Okay, hello everyone.

Good evening.

It doesn't feel like evening, does it?

It's so hot and sunny out.

Um, so I'm just trying to scroll to the top of my agenda.

I'm going to call to order the special meet a special meeting of the Berkeley City Council.

Today is Tuesday, March 17th, 2026.

It's 6.07 p.m.

And happy St.

Patrick's Day to you all.

Um Clerk, can you please take the roll?

Okay, Councilmember Kessarwani.

Here.

Kathleen.

Present Bartlett is currently absent.

Trade.

Present.

O'Keefe.

Here.

Blackaby.

Here.

Luna Parra.

Here.

Humbert.

Present.

And Mayor Ishi.

Here.

Okay.

Quorum is present.

Okay.

Oh, folks, please.

If you're out there, please take your conversations outside if you're going to have a conversation.

Thank you.

Okay, so we only have one item on the agenda because it is a special meeting this evening, which is the presentation and discussion of community survey results and direction regarding potential ballot measures for the November 3rd, 2026 general municipal election.

So I'm going to pass it over to our deputy city manager, uh, David White.

Yep.

Take it away.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here this evening.

Um just for some logistics, uh, so alongside I have Carrie Ardando, our assistant to the city manager.

Online, uh, we will have uh our public works director and deputy director Terrence Davis and Wahid Amiri Um and Scott Ferris, our director of parks and recreation and waterfront will be here uh very shortly.

And also part of our presentation will be delivered online uh from Lake Street Partners, David Merman and Emma Scotty.

So before you um you have the agenda uh for this evening's presentation.

Um we're gonna set the context and do a little background on how we fund our infrastructure and the gravity of our infrastructure needs, and we did cover some of this territory when we uh spoke with you in December.

Then we are going to transition it over to David Merman and the team to provide the results of the community survey uh that we launched in early mid-February of this year.

Um and that community survey was designed uh with council's direction to accomplish two objectives.

Uh one, uh, we investigated uh uh the support of Berkeley voters for a 300 million and 200 million general obligation infrastructure bond.

And then also pursuant to council's direction in January of this year, uh we also sought uh input from Berkeley voters on their support for potential uh general fund sales and use tax measure uh to help address the city's general fund deficit.

After we talk about the results of the survey, we're gonna talk a little bit about the extensive community engagement uh effort that is underway, uh which is being spearhead and shepherded by our Department of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront, our fire department, as well as our public works department.

Uh we will not talk about a lot of the results of that community engagement right now because we are saving that until we can complete the community engagement process and we come back to you in May with the results of uh what that uh is producing for us.

And then we'll talk a little bit about next steps and timelines about what the way ahead is and then seeking council input and direction on recommended actions and next steps.

So let's talk a little bit about how we fund on infrastructure.

And uh clearly the main takeaway from this slide is we do not uh devote enough resources to address the totality of our infrastructure needs.

Uh we are an older community uh and our infrastructure is clearly aging.

In terms of looking at the buckets on this slide, um, from the general fund, uh we contribute uh really revenue or resources to two main areas.

Uh about three million dollars goes goes towards our facilities, parks, um, sidewalks, transportation, as well as paying for debt service.

And then we uh transfer a total of about 9.9 million dollars.

There is an inflation adjustment that occurs on that figure, uh goes to Zar goes towards streets, and that's the results of council's action a few years ago to really help address uh our aging uh street network.

We do have one-time resources that come into uh our infrastructure uh toolbox uh that comes from property transfer tax as well as uh interest income, but that's volatile.

And over the years we have not been able to transfer all the resources to address capital that we may otherwise like because the general fund has needed those resources to sustain operations.

And then we have resources that are restricted by use.

Um, those goes towards our sewer system, our streets, stormwater, street lights, and marina.

And then about why we're here tonight.

So we've been able to uh been very lucky to receive voter support uh on a number of initiatives over the years to address infrastructure.

And the most recent item that we've been able to bring forward is Measure T1.

And we've realized with the sunset of measure T1 and that all those resources are allocated and going to be fully deployed in the next one to two years.

We realize that there aren't the resources there to address infrastructure in the way that the community would expect, as well as council.

What we've also been able to do, and this slide does a really good job of highlighting that we've been very aggressive in pursuing grant opportunities when they arise.

And the one statistic I would point out on this chart is with the hundred million dollars of T1 funding, we've been able to leverage that with 83 million dollars of grants.

And that work is continuous for us.

In fact, just the other uh day, uh maybe a week ago, we received notice from the state that we were able to secure a grant uh to help address our mental health facility on MLK.

And as we won't be talking a lot about the project list this evening, but one of the items we addressed in the project list is leveraging that potential grant resource with grant funds, and just want to deliver the message that we will continue to be aggressive in that endeavor and activity.

So this is just another slide to help really uh encapsulate uh the depth of the need that we have from an infrastructure perspective.

So we have an unfunded need of about 1.87 billion dollars, and that really is an unbelievable large number when you think about it.

And when you look at our last five year CIP, we believe we uh calculated about an average spend of about 39 million dollars per year towards our infrastructure.

That is woefully inadequate to address the totality of our need.

So again, understanding the T1 resources are fully deployed, understanding the depth of this need.

You know, we took a step back and wanted to think about what would another bond uh based on council's direction to explore this.

What could it do?

What could it be?

And how would we develop a list of projects?

So we took a step back.

We gave uh great consideration to how we've invested resources historically.

We thought about community use of our facilities, how to ensure equitable access.

We thought about our public safety infrastructure and apparatus and how to shore that up so we can be responsive to the community.

We thought about projects that could be leveraged with grant funds.

We thought about project delivery and uh project readiness, and all of that allowed us to come together with a preliminary list of projects, and there were a little more than 30 in that preliminary list, uh, that really defined itself into these three main buckets.

So the first bucket was community facilities and quality of life, which included improvements to parks, playgrounds, restrooms, aquatic facilities, dog parks, community and cultural centers, and waterfront areas.

The second bucket was public safety, uh which was really focused and targeted on the modernization of fire stations, and that really uh was partially derived and directed from the city council that uh adopted a referral in and giving us that guidance, as well as resources that are needed to address our 911 dispatch uh facility.

And then the third bucket was critical infrastructure infrastructure and accessibility, which was all about seismic upgrades, replacement and uh public facilities, ADA improvements, and programs such as our 50-50 sidewalk program.

And what was really critical in designing all of these projects is that we also really tried to hold on to a lens of climate resiliency, understanding that we're in a profound period of our time where we need to be prepared for the weather.

We're experiencing it today.

And so a lot of the projects that were developed were also thought through that lens to ensure that we can be efficient and resilient as we move forward.

So now I would like to turn it over to David Merman and his team to talk about the results of the survey.

Um, and again, as I mentioned before, uh that survey was really designed to probe a couple of main areas the infrastructure bond as well as the sales and use tax uh that was uh given direction to us by council.

David, it's all yours.

Thanks so much.

Can you all hear and see me all right?

Yep.

Great.

So uh glad to be here once again.

Uh I am traveling this week, so I couldn't join you in person, although I am uh a Berkeley resident, as well as uh having uh uh done the work on this survey for the city of Berkeley.

And as many of you know, we have uh conducted a series of these community surveys over the years.

Uh tracking uh overall levels of concern about different issues, uh awareness and support for the uh uh work that the city is doing, and then very specifically to test uh potential ballot measures and in many cases revenue measures, some of which of course were some were summarized and of course placed on the ballot in previous years.

This new survey, I'm not going to go through there's a longer report, I believe that's been submitted for everyone to look at, but we are going to just go through the highlights here of the key findings related to this question of an infrastructure bond measure uh that could be placed on the ballot uh here in Berkeley, and then uh one additional measure that was mentioned in the survey as well.

Uh so, and I want to also mention my uh our senior analyst on the team here, Emma Scotty, who's uh very much engaged in uh producing the data you see here and the results.

Um I will put on the screen here our summary slides, and again, this is excerpted from the longer report that many of you have.

Um, and these are findings from a community survey was conducted among likely voters in the city of Berkeley.

Um, 500 sample size, which is uh gives us a margin of error plus or minus 4.4%.

Um you can look at the the numbers with that in mind.

Uh, and then we're in the field uh in the second half of February of this year.

Um, and the mostly we'll be reporting here the top line results, but we do have lots of cross tabs and other analysis in terms of how different groups of voters in the city uh broke down on these on these various questions.

So this is just a summary of the methodology, all the things I just said about when we fielded and the margin of error and so forth.

Um just uh again, all of these uh crosstabs are available in the full report, but uh showing you some of the breakdown.

Again, this is uh of likely voters in the city of Berkeley.

People expect to vote intern out in 2026 November election.

Uh, and uh so all of those uh folks are represented uh proportionally in the survey relative to their proportion and the uh electorate of likely voters.

So here's the overview of the key findings that we uh learned here uh from this survey uh that was in the field last month.

Um we tested a the infrastructure measure, uh, the go bond, as it's referred to here, uh, at a couple of different uh funding levels.

We also tested a sales tax uh ballot measure.

They were both uh with different results, but both in a good position to pass, uh, in the sense that the yes vote of the number of voters to say I'd likely to vote yes on that measure is uh above the threshold that would be needed for the bond measure, which requires two thirds to pass.

We're measuring that currently, getting about 70% support uh from Berkeley voters on the initial ballot first time we ask it, just laying out some ballot language to describe what the bond is and asking people if they would vote yes or no.

Um, also note uh key takeaway on the bond is that we tested two different dollar amounts and we split the sample.

So people uh in the survey heard only one of those versions all the way through, either 200 or 300 million.

And I'll show you the difference in that.

But the bottom line is there was essentially no difference, and if anything, the larger amount with which includes a uh higher level of tax increase, uh, actually tested slightly better than the smaller amount in terms of having more support from the voters, and we'll show you those numbers.

We also tested a sales tax measure uh to the fund ongoing budget needs, and that uh was lower in terms of its total yes vote uh in the survey, but only needing a 50% threshold to pass.

It is also above that threshold at 60% yes in our initial test.

Um we also found uh in some broader general questions that Berkeley voters are fairly satisfied with the city and the direction of things in the city, believing it's going in the right direction, and that the city in general is doing a good or excellent job providing services.

There's there is a wide range of opinions on this, but um both of those measures have improved in the sense that the level of satisfaction of the city is a little higher than the last time we measured it two years ago, and uh in a higher proportion also saying that the city's doing a good or excellent job providing services.

And then we also asked about priorities within these areas of infrastructure funding in particular, and many of the priorities that we tested related to safety, in particular, protecting infrastructure from climate change, as as mentioned in the uh overall presentation, specifically uh issues related to emergency services, such as 911 dispatch and fire stations, improving uh earthquake and seismic protections, and repairing streets and sidewalks in particular for pedestrian safety, all of which uh got higher levels of priority from the voters out of a list of many, many things that they prioritize, but those were some of the highest.

So, from there, let me walk you through some of these numbers that we uh got in these total top lines, and then obviously happy to take corrections or thoughts from uh the council or others on this.

Uh, so this is the overall direction of the city of Berkeley, and it's just to note that this is a it has improved, as I said.

Uh, there was a we've been now measuring this for uh 14 years in the city of Berkeley.

Uh some version of this question is the city going the right or wrong direction.

Uh, and we have an uptick over the last uh previous measure of this in May of 2024, when we had 47% of the voters saying the city's going the right direction versus 29 saying wrong direction.

Now it is 56% going in the right direction and 22% in the wrong direction.

And that is a significant increase over that period of two years in the positive response on this question.

We also asked uh as noted about the job performance of the city and providing services to its residents.

This is a four-point scale, excellent, good, just fair or poor.

And uh the proportion saying good or excellent has slightly increased over the last two years.

It's now 56%.

That is uh a steady increase from five years ago in 2021 when it was at a somewhat lower point at 51.

This has always been a majority, but uh it is a slightly higher majority this year.

56% good or excellent versus 39% just fair or poor.

Then we wanted to uh before asking about the ballot measures.

We also asked about the general priorities in terms of infrastructure for the city, and these are all basically items.

We didn't cover every possible thing the city can invest in, but we we covered the areas that we might be considered for this infrastructure measure to see which ones were the highest priorities, and we asked people to choose.

So now these percentages add up to more than 100% because people were allowed to choose more than one.

Uh and then we, you know, uh equalized uh the responses uh so that nobody was was uh nobody was had more weight than anyone else.

But there are people who've voted for multiple things.

So we have percentages over 100% here.

And uh, and again, we're looking for the relative priority.

If you had to choose between these things, which ones would be the highest priority for you.

And two of them emerged clearly at the top of this list, which are safeguarding critical infrastructure from the threats of climate change, including flooding and wildfires at 35%, and increasing Berkeley safety and accessibility by improving sidewalks, curb ramps, and pathways.

Those two things, different versions of safety and uh uh protection, uh, both at the at the top of this list, followed by a second tier of things that are also clearly important to voters, reducing pollution flowing to the bay and flood risk by installing green infrastructure, improving parks, playgrounds, recreation, and replacing public safety facilities that are at the end of the useful life, all of those getting more than 20% picking them as one of their top priorities, and then somewhat lower, the more specific location specific uh areas here of improving the waterfront and the civic center.

Uh still have some support, but the button lower relative than priority compared to those broader ones.

Then we get to the actual ballot measure.

And again, this is uh we tried to uh ask it in a form that uh resembled what people would see on a ballot, as we have done previously uh in measuring potential ballot measures for the city.

And we find uh a fairly strong support uh in the city for passing a general obligation bond uh to invest in series of infrastructure things, and we specified here investing in fire stations, emergency response, parks and recreation, climate change resiliency, and public buildings and infrastructure.

And we had a we'll get to the two versions in a minute, but overall, this is the combined split sample across the whole city.

Our total result was 70% voting yes.

And we also measured intensity of support.

So you have 39% saying strongly yes.

So some of that 70% would need to uh be consolidated if if this measure were to pass, but it does look like it's uh currently 70%, seven out of 10 voters in the city saying I would either vote for or lean yes on voting for that measure, only 13% saying they would vote or lean no.

Um that's a wide margin in favor of yes, but it does uh importantly cross that two-thirds threshold being over 67%.

Um, and then you have 16% say I'm undecided and not sure which way they would lean on on that infrastructure measure.

So that's the total combined, and obviously it is does reach over the threshold.

This is the experiment we did with the size of the measure.

And this was interesting because we would expect, uh, given that we there was a tax associated with this, uh, a tax level, uh, that the one with the lower amount might be slightly more popular because it would have a lower and it doesn't include a lower tax increase.

Turns out, however, that there is essentially no difference in the total yes vote.

And if anything, the larger measure at the 300 million dollar threshold tests slightly better, the slightly higher uh vote support.

Now, this is well within the margin of error.

As far as we know, there's essentially no difference here, but 71% uh for the 300 million dollar bond measure and 70% voting yes for the 200 million dollar bond measure, uh, and 12 or 14% voting no, similar amounts uh undecided.

So it does not appear to be particularly sensitive to the level, at least in this range of uh the size of the bond.

Um, so that was the so this was the combined at 70% yes.

This was the split sample of the two different dollar amounts.

And then we asked another uh we then tested some arguments, and in the full report, you see that the language in these arguments, but basically the idea was we wanted to see what happened when people learned more and heard more about the infrastructure measure, and we tested a it's a stress test essentially of the support because it's both an argument in favor and an argument against.

And we wanted to see okay, if people hear arguments from both sides of this issue, would their vote shift?

And it does shift a little and it does shift slightly down.

So it started at 70% overall after that argument back and forth and give equal time to the yes and no arguments.

The yes vote saying these are important infrastructure needs and we need to invest, and it was that will uh produce benefits for all of us in Berkeley, and the no argument essentially saying this costs too much, we can we need to find the money elsewhere, uh, we can't afford tax increases at this time.

Um, and so hearing those two arguments, uh, here's where people ended up.

Still two thirds voting yes, just barely over the threshold, 67%, 18% voting no, and still 14% undecided.

So if any proportion of those undecided were to break toward a yes, it would once again be well over the threshold.

Uh, but it, you know, it's it's uh it's close, but certainly in a position to pass with 67% voting yes after those arguments, and that does reinforce that this is a fairly robust finding in favor of people uh supporting the measure of Berkeley voters supporting this this ballot measure.

The other measure we tested on this community survey had to do with a sales tax, and this was uh not for those infrastructure investments, but more broadly to address the the city's structural budget deficit uh with all of the increases in costs for programs and the fact that the uh revenues are not keeping up.

Uh so the idea was to see if voters would support increasing the sales tax by half a percent.

Uh, and in this version of it, we simply said here's what here's what it would be invested in, and here's what the cost would be.

Um, would you vote yes or no?

And 60% uh would vote yes on a sales tax increase to invest in these uh budget needs for the city.

Um that is again, it's lower than the support for the infrastructure bond, but it is well above the 50% threshold that would be needed to pass.

29% say they would vote no, uh, but that is a substantial 31-point margin in favor.

And you do have 11% who say they would be undecided.

This is a pattern that suggests that this would be likely to pass, uh, given just the simple information of what's on the ballot for a sales tax measure.

And again, we stress tested this by testing arguments in favor and opposed about the favor in favor argument, arguing about what the needs are for the city and the importance of investing in these uh these budget needs, and the no arguments again raising the the question of is this does this cost too much?

Is there other money that could be used?

Um, and specifically suggesting that a sales tax would be regressive.

Uh, so they've heard those strong uh arguments in favor and opposed, and again, overall support dips a little bit from that initial measure of 60%, but it is still well over a majority at 58% yes.

After hearing those arguments pro and con, 29% say they would vote no.

13% uh in the poll would are undecided uh as to whether they would uh vote yes or no on the sales tax.

So again, this would suggest it's in a good position to pass.

Um, and even if the undecided is broke uh to vote no on this case, that would it would still be well over the 50% threshold.

And then finally, we tested a series back to the infrastructure question.

We tested a series of priorities in terms of what was most important.

We had the broader priorities up top.

Now we asked about very specific things to invest in with an infrastructure measure once voters understood we're talking about an actual measure that might produce uh uh revenue that could be used for these infrastructure investments.

And in this case, rather than choose, everyone was able to rate each item on the list.

And then they they had a scale, five levels of how important it was, extremely important being the highest level.

And we're rank ordering here the things in terms of the percent who rated them extremely important.

There were four things in particular that had the highest percentages of people saying they are extremely important to me to invest in that.

The number one was renovating the 911 dispatch center to handle higher call volumes and modernized critical critical infrastructure 29%.

See, that is extremely important.

That was the number one on this long battery of potential uh investments.

Second highest was making the fire station citywide safer and more energy efficient by replacing fire stations and no longer able to meet demands.

And notably when we replacing fire stations that tested a little higher than repairing fire stations.

So that was notable, and that was a high priority for Berkeley voters.

Also tied with that as the second highest priority was improving safety and accessibility by repairing cracked and uneven sidewalks and upgrading curb ramps.

27% extremely important for that one.

And then also in the top tier here, uh just a couple points lower in terms of extreme importance upgrading the deteriorating public restrooms at Berkeley Parks.

And in this case, it was upgrading and repairing rather than building new public restrooms that tested a little bit higher, uh, upgrading a little bit higher than uh building new ones.

Um this is the full list uh just to show that the range of things that we tested specifically that could be an investments out of the infrastructure bond, but those four noted at the top, uh did have the highest overall as well as the highest uh extremely important rating.

But you see several other things not too far below that repairing the fire stations, earthquake protections, waterfront paths, repairing public buildings, which does include the civic center.

Remember when we limited the buildings just to the civic center, that rated lower.

When we say more broadly, repair public buildings, including the civic center, that did better.

Uh, so all of those are in fairly high levels, but those top four or five stand out above the others in terms of what voters are most focused on in terms of uh investments.

And those are the that's the summary of the findings, but happy to take questions or other feedback uh after after this uh presentation.

Thank you, David.

I feel like I'm gonna have to call you both something different to differentiate.

A lot of data is here, but we're used to it.

Data and I are in similar generations.

We've thrown up a lot of data, so I'm sure we're just doing it.

Okay.

Um very good.

Do I have any questions from our council members?

Do you want to pause and focus on the survey before we finish or I'm sorry, yes.

If you want to go ahead.

Okay.

Oh, sorry, sorry.

So we'll be real quick.

Um, in addition to the uh community survey, um, I want to give a lot of credit to Director Farrish, who's in the audience, Director Davis, Chief Sprague, Kerry to my left.

Um, and I don't know how many staff to thank, uh, but there are many uh in our parks recreation waterfront department, public works and fire department that have worked really, really hard to implement a very robust community engagement campaign.

And what this slide highlights for you is the breadth of the work um that they've engaged in.

Um they've been in front of six city commissions, uh, and I'm really encouraged by that because I've started to see commissions develop reports for council to provide advice um on how to move forward with the general obligation bond.

Uh, four community focused groups.

Uh, we have one more that's going to be occurring this week.

Uh, four, sorry, four community focused groups and then four joint district community meetings, and we have one more joint district community meeting this week.

And then we've developed the city web page uh as well as an email to receive input uh from the community.

And all of this, right?

All the results of all this community engagement, the results of the community survey are going to inform us bringing back the list to you in May that hopefully uh we'll get blessing to move forward with.

And I'll talk to more about that in a second.

So when you look at the timeline uh in next steps, um so we engaged and embarked on this journey in December of last year, and that was kicked off with the work session uh that we brought uh before you.

And following that, we brought on like street partners to help us with uh the community survey, and as I mentioned, uh staff developed a very robust community engagement campaign.

And that's what brought us forward to this day here today, in which we're bringing forward the results of that first survey.

And undoubtedly they're very encouraging.

Subsequent to the direction we received tonight.

Um, our goal is to come back before council uh in the May time frame.

If we get direction to move forward with a second survey, uh, which is one of our recommended actions, we would bring those results back in front of you.

In addition to that, it is our goal and our interest in bringing forward a refined project list again, reflecting the input of the community survey, reflecting the input of the community engagement effort that's underway.

In addition to that, we are refining the cost estimates that are developed for those projects, as well as considering the staffing organization and the staffing architecture that needs to be in place to deliver a bond of this magnitude efficiently and successfully.

And our hope is in that May study session that we would get direction on that final project list, which will also help inform our city attorney's office.

It is an integral role in helping to develop the uh ballot language that ultimately we'd like to bring in front of you in the June time frame of this year.

So that kind of outlines sort of where we are today and where we're headed.

Um I'll now turn to the conclusion, which is our recommended actions.

Um we have three actions uh that we would like to bring before you this evening.

Um the first one is to give us direction to actually develop the final uh ballot language for the 300 million general obligation bond to develop the draft ballot language for the sales and use tax, and then to give us direction to go back out and do a second community survey.

And I want to point out what that second community survey would consist of.

Um, one, we would actually like to test the actual ballot language that would be on uh the ballot itself.

It's really important for us to get that feedback.

And secondly, in taking direction from the council, one of the things that you were interested in was seeing the interaction of these measures with other measures that could be on the ballot.

And so you obviously as time has passed, we're getting better clarity on what are some of the items that could actually be on the ballot.

And so we would like to integrate that into a second community survey to see where things shank out after that.

That concludes our presentation.

And is uh David Merman said he's available on his team for questions, as well as myself and um other staff that are either online or in audience.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Um questions.

Does anyone have any questions?

Oh this says one, but doesn't say who it is.

So I'm not sure.

Perhaps one that I might okay.

I'll take council member Trake up first then.

Um I don't want to go second.

Um, thank you so much for the presentation.

Um I have three questions.

Uh I think all of them are for David uh David Mormon.

Um thank you.

Thank you so much.

Um as far as um in after I guess what's called the battery of uh positive and negative um statements.

Uh the measure is at 67% in your experience, uh, what kind of factors and what is that might influence um uh that kind of polling and how a measure does on the ballot, whether directionally it goes up or down, uh, some web factors influence whether it goes up or down, and also um in your experience, um how often does it go up versus down?

Um that's question number one.

Maybe I will.

Let me start with that.

So uh three things uh that we think uh play a role in that.

Um keeping in mind, as always, and Polsters are always going to say this, right?

That there is uh this is a snapshot in time.

We took this survey in February of 2026, elections in November of 2026.

Things happen, right?

There are events, there are new, there is news.

Since we took this poll, you know, country started a war overseas.

Uh right, lots of things can change and affect the environment, right?

And which people are making their decisions.

Uh, we don't know that you know a war received is going to affect how people vote on infrastructure in Berkeley, but sometimes things like that do, right?

And other things in the environment uh in terms of what people are voting on the election.

So there's that.

The second thing that can influence is exactly what the specific language on the ballot is.

Uh Berkeley voters are uh well educated, attentive relative to most voters in a lot of other places.

Uh they tend to read the measure.

They tend to have very specific reactions to the very specific things that they are presented with.

And that's one of the reasons we're recommending a second survey where we have actual language to test that would read exactly as the voters would see it.

And sometimes there's a an element in there that uh either boosts or undercuts uh the level of support.

And then um third, there's the question of the specific the ballot environment, so the broader environment of the world and uh and politics, but there's the specific environment of what else people are voting on on the ballot, which is another reason to have a second survey to what we have a better clearer sense of exactly what voters will be looking at on that ballot in Alameda County in Berkeley, which are the revenue measures in particular they might be asked to vote on.

Uh that kind of, you know, that you can get an effect where people feel like, wow, I voted for three or four taxes already, am I ready to vote for another one?

Uh so we do want to see how that might play out relative to the support.

And since of course the support here is slightly above, but just slightly above the threshold it would need to pass, you know, it's important, right?

Whether it goes up or down, as the your question indicates.

Uh in the past, the last thing I would say is that in the past in the city of Berkeley, we have more often than not seen the level increase from when we polled in the early in the year and in the winter and spring to the fall ballot.

Uh, but there have been a couple of years where that wasn't the case, where there were either shifts in the environment or a lot of other revenue measures.

And for instance, uh in 2022, and many of you know there was a ballot net, there were a couple of revenue measures in the city.

Those were measured ahead of time.

They went ended up getting about the level of vote that was expected in the poll, but they did not increase.

And as a result, actually fell a couple of points short of passage.

So it's it has rarely gone.

I haven't seen this type of measure, which is generally investments in the city go down, particularly in Berkeley, but we have seen it kind of hold steady or erode within a couple of points, and that would matter in this case.

So those are uh a couple of things to look at.

Uh thank you.

Uh and then I have two, I think, related questions.

Um in the slide deck, you first ask about um top priorities, and then later on, you have a more granular slide.

Uh and there seems to be a bit of a mismatch uh specifically.

Um, you know, I think you called this out uh the uh the buildings adjacent to Civic Center Park, Paul uh lower in the um more high-level survey, but they are formally uh within the top tier range.

And maybe you answered this um by saying in the latter case, um all uh buildings or seismic for all buildings is included, including those adjacent to civic center park.

But I was hoping you could speak to that more because I did see some other mismatches there, specifically around uh you know, parks or dog parks, uh what do the asterisk mean in the second um bar chart.

Right.

So uh these were slightly different questions to note one thing, right?

That the first question was here are six or seven broad areas for infrastructure investment.

You please choose and tell us which one or two of these is most important to you, right?

So people couldn't, even if they cared about civic center buildings or dog parks or whatever, they couldn't say, but they cared more about fire stations and sidewalk safety, they couldn't choose both, they had to pick, right?

And when they were forced to pick, they picked what we identify as the sort of safety-related items, emergency services as well as the sidewalks.

And uh, and so that's one difference.

And then the second difference, and I think this was we deliberately designed this in because we were curious about the we know there's been back and forth on about the civic center investment in the past.

Uh, when we just said fix these buildings in the civic center, and it was in that set of choices.

It just, you know, people might be happy to do that, but they they they clearly didn't think it was as high a priority break as those other items.

Then in the longer list, they were able to rate each of those and for each one say, how important is it to you?

Now keep in mind that infrastructure, that piece of repairing the buildings, but not at the top.

But it wasn't at the bottom either.

It was right in the it was just sort of in the middle.

And it was in the and it was framed the description was different.

The description said we're going to invest in public buildings around the city that are used for various kinds of services, including the civic center, and they mentioned three the two or three other things.

So those were the two differences, and I think account for that one.

And I think you can see in areas like parts, some of those differences as well.

Like when we got very narrow as to we're gonna fix, we're gonna provide dog parks, people like fine, but that is not my highest priority, right?

It's fine, right?

So it wound up lower on that relative list.

But when we said more broadly, we want to invest in parks, it was something people care about.

So, and then we had when we said specifically bathrooms and fix those, it's actually one of the highest, right?

So by having that granular breakdown, we're able to see a little more what people mean when we say, yes, I want to group the parks, but focus on these areas as compared to those.

So that's just useful.

And again, that doesn't mean you can only do the three things that voters care most about, but it does suggest that in describing and listing the priorities and talking about what the what the city's priorities are for this investment, that you might want to note the things that the voters care most about.

Thank you.

And then what do the asterisks mean?

Uh in yeah, so in that uh give me go down here.

Those we whenever we split sampled, so you remember we did the split sample in the uh bond measure, we had two different dollar amounts.

And that literally means people randomly get either one version or the other version of the question.

And we can then that allows us to basically get two questions for the price of one.

Uh and people, and we can also compare.

And so in that list of projects, partly for time, but also to do some experiments with language, we split some of those questions.

So for instance, we had replace fire station uh one item there that was replaced, you know, address the fire stations that are outdated by replacing them versus address the fire stations that are outdated by repairing them.

So we split samples.

People heard only one or the other, so they didn't know that they were here in two versions.

They just heard one.

But by testing it that way, we could then measure on both.

And it turns out if you heard replace fire stations, you're five points higher and saying extremely important, than if you heard repair fire stations.

So that produces that recommendation, then to say replacing is better language when you're talking about what what needs to what needs to be done with the fire stations.

And likewise on park restrooms, that's also got an asterisk because we split sample.

We had a version that said upgrade them and fix them.

Uh and another one that said add new ones.

Uh, and the add new ones was kind of in the lower half of the priorities, but the upgrade and fix the existing park restrooms was quite high.

So that was another interesting experiment that we did with the split sample.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

So I'm gonna go council member O'Keefe, Councilmember Brockby, and then go to Councilmember Humbert.

So go ahead, Councilmember O'Keefe.

Thank you.

Um I was wondering, I guess this is for the deputy manager, whoever wants to answer.

Um if you could stay a little bit about how each of these, the bond measure and also the sales tax measure could address our structural deficit.

I think it's more straightforward with the sales tax, but if you could comment on that, and then I'm also curious how the bond measure might change things.

I can start and then pass it off.

So uh the sales and use tax increase of a half cent is estimated to bring in around nine million dollars a year.

Um and currently our structural deficit is somewhere in the neighborhood of 27 to 30 million dollars for 27 and again for 28.

And so um we're in the process now of putting together budget reduction scenarios that include a lot of uh the reduction of a lot of staff positions, some filled, some vacant, um, and spread throughout the whole city, including public safety.

And so were this measure where the have some sales tax increase to pass, we would be able to mitigate some of the reductions to uh our public safety um units, both in police and in fire.

Um the 300 million dollar general obligation bond for infrastructure, that's not so much focused on like a budget reduction, although of course we would be hiring engineers and a lot of staff to do the work because it is a lot of work, and part of our budget deficit challenge in public works includes shifting a lot of people off of general fund and into special funds.

And so if we add more special fund dollars through this uh measure to address the infrastructure needs that we have, we would be able to, you know, offset some of those staff challenges, I would say.

Um I don't know if you want to add a little bit to that.

And I would just add, particularly around the infrastructure bond, you know, one of the things that we're very attuned to is that because of the age of our facilities, you know, if we cannot invest in them, we're gonna be subject to facility closure, service disruptions.

And so I can give, you know, just some really tangible examples.

Like right now, we don't have a hot water heater at South Berkeley Senior Center, right?

It's completely embarrassing and inappropriate.

But you know, these are the things that we're falling behind on, and this bond will allow us to invest, not in all of our infrastructure, but will allow us to address certain facilities and get us on the pathway of being proactive in certain regards.

Um so that's just a really poignant example in my mind.

And as the city manager said, you know, as we're looking at these budget reductions, which is about 10% of our general funds, so it's a very heavy burden.

Um this sales tax measure gives us the capacity to think about what can be preserved in order to keep the city operating at a level that this council and the community expects.

Great.

Thank you.

That's really helpful.

Um I was also wondering if you could anyone could comment on how both, once again, for both the bond and sales tax measures, how should these both pass?

How would the tax burden on our citizens compare with that of neighboring cities?

So we haven't um completed analysis of so it's we can look at it from the perspective of this fiscal year.

Um we don't necessarily have profile on what other jurisdictions are thinking about for their uh ballot for this upcoming election.

So we know we're about in line, right, with next to Oakland and Albany in terms of what our um what our total property tax bill looks like, and we can sort of do some hypothetical uh modeling of what a bond would look like.

The 300 million dollar bond uh is about 22 dollars um per 100,000 of assessed value.

And so for the median assessed value home of 550,000, that's about 100 a year on the property tax bill.

I can I can add a little just a little bit more on the sales and use tax.

I can't remember if you said that, but so we're at 10 and a quarter percent, and this would put us kind of in line with cities that are around us.

So Oakland's at 10.75, the city of Albany's at 10.75, San Diego Haywood, 10.75.

So it kind of puts us in that range.

It would make us equal to to those places.

Yeah.

Correct.

That's great.

Thank you.

Um I have more questions.

I I'll just I'll limit myself to three.

Um yeah, it's kind of a fun one.

Um, given that the uh support didn't really change or even arguably went up when we went from 200 to 300 million.

I was wondering if uh a higher number was considered or will be considered.

Just, you know, what's the how far can we take this?

So I can address that from a public opinion point of view, which is we don't know, and it is generally historically when we have tested higher dollar amounts with a higher tax increase that has tended to be somewhat you know, reduce the support gradually, depending on how high you go.

We don't know uh whether that would be the case here, but it's probable that it would.

Uh, and of course, since this is just a few points above the threshold, even though there does appear to be an appetite for this higher level 300 million over 200 million, there's there's certainly clear recommendation here that 300 million would be fine.

Uh but uh we just the answer is we don't know.

We wanted to test you know, versions that we thought were realistic, and that was just a you know a joint decision as we were working this together with the city staff as to what were the likely levels to test.

Uh because we uh unfortunately with one survey instrument, it's you can't test the whole range, it gets very, very complicated and messes up the uh accuracy of the sample if we do that too much.

Can I ask if I mean we're it sounds like we're gonna pull again?

So is there any interest or are we just like I mean, how did we come up with a 300 million?

Maybe that's a bigger question.

I don't need an extensive answer.

I mean, if you all want us to test test at a higher rate, we certainly could.

We felt like $300 million was felt like a lot.

And also, you know, when you think about $22 per 100,000 of assessed value, that seems kind of a reasonable amount.

Um there's it's not like a science.

Okay, I'm not suggesting we should.

I was just kind of curious what the process was and if that's being contemplated still.

Um actually sorry, I had one more question.

Um it's um for uh David M.

Um in the results.

I'm curious if there were any um demographics or parts of town or any sort of um human patterns that showed a difference in support levels, like a particular part of town or renters or anything like that that showed a significant statistical difference.

And that's we'll not give you the there's a there's there's a very long answer to that question, which is mostly provided in the report with a simple tables and breakdowns of that.

Uh we'll won't try to give that here.

The short version is that the variation I think was was less than we normally see.

In the sense that the levels of support were fairly consistent across the major regions of the city.

Um with a sample size, you can't break down like individual council districts or you know, that level of granularity, but we did broadly do uh sort of Berkeley Hills uh Central South, Central and South together, and then a West Berkeley is kind of three broad areas.

And notably there were not huge differences in the levels of support.

Um actually, even though the hills tends to have you know more homeowners, higher property values, they they were not particularly more resistant to uh the increase.

In fact, we're more supportive of certain aspects of uh increase compared to the rest of the city, but they were it was pretty solid across the board.

Um, and then other demographics, it is uh often the case that younger voters and renters are a little more supportive of property taxes because they don't pay them as directly.

Um there was a little bit of that pattern, but it was not a particularly big difference uh in that.

Um and then uh uh modest differences by gender, race, and some of the other uh measures, but nothing that was like jumped out as being wow, here's a group that is super super uh super excited to do this, or a group that was particularly opposed.

There's a very small group of Republicans in Berkeley who are too small, it's too small to break out on their own, but they generally tend to be against uh tax of business.

That's not surprising.

Thanks.

Yeah, and I appreciate you saying that um uh renters don't pay property taxes directly, because it's a common common misunderstanding that they don't pay property taxes, and it is um factored into the rent.

So I appreciate you being clear about that.

Those are all my questions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Okay, moving on to Councilmember Blackaby and then Councilmember Member Humbert.

Great.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um in some ways I might pick up a little bit from where Councilmember O'Keefe left off to ask the deputy city manager.

Um we've had a I I think had a similar kind of back and forth in the budget committee big picture, looking at the fact, like on slide three that we've got this 1.87 billion dollar kind of um overall backlog on the infrastructure.

Um, and you sort of identified how much we're investing in any given fiscal year through available funding, through FF funds, through the T1 spin down.

I was just sort of doing back of the envelope, which is a little dangerous, but somewhere on the order of 60 to 70 million each year, we're kind of investing in infrastructure investment.

And the capital backlog continues to grow even with that level of investment.

Is that fair to say?

Yeah, you know, it I went um, I want to credit Ray Yep.

He shared with me a report um that was presented to the council a couple years ago looking at asset management and how we're maintaining our assets.

And I, you know, don't have the statistics in the front of my mind, but it was interesting that when you really drill down and look at specific categories like parks and public facilities, you know, these numbers in terms of what we're spending on those buildings is even lower than this aggregate two percent amount, which is really what's driving the increase in the you know the deferred and unfunded liabilities.

Yeah.

Um because again, I no one I think here is suggesting, hey, let's uh you know go for more.

But I'm also thinking about um, you know, what should we be thinking is the ideal target, like 20 years from now.

Like if we're a 1.87 billion dollar backlog now, where what are we trying to where are we trying to get?

Like what's a healthy side?

I almost think of this as like in the national debt perspective.

We always are gonna carry some amount of national debt, it's just a question of how big it is.

I guess as a city, we're also always going to cover some sort of infrastructure, carry some sort of infrastructure backlog, but 1.8 billion seems like a lot.

So I guess my question is this is more like putting this in the context of like, are we trying to drive this number down?

Is this bond part of the solution to driving it down?

And if so, how much do we need to be investing on annual basis to be driving that number down?

That's and I so it's just like I said, it would look like we're we're investing somewhere like 50 to 60 billion dollars, sorry, 50 to 60 million dollars on annual basis.

We're not quite keeping pace, like we're we're falling a little bit farther behind each time.

So if we invest, if we have this bond online, which I think is about 20 million a year, something like that, if it's a hundred million of bonds over five years, 20 million.

So I I just at least want us to try and square this.

Like, is this number going to help us at least flatten the curve, if not start drying that down?

I don't know if we have a good read on that.

But so I don't have a direct answer.

I don't think this number is going to flatten the curve to the point at which we will we could consider the amount that we're investing in our facilities is adequate.

Um this is a start.

This is getting us on the right path.

I think uh when you think about the city five, 10, 15, 20, 25 years down the road, you know, I think about one of the referrals the council brought forward to us, which is needing to develop a long-term vision for you know, how are we going to not just go after this bond, but how we're going to regularly build into our financial model, um, a proactive strategic approach uh that allows us to continually go out to voters and have a plan of how we're gonna address our facilities.

I think when we have that plan well defined for you, we'll have a better answer to that question because it's a very complex question.

What I can honestly say though is that you know, investing in our facilities um really addresses a number of different important boxes.

One is obviously with aging infrastructure, there's liability and there's cost with that.

Um there's an incredible amount of staff time that goes into addressing emergencies as they arise.

Because we're addressing emergencies as they arise, we're spending more money than we should be spending by having a more efficient, up up-to-date, um, effective facility.

So I want to have a specific answer for you.

I don't have the number for you, but I can tell you that this is the beginning and that there's a continual path that we have to come up with in terms of what we need to do over a longer period of time to get our arms around this unfunded liability.

I'm eager to, yeah, I I love seeing this in context, so I'm eager to continue that conversation in future meetings just to kind of anchor this and like you know, in the big picture, we add this brick to the wall.

How are we doing in terms of you know uh making progress on this?

So one other just quick thing to add, and this is probably an obvious point, but just to make it is that the longer we defer the maintenance on all these projects, the more expensive they become.

Yeah, and so there is a uh there is a cost efficiency and a benefit to addressing them earlier rather than later.

So you know, and as Deputy City Major might say we haven't come up with an exact plan for what all that looks like, but like starting right now is is important.

Yeah, it's kind of it's no regrets move to say we've got to get after it.

It's just a question of how much more do we have to get after it over what over time?

Okay, thank you.

Um back to uh David Merman.

Um so we tested the sales tax and the bond measure together in this poll.

When we were asking people questions about it, were they thinking about them together or were they really thinking about them independently?

And I guess maybe we'll get to this in the second survey if if we ask you to do it.

But like, is there a chance that um when we pulled this and did the research on this, people were thinking about one or the other and weren't necessarily thinking that hey, the city's gonna come ask for both uh a bond and a sales tax increase, and how might that affect the response over time?

Yeah, so we were asking about them independently, right?

We were asking people just considered this measure on its own, and then we framed the question that way.

Having said that, we also had to choose an order here, and the order we chose was to do the infrastructure measure first, because it was more complicated if we had more items related to it that we wanted to test.

So because of that, that came first, and that was sort of the centerpiece.

Therefore, when people were responding on the sales tax, they did in fact have in their head the infrastructure, even though we said, all right, now just consider this separately.

We know that they had heard the infrastructure measure first, and it's possible that affected their, you know, that there are ordering effects are common, as you know, and yeah, and research.

Um what we will do in a follow-up survey, what we recommend doing is that we would take the things that we know to be on the ballot or very likely to be on the ballot in the fall that are revenue related.

And ask them in the order that they were like they are expected to appear on the actual ballot.

Okay.

So that we're simulating whatever it is, you know, as they go through their ballot, people say, okay, I've seen the the can't the state measure, I've seen the housing bond, or I've seen the transportation, you know, the Bay Area Transportation Rescue and the uh, you know, in the Alameda County, whatever they're doing, and now and now I get to Berkeley, and then they'll have they will have seen those other things in November when they come to vote.

So we want to test it in that context.

Um and likewise, if if we if the city goes ahead with both of these in whatever order uh we can you know talk about how we would test that appropriately in this in this uh follow-up survey, but that's how we did it this time.

So in this instrument, maybe there might have the drag was there for the sales tax.

Like they will they'll but if there was any drag from like, oh, I'm hearing more taxes, it would have brought the sales tax down, potentially that you know that has a couple of points of fact.

We don't we don't we didn't do an experiment to test, so we don't know, but uh uh it's plausible that there was a little drag on that.

Okay.

Um and then um just to follow up on council member Tragub's uh questions uh about the civic center buildings.

Again, I I'm supportive of um uh investment there to again for the retrofit for the rebuilding of that infrastructure for the maintenance of that infrastructure and kind of bringing those buildings back into into use over time.

Um and I know there was some commentary in the in the more extended poll research about how to frame it.

Could you just kind of characterize uh you know how to what was the what's our strongest kind of argument around that just so as we're thinking about it um in terms of how people you know view that infrastructure?

Strongest argument for infrastructure.

For that for that piece for civic center pieces, like because again, yeah, I think for civic center, it is if you say we're gonna rebuild the buildings of the civic center, that is not that does not appear to be the most exciting part of this for voters.

It's not that they're against it, it's just that they don't rate it as hot, right?

Relatively speaking.

When you say we have a lot of buildings that need repairs in the city to be able to provide services that that people need, and these include you know, senior centers, community centers, and the civic center buildings in the in the downtown core, and for both uh, you know, for for quality of life and for safety, we need to make those improvements.

That does bet.

And so that looks like the way to describe what means you know what could be invested in, you know, and we're not not offering any opinion here about how you would actually allocate or what the you know the specific mix that's obviously for the experts on the actual uh infrastructure to do, but uh in terms of how it would be framed or described to the voters, it does appear um that sort of envelope around the civic center is a better way to say it than just hey, we're gonna fix these this this particular set of buildings.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Madam Mayor.

Thank you.

Is it any cooler outside than it is inside?

Does anyone know?

Because I'd love to be able to open the doors so we don't pass out.

It's very hot in here.

Um, going on to councilmember Humbert, thank you for your patience.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and I've really appreciated the the questions that my fellow council members have have posed so far.

I just have a couple.

Um and this is for uh Dave W and Paul B, um, as opposed to Dave M.

Um as we write the bond measure language.

Do we have a fair degree of latitude to determine how locked in the city is on the amount of bond money that goes to each category of project and or what specific projects are funded?

What level of flexibility do we have in in that regard?

Um it's an important question, and I may ask for a little help from our city attorney here too.

But one of the things we've definitely talked about as staff is the need to have some level of flexibility built into this measure.

We want to we do want to have these projects identified.

But if, for example, one of the projects, the two that we were just talking about, a little city hall and the veterans building, we've got uh a $16 million grant into uh FEMA to do those projects.

If we got that grant and we needed less money for this project, we would want to have the flexibility to transfer it over to another project.

So we do need to figure out a way to build in some flexibility so that we're not locked into projects in a way that constrain us from actually doing good work for the city.

Um and uh obviously we work closely with our our city attorney colleagues to come up with what that moonlight would look like, and maybe maybe assistant city attorney uh Harvey could help with that.

Sure.

So as a general matter, the the bond measures um are required to describe the the purpose to which the funds will be used.

Um in practice, the city will describe you know the types of projects that that will go to.

Um so you know, there is some flexibility provided the the ultimate use of the funds, you know, matches the description in the in the ballot uh language.

Yeah, but thank you.

That uh I had a second question, but but you've answered that as well.

I appreciate it.

That's all I have.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Bartlett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

And uh thank you uh David and David for your work once again.

Uh one question.

This goes to, I guess the David Berman, the pollster.

The um so I I and you're a pro.

I assume just I'm just wondering, I assume you you'd you controlled for the for the timing of the election, uh it's not a presidential year.

So it it obviously is but more conservative audience, right?

I'm sure you control it for that, right?

Yes, this is that's an astute question, council member.

So you've looked at some polls in the past, and you're correct that uh we want to simulate the likely electorate for this election year.

So that is why this is not a survey of all adults or all citizens or even all voters in the city of Berkeley.

It is a survey of those we expect to turn out and vote in a mid-term general election 2026 based on their history, their vote history on the on the voter file.

Okay, yeah.

And that's why it explains some of the topics, right?

The sidewalks, things uh challenges faced by seniors, right?

Sidewalks.

It it is a it does skew a little older compared to the overall population of the city, yes.

And when you whenever you do a likely better survey, particularly in a somewhat lower turnout than then they're going to have uh more seniors relatively in the in your sample.

Fire.

Right.

Okay.

And then uh the other thing is um uh oh yeah, this regarding us is probably for everyone.

Um, you know, uh they uh many times they challenge us about how we are gonna spend these things, right?

Uh and so our reputation is really good.

Uh this the soda tax really got it going.

I see some sort of six people here.

And uh, you know, people didn't believe us that we would spend the money the way we said we would.

And because the threshold for the general fund is somewhat lower than the specialized spending.

And um, so we formed committees and we actually follow through on what we promise in these measures.

So it's really important that um as we design the language um and we from the committee afterwards, we honor a commitment because that's our that's our brand here.

Our neighbors respect that and they uh and they expect it.

Thank you.

Um I'm gonna go back to Councilmember Trega.

Is that your button?

Yeah, thank you so much.

Um I do have a couple more questions.

One of them was um a follow-up to something council member Blackby asked.

Um, and sorry, this is for I don't know who it's for, actually.

Um so if I understood correctly, the second survey is going to model um the ballot more precisely to assess drag.

But how can um the ballot be modeled in that way if it's not going to be clear at that time what all is going to be on the ballot and in which order?

Well, I'll take all that from a survey design perspective, and then the staff may have other comments.

I I believe it's true we won't know exactly everything that will be on, but we will be much closer to knowing.

We're talking about fielding, I believe, in the later part of April.

And as these things come online and the different governmental uh agencies uh uh go through their process of getting these measures placed on the ballot.

I think we will we will assess it as closely as we can, what is anticipated likely to be on if we you know, to the extent that there are things that could happen before the actual deadlines that you know it's it's possible we we can't anticipate everything uh at the same time.

You there's a timeline, of course, for the city to place your measures on, and you need to get your data uh before making this final decision.

So that's that's the window we're we're shooting for, and we will endeavor to get the best estimate from those in the know as to what is likely to appear on that November ballot so we can simulate it as closely as we can.

Okay, thank you.

And then in terms of the order, um, would there be A B testing to, you know?

We could A B test again.

Uh we should decide you know, the the drawback there is that your sample is cut in half, and if it turns out one version is passing and the other is not, you have a little less confidence because the version that's passing, it's only half your sample.

So uh you know, your margin of error is a little higher.

Um so that's the trade-off.

Uh what we tried to do was the that kind of experiment in this first survey to figure out things like language and what to prioritize and what level of fund.

Um so you think we would generally not do as much of that second time around, but it is it is something this tool we still have, and we could decide to do so.

Okay, thank you.

And my last question is uh at least at this time, is um for that second survey, um is there an opportunity to dig in more deeply into arguments that talk about the opportunity costs of not passing a ballot measure.

For instance, um the opportunity cost of not restoring um the Madiel Shirec City Hall building and continuing to pay 300 to 400 K to the to B USD, I think per year.

And again, this might be too granular, but um will there be some consideration to what uh we might be losing or but uh if we don't pass it and potential benefits on the flip side of uh approving this measure.

I will say that in the current version of the survey where we tested, I didn't go through all the language that was in these arguments head to head, but it's in the report.

Um we did in fact, in the positive argument, the argument in favor of voting yes test.

It was uh a sentence or half a sentence that basically said if we don't, you know, not investing in these uh fixes now means greater costs in the future because they continue to deteriorate.

Um so that is a capsule version of that argument.

We could test a longer version of it.

There's going to be some, but we're gonna have we're good.

The time is gonna be tight on that second survey, assuming we go forward with it, given that we have to test multiple measures to simulate the ballots.

So we'll have to decide in terms of priority if we want to take another bite at the arguments uh perhaps you know, further language as you suggest, but that again is an option, and we'll have to decide on that within the limitations of the length and budget for the survey.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much.

Um I have two questions, and then I think it I think everyone else has asked their questions already.

Um can you speak more to the strategy around refining the list?

Um I'm concerned about losing some projects that would be important for equity, like South Berkeley Green Space, or in terms of long-term need, like the projects of the marina that will cost us much more if we don't address them, or you know, even what has been mentioned earlier about civic center uh buildings where we could be utilizing uh match.

So I think naturally we want the input and feedback from council, and there's not gonna be this will be part art, part science, right?

So we are digesting the input we got from the survey.

It's an important piece of data for us.

As I mentioned, we're doing all this community engagement and staff are taking in all that input and feedback.

We're seeing the reports come from various commissions.

And really importantly, we're going to be updating the costs associated with the um projects that have been identified and thinking about you know what we need from a staffing perspective.

So we're gonna take all this in totality and try to develop the most robust list that we possibly can that ensures you know, we're addressing climate resiliency, that we're you know, centered on equity, and thinking about you know how we respond from a public safety perspective.

So there are gonna be hard choices, there's no doubt about it, but we're gonna do our best to be as balanced as we possibly can in the list that we ultimately bring forward to the council.

Thank you.

I really appreciate that.

Um I think this is something that I struggle with politics in general, is that we use uh polling results from people who are most likely voters, which means they're more likely to be more affluent, um, you know, have more resources generally.

Um and so that also determines the projects that we do inherently.

So I just want to bring that up as we're talking about this.

Um can also I would love if we can also share with the public the relationship between measure T1 and this bond when it comes to our residence bills, because I my understanding is that T1 is sunsetting.

So what will that look like?

So I can um when we come back to I can bring forward a chart that was prepared by our financial advisor that helped to show sort of the perspective of everything that we've issued in the past and sort of what's um uh been paid off and then what it looks like going forward with what this new measure would be with what's still um authorized to issue or what's already existing.

So the number we gave you about $22.14 per 100,000 of assessed value, that represents the new bond.

When we look in totality and include existing authorizations, uh don't quote me specifically, but the total assessment rate would be on average about 44 per 100,000.

And I can be more precise when we come back to the council, but that was about the number.

Okay, that's great.

I think we just want to make sure folks understand what at the end of the day their bills will look like.

I think that'll be important to our residents.

So um, although it's great to see so much support.

So okay, yeah.

And I would just add what was just to kind of amplify what was important about um those numbers is that when we looked over a longer period of time, going back to about 1993, um, we were well below um the peak assessment value of when we've issued bonds in the past um and well within the average.

So it was nice to see that because of the growth in our assessed value, and we're able to work within a responsible threshold.

We're not reaching the peak, and we're certainly not at the lowest point, but we're within a decent range.

Totally.

And I I remember looking at those graphs as well.

And I I still know that folks are really sensitive to affordability right now.

So just want us to be conscious of it.

Um okay, very good.

Well, let's move on to the public comment then, please.

Um is there any public comment for this item?

And uh please just come up to the podium up here.

I see some hands raised.

Any order is fine.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Good evening.

I'm Dr.

Stephen Albert, resident of uh district five.

Citizens applaud the city doing uh these surveys to test the waters of the voters.

But 500 is one percent of the 50,000 collective votes for mayor in 2024.

It's an adequate sample size to generate any meaningful data.

Entire survey should be discarded.

Thank you.

Uh I'm Dr.

Celeste Marks back again, and I'm gonna say exactly the same thing.

Your sample is way too small to draw meaningful conclusions.

We want results that reflect the attitudes and the demographics balance, maybe a randomized study, you know, so that uh added a little character, but mostly increases sample size.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Gordon Wozniak.

I was formerly in the council.

I want to thank staff.

I think it was an excellent report.

Uh I want to maybe amplify a couple of things.

There's a context I think you have to be a little worried about is taxes have been going up, mainly because of parcel tax, not due to the debt service tax.

In fact, as uh David said, over the last 30 years, the debt service tax has gone down by 50 percent.

Okay, and so it's not what's really driving people's taxes.

The other thing I think you have to have in a context, which I don't know if you can deal with this in all survey or it's just campaign literature, is Berkeley only gets about a third of the admiral or taxes, and it only gets about 40 percent of the parcel taxes.

There are a lot of other entities that cause your taxes to go up, and yet, because it's listed as Berkeley property taxes, everybody thinks the city gets it all, which is nonsense.

Okay, it's just not correct.

And the other thing that I think is a powerful selling point, which is mentioned in T1, is leverage.

If you can get rent leverage on existing money, you want to make that selling point.

We're gonna, you know, if there's someone giving you a minute, so you can finish your point if you want.

The last thing I think is what's really unique about the the T1 bond measures, and is that the city's been very good at leveraging that tax dollars.

You want to hammer on that because that's even conservative Republicans should appreciate that.

So I think there's a lot of good things, there are a lot of good stories, and you should tell them, not just focus on the dry stuff of uh what buildings are gonna get built and stuff like that.

Thank you, and thank you to the vice mayor.

Um, I'm Linda Alberti.

I live um feel free to adjust your mic so we can hear you better.

Um, I live by Nielsen and Gilman Streets.

Um, and I was concerned about the end sampling of the survey.

I thought it was too small.

And then another thing I'm concerned about is like sidewalk safety and things like that.

My neighbors got together.

We ended up just doing our sidewalks and having to uh pay for all of it ourselves because a wait list to get something through the city was ridiculously long.

I don't know if we can do adapt the sidewalk program.

Um we have elders going up and down the streets, um, and they're just not safe.

I worry about falls and also I worry about um mindfulness with spending our money like the Hopkins corridor.

I don't know how much money was wasted on that down by Monterey Market and all that with the bike lanes.

I'm hoping that they can be more mindful with how the money gets spent for future projects.

That's it.

Thank you.

And I do appreciate you.

Thank you.

Thanks for your comment.

I so I believe that Carol will give me another minute.

Thank you.

Am I close enough to the mic?

It's okay.

Am I close enough to prefer if someone could yeah, that would be great.

Even that, I think.

Yeah, thanks.

All right.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members.

I'm speaking on behalf of the Commission on Disability and to the city's request for feedback on priorities and gaps in the bond measure.

It's clear that Berkeley's infrastructure needs are significantly underfunded.

I'm gonna skip.

Right now, our central concern is the structure, the structure of the proposed bond.

Accessibility is at risk of being fully acknowledged in principle, but underfunded in practice.

In the proposed funding structure, accessibility appears inside the broad category that addresses critical infrastructure and accessibility.

That hundred million dollar pot of money, the red pot includes proposed major seismic upgrades to the three civic center buildings.

You put a shovel near a foundation, and you really don't know what the cost of the project is.

In addition, that same pot of money includes modernization of the three civic buildings.

Again, very, very costly projects, capital improvements at the sidewalks, and the list of accessibility projects, which includes removing trip hazards, improving the sidewalks, funding the 50-50 program, fixing crosswalks, have to compete against.

At the same time, that priority was in a statistical tie with funding fire safety.

It's what people all across the city want.

So don't have it compete with these intensely expensive structural projects, have a set aside pot of money within the hundred million dollar, a percentage that guarantees addressing these critical improvements.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for your comment.

I love the enthusiasm from the audience too.

Thank you.

I just wanted to thank the city council for making hard decisions in order to provide the services that Berkeley needs.

But I wanted to specifically highlight the fact that the 0.5% sales tax is it's very regressive.

I'm sure you all know this.

And it's 0.5% seems like a small amount, and it seems like it's just going to bring us in line with the near cities, but that has a real impact on people living in the city.

Um, and I I was encouraged to hear talk earlier of potentially looking at an increase in the value of the bond measure.

I I hope you will consider in the future using methods that are less regressive in order to raise funds.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello.

Um I was a council member once.

I know the choices are hard.

I do want to speak very strongly tonight, though, in favor of the whole city project, which is the downtown and the civic center.

Um these buildings, especially the buildings of the civic center, are important historic, owned infrastructure by the city.

They have history and they have architectural merit.

They anchor that whole part of the community.

We have the educational testing building, we have you know, 2180 Millview.

We have the beautiful beautifully refurbished high school.

We need to have this um it all put together.

We can bring back city offices, as was explained.

Thank you.

Um does anyone want to give her a minute?

Oh, you're giving you're given you're being given a minute.

Yes, if you want to continue.

Um we have to get the seismic upgrade done.

And I really thank the city manager and staff for the FEMA application, and there may be other things we could go after as well.

But we would save money if we bought the city buildings back.

And many of us really love what the Berkeley Historical Society has done and would love to see a permanent place for that.

Other cities have done this.

San Francisco, when its City Hall was upgraded, Pasadena, even Jerry Brown in his first administration, um upgraded the vacant state capital, which was unusable because of seismic issues.

So we I think can do this and would be very proud of it for generations.

It's um somebody said to me today, there one of the few things the society produces that survive from generation to generation is art.

Thank you.

We have all of the it feels like all the previous mayors here almost.

You know, she was the first woman elected mayor of Berkeley.

So anyway, yes, I'm trying to talk.

So anyway, you guys, I want to say, first of all, I'm very impressed with the process you're going through.

I'm really the staff, you know, and what they're doing and how you're analyzing this and how you're looking at this.

I think it's absolutely right, the right direction.

And I really want to encourage you.

One of the things that worries me a little bit is the fact that you're going to do a second poll, and I really, really want to see you do a second poll.

But I don't know if it's going to be enough.

I think you might even consider, believe it or not, doing two more polls.

You know, one more to try to try to figure out exactly what you think you would shape it into it.

And I and you know what should be in that 300 million.

And then I think you need to focus on the arguments, because I think how you present your arguments is going to be essential.

Now, if you can do it in one poll, great.

Then I want you to know, and then I'm saying I don't want you to spend money just to be spending money.

But I think it's very important the messaging and how we present it, because this community is so so wonderful and so rich, and we'll reach out and fund things and do things if they believe it's in the right interest.

So thank you.

You're very welcome.

Thank you very much.

Hi, I'm Ann Harlow, president of the Berkeley Historical Society and Museum, currently occupying part of the Veterans Building and slated to occupy part of the old city hall.

Um we the museum have spent have made a lot of progress in becoming more recognized and appreciated in the community, uh partly with the help of some of you.

Um but it's uh rather embarrassing uh when someone actually visits and sees the condition the building's in and recognition if they notice that it's got a sign that says, you know, this building is seismically unsafe.

Um it falls under both the uh community facility and quality of life category and the critical infrastructure and safety.

Um let's see, so I I'd really like to see you um allocate enough money so that the city hall project can be completed.

Thank you.

Oh, someone is giving you a minute.

Okay.

Yeah, um, so I suggest 325 million.

Um it's exactly half of the 650 that failed a few years ago, and there's been inflation.

Um also in April 2028 will be the hundred Berkeley's 150th birthday.

And if you could somehow um make it happen that there's at least you know enough progress that there could be some sort of ceremonial, this is going to be what this building is going to be in another few years, including the council will be meeting back here again.

There will be all these other meeting spaces for um other groups, and um I'm hoping the so-called council chambers could be a multi-use room.

I'm thinking, well, maybe if you need your diet, there could be a partition of some sort.

I think I'm out of time.

I like the idea.

Thank you.

Good evening, City Council.

David Flores here, District 2 resident and uh executive director of Berkeley Community Media.

Um I just want to say great job with the uh the survey that the staff did.

I went to two of the events and they uh provide a lot of time for folks to ask questions and get information.

But I just want to echo what some of the stuff uh I've been hearing here too of just uh, you know, if we could just get at least the seismic retrofit on some of these old buildings just because the longer we leave it, the more expensive it's gonna get.

And you know, the price of that compared to some of the other projects that I saw on there is significantly less.

So, in my opinion, it would be a little more doable, but honestly, I get that it's gonna be in conflict with some of these other stuff.

So it's a big decision you guys have to make.

I appreciate y'all taking the time and listening to all of us and taking community input.

And um, I really do believe in the vision of a revitalized civic center.

I could see a really beautiful um, you know, spending the whole afternoon in the downtown area um for restaurants and then events and community engagement.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um is there any public comment online for our item?

I think there's lots.

Yes.

Currently I have 11 hands raised.

The first commenter is Chad.

Chad, you should be able to speak.

Hello, yes, you're not going to be able to do that.

Oh no, you're you're echoing, Chad.

Yeah, so I'm just there's someone nearby that has the meeting open.

Is that any better?

Is that any better?

Oh, much better.

Great.

So, what I wanted to talk about was um I I am totally against all this polling.

I think there's too much of it, it's going too in-depth.

Um I used to go down I like the uh public.

And I would go down to the hybrid, and I would I would just watch the sea lions.

And um, I remember one time there was uh unhoused group of I uh and um it wasn't a good situation at all.

They're uh beach going.

Chad, you're you're cutting in and out very badly.

If you want to call back later, we can try to let you comment then or with a different device or something.

Yeah.

Uh next is Wandy.

Wandy should be able to speak.

I see you're unmuted.

Wandy should be able to provide comments.

I want these bad connections.

So sorry.

For some reason our second public commenter also was um we couldn't understand what they were saying.

I'm hoping this is not a tech issue.

And it maybe they're together in the same room or something.

Possibly.

Let's try David Shear.

Um hi.

Um I was very pleasantly surprised to see the right track or on track numbers on the survey.

Um there can be a lot of negativity in our um public in our public discourse.

And so often the the most negative voices are the loudest voices.

Um the comment, the public comments that we usually get are overwhelmingly not tenants, not students, uh not young parents.

Uh so this survey, which is a scientific survey, you know, they do the whole country.

It's they do 1500 people.

Um I think I hope that this shows where the voters in the city actually are.

Um, and I hope that you keep uh that you keep this in mind when you're getting yelled at about corridor up zoning or street safety or any of the many other things that people like to yell at you about.

Um the loudest voices in the community are not the same thing as the community.

They don't represent the community.

You guys and the people who put you into office represent the community.

Um that's all I got.

Thank you.

Thank you, David.

Next is um Hiram.

Hello.

Yes, go ahead.

Oh, you yes.

Um, I I was just wanted to say that I agree with the gentleman in the green shirt who commented earlier that we should have more polls.

I'm a big proponent of uh putting on as many polls as we possibly can.

Thank you.

Everyone's laughing because it's St.

Patrick's Day, so a lot of us are wearing green shirts right now.

Thank you.

I think he meant former mayor babes, right?

Uh okay.

Next is uh caller with a phone number ending in four zero five.

Uh hurt by an opportunity for shaky hand.

And the polling question was a question how do you feel about uh incurring a debt of twenty thousand dollars per household or more than five thousand dollars for debt per man, woman, and child.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you for your comment.

Um next is um Charlie.

Charlie should be able to unmute.

Not around.

Okay.

All right.

We are getting some interesting public comment today.

Next is Corey.

Corey, you should be able to speak.

Uh yes, can you hear me?

Yes, yes, we can.

Great.

Uh, thanks very much for the work done so far.

I very much appreciate it.

I noticed that the survey was only looking at tax on assessed value and not on square footage of parcels.

Um, as a resident who just bought a house in Berkeley a few years ago, several of my neighbors have property tax bills that are 20% of what I pay.

And so from an equity perspective, it would be ideal to consider looking at taxes from a square footage as opposed to an assessed value perspective, so that we can make sure that every uh homeowner in Berkeley pays their fair share for this tax.

Thanks for your consideration.

Okay, thank you.

Next is Kelly Hamergren.

Hey.

Um looking at the survey results, can you hear me okay?

Yep.

Yep, we can hear you.

Okay.

Um, I'd say the city benefits from short memories and not paying attention.

Um I've been looking over my property tax bill and much of the stuff in the list we are already paying for through special taxes.

Um Berkeley has a higher ratio of employees to residents than any other city I checked in the Bay Area and up and down the state, and we still pay drop a considerable amount of money on consultants.

I'd like to know how the sidewalk funding in this bond measure proposed bond measure is supposed to line up with major FF for streets.

There should be around 14 million available for sidewalks.

And please note that the oversight committee for FF has only met twice, and the last meeting was canceled, and on the twenty fourth is eleven.

Thank you.

Thanks for your public comment.

Next is Arlene.

Arlene, you should be able to unmute Arlene.

Um I'm speaking to urge you to include the the include the money for the bond measure it for up for the retrofit of old city hall in the veterans building.

You know, our city hall was built in nineteen oh nine, and our city the city then spent the money on on the same architects that built San Francisco City Hall, which is beautifully restored.

And not only could we save money by not having to rent the school district property, but we could use it for events.

And and I the the old city hall is as much a symbol of Berkeley as the campanilias for the university.

The downtown Berkeley Association has been working on this for six years now, um, to restore the civic centers.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Arlene.

Um I do want us to take like a very brief like 10-minute stretch break.

Okay.

Um so we will folks who are online, please hold.

We will be back in ten.

Thank you.

Recording stopped.

Hello.

Oh, here we are.

Okay.

Recording in progress.

All right.

Thank you so much, everyone, for your patience.

That was a very long ten minutes, I know.

Um, but we are coming back to our online public comment.

So I'm thank you so much for everyone who has spoken so far, and I will have our city clerk um help me out with this.

Yes.

Doing anything less than that makes a this whole process lack legitimacy.

A sample that was not statistically valid is indefensible.

Thirdly, a city manager unprepared to explain, much less defend the amount of a bond measure is simply astonishing.

We need much better from our public servants.

I mean, you should be asking for economic modeling for the various bond measure amounts.

Thank you.

Thanks, Carolyn.

Next up is Christine.

Hi.

Um, so my name is Christine Uren.

I live really near Civic Center Park, so I walk by it quite often.

And I just want to say that I think that the Veterans Building and the Old City Hall are just beautiful buildings to look at.

I really enjoy seeing them and walking by them.

So I hope that they can be um restored and made seismically safe and used.

And I also think the Berkeley Historical Society does some really great important work for us learning about our past and fighting white supremacy, really.

I mean, I found out a lot about the history of different groups in Berkeley and just in the Bay Area that I didn't know.

And also just, you know, small but important stories about our history.

And um, I hope we can we can keep that going and preserve these buildings and and help the society.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Uh next is Isaac.

Um, my name is Isaac Worshower.

I'm a resident of uh District 8, and I'm uh on the board of directors for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association.

Um, I'm also a parent of uh of a three-year-old Brooklyn and uh a Berkeley unexpected in about two months.

And I just wanted to speak about um the value of restoring a civic center and retrofitting uh the old city hall model Medal Sharik building and Veterans Memorial Building.

Um now is an opportunity uh to continue with the planning and the implementation of these projects.

And if we wait too long, it may become too late and it'll only be more expensive.

And we should do this uh for the coming generations.

These buildings are irreplaceable.

Um, the civic center itself is a the beating heart of Berkeley and an irreplaceable place, and we should do the best to make sure it remains there for my children and for the children of everyone else in Berkeley.

Um thank you.

Thank you, Isaac, and congratulations to your family.

Next is Tony.

Who is our current director of public works is leading us on Friday, which gives us no permanent uh director of public works as leadership for an infrastructure bond.

This is a terrible thing.

We have burned through five public works directors in the last 15 years.

We have to look hard at why it why we're doing this and um you know what we expect of these folks.

Um we need a chief engineer very badly.

We have a drainage plan, and nobody is talking about funding the drainage plan.

A flood is a terrible thing.

It can wipe out floods in the future, can wipe out private property all the way up to Sacramento Street in one fell swoop.

And so we can no longer depend on gravity to drain the city of Berkeley.

We are going to have to build pumps, drainage pumps, one on the potter drain and one on the next is Jeff Lomax.

So the city council class of 2024 between new parcel taxes, most of you endorsed that year between the 6.4% 2025 parcel tax increase.

You know, nanously approved on consent with no compelling explanation between the new 2026 parcel taxes.

Some of you have endorsed, and between this 700 million in total borrowing you are proposing now, you're on track for a 25% increase in property taxes for the average home in Berkeley over your four-year term.

Congratulations, congratulations.

You are on rhetoric record setting territory for unaffordability.

Thanks, Jeff.

Is Mark.

You guys think you go like shut it down so I guess they're bad, man.

My kids are bothering me.

Thank you for your comments.

Next is Layla.

You're on track for a 25% increase in property taxes for the average home in Berkeley over your four-year phone.

Congratulations.

Hello?

Oh, okay.

She's listening to the streaming that's behind.

Layla, turn off your your web stream and unmute.

Good evening.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Oh, my voice got changed.

That's all right.

We have a comment.

Yes.

Turn off the volume on your food.

Layla, you Layla, can you turn off the volume on your stream that you're watching, please?

Because it's echoing and we can't hear you.

Next is Layla.

Okay, you're asking me to do what?

To mute the stream that you're listening to, because we we can't hear you.

Okay, hold on.

Okay, Leila.

Layla, we're gonna come back to you.

We'll come right back to you.

Hello.

Oh, let's go to Greg.

Greg, you should be able to unmute.

Hey, how are you?

Um, I just wanted to touch on.

All right, let's go to the caller with a number ending in 211.

He should be able to unmute.

Hi, as a 60 year resident of city of Berkeley, I miss all of the movie theaters.

All of them gone.

Not to office on ChatHack, California Theater and Kittridge, we need to get them back.

We need to get some movie theater back.

People get addicted to TV.

Second.

With the heat going through as a physicist or in for really, really bad time.

I think he wants to have a session.

That's much longer than the end of the century, even as that.

The last thing I'd like to mention that in the White House.

We have to we not even have an election.

This man has done everything possible.

Again is the law of the country against international laws.

I'm sorry.

We need to stand up.

Okay.

Just cannot hear.

Okay.

Thanks.

Thanks for your comment.

Just reminder for folks who are online.

We're we're taking comments right now on uh the report that we had for our special meeting, um, which is the um item it was only one item, which is the presentation and discussion of community survey results.

Okay.

Next speaker is uh Yarrow public comment is not usually like this.

For those of you who have not been to a meeting, it's never like this, so I don't know what's happening.

Next is Morton.

Yes, hello.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Next, we'll go back to Layla.

Oh, where'd Layla go?

Okay.

Okay.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Good evening.

I'm Leela Moncharsh.

I'm the president of AHA.

And I have um Baja has told you so much about the architecture that I'm gonna tell you something a little different for tonight.

Um, I want you to know that I grew up in Berkeley.

I came here in 1951, right after the war.

You know, I want you to really understand that uh our parents and our teachers took us into City Hall, and they did it often.

And part of the reason was they wanted us to understand how important government was and how important democracy was.

And it was it was always very impressive because the building was so impressive.

Uh we learned a lot about what government means in those days.

Doesn't mean meeting in a cafeteria, doesn't mean meeting someplace that's gonna change or be different from time to time.

It means being in a place that's in the center of a city and is really impressive.

And that building was built to be very impressive.

So you know, there's some messaging here.

I urge you and Baja urgency.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Okay, that's all the speakers we could have.

Okay, okay, great.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Thanks, everyone.

Um, can we go to uh comment now from council my council colleagues?

Do you have any comments?

Um okay, go ahead.

Yep, Councilmember Kessarwani.

Uh thank you very much, Madam Mayor, and um thank you, Mr.

White, for the presentation and uh Mr.

Merman for your presentation as well.

Um, did somebody uh with uh actually is is Mr.

Merman still with us or no?

He's here.

Yeah.

Oh, he is on the Zoom.

Okay, uh Mr.

Merman, just given some of the comments that we heard.

Uh can you just explain why the poll of sampling 500 people is representative and how that works statistically?

Uh yeah, that's a valid question.

And uh it does it's counterintuitive to think that uh 500 people can represent many thousands of people.

But that is in fact how sampling works and statistics works, and in fact, all of the survey research that's done in the country, most of them are done with samples of several hundred, occasionally a thousand or two thousand for large national projects.

Uh but for a city the size of Berkeley, very typical survey uh uh sample size would be 500 because that provides statistically, assuming you do it accurately, and that's a very important point is that it does require expertise to sample representatively and accurately.

But if we do so with a random sample of the likely voter universe, it is statistically true that with the 95% certainty that the uh true result if you interviewed every voter in Berkeley is within 4.4% of the result we got on the survey.

Now there are other sources of error besides the sample size, and we we work very hard to control that.

So it is never a certainty, but this is uh the most uh uh efficient, cost-effective way to uh obtain a representative universe of likely voters uh to assess the uh uh assess the level of support uh across the entire universe of likely voters in the city of Berkeley, and that is uh it's a very reasonable sample size, and everyone who does this work in this in this field of uh survey research would uh would recognize this as a legitimate sample size.

Okay, thank you very much.

And then Mr.

Budenhagen, to the point that was raised by former mayor Bates about poll uh an additional survey.

Um I I think you already spoke to this during the Q ⁇ A.

I and I actually didn't intend to ask this many questions, I because I know this is the comment time, but I I think it helps um to um further the discussion.

I just wanted to ask, um, I know that we're you're we're going to do additional polling.

Will you be able to can you speak to what we will poll on uh further at this point?

Sure, thank you for the question, Councilmember.

The the so the follow-up poll, one of the things we want to do, we did not test against potential other ballot measures that people would be seeing on their ballots.

So and I think uh David Merriman talked a little bit about this, but we do want to try to get a sense of how people would uh view these these two issues in light of seeing a regional a regional uh sales tax measure or whatever other measures we think might be likely to be on the ballot.

So that's like one big reason why we want to do it.

Um and then also to to kind of refine the language and understand better what people really care about so that we can come back to you with these second poll results um and and then really hone in on what we want to come forward with both uh from the perspective of ballot language and projects.

Okay.

Okay, my mic is still on.

So um, and it sounds like it would be too much to get into arguments, right?

Because it's hard to do that if we don't exactly know what um projects we would be pursuing.

So I think we'll we'll have to um see how how things progress on that.

So I I just wanted to uh voice my position on this.

Um, in terms of the bond measure, you know, given the polling that 200 million polls the same as 300 million, I I think we should pursue the higher number.

And I want to appreciate Mr.

White, your comments about how the amount per 100,000 of assessed value is roughly in line with where he we have been in the past.

That chart, we we've probably have seen it in the past, but I don't know that when you reference 19 going back to 1993, that's not in the material for tonight, right?

Okay, but I think it's something we've looked at before, and maybe as I just want to suggest as we continue this conversation, it might be good to bring that table back so that we can continue to remind ourselves and the community where we are with costs, because I do hear I I think the mayor spoke to the affordability concerns and people uh you know, making the very valid and reasonable point that if you did buy your home more recently, your assessed value is is much higher than people who bought a long time ago.

Um so I think we do want to um be cognizant of those costs and um I also think that if we um have bonding capacity that is underutilized, um, that we are um doing a disservice to the city because as we know, we have over a billion dollars of deferred maintenance on infrastructure, and so what I see us hopefully being able to do if this 300 million bond measure passes is being able to take a bite out of um some of that aging infrastructure and and so to that point of which projects to pursue.

I do think we'd need to be because you know some of us have a memory of prior bond measures that didn't meet the two-thirds threshold.

So I think we do have to keep in mind that we're just right at the cusp there.

Uh this could it seem like the polling selling, yes, it could go either way depending on the nature of the campaign, the nature of the projects that are chosen, and the nature of the arguments that are made but for and against.

And so I do think we should pay close attention to which projects are polling strongly because our need is so great.

Um so I think we should focus on those projects, and it seems like we'll have a home be honing in on that even more.

It seems like we have some of that info already.

And so, and I did want to speak to um because we did hear in public comment folks talking about the importance of the civic center area.

I think we I think that's something we can poll on, right, in our next round to get a better sense of that.

But I I do want to say from the polling that we got, it seems like public buildings um is uh is a better approach than focusing solely on the civic center buildings.

Um and then you know, if we do get the FEMA loan or we we do get other other funding um for those civic center buildings, I we hopefully we will we'll have to figure that that out in the ballot language, right?

Of how we can be flexible um in uses.

Uh I also think you know, given the T measure T1 infrastructure bond experience of construction cost escalation, you know, I don't know if we're gonna have a situation where certain projects have a greater cost escalation than others.

I don't know if that's something that happens, but um I think we also need to think about a little bit of flexibility in that case as well for cost overruns.

So so okay, that's the the bond measure, and then on the sales tax, um, you know, I had done the the item earlier this year to ask us to poll on this when uh it became clear that our budget deficit is you know roughly 30 million, and what that means in terms of um the types of cuts we'll have to make.

So I I am in support of putting that on the ballot, and I I was very pleased to see that it's uh looks like it would pass all things.

Oh, I didn't realize I was on a timer.

Oh, okay.

I'll I'm I'm basically wrapped up.

So uh, you know, it looks like that one is in a good position to pass, and I think that would just give us we're still gonna have very hard decisions to make.

This measure wouldn't even go on the ballot till November.

We have to pass a budget by June 30th.

So uh, but it it may give us some flexibility moving forward um to protect uh some of our our vital services and staff.

So um that's all I have.

Thank you again for the presentation.

I'm glad we're having this conversation early so that we can be in a good position come the summer to draft ballot language.

Thanks.

And since we're already talking about this, I would like to make the motion to um approve the recommendation.

Thank you.

Okay.

So um we have a number of comments.

I saw Councilmember Humbert's hand go up and then council member Blackby Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um I I want to thank everybody who's involved with this whole process.

It's a whole lot of work.

Uh Paul Budenhagen, Dave White, um Scott Ferris, uh Finance Department, others who helped develop these lists of projects and cost estimates.

I want to thank Dave Merman, like research partners and our fire chief and police chief and their departments for contributing to this.

That's heartening.

And at least modest modestly positive.

Overall, of course, we want to get these numbers higher, but it seems like we're on a good trajectory, notwithstanding a very chaotic national and global situation.

The numbers for a potential bond measure likewise seem very good.

I would be in favor of the 300 rather than the 200, since there's not a statistical significance as between them.

Flexibility seems really a cardinal thing.

I also want to make sure we're leaving room to maneuver when it comes to geographic equity.

That we at least have some project-specific funds going to every district.

And I'd want to make sure those can be in the mix.

Modest improvements to Monkey Island Park.

And I think Councilmember Lunapar may be addressed this.

A new pocket park at Dwight and Warring.

It would be modest uh investment, I think.

Um I also want to say we um absolutely need to be more specific in the bond measure about where the funding would go.

Um if we have to be, then we simply set percentage floors for key categories if that's possible.

But the public has indicated are its highest priorities.

Then we can we can assure people that there will be a floor on the amount, but we'll go to those things.

But if the highest priorities turn out to be more expensive, we still have some wiggle room.

So flexibility, I think is critical within you know within limits.

Sales tax measure, totally in favor of that.

Prepare to move forward with that.

And since it's a simpler measure, I think there's even less need for additional polling.

So thanks a lot, everybody, for all the good work on this.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Backaby.

Thanks, Madam Mayor.

I'll be really brief.

I just want to thank staff for all your work on this and the great report.

Uh and thanks to David Merman, who I've worked with in a in a previous life, and it's good to see you here and see the work here and really respect um the end product here.

Uh I agree with uh my colleagues.

Uh, you know, I'm I'm um uh pleasantly surprised by the results.

Uh I know we still have room to go to sort of earn that trust and sort of make sure that we can get this over the finish line because I think it is important to make these investments.

Um to that end, you know, I think a common thread um as we're moving forward with the budget and moving forward with this is just continued transparency, continue to be very clear on goals and progress, and just kind of earning that trust uh from people who know that they can trust us to be good stewards with their money, we're making smart investments and we're getting the returns that we set out.

So I just think that ongoing discipline of um being clear, setting goals, reporting back, uh, and showing that progress is really important.

Uh the conversation we had earlier about the um the overall context of the total um infrastructure deficit, the total um uh liability that we owe, uh, and just making sure that we're thinking about how this is tracking towards bringing that down measurably.

I am interested in continuing that conversation because it concerning if we continue to invest, but that number keeps getting bigger.

Like what you know, how how can we kind of kind of curb that?

Um and I want to make sure that we're making uh an impact on that.

And lastly, I'll just say, you know, I I do not love the fact that we need to consider increasing the sales tax.

I agree with other public commenters.

I mean, it is a it's it is among the more regressive things that we can uh that we can do.

I also realize kind of the need um of where we're at, and I understand that there is room uh to move there relative to other jurisdictions.

I'll say that's just the least favorite of my of the options.

Um I think investing in infrastructure in a bond obviously is um uh that is widespread and is borne proportionally by people who can who can afford to bear that.

I think is is important.

But again, I recognize the need and I will certainly support uh the sales tax, but just wanted to comment on that piece.

But again, thanks to staff, and thank you for bringing this forward.

I'm eager to move this ahead.

It's really important that we get this right as we head into November.

So thank you.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Tracker Thank you so much for this presentation.

Um it's um just really appreciate all the community members that have come out.

Um I really uh appreciated the opportunity last week to join Vice Mayor Lunaparra during our joint D4 and 7 listening session in D8 at the beautiful uh Wheeler Community Center.

Um this is all very helpful as we consider which projects to include in a potential bond measure, and I appreciate having a clear and consistent understanding of how priorities are being evaluated across categories so that we can confidently make decisions about what rises to the top.

As my colleague, council member Keefe pointed out, it's important we look at this bond measure holistically, especially as multiple measures may be coming forward and voters will be evaluating them together.

I see a real opportunity here to communicate the full value of these investments, including the opportunity costs of not investing in them.

Investing in our city facilities can and I think will reduce ongoing expenses like external rentals and create long-term community and revenue benefits.

I also want to highlight that voters clearly care about um protecting the bay, including reducing pollution flowing into it and addressing flood risks to storm drain upgrades and green infrastructure, alongside safeguarding critical infrastructure from climate risks like flooding and wildfires.

As we shape the bond, it's important that these priorities are reflected in a visible and meaningful way in our project selection.

I strongly support going for the higher bond amount, especially given inflation and broader global uncertainty, especially if we could ensure that we are well positioned for matching grants, which is critical to maximizing these investments.

Uh and like uh my colleagues, um, I I am a reluctant uh yes, but still uh very much a yes in support of putting a half cent sales tax measure um because the uh the costs of frankly not doing so will be uh devastating to the city.

Um and finally, uh and you know, as the district for representatives, of course, um I would be remiss um not to say this.

I want to underscore the importance of investing in our civic center institutions, uh, which have long been a pillar of our democracy and civic life.

I know that we will not be able to reopen them overnight, but the costs of continuing to neglect them will accumulate um and we cannot afford to have demolition by neglect of these storied institutions.

Uh we should also ensure that keep community priorities such as green infrastructure and parks are clearly reflected in the project mix we're considering.

From a strategic standpoint, we need to be mindful that voter support can shift between polling and the ballot, and that clarity, trust, and strong communication will be critical.

Um I was taking copious mental notes when um Tom uh former mayor Bates was speaking because um he knows how to get ballot measures passed.

Um I don't know if we um have uh just the the resources and the time available to do multiple uh ballot uh to do multiple additional surveys, and that's why what goals on this survey will be crucial.

Um, but I have trust um in uh the work of this polster.

Um does a great job, and overall, this is a strong foundation, and I appreciate the work as we move towards shaping a responsible and compelling uh bond measure um as well as uh uh a potential uh half cent sales tax measure increase.

Thank you.

Um Vice Mayor Luna Barra.

Thank you.

Um I want to thank staff um for all of their work on this and the polling team.

Um this is really incredible and valuable work, so thank you.

Um I've similarly to my colleagues have heard um from community members about the concerns about the regressive nature of a sales tax and a property tax on assessed value, and I really hear that, and I worry even more about the even more regressive nature of the effects of the long-term budget cuts that we're facing.

Um so I'll be supporting the um staff recommendation.

I also wanted to add on to Councilmember Hubbard's comments.

I don't want to get too much into the specific projects given the scope of this meeting.

Um, but I heard from some constituents both at our neighborhood group meeting and um separately, the goal of building a pocket park or any kind of more permanent infrastructure at the closed slip lane on Dwight and Piedmont.

Um this is a park's poor, very dense neighborhood, and I'd love to see that being added to the list of potential projects funded by the measure.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Taplin.

Uh thank you very much, Madam Mayor, and thanks to the team and to my colleagues and the people who spoke tonight.

Um I don't have that much to say.

I just want to say thank you for for the presentation and all the work that's gone into this so far.

Um Councilmember Treger's remarks uh pretty much captured what I was gonna say.

Um I would just add that as one of the West Berkeley council members, um, it's really important to me to keep a sharp focus on on the equity priorities, uh parks, storm water projects, and the waterfront.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember O'Keefe.

Just a couple of things.

Um regarding the sales tax measure, I just want to say I'm kind of a psychotic penny pitcher, and I had no idea that our sales tax rate was less than the surrounding cities until this came up.

And I appreciate the argument that it's regressive, but at the same time, I'd unless I'm just really out of touch, I I don't think many people know that, and therefore I I think we're kind of have been leaving money on the table literally uh by not having done this sooner.

And so I given given that it could potentially plug a third of our structural deficit, I could not be more in favor of the sales tax measure.

I just really want to um say that as emphatically as I can.

And I appreciate Council uh Vice Mayor Lunapara's point that not funding city services is extremely regressive.

That was a really really excellent um thing to point out.

So very excited about that.

Um regarding the bond measure, I don't have anything more to say except just that it's a huge amount of work, and thank you so much to city staff for everything that's gone into this and will continue to go into this.

Uh you guys are doing a great job.

Uh really good, it's a huge amount of money, so the fact that the process is so um carefully thought out and so much time is being spent on it is really um appropriate, and you guys are doing a great job.

And I just want to say, like, it was nice to see that at least more the majority of people think that the city is going in the right direction.

That felt really good.

Um I think that is also indicated in the high level of support.

I think people seem really willing to invest their money in the city, and it showed they have a lot of pride in the city, and they should because the city is amazing.

This is the best place to live in the whole planet Earth.

And um, and everybody knows it, and I think these uh poll results really really show that.

And I just wanted to highlight that and just feel good about that.

And I I really um this is very exciting.

Good job, everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Uh Councilmember Bartlett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um, I too want to just join myself to all the previous comments.

Um regarding the the district equity, um, you know, the T1 formula was really good, uh, the way that was rolled out.

I think we'd be good to do that again, I think, to make sure um that the resources are rolled out evenly and fairly uh and equitably.

Um I want to do it give a plug for downtown because it is necessary.

I realize the the real price tag for downtown um development is much higher than the money we would get from this, but at least gets us on the way.

Um and we do need to we do need a really real vibrant civic center uh square like other cities with a water fountain too, like a water-based fountain.

I see this every time.

And um, and then uh and finally I'm gonna say it's really nice to hear the vote of confidence in people.

Uh they like the work we're doing, uh, they're supporting us, uh, and they have faith in what we're doing, and it's really wonderful to see.

It's really wonderful to see.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you.

Councilmember Taplin, did you want to add something?

Yes, thank you very much.

I also wanted to put in a plug for Francis Warbreaker, which is really the heart of this one.

And it was a one of our flagship projects that had to be shelved from T1.

And it's very important to me to demonstrate the city's ability to finish projects that we promised to undergo.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Thanks so much for your comments.

I really want to thank the city manager's office.

So Paul, David, also Carrie, who's our silent partner up here with David.

Would love to hear you present next time.

I know you did a lot of work on this, so thank you very much.

And I also know that a lot of grants have been applied for by you.

So when we talk about leveraging grant fund or funding for grants, I just want everyone to know that Carrie does a lot of that work.

So big shout out there.

Thank you all for putting this presentation together and just for the heavy lifting of working with the Lake team to put this poll together.

There's a lot of thought that goes into this.

And so thank you.

And thank you also to everyone from the city staff who worked on organizing this and facilitating the conversation.

So Scott Ferris, I know you're here, but um other folks have been involved with those conversations as well around the city, around the Go Bond.

And I also want to thank the community for participating in the community meetings and the survey.

I don't know who you are out there who took the survey, but thank you for taking it and thanks for your confidence.

Um and really big shout out to our Realized Vision 2050 task force.

In the past year, um, we had many conversations with folks in our city throughout a variety of different specialties who gave thoughts and inputs, and I really want to uh let you know that that was very helpful.

Um, in terms of projects, I know folks have pet projects that they really care about.

And I just also want to encourage all of us, my council colleagues, to remember that these projects benefit everybody in the city.

So, you know, when we're supporting something in downtown or Francis Albriar, like we go, our residents go to places throughout the city.

So just want to keep us united in our thinking about how this supports Berkeley as a whole.

Um, and also just second um what some folks have also mentioned about making sure we really want to have strong accountability in here.

Um I I love to to I love that that's something I know we're already talking about.

So in my office, we really value community engagement also and encouraging folks to engage with local government.

Infrastructure is really the backbone of our city.

If we have, like I like to say, a hundred-year-old infrastructure, basically, uh, and with over 1.5 billion dollars of deferred needs, it's you can see the need versus what we have.

It's there's there's a big difference.

Um so this bond is really needed to ensure that our infrastructure is maintained and also that we're prepared for the future.

We talk a lot about climate change here in this city, and this is our way that we're we're really preparing for it.

So we really need our community to come together to help fund these projects.

Um for every year that we don't adequately invest in our infrastructure, the deferred costs increase exponentially, and I think that's an important part.

Um I want folks to know about that.

Uh, this 300 million dollars will allow us to leverage additional grant opportunities, as I mentioned.

Um also I want to mention a couple of things that I wanted to pull out.

So given that Berkeley is the birthplace of the disability rights movement, um, I'd like to make sure that accessibility is incorporated throughout our projects and just generally want to second what Berkeley voters, Berkeley residents are saying about um accessibility being important.

I was pleased to see that over 70% of the folks polled understand the need to support infrastructure generally.

Um of my favorite things about being there is getting to learn about all of the different projects that are happening in the city.

I've gotten many tours from public works and our parks department, um, and and also you know, done right alongs with police and fire and a sit along with dispatch.

And um that's really allowed me to see the amazing things that are happening throughout our city.

And so I I really want to make sure folks understand how much work is happening all around us that you may not notice uh day to day as you're going about your about your business, um, but I get a chance to see that specifically, and it's an incredible honor.

Um there's always room for improvement, but I'm very glad to see that the confidence from the community is strong in us in our direction.

56% of folks polled so they think that Berkeley is heading in the right direction.

And I really want to thank my council colleagues, because I think that us working together through really challenging situations in a civil and respectful way is really reflected by these numbers.

So thank you all so much for the work that you're doing to show our residents what a highly you know functioning, you know, uh progressive city can look like.

So thank you very much, and thank you so much for for the presentation this evening.

So I know we have a motion on the floor.

Um I will ask that we please take the roll.

Okay, on the motion to approve the recommendation to direct the city manager to prepare draft ballot language and authorize a second community survey.

Uh Councilmember Kessarwani.

Yes, Taplin?

Yes, Bartlett, yes, Trego.

Aye.

O'Keefe, yes, Blackaby, yes, Luna Para, yes, Humbert, yes, and Mary Ishi.

Yes.

Okay, motion carries.

Okay, thank you all so much.

Really grateful.

Um, okay, so we have finished our one item on the meeting.

So I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Okay, a second.

Um, and do we need to take the roll again?

Yeah, because we have someone online.

Can we take the roll again on this basic?

To adjourn, Councilmember Kessarwani.

Yes, Taplin, yes, Bartlett, Traegab, O'Keefe, Blackaby, yes, Lunapara, yes, Humbert, yes.

And Mary Ishii.

Yes.

Okay, we're all right, meetings adjourned.

Thanks, everyone.

Record.