2026-10-13 - City Council (regular)

Okay, hello everyone. Good evening. All right. I'm calling this meeting to order. I'm calling the Berkeley City Council meeting to order. Today is Tuesday, October 13, 2026, and it is 6.06 p.m. Can we

please start off with a roll? Okay. Councilmember Kesser-Wani is here. Kaplan, present. Bartlett is currently absent. Tragem, present. O'Keeffe, here. Blackaby, here. Lunapara, Humbert, present. And

Mayor Ishi, here. Okay, quorum is present. Thank you very much. I believe it's the first meeting of the month, so I will read the land acknowledgement statement, which is very appropriate given that

we just had Indigenous people say yesterday. So, the City of Berkeley recognizes that the community we live in was built on the territory of Huchun, the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo-

speaking Ohlone people, the ancestors and descendants of the sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. This land was and continues to be of great importance to all of the Ohlone tribes and descendants

of the Verona Band. As we begin our meeting tonight, we acknowledge and honor the original inhabitants of Berkeley, the documented 5,000-year history of a vibrant community at the West Berkeley Shell

Mound and the Ohlone people who continue to reside in the East Bay. We recognize that Berkeley's residents have and continue to benefit from the use and occupation of this unceded, stolen land since

the City of Berkeley's incorporation in 1878. As stewards of the laws regulating the City of Berkeley, it's not only vital that we recognize the history of this land, but also recognize that the

Ohlone people are present members of Berkeley and other East Bay communities today. The City of Berkeley will continue to build relationships with the Lajon tribe and to create meaningful actions that

uphold the intention of this land acknowledgment. Thank you. We now have a number of ceremonial matters this evening, starting off with the acknowledgment of our Director of Police Accountability.

Both our outgoing interim former director, and also our incoming director. And so, perhaps, I will just turn it over to the both of you. Did you want to share anything? And then I have a few words I

want to say too. I'm going to say a few words and then Director Oppenheimer. Thank you, Honorable Mayor and members of the City Council. It's been an honor and a privilege to serve the City once

again. I've been here a little over six months now and one of the things I look forward to in my re-retirement is getting back to my exercise routine because all my pants are getting a little tight.

That exercise includes pickleball because, yes, I became one of those people in my first retirement. I have to say I was surprised and overwhelmed by the incredibly positive reception I faced when I

returned. I had apparently built up a cache of goodwill that simply wasn't evident to me. And it triggered a dormant case of imposter syndrome that I've been fighting to beat back down ever since. The

number one question from friends and family members when I came back to work was, why? Why are you going back to work? Of course, a big reason I returned was because I care very much about making sure

the Office of Director of Police Accountability and the Police Accountability Board remained functioning. In my remarks to you upon being appointed, read by the Mayor in my absence, I said that I felt

strongly about making sure that meaningful civilian oversight of our Police Department lives on and that I am a true believer in the value of community members helping keep our police accountable and

ensuring that police policies, practices and procedures reflect this City's values. I'm still a believer. I've had a front row look at the new and emerging technologies available to law enforcement

with our department on the cusp of adopting some of them. I can say they're exciting and scary. Exciting for helping our Police Department prevent and solve crimes more expeditiously and more safely.

Scary for the potential intrusions into the privacy of law-abiding civilians. I see an important role for the ODPA and the PAB in monitoring the uses of these new technologies. Back to where I

returned. Knowing that my tenure would not and could not drag on endlessly was another big enticement. I thank the Mayor and the Council for working quickly to find a new permanent director. And you

have chosen well in Mary Opler. Thanks also to HR for figuring out how to keep me on for these two weeks after she started because it's been an invaluable opportunity to help Mary get oriented.

Finally, I came back because I had a lot of faith and trust in many of the City's leadership with whom I had worked with before, including City Manager Paul Boudenhagen, Deputy City Manager Dave

White, City Attorney Faruma Brown, Deputy City Attorney Sam Harvey, Police Chief Jen Lewis, Deputy Chief Jen Tate and Captain Joe Okies. After working with them for six months, that faith and trust

has not wavered. I've had the pleasure of working with new faces, including the Mayor, Human Resources Director Janelle Rodriguez, HR Manager Monica Walker, Steven Heilis in the City Attorney's

Office, and Arlo Malmberg at BPD. I want to thank the members of the Police Accountability Board, all of whom are new to me and who are putting in so much of their volunteer time and thought into

their work. With special thanks to Chair Josh Cayetano and Vice Chair Leah Wilson, whose efforts have been far above and beyond what is typically expected of those positions. Last but not least, huge

amounts of gratitude to my staff Jose Murillo, Dan Weinberg and Saeed Mehdi, again for holding down the fort for two months without a director and for their support these past six months of me as

interim and for their commitment to the work of votersite. Because of the title, Interim or Returning Interim Director of Police Accountability is really too unwieldy. You can just call me Director

Emerita. Thank you. And hello all. I'm Mary Oppler. I'm the new Director of Police Accountability and I just wanted to say thank you so much Director Lee. Kathy has been an absolute godsend. Coming

here I didn't know what I was going to get until you really get boots on the ground. You don't know what an organization is truly going to be like and I am incredibly impressed. The staff has been

absolutely lovely. They have made this transition very easy. They're very hardworking and Director Lee is incredibly generous to not only come back into this role but agree to stay on an extra two

weeks because I know she wants to get back to retired life and I just want the community to know that you have been in good hands. I am very impressed with the staff, Director Lee's leadership and the

hard work of the board. I am very impressed by the work that they're doing. I've worn many hats in my life as a public servant. The one I identify with most isn't being an attorney or working in

oversight. It's actually my time at the American Red Cross because I believe in people power and I'm just so excited to see Berkeley out here. To see this level of civic engagement just warms my heart

and I think this is really going to be an excellent fit so I look forward to working with all of you and again thank you so much Kathy for everything you've done. Please don't leave yet. So you know

the Police Accountability Board has already sent a formal thank you and a resolution to thank you Kathy for returning and Kathy told me I already have a day named after me. Don't do that. So I'm

trying without trying to embarrass you too much. I did just want to say thank you very much for your service and for returning to the city. It was incredibly essential to us that we had someone that

had community trust and your work really speaks for itself. The community members, the council, city staff, everyone was very thrilled that you were returning and I just really want to thank you very

much for coming and holding down the fort and of course they have a very warm welcome to Mary Opler. We're very excited to continue to work with you. We just have a very small token of appreciation

for you Kathy that I'm going to bring over to you. So thank you. You're very welcome. Thank you so much. All right we have a short virtual presentation by Director Barnally-Gosch with PowerPoint and

they will be given some time to speak and then I would like to ask that council if you do have some brief questions you may ask them but we have quite a long number of things on our ceremonial

calendar and also on our calendar this evening so if you could keep them brief. Okay Barnally are you here? Hi Director Gosch. Oh there you are. Hey everyone. Thank you for accommodating me this

evening. I'm Barnally-Gosch. I'm the board board director for District 3 and I represent Berkeley, also Berkeley resident. We wanted to just give you a brief update on what's been going on at BART.

Some of the good news and also what to expect depending on how the regional transit measure goes in November. So if I could have the next slide. BART, if you've been riding BART lately I hope you've

noticed that our stations are cleaner. The system is more reliable. We're doing everything we can to accommodate the riders who are back. We've used a multi-pronged approach to safety with the new

fare gates that are new infrastructure. It's reduced our maintenance costs. We have police riding our trains. We have transit ambassadors, crisis intervention specialists so we can keep riders safe

and also make sure folks who might be facing issues are connected to services. We're cleaning our trains at twice the rate and we have all new trains which train cars the fleet of the future which is

much easier to clean. And I am rushing because I know we have limited time and I want to make sure we have at least a couple of minutes for questions. Next slide. We always like to remind people that

you can now tap and ride. You can use your bank card to use BART and for folks who need it we have 50% off, clip or start to support riders who are low income, our students and also our seniors get a

discount. BART and other agencies have been really working hard to make sure our schedules sync up. It's a challenging process with all of the different schedules and frequencies but it has been

something that has been the focus of all our agencies since the pandemic and we continue to do that. So every six months we try to realign and rebalance all the schedules so passengers don't have to

wait between taking services. At downtown Berkeley we have new improved LED lighting also at many of our other stations. During the pandemic we heard loud and clear from riders that safety was a

concern. Cleanliness was a concern so we're using, like I said, a multi-pronged approach to deal with issues of real safety but also perception of safety which better lighting helps us make our

passengers feel more safe. Next slide. Downtown Berkeley is our busiest station. It's my home station and this is going to be something we all have to think about. All of the people who might be

impacted if the regional transit measure doesn't pass. Because of the university we have huge improvements, increases in ridership since the students voted for Bay Pass. We're also investing in the

cities that we run through, working in partnership with all of you to deliver 1,300 housing units at North Berkeley and Ashby stations. We're also working with the city in partnership to make sure

that BART riders have more ways and safer ways to get to our stations by working in partnership to deliver bike and pedestrian station access improvements. Boardable is a very popular thing that BART

does and we're always excited to partner with our Downtown Berkeley Association, our arts institutions and we hope to continue to do that in the future. Next slide. So one of the things I want to talk

about is how we are very efficient and we have one of the lowest operating costs per passenger mile for heavy rail operators and this is a very distinct category and operating costs have been growing

below inflation compared to our peer agencies and because of this distinct system that we are, that we're a fixed rail system, our service doesn't always scale with the cost of operating it. So cuts

in service don't always deliver the kind of cost cutting that we might need to balance our budget. So it's a very sort of sensitive, unique system and so disproportionate service reductions put

revenues from fares at risk because they don't save us money proportionally. So that's something we've considered sort of going forward. Next slide. One of the things that was very important to me, I

said on the audit committee, is that we have structures in place to make sure our public dollars are being used well. So BART's Office of the Inspector General, which is our independent auditor, does

performance audits that help us as directors make better decisions and helps our staff deliver a better product to our riders and they also investigate allegations of waste, fraud and abuse. This is

really critical to managing and gaining the public's trust. That being said, in 2026 there was an additional independent financial efficiency review that was conducted as part of SB 63, which was the

legislative item that led to the regional transit measure being on the November ballot and that showed that at BART we've already been trying to save money, $516 million in operating costs through

service reductions, workforce controls, operational efficiencies. This is between 2019 and 2025. We also reduced our capital costs by $519 million and increased revenue by $99 million. So we are going

to continue to look at what kind of cost cuts we can do without impacting our riders. That is very personally important to me. You will notice though that some of these cost cuts have impacts on

riders. We are running shorter trains during some of the commute hours and I hear from people, "Hey, BART's getting crowded. Can you add more cars?" And we can and every car that we add consumes

electricity and increases our costs and we have to make sure that that's balanced with increased revenue. Next slide. As you all might be familiar with already, we are facing a deficit and big reason

for this deficit, it's historic underfunding of public transit agencies in the US, but it's also a direct outcome of the pandemic. Due to remote work and just people working differently and traveling

for different reasons, our ridership has dropped compared to pre-pandemic ridership. And what that means is that we are facing a $370 million structural deficit. If the regional transit measure

doesn't pass, if the measure passes, we would get $310 million. We would still have to make some cuts and we are committed to not increasing rider fares and doing that with continued efficiencies and

also hoping that ridership continues to trend up. However, if it doesn't pass, then the BART Board approved an alternative service plan that would go into effect in January that would include service

stopping at 9 p.m., stations, closures, employee layoffs and some of these employee layoffs would be our police officers, our cleaning staff, all of the things that make BART easy to use and safe to

use and fun to use. Next slide. So like I was saying, the good news is ridership is trending up. Almost all of our riders have come back. They're just riding fewer days a week. That's just where we

are in terms of people going back to work. However, we are seeing big events are bringing ridership back. Like you can see here, October 6th was the highest ridership day since 2020. And on the days

that people are going back to work, the most popular days for in-person work, we are regularly going above 200,000. But just a reminder that before the pandemic, our ridership was around 400,000 plus.

So even though ridership is trending up, that is not enough to close our deficit. With every 5 percent increase in ridership, we make about 13 million in new fare revenue. But that is a very small

step towards closing a 370, $380 million revenue. So we're excited that people are coming back. They're noticing our new trains. Customer satisfaction is up at 91 percent and more. So we are doing

everything we can and we hope that this will gain the trust of riders and that we can continue to operate into the future. Last slide. If you have any questions that I can't answer today, please feel

free to reach out to me directly. Also, Henry Simmons is in the audience today if you want to chat in person. And I will stop there and see if there's any questions folks have. The thing I think about

the most as somebody who also lives in Berkeley is what happens to our Berkeley institutions, to UC Berkeley. Yeah, and you can stop sharing this slideshow. What happens to UC Berkeley? What happens

to our downtown businesses if the measure fails? So much of the health of downtown of our residents here, people who come here for work, for play, depends on BART. And of course, this is not just

about BART, it's all our transit agencies are facing this crisis. So thank you for giving me the time today and for accommodating me while I recover. And I'm gonna stop now. Thank you, Mary Shee.

Thank you very much. Are there any quick questions for Director Ghosh? I did just want to check and see if Peralta students would be receiving something like Bay Pass. Funnily, we did meet with the

one of the Chancellor's Vice Chancellors and we did discuss that. I think those discussions will be ongoing. They already have, I guess, easy pass that they use on their shuttles. If BART survives,

those will definitely be conversations. I think we've talked, there's definitely student interest for Bay Pass. Just hard to have that conversation when we don't know what the future of our transit

systems is. Totally understandable. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here and for presenting and also Henry Simmons, thank you. I know you're in the audience as well. Thank you. All right, very

good. So moving on, we have two proclamations, one for United Against Hate Week, which was requested by Council Member Blackaby. Excuse me, Vice Mayor, are you Vice Mayor now? Vice Mayor Blackaby. All

right, very good. And one thing I did just want to say is that with us being in election season, that there has been a lot of very intense and inappropriate hateful rhetoric. And so I did just want to

call that out and say, as Mayor, it's very important to me that we on the Council are continuing to uphold these values. I mean, we have this United Against Hate proclamation that's here that we're

speaking to today. And I really want to make sure that we as a community are continuing to fight against hate and to speak up when we see anything that's wrong or hateful. And so I want to say that,

you know, not only here in this political, in our setting here on the dais, but also, you know, out in the community and on the campaign trail. So I do want to call on all candidates who are

campaigning right now to really, to really be, you know, speak out when they see things like that. And I want to thank my Council Member colleagues because I feel like the tone that we have set here

on the dais, especially over the last two years, has been really very positive and working together. And so I really want to applaud us for that and also encourage us to continue to do that. I think

it's very important as our city leaders, especially when we see what's happening on the federal government level. So I will pass it over to Council Member Blackaby. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Could I ask

Ray yet to step forward? We're pleased to be joined today by Ray. Ray is a volunteer with Not in Our Town, which was the organization that launched United Against Hate in 2017. And so Ray, on behalf

of many other people who are here and who are not here, is going to accept the proclamation tonight. I just want to associate myself with the Mayor's words. We'll read the proclamation, but I think

with the proclamation together as a Council, as a community, we're saying loudly and with one voice that hate has no place in Berkeley, whether it's anti-Jewish hate, anti-Muslim hate, anti-trans,

anti-LGBT hate, hate in all its forms. As the Mayor said, whether that's on the campaign trail here at Council meetings or at any other civic gathering, large or small. That's true across the board

here in Berkeley, and I think it's important for us all to ratify that. This is the proclamation that the Mayor has made, proclaiming United Against Hate Week in Berkeley. Whereas the United States is

a nation of immigrants whose strength comes from its diversity, and whereas the Constitution enshrines equality on all individuals regardless of race, gender, orientation, religion, or political view,

and whereas rhetoric continues to generate a toxic environment that encourages the propagation of racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and other bigoted

views by emboldened hate groups and individuals. And whereas deep divisions within our country are the result of extreme ideology, further strengthening a cycle of mistrust and suspicion fueled by

fear, anxiety, and insecurity. And whereas the City of Berkeley is dedicated to preventing and opposing hate and intolerance in our communities, Berkeley started United Against Hate Week in 2017,

which has since expanded into a national movement. And whereas education, compassion, and cooperation are key to unlocking understanding and embracing differences between people, with United Against

Hate Week an important step in bridging divisions and strengthening our communities. And whereas Minnesota Neighbors, a film profiling the brave actions of Minnesota residents during ICE's operation

Metro Surge, will screen at the Grand Lake Theater on October 21st at 7 p.m. Now therefore be it resolved that Adina Ishii, Mayor of the City of Berkeley, does hereby proclaim October 18 to 24, 2026

as United Against Hate Week in the City of Berkeley. Thank you. Did you want to say anything, Ray? Here Ishii Council members, I'm Ray Yep. I'm pleased and happy to be here to represent Patrice

O'Neill. She's the founder of Not in Our Town and the Not in Our Town organization. Patrice is very busy these days. There are 11 premier showings of Minnesota Neighbors. So she's flying around and

representing all of these openings at various cities like Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and of course in Oakland next Wednesday on October 21st at the Grand Lake Theater. I had the opportunity

to work with Jack McCormick and Patrice back in 2018 or 2019. So very close to the beginning and that was a Bay Area effort. And I think all of you have seen the signs all over the city, including in

your offices. And we are happy that Berkeley has kept up its commitment to anti-hate and racism by continuing your support for United Against Hate Week, which is only next week. So I hope all of you

have signed up or will sign up to attend the premier showing next Wednesday. And I'm going to pass around to the clerk's office, this flyer and also another sign in case you need another one and hope

to see you at the premier showing next Wednesday. Thank you for your support. Moving on for our final proclamation this evening, we have one on Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, which is

October 2026. It was requested by Councilmember Humbert and he's online right now and we'll read it from there. And I believe that two people are in attendance for this, Catherine Bierce, and then

someone else who is online that perhaps if you're online, if you could raise your hand, that would be helpful. Thank you. In person or are you Catherine? Okay, great. Come on up. Thank you. Okay, go

ahead, Councilmember Humbert. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And it's my it's my solemn privilege to read the following mayoral proclamation on Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, October 2026.

Whereas since 1998, National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month is observed every October to break the silence around miscarriage, stillbirth, termination for medical reasons or early infant

death while raising awareness and support for grieving families and whereas a 2024 study published in health affairs estimates that approximately 1,034,000 miscarriages occur annually in the United

States. As miscarriage and abortion care rely on the same medications and procedures, abortion restrictions in some states have left providers uncertain whether they can offer standard miscarriage

treatment, miscarriage treatment, delaying essential care and whereas 4 in 10 women experienced PTSD symptoms within three months following either a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy. PTSD symptoms

reported by the study's participants included nightmares, flashbacks and re-experiencing feelings associated with the loss. Depression, anxiety and PTSD are common after pregnancy loss and can last

for months or years. Yet most parents never receive follow-up care and whereas Berkeley is home to Alta Bates Hospital, commonly known as the birthplace of the East Bay with over 4,000 births per year

and whereas October 15th is observed as pregnancy and infant loss remembrance day when families around the world light candles at 7 p.m. local time for the international wave of light and whereas

resources for grieving parents including HAND helping after neonatal death, www.handonline.org, SAND, support after neonatal death, meeting in person on first and third Wednesdays in Oakland, the

Compassionate Friends, www.compassionatefriends.org, crisis support services of Alameda County at 800-309-2131 for a 24/7 hotline, Empty Arms, www.emptyarmsbereavement.org and Chasing the Rainbows,

www.chasingtherainbows.org, among others. Now therefore be it resolved that Adini Ishii, mayor of the city of Berkeley, hereby proclaims October 2026 as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month that

I recognize and respect the rights of women and pregnant people to make their own decisions about their health care while also honoring the grief of parents experiencing pregnancy and infant loss at

any stage and for any reason so that we may create a more compassionate community in Berkeley and beyond. Thank you. Thank you, council member. And did you want to share a few words? Yes, thank you

for being home to Alta Bayt's hospital, birthplace of the East Bay, and also given the commonplace accompanism as carriage that there are actually hundreds of dead babies every year and every month in

Berkeley sadly, and I'm one of those people who experienced that this summer. So I want to help raise awareness of how common miscarriage is and highlight how important it is to resources for people

in our communities. So for folks who are experiencing miscarriage or who've been through loss of an infant or pregnancy, you're not alone. And for the community leaders and people in the room here, I

have three requests. First is to please never say that you're going to have a second kid because a loss is a loss. Secondly, to be aware of resources like those named when people have them as

carriage, you can point them to resources like HAND and others. And then thirdly, I hope that tomorrow, you'll text three friends in swing states to ask them to vote for pro choice candidates because

people's lives depend on it. As recognized in October is infant lost awareness month and especially most awareness month. And thanks for supporting healthcare for all women's rights. Thank you.

There's also someone on the online who's the nonprofit want to hear from them too. I believe their name is Raina. Raina, if you're online, could you just raise your hand so we can find you? Hi, can

you all hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Great. Thank you so much. I, yes. So my name is Raina Cook-Ramigio. I'm the board vice president of HAND of the Bay Area, which is a volunteer run nonprofit led

by bereaved parents who've lost a baby in pregnancy or infancy. And I'm also the mother of Sage, my two-month-old baby who died three years ago from a rare undetected heart condition and yes, was born

at the Alta Bates Hospital. And losing a baby is sadly far more common than many realize. And yet the grief can be profoundly painful, disorganizing and just isolating. And yet this grief is often met

with silence, not indifference, but because people don't always know how to make space for it, leaving families feeling alone and separate from their communities. And so I wanted to share, yes, HAND

as a resource offers support groups, peer support, bereavement education, and many other resources at handsupport.org. So our abundant gratitude for this proclamation and for you affirming the

importance of remembering every baby, honoring every family's grief and reminding bereaved families that even in our loss, we still belong. Thank you. Thank you, Raina. Okay. Thank you all so much.

That concludes our ceremonial items for the evening. We will now move on to city manager comments. No comments tonight, Madam Mayor. Thank you. And our, I believe that our city auditor is making her

way to the stage. So we will hear from her in a minute. Thank you, Madam city auditor. Thank you. And good evening, everyone. I just wanted to provide a quick update on our 2025 audit of the homeless

response team or HRT. This should be an information item on your agenda tonight. We initiated this audit because HRT is an important touch point for encampment residents in Berkeley and a key

component of the city's approach to addressing unsheltered homelessness in our community. The HRT has made significant progress on this audit since the audit was released implementing five out of six

outstanding recommendations. One highlight includes the city's new encampment coordination policy, which addresses the recommendation of formalizing the structure and procedures for weekly encampment

coordination meetings. These meetings are useful to coordinate services for vulnerable encampment residents. The HRT also published new performance data reports that expand reported outcomes for HRT

program participants, such as demographic characteristics, shelter, enrollment and housing outcomes. I just wanted to thank the HRT for addressing our recommendations on service coordination for

encampment residents and increasing transparency and accessibility of public reporting to the public. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam City auditor. All right. We are now moving on to

public comment for non agenda matters. Okay, so we will draw five names from the drum for comments for item two for comments that are not on the agenda, not on items not on the agenda. And then we

will go to the first five hands raised on the zoom and each speaker will have one minute. Okay, the five in person speakers are Hillary Maria soul Dorothy Duran's Elaine Stettin and Marlene Watson.

Okay, if you've heard your name called please come on up. Any any or is fine. You can just explore. Good evening. My name is Dorothea and I live in Berkeley. And thank you very much for observing this

special week against hate. Imagine a candidate warned of a jihadi takeover of City Hall. Imagine officials called Islamo terrorists because of their faith or their heritage or a mosque based

organization labeled a farm lobby in a questionnaire. Berkeley would respond within hours and rightly. No one would demand a debate over definitions first. I asked for the same standard. When Jewish

residents are told they have taken over City Hall, that they are foreign agents that they are Nazis. The response should be just as clear during united against hate week. Let us name anti Jewish hate

as plainly as the other. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mary in Asia and the council. My name is Marlene Watson. I am here also with this brag. He's online. We're the original artists of the tour

Island Monument project. And I'm here to bring on a couple points here over the years. It's been 34 years and I thank you all for having us at the power. I just passed Saturday indigenous people's day

powwow and everyone had a good time there. And what has been the issue with this project and I'm worked as an architect. Got my master's in architecture from Berkeley with my master's in science and

civil engineering from Berkeley. And when we started this project in 30 34 years ago, we went through all the approvals twice. Marlene, I'm so sorry but you're out of time. I'm going to send my staff

to get your contact information. We can follow up. I'm not I don't have another minute. No, I'm so sorry. We don't have we're in off agenda comment right now. So we only select five people and they

only have a minute. So we'll follow up with you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Hi, good evening. My name is Elaine Stelton and I'm ceding my time to Reverend meals. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you

all very much City Council higher up. Thank you very much City Council for adopting the proclamation against hate as you've stood against hate for so many years. I've been here for three years and

I've seen your poise and I've seen your contact in this in this in the face of intense debate and hatred being spewed around here. It is important I represent a group of seven clergy Jewish and

Christian clergy who have spoken out against anti-Semitic language being used in the political campaign right now, not by just by candidates, but also by pressure groups who are using language and

invectives that are beyond the pale can only be classified as hate speech and should be called out as such very old anti-Semitic tropes are being dredged up again in this speech talking about a

Zionist takeover of the city council as if there is a small old conspiracy theory dating back to many, many years. Thank you very much. Thank you for all your work. Thanks for your comments and not

even be able to reach this microphone pretty soon. Okay. Thank you very much. And Mayor, thank you for the amazing gathering that you held at the middle school a week or so ago. The words against hate

is kind of like obvious and yet I find that it's a lot more productive to be for peace because everyone can be against something and then we have more conflict and I've seen it happen over and over

again even to use the example of bicycles don't want to be driven off the road by cars. Well, I was almost driven off the road by a bicycle the other day. Things are getting very tense and tenser

which is why I keep ad nauseam repeating the same thing. Please, please, please be within in empathy and compassion in unity because it's the only way it's going to work. Thank you. Thanks Maria.

Okay. I guess we were informed that Hillary is not here so we we can pick one card to replace to replace that Linda W. Good evening. My name is Linda and I've lived in Berkeley for 36 years. Thank you

for marking the united against hate week at a recent campaign event a city council candidate spoke of a Zionist takeover of council that claim that a hidden group has seized our government is one of

the immediately recognizable and ancient conspiracy theories about Jews. The newest iteration swaps Zionist for Jewish, but it doesn't change what Jewish residents hear that our civic participation is

illegitimate. It's impossible to rationalize the obsessive focus on Israel, Zionists, Zios, Zion Nazis as nearly criticism of a distant foreign government. Instead, it's a mass hate movement with all

the characteristics of a mass hate movement. Six local clergy have asked the candidate to retract and apologize. This week of all weeks, it's vital to name anti-Jewish hate cleanly, including the

anti-Zionist conspiracy theory. Thank you. Okay. Now go to the first five hands raised on online. First one is a caller with a phone number ending in 211. Hi, I agree with your Councilman immigrants

built this country in the first administration, Donald Trump had dried like COVID-19 was that 1.2 million Americans died unnecessarily, or most other country had tens of thousands. Second, in my great

company, we hired more women in our company who had average hundred employees at our eight days of business and who paid them very well. If you look at the picture, I send you constantly, you will see

at least at least one third of the employees are women, beautiful women. She was the head of our advertising department. She set over 3 million dollar advertising budget. Also, we made millions of

dollars to the city of Berkeley, to the IRS, and to the state of California. And the man who invented COVID, both of them, Lebanese American for Moderna and Greek American for Pfizer. This man is

mentally ill. He should be removed. He is destroying the country as we know it. Please read everybody. The book written by Rick Wilson, it's called Everything Trump on Your Time Is Up. Thank you. Next

is Dahlia. Hi, thank you so much. And thank you City Council and Mayor for standing for this anti stand against hate week united. I just want to reiterate what my very colleagues have already stated,

which is Zionist hate is hate. And let's please stand against all hate. And as the very tiny person at the microphone said unity, peace and appreciation, respect for all people, all cultures. Thank

you again for anti hate week next week. Thank you. Next we have Russell Bates. All right, good evening, everybody. It's the Russians for me to see the American flag bear sense. Unlike some of the

previous speakers, I see this country becoming more and more the United States of Israel. There is so much Israeli influence, Zionist influence. People are being punished for speaking up for

Palestine. My idea would be I would like to see from Piedmont Avenue to the end of university after this next election. City Council, Zionist three. Thank you very much. All right. All right. That's

next. Next we have Lee Lee Sprague. Yes. My name is Lee Sprague. I'd like to give my one minute to Marlene Watson. Okay. Thank you. Hi, Marlene. From the beginning, 2005, Scott Parsons, the artist of

this Turtle Island Monument project was designated by the city of Berkeley in 2005. And from then our project was not our project anymore. And the city has put Lee and I as consultants ever since

2005. And there was another city resolution besides the 2005. There was another one recently that also proclaims Scott Parsons also as the artist again. So what we're asking for is to rescind the

resolutions of a non-native artist to take his name off of our project because we have the Native American Arts and Crafts Act as a protection. Thanks, Marlene. I'm sorry. Thank you. Your time's up,

but I think my staff will reach out to you. Appreciate it. Bye. So next we have Rachel. Hi, my name's Rachel Bradley and I'm here tonight to lament the continuing carnage on our streets where

pedestrians are repeatedly run over in crosswalks and seriously injured or killed. We can't just accept this as the way things are. It's only likely to get worse as more people move here, walking our

streets and driving their cars. The city must take serious and immediate steps to improve pedestrian safety for all Berkeley residents and visitors, including the elderly couple from Barcelona who

were the latest victims of a hit and run on university. Two obvious places to start are better lighting and consistent traffic enforcement. Repainting the faded crosswalks all over town would also

help. This needs to be a top priority and not just a long-term goal. The statistics are appalling. We're close to or at the top of the list of similar cities for such injuries. I urge you to imagine

how you'd feel if you or your loved ones became victims of this ongoing traffic violence. Keeping its citizens safe is the first duty of any government. The status quo is simply not acceptable. We

need to change it now. Thanks. That concludes non-agenda public comment. There is another non-agenda public comment period at the end of the meeting. There's another non-agenda comment period at the

end of the meeting. Thank you. Sorry. I couldn't quite hear you. Okay. So it is the first meeting of the month. And so are there any public comments from employee unions? Anyone online from an

employee union that would like to speak? Please just raise your hand. Okay. Okay. We will move on to the consent calendar then. Oh, just turned on the parliamentarian. Okay. All right. Moving on to

the consent calendar. Council members? Anyone? Okay. Councilmember Blackaby. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just had a couple of quick comments on consent. On item 10 ‑‑ as you're walking out. If you could

please keep your conversations down. Kelly, please. On item 10, the board adaptive sports and rec's 50th anniversary celebration, the item from Councilmember Taplin wanted to relinquish $100 from our

office account towards that event. And on item 11, the Creations Berkeley tour sponsored by Councilmember Bartlett, we also wanted to relinquish $100 from our office budget towards that item. And then

I had one request around information reports. There's three really good chock full of data housing related reports, number 18, 19, and 20, and was asking consent. And I think I need a couple

colleagues to support. If we could pull those to action just for the purpose of having a quick discussion and some Q&A, there's some really good data about our progress on building affordable housing

in Berkeley and I wanted to at least highlight that. So if there were a couple other colleagues ‑‑ Yes, I'm happy to pull that as well. Okay. So Madam Mayor, we'd want to put it, but maybe around when

Director Gilman is doing the other item, we could kind of do it in that sequence. Yeah, I think that makes sense because I think what I'd like to do for our action calendar is have our former business

from the ‑‑ oh, sorry, where is it? Oh, yes, thank you. Our old business, which was item 15, moved up to the beginning and then we could have the environmental health item and then those items. Great.

Yeah. Sounds good. Thank you. That's all I have. Okay. All right. Moving on to Councilmember Bartlett. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I want to thank the Vice Mayor for your item tonight around the hate

week. I'm happy to be a co‑sponsor on this one. You know, I think it's hate week. And briefly wanted to ‑‑ the board of adaptive sports and recreation's 50th anniversary. I'd like to give $200,

office. And of course, and thank you, everyone, for considering this great group of kids, this dance for going L.A., item 11, Creations Berkeley. And I think that's about it. Thank you very much.

Moving on to Councilmember Tragob. Thank you, Madam Mayor. First of all, I want to appreciate Councilmember Kaplan for including me as a co‑sponsor on item 10. And I would like to contribute $150 out

of my G‑13 account to item 11 by Councilmember Bartlett. Thanks for bringing that forward. On item four, I understand that this is a contract amendment. I would just like to appreciate the great work

that building opportunities for self‑sufficiency has done at the McKinley House and all across the city. Thank you to BOSS for all your work. I really appreciate my colleagues supporting my item, a

resolution in support of proposition four, the California Fair Elections Act of 2026 on the November 4th general election ballot, which is item 12. Prop 4 will allow other cities and counties in

California to have similar opportunities that we have here in Berkeley for fair, publicly‑funded elections. And lastly, I just wanted to, if I may ask the city manager if he could just confirm that on

item one, it would be with the amendment to the timeline for the first report that the council adopted at its previous meeting. Yes, Councilmember, that's right. The first report would come to you in

November, as we said, at that last meeting. It would be November 17th, that first meeting in November. And then subsequent reports would come in March, starting not that few months later, but the

following March. Thank you. And no further comment. Thank you. We're going to go to Councilmember Kesewani and then online to Councilmember Humbert. Thank you very much, Madam Mayor. I'd like to be

recorded as donating $100 to the BORP adaptive sports and recreation's 50th anniversary celebration. And thank you, Councilmember Taplin, for that item. And I'd also like to be recorded as donating

$100 to Creations Berkeley for the dance group. Sounds like it's a road trip. Okay, great. And thank you, Councilmember Bartlett, for that one. That's all. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Humbert.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'd like to, with respect to item number 10, the BORP adaptive sports and recreation's 50th anniversary celebration, I'd like to relinquish $100 from the D8 office account.

Thank you, Councilmember Taplin, for bringing that. Item number 11, brought by Councilmember Bartlett on Creations Berkeley, would like to relinquish also $100 from the D8 account to contribute to

that. Resolution, the number 12 resolution in support of Proposition 4, thank you, Councilmember Trigob, for bringing this item. Public financing of elections is a good, is good public policy, and I'm

in favor of extending this privilege to all cities in California. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We're going to go to Councilmember O'Keefe. Parliamentarian keeps kicking you out of the

queue, but you are there, and I'm number 31. Oh, yes. I'm going to build us our own. I've been building doing microelectronics. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, I just have thank you, Mayor. I just

have two quick, three quick comments. I'd like to donate $100 to item 10, $100 to item 11 from our office account. And I just want to thank councilmember for item 12. That's it. Thank you very much.

Councilmember Leno Parra. Thank you. I'd like to donate 150 to both items 10 and 11. And thank you. For authoring them. Thank you very much. I'm also going to add $100 to item 11. And then also thank

councilmember Tregg up for item number 12 is I don't know if I would be here if we didn't have public financing. So thank you very much. All right. We are now going to go to public comment on

information items or consent items only. Please come on up Kelly. Okay. And I have two more minutes and I'll take another one. If anyone wants to. Give me one. Okay. Someone's giving you a minute in

the back. Okay. You have four. Thank you. All right. So I'm commenting on item number two, the San Pablo specific plan, which is your second reading tonight. And the San Pablo specific plan is going

to impact Berkeley for decades to come. And I think it earned more than a 10 minute presentation. And I think it deserved a lot of questions that weren't asked. And I ask you to consider some

reconsideration of that San Pablo specific plan. And that is number one, that you approved moving affordable units to 120% of AMI. And I ask that you limit that number to no more than 10% of the unit.

And then affordable housing building. I asked that you return the family units to 50% as you heard Margaret Ernst say at your last meeting, that it was very difficult to rent the one bedroom and the

studio apartments and that we have a really big need for affordable family units. And those of us from the community really had misunderstood the intent of the city. We thought it was going to be

family units and affordable, not family units or affordable. And I really wish that you would put those two together family and affordable at the Muhly sites. Oh, we also took out the 50 feet of

commercial space at the street level in the front. And this was really to encourage activity on the streets so people would enjoy and feel comfortable walking on the street and that was removed and I

would ask that that be returned. There was a long discussion at the planning commission to encourage the first 50 feet as for commercial space for street activity. The planning commission also had

long discussion on removing the density standard and to put that. As no minimum on the density standards, so that on different site lots, especially awkward shaped lots, there could be a flexibility

in design whereas it was brought down from 145 to 100 units per acre. The planning commission recommended that it be no minimum for that flexibility. Open space and gathering space should not be an

incentive. It should be a requirement. If there is anything that you pick up today on health and community, it is about open space and gathering space. In fact, it was in the book super ages when I

left the meeting on the 29th and I picked up where I'd left off and it was on mental health and mental health was measured with access to nature and that access to nature nature can actually be

measured in reduced emergency room visits. This is critical. It is important and the nature score they ask they suggest it should be above 80. I put in my zip code here in Berkeley and it came up as

39. I ask that you reconsider these items and have discussion about it so that we can have the best for thanks Kelly. Thank you. I'm here to speak on consent item number two, the second reading of Sam

Pablo plan and what I think is a significant abuse of ethics and discretion on the part of this council when they passed the amendment. I was appalled at council member a conduct at the last hearing

on this matter and so should you given the referendum that you proposed today. How many times are you going to let see and bring in substantial amendments to a plan at the last minute without not one

of you even objecting to it? I get that some of you agree with the outcome, but the fact that you let her abuse the process and the brown act is insulting to the constituents when she claimed to

represent clearly it gives you no chance to check her data. I submit that these significant last minute changes the height far far unit per acre density in the spa as a proposed violation of the brown

act want is laughing right now. That shows how disregard she is to the constituents that she claims to represent what's worse is her MO and you continue to let her do it at each significant proposal

before you. She comes in with the last minute amendment. Do you understand you're telling darkly that litigation referendum and complaint to hire office are the only thing that force you to listen to

constituents. You spend all your time thanking staff instead of asking the hard questions. If you research them, perhaps you'd understand how harmful these changes are. It is this game that this

keserani polls at every controversial proposal, which is plain insulting to Berkeley. Let her laugh. Keep on laughing. She clearly had time to speak with the planning commission staff and the planning

department before about the amendment and yet she first presented it to the public on the dais. This council never curtails her childless Trump like rants such as the one that happened last time, even

though your rules say you should. She unreasonally berates well intended citizens who supply facts in opposition to her process, her ethics and her data more importantly, despite her claims, she does

not represent the interest. I don't care about her D1 constituents, the unhoused, the disenfranchised, and those who cannot afford housing. She's smiling. She thinks this is funny. She clearly claims

more about her social media. I don't expect this will make much difference today because you've chosen to put it on the consent calendar. Many of you have hops for higher office. But one thing has

happened because of keserani and sensitive and disparagement. There are more neighborhood associations that have risen up and we're going to be here, 26, 27, 28, 29 and 30. Thank you. Thank you. Good

evening. I'm Dr. Steven Alpert. The actions of this council regarding construction new housing are profoundly disappointing. The same public specific plan similar to the pending three quarters up

zoning reportedly provides affordable housing for families. Indeed, council members proudly proclaim they support housing for families. However, as documented by Kelly Hammergren and her detailed

activist diary post on October 9th, the vast majority of new housing approved by the city's zoning adjustment board, whose members you appoint, allow for studio and one bedroom units. For example, the

11 story structure, recently approved for 2920, 2029, 2920, Shattuck has 242 units of which 219 are studios, only 13 are two bedrooms and one, only one unit is three bedrooms. That building will not

provide housing for families. Stop this farce. Council member trade group and near issue support council member keserani's proposal to allow developers to remove the small percentage of onsite

affordable housing mandated by state density bonus and instead pay in new fees to the housing trust fund city staff, along with consultants, spent several years formulating the same public specific

plan, engaging with the community members. To offer the vision for the transformation of San Pablo Avenue. The resulting ideas and recommendations were disregarded by this council, similar to the

Hopkins bike plan majority of council members simply disregard and ignore information that in real world data that contradicts your predetermined agenda. >> These public council comment sessions are

now entirely performative. We pretend to listen to us but have already predetermined your votes. It's a disgrace. >> Hi, I'm Gail Alcock and I'm D2 and I'm just thinking about the last meeting where I

was left with the question I've been asking from the beginning of middle housing and what's the cap, how much, and the two comments I'm referring to are, we have to build as many house units as

possible for as many, any number of people that want to come here. And the other comment was we need as much housing as possible, which I also heard Saturday from one of our council members that more

housing is the answer to our economic problem. So, in case we forget that the affordable housing is actually what we need, not just more housing, and I consider what's being built on San Pablo as

middle housing, not affordable housing. Here's in case any affordable housing does get built. >> Thank you. >> I'd like to speak for the surveillance technology accountability requirements.

Transparency and accountability is sort of a necessary common sense thing and I go to the board, the public, the police accountability board meetings and try to emphasize that in construction, if I'm

going to get a permit, I know I'm going to be hit with an inspection. So it's like, could be simpler if we're making agreements to also be able to break them when there's a breach in trust of some

sort or another. And if we don't track these things, in fact, and evidence, we're sort of steering without a steering wheel. So bless all of you, thank you, and gosh, there's so much to do, thank you.

>> Thanks, Maria. >> I have two minutes more, so I have three total, thank you very much. So it's interesting that you have item on the, you're talking about hate, and none of you did jack due to qua

for about the genocide. Zionism is equal to hate, which is equal to racism. >> Which item are you referring to? >> I'm talking about hate week. >> That was not on the consent calendar or an

information item, so you're welcome to speak on one of those. >> Surveillance, and you know what, I'm so tired of you interrupting me, I want my freaking time back. She does this every fucking time.

It's really annoying, Mayor. >> I will give you your time back, but profanity, just watch your profanity, please. If you could give her more time back, please. >> Yeah, get the smirk off your face,

because it's really annoying. It's funny, the other person talking is talking, you didn't stop one person who is talking about any member of the council. And that's something that you do, I guess,

sometimes. So if you're going to have these rules, you should be consistent with them, period, which you're not. Yeah, keep smiling, it's not fucking funny. >> Okay. >> Excuse my language. >> You

know, I think you are welcome to make your comment, but you should know this is not okay. We don't need floc, and we don't need a mayor that continuously interrupts the constituents just because she

doesn't want to hear what they have to say. There's a genocide going on, you're talking about hate, yet you are all haters. And the fact that we have all the Zionists in the room tonight, I'm happy I

wore my anti-Zionist club sweatshirt. I hope you all can see it, because Zionism is equal to hate, which is equal to racism. Maybe y'all don't know that, but it's a fact. When you don't allow a

certain group of people to live, to breathe, have different set of rules. >> I'm sorry, this is clearly not about consent calendar or information items. >> It's about surveillance. >> I'm not even

hearing you talk about surveillance. All the time, everywhere, we're being surveilled. And these things should not be happening. And I hope these rules that you guys are having on the surveillance

policy is a good one. I haven't read your item, but yeah, I don't know why she's over there and choosing to ignore this constituent of the city who has lived here for 45 years. And some people don't

appreciate the fact that the council doesn't even listen or pay attention. That has been mentioned numerous times at numerous meetings, and you still continue to do it. You continue to be rude to the

people that vote in this city. It's not okay. And there has been a genocide going on, and if you can't love everyone, treat everyone equally, Cheryl, can you please stick to conversations on the

subject? And you don't have to control everything, Mayor. You should check yourself. >> You can refer to us as a body. >> See, now you're going to your little rule that you're only applied sometimes.

>> You know what, Cheryl? Cheryl, the rule is to address the council as a whole. >> I was addressing the council as a whole. >> Okay, and folks can talk about certain things that people are doing.

That's their right, but they can't address individual people. >> They are addressing people. >> So I don't want to argue with you, Cheryl. >> You're just a lotionizer in your house, Cheryl. >> Okay,

all right. Is there other, is there, and excuse me. Is there any other comment on consent calendar or information items only, please? Anyone online? >> Looks like we have a few hands raised. We have

eight hands raised right now. So we have M. Jones. First, this is for consent and information items only. >> I'm what, M. Jones is waiting on non-consent items. >> This is public comment only for? >>

I understand. >> You're waiting for an action item? >> I'm waiting for, not on the agenda items. >> Oh, okay, all right, I'll put you back. We'll get that at the end. All right, Rachel Bradley. >> Hi,

I attended the recent public hearing on the San Pablo Avenue specific plan and was deeply disappointed to watch the council ride roughshod over the deep concerns of the community to adopt a plan that

will actively discourage affordable housing and that gives short shrift to residents' documented concerns about gentrification and the lack of family housing as well as undermining our small

businesses in the area. Not to mention, allowing the last minute amendments that further undermine the community's wishes and goals. More and more Berkeley residents are feeling ignored and unheard by

their representatives. This is not a healthy environment that encourages trust and pulling together to achieve common goals. I know I'm not the only one who's deeply disappointed by your short-sighted

adoption of the plan. It's not too late to reconsider. >> Okay, the next speaker is David Scheer. >> Hello. I just wanted to speak briefly about information items, I think 18 and 19 on measure O and

inclusionary housing. They tell a really important story. It's kind of a bummer to see them on information, but they tell a really important story and I think part of it is that the city of Berkeley

is actually a regional leader in building affordable housing. That's building affordable housing through inclusionary, through the measure O bond, through the in Lou fees. So this is something where

we really need to like, I think be shouting it from the rooftops and I hope that we can find ways to do that. Another important story that it tells is that inclusionary units and inclusionary and the

in Lou fee is totally dependent on the private construction market and it's a real problem because it means that there's a lot of times we're not getting what we need to be getting. Measure O and

bonds are way around that and measure O is almost done so we're going to have to re-app. Thank you so much. >> Okay, next is Janice Ching. Janice, go ahead. I see you're unmuted, Janice, but we can't

hear you. >> Is that better? Okay. Okay. I want to add my concern about the loss of public engagement when substantive changes are brought forward at the last minute. This is about the San Pablo

Avenue specific plan. People who have been watching that plan for such a long time deserved but did not get to review and comment on the proposed changes. They didn't get enough of an opportunity. I'm

also very concerned about giving away height by right and that will take away the incentive to build the affordable units we need and get from the state density bonus. So I'm against that and lastly,

I want to warn against the loss of commercial units on our quarters. This is already happening on Shattuck and I worry that it will turn San Pablo Avenue into a less safe and less welcoming area.

Thank you. >> All right. And we have Tony. >> Good evening. I do want to remind the council that every bit of money you spend comes from us, the taxpayers. And you took about a million dollars from

MTA to do the San Pablo Avenue specific plan planning and everything that the planners came up with was overturned such as the nodes, such as maximum density, such as height limits that would

incentivize the use of the density bonus and affordable housing and many other items. And I have been trying to understand where the changes came from in March of 2025 and I haven't been able to

figure it out. So I'm going to continue to ask. In the meantime, I do not like the zoning on San Pablo Avenue. I am a fairly expert person in Berkeley on zoning. Zoning is sort of like labor

negotiating. You use comparative standards. >> Thanks, Tony. >> Next is Dietmar. >> Hi. My name is Dietmar Lorenz. I'm an architect in Berkeley. I share the concerns previous speaker mentioned about

the process of the San Pablo plan and the last minute motions which were obviously circulated by staff but the public didn't learn about it until the hearing. I think this is really a poor conduct.

And then, you know, many of you on the dais deliberated, well, you know, is it, you know, are we doing a five-story base or a seven-story base? Basically, you know, does affordable housing come

through the state density bonus or through the housing fund? And you know, with all this struggle between the two, many of you said there's merit in both approaches. It's in hindsight very surprising

that nobody suggested why don't we meet in the middle and allow a six-story base? You know, if you're really concerned about compromise, and it's also always this false statement that you wouldn't get

anything into the housing fund if it runs through the state density bonus. The facts, you know, say the opposite. >> Thanks, Dietmar. Your time is up. >> And last speaker is Carla. >> Hi. Good

evening, mayor and council. I'm Carla Appleberry, the founder of Creations. And I just want to thank you all and the taxpayers of Berkeley for supporting our proposal on tonight's consent calendar.

And I just want to clarify something. This opportunity was described kind of, could have been as a road trip. But it's so much more than that. It's professional development and giving young African-

American girls access to training, performance opportunities, and a world of arts beyond Berkeley. And with concerns like gun violence and human trafficking affecting our youth, Creations is doing its

part to keep children safe, engaged, uplifted, and encouraged. Every child we reach matters. These girls have spent years dancing at Berkeley's annual celebrations, and we look forward to continuing.

Thank you for investing, and have a good evening. >> Thank you, Carla. Thanks for clarifying that. >> And we do have one more speaker. We have Dela Luna. >> Yes. I wanted to also speak about the

amendments that came in last minute. That has happened recently twice with the San Pablo, the first reading, and then also with the tear gas. And it was Kestorwani, a councilmember who did that both

times. And that was just like in the past 30 days. So it is surprising what that first speaker said that nobody on the dais even mentioned it or said anything. And it does eliminate the public giving

us an opportunity to review and then make comments on it. And then I wanted to say that there is a marked difference in how some speakers are treated as the -- one speaker was addressing councilmember

Kestorwani directly. And there was no intervention. So I just wanted to say that. And then I also wanted to say that Christian Zionism does exist and Christian Zionists do live in Berkeley, and I feel

like that's being erased from the conversation. And that's it. Thank you. >> Okay. I think that's it for the public comment. Is that correct? >> Yes, that's it. >> All right. Councilmember Tapland,

yours is up first. >> Yes. There's a lot I could say, but I'm just going to move adoption of the concern calendar. >> I'll second that. And I did just want to thank folks who have commented about the

San Pablo Avenue specific plan. And I do just want to say for the record that all councilmembers and the mayor are free to introduce amendments to any item during the public council meeting. Believe

it or not, that's the point of the meeting. To debate the item and consider amendments. And I do just want to remind everyone that I wasn't the only one who had amendments. We had councilmembers

Tregoob, O'Keefe and Blackaby who added important substantive amendments to the item that made it stronger. And I am very proud of the plan that we passed. And I regret that my smile and listening to

public commenters has upset them. And I look forward to passing the consent calendar with a second reading of the San Pablo Avenue specific plan. Thank you. >> Thank you. Councilmember Blackaby. >>

Briefly. This was in consultation with the city attorney on items 18, 19 and 20. Just wanted to confirm before we vote that the ask is to consider them together one block. It's not three separate

things. One question period. One public comment period on all three reports. Just so it's clear on the agenda process. >> Thank you. I appreciate you clarifying that. Yeah. And I did just want to say

out loud for folks, you know, we have had a lot of conversations with the city attorney's office about what's appropriate and not appropriate in stopping people. And certainly when people are speaking

off topic not on consent or calendar information items, it is appropriate for me to interject and ask that they speak on those items. And also I think it's important to acknowledge there's a

difference between when you're addressing, you know, something that a council member did or said versus saying you, council member, I think that, you know, you need to do this better or something.

There's a difference between addressing individuals or the council as a whole. And so, you know, I will continue to uphold the rules that we have agreed to on council, you know, and I think it's

really unfortunate that we have people who are oftentimes trying to shoe horn in their own issues into the business of the city because it prevents us from being able to move forward. And I also do

want to agree with council member Kessinwani's statement. The purpose of us having, you know, conversations on council, it's not about last minute amendments. It's about this is what we're deciding.

And actually at that meeting in particular about the San Pablo Avenue corridor plan, we had people present their amendments before we even had public comment. So it did give people an opportunity to

speak to it. And that is actually something that we've been talking about too. It's something that was recommended to our agenda and rules committee. And I think it makes a lot of sense. So, you know,

I want folks to understand we are absolutely listening. We are here. We're taking notes. We're paying attention. And our staff are also here listening, taking notes, paying attention. And sometimes we

just don't agree with the commenters. And that does happen occasionally. And so, you know, I don't want folks to feel like we're not listening. We absolutely are. It's just we may not agree and change

our minds on issues all the time. So I think that's important to say. Okay. We have a motion on the floor. There was a second to approve the consent calendar. So I believe we need to take roll because

council member Humbert is online. Okay. To approve the consent calendar, council member Kessinwani. Yes. Taplin. Bartlett. Yes. Traga. Aye. O'Keeffe. Yes. Blackaby. Yes. Lenapara. Yes. Humbert. Yes.

And Maryshe. Yes. Okay. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you very much. I'm going to give us a 10 minute break. We are going to switch into the presentation for item 15, which is the affordable housing

preference policy. So I will give 10 minutes to just let everyone take a quick bio break and for folks to set up for the next item. Thank you. Thank you. Recording stopped. Recording in progress.

Recording stopped. Recording in progress. Okay. Hello, everyone. We are back from the break. Thank you very much for your patience. We are jumping to item number 15, affordable housing preference

policy, pilot assessment and policy update, which was continuing from the September 29th, 2026 meeting. Thank you so much for your patience with us. Thank you so much for coming back. Thank you so

much in advance for your presentation. Go ahead. Yeah. Good evening, mayor and city council members. Thank you so much and not a problem. We're happy to be here tonight. My name is Michael Baratey.

I'm the senior project manager and housing policy supervisor with health, housing and community services. I'm here tonight with the housing and community services manager, Margo Ernst, and my

colleague Anna Cash, our housing policy specialist on our housing team in HCS, and we're here tonight to present to you about the affordable housing preference policy. We're going to provide you an

update on the policy, how the implementation has gone so far and prepare some recommendations to help the policy, hopefully work more effectively for both applicants and affordable housing providers.

So Anna has provided a presentation tonight and I'm going to pass it to her to get started. Okay. Thanks, Mike. Good evening, mayor, council members and the public. My name is Anna Cash and I'm a

housing policy specialist in housing and community services division. Is that better? Thanks. So I'm going to start walking through the policy and we've had new council members elected since this was

first adopted, so I will give a grounding of the policy to start us off. Berkeley's affordable housing preference policy was first adopted in 2023 and took effect January 1st, 2024. Preference

policies are a tool that cities can use to prioritize applicants in affordable housing lotteries based on specific criteria. And Berkeley's preference policy implements goals identified by the

community and city council of helping people who've been displaced from Berkeley return, preventing additional displacement from Berkeley and acknowledging and addressing historic injustices. The

story of Berkeley's housing preference policy starts with community organizing in response to many years of displacement, especially from the black community in South Berkeley. South Berkeley

community groups galvanized around the Adeline corridor specific plan and planning for the BART stations and called for specific anti displacement policies, including a preference policy or right of

return. The preference policy that has been adopted is the result of extensive community engagement and leadership by the city's community partners with healthy black families as the lead community

partner. Healthy black families worked on surveys, a community leaders group and outreach like town halls and forums to help shape the community driven preference policy and staff have also had

critical partnerships with the online affordable housing application portal, which is now the regional portal doorway as well as well as with our CD and John Stewart company and other affordable

housing developers to figure out implementation. So there are seven preferences in the preference policy. There's a first priority for families who lost their homes when Bart was built in the 1960s

and 1970s and then there's six other categories that are worth one point each. So displacement due to eviction, foreclosure, resident of a red line neighborhood, descendant of a resident of a red line

neighborhood, homeless are at risk of homelessness and families with children. This is a cumulative points based system where lottery rankings are resorted based on the total number of points and

applicant household has and you show proof for each preference that you qualify for. There are two types of affordable housing in Berkeley, nonprofit affordable housing supported by the city's housing

trust fund and below market rate units created by the city's inclusionary housing ordinance. And we call those HTF and BMR units respectively. So the first large HTF project that preferences were

applied to is model Miller Sherrick community, which is across from Ashby bard in the heart of south Berkeley, 87 total units and it has healthy black families offices on the ground floor. So a lot of

the pilot lessons that will speak to focus on that building because it's larger. So there's more that we can learn. But preferences have also been implemented at two bmr properties with five total

preference units. So far we undertook both qualitative research in partnership with healthy black families on resident experiences at the model property as well as quantitative analysis with the

support of street level advisors digging into leasing data from that building. We also conducted several stakeholder interviews to get a well rounded picture of the pilot. I'll start with what's

working well, which is that the policy is creating a pathway for long-term Berkeley community members to come home 17 households with ties to red line neighborhoods moved into model Miller Sherrick

community. That's more than one in four of the households who moved in and when healthy black families conducted a resident survey in the building, two thirds of respondents indicated that they had

applied because they wanted to return to South Berkeley. One of the quotes from that tenant survey speaks to the profound personal impact that that can have. This person said it was fair and truly a

blessing. Affordability and Berkeley had been out of reach for me since I left my mom's house in 1984. Another promising aspect of the policy is the priority for those whose families were directly

displaced due to the construction of BART in the 1960s and 70s. We obtained public records to form a database of these homeowners and the city issues certificates. So we work with people through that

process. We also formed a partnership with the Berkeley public library to support people in looking for documentation of their ties to these homes. So far, 17 certificates have been issued and we

review those applications on a rolling basis. This is a quote from a recent part certificate recipient who said my great grandmother was a single mother with three kids who worked hard to buy her

first home to then be forced to move. So those certificate applications have really shown us how these stories get passed down through the generations. And now I will speak to some of the challenges.

So number one is the complex point system. The points based preference policy started out on the Alameda County housing portal, which then transitioned to the regional portal doorway. Doorway is

designed to support tier based preference policies. This inconsistency and the heavy burden of verifying many points creates friction for both applicants and leasing staff. Adopting a tier based

system will align Berkeley with regional standards and will allow doorway to transparently display applicants wait list position to them when they log on. The next piece is income mismatch. For some

of the preferences, such as the homeless eviction and foreclosure preferences, the majority of applicants who verified for these categories were not income eligible for 50% or 60% area median income,

nonprofit, affordable housing units. So that speaks to broader structural issues. Finally, the homeless preference staff reviewed nearly 900 homeless verification forms and were able to verify few

people for the preference. And also service providers shared that having a specific homeless preference led to false expectations since it wasn't tied to supportive housing that typically comes with

homeless placements. So it was more confusing than helpful for many applicants responding to these challenges were proposing policy updates that staff developed in consultation with key stakeholders

from model Miller share community, including healthy black families, RCD, John Stewart company and doorway. This chart shows what we know from the lease up at model Miller share, which is that

descendants of people who lived in Berkeley's red line neighborhoods face the greatest cumulative displacement pressures. Four points was the highest number of preference points that applicant

households who moved into preference units had and the orange bars represent red line neighborhood descendants. So you can see they're highly represented in the highest priority categories. All of the

households with four points were descendants of red line neighborhood residents and 80% of highest priority applicants, those with three or four points had generational red lining roots. This new

proposal elevates historical injustice displacement from Berkeley and ties to the community more. It honors the community's intent and creates a more effective process. Just as a reminder in the

current policy, applicants get one point for each preference and they add up. And each of those preferences needs to be independently verified. So let's say you selected all seven preferences, you

would be asked to submit documentation for all seven categories. This new proposal is around a ranked tier system. So a tier system groups applicants by priority with all applicants in a higher tier

considered before units are offered to the next year. Under this system, applicants only provide verifying documentation for their highest qualifying preference. So this proposal reduces documentation

burden and makes the process better for applicants. The new proposal still has first priority for families who were displaced due to BART construction. Then the next tier lifts up households with

generational ties to red line neighborhoods. Then current and displaced Berkeley households is a consolidated category that is inclusive of the many ways that people experience housing precarity and

displacement. In the red line neighborhoods and current slash displaced resident categories, households with children are prioritized first. That was a priority for the community partner healthy black

families that we wanted to honor and research shows children are most vulnerable to and impacted by displacement. So why make these changes? First is a strengthening of equity and anti displacement

focus of the policy. One key change is to reposition descendants of red line neighborhood residents to tier two priority level. As we saw in the pilot data by prioritizing these long term community

members, you're prioritizing those with the most layered and compounding displacement experiences. Then simplification. These changes consolidate three overlapping categories into a broader displaced

from Berkeley category. And also this new system uses tiers instead of points with tiers instead of providing documentation for every category, applicants only provide it for the single highest tier

they qualify for out of the three categories. So this means faster lease ups, too. And it supports Berkeley families by applying that families with children sub layer. It's also important to name the

bigger picture around displacement in Berkeley. The preference policy is just one tool in the toolbox and there are additional opportunities around anti displacement efforts as we look to the upcoming

BART developments and other sites. One there's a need for holistic support for returning Berkeley community members, especially those who've been displaced for a long time, making sure that they're

well connected to Berkeley resources to help them thrive. Also the income mismatch that took place at model shows that many people who've been pushed out of Berkeley can't afford affordable units that

are reserved for 50% or 60% area median income. So there's a clear need for more deeply affordable housing and it could also be helpful to explore connecting preference applicants with existing

housing for extremely low income residents. HAC unanimously recommended the staff recommendation to council at their July meeting, sorry that should say October for City Council. If council chooses to

advance the proposed policy tonight, staff will revise administrative guidelines and coordinate with the regional online housing portal doorway to implement the new preferences by the November 1st

effective date. So again, here's our final recommendation. And just to go over some of the key benefits, the proposed policy revisions make it easier for applicants to apply with reduced

documentation, work effectively with the doorway online affordable housing application portal, make it easier for property managers to verify documentation, supporting more efficient and faster lease

ups to get people house faster and these changes more directly center the equity goals of the policy. The revisions elevate our displacement and the red lining preferences to focus on equity while

still being inclusive of broader displacement experiences and Berkeley community members. Again, our intent is to preserve the community priorities and translate lessons from the pilot to make a

better process and experience for applicants. Thank you so much for your time and we look forward to your questions. Thank you so much, really appreciate the presentation and the really, you know,

interesting and important data. I'm going to take council questions from council members starting with Councilmember Traeger. Oh, actually, no, I'm going to start with Councilmember Bartlett, if

that's okay, just because it was his district we are mostly talking about and then for the model shared building. Thank you. Thanks very much. And it's wonderful to see this in practice. After all

these years, a couple of quick questions, though, and this is we're going to some of the anecdotal reports I've heard about, I guess, friction in the application process resulting in possibly our

numbers being lower. I am wondering if you can speak to that at all. Anything you heard? Yeah, well, you know, I'd say part of our recommendations tonight is to help improve the applicant experience.

As Anna mentioned, each preference requires individual documentation. And in addition to that, that's in addition to the real layers of documentation that are already required for affordable housing

applicants. So our hope tonight is that by adopting this new policy revisions, we can really simplify that experience by reducing the burden on applicants. So that was one thing from talking with

folks, you know, talking with Healthy Buck Families and tenants at the building, as well as the property managers that we found was kind of a big burden for folks using the current policy. So would

that look like a certification that they can take with them a portable certification or a profile that's reusable? Something persistent, right? If they didn't make this round, they can take them back

next round. Because you're right, the foundational friction with applying for affordable housing anywhere in this county is really cumbersome and difficult. It'd be great if we could even inform that

process. Yeah, so I mean, one of the reasons that we want to work seamlessly with Doorway, the regional online affordable housing application portal, is that it does save people's sort of basic

profiles. So you know, there's an effort there to really make things more straightforward for people. And then with the BART certificates, we as staff work with applicants to issue certificates that

they can use for different affordable housing lotteries. For other preferences, the two other tiers, those are verified as you go through the affordable housing application process. But as Mike

mentioned, our hope is that, you know, by having so many fewer categories, the burden will be really reduced for people. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Matryek. Thank you so much for this incredible

amount of work. And I have a, I have two questions. The first is, and I recognize much of what is in our 100% below market rate housing pipeline is rooted in South and West Berkeley, but since this is

a citywide policy going forward, what is the mapping of, let's say, the, I mean, the preference is someone who may have been redlined out of a community or displaced, maybe had family living in South

or West Forklion was-- It's displaced, but a unit may open up in Berkeley, but outside of those communities, just wanted to try to understand the positioning of this policy with the overlay of

Berkeley, as well as whether this would apply to inclusionary units inside otherwise market rate buildings, or does this policy specifically impact the 100% BMR buildings only? Yeah, so the preference

policy applies citywide, and it applies to both the housing trust fund units, where it's 100% non-profit affordable housing, as well as below market rate units in market rate buildings, so long as

they're not otherwise reserved for special population, like shelter plus care. -Did you want to add anything? -I think, I'm not sure if I fully understood the first question. So, you know, the policy

does apply citywide. If you want to go ahead. Yeah, I think the, for, and Anna and Mike can correct me if I misstate this, but for Tier 2, which is displaced from a redlined area, that, the, can you

describe the areas in the city that that? -Sure, yeah, so the second tier is, you know, if you are descendant of someone who lived in a redlined neighborhood, and the redlined neighborhoods are

primarily south and west Berkeley, and small sections of central Berkeley, and that's in recognition of, you know, the many years of harm that redlining has led to, and also the ways in which

redlining has paved the way for gentrification and displacement today, so those are the very same areas where we see the greatest displacement pressures in Berkeley, so it's both to address historical

harms and also to address the displacement pressures. -And Tier 2, the Tier 2 preference is citywide, so it's not location-specific in terms of, like, where that preference would apply. You, that

preference can apply to any affordable unit that is subject to our preference policy citywide, so it's not just in those units that are in those areas, and then the third tier also does give

preference for displaced households citywide. Is that my characterizing that correctly? -Yeah, so I think, if I could clarify, my question really gets to, if someone had generations of family that

were, for whatever reason, displaced out of what is a formerly redlined community, and they may get on this list, but a unit may open up outside of those areas, how would this map on if it's citywide?

-Yeah, so the city doesn't centrally manage a wait list. The only thing that we're sort of, you know, centrally managing is the BART certificates, so the process is that people are applying on

doorway, the regional portal, and they have sort of just housing choice to apply to the buildings that they want to apply to, you know, they can select which neighborhoods they want to apply in, and

then, you know, the lottery is reorganized by these tiers, and if they're selected for a unit, they would provide verification of their preference if they want to move into that unit, so somebody

with, you know, generational ties to South Berkeley could be choosing to apply to a building in South Berkeley, maybe it's important to them to come back to their direct neighborhood, or maybe there's

a building in another part of the city that they would like to apply to, and that's, you know, up to their choice. I hope that answers it. -Okay, thank you, and my last question is around, you

mentioned that one of the barriers was the inflexible nature somewhat driven, I guess, by other, you know, like federal laws, like 50% AMI, 80% AMI, or just how the density bonus works, and those

might not be fully responsive to the magnitude of the need around housing for all affordable income levels. I'm wondering how you're thinking through what other policies might you recommend that the

city may look at going forward in concert with these recommendations to provide additional flexibility, say, to have units with deeper affordability or allowance for, say, workforce housing outside of

the 50% and 80% AMI. -Yeah, I can start it. Yeah, so we do want to acknowledge our housing trust fund projects do provide some 30% AMI, extremely low-income units, and permanent supportive housing, so

we do offer those resources. It's not that that's not available. It's just that the way the system works requires certain percentages of each type, and then also it depends on the funding sources that

are available as well, and so each project gets unique funding sources that often don't allow for as many low-income units as we need, so we do offer them, and we also want to acknowledge that there

are project-based vouchers from the Murphy Housing Authority that also serve the extremely low-income families as well, so those are some current sources that we do have available, and I'll pass it

over to talk about some other options. -Yeah, I mean, part of what we did with stakeholder interviews was talk to other cities, so we learned about some interesting models. For example, in San

Francisco, folks who qualify for preferences related to displacement but can't necessarily afford the sort of general lottery units. Over there, they're sort of connecting with the Housing Authority

to, you know, help link people up who qualify for preferences with project-based voucher units where rent is tied to income, so that's just one thing that we learned about in the process. -And we also

have our, like, the permanent supportive housing that we have that is deeply affordable and it has supportive services that are tied to it. Those units don't, aren't leased up using the preference

policy because there's a different process for leasing those up, which is through coordinated entry, so I think it is primarily the issue that we were coming up against is for those units that are at

higher income bands and getting so many applicants that really wouldn't income qualify and, like, setting up the expectation that they would get a preference and be able to get the unit when their

income might be too low for those. -Thank you. -Thank you. Councilmember Blackaby. -Thanks, Madam Mayor, and thank you Anna, Mike, and Marco for being here twice, and thank you for the presentation on

this great program. I really just had one question as sort of someone who's really interested in the numbers behind it. Could you give us a sense of during the pilot phase, again, roughly the number

of applicants and how many people got placed into the number of units, and then how you anticipate that scaling kind of during full rollout? I'm just trying to get a number, kind of an idea of dozens

of people, hundreds of people, and kind of how many people is this going to touch if you have some order of magnitude guidance of the, or hints, what that might look like? -Yeah, I mean, so currently,

you know, the policy applies to a portion of affordable housing units, so for the current iteration of the policy, that's 75% of units. So, you know, our hope is that with some of these policy

revisions, the policy will be even more effective at placing people who qualify for preference into those preference-designated units. I wouldn't expect that, you know, we could necessarily say 75% of

the new affordable housing stock will be people with preferences, but I think the goal is to just get, you know, just continue to increase the number of preference households in preference units. I

don't know what you might want to add to that. -Yeah, I also just want to restate, and Margot's point earlier, that buildings do have special funds as well that require kind of direct placement, such

as permanent supportive housing, so the preferences won't necessarily apply to every unit and every building. We have to kind of work within that puzzle, within the puzzle pieces of funding, so it's

kind of hard to pinpoint a number, but I know Margot and I are, for your requestable item, can talk more about the housing pipeline later. That'll give us, she has those numbers that can give us more

of an idea of what that might look like. -I do. I have numbers on that. I hope you're right. I will say one thing, I know it was important, when the City Council adopted the first iteration of the

preference policy, one of the things that was really important was to get it adopted kind of in advance of our robust pipeline of projects and units coming online, including all of the units at the

North Berkeley and Ashby Bart station, so it was well positioned when it was adopted to really take advantage of all the units that are being generated with both housing trust fund dollars, as well as

measure O dollars and really, you know, to be able to have it apply to those, and so that's still the case, even with the second iteration. -Yeah, I know, and I'm looking forward to talking about the

numbers on that stuff later. Thank you. -Thank you very much. Other questions from my Council colleagues? Okay, I was going to ask a couple questions. So with the income mismatch, I just wanted to

make sure I understand you were saying that people had, and from the report, people had lower incomes than the levels at which we had them at. Is that right? Could you just dive a little bit deeper in

that? -Yeah, so essentially, you know, part of any affordable housing application process is making sure someone income qualifies for the unit. So there's both minimum incomes that you need to make

for specific, so specific units are designated for specific income bands. The most common in low-income housing tax credit affordable housing is 50% area median income units and 60% area median income

units. And those income bands both come with minimum incomes that an applicant household needs to make and maximums. And so part of what the, you know, leasing staff is doing is making sure that

people make enough income to afford the unit. And in many cases where they were verifying preferences, we saw that, you know, especially for the homeless preference, they were able to confirm, yes,

this person qualifies for the homeless preference, but they don't make enough income to qualify for the affordable housing unit on the basis of income, which is a separate process from the preference

policy. -And was that just for the unhoused applicants or was that for others as well? That's what I wasn't quite clear on, I think. -Yeah, for eviction and foreclosure, that was also where we saw the

biggest income mismatch numbers. -Yeah, I just wanted to kind of acknowledge, also going back to Council Member Trico's question too, like one issue that I think we're really experiencing now and

trying to navigate is as higher incomes continue to move into Alameda County and across the Bay Area, incomes on the lower end of the bracket are stagnating. And so what we're seeing is our AMIs are

increasing overall, but folks on the lower end are, it's getting harder for them to kind of keep things. And that's something that we're kind of still trying to, a lot of communities are struggling

with and our system is kind of experiencing that gap right now. -I see, thank you, that's helpful. And then you also mentioned holistic support for families that are moving back into the area. And I

think that that makes sense to me. And I'm just wondering if you could speak more to the types of supports and, you know, if you all had thoughts on like how we could do that better. -Yeah, so I think

one thing is just making people aware of the resources that already exist. So whether it's workforce development from the county or free diapers from WIC or whatever the case may be, you know,

affordable housing is a huge support to people. But many people who've already been pushed out of the community might be one economic shock away from housing precarity. And so, and from greater

challenges, we know that the general cost of living here is high. So I think one piece is really just making people aware of existing resources and working with our community partners to help, you

know, make those connections. There have been programs in other communities. Austin, Texas has a Displacement Prevention Navigator program where trained community members help neighbors stay in their

home with housing resource guidance and other supports. So there's interesting models out there from other communities, but I think just, you know, really ensuring that people are well aware of

resources. -Yeah, there's just some simple stuff we could do better. Like our parks department offers priority access for income qualifying folks to register for their kids for summer camps. You know,

we have our youth works. We have great programs at our senior center. And so, you know, Anna and I and our team were discussing just creating better synergies in our department to really connect folks

and our housing to these awesome resources that we already offer. -Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Okay. I think that there are no more questions. So I will see if there's

any public comment on this matter. Again, we are on item number 15, which is affordable housing preference policy, pilot assessment and policy update. If you have any comment on that, please come on

up and raise your hand online. -So I'm really disappointed that we don't have some statistics on how many applicants are turned away, you know, that really want this housing and they applied, but we

don't have enough units. So I think that's really important for us in terms of our planning in this community of what we need for affordable housing. We need to have those statistics. They should be

here and I'm disappointed that they're not part of the report not available right now. So that's one comment. The other comment is in relation to people not having enough income, the homeless who

don't have enough income to even qualify for the affordable housing. And that should tell us why they're on their street because they don't have enough income to qualify for affordable housing. So

there isn't any place for them to live. What's left of them is being on the street. And I think we need some better numbers on that also so that we know how much housing we need for the extremely

poor. So I don't know what we do tonight about that. But I think that that really needs to be given to the council and the community so that we have that kind of information. As far as the preference,

this sounds a lot easier if they only have one thing to prove rather than a bunch of things. But I still wonder, you know, I saw something in here that you may need a PRA. Thank you. Thanks, Kelly. So

that makes it hard. Appreciate your time. Thanks. We have two more minutes. Good evening, mayor, council, staff, community. My name is Moni Law. I've been advocating for affordable housing for the 15

years that I've been here. And I came to every city council meeting and mayor Tom Bates asked me once, "Moni, why are you coming to the meeting on the next week?" I go, "Yes, mayor." And he goes, "But

why?" And I said, "Because I care." And here's one of the biggest items I'm really concerned about. And I thank you for your work, by the way. We work together during that time. All those meetings, I

went to many of them, lots of them. And we created this wonderful policy. And here's the heart of the matter. I'm a poli-sci major for UC Berkeley, not a math major. But here's the basic math. And

here's the basic problem. Average median income. What's the average median income in Berkeley? $180,000 a year. What's half of $180,000? $90,000. How many teachers do you know who make $90,000? How

many store clerks do you know who makes $90,000? How many teachers? All the categories of people in our community don't qualify often for the 50%, the 30% still too high, because you know how much

people make for SSI? $700,000 a month. Social security, on average, people make $1,200, $1,500 a month. That's not enough. So they don't qualify for the so-called affordable housing units. The RENA

numbers for the city of Berkeley were not met for 20 years. My understanding is they slapped Berkeley hard, pretty hard, and said, "You could be fined if you don't come up in your numbers of actually

affordable units." So Regional Housing Network Association, whichever N.A. stands for, R.H.N.A. In these last 10 years, we had an opportunity under the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance to make more

affordable housing onsite instead of the in-room fee. We let developers off easy. They got the opportunity to put money into the Inclusionary Housing Fund to build later, some other time, some other

place. We need the housing now, and we've already lost a lot of opportunities to ensure that type of housing was built that was low income, truly low income. Finally, as I came back to Berkeley after

being here 25 years ago as a student, or longer than that, I was so shocked and sad to see how many black people disappeared and I asked, you know, Mayor Gus Newport, "Where did all the black people

go?" He said, "Well, they've been displaced. Gentrification is strong, and the community ability to stay in their grandparents' houses no longer. Grandparents died. They then have no place to live,

and half the people I talked to, I talked to most of the people that are homeless in Berkeley, they grew up here. Their parents owned the home for three generations. They lost the home. They lost

their housing, and they're sleeping on our corners, and under tents, and tarps, and being swept away like they're trash, they're human beings. We have to do better for the unhoused in Berkeley, and we

have to do that by the decision making of our policy makers, which are our elected officials, to change and improve the Inclusionary Housing, or as I point out, make. Mayor, um, not Mayor, Council

Member Susan, um, and also Linda, Maya, and Susan, um, last name is escaping me. One graph. Wanted to know what I meant when I said, um, the Inclusionary Housing is difficult to obtain because they

have to apply to each building. Other cities do a unified application, so you can do it once and not, you know, run around to every building, 500 of the buildings you're trying to run to. They miss a

deadline, they miss a document. It's way too high of a threshold for a family that's already stressed out, to have to go to every building, put in for the lottery, pray and hope. Now, by the way, the

numbers I was hoping you would say it, but I believe there are 9,000 people that applied for the Maudel Shirek building. I know people who applied for it, they didn't get it, they're heartbroken,

they're still on doorway every day, trying to find an opening that they can afford. So there's ways we could do this. Please vote for better policies. Thanks. Thanks. Um, first, how well promoted was

the policy? I think that has to be looked at, if there were so few applicants. Second, and this point has somewhat been made, what if the grandparents who were discriminated against, those

individuals, some of them left and they now have a home elsewhere, with a backyard for their kids to play, why would they want to come back for a small apartment? Instead, their siblings may have

stayed, may have been working in very minimal wage jobs and in fact are extremely low income and maybe homeless, maybe it will likely be aging and they would be excluded because they're not extremely

low income. Theirs isn't about the right to return. Theirs is, they have the historical ties to redlining, they're here, they're here and they're poor and some of them are homeless and like Moni, I

have also spoken to people who grew up here and are homeless and are struggling or stayed with siblings for a while, but how are they covered by this? But are very, are very unstably housed. Some

people are not homeless, they're unstably housed. And they're hanging on with a family member who may keep them for a while, then they go couch surf with another family member, how are they going to

be covered by this policy? And it's important that we also look at people that are here now that are homeless and extremely, are at risk of homelessness that fall in the extremely low income category

because and they don't all need to be in supportive housing. That's another issue to talk about is if everybody who is economically deprived has to be into supportive housing is not necessarily the

case. Thank you. Thanks, Carol. Are there any public comments online? Let's see, we have six hands raised. So this is public comment on item 15, affordable housing preference policy, Monique Allen.

Hello, everyone. James Chang is online and he's given me one minute extra, so I have two minutes. Okay. Thank you. Esteemed council members and Madam Mayor, as a Motto Miller She-Rec resident who does

not recall receiving a survey from healthy Black families, I thank you for the opportunity to speak about Berkeley's housing preference policy process. The Motto Miller She-Rec community apartments

received over 9,000 applications for two waiting lists for just 87 apartments. That number does not show how many applicants qualified for Berkeley's affordable housing preference, but it does in fact

show a need of a scale of a need. These applicants who did not receive housing should not simply disappear from view when one development fulfills its affordable housing commitments. To remove the

burden from the applicants, I ask that the city require organizations paid to conduct housing preference outreach to also advocate for applicants after being denied from the initial application,

especially with this new program that's tiered. Outreach organizations' work should include verifying descendants and other eligible applicants for the housing preference provide a prioritized clear

path for consideration for future affordable housing, beginning with the Motto She-Rec pool of thousands of possible eligibles. These organizations must continue to advocate for the pool of known

eligibles, rather than leaving them alone to start all over. Their performance should be measured by verified applications, completed applications follow-up, tracked, denied applications, and

successful housing placements with wraparound care resources to mitigate the risks associated with 100% affordable housing. Motto Miller She-Rec is only 6% Black. These people are still seeking a

home. These organizations should do better and let us close the loopholes between outreach, verification, application, denial, and placement, where no eligible applicant is left behind. Thank you, and

with that, I am complete. Thank you, Dr. Allen. Thank you. Next is David Scheer. Hello. Oh, two minutes. Great. So I am in total support of the updates to the housing policy, the housing preference

policy that staff is putting forward tonight. I think that the preference policy is one of those places where we put our values into action. So I think that this revision will improve the policy, and

I hope that you pass it. Aside from all that, I just wanted to highlight and make sure that council and the city manager and HHCS leadership understands what a phenomenal job the staff did in this

revision. To me, this process of revising the preference policy is just a textbook example of a thoughtful, collaborative, and data-driven policy development process. They really went full spectrum.

They partnered with healthy Black families. They talked to the residents. They talked to private and nonprofit property managers. They got the data. They talked to jurisdictions with similar programs.

They really did the work, and I think the outcome of that is here for everyone to see. It is a program that is going to work better on its own terms. It is going to work better for the community. It

is going to be easier to implement both for staff and for property managers. So I just wanted to call that out and make sure that everybody is very clear on just what a great job that they did.

Separate from past that, I just want to say that as important and meaningful as this policy is, we know that it is not really enough. It only applies to regulated low-income housing, which is only

ever going to be a small percentage of our housing stock. Not everybody who has been displaced from Berkeley or their descendants are low-income. When BART came in and demolished large portions of

South Berkeley, they displaced a lot of homeowners. Of course, we know that during the foreclosure crisis 20 years ago, a lot of Berkeleyans were abused and defrauded, and they were foreclosed on.

Leaving Berkeley as a homeowner, and we got this program that you can come back as a low-income tenant, it is not the same. We really need to make sure that we are finding things to do for middle-

income people. That is all. Thank you. Okay, next is Taj. Good evening, Council. I was here in support of the previous commenter, so please take me off the board. Thank you. Next is Della Luna. Yes, I

wanted to say that I agree that you could see how much work that the staff put in, and I appreciate some of the challenges they brought up, especially about the income that is going to be rising in

the area. It is already happening in San Francisco, and we are expecting it to happen here shortly. I appreciate that the staff brought that up instead of not mentioning it, but it does seem like

there needs to be another metric just besides the median income. There has to be something. I know it is not average. I do not know what it is, but there is something else that is not attached to the

highest income earners because it balloons the data and the income levels, and then hearing about people who do not qualify that again has been a known problem, but I appreciate the staff bringing it

up instead of not bringing it up. I am impressed by the outreach to the community, and especially about getting the people displaced by BART and going through the effort of getting those records to

give people the certifications. That must take quite some time, but my question and what you did not speak about was about the people that might be in the queue who might have applied for the Sherrick

Building, and maybe there are, let us say, 4,000 people that are in that queue, and they went through the process under the old certification. How would they fit into this new process with the new

certification, with the only four levels? Are they still at the front of the line? Then there was a previous speaker who spoke, and it might have sounded like these people are not included, like they

will not just cross over to this new system, so I just would like to hear about that, like making sure people are not going to be dropped. Then I do hope this passes because I know people are waiting,

so that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next is Maria Sol. Thank you, and hi again. I just want to follow up on what Moni spoke of. This is very complex, obviously, and there's so many different

facets, so much to deal with, and you know I've been intimately involved with the full spectrum. Those people that deserve respect that have nothing but are not disposable, like we see happening

globally. They deserve a space, and yet, income is necessary for the choices that are affordable, and yet there's so much power and privilege and profit and incentivization. I was involved in Chicago

when the banks were redlining and burning buildings down with people in them, so I just want us to stay open to what our premises are, and how we regard people, and be as creative as we possibly can,

because this can be accomplished if we pay attention and are filled with care for everyone. We can be okay. Thank you again. Thank you. Thanks, Maria. And we have Janice Chang. Janice Chang. Good

evening. I support the affordable housing preference policy and appreciate that we are prioritizing affordable housing for families. My question is, why are we not prioritizing building family-sized

housing in the market rate sector so that we can get more of this type of housing with the state density bonus? How do we get market rate builders to build more family-sized homes? How can we

incentivize that? And it also concerns me that the AMI continues to rise so quickly, causing people to not qualify for the lower-income housing. We need to come up with a way to address this issue as

our incomes increase in the city. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comment? That's it. Okay. Thank you very much. Coming back to Council, are there any comments? Councilmember Bartlett. Also,

Councilmember Little-Pier, your mic is on. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I want to thank the staff here for your diligent work. I know this is really hard and healthy Black families as well as everyone

else who worked hard to bring this policy to life. And Lori Drosti, former Councilmember who initiated this, and thank her for allowing me to join it when I came to Council those years ago. And so

it's important to realize this effort was targeted by the federal authorities. We were afraid of it because it had lots of issues legally, which one you get into on the record. And it was a lot of

pressures. And we stuck with it, and we moved the needle forward and forward and forward, and here we are. And I have to say, 17 doesn't sound like a lot, but I'm very pleased with these results.

We're seeing families reconnect with a community, that generation of displacement pulled apart, and that means something. And my office, by the way, is on the Green Line. It's on Shattuck. It's the

old Green Line. And if you think about the history, which I do every day when I look out my window, the Green Line is what it sounds like, an investment boundary. And it's ring with banks. It is today

still. And these banks who had their own form of neighborhood preference, they determined who to get a loan, who could buy a home, who could build wealth, and ultimately who could remain in the

community. And now we are, generations later, working diligently and intentionally to reverse some of those consequences. And that's what it means so much to me now today. You know, we're not just

making homes and apartments. We're reconnecting families to their roots. It's wonderful. And we heard about some friction in the application process, for sure. People having to start over, having to

submit the same information again and again. And I'm really glad that you're fixing this, making the process simpler, more effective, and more just. We heard some talk about the affordability levels,

and that's a larger issue we can get into. But the fact that you're invited back and have access to your home is important. And so if you realize that for a long time, these lines were drawn to keep

people out. And now, despite the challenges, both internal and external, we were acting with intention to create pathways home. And I want to celebrate that and celebrate you and all of you. I'm proud

to be from Berkeley tonight. Alders open. Thank you very much. Council Member O'Keefe. Thank you. I just have a small thing I want to highlight. In the presentation, there was a reference to the

partnership with the libraries. And I'm the Board of Library Trustees representative. And I just wanted to just highlight the work of Jeff Finley is actually the name of that librarian at the Central

Library who's been doing that work. And it's my understanding is it's really, really important work. He's been working like directly with families to help them gather the documentation they need to

show that their families were displaced. So I just wanted to recognize Jeff. It's really amazing work. So thank you. Thank you. Okay, we are moving to Council Member Tregov, and then online to Council

Member Humbert. Thank you. I would like to echo many of the comments just thanking staff and also thanking the community. I think this has been a beautiful partnership. It has been, you know, the work

you've documented has been painstaking. But I'm very excited and proud to be voting on this policy tonight. And I just wanted to weigh in in strong support of this item, creating opportunities for

more folks that have been displaced and uprooted out of Berkeley to be able to find a place that they can call home again. And I look forward to the continued partnership that I know we will have on

this topic as there are opportunities to refine, to address some additional structural impediments to getting as many folks into housing they can afford as possible as soon as possible. And lastly, I

want to, one commenter mentioned how the transition to the new system would work if someone is already in the pipeline. And I trust under your leadership that will be seamless in the transition

process. But thank you so much. Thank you. Going online to Council Member Humboldt. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I want to thank Director Gilman, as well as Margo Ernst and Akash and Mike

Uberti for all of the really hard work on this. I also really appreciated Council Member Bartlett's heartfelt comments. I found them really inspiring. So thank you, Council Member, for your wonderful

comments. I truly appreciate how careful, how much careful thought and community engagement went into developing this policy. It's deeply important that we try to right historic wrongs. We'll also be

cognizant of current needs. And I think this approach does an impressive job of attempting to balance a variety of factors and stakeholder interests and simplifying things in a way that's much more

elegant than the original framework. I truly appreciate health, housing, and community services. And I am pleased to be able to -- that we're going to be able to move this forward tonight. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Kesirwani. Thank you very much, Madam Mayor. I just want to thank our staff for bringing this item before us and refining this proposal that we previously adopted. And, you

know, I think it bears repeating. The reason why we have an affordable housing preference policy is because we don't have enough affordable housing. And, you know, we had the debate last time and

heard some public comment tonight about the San Pablo Avenue specific plan. And I just want to be clear from my perspective, every opportunity that we have in our city to create more homes, whether

they are market rate homes or below market rate affordable homes, it's necessary. And people are asking how much. Well, we are in a deep hole as a region and a state. And so that is why I think we did

a very important thing along San Pablo Avenue. We paved the way for thousands of new homes to come to that corridor. And many of them will be below market rate or affordable homes. And we need this

policy as well so that when we place people into those units, you know, we do it in a way that seeks to, as much as possible, redress prior harms that were made. So thank you again for this policy and

look forward to adopting it tonight. Thank you. I also want to add my thanks and just say that, you know, I really do want us to take a look at how we can provide more holistic support. I think that

makes a lot of sense and looking at other kind of common sense things that we can do. I do think it is frustrating that people have to apply to new buildings over and over again. I hear you all

calling out some of the challenges and ways that we can do better. So I just really want to thank you for doing that because if we don't come back, we can never improve it. And the fact that we did

this in the first place was a big deal. So thank you. Okay. So is there a motion? Because got a lot of comments. I will move to approve the staff recommendation. Thank you. A second from councilmember

Bartlett over here. Okay. Let us take the role, please. On the motion to prove the staff recommendation on item 15 affordable housing preference policy councilmember Kesser-Wani. Yes. Tapplin. Aye.

Bartlett. Yes. Traga. Aye. O'Keefe. Yes. Blackaby. Yes. Unapara. Yes. Humbert. Yes. And Maryishi. Yes. Okay. Motion carries. Okay. Very good. So count. Thank you so much. Thank you. Those of you who

are not relevant to items 18, 19, and 20, please feel free to depart. Councilmember Blackaby has brought items 18, 19, and 20 from the information reports onto our action calendar as sort of a

singular item. And so I will ask if there's anything in particular you wanted to present or if this was mostly just for questions. It's mostly for questions. I'll have the reports up so we can refer

to them. So as we're talking through it. And I shared some of the questions with staff ahead of time. So hopefully we can, so there's no gotchas here. It's really just to kind of dig into the numbers

a little bit. So starting on number 18, where we talk a little bit about the pipeline of BMR program, I know in the report, and I've got it here in table two, we're projecting across all projects at

some point in the future, about $32.5 million in projected revenue, fee revenue. Remind us just in the context, what's currently in the housing trust fund this would be supplemented against. Yeah,

sure. Thank you. So across all of our our sources, so the housing trust fund plus our other sources that fall under the housing trust fund umbrella, which includes like measure O, measure you one

commitments and, and some other one time sources that we have across all of those, we have about 4.9 million that is uncommitted. And I do want to acknowledge this is going to come up in one year

later questions. There's actually a mistake in the measure O report. There's not 17 million uncommitted. There's, there's only about 2.9 of measure O uncommitted. So we will be preparing an update, a

revised measure O report and bring it like to a future council meeting with the correction. Okay, great. Yeah, come up to that. Okay, thank you. And I did also want to clarify, I'm not sure if this

was part of your question, but we don't typically commit future fee revenues. So we don't have any of that 30, 32.5 million that you know, none of that is currently committed. The only time

historically that we've committed future fee revenues was when we, we pre committed 13 million of, of mitigation fees to the BART station development projects. And that money has since come in. So

those, those reservations are now cash on hand. It's only really recognized as the project comes online. Okay, great. And then remind us. So for a typical project, again, we leverage this housing

trust fund money. It's a force multiplier. So it's maybe one piece and then four to five acts of other funds come in against it. Is that again, just roughly order of magnitude? Yeah, that's we, we

leverage between four and five dollars for every $1 of commitment for a, for a typical housing trust fund project. They, there are exceptions to that. And there's also another exception, which is our

small sites program, which leverages, has a much lower leverage. We leverage about 30 to 80 cents for every dollar commitment in those projects. And that's largely because there aren't the resources,

the programs statewide and federally don't exist to support that type of preservation project. Got it. Okay. Flip into the next page. So this is then actually saying what was actually produced in

fiscal 2026. So the pipeline is hypothetical and potential going forward in fiscal 2634 newly constructed BMR units were actually made available for lease. So roughly 10% or so of the pipeline

actually came through in terms of new units. Should we expect that kind of, I know a lot of that's driven by market conditions, but that would suggest that this pipeline of 292 units might actually be

kind of an eight to 10 year process to fully go through. Is that a reasonable expectation? Yeah. You know, it's really difficult to determine the predictable pace because each project is unique. So,

you know, it's really dependent on the project size, the number of units affects the number of materials, the type of financing they need, the developers options, the developers option to how, how

they want to comply, if they want to provide more onsite units or not. As well as changes to state law that might encourage more onsite units, such as most notably the density bonus law. And then as

you mentioned, just broader economic conditions, right? So the higher interest rates affect how people can get on. So as those shift over time, you know, we're, it's difficult to say with a

predictable pace how each project will come through. But we do want to note that if a project does install, it's typically the timeline will be three to five years from development, you know,

entitlements through occupancy. So that's kind of like a gauge. But, you know, as we've seen throughout the community, I know there's been talks about it recently, specifically for like downtown, it

is possible that projects might not follow that timeline. Okay. Yeah. And I'll just add to that to say, you know, the, there's only like a single point in time when we count the units, whether it's

units or fees. So it really can vary widely year to year. Because if we have a large project that that say, has a, you know, a higher number of in onsite inclusionary units, then whatever year that

that CFO is issued is like when that's going to hit. So, you know, it's like, it really can vary widely. But if you look at it over, say, like a 10 year period, there might be some average that we

could talk about, but year to year, a lot of fluctuation. And you'll see that again, I was looking at table three here was my next question, which is significant fluctuation too, in terms of when we

recognize that fee revenue, right from a high of $16 million, four years ago to a million and a half this last year. So again, that cyclicality, again, just what you're talking about, it's driven by

market forces, it's driven by things outside of our control, but we recognize the fee revenue as the project comes online. Yeah, that's correct. We collect the fee revenue at certificate of occupancy,

which is also a bit different than other city fees, which typically happened earlier in the permitting process. So that also kind of changes the timeline for revenue collection as well. So we have to

kind of wait to the very end of the process. Okay. I will add to that, you know, recent changes, somewhat recent in the last few years, changes to density bonus law that sort of increase the

percentages of onsite affordable units and the corresponding density bonus did shift what onsite units we tend to see now, which is a higher percent. So it used to be that, you know, maybe more

projects would fee out or if they weren't feeing out and they were a density bonus project, they would kind of cap out at 11% onsite. And now it's like tends to cap out at 15% VLI onsite. There are

some other changes in density bonus law that might change that over time. So that is another reason why we might see a reduction in fees, although we do have a, as you noted, like there is a healthy

pipeline. We anticipate there will be years in the future, the near future where we have a, you know, a larger fee collection. Obviously, that's just current pipeline. We add to the pipeline every

year. So, right? Yeah. Okay. Shifting to measure O's, this is the next report. So what we just talked about is housing trust fund. This is from development fees, right? And then measure O is the

affordable housing bond that voters passed. Remind us and me, because I don't know, but can affordable housing, can any one project use money from both O and the housing trust fund or do they pick one

or the other? Yeah. So they, the way we define our trust fund and the, there are some sources that support housing development that don't, aren't technically like part of the housing trust fund

itself, but they're still in the umbrella of our housing trust fund program. And so we, you know, they, it's common for projects to have a mix of funding across multiple sources. And it usually has to

do with which sources are available at the time that we fund that project. Sometimes you'll notice we'll bring a resolution forward that will say, it'll commit an amount to a project. It might say

like, you know, 15 million from the combination from the following sources. And we don't even, we haven't even identified which source it's going to come from yet until we execute the loan agreement,

which might be three to four years down, down the line. So, so it is common that they will, it'll be a kind of piece together from a lot of different sources. And we look at it collect holistically.

So like we're looking at the local commitment collectively, when we're looking at things like the trust fund guidelines in terms of the funding caps or percentages and things like that. So, so yeah,

it's common. Rarely is it because they're applying specifically for measure O versus housing trust fund. More commonly, what can happen is certain sources can't be used for certain activities. Maybe

it's pre-development or sorry, what were the other pre-development or like typically measures for hard costs and our other funds are more flexible. So we put those into pre-development. Yeah. So it

also depends on that. It all kind of feeds the same pot to some, but then some have restrictions in terms of how they can be used. That's right. So by packaging them, we are able to piece them

together to kind of help the applicant. Okay. We were just talking about the remaining measure O bond capacity you mentioned. I know in the report, it looked like it was something like 17, but it's

actually much less than that in terms of what's left. It's, it's, it's closer to three million. It's about 2.9 million. And we don't anticipate issuing an RFP for that. We might at some point in the

future, if we've pulled enough resources to really justify an RFP. We do have certain projects that qualify for over the counter applications. And we, we try to keep some money available for those

types of applications, which are like emergency health and safety rehab of, for our existing pipeline or gap, gap financing for projects that we've already committed resources to. And if they, if

they're at the stage where they need just some gap financing and without it, they might lose other, other commitments, substantial commitments through the state or, you know, tax credits, then we can

consider those applications over the counter. So coming back to the city manager. So I know in the report, there was sort of a discussion that as we were nearing the exhaustion of measure, oh, we

should think about timing of whether or not we do the next bond. And that's something we'd have to talk about maybe starting next year. No, if you have any thoughts on, on that? Yeah, that, that would

be something we would want to talk about next year. I'd work with our team, our finance director and HHS team to get a sense of how much capacity we have to go out to market for more bonds where we're

at with the housing pipeline and what the, you know, future might look like, and then come back to council and see if council would like us to actually explore that more formally. Okay. Yeah. And I

know you had asked in, in your questions that you had sent about sort of like, which yeah, a bond or, or the trust fund, and which is, you know, which is most impactful or makes the biggest

difference. And I, I did want to respond to that and just say, you know, both are immensely valuable. Measure O was a huge infusion of a large amount of money that allowed us to really get this robust

pipeline and really invest in the two BART station developments, as well as a lot of other significant projects throughout the city. But we also have, you'll notice in our pipeline, I say you'll

notice, because I think we, I think this, the updated list was sent to you earlier. But we also have right now, $45 million of housing trust fund dollars committed to our pipeline. And that's

primarily mitigation fees. It's mitigation and in lieu fees and a little bit of home funds. So it's, you know, both are so valuable, one gives us like a certain fixed amount at an infusion at a single

point in time that's incredibly valuable. But the mitigation fees are, they're kind of like the bread and butter. I mean, those are the dollars that even though they do vary from year to year, they

are a constant, a constant revenue source for the trust fund. And it's what allows us to do the gap gap funding, it allows us to do the emergency repairs on our existing pipeline, we, we do have an

aging pipeline, we have a lot of older projects. And then it allows us to even conceive of new new projects. And so I did want to say both are so immensely valuable. Yeah. And they they work really

well together. Because, like I said, having the influx of the measure oh dollars really gave us this robust pipeline. But the mitigation fees are what are allowing us to keep these projects alive. And

almost if I don't have to start with thinking about it, but the housing trust fund and sort of this in Luffy's just sort of continuing to steadily kind of refill the pipe. But a measure or a

subsequent bond could be kind of again, a larger infusion for very particular projects, very particular needs that could come on potentially if supported by the voters kind of comes online much

faster, whereas the housing trust fund is sort of a steady increase over time. Okay. One kind of comment, and I love this chart, because this was sort of the chart that was showing cumulative city

assisted units by year. So this is actually what where we are so far in the forecast for where we hope to be by 2035. And just my thought here, and maybe this is also for the city manager, but it

would be probably useful at some point to just, you know, the data is fantastic. But then putting the context around it like what's good or where do we want to be, you know, like to meet the targets

of what we think we need to do, not just for Rena, but just as a community in terms of the number of affordable housing units that we want to have ready and in place to support the kind of community

we want, what's, what's good or what's the target that we're shooting at. And that also might be useful when we could talk about a bond, because it's like, you know, we're, you know, if we're going to

be at 2300 by the end of 2035, that's probably not enough. Ultimately, we probably want to be farther, but what do we need to do to get to the bigger number? So anyway, that kind of planning exercise

I think would also be really valuable at some point. I can just say, yeah, we would agree. I mean, I think that would be an important exercise, also kind of fun and also uplifting when you think about

tying it to the preference policy and thinking about all the people that were displaced and what would it take to bring them back. And then looking at that in the context of the funding required to do

all that would be, and the other thing would be interesting to look at is compared to other cities and what are they doing? Great. Last thing, this is the last report, which was the, again, all the

data here is fantastic because it just, you can dig through this and dog ear it and I marked up my stuff. The last one is on the condo conversion report. I know here's the number of applications,

number of completed and pending. It seems, you know, incremental, marginal. Any thoughts on what we could do from a policy side if we really wanted to accelerate this process? Like what other tools

might be in our toolbox as a council, as a policy body to move this forward more quickly, if you had any thoughts. So yeah, we wanted to acknowledge that the condo conversion, the council has done a

lot to advance ownership opportunities and make them more flexible over the past couple of years. The condo conversion ordinance exists to kind of regulate the process. And, you know, I want to

acknowledge that some advocates may consider that by going through the condo conversion process, you take away rental housing, which might lower affordability in the community. And that's why we, the

city assesses the affordable housing mitigation fee on the process. So there actually is a cap of a hundred units per year for this reason, but the program hasn't come close to approaching this in

practice. Many applicants are what's called a tendency in common owners. We're seeking to transition their ownership structure into more formal condos. So in terms of ownership as well, you know, most

federal and state sources for affordable housing that we've just discussed are targeted towards rental housing, which further limits the city's ability to invest in ownership. The city previously had

a down payment assistance program in the nineties and the early two thousands in the form of shared appreciation loans. But this program was ended because council determined at the time that the

median purchase price of homes kind of negated the city's ability to really effectively provide meaningful loans for people. Um, so I, you know, I just want to say in terms of increasing condos and

more ownership opportunities, um, overall, um, we submitted a separate info report, um, back in June, that kind of further expands on these options. But, um, you know, we, the city council established

the same inclusionary housing in Luffy for rental and ownership projects. Previously it was higher for ownership projects. Um, so this is a way to kind of not make developers lean towards one way or

the other. They can choose what is better for their project. Um, adopting middle housing rules to encourage small scale multifamily info development, um, amending the zoning code for streamlining

provisions for middle housing info projects compliant with SB 684, um, which allows small lot subdivisions for projects under 10 units. Um, amending the zoning rules to permit the sale of ADUs

separately from the main property. So, you know, these are examples of the regulatory aspect in terms of condo conversion. Um, you know, possibly lowering the fee could encourage them more, but it's a

fine balance with protecting city tenants as it is. Thank you. Um, thank you for being here. Thank you for the indulgence. Um, and I appreciate all the great information in these reports. So thank

you. Thank you. Councilmember Tracob. Thank you. Uh, just two quick questions. I think they're quick. Um, figure one on page four of the first, uh, report the inclusionary housing program fee revenue.

Um, I know you mentioned that there have been some changes in how the density bonus, uh, percentage is calculated at the state level and you know, where the cap is, but that's a pretty precipitous

drop. Um, and I'm wondering, does that fully account for it or what other fact I also recognize that, you know, um, funding is funds are not always collected at the same time, but, uh, can you just

speak to what, like what accounts for this, um, drop and, uh, what, um, factors may lead to, um, an increase in fee revenue again. Yeah. Well, you know, a big, uh, big reason a lot of projects have

paused is the, um, really increase in interest rates have really significantly increased if since 2002, um, as well as increased labor, uh, I'm sure we're all aware of the tariffs that's increased,

especially for larger projects costs as well as, I'm sorry, that would be increasing material costs as well as labor costs. Um, so those have all been kind of deciding factors outside the city's

control that have affected, uh, projects moving forward. Yeah. I think there's some of it is development cycles or trends. And I wasn't here back in the, you know, that when we had that peak year of

16 million or whatever, I don't know how much of it might've been like pent up, um, progress from things stalling during COVID. I don't know if that was the case here in Berkeley. I know it was where

I previously worked is like there was sort of like a pause and then everything kind of went into construction at the same time. So I don't know if that influenced the amount of fees that were received

in those one or two years. Um, but I would say economic factors certainly have contributed feasibility issues with development that might make some project stall or some not even come through. Um, and

then the, the change in the density bonus percentages and I will say it's not just that it went from 11% to 15%. I think that developers got a lot more savvy about what density bonus could, could, um,

they could achieve through density bonus. And so I do think there overall, there's been a, there had been a trend during that time of just more developers utilizing density bonus in the way that it

really worked for them. Okay. I also wanted to acknowledge, uh, you know, this probably is in the best graph and if we went back further years, you know, it would show kind of more of a trend and by

doing it at that peak year, it kind of makes it seem more precipitous that it was. All right. Uh, thank you. And my other question, I think it was just an accounting question for my own, uh,

edification on this is on the second report. Um, the Berkeley way, the 2012 Berkeley way, um, there's the bridge affordable component with 89 units. There's also the permanent supportive housing

component. I know the two are co-located. I'm just wondering how to read this is, is this additive, the 89 units plus the 53 and 44 on the other page, or, um, is this all going together? Thank you.

I'm trying to catch up to where you're at. Sorry. Sorry. Pages one and two of seven. It is, uh, additive. Yeah. So the, the, they would be, they're all individual sections of the development. Thank

you. Yeah. Any other questions? Okay. Very good. Um, is there any public comments on these items? Anyone online for public comment? Money's running to the front. Go ahead, money. Uh, quick question or

point on the nexus study, um, that was done some years ago that found that you could set aside 20% of the units for affordable and still meet the ROI. So the rate of return was actually justified that

even putting that many, and I think part of the reason that I've seen over the last few years and others have agreed with me and I'm not an expert, but by allowing a developer to take an alternative,

like you said, it becomes savvy. Of course there are fewer that are being built on site, even though the study that the city council itself actually ordered to be completed and they paid for it and it

justified more units on site than just the 10% that a lot of agreements have been developed for. So it should have been set up in that way. If it's still possible, that would help a lot. Also for the

housing trust fund, um, the only, I think the only building is my understanding that's been built is the Berkeley way project from the mitigation fees and the in lieu fees and the fund that's sitting

over there to be built at some point in time. And maybe there are more that are being built that I've missed, but I think it's just Berkeley way. Is that correct? Yes, that's all. And we could do

better. Thanks. Thank you. Any public comment online for items 18, 19 or 20 for, uh, Cheryl Davila former council member Cheryl Davila, please be respectful. I know it's hard for y'all. Um, yeah. So

while the Reno numbers, not a good number, um, I don't know how truthful and accurate that is also, you know, 10%, it's supposed to be 20% in lieu. Um, well, and if they don't put it in there supposed

to pay the in lieu fees. So I think they should be more than 10% and at least the minimum 20%. And that's even a low number. Um, we need affordable housing. We need affordable for the very, very,

very, very low income. We need affordable for people that are on social security or disability or disabled. Um, and for, um, others that can't afford these market rate units. Um, and yeah, the in lieu

fees, only one project. Um, I'm wondering like what's in the pipeline because I haven't heard of anything. And it's interesting that now you're giving two minutes when usually only give one minute. I

know nobody comes to these meetings because they're not listened to, heard, respected, honored, and it's pretty much a waste of time. So people don't join these meetings because they're not, you can

have 400 people in the room and you don't pay attention to those 400 people unless like the tear gas thing, which I'm happy you kept the ban on, but, um, it's an election year. So that's probably why

that passed. Next is Janice Ching. Hi, I really appreciate the staff report that shows, um, how robust the pipeline is. And I, um, am wondering, you know, the range of projects that have been in that

pipeline because I know that some of the projects sit there for some time and that a lot of the developers are trying to sell these projects. Um, so anyway, that that's one point. And the other thing

is just that within the number of projects that are in the pipeline, um, we're still trying to incentivize developers to come forward with more projects. And I understand that we need to keep that

pipeline robust, but when the economic situation is as, um, dire as it is showing that precipitous drop, um, it just seems that, you know, maybe now is not the time to be giving gifts away to the

developers to get more projects going, you know, proposed when they can't build it and possibly for years. So, you know, I, I just want to say there has to be some kind of balance here between what we

incentivize so that we can get, um, the affordable housing that we need. Thank you. Thanks Janice. Okay. That's, uh, that's it. Okay. Thank you very much. Any other comments from council colleagues?

Thank you. Yeah. All right. Very good. I don't think there's any action since this was an information report, but I'll just thank you both for your time and for answering our questions. So thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Um, we are going, you need a break. Okay. All right. Let's take a 10 minute break and then just to be clear, cause I know we jumped around a bit here. Um, we will come back to item

number 13 and then 14 and then we will be at 16, 13, 14, 16. Okay. Thank you. Recording stopped. Hello. Oh, there we are. Okay. All right, everyone. We are back in session. No, we're not. Okay. We are

not back in sec. Recording in progress. Now we're back in session. Okay. Um, it is not clear to me. Did council member, uh, sorry, did council member Taplan actually leave? Is he gone? Okay. All right

then. So, um, we are moving on to item 13, which is provisions to the approved environmental health fee schedule. So I'm going to open the public hearing for item 13 and I will pass it over to our

city staff. Thank you very much for being here. I can just say, madam mayor, we don't have a presentation, but if there's questions, staff are here to answer. All right. Are there any questions for

our city staff? Thank you so much for waiting in your patients. It's been a long night. Okay. I am not seeing any hands raised. Um, okay. Is there any public comment on item 13 revisions to the

approved environmental health fee schedule? Kelly, are you walking up? Okay. Yep. Kelly's walking up. It looks better and let's vote and go home. The chairs are so uncomfortable. You've got the great

ones and we've got the hard ones. Okay. Thank you. Any online comments? Uh, one from Cheryl Davila, former council member. Um, I don't know. Maybe that's from before. Okay. Nope. Um, it's not. Okay.

All right. Any comments from council members? Is there a motion to close the public hearing? It's a moved second. Can we take a roll on that please? Okay. Close the public hearing council member

Kessarwani. Yes. Taplin is absent. Bartlett is absent. Traga. I O'Keeffe. Yes. Blackaby. Yes. Unapara. Yes. Kumber. Yes. And Mary. Yes. A public hearing is closed. Public hearing is closed. Thank you

very much. Is there a motion to, if we approve staff recommendation. Thank you very much. Is there a second? Is there a second? Thank you. Can we take the role in that please? Okay. Uh, to approve the

revisions to the environmental health fee schedule, council member Kessarwani. Yes. And, uh, Traga. Hi O'Keeffe. Yes. Blackaby. Yes. Unapara. Yes. Humbert and Mary Ishii. Yes. Okay. Motion carries.

Thank you. Is it possible that people online can't see us? Can we double check that please? Can't see us. Cannot see us. I mean, I, I could test it and see. Okay. Okay. Um, Kelly says that they can

see us online. So perhaps this person has a screen that's frozen or something. Okay. All right. Very good. Um, Ken, I'm going to open the public hearing for item number 14, which is amendments to

Berkeley municipal code section 23.3 0 4.1 0 0 site features and residential districts to require undergrounding of electrical transformers on private land. I will pass it over to our director. Hi.

Thank you, mayor. Good evening council members. I'm Jordan Klein, director of planning development joined here at the staff table by Justin Horner and Bronca Tatarovich from the land use policy team.

And Bronca is pulling up the slides and is going to present on behalf of staff. Take it away Bronca. No, no, it's on. All right. Thank you, Mary. She and the members of the city council. My name is

Bronca Tatarovich and I'm an associate planner with the land use planning division tonight. I'm presenting an ordinance that amends BMC 23 3 0 4 100 site features and establishes a clear land use rule

for electrical transformer placement while preserving the separate authority of the city engineer and PGNE. The presentation focuses on how those decisions fit together. The issue at hand is not that

transformer sighting lacks technical review. Under the current process, there is no zoning standard. So sighting is negotiated on a project by project basis. This results in late and inconsistent

sighting decisions. Often long after the site and frontage design have been finalized at the same time, PGNE favors pad mounted above ground equipment. All of this can reduce usable frontage and

developable space while applicants lack a predictable early design standard. The cabinet or the vault is the trend. If the transformer is underground is only part of the land use impact. PGNE also

requires clear level working space, vertical access for replacement and a constructible trench route. As noted in the staff report, the minimum clear working space in front of the equipment door is

eight feet. While these photos show suburban locations, Berkeley is largely built out. And most of the development occurs on constraint in field sites. This slide shows two Berkeley examples on the

left side of the slide. The photos show an above ground transformer on the property on the right way, despite multiple efforts and review processes. The project was unable to obtain a variance from

PGNE to place the transformer underground, even though the property is a designated landmark. On the right, the photograph shows three walls in the side wall containing underground transformers that

serve the new Berkeley city college campus. This slide shows how the ordinance fits within the existing decision-making structure and clarifies who is responsible for each decision. First, PGNE

determines whether our transformer is needed and establishes the capacity and other technical requirements for the equipment. The ordinance does not change PGNE's authority over utility service

design. Second, the applicant is responsible for coordinating with PGNE and the city early in the project and developing a siting approach that complies with all applicable requirements. The third

row, the zoning and land use, is the change made by this ordinance. The new zoning rule prohibits above grade electrical distribution equipment on private property for residential, commercial, and

mixed use projects. This establishes the city's electrical equipment siting expectation at the beginning of project design. The rule does not authorize placement in the public right of way. If the

applicant requests placement in the right of way, it is a separate decision made by the city engineer and public works through the engineering permit process. Approval remains entirely within the city

engineer's discretion. If the city engineer determines that placement in the right of way is not in public interest, the ordinance provides an exception that allows above grade equipment on private

property. The applicant or property owner remains responsible for all costs associated with design, permitting, installation, maintenance, relocation, and removal of the equipment. Finally, all

required approvals remain in place. PGNE must approve the utility design and the project must obtain all applicable city permits. So the ordinance establishes the zoning rule, but it does not replace

or override any other decisions shown here. The amendment is intentionally narrow. It establishes a zoning standard for residential, commercial and mixed use projects in residential and commercial

zoning districts. It does not make the utility decision, rent and encroachment or transfer design and cost responsibility to the city. In all, the amendment does not create a siting entitlement. Every

siting and encroachment issue remains a separate engineering decision under the city engineer's sole discretion and based on the public ground criteria listed on the slide. The recommendation to the

city council is informed by utility interdepartmental and developer input. The Planning Commission recommended council adoption with slightly different language in June 2025. Based on the input

received, staff identified the land use benefits and operational tradeoffs shown on this slide. On the land use side, undergrounding protects active frontages, preserves limited infill land, reduces

visual impacts and provides applicants with a predictable standard. On the operational side, underground equipment may be more costly and difficult to maintain, raises water intrusion concerns and may

constrain future capacity upgrades. These considerations frame the policy choice presented by the ordinance, while technical feasibility and right-of-way impact would continue to be addressed by

agencies responsible for those decisions. And finally, staff recommends that city council conduct a public hearing and adopt the first reading. The ordinance supplies the missing zoning rule while

preserving the existing lines of authority and responsibility. That concludes my presentation. Thank you and I'm available for questions. Thanks, Branka. Thanks very much for the presentation. Any

questions from folks? Okay, I was going to check and just ask about the space constraints. Is it possible to -- would you have to expand the space later to allow for more equipment or how would that

work just so we understand? Well, there is a constraint, but usually, as we heard from PG&E, those transformers are designed to allow for larger capacity. So whatever the needs increase, that capacity

should be fit for for a while. But they are designed for certain size of a transformer. So if the need is completely outside of the calculated capacity, I guess they would need a bigger transformer

and a bigger vault as well. But I think that would, in terms of development, also change the nature of the project entirely. Thank you. Appreciate that. Okay, I don't see any other questions up. So I

will see if there's any public comment on this item. Good evening, Anne Marks with PG&E. I'm pretty new to the company. I got to read back in the archives and there's been a lot of back and forth. I

want to really commend the staff and the Council for the time that's taken to sort of understand all the intricacies of this issue and what is there. I think, PG&E, our goal is safe, reliable energy.

And we want that to be provided in a way that's cost effective, that takes into account things like aesthetics and operational needs. And so it's not that we are always trying to put in a pad mounted

transformer. I think there's definitely situations where that is not the case. So I think this, you know, understandably, this is a way to express a desire to not have pad mounted transformers and to

put them subgrade. And so I think that is stated in a way that I think allows us to continue working with each other and understanding how to make that happen. And so, you know, but I think when you

look at that conversation, the conversation you have with PG&E, I think you understand that obviously when it comes to making it safe and reliable, there are certain recommendations that we make and

there are certain things that are the preference as expressed through the CPUC, which is obviously our state governing body. Thanks. Thank you. Other comments? May I have a thumb drive that has the

images for the public? I think that typically we wouldn't have public commenters give a presentation. You're welcome to speak to the images and hold them up if you'd like. Okay. Just thought the

public might want to see them, but whatever. I'm a member of the Planning Commission, as some of you may be aware. I'm Trishana's appointee and brought this issue to Planning Commission a year ago.

And there was unanimous support for the commission. The problem being that although the PG&E representative, thank you, was somewhat neutral about this. I appreciate that the actual formal edict from

PG&E prior to that vote and still, in effect, is above ground on the private property. And I wanted to illustrate for you what that means from a design standpoint for our community. So I provided this

put together just today. You're familiar with the EDGE project, probably on Bancroft recently completed. This is with the old policy where all the tick was a letter from the planning department to

PG&E asking for undergrounding in the sidewalk. And we got it. And that's what we have there. Undergrounding in the sidewalk, as shown by Bronco earlier. And we have on this important. This is right

at the intersection of Telegraph and Bancroft. We have eyes on the street. We have windows. I've got a commercial front in addition to the lobby there and the image on the right. If you vote no on

this ordinance, that's what we would have for this project, would have had or would have for a similar project. The next project, I think, is one that should be close to your hearts. It's this is

actually not a middle housing project, but it looks very much like one. This is the kind of project that could be and should be approved under the middle housing ordinance, and it's a project that I

think looks nice as designed. It assumes that you vote yes tonight. Thank you very much. And I think the rest is self-explanatory. If you have any questions, let me know. Thank you. Thanks so much.

Appreciate the images. It is helpful to see. Good evening. My name is Avi Foreman. I'm an architect, general contractor and developer, deeply affected by the proposed legislation today. There's a

nongovernmental body that single handedly has the ability to avoid any multifamily housing development based on nothing but their own profit motive. At twenty eight hundred telegraph, the site of the

former cream cycles, we were approved for the construction of seventy five beds by the city of Berkeley only to be told by PG&E that they would not install the transformer as designed because it was

in a subsurface transformer, which is marginally more expensive for them to maintain. This would have required us to place the transformer inside, which would have required twenty foot vertical

clearance cannibalizing about a thousand square feet from two floors out of our extremely tight footprint, required large street fronting doors and effectively voided the planning approval granted by

the city of Berkeley and rendered our approved project unbuildable. This effectively leaves leaves leaves a private for profit corporation able to unilaterally deny approved projects and unilateral

authority to stop the construction of new housing units in the interest of their shareholders, whether indoors or outdoors, pad mounted transformers are unsightly unsafe and in many cases such as mine

untenable to let this critical city planning policy which deeply affects the city residents and developers alike cannot be left to be made unilaterally for a for profit institution whose interests are

their shareholders and not the city of Berkeley. The legislation is critical for infill developers like me to ensure that PG&E is required to abide by the laws and approvals as established by the

commission and government of Berkeley. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Patrick Kennedy. I'm a developer. I have been building for thirty five years in the city of Berkeley and every

project I have built has been a buried transformer. And in thirty five years, I have never had a problem with PG&E maintaining it or replacing it. And the idea of having to replace it with a much

bigger one is probably unlikely unless a building is scraped and a much bigger building is built, in which case you can do another buried transformer. So I think that's not a particularly big issue. I

think the much more important issue is that if the city wants to promote middle housing throughout its neighborhoods and enable a large number of smaller developers to re-knit the fabric of our

neighborhoods with triplexes and fourplexes and middle housing, it must support this ordinance because pad mounted transformers on small sites essentially destroy twenty five percent of the value of

the site and make many projects untenable. Just to give you an idea, I know several of you attended the groundbreaking we have for our six unit project on Cedar. If we had to put a pad mounted

transformer on that site, we would have lost one of the six homes. We would have denied one family the opportunity to move to Berkeley. We would have removed a million and a half dollars from the city

tax roll and we would have had a blighted transformer on a corner that otherwise would have had a beautiful new house. So the cost of the buried transformers, by the way, is always borne by the

developers. So we're paying for the cost of that. And the only matter of consequence to PG&E is the purported difficulty in maintaining a buried transformer in the public right away. But thank you.

Thanks, Patrick. Thank you. Bye bye. OK, Kelly. So I actually love looking at plans, architectural plans. And when I see the plans making space for the transformers at the front of the building,

they're just plain ugly. You can't really make a nice flowing design across the front of the building because you have to leave this great big giant space for the transformer and you can't put

anything in front of it. You just got these great big giant doors. It's just plain ugly. I don't need to take any more time to tell you how many times I want to say it's just ugly and they should be

undergrounded. So I would ask that you approve this. Thank you very much. I love any issue that unites the two of you. So so thank you. Thank you very much. Is there is there anyone online? Speakers

online first is Cheryl Davila, former council member. So I knew who knew that I would ever have any agreement with the speaker prior to Kelly. But I do agree with the points that they made as well as

Kelly. Things should be undergrounded. But I'm just curious, like how that works in an earthquake, if that research has been done. And yeah, it's interesting that PG&E doesn't want that. But, yeah,

you know, we're all in agreement here. Thank you. Love that. Thank you. Next is Brianna Morales. Hi, good evening, everyone. I'm Brianna Morales and I'm speaking on behalf of the Housing Action

Coalition. We're a member supported advocacy organization that works to advance California's housing goals to to settle our housing and affordability crisis. Our members are the building industry.

They are builders and architects and labor who actually deliver housing. And so their experience has shaped our recommendations tonight. We support the intent of the ordinance. And as we heard

tonight, small infill lots can hinge on where a transformer goes, and that matters to a lot of small builders doing duplexes and other missing middle housing. Or ask us to make sure it works for them

as well as community members and other builders. So first, you know, certainty staff's own slides say that public works isn't required to find or approve a right of way location and the exemption

depends on a city engineer finding with no stated criteria or deadline and for a small developer with one tight lot. That open ended step is a pretty real risk. So please make the exception objective

and time bound. Second, options. Our members tell us that side and rear put placements are preferred in some ways and that even though right of way is still better, a few cities are generous with it.

And so underground works on many sites, but not all. So please keep these options practical and open, including the front setback with objective screening when it's the only feasible spot. So a

standard meant to protect homes never costs a project one. We also kind of saw that Fremont lets commercial and mixed use projects either go underground or or screened third, you know, data staff's

slides list higher cost and constrained equipment, supplies, tradeoffs. But the report doesn't quantify them, it seems. So we'd welcome independent cost data from local builders before second reading.

And HAC is always happy to be a partner in doing this. So thank you so much. We really appreciate all of your hard work and have a good rest of your night. Thanks and Maria, so so again, I am so

unimpressed with PG&E. I don't trust them. They have been culpable for death and destruction. There's endless deferred maintenance, exploitation, shutting off people's electricity when their life

depends upon it. I just do not trust them. I do not like them. And I'm very concerned about well, I've even reported leaning what do they call them? Power poles, you know, the ones that are everywhere

above ground. They're tipped like it's such serious angles with lines pulling them over. It's like, you know, when they cut trees to free the lines, they butcher the trees. I just recommend extreme

caution when it comes to anything with regard to them. So I'm just going to the foundation again. Do they care or are they just there with greed and lack of accountability? So I'm just speaking to the

premise. Thank you. Thanks, Maria. Is that it or no comments? That's it. All right. Coming back here, Councilmember Traca. Thank you. I would like to sincerely appreciate staff for bringing this item

forward. This same proposal was included in part two of our Renaissance item. And I think we definitely channeled each other's vision. And I particularly appreciate the discretion this item provides

to the city for installing electrical distribution equipment in the public right of way for accessibility and pedestrian access, not to mention all of the solitary reasons why undergrounding should be

allowed. I'm I'm glad that everyone appears to be unanimously behind it, and this is the part that I rarely get to say in public, but I would like to thank PG&E as well for coming to the table and

working with staff and stakeholders through this issue. With that, I'm very happy to move this item. Thank you. Councilmember Casarwani. Oh, sorry. Is there a second? Second. To close the public

hearing. I move to close the public hearing. Thank you. All right. Actually, let's just take the role on that and then we'll come back. Close the public hearing, Councilmember Casarwani. Yes. Traga.

Aye. O'Keefe. Yeah. Blackaby. Yes. Munepara. Yeah. Humbert. Yes. And Mary. Yes. OK, OK, thank you. Councilmember Casarwani and then Councilmember Humbert. Thank you very much, Madam Mayor. I want to

thank the Planning Commissioner Khan for bringing this forward to the commission. And I do also appreciate all of the people who've spoken in support of this. I think this makes a lot of sense. I was

just wanting to double check and I think I have the assurance that I didn't want, you know, one additional 80 you on a block to lead to an individual homeowner getting getting hit with a bill to

underground a transformer that benefits the whole block, but it looks like this is just for private property, not for the pole mounted transformer in the public right of way. Correct. Correct. OK,

with that, I am eager to approve this. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilmember Humbert. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I also want to thank Commissioner Khan for bringing this item and director Klein

and Branka Dutarvik for their work on it. I think this is a really important measure to help ensure that we're keeping our sidewalks clear, also helping to ensure that we're maximizing space in new

mixed use buildings for retail space and active street frontage in a highly urbanized area like Berkeley, putting electrical infrastructure underground is very important and should generally be done

as a matter of course. And it sounds like it has been. And I think it should be seen as a cost of doing business for our utilities. I do want to briefly acknowledge that staff, including our own

sustainability and toxics teams, identified some real trade offs here around maintaining and upgrading underground equipment as buildings electrify around resiliency and around water intrusion. Those

are important considerations. On balance, I think the design, land use and public realm benefits clearly outweigh them, especially since per my understanding, this ordinance still leaves PG&E to

determine whether a transfer is even needed and keeps the city's engineer's discretion over the public right of way. I also understand that PG&E would generally prefer not to underground the equipment

and I understand the practical considerations that they have raised in writing at the same time, undergrounding is a reasonable and increasingly standard expectation and built out cities like ours.

I'm hoping PG&E will work constructively with us and with applicants to find compliant solutions. Utilities have managed this and other jurisdictions that have adopted similar requirements, and I

think we can do it here. So thank you, everybody, for for for this item. Thanks. I'll support it. Thank you. And thank you again also to Commissioner Kahn and also to our city staff for all their

work. Thank you, everyone, to the commenters, both for your comments, but also for your patience this evening. I do want to thank Anne for being here in person. It's amazing to have a PG&E rep that we

can actually call. So I do just really want to thank you for that. Thank you very much for being here. And with that, I will see if there is a motion to approve. Thank you. All right. And then is

there a second? Second. OK, can you take the role in that, please? OK, to approve the amendments to the Berkeley Municipal Code to require undergrounding of electrical transformers on private land.

Councilmember Kesarwani? Yes. And Trigab? Aye. O'Keefe? Yes. Blackaby? Yes. Lunapara? Yes. Humbert and Marishi? Yes. OK, motion carries. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. OK,

all right. Guess what? We have one more item. OK, so we are moving on to item number 16, which is Established 2027 City Council Meeting Schedule. I will I don't think there's a presentation for this.

Does anyone have questions on this item? Seeing no questions, I will ask if there is any public comment on this item. Kelly's coming up. You know, I'd really like all of you to take more time off. And

I mean that sincerely. I really would like to see you take more time off. And I would appreciate it if you just extended this a little bit and made your vacation go through Labor Day, I know that

schools start before some schools, some schools start after Labor Day, and I think that would be a good thing to do. Thanks. Thank you. So Labor Labor Day is on September 6th and 2027. So just, you

know, make it another week. Yeah, we have one last meeting and some of us would be really happy about that. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Kelly. Anyone else public comment for this item? Anyone

online? Sure, to have a former council member. I don't see how that's funny, but, you know, whatever. Yeah, so I don't know about taking more time off because you already got a raise to shorten the

agendas, it's 10 o'clock and you're pretty much done. So, like, I don't I don't see how that that's a good thing. You give less time to the people to speak on items. You don't listen anyway. But the

point is, I don't know if you are working working that hard. Honestly, I don't see it. And a lot of people in Berkeley don't see it. I know a lot of people aren't happy with the entire Berkeley City

Council currently. So, yeah, you don't need more time off. And thanks for letting us know all the time you are going to take in advance. And three pals done three as well. Thanks for your comment. Are

there any other comments on this item? No. OK, all right. Coming back, council member Humbert. I know you have something you want to share. I do. Thank you, Madam Mayor. This is an amazing night

because I'm finding myself totally agreeing with Kelly Hammergren. So we're getting all these concordances here that are unusual. You know, I do think that that her idea is a good one. I think that,

you know, a schedule where the final meeting is July 7th and we eliminate the August 31st meeting makes a whole lot of sense. We come back after Labor Day. That way we don't have an awkward first

meeting right before the Labor Day holiday and during a period of significant filing activity during election years, but we're also able to have more of July for recess for council members and city

staff with school age kids. So we we talked about this at agenda and rules. And if I'm recalling correctly, the clerk said elimination of the August 31st meeting wouldn't necessarily be a problem. I

mean, we have so many special meetings and closed sessions that we do meet our, you know, basic requirement of a number of meetings. So I, you know, I'm I'm I'm offering the Kelly Hammergren plan. So

thank you. Is that a motion? Because I want a second. Yeah, that is a motion. And there's a second from council member O'Keefe. Quickly, I clarify the dates just in the motion. Would be July 7th, the

last meeting, the 6th, July, July 6th would be the last meeting before the summer recess and the first meeting back would be Tuesday, September 14th. OK, is that clear? OK, very good. All right.

There's a motion on the table. Any other comments on the floor? Sorry. Yes. Yeah, I just want to say that this, I mean, whether we keep August 31st or not, I'm in favor of that, but just I just want

to say how appreciative I am as a teacher. I know anybody who has kids in schools has the same. Like I've never understood why our recess does not overlap with the school break. And I'm just so

grateful that we're making this change. It's going to be a huge difference in my life in the lives of a lot of people, not just up here, but the staff who work, work with us. Absolutely. I think as we

consider, you know, wanting to have our council be inclusive, We're talking about parents who have children in the schools. I think that's really important. So thank you. Thanks everyone. And thank

you for your suggestion, Kelly, and also Councilmember Humbert. There's a motion. So can we take you on that, please? Okay, to adopt the 2027 City Council meeting schedule modified to remove the

August 31st regular meeting. Councilmember Kessarwani? Yes. And Tragem? Aye. O'Keefe? Yes. Blackaby? Yes. Unapara? Yes. Humbert? Yes. And Mayor Yishie? Yes. Okay, motion carries. Thank you. Thank you

all very much. Okay. Is there any other public comment for items not listed on the agenda? I believe... Oh, sorry. We have... Oh, go ahead. Okay. Well, thank you for all of that. That's very nice. But

now I have something difficult to ask of you. And on Saturday night, I went with three friends to the film "Naza." And it's a difficult film. I already knew about "Lavender" and "Where's Daddy?" But I

would ask all of you to go to that film. And if you don't know what "Where's Daddy?" is, "Where's Daddy?" is tracking someone who may or may not be a member of Hamas, their phone. And when they get

home, that's the place to bomb. And so watching that film and listening to the conversations, knowing about this procedure, this plan, that's when we go. That's when someone is killed is when they're

home with their family, their children, their babies, their toddlers. It's difficult. I suggest that you all go. I think it's good to bring someone with you so you have someone to talk to afterwards.

Thank you. Thank you. We were actually just talking about that film earlier today. So thank you. Carol? So it's meaningless to pass laws of which there's no education that the public doesn't know

about and there's no means of enforcing it. I've mentioned the elevator ordinance before. Yesterday on the bus, I met someone in a wheelchair. He had no legs. And he said, "Really?" He was really

surprised because he lives in one of our affordable housing providers. And his elevator was out for four days. And they told him, "No, it has to be a month." And that's one of our recognizable

affordable housing providers. Somebody else told me she was really happy that she could afford to buy a home because when she was in an elevator building and she has a visible disability, she was

frequently stuck in the building. She didn't know this was a law. It was a law since 2018 that someone has to be relocated after 24 hours. So two weeks ago, I didn't talk on items not on the agenda,

but it was very much on my mind because I had been advocating for my friend for several days from another well-known affordable housing provider in Berkeley that when their elevator broke down, they

were told by the property management, it's an amenity. And she's 82 years old. The only reason she was able to be relocated in Berkeley was because she knew pay to redo in the city manager's office.

And she called there and he called Scott Gilman and someone talked to her and worked it out. Everybody doesn't have that connection. And when I was trying to help her, the rent board didn't even know

this was a law. The rent board employees, I was educating them on various provisions. So we have to be able to enforce things. Thanks, Carol. Hi, Michael Casey, longtime Berkeley resident, 40 plus

years, attended Washington through Berkeley High. My dad and I own a property for the last 40 plus years as owner occupied of a city planner for a city of Oakland planning and building department for

15 years. Last week, I received a notice from the rental housing safety program. I got two notices, one as a tenant, one as an owner over the past two to three years. I've been getting a letter from

our HSP and the states, you know, that's a rental property. It is not. They say just go ahead and pay $120 fee. I just go ahead and pay it. Now I'm told that I'm supposed to do an inspection to see if

this is my own residence after living there for 40 years, told likely just administrative error, blah, blah, blah. I mean, as working for the city of Oakland planning and building department, I know

you have to have a search warrant or a active building permit to come on someone's property. So this feels like a violation, especially all that's going on with the world with ice and COVID to just

want to inspect people's properties. I called the inspector. Oh, yeah, we're going to come in. It's a four hour window. You take off work and my dad, who's 85 years old with health problems, is

supposed to miss doctor's appointments to sit there and wait for this inspector to come through to tell him that he's an owner of a check to see if he's an owner of a property. I mean, I think this is

ridiculous. I think we could do better than that. I don't know who to talk to you about this and what should be done. But I think it should be brought to everyone's attention, especially at this day

and age where people are uncomfortable having inspectors or city officials and government officials coming on people's property to see if they are an owner. So thank you for your time. And sorry, it's

so late, but I wanted to get that in. I'll email it as well. Thank you. I appreciate that. Definitely interested to know what's happening with that. Yeah, that's yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. Is

there any other public comment online? M Jones. You have two minutes. M Jones. There you go. Hello. Yes. Oh, my God. Anyway, I would like to speak on. I sent that email to the mayor and D2 D3 and

planning departments and I would like someone in that email to get in touch with me. I am living next to a rat and raccoon infested building. That is a historical landmark. Reach formerly reads

records and. Oh, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Sorry for anyway. And then I'm having to deal with the traffic, the parking challenges being next to the Creekwood restaurant. And now the commercial

building that I live above has opened up a smoke shop and I never got a notice about it about a smoke shop opening. Isn't it isn't that the policy that a smoke shop has to have a public meeting before

they open up question. Sorry, we don't address the questions during public comment, but you can finish your question your comment period. Yeah. So I would just, I sent an email to the mayor and the

planning department weeks ago. I never received any follow up from anybody of those departments. I call all these different departments. There's, it's always a voicemail. There's never a live person.

So, you know, I'm just really frustrated and I would like someone to address my concerns. And that's it. Thank you. Thanks for your public comment. My, my staff has gotten received your email and we

will, we will follow back on. Thank you. Thank you. I'm so sorry. You had to come to counsel this way. Is there anyone else online? We have Del Luna. Yes. I wanted to speak about earlier. When

Christian Zionist exist and Christian Zionist live in Berkeley and Christian Zionist might be on the dias. So when you all were talking about, like, the political campaigns and the way you were trying

to define hate speech and then tie that into anti hate week. It, I just felt like you were a racing Christian Zionist who do exist and do live in Berkeley. Secondly, the statement talking about a

nation of immigrants. That's actually a white supremacist dog whistle. Immigration law didn't exist till the 1970s. So everyone who came in before the 1970s was not an immigrant and then the laws

were, of course, only created for black and brown people to restrict them. So when you say a nation of immigrants, you are erasing the history of this country and for certain populations who are often

marginalized, which I think you all were attempting to address that. But then you kind of side handed, like, there was some underhanded things that were stated and I don't think you stated it on

purpose, but I just wanted to say to bring awareness to it. And what's characteristic about that is that it wanted a racist colonialism and then it was a settler move to innocence. So it's like

saying, oh, we're all immigrants. You just kind of, like, erase everything that happened and then kind of proclaim an innocent stance. So I wanted to offer this book. It's called Not a Nation of

Immigrants. Full title, settler colonialism, white supremacy and the history of erasure and exclusion by Roxanne Dunbar Otis. And she's went to Cal, so there's a connection there. And she lives in the

Bay. But I just would encourage you all to read this. So when you make statements like that, you aren't coming with, like, underhanded cuts. And you didn't mention racism against black people or

hatred against black people. So it kind of felt just imbalanced and you used it for, like, to talk about the political campaigns unnecessarily. And we have Cheryl Davila, former council member. I

agree with everything that last person said. It was only geared towards anti-Semitism, not geared towards black and brown people and barely mentioned Islamophobia, which is really prevalent right now

and has been since 9/11. So it's really, it was really sad that the Zionist with that horrible symbol, yes, a Holocaust survivor. However, in these times, sitting in a Berkeley City Council meeting

with that symbol during a genocide and ethnic cleansing and apartheid, murder of children and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians starved, martyred, disabled, living under the rubble, trying to

maintain a life with no toilets, no water, no food, but yet they're steadfast and resilient. It was really kind of disgusting to be there this evening. And that's the only thing you talked about was

hate for one group of people, which just shows your racism and inability to have compassion and empathy as an elected official supposed to be representing the constituents. But you only represent

those that were. Thanks for your comment. Thank you. All right. And Maria Sol. Oh, wow. You know, I want to take this moment to thank Kelly Hammer and she's just so diligent and efficient and amazing.

And the fact that she brought up another opportunity to develop compassion and empathy for everyone. I keep saying we're one family and, of course, we're exceedingly diverse evening that we've

discussed has to do with are we going to prevent harm or are we going to exert our power and privilege and benefit personally at the expense of many. So I keep bringing I try to keep bringing us back

because I have every faith in the heart. I know you're always so smart, but I know you all have hearts and we are in fact in this together. So I don't mean to be boring and repetitive, but if we don't

start there as a cum unity where we can share and care and look out for each other instead of militarizing through surveillance and a I, you know, weaponry now or, you know, killing as a sport. We are

one human family and I thank each of you for coming and doing all the work that you do and doing the best that you can and encouraging all of us to do the same. So thank you again. Thank you. Thank

you, Maria. Other public comments online. Okay. All right. Thank you all so much for your public comments. I will see if there's a motion to adjourn. I will entertain. Thank you. Is there a second?

Second. Okay. Can we take the role please? Got some of her kiss her wanting. Yes. Traga. Hi. Okay. Yes. Black. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay, we're turned. Thank you all very much.