

I'm Jordan Klein, I'm Director of Planning and Development.

And I'm joined here at the staff table by Ann Hertz, the land use planning manager, Justin Horner, Principal Planner, and Branka Tatarovich, Associate Planner with the policy team.

Before I turn it over to Branca to present, I want to pull up the slide deck.

I want to call your attention to revised materials that we have submitted and are requesting that you accept uh for consideration the this evening.

Um yesterday we received input from staff at the Rent Stabilization Board who expressed concern about the wording of the definition of protected units, and so we reviewed their feedback and wanted to incorporate changes that address those concerns.

Um so that's uh that's the purpose of these revised agenda materials.

We don't believe that it constitutes any substantive policy change, but it does clarify the language.

So we hope that you will take action to accept this material.

Do we need to do that before?

Yeah.

If you wouldn't mind doing that, now that'd be great.

Is there a motion to um?

Thank you.

Is there any opposition?

Okay.

Thank you.

Um excuse me, ms Mr.

Clerk, does that require I think that's required to be a roll call vote?

Uh two-thirds.

No, yes.

All right, we will take the roll.

Okay.

To accept or advised material, Councilmember Kessarwani.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Umbers.

Yes.

And Mayor Ish.

Yes.

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you very much.

Now you know we're all awake.

We're all here.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor Ishii and the members of the City Council.

My name is Branka Tatarovich, and I'm an associate planner with the land use planning division.

Tonight I'm presenting an ordinance that amends titles 21 and 23 to implement Senate Bill Six Eighty-four.

The ordinance establishes a ministerial SBC six eighty-four compliant pathway for small lot subdivisions and the related housing development.

And it also creates a streamlined local parcel map option for lower density infill projects that don't qualify under SB684.

The Planning Commission reviewed the SB684 small lot subdivision item in the summer and fall of the last year.

The Commission first discussed SB684 in July and then in October it recommended adoption of the amendments to Title 21 subdivisions and Title 23 zoning to implement the small lot subdivision processes.

The policy intent beyond SB 684 is to ministerially approve qualifying small lot subdivisions and the related housing development, reduce procedural barriers for ownership-oriented infill on service sites, and retain objective standards and health and safety protections.

In Berkeley, the implementation context is that the city's middle housing zoning updates increased maximum densities in several districts.

SB684 requires projects to meet 66% of the maximum allowable density, and with those higher maximums, smaller projects are unintentionally disqualified.

The reason to include a local parcel map, middle housing infill project path is to provide a streamlined option for smaller infill that still meets minimum density.

Because SB684 projects include both a subdivision and housing development, the amendments to titles 21 and 23 are designed to work together.

Title 21 changes cover the subdivision side, procedures, completeness, the eligibility screens, and the subdivision related development standards.

Title 23 changes cover the zoning side, including zoning district permissions and the objective development standards.

This slide summarizes the new chapter 2130 small lot subdivisions, middle housing infill projects in Title 21, which is the main SB684 implementation section.

The first section sets the SB684 implementation purpose and establishes the two pathways, the two pathways.

Section 2130 020 definitions then defines a single project type, the middle housing infill project.

This definition definition is important because it links to the zoning code.

The section also codifies the parent parcel rule, which requires that zoning requirements, including inclusionary standards and other applicable city regulations, be reviewed at the original pre-subdivision parcel level.

The next three sections cover the application requirements and procedures and the subdivision side requirements and standards.

The last two subsections cover the approval and recordation sequencing and expiration enforcement and the standard savings and severability clause.

This slide explains the parent parcel rule.

A parent parcel is a parcel that exists prior to a subdivision creating a middle housing infill project.

In the image, we see two development envelopes on a 5,000 square foot original lot that conform to SB684 and R2 zoning standards for height and setbacks.

Both envelopes could be permitted as middle housing projects even without any subdivision of ownership.

With SB 684, the envelope on the left is then subdivided into six condominiums, and the envelope on the right is subdivided into four fee simple lots.

But in both cases, the zoning standards are applied at the parent parcel level before the subdivision happens.

This slide summarizes the zoning code changes.

First, the ordinance permits middle housing infill projects where multifamily use is allowed across residential and commercial districts, including the MUR district.

Second, in the general development standards section, the ordinance codifies the parent parcel rule and establishes the objective middle housing infill project zoning standards set.

The parent parcel concept is also defined in Title 21 in section 213020.

So the subdivision and zoning codes are aligned.

And finally, Title 23 cross references, the Title 21 middle housing infill project definition to ensure the subdivision and zoning review are consistent.

This slide summarizes the additional Title 21 changes that are primarily about state law compliance with the subdivision map act.

These are mostly cleanup and alignment items, improving code readability, resolving internal conflicts, clarifying approval authority, and streamlining processing for certain subdivision map act exemptions.

Finally, staff recommends that the city council hold the public hearing and adopt the first reading of the ordinance to implement SB684 by establishing a ministerial SB 684 compliant path for small lot subdivisions and related housing and a local parcel map path for projects that do not qualify under SB 684.

That concludes my presentation.

Thank you.

And I'm available for questions.

Thank you very much, Branca.

Oh, you got applause.

That's great.

Yes.

So thank you very much for your presentation.

And so I want to ask, of course, we've opened the public hearing, but ask if there are any questions from my council colleagues.

No questions.

Okay, very good.

Is there any public comment?

No.

Yes.

There is a go ahead, Councilmember Black.

I was gonna go later, but since no one else went first, then I have to go first.

Okay.

Real quick questions on the staff report.

Uh bottom page four and also page five.

There's some adjustment or application of this in very high fire hazard severity zones.

Um, and high fire hazard severity zones where some of this may or may not apply differently.

Could you just talk a little bit about that just to make sure that's clear?

Yes, so only the projects that are in very high fire severity zone are excluded from SB 684, and that's the provision under the state law.

Okay.

We just and we saw there was some language in government code 66499 that you referenced here where they also said or within a high or very high fire hazard zone as indicated on maps adopted by the Department of Forestry.

So I think our, as our office was looking at this, is it just the very high, or is it high and very high where the exemption happens?

It is only very high, and we clarified that with Chief Deputy Chief Arnold.

So there are two different state codes and uh city of the city of Berkeley because it has local jurisdiction over creating the maps, um, only applies one of them, and in that case, only very high um fire severity zone applies.

Okay.

So we got that confirmation.

And that's true whether you apply the government code 66499 standard or the SB 684.

Because I think both of them refer to higher very high.

So our local path will not be applicable in the Hills.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Casarwani.

Yes, uh, thank you very much.

Thank you for the presentation.

I'm really pleased that this is coming back to the council after uh the referral referral that I had put forward last year, and I just want to remind folks that um this is a companion to the middle housing ordinance that um this this council unanimously adopted so this will give um folks an opportunity to own that small cottage that middle housing will now make possible.

Um, so I did just want to clarify, because your example showed for each split lot, one unit, but is it the case that you can have more than one unit on each lot up to the maximum under state law, which is 10 units?

Yes, so you can have 10 um dwelling units and 10 ownership units.

So ownership units can be uh regular parcels, they're called fee simple parcels or condominiums.

So any combination of the number of units up to 10 and ownership units up to 10 is allowable.

So you can have a parcel map that let's say splits the lot into two fee simple lots, but each lot can have two fourplexes, so that would be eight units, but only two ownership units, or then those four policies can be condominiums.

So all of these combinations are allowed as long as the maximum number of units is 10 and the maximum number of ownership units is ten.

So just to clarify, so so are you saying one ownership unit per lot or no?

So lot is an ownership unit.

Okay.

It can be either a condominium or a fee simple lot.

They are the same under the subdivision app act.

Okay, okay.

Um I think that is all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um is there any public comment on this item?

Oh, you have a question.

Okay.

Sorry.

Sometimes our parliamentarian system isn't working.

Go ahead, Councilmember Draco.

Parliamentarian wasn't following procedure.

Um I just wanted to thank you so much for the presentation.

I just wanted to clarify two things.

Uh, the local parcel map path.

Would that be non-ministerial?

So that would be like the second option.

Yes, the second option uh cannot be ministerial because 684 is uh carve out uh uh in within subdivision map act uh to actually allow ministerial subdivision.

Um other than that, um subdivisions are kind of discuss discretionary, sometimes the administrative, so parcel maps are mostly administrative, so the decision is made within the department.

Um yeah, so we couldn't create a ministerial process because of the preclusion that um of uh subdivision map act, but uh we did whatever we could to make it streamlined and as administrative as possible.

Okay, and then um when we approved middle housing, I think there was one, maybe I think just one uh zoning district where there was a minimum density standard uh for a particular lot.

Um I was wondering if um this recommendation has if there's any bearing between those two, or are these apples and oranges?

We do require minimum density per zoning if it is stated in the zoning development standards per particular district.

Um and across middle housing, I think the lowest is 20, right?

And then as the density increases um a little higher, up to 40, I think.

Um but for um middle housing infill projects um the project proponent has to propose at least one unit, so in most cases that's pretty much enough to satisfy the minimum density.

Especially if there's already existing units because they're counted um towards the density as well.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Public comment on this item.

We are on item number 20 amendments to Title 21 subdivisions ordinance and Title 23 zoning ordinance to implement Senate Bill SB 684.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Brianna Morales and I am with the Housing Action Coalition.

We are a members supported organization that advocates for housing at all levels of income.

And HACC was proud to sponsor SB 684 because it creates a clear practical pathway to deliver small-scale ownership housing, with the kind of density that already fits into existing neighborhoods and gives working families a real shot at home ownership.

The next step is really about implementation, taking the state law and making it usable here in Berkeley.

By establishing a ministerial objective approval process for small lot subdivisions and creating a complementary local path for projects that meet requirements, the city can provide clarity and predictability.

And that predictability is not a small thing.

Our members who build the housing tell us all the time how much they struggle, especially when they're a small infill project, because the process was uncertain, there was delays, discretionary and overcomplex pathways that they had to take.

That uncertainty simply causes risk that they cannot afford, and those builders walk away.

When that happens, the kinds of homes that can be attainable to middle income households never get built.

And so for HAC, successful implementation means paving the way to allow builders to build the homes that Berkeley desperately needs in a housing crisis.

So we urge you to pass legislation that allows projects to move forward, demonstrating not only that Berkeley supports housing in principle, but also through practice.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thanks for being here.

Um is there anyone online who would like to make public comment on this item?

Three hands raised.

First is CUIO.

Hold on.

Okay.

COIO, you should be able to unmute.

There you go.

Thank you.

Hi.

Um, so first off, uh SB 684 was actually replaced by Bill SP 1123 on July 1st, 2025.

So it's not clear to me why we're adding an obsolete deal to the Berkeley code when we should be adding the current California bill instead.

Uh secondly, the proposed local alternative to SB684 doesn't actually offer an equivalent to the California bill.

This means that the de facto ability to parcel split and smaller residential lots has been inadvertently removed completely by the new housing zoning legislation.

I would like to see today the city council adopt the part of the recommendation that does implement SB 684, but to hold off on implementing anything for an alternative pathway for the small housing lots that have been excluded because it is my belief that we can find a better option that would actually uh allow those lots to uh benefit from a streamlined ministerial approval in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is uh Debbie Sanders, Debbie Sanderson.

Hi, thank you.

Um, this proposed ordinance does one really good thing, and that's in section seven of the ordinance.

Um it updates chapter 21 to the to be consistent with SB 684.

So I'm clear that we should adopt section seven of the proposed ordinance.

But the first six sections modify our parcel map process, and I don't think any of those amendments are really substantive.

They don't address any of the particular problems we face now when we want to subdivide a parcel.

Um, um then the last four sections, I thought we're to update our zoning ordinance to be compliant with SB 684, but I don't think they do that.

Uh, in particular, section three creates new zoning standards for MHIPs, and some of those standards conflict with SB 684.

So if we want to help owners of small lots that don't meet the uh SB 684 standards, if we want to make it easier for them to subdivide, then I think we need to go back to the drawing board because I don't see anything in this ordinance that makes that issue easier.

So let's adopt section seven, and then we'll be in compliance with 684, and go back to the drawing board for the other two parts.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's it.

There was just two speakers.

Ah, okay.

Thank you very much.

Um if you could address those, there are a couple of comments online that I I think I'd like you all to address, and then I know you have comments as well or questions.

Sure.

Um I'll take a stab at it.

I'm not I'm not totally sure one of the commenters' reference to the problems that uh people are having subdividing, and I'm not sure what specific problems are being referred to, so it's hard for me to respond to that.

Um I want to, you know, the a larger issue that I am aware of that's been raised that we're trying to address through this process is that when city council adopted middle housing standards that uh set higher maximum densities, it it made it more difficult for uh uh projects that wanted to take advantage of SB 684 to meet the requirements of um of hitting the minimum of uh 60 of two-thirds uh of the maximum density um in order to qualify for six SB 684.

So if they only wanted to build two or three units, and they'd be in order to qualify, they'd be required to build four or five units.

So that's no, and um I'm not sure how common that problem is, um, but it's definitely a possible outcome.

And so um that's the purpose of our local path that Bronca described, our local parcel map path is to create a more streamlined process for projects that do meet our minimum density requirements but don't meet the the requirements to qualify for SB 684, um as Bronca noted in I think the QA, um that doesn't quite match the ministerial process enabled under six SB684, because um our understanding of the subdivision map act is that we are precluded from doing that or precluded from offering a ministerial pathway, um so what we've presented to you as as streamlined as a pathway as we could come up with, and um and we think yeah, we we were that's what we're recommending to you this evening, um city council could potentially consider and explore reconsideration of the maximum densities adopted under middle housing um as a way to restore the accessibility of XB 684, if but uh that's not really that wasn't the assignment before us um for for this project.

Um so we you know we we certainly looked at this really closely in close collaboration with the city attorney's office as well, and um we are confident in our recommendation this evening.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Vice Mayor Linopara.

Thank you.

I just have a quick follow-up to that, and if council had adopted no density maximums, then how would 684 apply?

So if there is no stated maximum density, then the density under SB 684 state would be um the default metropolitan area density, which is 30 dwelling units per acre for Alameda County and Berkeley, and um I think it's uh 66% of that, which is 20 dwelling units per acre, and that is the minimum density in the lowest middle housing zoning district.

Thanks.

Okay, thank you very much.

Um council deliberations are actually let's close the public hearing.

Is there a motion to close the public hearing?

So moved.

Second.

Okay.

Is there any opposition to close the public hearing?

Okay.

Public hearing is closed.

All right, council deliberations.

Councilmember Kesserwani.

Okay.

Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.

Um, thank you again to staff for the ordinance.

So I just um, for the purposes of moving this along, I I had two um considerations that I wanted to suggest to my colleagues, very minor changes, um, to two numbers.

So if you have the packet open, this 96-page packet that includes the ordinance, um, on page 15, the bottom of 15 and the top of 16, um, there is language around the minimum lot size for the lot split.

So in the multifamily zones, it's 600 square feet.

So that's essentially the all of the flats where we the middle housing ordinance now applies.

If you want to do a lot split, it has to be at least 600 square feet for you to get a little cottage on it.

Um, and then in the HOZ, the hillside overlay zone, that's the only zone that remains a single family zone.

State law says it only applies to vacant single-family parcels.

So there's that's gonna be very few.

Um, here we said 1200 square feet is the minimum lot size.

And um the question I asked earlier was relevant because that is not a restriction on the number of units that can be built on that vacant single family parcel.

You can still get up to 10.

It's just that the opportunities for the fee simple ownership will be restricted because it's a higher um minimum lot size of 1200.

So, what I was going to suggest just to maintain flexibility for the for the ownership.

Um, again, I I there's there's maybe very, very few vacant single-family parcels in the hills, but to the extent that there might be a couple, I was gonna suggest we just equalize it.

So just say 600 square feet for both.

So we have the same rule citywide, and it doesn't increase the number of units, it just allows the fee simple ownership to be easier if somebody wanted to do that.

So that was one suggestion.

I'm interested in my colleagues' input.

Apologies.

Is it possible to put this on the screen so that we can.

Yeah, oh, oh, you want to see.

Yeah, it might just be helpful for transparency so folks know.

Oh, okay.

Um it's gonna take me a moment to maybe staff can help us while you're going.

Because I'm just looking at the ordinance.

Um, so that was one thing, and then on page 20 of 96 pages, which I think we're gonna show, there is a requirement for open space, which is really important.

It says a minimum of 200 square feet per unit.

Our middle housing ordinance, if if you will recall, it said 150 square feet per 1,000 square feet of residential square footage, which in my mind is or is roughly a unit.

So for just the for the purposes of keeping things aligned with a middle housing ordinance and just slightly reducing this requirement, I was going to suggest we change 200 to 150.

Um, all it does, you know, if you think about you know what are the ramifications of that, it just makes it a little easier to comply.

Um it's it's my feeling that 150 150 square feet is um a good amount of open space per unit, and and that's what we did in the middle housing ordinance.

So those are the two numeric suggestions.

Um, so I I can make a motion to approve the ordinance as proposed by staff, um, with those two numeric changes.

The minimum lot size in the for the vacant single family homes will be 600 square feet, and the minimum square feet of usable open space will change from 200 to 150.

That's the motion.

And I'll second that.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

Are you able to pull that up?

And it yeah, if not, no, no, I understand.

It's it can take a while to pull up that document.

Okay, are there other comments then?

Council member uh Vice Mayor Lunopara, please.

Thank you.

I'm wondering um if staff has any thoughts on those amendments proposed, or specifically I'm curious about the um the reason for the state law having a different size for single family home versus multi-unit.

I think that's supported from SB9, which is a subdivision ministerial process for single family zoned parcels, um, referring to 1200 square feet lot size.

I don't think there's there's more to that than you know, just being consistent with that's been done.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

And um, do you have any other thoughts on those amendments?

Um no, I mean, as Councilmember Kisarmani um already stated, um, it doesn't increase the number of units, so it doesn't really increase density.

Um, it does increase the number of ownership, fee simple ownership units potentially.

I think that's uh consistent with the policy intent where you know we are trying to find options to um for increasing affordable, naturally affordable homeownership options.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Other comments from my council colleagues.

Okay, well, we have a motion on the floor, so I think we should take roll, please.

Do you have a comment?

Yeah, go ahead.

I want to express a little discomfort.

I think I was trying to form a question still.

Um I guess you know, since this is this change is really only gonna affect hillside overlay, which is my district has a lot of um, it's only gonna affect we're just saying that we can make the lot smaller in vacant lots.

And uh, council member, it's only for a vacant right.

I understand.

Yeah, yeah.

And I understand we're not like this isn't like a and run around density, I get that, but I I guess I'm just I I'm a little uncomfortable with this not getting to vet this beforehand.

That's my discomfort.

So I'm not sure how to maybe I'll just have that be the reason for my vote.

I don't I don't even know what question to ask, which is not a comfortable place for me.

That's my concern.

It's probably it seems fine.

I can't think of a reason against it right now, but I just I want more time to think about it.

If that makes sense, okay.

Um council member Tragub.

Yeah.

So sorry, to be dense.

No, not intended.

Um, uh, so this could potentially apply to R1H now, as long as it's not a very high fire severity zone, correct?

Is that the issue at hand that's leading to it?

Council Member, it's this is not a change.

The ordinance always applied to the Hillside Overlay Zone.

Okay.

Yeah, it it's just all we did was change 1200 to 600 square feet in the hillside overlay zone, but it was always applying to the hillside overlay zone.

Okay, thanks for thanks for helping me, member.

What we voted on before.

Thanks.

And just um if it helps at all with your discomfort, council member, um, we're we're trying to increase the ability of people to have ownership, and so that that's the kind of piece here, right?

So um hopefully that helps a little bit.

Uh oh, council member blackaby.

If you wanted to follow up and then I just want to say it does seem reasonable on its face.

I just it's kind of sudden.

I like to think things through.

That's all sure.

Sure.

Just my question, Councilmember Kraswani, is so again help us understand the so lot sizes on vacant parcels will be reduced, um, but density doesn't change again.

Again, just help me walk up through a little bit.

It's an I actually discovered this in talking to uh director Klein.

Yeah, so and you know, when we're talking about middle housing ordinance, you know, we think about like the edge extreme case.

So that's what I was thinking about here.

So I think this is highly unlikely, but there's a vacant parcel in the hills.

Um let's say maybe for this example, it's better to think of like a smaller, something on the smaller side, maybe it's only 3,000 square feet.

Um this change would matter because it's saying, well, your minimum lot for your split could be as little as 600 square feet.

Okay.

Um so 1200, so um, so you could still if you wanted to do five units or ten units even on that 3,000 square foot parcel, that's still allowable.

Nothing we did here changes that.

What we are trying to do here is simply say, well, if you want to do um four ownership units, it'll now be a little easier because your lot size can be smaller.

1200 is is rather large.

Um relative to what we're doing for the rest of the city, which is the 600.

So the idea is just um keep it the same for the whole city, and the controlling kind of legislation around the density in the hillside overlay is still what we did with middle housing.

So the so it's it's not it's do you just staff do you want to explain?

Um, because remember hillside overlays, this is a little confusing because hillside overlay doesn't have middle housing density, it just has R1.

Right.

So it defaults to what the state law says, which is two-thirds of the R1 density, which do you want to explain what that would be?

It is actually two-thirds of the state default.

Oh, oh, it's thir uh it's 30 dwelling units per acre, because it doesn't make sense.

Two-thirds of one unit, like two thirds.

It's two-thirds of a unit.

So it just it's it's two-thirds of 30 dwelling units per acre, which is what the state law says.

Yeah, so you'd have to do the math, 30 dwelling units per acre, what is that?

Like four units on a 5,000 square foot lot.

So you you could do two-thirds of four units.

Um, yeah, that's two units.

So it's two but that's the minimum require.

I think you're confiding.

I think you're asking about the maximum.

Yeah, but so the maximum is 10, and that's established by SB684.

That's established by six that's that's state law, right?

So whether we implement any ordinance, um uh or not, the that would still be allowable just under the provisions of the state law.

Uh this comes back to the earlier question, was was but then how does the very high fire hazard severity zone piece come into play?

Um uh the lots that are within that zone are just automatically disqualified, right?

So then thinking all the way through again.

I'm I'm just thinking of the different strips.

So if you're in the very high fire hazard severity zone, bless you.

Yeah, you can't subdivide, right?

If you are in the hillside overlay zone, you are not covered by middle housing.

But you are covered now by this.

Yes, state.

Regardless of this legislation, if we are.

If it's a vacant lot, correct.

Only for vacant lots.

If it is a lot with a current single family home or duplex or something on it, this does not SB9.

Also, I just want to note I'm sorry to complicate things, but we're I mean, this is true of R1H.

There are multi-unit.

Yeah, R1H, I'm sorry.

Yeah, you're right.

Right.

So keep that going.

So we could keep the through line other than that piece.

But so if you're R1H in the high fire hazards of Verity Zone, the two third the 20 uh uh the 20 dwelling unit per acre density applies.

No, that's not a maximum.

That's the minimum in order to comply in order to be eligible for SB684.

Okay.

The maximum number of units is 10.

Okay.

Um so that's true.

Uh okay, but again, just on vacant lots, vacant R1H lots.

Yeah.

Correct.

And I would also uh like to add that um so uh when um there is a map for subdividing the lot into fee simple lots, there are subdivision map act uh requirements that still apply.

So the fire code, the uh access access seasements, all kinds of things need to be complied with in order to subdivide into fee simple.

So reducing the uh minimum uh lot size, um, is not automatically making it so much easier because there are all of these other requirements that might even be harder to be achievable with a smaller lot size.

So the yeah, so the lot size isn't the rate limiting factor in that in that part.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, okay.

Councilmember O'Keefe.

Yeah, this is kind of random, but I actually just sort of realized I have a um sort of I don't think I have a legal conflict here, but there's sort of a I think I'm gonna abstain.

I think I have a I have a little bit of a self-interest in this that makes me uncomfortable.

I don't think I need to recuse, I can go check with Freeman.

I'm almost positive that's not a requirement.

I just it's like a personal comfort thing.

So I'm just saying I'm gonna abstain for that reason.

Okay, so just so we all know, and I can talk about it if Freema says I have to say more, I will, but I don't think I do.

I think you two should have a conversation.

I'm not away.

Well, this is highly unusual.

So um please give us a moment while we um wait for them to return.

Okay, so we're gonna take the roll.

Uh second from Councilmember Humbert.

Okay, so uh it's the ordinance as proposed by staff, including the amendments and the revised materials, and then the minimum lot size for multifamily lots at six hundred square foot minimum, and then useful open space at 150 square foot minimum.

Yes, uh uh um Mr.

City Clerk, it was the it's the vacant single family zoned parent parcel that ships from 1200 to 600.

You said multifamily.

Oh, okay, so so would that change?

That's the motion.

And can I clarify that includes the the uh reflects the sub three materials?

Yes, and the sub three materials, yes, that's what I'm saying.

Thank you.

Okay, on the motion, Councilmember Kessarwani.

Yes, Kaplan, yes, Bartlett, yes, Trega.

I'll keep Blackabi, yes, Munapara.

Yes.

Umber, yes, and Mary Ishii.

Yes, okay, motion carries.

Motion passes.

Thank you all so much.

Um thank you for those of you who came to watch or give public comment.

I'm gonna move us on to the final item for this evening, which is item number 21, the City of Berkeley's 2026 state and federal legislative platform.

Um as was mentioned at a previous meeting.

I um was able to go to Washington DC uh for the U.S.

Conference of Mayors as well as the Mayor's Innovation Project, um, and also had an opportunity to do some lobbying on behalf of the city with our lobbyist.

Um, and so we are very lucky to have Niccolo De Luca here with us to answer any questions that we might have.

So typically every year the mayor works with city staff and our state and federal advocates to set a legislative platform that guides our advocacy work.

As in previous years, our priority areas are related to homelessness, housing, economic development, infrastructure, public safety, sustainability and the environment, and health.

It takes a long time for legislation to come to fruition, as you all know.

Therefore, it's logical for many things to stay on the list year over year.

Um and so that is to say that many of the things are similar from previous years because we know that these are going to continue to be our priorities.

I think I'll just need whoever's sharing right now to stop sharing.

Is that city staff?

Okay, I can.

Okay, very good.

Thank you very much.

And yeah, go ahead.

Okay, I'm just gonna read them out loud.

Um, these are some friendly amendments, additions.

Um, support legislative and funding efforts to sorry, could you make it a little bigger and close that side so that folks can read it a little better, please?

Thank you.

Is that better?

Okay, support legislative and funding efforts to assist students experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity.

Support legislation allowing municipalities to regulate autonomous vehicles locally, support legislative efforts to create a non-f not-for-profit utility service to replace investor-owned utility utility programs, support funding for increased lighting on streets and sidewalks, support funding for seismic retrofits for affordable housing providers, including nonprofit housing cooperatives and community land trusts, support funding for public bicycle storage, support funding for urban heat island mitigation, and then um a slight um addition to the support legislative efforts to enhance greater access to hospitals and health care, including Medicare for all at the federal level and Calcare at the state level.

Support legislative and funding efforts to expand the availability of emergency naloxone phenyl strips, test strips, beverage test strips, needle exchange programs, and other harm reduction tools.

Support efforts to include information about emergency naloxone administration in the responsible beverage service training program, licensee education on alcohol and drugs and program and or other appropriate certification programs.

Support restarting and expanding the CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable Supplemental Benefits Program and support legislative efforts to more easily enable the creation of the East Bay Public Bank.

Thank you very much.

And um, I know that also uh Councilmember Humbert has something he'd like to add as well.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

And I don't have it um uh in written form to put up on this screen.

I mean, I have it on in my notes.

Um, I want to thank um you, uh Mayor Ishii and the city's lobbyists for uh your work on this list of legislative priorities.

Um there's one thing, I just have one thing, and I think it's really important for the future of ownership housing, and that's condominium construction defect liability reform.

My understanding is that uh assemblymember Wix and possibly Senator Ergine may be taking this on.

I'm confident that assembly member Wicks um is or at least she said she's going to.

It's gonna be a political um uh fight, I think.

So I think that adding this to our list would align with some planned efforts, and I'd like to move that we add this to the following list, and in the language, it's just a very short um blurb.

Uh reform condominium construction and design defect liability to reduce costs, improve feasibility, and expand ownership housing options.

So I'd like to move to add that.

Thank you.

I think it would be good for everyone who has something they want to add for them to speak now so that we can discuss it all together.

Um, I will go to Councilmember Taplin.

Thank you.

Um, under health, I wanted to offer support legislative efforts, so protect access, agenda affirming care.

Thank you.

I think a great addition.

Councilmember Backaby.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

I just add two in the public safety area.

It should surprise no one they're wildfire related.

Number 10 says currently support legislation and funding to improve fire safety, including undergrounding utilities.

I wanted to propose the addition, as well as guaranteeing that homeowners that do fire mitigation work receive home insurance renewals, which is an important loop closing mechanism to get the fire safety mitigation done.

The other item under funding priorities in the same section number five, where we talk about grants to support home hardening, including lower no interest loaner grant programs.

I would just want to add, as well as state income tax credits to assist homeowners in clearing hazards of vegetation and hardening homes.

So those are the two my two additions.

State income tax credits.

So again, it doesn't hit us in the county or city, and other states are doing it, but it's a state income tax credit for work that you're doing to harden your home.

Thank you.

I just want to make sure I heard you correctly.

Okay, thank you very much.

Moving on to Councilmember Tracub.

Thank you so much.

Let me just check something.

Okay.

Two amendments under the environmental section.

Support measures to incentivize and/or expand the use of andor funding for local distributed energy resources, such as rooftop solar, battery storage, virtual power plants, and community microquids.

And then I have I will have this in writing as long as you can read my chicken scratch.

Second one is support efforts to advance climate resiliency and adaptation efforts locally and regionally.

Thank you.

I'm gonna ask since there are so many here that you all type these up and send them to maybe the clerk.

What do you think?

What's best?

What's the cleanest way to do this?

Yes, I suppose if you want the exact wording added that I shouldn't.

I think that would be helpful.

Yes.

Thank you very much, everyone.

Okay, councilmember Bartlett.

Thank you, Madam American.

A few um a few additions here relate to our conversation tonight, actually.

Under health care uh expansion uh of medical reimbursement amounts and service categories for community health workers.

Second, requesting state technical assistance for place-based health equity initiatives.

Three, supporting flexible grant funding to target investment in neighborhoods with measurable life expectancy gaps, and then under home ownership housing, um, support density bonus tools for affordable condominiums.

Another one is um create local flexibility for inclusionary ownership.

And seven infrastructure financing that supports entry-level condominiums.

Okay, is that everything?

Okay, so since we are very lucky to have Nicolo here in person.

Sorry, Madam Mayor.

Yes.

Apologies.

In the spirit of transparency, I added two words on the first one.

So where it said rooftop solar, it now says distributed slash rooftopslash balcony cellar.

That's all.

Okay.

Very good.

Councilmember Humbert, just so you know your mic is still on.

So as you are all typing this away and sending it to the clerk, and the clerk is putting it all together.

Um I'm gonna ask if anyone has any questions for Nicola Wyhe's here.

Anyone?

Yeah.

I'm happy to quickly give an overview, Madam Mayor, if that's okay.

So Madam Mayor, Council members, Nicole De Luca, it's an honor to be down here.

So thank you very much.

Great seeing many familiar faces and some new ones.

Um we have the honor of working for the city of Berkeley in Sacramento and in DC.

Madam Mayor is a blast seeing you in DC, and you did a great job in all those meetings, so your constituents must be very happy.

Um we've had a good run with you all.

Uh 16 years, over 23 million and almost a hundred bills that we've worked on specifically for the city.

So here's where things stand right now in Sacramento.

Uh Friday was a bill introduction deadline.

There's over 1,800 bills introduced, of which about 500 are spot bills.

Uh the bags under my eyes are because we've been reading a lot of bills, and I'm also getting older.

So, what we're gonna start doing is sharing more of our legislative matrices on every Friday to start highlighting what's out there.

Um we shared one today highlighting fire safety and insurance, and an overall kind of what's going on in the world of local government.

Um it's gonna be an interesting year.

We're seeing a lot of trends such as e-bike regulations, uh bills on illegal dumping.

There's a lot of um uh transit sales tax measures.

Um a lot of cities and counties are looking at uh the November ballot to see what might be coming down the horizon.

Um, of course, housing, streamlining affordable housing.

Uh we're doing a presentation to a budget subcommittee on the need for HAP funding.

Uh, been working with Senator Ergin on his RV bill and his local health jurisdiction bill.

I want to thank the city manager and his team for all of his work there.

So a very active year already.

Um as you know, things don't really ramp up until March, April, May, June, July.

Um the budget started off last year.

We're looking at an $18 billion gap.

Now we're looking at a $2 billion gap.

So hopefully the budget improves.

A lot of that is through some of the AI investments that are happening.

So that's Sacramento.

Um DC, we're working with the city manager and his team on some uh projects to submit for uh community project funding, um, also known as Earmarks, um, of which the city did well last year uh through the leadership of Congresswoman Simon to or signed into law for Ashby Bart and then for fire safety, the East Bay Training Center.

So it's been another busy year looking forward to it, and just really begin to roll up our sleeves to work on legislation.

Um, and we appreciate all the positions that you take.

The clerk has been great about always sharing positions immediately the day after you all have taken action, and we of course share those with the author with our delegation.

We're spoiled, we've got a great assembly member and a great senator, and of course, leadership, speaker's office, pro temp's office, and committee staff.

So happy to answer any questions you all may have.

Um, and thank you for all the support and the strong partnership.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for your presentation for giving us the overview.

I think it is really helpful for everyone to know what's going on and what you all are working on on behalf of the city.

Uh Councilmember Taplin, did you have a question?

Yes, thank you.

I have uh two uh two questions.

You mentioned um bills respecting e-bike regulations.

Yes.

Could you speak more about that?

What kinds of things?

Absolutely.

Um, so through the mayor, um council members.

So um right now I think we've got about four bills out, and we're expecting about 12.

It's just tighter regulations on how the e-bikes basically their capacity, whether it's the horsepower or some of the output.

Um there's there was a study last year about overall e-bike safety, and I've read reports about some of the um operating room surgeons seeing high number of head trauma for young people, 16 and younger.

Uh so what we're expecting is um regulations on overall output of the e-bikes, probably starting effect of 27 going to next year.

Um, maybe different types of infractions for the vehicle code.

Um we do know that e-bikes are a affordable way of transportation for some, um, but then we've also heard when I say we, because we talk to a lot of legislators and staff have heard some of the horror stories of the accidents of kind of the joy riding, of the um comparability of e-bikes like motorcycles, so really looking at a handful of bills trying to be more strict on output of the e-bikes and their overall kind of product uh production.

Uh thank you.

Um, yeah, it was I've been following some of some of those bills and um, and this isn't a isn't a question, but for us to think about um uh as you mentioned, e-bikes are an affordable mode of transportation for many people.

Um, and I'm I'm concerned that efforts to um adopt stringent regulations will um create a barrier, um, and I think you know we all support road safety, but if there's there's no mystery around which vehicles are causing the most harm in the road, and it's on e-bikes, so um, but my second question was um are there in the overall landscape.

Are you noticing any shifting headwinds?

Um uh I'm thinking about public safety in particular.

Um, you know, I think if I think if we roll back six years, there was I think one headwind that started to shift a little later on.

I'm wondering if there are similar things taking place in other areas, including public safety.

Absolutely, that is a great question.

When it comes to public safety last year, as you all may recall, I want to say it was an assembly bill about how you treat um uh prostitutes and the Johns and the age limit of who is soliciting sex from who and how those uh what the different uh punishments may be, felonies, misdemeanors.

Um that bill was heavily discussed, and quite frankly, when I'm in my 19th year, um I was a little surprised that it was signed into law.

Um the legislature that I'm more used to has been a little bit more progressive on kind of law and order bills.

Um, I was a little bit surprised that that one was signed uh and pushed kind of so aggressively.

Uh there's actually now a radio bill to essentially undercut that about whether whether you're um soliciting or loitering or how you even define that.

So um we do have a new class of assembly members and senators, and I am seeing a bit of a shift a little bit more kind of towards the middle.

Um there's also something to keep in mind, which isn't necessarily the tone and tenor, but this is the governor's last year.

Um, and the governor has been clear on some of his priorities.

Um, and there's also uh sense of not knowing who'd be the governor next year and who would be in the cabinet next year, so former legislative um proposals that might have been maybe waiting for next year are gonna be expedited this year.

Um, and so hopefully I'm answering your question as directly as I can, but have seen a little bit of a shift on public safety.

Um, none of the bills that we've looked at uh this week and in today really kind of stood out on the side of public safety other than an assembly bill seeking to water down or undercut uh the bill that was sent into law last year on um prostitution and loitering.

Thank you.

And I actually have one last question.

My apologies.

Um, and this is kind of a follow-up, but um, just from a from a high level, is the the posture among the legislature are are we do we think that they're in a position to advance or hold or protect?

I think we're you know on defense against the Fed.

So I'm wondering whether how much appetite there is of the state to push for innovative new things versus fighting the key things we currently have.

Great question.

Uh definitely both.

Um last year there was a lot of bills towards the end of session on ice and masks.

There continues to be a handful of handful of bills on immigration, what ICE should not be allowed to do in our state, things of that nature.

Continue to see the trend of pushing back against DC, primarily through the governor and a lot of his budget proposals.

So I expect definitely pushing back, but at the same time continue to advance.

I mean, there's you all know because you're all a very well versed.

I mean, there's a tremendous amount of pride in being a Californian in the California values in everything that our state does.

And that just gets louder and louder each year with a greater sense of pride, which could be whether it's a housing bill or a bill about climate change.

As you all know, they the cap and invest was approved last year, a lot of good funding for housing and affordable housing, land conservation, but then also fire safety.

So if you ask about trends, I'd say two trends have been really clear.

This year there's definitely a trend to address illegal dumping, handful of bills on that.

And then another trend is overall fire safety and that impact, and how do you, whether it's zone zero, which you all led on, how do you do defensible space, what does that look like, and how do neighborhoods really take a stand themselves against what Mother Nature may deal towards you?

Thank you.

Thanks for your questions and for your thorough responses.

Um Council Member Tracker, did you have a question?

Yes, I have two questions.

Uh one, um I I know I've been following the legislature not as closely as you, of course, and affordability continues to be top of mind.

Um predictions or surprises uh thus far in the cycle around uh those discussions.

And my second question is more pointed because it might inform one other potential amendment if the count to our priorities of the council signs off on it.

Um we we do have a no uh unfunded mandates language before us.

I appreciate it.

Um, in the context of the governor's um released budget, which um appears to shift the burden of funding for um certain mental health services to local uh and county jurisdictions.

Um I'm wondering if you could talk about that a little bit and would it be uh if you were advising a city council, which you kind of are, um would you feel that it might be beneficial to insert some language around um uh making sure that there is appropriate funding and uh resourcing for local jurisdictions for um mental health or other forms of health care.

Absolutely.

Uh through the mayor, council member, I would say the way that the ledge platform is written now, it's clear about any impacts of local funding, whether it's to the city to the county or of the region.

So I think you're very solid there.

Um you were mentioning about overall mental health funding, kind of pushing that back on the county.

Something to keep in mind, and the governor was very proud of was Prop One and the funding for Prop One and how that's tied to not just services but also housing.

So that was part of it.

Um something that the governor did towards the end of the session last year was use a cap and invest proceeds to help offset other costs that the state would take to make sure the state's general fund wasn't as negatively impacted.

Um affordability you asked, you know, I would say we're still extremely early in the legislative process, and that is something a lot of us have identified and we're waiting to see what happens, whereas both houses, the Senate and the Assembly have been clear they want to make the state affordable, especially for uh middle class families and working-class families.

Um, what's gonna be interesting though is also the lack of redevelopment, so there's not the funding that the cities have for greater flexibility to build.

There's a discussion of the housing bond, which could be up to 10 billion, which would be spent very quickly, but there's also been a push from the legislature of let locals decide how they want to handle things.

And so I think the rub could be what the affordability uh package would look like versus allowing cities and counties and others to take their destiny in their own hands.

As of right now, we don't yet have an answer on that, but affordability is a theme.

Thank you.

Council Member Bartley, do you have a question?

Oh, thank you.

I was curious of um what's the outlook on our insurance issue.

There was a handful of the first series of informational hearing about two weeks ago, three weeks ago on overall housing in insurance for houses, whether it's affordable housing, whether it's in a fire area or what have you.

Um it getting louder and louder to make sure the insurance companies cannot increase their rates so high at the same time that they're protecting in case of a catastrophe.

We're expecting a handful of insurance bills that are substantive and are really going to try to help kind of move the needle.

Um definitely going to flag those for the city.

There was a few last year that didn't make it to the finish line, but I know their authors are committed to doing so, so that will remain another hot topic of what is affordability for insurance look like.

How do you maintain as much coverage as you possibly can, especially for single family houses in the urban wildfire interface area?

Thank you.

Okay, so one other thing I want to make sure that I get everyone's okay on is our ability to send advocacy letters that are supported by these areas without coming to council first because that will allow us to move more expeditiously if things come up that we can support.

Just want to see if anyone's opposed.

Okay.

All right.

So we have a number of additions that have been recommended.

Um, personally, I'm fine with taking all of them as friendly amendments.

Um I just want to see if anyone has any other comments about that.

Actually, I need to take public comments, so let me do that first.

Public comments.

Hi.

Um, and I would um like to thank Carol and Brianna for yielding time to me.

Um, so uh I do I get a minute from each of them.

Okay.

Um hi, my name is Sarah Bell, and I am speaking on behalf of Berkeley's Housing Advisory Commission.

The commission met on Thursday, February 5th to make recommendations on the housing section of our city's legislative priorities.

Um, and as a commission, we recommended a number of edits.

I would like to emphasize that the commission voted unanimously in favor of each of our edits, so respectfully request that council incorporate our feedback into the final legislative priorities, which overlap with changes um suggested by council members already tonight.

You should have received a memo with the rationale for each of our edits in the agenda packet.

In other words, we did type it up, and I will attempt to summarize them now.

Um, there are some complications around which version we started from in making our edits.

I'm happy to sort out which items we're referring to.

And I would also like to thank um the city's lobbyist um for all of their efforts on thus far.

So starting with recommendations for tenant protections, we recommended codifying rent relief and eviction moratorium for future emergency situations and enhancing our state code around preventing tenant harms that come from predictive algorithms.

Both of these are timely given the changing world we inhabit.

Moving on to housing construction, we recommended pursuing changes to the building code, such as universal design and elevator reform to make our buildings more accessible, and allowing single stair modular construction and the use of the residential code for middle housing.

That last one being very important for our city because we just passed middle housing.

We also recommended pursuing condo deposit and condo defect reform to enable multi-family for sale housing to pencil because despite our recent boom of rental housing, significantly less for sale, multifamily housing has been constructed in Berkeley over that same period.

In the area of funding, we suggested edits in order to be concrete in the outcomes we wish to achieve without being overly specific on the mechanism.

We also recommended expanding the item on funding seismic retrofitting to include home hardening as well, since many homes in Berkeley are at elevated risk of wildfire.

On changes to the California Constitution, the commission recommends promoting the repeal of Article 34 to its own item, and to put a final point on the item about lowering the voter threshold for passing affordable housing bonds, specifying 50% plus one.

We emphatically need to make it easier to approve and fund affordable housing.

The final piece of text that we recommended adding is an edit to item nine in the mayor's memo and number 10 and the one that we received to expand the scope of our support for student housing and also to include education workers in that support.

As for the text that we recommended removing, the item on LITECH changes, nine in hours, eight in the mayor's memo, did not actually we recommended removing that because it did not actually indicate a need for any legislative changes at this time.

The item on programs to fund, which was 14 in ours and 12 in on the mayor's version, we suggested merging um just into a more general item on funding.

And lastly, the item on ADU law seemed to be a holdover from years past, so we recommended removing it.

And furthermore, allowing other cities to count ADUs towards the arena allocation, um could be detrimental for a city like Berkeley that takes its housing goals very seriously.

Um of course, housing is a regional um concern.

And so that's another reason to remove the item on ADUs.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration of these changes, and we hope you incorporate our suggestions.

I'll make myself available to answer any questions and help track across versions.

Um, and I really appreciate again both um both our lobbyists' work and the council's work on producing these priorities.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah.

I did not receive your email, so um we're checking for it right now, but I don't think we received it, so that's very concerning.

Um so you we might need to take a mini break at some point, probably after public comments so we can go through this to make sure um it's clear.

So is there any other public comment?

Yes.

Hello, um, not taking any position on any item, but wanted to just piggyback on the question about headwinds, and I know you it's not a back and forth, but in case anyone else has this question, um, I just recently started tracking the kind of mental health diversion efforts that have been happening at the state level around more mental health diversion in the courts.

And I know today the public safety committee at the state, like Senator Errageen, came out with some recommendations around a bill related to mental health diversion.

And I just thought, given Berkeley's challenges, it would be nice if that subject were included on the list in some way for the city to be able to maybe lobby around, or I'd like to be interested in hearing sort of more of the headwinds around that, if that's something that the lobbyists could talk about if someone else had that question.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other public comment on this item here in person or online?

Anyone online have public comment on this item?

There's no hands raised.

Um the letter from the hack is in the sub two package.

I see it.

Yeah, we found it.

Thank you.

Um, I want to give us like five minutes just to because there's a lot of different pieces of things.

Um, so if you can give us five minutes, I want to review a couple things and then come back and we can have a conversation.

Hi, so okay.

So the reviewing what was sent, uh, the numbers don't line up with the current numbers of this, and it's very messy and messy to combine all these different things together.

And I think for the sake of transparency and making sure everyone is clear on what it is that we are um voting on.

I'd like to actually continue this item until another time where so that we can actually take the time to rewrite it, take everyone's edits, make sure it's clear what we're all voting on.

Because I I understand like right now, I would say most of this is not controversial, but um I do think it's important for us to be clear what it is we're voting on.

So I'm gonna ask that we continue this item, which Mr.

City Clerk, I just want to make sure, means that if we we would move this to the next council meeting.

Which is yes, you certainly certainly can on March 10th.

March 10th.

Okay.

Okay.

We are gonna do that for the for the sake of transparency and clarity.

So I apologize.

Thank you all very much.

I really appreciate you Nicolas for coming to be here and answer our questions and by next time we should have something that's a little cleaner for us to actually approve and we'll be able to pass it forward with you.

But you know like I said nothing here is is super controversial.

It's really more a matter of getting it getting it straight clear.

So okay so with that we won't be able to carry over any of the additions that were added tonight.

What's that?

So I mean they could be rendered rendered reintroduced at the next meeting.

We will reintroduce these changes at the next meeting.

All of them in together yes okay could we is there a way to could we submit them as a supplemental so they could be published ahead of time yeah just read on the dice again I think that would be the idea is to have it printed ahead of time written down everyone can review it and read it before.

Okay.

Okay very good all right thank you all very much for that and that is our actual our final item for this evening so I will ask if there's any public comment for items not listed on the agenda.

And thank you.

So I just want to advise council that at the end of June the mental health trauma comment contracts that we have will all be coming to an end so that's the contract to serve the African American population, uh the Latino immigrant population, the LGBTQ population and those may or may not be renewed.

So as long as mental health was raised I've just gonna mention that's that may be an additional gap in our system as we address all of these issues.

I also was sad to hear it during the legislative presentation I don't know if what that law was that was mentioned as far as sex workers and the customers and I'm gonna take a look at it because a while ago sex trafficking came up as a as a recommendation from another commission I was on it really is it really is an issue in Berkeley it's very sad to attend uh an event in am I able to keep talking okay it was very sad to attend a very well attended event in Berkeley and see a young girl who is was clearly and she was clearly underage with her her zipper down posed on the sidewalk and passing by and what do you do I don't know what to do I mean I want to have her arrested that is not a response to a young girl who's being exploited so I wonder and I how much do we really care about addressing that issue that young girls are being trafficked and I had mentioned previously about coming across someone in a homeless encampment um uh was very suspect the man she was with who was about 60 when she's was clearly underage and six months pregnant so it is an issue in our community and there are only for this as the city manager thank you.

Thank you um is there any other public comment on items not listed on the agenda on the agenda.

Anyone online?

There's one one hand raised online.

I should be able to unmute caller ending in two one one that's hi uh last item which I'm about to uh talk about.

Uh since Donald Trump um rejected the nuclear test uh treaty that have been in effect for over 50 years, the doomsday clock was advanced seconds before midnight.

This man is crazy and he will do it.

If we don't have nuclear war, which would happen because of Ukraine possibly or any other else, ninety-eight percent of humans are going to vanish within minutes or seconds or hours.

Two percent will die within days or weeks from very painful deaths.

That will must stop.

Must stop this crazy man.

And, you know, please watch his uh the uh his talking tonight and laugh.

Have a good night and good to talk to you.

Thank you.

Any other public comment?

That's all.

Okay.

Is there a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

As long as there is no opposition to adjourning, we will be adjourned for this evening.

Meeting adjourned.

Thank you all.