I am going to call to order the Berkley City Council meeting today's Tuesday, May 20th, 2025, and I'm going to start with the roll, please. Councilmember Kessar Wanney. Here. Taplin. Here. Bartlett is absent. Trggab, passant, okay. Blackaby, Unipara, Humber, and Mary E.C. Okay, former's present. All right, thank you very much. We have a few different ceremonial items today. I'm going to start with our proclamationamations. Oh, just realized, I don't have them in front of me, but we have three proclamations, Jewish-American Heritage Month Proclamation, East Bay Affordable Housing Month, and Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and following that will be an adjournment in memory of Christina Murphy. Thank you. Look at them. So, starting with Jewish Jewish American Heritage Month. All right. And it will be received by Jeff Morgan and Sam Hershberg. Just if in case you all want to come up to the podium since I know you're going to you have some prepared remarks as well. Okay. Oh, and perhaps one more person. Okay, so Jewish-American Heritage Month, whereas the city of Berkeley takes great pride in supporting individual freedoms and a strengthened by the diverse, religious, ethnic, political, and cultural contributions of its residents, including Jewish Americans, and whereas the history of Judaism on this continent dates back to 1654, when 23 Jewish refugees fleeing persecution abroad sailed into modern-day New York City, and whereas over 350,000 Jewish Americans live in the Bay Area and make invaluable and significant contributions to the fabric of our communities. And whereas the city of Berkeley is home to a wide variety of Jewish institutions that cultivate space for sacred worship, study, and community, such as synagogues, community centers, preschools, nonprofits, campus organizations, and more. And whereas Jewish Americans are diverse, encompassing a wide range of identities, beliefs, racial backgrounds, lived experiences, observances, and cultural traditions, with connections to vibrant Jewish communities worldwide. And whereas Tikkun Olim or repairing the world is this meaningful expression of Jewish values from many Jews reflected in the involvement of countless Jewish Americans and movements for social progress, justity, justice, equity, freedom, and liberation throughout American history. And whereas the city of Berkeley honors the resilience of Jewish Americans amid a troubling rise in anti-semitism in recent years, and reaffirms the shared moral responsibility to stand forcefully against all forms of anti-semitism. And whereas the Berkeley City Council acknowledges the importance of local government in celebrating its diverse communities, advocating for equity and justice and reaffirms that Jews everywhere deserve to live in peace, dignity and safety. Now therefore be it resolved that I, Adina Ishi, Mayor of the City of Berkeley, do here by declare May 2025 as Jewish-American Heritage Month. Thank you, Mayor and thank you members of the council. I am only one member of the Jewish community here in Berkeley, but I'm delighted to be able to receive this, along with some of a few other members of our community. You know, Berkeley is a very diverse city as we all know. And the Jewish community is, I think, equally diverse, which is fitting for the Jewish community of Berkeley. We have, as you mentioned, in the proclamation, Jews from all walks of life, all political perspectives, lots of different colors of us, and it's really a dynamic and diverse group. And I think that's what makes us strong. And in addition to this diversity, we share, we Jews share a common heritage and history that goes back as everybody here knows, probably at least 3,000, maybe 3,500 years. So we've been around for a while. And I think that wherever we go, we are, when we are welcome, it's a beautiful thing. And we try to give back to the community what we take from it. And in this case, you're offering this proclamation as very meaningful to all of us. And I wanted to say thank you one more time. Again, by the way, I'm Jeff Morgan. I own a winery here in Berkeley. It's called Covenant. It happens to be a kosher winery. And all of you are welcome to come visit anytime. Thank you. And also author of a great cookbook too. Yeah, actually 10 of them, but you have the last one. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for that. Thank you for that, Flamie. Thank you. Thank you. And were there other comments? Hi, I'm Shulamolechem. I'm Sam Hershberger, Zalman Spora, Fyredish. I'm a student who just graduated from UC Berkeley and my pronouns are he-they. I'm grateful to the city of Berkeley and honored to be one of a few people accepting this proclamation, especially in a time when recognizing the Jewish community, especially in a time when politicians are giving Nazi salutes. I've led Yiddish song circles and forum events for queer Jewish students and organized with the Golden Gate Boond. While many associate New York with American Jewishness, I truly believe there are a few places where you can see the diversity of the Jewish diaspora better than in Berkeley. From a Ladino conversation group to the Yiddish theater ensemble and exhibits on Jewish culture in the Muslim world at the Magnus, the beauty of Jewish diasporic life can be seen everywhere in Berkeley. The long fight for civil rights in the Bay is also intertwined with the Jewish community. From socialist Jewish farming communities in Petaluma in the 1920s, all the way to the work of Berkeley alone Melanie Kay Cantrowitz with the Vildechias. This history inspires young people like me to engage with our Jewishness and with liberation struggles. And this resolution is a reminder of the importance of fostering a vibrant, positive vision of Jewishness and fighting for justice for all people. So thanks again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Ishi. Thank you, council members, for this proclamation. I'm Hannah Weissman. I'm the director of the Magnus Collection of Jewish Art and Life. It's a real honor to be able to help receive this proclamation as a museum that serves both our campus and our public community here in Berkeley. We really strive to be a place where our Jewish community has a sense of belonging in all of its beautiful diversity as Sam and Jeff were discussing, but also a place where members of the entire Berkeley community can come and learn and be in community together. So we appreciate very much the City Council's recognition of Jewish American Heritage Month and thank you for the proclamation. Thank you. And I also want to say a huge thank you to council members Luna Para, Tregub, and also Keith. Did I miss anyone who worked on this proclamation as well? I think we're going to take a quick picture with you. I don't know if they want us to have that kind of conversation. Is it during value? I'm not saying that. I'm saying that. I'm saying that. I'm saying that. I'm saying that. I'm saying that. I'm saying that. I'm saying that. I'm saying that. I'm saying that. I'm saying that. I'm saying that. I'm saying that. I'm saying that. Okay. Okay. Yes. Wait. Sorry. You said I'm small. I'm small. You said I'm small. I'm small. I'm small. I'm small. I'm small. I'm small. I'm small. I'm small. I'm small. I'm small. I'm small. I housing month, whereas quality affordable homes are vital to health, safety and racially just communities. And whereas after 41 years, East Bay housing organizations proudly continues to champion affordable housing in the East Bay, fostering a racially and economically just community for all. And whereas even before our current high inflation rates, increasing housing costs led long time residents to be displaced, live in overcrowded homes or experience homelessness, threatening our region's racial diversity and economic opportunity, and whereas stable affordable homes are the solution to homelessness and support seniors, families, youth veterans, people with disabilities or special needs and our whole community. And whereas there are concerted efforts underway to drastically reduce or altogether eliminate federal funding support for affordable housing. And whereas these efforts have nearly led to the cancellation of more than half of the grants funding fair housing initiative programs, and the cancellation of at least $62 million in Section 4 funding, administering technical assistance and small grants across the country. And whereas proposed budgets for our National Department of Housing and Urban Development threatened to send shockwaves through existing housing voucher, public housing and homelessness assistance programs, leaving communities without critical support. And whereas the role of local governments and regional bodies has never been so critical in maintaining support for producing, preserving, and protecting affordable housing opportunities for low-income communities. And where is local housing organizations are continuing to recognize May as Bay Area Affordable Housing Month because regional action to a growing regional housing crisis is an essential part of recovery from the pandemic and the work to ensure that everyone has an affordable and stable home. And whereas East Bay Housing Organizations has organized affordable housing week for 29 years, acknowledging the need for and benefits affordable homes. Now therefore, be it resolved that I, Adina Ishi, mayor of the city of Berkeley, do hereby declare May 2025 as affordable housing month in the East Bay. Hey. And I believe that we will be, it will be received by Dana Coleman. Is that you? Hello, Dana. She is an Ebbhobe member, a Berkeley resident, and a former City of Berkeley employee. Oh, they put that in there. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you for recognizing affordable housing month and affirming your commitment to affordable housing. Thank you Mayor and the City Council. As a resident and community organizer member, I am happy to receive this proclamation on behalf of the East Bay Housing Organization. And as we celebrate affordable housing month, ELPO members and staff has organized over 30 public events across the East Bay and Alameda and Contra Costa counties, including an upcoming event right here in Berkeley on May the 29th. And to see more about this, you can go to the ELPO. app.org. Thank you again very much for this honor. Thank you. Okay, so for our final proclamation this evening, I'm honored to present the Proclamation for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. As our first API mayor of the city, it is really my honor and also saying next to one of my council members who is also in the community. We're proclaiming May as Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Whereas the month of May is recognized across the United States as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, a time to honor the history, cultures, and contributions of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders who have enriched our nation and our local communities. And whereas the city of Berkeley is home to a vibrant and diverse AAPI population whose cultural traditions, civic leadership, entrepreneurial spirit, and community activism have helped shape the fabric of our city, and whereas AAPI individuals have contributed to Berkeley's legacy as a center for innovation, social justice, education and activism from student movements and labor organizing to the arts, sciences, and small businesses that strengthen our local economy. And whereas we acknowledge the challenges and discrimination that AAPI communities have faced, including racism, xenophobia, exclusion, and violence, and we recommit to standing in solidarity against hate and injustice in all its forms. And whereas celebrating AAPI Heritage Month provides an opportunity for all Berkeley residents to learn from the histories, voices, and experiences of AAPI communities, and to deepen our commitment to equity, inclusion, and collective healing. Now therefore be resolved that I bear a Dine Eishi, do hereby proclaim the month of May 2025 as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in the City of Berkeley, and encourage all residents to uplift and honor the many contributions of our API neighbors, leaders, and ancestors who continue to inspire a more just and inclusive Berkeley. Thank you. And I guess you and I are receiving this one. Thank you. All right. So finally, we have one more ceremonial matter, which is to our adjournment and memory of Christina Murphy. But although we have this, of course, we don't want to make you all wait until the very end of the meeting to read this. So I will actually have Council Member Traygub share some words now. So thank you so much to her family who's here today. There truly are no words so I didn't try to any. I'm going to speak from the heart because there are no words to describe the full depth of the amazing, amazing human being and public solvent and giver and now angel looking down and shining a bright light on us that Christina Murphy has been and continues to be. I have... on us that Christina Murphy has been and continues to be. I had the deep luck of being introduced to Christina in 2016 when we were both running for the Berkeley Went Board. And we got a chance to become very good friends on the trail. And a friendship only deeper when we had an opportunity to sort of together. In four time on the Went Board, Christina advanced a number of causes that really ensured that we were doing everything we possibly could be for the least of us. In fact, Christina ran as a voice for the voice less, but she is, you know, everyone on campaigns, myself included, comes up with slogans. There are very few people that I have ever met in my life that have demonstrated a commitment to that slogan. That is who she always was. Christina was and remains a voice for the voice less. Following her service on the Went Board, she continued to work with nonprofits and later the city of Berkeley on the homeless response team. And I met so many people that but for meeting Christina, would not have a roof over their head, would not have resources that they now have. Even upon receiving her diagnosis, which was devastating. And I can't even imagine what her family has gone through. But even then, Christina was always thinking about others ahead of her, from giving away her shoe collection, to thinking about how to ensure resources for others. And that is who she has been consistently. When my homeland was invaded, she was doing, it was a resource fair that she was organizing. I remember at the Ashby flea market. And even then she gave me an opportunity to say a few words about the cause of Ukraine. And I just, someone who puts causes and humanity and the well-being of others ahead of herself. Someone like that were very lucky if we meet one person who demonstrates that throughout in a lifetime. And those of us who got to know Christina who served with Christina who were parts of her circle of the community because Christina expanded the community she brought in the community. All of us were fortunate to be touched by her and for those of you who did not have the benefit of knowing Christina, her legacy continues today in the affordable housing items that are on our agenda tonight in the resources that the city is working on, even despite deep financial challenges. Christina's light continues to shine upon us. We now bear the responsibility to continue her heavenly work on this Earth. And we will do our very best to do so. Christina Prasente. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you sharing those words and I remember Christina running for rent board back in the day was a while ago and I'm really glad that we were able to adjourn her memory. I know her family's here. I was wondering if anyone wanted to say anything. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thanks. First of foremost, I'd like to thank you all for having us. Thank you for those kind words. I can tell my sister meant a lot to you. Christina was Berkeley. It was in her throughout. Berkeley was a part of her. She fought for people who didn't have voices in Berkeley. I'm thankful that you guys will continue to push on for her, because she was an advocate for so many things, homelessness, drug abuse, mental health, and we all suffer from a lot of that. And without her, a lot of people wouldn't seek help. She was a walking resource. If you didn't know how to find the help, Christina already knew where it was at. And most of the time, she used to have the paperwork in her trunk. She had resources everywhere. I do comedy. I'm a stand-up comedy. And I'll never forget Christina got on stage. And instead of telling jokes, she started handing out resources. And that's the kind of person Christina was. So I'd like to thank you guys for having her, for being by her side, and for having to love for my family. Thank you. My name is Chris Terrell. I'm Christina Murphy's sister. And thank you, Igor, for inviting us and sharing all those kind words. Thank you mayor for allowing this to be and honoring her and her legacy. I'm really grateful that I had a sister like her. She was rough and she was very sweet and sentimental. During COVID we definitely bond it more and she introduced me to a lot of organizations that she was a part of. I did help her also canvas the area when she was running for rent board. So that was fun to have an opening experience in like politics and advocacy work. And I definitely have acquired her voice than she is, but she definitely was that voice for me as well. And I just really want to thank all of you council members for showing her grace and patience and allowing her to speak for people and for the community and for those who are insecure housing and things like that in our hometown. Born and raised in Berkeley, Berkeley high, UC Berkeley is It's all in our blood and I just appreciate you guys for giving her this space to be who she was and who she is for this community. So thank you all. Thank you. I'm gonna give. I'm the God first. Let me gonna give honor to God. I'm gonna honor you, you all. I appreciate you all for recognizing my cousin. My name is Wayne Dixon. Born and raised in Compton. Rookman Watts. Up to the dub, Watts' world. I'm saying the Watts' world. I came out here at Marriott, the physical standard, and she picked me up at the train station. She said, cousin, can you bro with me? We gotta go. I gotta go to my job, listen to flowers, right? Hey, hey. All right. And so if I start talking too much, land the plane, land the plane, you know what I'm saying? But anyway, so I brought water and she picked up some flies, about 1,000 flies. So we went on home in the cabin, right? She put on flies, right? Land the note, man, we're doing the community cleanup. If you got some valuables, we got a storage, right? Everything you live out here is going to get going away. Then you know, we went door to door to door to door to door. We put some flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, put the parties, everything. I'm out of the water because myself, I do eventually work. I'm an advocate and a lot of I deal with lifers coming from prison. And I've been doing this since 2013. Since the 2000, Richard Law got amended. My problem is 36. And so I've been doing this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I want to do that on behalf of Christina. You know what I'm saying on behalf of Christina. Yeah, it's like, yeah, here, here, good. That's a week. I got a shout call from Badges, I've been watching on 1 3rd, nothing I would know. And yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll be do this, right? Last minute orders, we want to share, let me know. I got to. And Kobe, her husband, right? All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. Say, let the plane land the plane, all right? But anyway, I say, I want to say thank you, girl. I want to thank you. I'm not trying to promote my business and everything else man. I'm just like my cousin man. It's like my mind's like that. But anyway, man, I want to say thank you. Thank you. We're getting heard of. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you all so much for being here. I know there's quite a bit of her family members here today So thank you all so much for making the time to come out and thank you councilmember trade-up for your words as well definitely from the heart Yeah I Next thing on the agenda, I feel like we need to have like a moment or something. I just want to give us a moment. Let's just take a moment. Okay. any manager, did you have comments? No, Madam Mayor I don't. I would just appreciate Council Member Trigger for his remarks about Christina Murphy. We staff miss her very much. She still has an empty office space that we all walk by every day. And she lived her life fully and with love and is deeply missed by all of us as well. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. OK. We are moving on to public comment. You heard it pretty good. Okay. Okay. Our city clerk is picking up cards for public comment on non-agent matters. That's it. Hardness. Yeah, it cut. Oh, yeah. So we have four cards. We have Gina Reeger, Richard Wood, Cheryl, and Steve Tracy. Okay, so if those folks could come up, please. Come up along the side, any order? And then any order. We have four people online, so be one minute each. Okay, go ahead and come up. One minute. It depends on how many public comments we have. I thought it's 10. All right. Get shorter every time. I'm here to talk about encampments and in particular, there is a tent in Courtney's park, which has been reported to the city. I represent, I believe, the majority of stakeholders who live, vote, and pay taxes and Berkeley and value deeply our beautiful parks. Some of which are besieged by encampments and permanent squatters. Our peaceful enjoyment is continuously compromised when we encounter people living in our parks and blatant violation of our laws. When we have no idea whether those inhabiting our spaces will further behave unlawfully or without civility, it's in a front to us to have to guess whether we, our families, and grandchildren friends will be confronted, accosted, view public urination, et cetera. Thank you. Sorry, your time is up. And just I know you asked a question about on the agenda, it says that if more than five people are selected, then they'll be given a minute so just answer your question earlier. I thought there were only five people. There's online. There are online comments as well. Yeah. So go ahead the next person please. And sorry for folks who haven't been here before I'm a real stickler for time so when your minute is up it's it's up. Okay go ahead. Hello, I wanted to stop and tell you about the Starbucks on Starberry Creek up there on center or is it not center street or something by the University gate and how that creek runs under there and that building is scheduled to be demolished and made replaced with something big and residential or whatever and I thought that it that maybe it was due that the stream would be considered for daylighting. And other than that before I left, I figured I would tell you that it is very disappointing that everybody likes to cook the bold sexy girlfriend, the hamburger, and Turner into that food when she was a And I'm telling y'all that a hen that never ate any worms, never said blood. And if you kill a hen that was from a factory farm in a cage that never said blood, that you're the bloodshedder. And this is law that you sound not kill a cow that ate only vegetables and never harmed another living creature. And you do not have the establishment of the law in any place like- Thank you. Thanks. Next speaker. Council, Steve Tracy. Two weeks ago I was here, I didn't introduce myself, but I'm back, tent count, one tent tent in cordonesees. 31 in Alonie. I didn't update that, but Mr. Bullton Hagen was kind enough to have Mr. Rudd who sent me a letter. I just got it. They're too busy. They're too stretched. But I'm a third grade teacher, and it's pretty simple math, which is bigger 31 or 1. We can solve the problem at Cordenese's by enforcing one camper out before it becomes 31 like 4-alone, which is going to get its own enforcement. Let's do some easy math. And it's a public nuisance. He forwarded the encampment policy from last year, but there is an exception. Council take action to clear a public nuisance. Can't par out. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Next speaker. All the people in Palestine are on-house and living in encampments are on-start, are starving. And you should have some compassion for those that are living on the streets who can't afford the expensive rents and Berkeley, but 14,000 babies are going to die within 48 hours in Palestine. 14,000. The hair starving and an eighth month old baby looks like a newborn because the baby has been starved. Free Palestine. I know you passed a Zionist resolution, but now you could still do something that's going to change the world. You could still, there's still time. You could just do an arms embargo. You could support letting the food in. There's all kinds of things you can do. Free Palestine and stop the enforcement's on an housed community. Thanks for your comment. Okay, going to the online commenters. We have three. Do we want to take this last person? Because we only have one person. Yeah, I guess we can. We have those commenters. Do we want to take this last person? Because we only have one person. I guess we can. We have three online commenters. Go ahead. Gordon Gilmore speaking for the Berglier-Reach Coalition. Could you speak a little closer to the mic? Can you hear me now? That's better. Thank you. Notice was posted at a lonely park. Notifying in-camera residents that they needed to vac. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. We can go to the online comments now. All right. First is Eva. Eva, you should be able to unmute. Thanks. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. Just really quickly. I want to thank Cheryl W. for talking about the public space. We have beyond the public right. Thank you. Thanks, Cheryl W. for talking to unmute. Thanks. Can you hear me? Okay. Yes. Thank you. Just really quickly. I want to thank Cheryl W. Laf for for talking about the babies and Gaza. That's a really dire situation. And unfortunately, it is linked to the homelessness problem here in California. We could have solved homelessness. If we were not sending tens of billions of dollars to Israel to committed genocide that is really damaging US national security on top of the moral injury that we're all we're all part of because we pay tax dollars into it. I also want to let you know that I was in Sacramento I followed a bunch of educators from Rinc County and Berkeley and other parts of California to oppose AB 715 that stories covered at Marine County confidential dot sub stack dot com. And the prior article prior to the 715 article has a lot of video of State Senator Henry Stern. I think that's of interest to people in Berkeley. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Okay. Next speaker is Madeline. Madeline, you should be allowed to unmute. Hi there. My name is Madeline Roberts Rich. I was helping out to save the United Artist Theater Coalition, although I myself am not part of it. I just want to select the Berkeley community know on April 22nd the City Council allowed for the developer to move forward within exemption, a categorical exemption to SIKWA, which is very much against the law. They are aware of this. And so if you're wondering in a few years time downtown Berkeley flounders, and why there's no activity at night, a big part of it is commercial theaters and the infrastructure for those theaters were not protected. I personally was not calling for the preservation of the theater, but rather allowing and making sure the developer went through the legal process of a mitigated, negative declaration or an environmental impact report as required by state law. You can look at the April 22nd meeting. I entry you to look at Commissioner Bartlett's comments, which were extremely disrespectful to the State of United Artists initiative. I will keep coming back so this is your time is up. Okay, and next is a caller with a phone number ending in 191. It needs a name. Hi. So our company manager, Emilio Montio, he mentioned it, we've treated it as well. I think he handed you some as well. But my comment today, and you should consider how different employees in city behave. Because some of them should not be fit to work for our beautiful city, and it shows. It shows, especially in our case. But my goal today is about my good friend Michael Erner. He was a cheaper-up guy at the Triacon synagogue. He best away August last year, 2024. He was a good man. And believe like I do, Jews, Muslims, Christians, are cousins who are the same. Zionist is not what we are. It is a war. And the blood of all those kids in Gaza, adults, women, in all of our hand, in all of our hand. And that's the lack of the city council to vote for, for, for, for, for too far as the solution, broke up that monastarch Trump, he's a monastarch, he's throwing our country. I've been working for 62 years. Thank you. And that's the first time I hate it. Thank you for your comment. That's the last non-agenda comment. Okay. Thank you all for your public comments. I am going to move on to the consent calendar. So per government code section 5, 4, 9, 5, 3, subsection C3, I'm providing verbal notice that the city council will adopt a resolution confirming the appointment of Janelle Rodriguez as the director of human resources to be effective June 9th, 2025 at an annual salary of $240,000. I'd also like to motion to add the urgency item for the excused absence for Councilmember Ben Bartlett to the agenda. Sorry, make a motion. I just want to make sure folks got that. I got a second here. Any questions about that? Okay. Can we take the role please? Okay. We need two thirds to add it to the agenda. Yes, to add the item to the agenda, Councillor Wanning. Yes. Tapplin. Yes. O'Barrillette is absent. Tregum. I. O'Keefe. Yes. Blackaby. Yes. Loonopara. Yes. Humber. Yes. Ann Mayer-Each. Yes. Thank you. Item is out. So it will be added to the consent. Yes. Council Member Blackaby. Thanks, Man Mayor. I just had a few comments on consent items. First on item one, just appreciate my colleague's support of adding ADA compliance expertise to the SSCOC, which will be discussing later tonight, the composition of that committee. So I'm looking for that discussion and I appreciate support of getting that piece added. Just wanted to add my welcome to Janelle Rodriguez as well. We'll be again in adopting the consent calendar, really looking forward to working with her and her expertise that she's bringing to our city, to the HR function, which is really critical, so welcome and thank you for joining us. Item number 26, thank Council Member Taplan for authoring this resolution supporting Senator Arrogance bill SB692, the RB by-back program. I know it's been extremely successful here in Berkeley and I appreciate Council Member Taplan's leadership on this item that hopefully we can do more of this here and also in other places across the state. Item 27, Council Member Trigger, do you have a spot for another co-sponsor on the Middle Eastern North African item? I would be delighted. I would love to add myself as a co-sponsor to the item 27. Appreciate your work on that. Item 28 on the Asian Cultural Festival would like to add $250 from the D6 discretionary account. Also, I want to Councilmember Triggum's items. And finally, on item 29, just wanted to thank Councilmember O'Keefe for all of her work and the other co-sponsors, Mayor Ishii and Council Member Loonapara, as we're seeking additional sort of short-term solutions. We've heard in public comment tonight and many other public comments in previous evenings, trying to find some short-term solutions to help move people out of encampments into places where they have safe housing on the way to a more long-term sustainable solution. I'd appreciate the work of Council Marokieff at trying to craft something that would help us close the gap in the short-term and look forward to working with you and then hearing back from the city manager in the coming weeks and months as to what we can do there. So those are my comments. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you very much. And Council Member O'Keefe. Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to speak, thank you, Council Member Bartlett for taking me up. I'd like to speak for a moment about item 29, alternative housing options for people experiencing homelessness. Back in February, I attended the community meeting hosted by Council Member Tregoupe and Mary Shee regarding the Civic Center in Campment, Civic Center Park in Campment. And we heard there from over 200 members of the community about what to do in response to that situation. Some were primarily concerned about the effect that the encampment was having on BHS students or members of the public, and many expressed anger and frustration that the encampment made it difficult for the public to use and enjoy one of our wonderful parks. And of course, many, many people expressed outrage and dismay that people in our community were living in these terrible conditions. One thing we heard over and over again from almost every perspective represented was a demand that we, city leadership, do better, try harder to find ways to help unsheltered people and at the same time to restore public places so they can be used by all. My office has received, including the All Council in Box, has received about 800 emails about homelessness and I have been in office for about 150 days. This item, item 29, is a direct response to this mandate from the community. We hear you loud and clear. Right now, our wonderful homeless response team works extremely hard to get to note each person living on our streets and in our parks and works tirelessly to connect them with the help they need, ideally moving them into stable housing. It's not enough. There are not enough beds. As city leaders, we cannot continue with the status quo. We have to keep trying to find innovative solutions and do whatever we can to improve the situation no matter what the obstacles. This is the hard work that people elected us to do. Item 29, alternative housing options for people experiencing homelessness is the first step in a path to expanding our toolkit to address chronic homelessness. It's a small step. All it does is ask city staff to look for possible locations where a new kind of shelter might be created. And by new, I don't really mean new. Because the concept we hope to recreate one day has already been proven to be successful. Just a few years ago with the Horizon Transitional Village in Spark site at 742 Grayson. I won't go on here about how wonderful that program was. I know some are here to speak about it and I look forward to that. What suffices to say, the Grayson Street site, which safely housed almost 150 people in intense and many were in RVs and connected nearly 50 people to permanent housing in just 15 months. Represented Berkeley's finest work in two things we excel at. Innovation and compassion. I'm grateful to co-sponsors of the side of Mary Shee, and Council members, Luna Parra, and Black Abbey, as well as amendments provided by Council members at Trey Guben Bartlett. My hope is that if this is ultimately a success, we can help so many more people in our community who need stable and safe housing options, and at the same same time restore our parks and sidewalks to public use. This idea faces many more obstacles before it can become a reality. But I'm proud to be taking this first step tonight. So thank you. I hope we have everyone's support. Thank you. Okay. Council member. Oh gosh, Humbert. Thank you Madam Mayor. I just I wanted to, um, say, contribute $250 from the district eight discretionary account toward the item number 28. Funds provided to the annual Asian Cultural Festival. Thank you. That's the only comment I have. Thank you very much. I'm going to throw in Council Member Trigub into this, because for some reason it's not showing up on my list. Apologies. Yeah, sorry, I think this one is done. Thank you. I Would first of all also like to formally welcome Miss Rodriguez if she's in the crowd or listening, we're looking, yes, welcome. We're looking forward to having you on board. I would like to express my profound appreciation to Council Member Kaplan for his item 26 letter in support of California State Senate Bill 692 relating to vehicles and homelessness, definitely an item. I want to, the council to support as it moves forward. I would like to thank members of the council for considering or a contribution or contributing from this questionnaire funds towards item 28, the Asian Cultural Festival. I had the deep honor of attending one in downtown Bark, resolution recognizing the middle eastern and north African community and urging support for assembly bill 91. I would like to thank the Council for considering item 27, resolution recognizing the middle eastern and north African community and urging support for Assembly Bill 91. And lastly, but certainly not leastly, I would like to thank Council Member or Keith and all the co-sponsors for drafting or co-sponsoring item 29, alternative housing options for people experiencing homelessness. And I would like to thank the members of the Health and Life Enrichment Subcommittee, which also include Council Member O'Keefe as well as Council Member Bartlett for working so collaboratively to ensure that in addition to the first part of the item, which is still to explore any and all opportunities for alternative housing options. We also have a lot of resources that we can explore any and all opportunities for alternative housing options. We also take a hard look at the resources that the city already provides. We are a city of 123,000 individuals. Looking at furthering opportunities for collaboration with the county, with the region, with our neighboring cities, making sure that all of our neighbors are doing their fair share. This is a challenging time financially for every city and the county. We must be able to figure out how to do more with less. And I will say that the amendments that are up for consideration were drafted in collaboration and partnership with staff. I would like to thank the City Manager and staff working on these issues for continuing to partner with the county and with our neighbors to make sure that we are in alignment around the principle that this is a community that everyone should be able to call home. With that, I am, well, I will not make a motion on the consent calendar just just want to clarify that it was mine to be directed to take the different parts of the recommendations sequentially before they bring forward clarify that it was my intent with these amendments and I conformed this with the city manager and you know, it can correct me if I am misspeaking. But all of these can be done in parallel, not sequentially. So we as a city have been good been good at being able to walk and chew gum at the same time, and I have every bit of confidence that we will continue. Thank you, thanks, Councilmember. Councilmember Lidopara. Thank you. I am very happy to see that item 11 is on the consent calendar. This item will codify personnel policy that ensures that when our city offers a promotion to an internal employee, they then receive fair financial compensation associated with it. So I want to thank Monica Walker, the personnel board, city manager and all of the workers who identified this inequity and organized for it. I will also be abstaining on item 21 because I want to highlight the PAB and ODPA's concerns and we'll be working on collaborative solutions moving forward. I'd also like to thank Council Member O'Keefe and her staff to Walb and Alex for all of the work that they've put into item 29. Thank you so much. Thank you. Councilmember Kessar-Wani. Yes, thank you very much, Madam Mayor. I wanted to call out item number eight. This is funding that the North Berkeley Bar Development has been awarded from the State's Affordable Housing Sustainable Communities Fund. This is $50 million, a portion of which'll go to the city to do public bike and pedestrian infrastructure improvements. So I'm really thrilled to see us move that item forward tonight. And then I just also want to note that I'm happy to be a co-sponsor of item number 21 for the festival. The, oh, I'm sorry, it's not item 21. I will find it. the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the dollar amount? Oh, isn't the dollar amount. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. The dollar amount is mentioned. Yes. Okay. Any other comments from council members? I'm sorry. My little parliamentarian system is not working. So just give me a wave. Okay. All right. So I just want to, again, and also say thank you very to Council Member Oaky, staff, and all the staff that worked on item number 29. Item 29 affirms the City Council's position. That to the greatest extent possible, the county's measure W and other locally sourced funds should be used to support Berkeley-specific homelessness service needs as outlined in four principles for county consideration. This is all in the item. I'd like to request the city manager communicate the position of the city council as it says there already, but in the form of a letter to supervisor, Forternada Bass, and the Alamedic Board of Supervisors. Thank you. That's my that's my only comment. Otherwise, thank you all's work. No, it was a lot. Okay. Now, we will take public comment on consent calendar and information items only. About two minutes. Hold on one second. Let's see how many people are here real quick. I think that you might end up having one minute, one, two, three. Yeah, and their speakers online. Yeah. You will have one minute unless you can get another minute from someone else. Okay. Okay. Excuse me. John Caner, CO, Downtown Berkeley Association, co-chair of the Business Alliance of Business Organizations. Berkeley Alliance of Business Organizations, Babbo, we're about two years old. We have sent the letter with 10 business organizations supporting item number 29, want Thank Councilmember Rokief, the mayor, Blackbeard. I'd like to thank Councilmember Rokief the mayor Black B I'll try to go for amendments People need a place to go and we need to get people into care We need to get them into services. We need to get them on the path to stable housing, but But we need enforcement. We need enforcement of our sidewalk regulations and our park regulations. We're such a small town. If we house people and we should, they're in our parks and our streets. More people will come in. We need to have enforcement. There needs to be some tough love. We also, some of our members added they really want to make sure if it's in their neighborhood. Thank you. I'm sorry. Some of our members had it. They really want to make sure if it's in their neighborhood. Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Honorable Council members, my name is Joshua Kaitana. I'm the chair of the Police Accountability Board. I'm here to speak on item 21, which was the control equipment report under which the council would adopt the resolution approving the 2024 equipment report. I would just ask the council defer, not reject, defer hearing the item until the presentation of the military equipment report for two reasons. The first substantive and the second procedural. Subtinent reason is that the police accountability report under the municipal code is required to review the report and pursuant to that review, we requested records in the police department police department said no, can't see those. Even though under section 28 of our charter we are able to access and in fact the 28 charter says that this all agents and employees of the city shall cooperate with and assist the director of the police candidate board, the police candidate board and its staff and produce all records and all written and unwritten information documents, details and evidence to the board to carry out its student duties and functions and in this case it did not do so. So I just ask that the second reason is procedural. Thank you. Thank you. Dean Mayor and Council members. Executive Director of Dorothy Dayhouse. I'm here to express strong support for item 26 and it bill 692, which provides essential legal framework for cities like Berkeley to operate vehicle buyback programs. Dorothy Dayhouse proudly operated the pilot RV buyback program in Berkeley and saw first hand the transformative impact it had offering dignity, safety and a path forward towards stability. It also exemplified what a strong and compassionate partnership with the city can look like. We're excited to see this work continue. I also support item 29 alternative housing. Dorothy Day operated Horizon Transitional Village, a community shelter, not congregate. That fostered stability, dignity, and a personal space. I encourage everyone to Google the program and watch the CBS News feature from December 15, 2020. The approval model can work. Thank you. Thank you so much and thanks for your work. Next speaker. Hello, my name is Ashawait Jones. I'm a lawyer. I'm formerly homeless and I'm a resident of Berkeley. I'm here to express concern about the City of Berkeley letter in support of 692. I applaud the city's work on its background early gap in working with vehicularily house full to support self-determination, dignity, and that wanted with a pathway to a more permanent shelter. I am concerned that SB 692, as amended, are broadly to non-abandoned vehicles. SB 692 allows the expedited removal and dismantling of, quote, abandoned vehicles without a death, one of vehicles allowing for potentially discriminatory enforcement, the lack of the definition of the type of vehicle that the law applies to also makes it right for potential litigation against the city and for towing vehicles that are not abandoned. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Rebecca Miller. I'm a Berkeley resident. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm here also to ask the castle not to submit a letter of support of SB692, which has been significantly amended. There's a number of bills pending in the legislature this year that similar to that bill would expand local government's authority to tow and destroy vehicles and reduce the procedural protections for vehicle owners. Of course, removing abandoned vehicles and damaged vehicles that pose a threat to public and important government service, but there are already a number of provisions in the vehicle code that allow and continuing to dilute vehicle owners rights as this and other bill seek to do raises constitutional concerns and increases the opportunities for abuse by local governments around the state who are less concerned than Berkeley with the well being of people who are unhoused and living in vehicles are storing their property in their vehicle. I think Rush to expand local governments authority in this dangerous piecemeal fashion that will have harmful clinical consequences. Thank you. Thanks so much. Can I get two minutes? Nice. Thank you. Oh, um, so not, yeah, sorry, one here and one over. Yeah, sure. Okay. Thank you. My name is Amber Wittson and I live in an RV here in Berkeley about item 26. SB-SIC-92 is currently suspended in the appropriations committee, so it's unlikely to move forward this session. This letter of support isn't about shaping policy, it's about optics, it's posturing, not progress. The proposed letter and even the agenda item description are packed with misleading language. Kerry, I expected better from the Councilmember I voted for. There's a disturbing flip flop between compassion and spin. The letter claims RVs and trailers are being abandoned on our streets. That's a lie. The only RVs that sat uninhabited for weeks were the ones to cityqueer through its own buyback program. Towing companies couldn't keep up so they lingered. The letter even admits this. Calling those RVs abandoned and lumping them in with talk if illegal dumping is misleading. Truly abandoned RVs don't sit long. People move into them fast just like they did the ones at second and cedar. Labeling vehicles is abandoned because they haven't moved in 72 hours as a convenient legal fiction used to justify impoundments. The letter acknowledges that most people living in vehicles are victims of the housing and shelter crisis. But it's claiming that many RVs are sold or leased to the unhoused by unscrupulous actors. Maybe that's true in Oakland, but it's not the reality here in Berkeley. I've lived in vehicles on these streets for 11 years and was the go-to mechanic for much of the RV community. I've never seen anyone renting an RV here. The letter also falsely suggests that SB692 requires shelter offers alongside RV buybacks. It doesn't. The April 9th amendment stripped all language about assistance to unhoused people. SB692 doesn't mandate buybacks, doesn't require shelter and doesn't promise housing help, promoting it is compassionate policy is dishonest. Most vehicle dwellers I know want stable housing. Some of my friends from the second street buyback program are actively working toward that right now. To be clear, most ARPs aren't made for long-term habitation, especially newer models. They're both for short-term recreational use with planned obsolescence baked in. Even with good maintenance, they break down under daily use, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't be allowed to shelter in them when no better options exist. The letter implies you'd rather see people in tensor on sidewalks than in beat up our v's. I'd wager that some families of our neighbors who died from exposure over the years would have gladly seen them alive in a run-down trailer rather than dead. Berkeley should stand for real support and holding homeless services funds recipients accountable, not back-a-bill advertised as compassion but meant to make life easier for local governments. Please don't support SB 692. Also regard. holding homeless services funds recipients accountable, not back a bill advertised as compassion but meant to make life easier for local governments. Please don't support SB692. Also regarding item 29, I read an article a few months ago that said the red code, the developer of 742 Grayson is waiting for capital before they can do anything else with the property. Maybe they wouldn't mind leasing it to the city again in the meantime. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. I also read your op-ed by the way and I appreciate it. So thank you. Just a reminder to folks to refer to the council though as a whole body and not individuals. Thank you. Hi. Once again Gordon Gilmore speaking on behalf of Berklee Outreach Coalition and I wanted to say that I'm going to be able to do that. Hi, once again Gordon Gilmore speaking on behalf of the outreach coalition and. I wanted to oppose item 26, but seems like that's been all my reasons for opposition have been explained already. So I just want to speak and support item 29. Let me say that opposed to public space being relegated to the public right of way as people feel prevented using the public space of the parks largely on the basis of fear given that the on-house aren't encroaching on public space in the park that's being put to use by the public and hadn't been prior to. And this fear is not sound basis to force on-house folks into the public right of way. But this item will be crucial for making safe and comfortable places where on-house folks can live in the streets. Outside of the spaces being used by the public. That will allow for an answer to the question, where do we go? Thank you. Thank you. Hello, Councilmembers. In May? Yeah, my name is Bob Wh Wellen. I was intimately involved in the horizon program. We learned a lot of lessons there. If we ever get something similar to that again, it will be even better. I want to speak in support of I have 29. I want to encourage you to find a location or locations. Many people and groups and agencies are waiting in the wings for the opportunity to provide innovative and cost effective solutions for our analysis neighbors. We have to reduce the purpose and cost to a level that allows us to provide a warm, dry, clean space for people to live. Ideally, locations that will be available as long as it's needed. Just close with this, there are a lot of empty spaces in Berkeley, and empty space is full of potential. Let's try to use it. Thanks. Thank you. We've heard tonight some people complaining about on-house person staying in parks. Well, number 29 is a solution to that. It's mitigating that by providing persons and alternatives so that they just aren't Exited from the park without any place else to go and just moved around the city Councilmember Traghub has already responded to one concern I had which is that this not be delayed to this identifying sites by Reports and analyses etc and councilmember Traykib has said the city manager could identify the sites while concurrently respond to the reports that have been requested and the data that's been requested. I have a concern if the city manager's office can't begin to negotiate that at least when they identify a list of sites that they are, if I can finish the sentence. Thanks, Carol. Carol, I'm sorry. Feel free to write us, Carol. Hi Maria We gotta stop meeting like this. Thank you mayor. Thank you missokie and everyone else Yes, I forgot to tell you. The meeting we had with Peter Rdew last Friday was spectacular because the group that has demonstrated the capacity to build tiny home communities, whether they're for shelters or RVs, has demonstrated that they're able to do it in Richmond and in Oakland. And it's like we're surrounded by people that have succeeded. And we're Berkeley, as has been mentioned, we are diverse. And yet we are a community, innovation, compassion, Egorah, doing more with less. We have community members, the residents that deserve safe space, the businesses that deserve to flourish. It's like we can all succeed here because we've got architects, we've got collaboration, cooperation, and it's been already test-driven and proven. So, I just ask you, let's, the longest journey start to the single step. Do not let perfection, or, oh my god, where's the last penny? Let's just find spaces, because as a designer and builder, we find the space. We can design it, and we can work with the community to have it be in harmony. We can all get along. We really can, and we've been doing it for centuries, and if there's 123,000 people here, I want all of us to be happy. I really do, and I know that we can. So it's a process but let's keep it simple. Step by step. I got to to even get up here. Thank you. Thank you. Good timing. Okay. Are there folks online to speak to the consent calendar or information items? Yes, there's currently seven hands raised. Okay. First is Beth Rossner. Good evening, Marin Council. This is Beth Rossner from the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce, speaking tonight in support of item 29. Our members continue to see the real impacts of the homelessness and mental health crisis across the city. And we believe this referral offers a thoughtful and necessary approach to addressing it. We support the city taking steps to identify additional shelter sites both within and outside of Berkeley. And for considering geographic equity, feasibility impacts on our commercial districts and cost effectiveness. We're also encouraged by your emphasis on ensuring that Berkeley receives an equitable share of funding through Measure W and Prop 1. This proposal reflects a balanced strategy that acknowledges the scale of the challenge and the need for collaboration across jurisdictions, not just our city. So we urge the Council to support this item and move it forward, Blair Beakman. I spent the past 10 years working on tech accountability for the Bay Area. I moved to San Diego a couple of ago. I'm in the Bay Area at this time, so I'd say hi. To start off, you have three items in your consent on tech accountability issues. Two, one is a police equipment reporting. Another is upcoming street lighting. This can be a community process in mid-June. Really good luck that your street lighting efforts be a community process and they are not afraid to talk about the technology to be placed in those smart street lights in your future. It's important to talk about and be clear about and it will be difficult for yourself. Good luck in taking that extra step to talk more openly and honestly and clearly about what tech will be on our future in Berkeley. And with that said, that tech to be placed is important for the upcoming oversight committee that you're talking about tonight. Good luck that they have good civil protections, civil rights ideals in place that they can rely on ACLU good practices in their decision making for that future. I know it's hard to see sometimes from online. Your time is up, but thank you so much for your comment. And it's a really good point about technology and street lighting. Okay, next is tiny village spirit. Yes, hi, Mayor Ishi and members of council. I'm Sally Heine, a member of Strawberry Creek Friends Meeting, and also director of Tiny Village Spirit. I'm here to support item 29 because we can do more to create innovative solutions, addressing the need for emergency housing for those that are unhoused in our community. Our organizations' volunteers have been involved in creating both Oakland and Richmond's first legal tiny house villages, and we're excited about the potential to create a tiny house village in Berkeley, which might be part of a win-win innovative solution creating more emergency housing. I also want to just quickly support Amber Whittsmith's very articulate views regarding SB 692. Amber really has the wisdom regarding experience living in our views and I really respect her views. Thank you very much. Thanks Sally and can you just make sure to include our office and those conversations I'm really interested in that. Thank you very much. Thanks, Sally. And can you just make sure to include our office in those conversations. I'm really interested in that. Thank you. Yes. Okay. Next is Tony. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I do support item 26 on the buyback of ourDS that Jesse Arguine in his new role as a state senator has proposed. I think it's a compassionate and creative way of dealing with vehicles that proposed a danger to the community and to potential inhabitants. It's a buyback program that creates cash for people who need it. And most importantly, it's already in effect. And so let's build on the success. And I want to thank Terry Tapplin for bringing this forward. Our district is one of two that are very impacted by this program. And I think it's a positive step forward. And I hope that Senator Arigee gets some success. Thank you very much. Thanks for your comments. Next is Mooney. Bidding Mayor Council and community. I have had the honor to work with the tiny home village that first started in Oakland a few years back with young people as the designers those who were formally homeless. Now we do have unhoused multi-faith community members city staff members all working together with the hope of getting similar space created for housing and Berkeley. So when they say it's not possible, remember what was said in South Africa by a wise elder, it seems impossible until it's done. And I'm on the steps right now. If the person said we couldn't save the Burk most office, but we did. Let's house those who are unhoused and do so with compassion. I remember the way Church Berkeley and a resident of Berkeley. Thank you. Thanks, Moni. Next is Ruben Bazardo. Thank you, Mayor and Council members. I just want to also add my comments to what Monila has said about how good it is to work in a city and live in a city where the council and the staff and in partnership with nonprofits are really working on the issues and bringing about solutions that work for everybody concerned. I specifically am here tonight to register support for the item on the consent calendar that would extend the city's contract with the village of love which operates Sacred Breast drop in center which is housed at the first church Presbyterian. The homeless response team, our own social worker, R.E. Newlight, several council members offices. A whole host of people are there and it's a hub for support for the unhoused community in the telegraph neighborhood and just wanted to commend you and thank you for having it on the consent calendar. Thank you. Thanks for your comment. How many more comments do we have? Three more. Okay. Just want to get a sense of time. Helen Walsh, Mary and O'Sullivan and Andrea Pritchett. Helen, you should be able to speak. Good evening Mayor Council Member and Community. I'm going to be speaking on two consent calendars. First one is number 29. I'm in support of the city council. Sorry, I'm reading for wrong thing. It is clear that Berkeley can't keep moving on house peoples around from site to site. We need additional emergency shelter, a tiny house village, or including RV options for our on-house Berkeley residents. I have been attending tiny village meetings held at the Berkeley Public Library for several months. We need creative housing alternatives that bring community together. I believe this project is more than housing, it builds and connects community. Our on-house community of deserves to see their vision, along with allies and community volunteers come to light. I also want to make a comment on consent item number one, adding additional qualifying. number one, adding additional qualifying. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry, you're out. Well, I'm for adding somebody who knows accessibility. I'm sorry, but you're out of time. And then Maryano Sullivan. Thank you. Hi, this is Maryano Sullivan, and I live in West Berkeley. And I want to add my voice to those who tonight are saying that the council should please pass item 29. So the city can take the first step for identifying sites where our neighbors can live in safe communities like the tiny house projects in Oakland and Richmond. and also encourage a place for RVs to be able to come together and and live together in safety and with the resources they need. Thanks. Thank you. Okay and the last raised hand is Andrea Pritchett. Thank you, Council. I'm here to speak about Item number 21, Police Equipment and Community Safety, Ordnance Animal Report. It's my understanding that the Police Department yet again has failed to produce the information requested by the Police Accountability Board in timely fashion. This, the inventory of weapons and equipment related to these weapons is incomplete. It hasn't been provided. So I really don't understand why this report is on a consent calendar. And there's a really disturbing trend of the police department delaying or denying access to information that is crucial for the police accountability board to have in order to do its job. And you know, a lot of us who've been keeping an eye on the police for a long time are really waiting for the council to take a stand and to lay down some law to the police department that they too are governed by the law. But thank you so much for your comment. I appreciate it. Was that our final comment? That's it. Okay. I see that council member Lino Para has her light on. I'd like to abstain on item 26, please. Thanks a minute. 26. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Yes. Council member Trayga. Yeah. Thank you. I intend to make a motion on the consent calendar before I do just quick words on item 21. My office met with both the police accountability board director and I've spoken with the police chief. I wish to thank the PAB and BPD for your engagement on this matter. I come from almost 13 year background in oversight. And so I understand and appreciate the importance of ensuring that you have the background you need to be able to and the information you need to do oversight. I feel based upon my review and discussions comfortable with this item and will be supporting it tonight. Going forward, perhaps there may be an opportunity either through an off agenda memo or an information, no presentation, to better understand, you know, the scope of the the PABs charge around these kinds of reviews. you I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. Thank you. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you Recording in progress. Okay. Hello folks. We are coming back. Hi, councilmember Tappelen. Okay. All right. Sorry if I can have quiet out there. Please, we're going to get started. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I love the chatter, though. That's great that you all are chatting with each other. I think that's awesome. So, all right. So moving back, we just finished consent calendar. We're moving on to action. And I had asked earlier, but I'm going to just say it officially now. I'd like to move item number 32 above item 30 so that we can handle that first. So I just want to make sure I just get consent of my council members. Yeah, okay, great. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Tapel. And I saw your head nod too. Okay, awesome. So we are going to start with item 32, which is the appointment of four Berkeley residents to the Safe Streets Citizen Oversight Committee. And for folks that don't know, that's actually measure FF. And what I want to do, sorry, I just want to make sure I'm reading this properly. Okay, so for our process for this, I know we have some folks that are here in person and then I think some people are joining us online for the Safe Streets that is an oversight committee. So what I want to start with is seeing if any of my council members have any questions for the candidates. This is, I just want to just say like this is kind of a weird process. Normally we each get to a point our own commission members. And so we just kind of do that. But this requires a lot more coordination because there are so many of us and so many candidates. And I want to say that the candidates were really fantastic for this. Unfortunately, we can only pick four. I think we had, was it 15 different folks who applied as applicants. And I just want to say thank you. I think that this measure had so much support. And there are people who are really enthusiastic about being part of it. And so I want to say, regardless of whether you are chosen today or not, I hope you will continue to engage with the process. And that you will continue following this issue and advocating for what you want to see. And also because there are so many of you who are interested, I also want to encourage you to I think that's amazing. I'm really thrilled with all the applicants, just the high quality and just experience of everyone who was applying. So thank you so much. So council members, does anyone have a question for any of the candidates? And actually, can I first see, I'm going to contradict myself and say, Mark, can you see are Applying for the state street citizen oversight committee would you mind raising your hands so that we can see that you're here online And then I will ask I have to see that councilmember Triggum had his hand up Thank you. I'd like to ask a question for the applicants that are here around. Can you please describe your experience in working with those who may have viewpoints other than your own. You just, the one that was that? Are you asking that of all of the candidates? I am. Or applicants? Oh, okay. In that case, I will ask folks if you could just come up to the mic. And then Mr. City Clerk, did we have folks that were... Do we have folks that are online? There's... Well, there was one... There was one applicant who had raised his hand and Gertrude Stein is online. Sure. Yeah. And I think that Laurie, the wonderful staff of Councilmember Blackbeer, is going to help also move some of these ropes so that you can get through a little easier. Okay. And whoever wants to go first can go first. I think you're up here already, Trent, so you might as well walk up. Okay. Okay. Thank you. To answer your question. I'll say the council. And just move your mic up. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. To answer your question. Okay. Thank you. To answer your question. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. way was new to them. So it got a lot of pushback from private building owners because they were the whole green Wave was new to them so it took a lot of convincing and a lot we got a lot of pushback to try and encourage them to make green building Editions to their their developments and also I have worked in private education for 10 years. And as many probably know, a classroom can become very heated, especially in middle school and high school. So managing all of that, I learned a lot of valuable skills through that. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm sorry, I didn't say this earlier, but if you could just give folks two minutes, I think. Yeah. Thanks. And yeah, thank you, and I'm sorry I didn't say this early, but if you could just give folks two minutes I think Yeah Thanks and yeah, thank you mr. City clerk for adjusting because I feel like it's hard to get through here To access the podium a bit go ahead. I am civil hatch and I am a professional civil engineer, but about 27 years ago. I transitioned over to communications for our profession. And so I, in my firm, specialize in stakeholder engagement and public outreach. And through that, very, very strong consensus building, opinion gathering, feedback monitoring, all of the kind of communication skills that are needed for civil infrastructure projects. We do a lot of bicycle pedestrian projects as well. And city street projects, we work at the county and state level. So I have a tremendous amount of experience working at all levels of government and all levels of community. including people that are non-English speakers, seniors, people with disabilities, and so forth. Is that the answer you guys? Thank you. Okay. Okay. Hi. Oh. I need to turn it on. Can you try again? Can you hold it a little closer? It is, but it's not very loud. So let's see if we can... Can you hear me? Yes, perfect, thank you. Okay. So I'm Marina Fisher. I've worked on many projects over decades with people and one way I introduce myself is to say that I have an opinion about everything, but I don't need to have my way. And I have very strongly held opinions, but I trust that people I work with also have very strongly held opinions. And I am certainly eager to, I believe in working with people across disagreements. I think you need to. I don't want to live in a community or a country where people are expected to have one voice. I think it's unbearable. And I find myself always willing to listen to another point of view and certainly offer mine in a strong and advocacy sort of way as I can. Thank you. Feel free to just yeah back up because I expect that folks will come back up in a minute. My name is Stephanie Allen. With my colleague here, I was co-chair of the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee for the School District for six years. And I also worked with Council Member Blackaby on writing measure, FF. I have a very clear understanding of what an oversight committee is supposed to do. And I bring a lot of experience and civic affairs. You want me to go on for a few minutes, I will. But anyway, I'm very concerned about this, especially the ADA requirements. Because I'm acutely aware of the problem facing those of us who are not able and repairing the streets and sidewalks would make a huge amount of improvement in our lives. Thank you. Good afternoon, my name is Suzy Marsola. I am an architect and I am very interested in being on this committee because I think it's an opportunity to really use the power of excellent design to make a big difference in how people move around our city and in the public realm. I am committed to listening and an open process to designing an excellent environment for all of us to coexist in our public realm. Something like 30 to 50% of our public space is streets and it's important to get them right and part of getting them right is hearing what people have to say about them how they move through them we have plenty of examples here in Berkeley to look at together and discuss one of my many accomplishments in my 40-year architectural career is I hope the city of Berkeley through its Berkeley Civic Center process that had over a hundred or excuse me a thousand individual voices and we brought that vision to bear on the Berkeley Civic Center. So it's an important part of the work I do listening and coming to a good consensus design that works for most. Thank you. Thank you. there's any safe streets oversight committee applicants that are online. Okay. Thank you. If there's any safe streets oversight committee applicants that are online please raise your hand. There's Ben Gerhardstein. Ben you should be able to speak. Can you hear me? Yes. Good evening, everyone. I'm Ben Gerhardstein. I am a public health professional by day and a pedestrian bus school in Safe Streets, Advocate by night. And as to a council member Trigger's question, I would say that in my professional capacity as a public health professional, I spend my days working in response to community concerns around exposure to chemicals in the environment and a heated topic and often local community settings where the community voice is fraught and charged and as a scientist, we need to listen and engage thoughtfully with different points of view. And then as an advocate I would say that you know we are often finding ourselves needing to work with other people in our advocacy spaces who have different points of view, different priorities, different perspectives to come up with common goals and positions and that serves me well. So I'm also serving as a commissioner for the Transportation Commission and the Transportation Infrastructure Commission and I to be able to successfully find consensus and agreement across my colleagues and those capacities. Thanks. Thank you. Anyone else online? Nobody else has raised their hand. Okay. Did you have any other questions, Council Member Traco? Any other questions from folks? Yes, Councillor Member Black will be. Same thing. If you'll indulge, I do like the idea of having everyone answer the same questions. That's okay. Great. I was just going to say I actually think that's a very fair process. Okay. So a short two-part question, which is one kind of, you know, why do you want to serve in this role? And what unique skill set or capability do you think you'll bring? Because I think a big important part of our role here is to compose a panel that represents those point of view. So, you know, why do you want to serve on this body and what unique capability or skill do you think you bring? Thank you. And thank you for being willing to serve. Yeah, I actually am wondering if I should tack on my question only so we are not like having them go through each and it does anyone else have other questions? Because my only other question was going to be that if you could share because to me something that's really important for the Safe Streets Citizens Oversight Committee is having folks who really understand the needs of our residents around Safe Streets. And so, if people could speak to their experience around that, I think that would be important to me. So why do you want to serve? Why do you want to serve? Your unique kind of skill set capability superpower when you bring with the job. And through your experience with the community. And the issues around safe streets in this community. Okay, is that fair? Okay. Uh-oh. I know. Is it too much if I add one that's kind of really bad? Yeah, and I think maybe we need to write this down for you. Yeah, well, I'm just also interested. I think this could be covered in all that, but I'm specifically interested in your financial oversight, but a few days if anybody could speak to that, I think that would be worth mentioning. Like if you have experiences with like financial oversight, specifically. Do I put this in share? Yeah, exactly. Do you want to have this written somewhere? Go first site. I'm just trying to write it. Experience. Safe streets. Okay. Okay. If you can read my hand writing, I'm going to start with this just to make it easier and then and then House member Blackby when you get it up, you can put it up on the screen. Okay. Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. So the reason I'm interested in serving is I think it's a unique opportunity that the citizens and voters of Berkeley have passed to generate a tremendous amount of resources to transform the nature of our streets and create a city that is both bike-friendly and transit-friendly and pedestrian-friendly, that slows traffic, that is safer for everyone, that looks to a climate future that is healthier for people and the voters of Berkeley have entrusted the city with a tremendous amount of money that smartly included I think citizen oversight. I hope that it's an effective way to direct those resources. My particular superpower has nothing to do with the engineering end or the transportation end, although I think I'm a quick study, but I was chair for two terms of the commission on disability. I built it up from commission of two for the several years before I was there to a commission now with fully nine active engaged members. And we have through my work with the commission, I'm really acquainted with both the legal requirements and the best practices for streets. So the city is required to follow pro-wag at transit stops. It was adopted by the Department of Transportation. It is best practices to follow pro-wag and advocated by the National Association of Public Works Departments. It is something that I hope the city will haltedly support. Pro-Aug is the public right, public right of way, accessibility guidelines, and it guarantees to the extent possible. It secures best practices for people with disabilities, whether mobility or flying folks on the streets. Thank you so much. Okay. In 10 seconds, I was a development director. I raised millions of dollars, wrote grants to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Institutes of Health health. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. Trying to make sure we have a fair process. Could you make it a little bigger? Please. Thank you. Okay. Whoever wants to go next? Hi. What I can bring to go next. Hi, thank you. To answer your questions, what I can bring to this committee is that as a transportation engineer, I'm familiar with all of the design standards. Like that's very straightforward and very black and white. But when you're in the field and when you're in the real world, you need to have some flexibility and you need to be able to see things and foresee things. So it's kind of like a construction mindset where you have to work with what you have or with what you don't have. And that kind of real world application in any kind of public setting comes in really handy, especially with communicating with contractors who also have their own opinions into address. Your initial question of dealing with disagreements, there's been plenty with contractors. I also love being socially involved. So as a state employee, I consider myself as a public servant. I work for CalTrans. I chose not to pursue CalTrans highway employment opportunities, but instead went with the local assistance approach. And I am involved assisting local agencies, lots of cities in the Bay area with managing and distributing state and federal funding for their local projects. I'm very passionate about creating a solution that serves the community and as a resident of Berkeley and also a new father and a past teacher, I have a very large soft spot for children. So making the streets safe for all those who use them, especially children, is really my main goal. as a resident. I the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the way that we're going to make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that we can make sure that on the oversight body because I understand what the function of an oversight body is. It isn't to do the planning for the streets and the sidewalks. It's to ensure that the measure is implemented the way the voters passed it by the council and the city bureaucracy. I spent six years on the oversight committee for the school district for our facilities bond. And I learned a lot about why you have these commissions. And it is a critical factor for maintaining trust with the voters and implementing what they think they voted for. When I worked on helping to write the measure, it was very clear that overwhelmingly what people in this city wanted were the streets and the sidewalks fixed. I moved here in 1969, I live on Channingway, not far from Berkeley High, and this spring was the first time that my street was paved. When I used to ride my bike, you couldn't ride it down Channing, even though it's a bike lane, because the street was so bad. I can't really use a lot of the sidewalks in the city now because my walker will get stuck and I'll go ask over to you, Kettle. Over the years, I have worked on the police review commission, the labor commission. I was part of the planning process for the Bayer project. I have been involved with the school district on career technical education and I'm the president of my neighborhood association. Thank you. Such a polite group I appreciate. No you go. I think I was a huge fan of measure FF. So glad it passed. I'm a huge fan of functional civil infrastructure. So I'm. Why do I want to serve on this oversight body? My career is winding down a bit. And I have empty nest and I have plenty of time looking for an opportunity and this felt like just the perfect fit for me. A unique skill setter superpower. I've worked with government entities all around the Bay Area and around California, as I mentioned earlier, at all levels of government. have a very, very clear view of how staff operate, how measures operate, how funding operates within the government context for projects like this. And the other superpower is I'm an avid cyclist, commuter and recreational. So I have a, when you're a cyclist, you see things that maybe other people don't see. Community on issues of safe streets, like I mentioned earlier, done many, many bike-ped projects, you know, from start to start to finish. So safe streets is very important to me. Financial oversight, I think as somebody said earlier, I've been involved on the financial side and grant making and financial management of civil projects. And I know how the funding flows from the federal down to the state to the local. We're currently working with one of our clients to actually pass a ballot measure to get funding under Prop 218. So I've got a lot of clarity around how the finances work as well. Thank you. Hello again. So why do I want to serve? I would like to serve because we've seen a number of improvements on our streets. Recently, I would like to see more of those improvements and I would like to see them or help see them through a holistic lens. I think that's something that our systems, our pedestrian, our bicycle, our vehicle systems can benefit from a holistic view. The skill sets that I bring to that is that I am an architect, I'm a designer, this is what I do all day long, designing places for people and working with individuals, a collection of individuals to make that right for a number of people. So kind of coming up with a good design and in this case oversight approaches to implementation from a holistic point of view. My experience with the community regarding safe streets is I'm a member of this community and I use the streets and I pay attention. I pay attention to a lot of what we've seen going on in town and understanding what the implementation effects are on how we move around our town. In terms of experience with financial oversight, I was on the Seabock, the construction bond oversight committee with Stephanie for six years and for years before that on the facilities committee at Beak for BUSD. I'm a partner in my firm. We oversee millions of dollars of construction contracts every year. So it's very, very, very common to look at details to understand construction costs to manage those kinds of aspects of design and construction. So I think I bring an expertise in those kinds of financial oversight to this committee. Thank you. Thank you. I think Ben is, is Ben still here online? I am. Ben, can you see the questions? Yep. Anybody go? Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. So to start, I think that this, the measure FF and to the extent that this oversight body is a going to help to deliver the good of FF is like the most important contribution the city or opportunity the city has had in maybe ever to improve the public realm and make our streets safer and so I applied because I want to make sure that this measures as successful as possible. Among my skills and I think what I would provide is a very nuanced understanding of our city's plans and policies. And that's important for measure FF and it's delivered because we wrote into the measure that the city will incorporate plans and policy recommendations in all the capital improvements that happen with the with with measure F funds. I am quite familiar with our communities views on issues of safe streets having co-founded Walkway Berkeley in 2018. I've fielded countless inquiries and concerns from members of our community and engaged with many of you all around those issues. So hopefully my record speaks for itself there. I think in terms of financial oversight, I, one thing that we've always tried to be very careful and thoughtful about is understanding how the city finances street improvements. And so having understanding of what the the financial realities are for use of these funds and how much construction costs for the various features that we want implemented has been something I picked up a lot and would bring to the committee. Thanks. Thank you Ben. Okay so there's there's no one else that's online. Just double checking back in. Okay, all right, so I wanna give us just five minutes to take a brief recess so that we can have conversations amongst our Brown Act circles and then return and we will have a motion. So I just want folks to know that we had initial conversations about this, so it's not like we just heard you and we're, you know, we're going to decide based on that exactly because we recognize that not everybody is here and able to speak for themselves. So we just want to make sure that we're taking into account both the responses, but also the application. So I'm going to give us five minutes just to convene really quickly, and we will be right back. Recording stopped. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you recording in progress. Okay, sorry. Obviously, we have a very, very challenging decision. So yeah, I just, I want to thank everyone so much for being here, for being online, for taking part of this process. Everyone who submitted an application, this was an incredibly challenging decision. Oh, my laptop just died. Nice. Okay. I am going to, oh the other thing I was going to say is that one thing that we did have a conversation about was just the general lack of diversity in our applications period, like we were looking across the board, age, race, gender, etc. And so that's something that I want to acknowledge and the hope that we do more work to have a more diverse applicant pool. Councilmember Tapplin, do. Yeah, thanks. I just wanted to say because I wasn't a part of any of those conversations at just a place, but I did want to share some of the people whose applications I found really impactful and that I was planning to support. I among the people here, I was planning to support Renifisher, Zach Frazier, and Ben and Gehrerstein, among the folks not here, unless I missed them. It was hard to tell who was who, but among the folks who the folks who I think we're not there, I was planning to support either Douglas Leg or Keith Maddox. Thank you. Thank you. And actually, can I ask a question to you for? Maybe it's our city attorney, but potentially about like if we can have an alternate. for this, who would be an alternate specifically for any of the council appointees? I would need to look that up. I'm sorry. Let me take a look at it and sure. I'm sorry. Councillor Member Humbert, did you? Oh, no, I'm sorry. Okay, so I thank you so much Council Member Tapline for your comments. I'm going to make a motion that we include. Our representatives be rena Fisher, Douglas Leg, Ben Gerhardstein, and Cible Hatch, and then also see if we can have an alternative and that would be Zach Frazier. So that is my motion. Second. Okay. If there's no other discussion than I'm going to have the clerk take the roll. Just make the space in case there's any other discussion. I'll just say look, I appreciate everyone who put their names forward. I know we've all done this at points in our past. past and I appreciate putting yourself out there and being here for this process in a very public way. So thank you for coming and thank you for applying. It was a really difficult decision and I think we could have composed a lot of different really great slates. And so again, I just want to thank the mayor for making that motion. I intend to support the motion, but I do really appreciate the effort there. Everybody took to be here and also to take the time to apply. And like others have said, hope there's a way that others can participate in the process one way or the other. So thank you, Mayor. Thank you. And I was reminded that I have not done public comment yet, but go ahead Council member Humbert. Thank you Madam Mayor. I wanna join in Councilmember Blackbees comments I I've reviewed the qualifications of all those who submitted their applications very and I've done so very carefully We're presented really here with an embarrassment of riches Really great qualifications on the the part of basically everyone who applied. And I deeply appreciate the willingness of those, call these good citizens who have applied to serve, but unfortunately we can only appoint four and I hope also an alternate and I do think it's important to do what we can to balance gender and ethnicity as well. So thank you. And I intend to support the motion. Thank you. Was there another comment? Yes, Council Member Traygub. Yeah, I appreciate the engagement. Council Member O'Keefe and I had an opportunity to discuss And I would like to offer a substitute motion that would include possibly some of the same names. I didn't mark down who the names first question. I'm going to be talking about the second question. I'm going to be talking about the second question. I'm going to be talking about the second question. I'm going to be talking about the second question. Okay, so there is an alternate motion, so I think we need to take it. Yeah, okay. Thank you. Sorry, we still need to take public comment though. haven't actually taken public comment but City Attorney did you? Yes, Madame Mayor. I checked and there's no reason why an alternate can't be chosen Thank you. You know Are you going to see something councilmember humburt? No, okay. All right. I'm sorry. I do want to take public comment. I apologize Is there any public comment? For online? Sorry. Two hands raised online. First is Blair Beakman. Hi, thank you. Good luck in your decision making, who will be chosen for this important committee. The city of San Jose has done something of the same important work, like about five or six years ago now. When they were developing their this process and its oversight committee, there was a real important emphasis on the idea of tech accountability. That was to be a part of the initial process. It kind of got sidetracked a little bit, but I hope as I tried to mention earlier that as you will be for this item, that your future commissioners here, they'll want you looking to check accountability measures and the work of the ACLU towards civil rights, civil protections, because in this work that you're gonna be doing with payments and streets and complete streets, it's gonna involve tech technology. And to have a good background in good civil rights and civil protections along with public safety. Working those things together, it's an important combination to have. So I just wanted to mention it and how you'll be deciding the item in the future of the commission in their work and process. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comment online? Yes. I'm in Walsh. Hello, Mayor and Council members. I just wanted to say, hold on a second, where did I put it? Elevating ADA compliance expertise within SSCOC appointments is a crucial step towards ensuring accessibility is a fundamental principle in public planning. So I appreciate the addition. I appreciate that a few of the applicants had a holistic viewpoints that included accessibility and I'm looking forward to seeing where we go from here. I do hope in the future we have more diversity in the applicants. Thanks. Bye. Thank you. That's all. Okay. So, yeah. So just repeating, so the motion, sorry, so the alternate motion we need to vote on first. And I think you had, Reena Fisher, Zachary Frazier, Frazier, I'm sorry, Douglas, Craig, and then your fourth was Suzy Marsola. Ms. Marsola, and Stephanie Allen, as a whole, alternate. Okay, so I think we should take the role of that. Okay, on the substitute motion, for Fisher, Frazier, Leg, Marcella, and Allen as the alternate council member, Kessler-Wyne. Pass. Taplin. Bartlett is absent, Treggub. Aye. Okay. Yes. Black to be passed. Luna Parra. Abstain. Humber. Abstain. Mayor Ishi. Abstain. Councilmember Kisarwani. Abstain. Kaplan. Abstain. And capital. And council member Black. Okay. That motion fails on the main motion and I don't know. Given the city attorney's advice if you wanted to add an alternate. Yes. Yes. Adding Zachary. Fraser with the first not as only will that person only the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Okay, okay, I'm ready to vote. Okay, on the main motion, Fisher, Leg, Gerhard Stein, and Hatch with Frazier as alternate. Councilmember Kessar-Wanning? Yes. Tap one. Yes. Bartlett is absent, Tregub. Pass. Okay. Yes. Blackaby. Yes. Luna Para. Yes. Humber. Yes. Mayor Ishi. Yes. Councillor Remember Treggub. Aye. Okay. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you all so much. I really want to thank you all. So just for everyone. Thank you all so much. Appreciate it. And for those of you like I said and who were not voted on, we'd really love to continue to see you engage. So we are going to move on to item 30, which is the 2026 proposed mid-biannial budget update and public hearing number one. And thank you all so much to the city manager and staff for your patience. Thanks everyone. Mayor, we'll have our budget team come out here and they'll be seated at the temple here in front of you. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay, great folks set up, can I just get a sense of folks, how many of you are here for the budget? Okay, and how many of you are here for the appeal? Well, okay. All right, I was just curious how folks were separated. I want to make sure. Thank you all for your patience. I know it's a long night. I'm going to put it in the fridge. I'm going to put it in the fridge. I'm going to put it in the fridge. I'm going to put it in the fridge. I'm going to put it in the fridge. I'm going to put it in the fridge. I'm going to put it in the fridge. I'm going to put it in the fridge. I'm going to put it in the fridge. I'm going to put it in the fridge. I'm sorry. We have a presentation tonight on the proposed mid-vignal budget update for fiscal year 26. This will be the first of several public hearings between the budget and finance policy committee and council to lead us on the path toward budget adoption on June 24th. Next slide please. And thank you to the budget team and to Michelle Rosetti, who's kindly sharing the screen for me. Tonight we'd like to provide a little bit of situational awareness about the budget climate, provide an overview of our citywide summary related to the fiscal year 26 budget, then delve a little bit more in detail on the general fund, including discussing some budget-balancing options, and then close out with a high level overview of fiscal challenges and funding needs on the horizon, and then next steps and timeline, and then entertain any questions that the council may have. Thank you. Next slide. So again, as we prepare, fiscal year 26, particularly as it relates to the general fund, the city has faced a structural deficit in the last several fiscal years. However, the city has closed these deficits by relying on one time measures. These included vacancies, including hiring freezes, or putting celery saving targets in place, deferring projects, use of the fund balance for other citywide funds, and the use of reserves for the general fund. And more importantly, over the last several years, receiving federal assistance of $66 million from the American Rescue Plan Act that helps support not only the General Fund, but several other citywide funds. Again, as we go into looking at fiscal year 26, our resources are a far shy of our needs and in addition to trying to balance fiscal year 26. We know that there's a great deal of federal and economic uncertainty. We are mindful of the status of federal grants coming from the federal government and any changes that may be coming down the way. We know that with the tariffs and other trade policies, there's a likelihood of increased cost of supply and demand issues. And as my colleague, our finance director, has provided information to council. There is a likelihood of a recession on the horizon. Next slide please. So really, this is to help provide the context that again, as we look at balancing options for fiscal year 26 to also be mindful that long term. We'll continue to face challenges on the horizon and will really need to start working diligently to help develop our fiscal year 2728 by annual budget. But for the moment for fiscal year 26, we have a package of one time options for council to consider. But to step back on a high level glance, the citywide budget is depicted on the slide. You can see the growth across the city funds from fiscal year 24 up to our current update for fiscal year 26. Of note is that when we look at our new budget for fiscal year 26, compared to the budget that was stopped two years ago, we do have some growth in revenue that's largely due to the measure F streets coming on board due to the approval by the voters of that measure. We're also increasing our revenue growth by about $7 million in the general fund, which will be discussing here shortly, including the vacancy tax coming online in fiscal year 26. And then our other special revenue funds have an inflationary increase as well. However, as noted by the green bar, our revenues are still far shy of our expenditures. And this will require either more expenditure reductions or departments, excuse me, departments and other special funds to use their fund balance to balance. Next slide please. This slide depicts again our all funds by department. The city has nearly 200 funds that make up our citywide budget. The largest department is the public courts department and you can see there on the slide. Their budget is 185 million. This is again reflects the complexity of the public works functions. Zero waste is in public works. The sanitary sewer fund as well as the general fund component related to transportation and other special revenue measures as well. The next largest apartment in terms of complexity of funding is health, housing and community services. You'll note there that the budget actually has decreased for fiscal year 26. It's just under $100 million and that's due to timing related to the housing development projects coming online. But you'll see across the board for the most part departments across all the funds are experiencing increase in fiscal year 26 adopted of the updated budget. Largely due to increased cost of doing business primarily related to personnel. Next slide please. And again, for people who are more visual, this is a chart reflecting the data behind the table. You can see on the pie, as noted toward the bottom, it's about six o'clock or So I'd say say blue but it looks a little lavender from here. Public works is about 24% of the city wide budget and again. Public works is the largest expenditure by department and you can see the breakdown across the other departments as well. Next slide please. This is a similar chart but instead of looking at all the city wide funds we are looking specifically at the general fund. You can see that unlike the other chart with public works overall budget was close to 185 million. When we look just at the general fund public works is much smaller About 7.6 million dollars the bulk of the general fund does go to support our police and fire Departments as a noted toward the bottom of the slide and again The departments are experiencing an increase in their personnel costs also to note as we talk about balancing strategies, the current expenditure figure in the general fund, the $310 million does reflect the savings from keeping certain positions vacant. And we'll talk about that here shortly. Next slide, please. Again, similar to the Alphonse breakdown, this pie chart represents where the general fund dollars are allocated to. Again, primarily to city departments, combined public safety of police and fire. And the general fund contributes about 48%. That's $151 million. The general fund has also contribute $14 million. That's about 4% of the budget to capital projects, including the new streets policy of $10 million. And about $12 million or 4% of the budget is allocated to community agencies. In addition, the general fund also covers debt and transfer and some other operational overhead is noted in the pie chart. Next slide, please. So you'll hear a lot about one of the drivers of our increased costs is personnel and again it takes staff to deliver the variety of services that the city provides. The pie charts here are snapshot of the expenditure by category. On the left you'll notice that across all the citywide funds, salary and benefits represent about 54% of expenditures. However, when we look at just the general fund, the salary and benefits increase quite substantially to 68%. Again, that reflects that the general fund is contributing to public safety and also the general fund is not putting in as much towards capital projects as some of the citywide funds that have a lot greater expenditures in terms of infrastructure. But again, just a comparison between those different funding sources and a depiction of where the dollars are going in terms of providing city services. Next slide, please. And again, if we drill down in more detail on the personnel cost again for the general fund, you can see there that is noted in the yellow sliver of the pie. Celeries are about 54% of the cost of personnel. Also important to note that pension, which we'll be talking here shortly about the use of the Section 115 trust. Represent about a third of the budget and health insurance is another component at 12%. So again the package of salary benefits really are the drivers of the city budget, particularly for the general fund. Next slide, please. Again, as we've discussed with the budget and finance policy committee, the general fund has been struggling with the deficit. You can see there on the slide the various strategies that have been used to close the budget gap. Noting that in 20 fiscal year 2021, the projected deficit was $40 million. So we're seeing a similar trend now. Again, there's a list of the various options that we used and again, noting the use of the federal assistance through ARPA. Again, what we want to talk about this evening is continuing to use some of these one time options, just to get through fiscal year 26. However, a lot of these options are not sustainable. I am really, really, wanting to look at more options to address the structural deficit in 2728. And several of these options have trade-offs between the short term and the long term that we'll discuss shortly. Now, you're going to have a little bit our budget balancing strategies this evening. And again, we started with our model, with our adopted revenue and our expenditures, which resulted in a deficit of just under $30 million. However, as we'll talk about here in the next few slides, our revenues are projected to increase by about $7 million. So you can see that our revenues are now reflected at just under $292 million. We also refined some of our expenditures in terms of refining some of our pension estimates and some cost shifts, which got our expenditures down to about $313 million. However, the next step, and we'll be talking about this here shortly, is that we, for modeling purposes, went ahead and factored in keeping some positions vacant, just so that we could be accurate in our model and know what those costs would really relate to when we factored in the benefits and workers' compensation compensation and that brought our expenditures down to 310 million, leaving a deficit of just under $20 million. What we are proposing for consideration is to continue two strategies that were adopted as part of the fiscal year 2526 biennial budget, this includes a worker compensation transfer to the general fund. That's about 5.2 million in the use of the Section 115 trust to pay a portion of the pension, which would thereby relieve the general fund contribution to CalPERS by about $3 million. In addition to continuing to reduce the deficit, we're also proposing an increase in the use of the pension trust by another $3 million. Looking at reducing the contribution to the IT cost allocation plan, which regenerate about 6.2 million and reallocating the small sites for about 2.5 million. And again, it should be noted that we have assumed in that $310 million expenditure about $9 million of savings by holding positions vacant. So again, working through these strategies it ends up with a projected surplus of about 1.2 million. However, we know there are many needs on the horizon, including the Marina Fund, which is facing a projected deficit about 1.3 million. So again, we're quickly back to just being barely being balanced, and we also know that there are other needs by departments, Council referrals, and a lot of contingency and unknown in the future that would draw on that projected surplus. Next slide, please. I'll turn to the next few slides over to our finance director to talk about the changes in our general fund revenue. Yes, good evening, Councilor. This is Henry, you're coming. The finance director. We do two projections. We, before, just wanted to give you a little of what we do and how we do our projections here so that you have a context of how this happens. So before Council passes the budget every year, we do a projections that usually takes 9, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, next year based on those numbers. So for this year, we did the first three quarters which ended in March 31st We actually figured out how much we actually got in. We now based on that. We now do the projection to where we are going to land, where we think we're going to land for the last quarter of the fiscal year, which is going to happen next month. And then we now project for the fiscal year. So when we did the projection this year, we found that we had some few good, good, good revenues streams that were in, that were solid. And they were driven by actually only the our real estate development. We had about nine huge sales of properties of a nine, over ten million dollars. Of it to tell about 235 million, we transfer... huge sales of properties over $10 million. Of it to tell about $235 million, which translated to about $9 million. So if you look at the sweet spots that we got, because of that our secure property tax went up, the property transfer tax went up, the measure P tax went up. And everything that ties to the property tax based on that revenue stream went up, including the UUT tax and the UUT. And so if you look at everything that happens in terms of the revenues that we received, that was the driver. The other revenue that we knew was coming, but we did not know what's going to be a little bit higher than we thought anticipated. What the utility is, the stocks. We knew the PUC increased the tax. I think the rate was about 2.5% to 3%. But when it came up, there was about half a million dollars more than it was anticipated. The other revenue that we found fascinating, that I find fascinating, because this is my department that actually handles this, which is the business license tax. The business license tax came up with about an additional $1.2 million. And this is fascinating because we had less businesses in the city. We had about 500 less businesses in the city, but we had more money because I would say maybe two things happened. We hired two more staff that does revenue generation. And then we also did, we think there was a little bit of, because of the inflationary rate that we have, the inflation of gross receipts was higher because our business tax is based on gross receipts. So obviously some reaches that used to be 10 bucks, nice 15. So if you look at the gross receipts, of course it's higher. So we got more. So anything that brings in a little bit higher inflationary rates were able to able to capture those. And finally, we had a fantastic investment income. The feds raised interest rates a couple of times, until we were able to capture those rates. And that's why our investment went up by about 1.0 million. So does that be good ones? The negative one that we've been tracking is our TOT attacks, which is the hotels. We've been having issues with some of our hotels, not having difficulty paying, and so we need to be looking at that. So we we downgraded that, we brought that down, those revenues down. We have our supplementary tax was down. The supplementary tax is just the tax where the difference between what the county gave us in January and what they actually gave to us is just its slight modifications of what they're saying. So that one went down a little bit. But overall we had a new robust about $7.5 million in increase in our revenues for fiscal year 25, which then translates into us projecting for a higher 2026. And that's where we are. Next slide. These slides just projects the same thing we just said. It talks about the property related taxes and the effects on most of them. So if you look at the track that you see, you have your secure property tax, which is up because your value of your home, it goes beyond the 2% that the county captures. You have your property transfer tax because we had excellent sales of properties over 10 million bucks. We have property transfer tax with this measure P, which were the drivers of the revenues that we were talking about. They just capture the, if you look at the graph, it just tells you the rate of increases for those three property. I mean, those taxes that were tied to the property tax. Next slide. And the other major revenues like I discussed were the business license tax. The sales tax was not really that high. It was leveled up. We actually received almost exactly what we said. We were going to our projections, we were going to be leveling for the next couple of years to see how those sales taxes will be impacted. This is nothing that we generate. This is something that the state generates in terms of its revenues and the operational stuff that happens in the city, but it's been it's usually collected by the state and and and divided to us by that. So macro economics really happens with this one when you have huge commercial when activities, it drives our sales numbers. And so in this one, the consultant that we hired that helped us with this gave us a level of about 1.2% increase last year, and it was leveled up, was almost very, very on point. And so for the next few years, it's been a level looking at 1.2% increase. And they're going to do a new review based on the new, that we're talking about, which is the impact of the tariffs. They're going to do a new revenue projections for the impacts of the tariffs for the sales tax because they think there should be an impact on the sales tax. So we are going to revise that if it goes down, if they think it's going to be a huge impact, we might have to come back and revisit this again. But what they said when we had this conversation with them a couple of days ago is they think it's going to be leveled for a minute and then the impact we're not sure about it probably when we're in the second first or second quarter of 2026. Next slide. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm David White, Deputy City Manager. And we're going to now transition to talking about some of the budget balancing options that are presented to you tonight. So we're going to start off talking about the vacant positions that we've modeled into the budget. The budget manager Sharon Friedrichson just mentioned earlier this evening. So in the supplemental that you received, you received a number of different exhibits. So there's a lengthy exhibits about three or four pages long that discloses all of the vacant positions that were in the budget model. When we first ran the budget itself. And there were quite a few positions in the budget itself over 100 positions that were vacant, generating north of $20 million savings if they were all to be held vacant. After we produced that chart and presented to the budget and finance policy committee, we were asked to refine our analysis And so we took some time to review that list, to identify positions that were filled, and or exemptions were granted. And that produced a revised list of vacancy in the general fund. And that list generated about 104 vacant positions that had savings of a little less than $20 million, about $19.9 million. One of the things I want to caveat as I go through this is we did not include any of the vacant positions in the mayor and city council's office, the city auditor's office, office of director of police accountability. However, we did include the city attorney's office because the city attorney did put a position into the for consideration that she's willing to hold vacant to adjust our budget deficit. So going back to the discussion, we identified about 104 vacant positions that generated a little less than 20 million dollars of savings. So then we went and worked iteratively with all of our department directors to develop a list of positions that we were proposing to council to be held vacant in fiscal year 20. So then we went and worked iteratively with all of our department directors to develop a list of positions that we were proposing to council to be held vacant in fiscal year 26. We also identified some positions that could be reallocated to other funds. For example, in the fire department, we identified the fire chief identified about 10 paramedic positions that could be placed into measure FF. And then we also found one position in the budget model that was a temporary provisional position, it was not to be budgeted in fiscal year 26 and that was a position in the police department, and so that was removed as well. So after going through all that work, as you can see on the chart in front of you, that column A, with that refers to there, are the, as I said, the 104 positions that we identified as actually being vacant. Then column B, the 55.2 positions, that reflects a number of positions that we are proposing to hold vacant in the fiscal year 26 budget. Positions that were reallocated to other funds, and then one position that we were able to eliminate because it was a temporary provisional position. So what that leads us with in the fiscal year 26 budget is about 48.9, call it 49 full time equivalent positions that are actually budgeted in fiscal year 26 with costs associated with it of about $10.5 million. So what we are saving in this proposal, the council is about $9.3 million by holding these positions vacant in fiscal year 26. Next slide, please. So in addition to the vacant positions, another strategy is what we call a worker compensation holiday. Again, the city is self-insured for worker compensation claims and all the various city funds contribute to the worker compensation fund. When we talk about a holiday, this means the general fund would not contribute to worker compensation for fiscal year 26. However, with the holiday that we already took for fiscal year 25, our assets in that fund are close to about 35 to 36 million. We've consulted with our actuarial and the actuarial recommends a confidence level of 75%, meaning that we fill that where you're 75% confident that we have enough money in the fund to pay all the known claims that we anticipate will come and we do at some point in the future. The amount recommended by the actuarial just under 50 million 49.6. And just for context, the city typically pays claims about 6 to 8.4 million every fiscal year. And so again, if all those claims should come due at once, we would need that amount in our worker compensation fund to cover that. And again, the actuary expects our discount outstanding liability to be 44.3. So you can see the impacts of taking the holiday or hitting the fund. However, again, right now we're a little under par with what's recommended at that 75% liability in terms of confidence level at this point in time. Again, this assumes that we would need all that funding at once. So again, we're balancing our short term needs of trying to balance the 26th budget with looking at more sustainable strategies so that we can continue to have all funds, including the general fund contribute to the worker compensation fund moving forward. No, I think you covered it. Thanks. Next slide please. The next option is to use the Section 115 Trust. Again, Council had the foresight to establish a Section 115 trust. This is a irrevocable trust, meaning we can only use it to pay pension costs. The Council has budget and fiscal policies, and we've been using those policies to put money into the trust. My colleague here in the finance department pre-pays our entire unfunded actuarial liability to CalPERS and with that savings, which is usually about 1.5 million, we put that back into the trust. We also have some policies related to our investment returns and we put funding into the trust when our investment income is greater than expected. And in prior years, when we had a more robust budget, we also prefunded the trust. So we have, through these policies, currently have a trust balance of about 26.4 million as of June 30th, 2024. Again, council goal is to put about 5.5 million into that trust every year. And we've been close probably anywhere from one and a half to about 4.5 million and any given year. What we are proposing to do, given that our pension costs have increased is to use the trust to pay a portion of our pension cost to CalPERS and therefore the general fund would pay a lesser amount but still would contribute we're recommending six million dollars be used in the trust again what's important to notice our short-term need versus the long term need. And you can see on that slide below the projections from CalPERS for our fire, our police and our miscellaneous plans. Again, this is just the general fund proportion, but you can see there the escalation from about 33 million in 2425 upwards to 46 million in five years, so almost a 12.4 million dollar increase. So again, making sure that the trust is there to also buffer the forthcoming spikes in CalPERS is important so that the city's not in a position of needing to make reductions in staffing or programs and services in order to pay CalPERS. And I'll pause to see if the finance director would like to add any more information. I just wanted to ask to add a little bit of context to this that these are just short-term fixes. Our budget on funder liabilities for our pension is about over 600 million and so 26 million is dwarfs. It's just for us to be able to help level where we have a spike which we think we're going to have if car push doesn't make this 6.7% of the supporters so we know it's coming so this 26 million is just to help us but this is a short term at the same time we know we're putting in more money in there so we we're a little bit okay but we just want to make sure we know that these are just short term things that we need to do short term and long term stop doing more I didn did more money to that because it's going to be, if you look at 28, 29 and those pension costs start going up, we need to be able to make sure we have a shock observer to take care of those shocks. Thank you. Thank you. The next slide, please. The next budget balancing option is similar to the Worker Compensation Holiday. Again, various city funds contribute to the IT Cost Allocation Fund to pay for IT services. Again, under this approach, the general fund would reduce its contribution by 50% again, just for fiscal year 26. We have consulted with our director of information technology and I believe court service will remain intact. There may be delays in project implementation. We will start using some of the fund balance of the IT cost allocation fund. However, there should be sufficient funding to account for any unforeseen expenditure, such as significant infrastructure needs, application failure or cyber security event. However, we wouldn't recommend going beyond that 50%. That's really starting to put the fund balance in a precarious state and and would not recommend continuing this practice in future years. Next slide, please. I'm gonna take this one. Okay. The next budget balancing option relates to our measure U1. Again, measure U1 is a general fund tax. That's assessed on certain businesses akin to a business license, really with the intent to help with anti-displacement and affordable housing projects. In the fiscal year 2526 budget, 2.5 million was allocated in each fiscal year toward the small site program. I believe in consulting with our staff at HHCS. They haven't quite spent all the 2.5 million in fiscal year 25. I think about 1.4 million and again in terms of balancing for fiscal year 26, the 2.5 million for small sites could be reallocated. We do know that we have a required match of 2.5 million for our state and government resolution grant funding. The city was successful in receiving a grant from the state. We've used the grant funds for the first two years and now we have a two year commitment. Or the small sites could be reallocated to where the overall general fund deficit. Again, we are aware that the U1 budget also faces competing demands as well as affordable housing projects come online. Next slide, please. Again, what we try to do is present a package of options again, recognizing that these are one time in nature and not sustainable from a fiscal perspective for the upcoming fiscal years. However, as we illustrated, we're close to closing the deficit. However, there are other challenges on the horizon. Again, the general fund is under these scenarios, just barely balanced. We do know that concerns from the federal and state to the government in terms of pass through funding? The state is also in a budget deficit as well. Our parking funds are still trying to rebound from individuals not returning to our parking garage or parking on the streets. Our Marina fund is facing fiscal pressures as well related to the local economy. Our camps fund is starting to rebound, but also in a place where it could easily slide downward and our internal service funds, which again are charged across various city funds, including the General Fund, are also in need of sort of a fiscal a true up as well. And this relates to our building maintenance and our vehicle equipment and fleet. In addition, our deferred maintenance needs are great. About 2.5 billion has been identified through our city buildings, our fleet, our technology, and of course, as the council is well aware, our streets and our road-pathening. And again, as we alluded to earlier, there's quite a great deal of uncertainty given what's going on at the federal state budget and the local state, national and international economy and how these things impact us in terms of tariffs, which may impact our revenues as well as impact our expenditures as prices go up still remain to be determined. Next slide please. So again, what today is the first opportunity to present this package of options to council. Received input from the council related to the strategies and entertain any questions. I will continue to work with the Budget and Finance Policy Committee. In fact, the next meeting is just in two days. We'll be talking about the police and fire over time in particular how the overtime relates to vacant positions and the recommendations that we have put forward. We'll also be talking about our measure P and our measure U1 forecast and programmatic needs in more detail. We have another budget and finance policy committee on June 12. We'll talk about the status of our parking meter funds. I likely discuss the Council budget referrals and continue overall budget discussion about options to balance for fiscal year 26. On June 17th, Council will receive several reports related to increasing our fees. and these are charges for services. Some will help the general fund. Others will help the general fund, others will help, other citywide funds, and we'll also be assessing our tax rates for the new fiscal year to adjust by the inflationary index. This will lead to adoption of the budget on June 24th, as well as the adoption of the annual appropriation ordinance for fiscal year 26. That does complete the presentation. I know that City Manager W.C.M. Manager Finance Director and I are available to answer any questions you have as well as our colleague departments. And I thank you for your time and attention. Thank you. I just want to start by saying that I know that this is incredibly challenging to work with and present on so I want to say a huge thank you to your offices for all the work that you're doing here and also just maybe let us take a little breath because I know that's a lot. So I'm going to start with, oh, actually, it just relates to this since this is a public hearing. We should open the public hearing. Sorry, give me one second. Mr. City Clerk, we remind me we need a motion to open the public hearing. We don't. Okay. Thank you. All right, so we have opened the public hearing. And do we have any questions from the council first? And I see Councilmember Tapplin has his hand raised. And knowing that my parliamentarian is not working, please give me a rate, just like a hand wave if you want to speak. Councilmember Tapplin, you can go first. Thank you. So I have six questions just so everyone knows how many there are. This is for the team here and thanks everyone. Can you say what departments represent? What city departments represent the most significant growth in costs across the last six cycles, both citywide and with respect to the general funds? Like if there were like three or four departments that have, especially, um, grown in costs in the last six cycles. We could as a starting place pull up the presentation and show the actuals. That would be great. Yeah. Maybe start with the general fund, which is more salient. Yeah, we can just speak to this again that one. So you can see there the growth across the departments from 22 through 26. So you can sort of read across the line there. And again, we have those listed from the mayor all the way down to Fire Emergency Services. Again, non-departmental is more a catch-off for paying our insurance and debt and some other things. So I'm asking here this opportunity to mold that over a little bit and then we can answer any additional questions. I see here that's a lot of it's due to personal costs. Looks like we've got some big jumps here. Marin Council looks like the PAB. It's also new, which makes sense that it would grow and grow so quickly. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, I was just, I just tried that caught my attention. So I appreciate the chance to see it again. My next question is for the fiscal year 26 general fund revenues. Do we break for the secured property tax? Do we break those down by residential versus commercial parcels? I'm wondering if there's anything that we can glean from looking at like, you know, are we seeing a lot of growth? And from our commercial taxes, I know that residential taxes are, are, are a big part of the, I'm just kind of curious about on the commercial side of things that we're seeing a lot of activity there recently. No, we do not, the county do not break it out in terms of commercial or residential, but they give us, they give us the backup for it so we can actually look at it and see where the trend lines are going. The trend lines are really going because one, our says value, our AV has gone up tremendously, by over about I think half a billion dollars from last year to this year. So we've had tremendous growth. You know, Proposal 13 says the maximum we can, the county can grow is just 2%. But because we have huge sales and people are always trying to figure out a way to reassess the value of their homes. And so when we look at the growth rate, we've had it tremendous growth in our EV. It's been like about 4%, 5%, 6% across board, across all properties. Thank you. And my third question, so the 12 million for community agencies, is this reflected both the formal grant processes as well as like the council discretionary actions and the federal referrals that individual offices give to individual organizations? That's correct councilmember Tafeling. Thank you. And so my fourth questions have the other charter offices produced cost reductions or salary savings? No. Thank you. My last two questions are relatively, so I can ask them together. So as I understand, U1 is a general tax, these are a dollars to go to the general fund, but they have been treated as a special tax or they were billed as a special tax. Like people seem to think that these are dollars that are only used for its purpose, but they go into the general fund and could be used to resolve part of the deficit, is that later from that correctly? Yes, yes. General fund is a general fund. We've been tracking it separately, not because it's a special fund. We're tracking it within the general fund. It is a general fund, and everybody needs to understand that. As there are rules for how we can spend general fund and how we can spend special fund, we have not come mingled it. It's still part of the general fund. We're just doing a little bit of an accounting and making sure we're tracking it separately. But it's all rules up to general fund. That's the rules. Thank you for watching my final question for now. The internal Those are also in deficit. They council member Tablin there. Using their fund balance. So, uh, moving forward, we definitely will need to, uh, relook at the, uh, operational component of the internal service funds as well as, you know, the methodology of how we bill for the services across the departments. Thank you very much. Those are our questions. Okay, thank you. Council Member Lutopara. Thank you. I have a couple questions. Director Ouyakami, can you explain why measure M revenue, the vacancy tax revenue will not be available until July 2026 if it went into effect in 2024. Is that measure M is the vacancy tax? Yeah, the vacancy tax. Thanks. Well, the vacancy tax itself, number one, the finance department doesn't handle it. The rent board handles it because we don't have the data to actually come up with it. So we ask the rainbow to come up with a plan in order to be able to implement it. But the tax itself says that you have to be vacant for about 90 days out of a six month cycle. So even the past a couple of years ago, in order for us to get that 90 days, 90 days, six months, we have to look for a year. It takes a year to get to those data. Now, we are, I think we are about to build for the first time this month. And so we have, we knew it wasn't going to happen in 25, but we've put those revenues into the stream for 26, 27 going ahead. And so I think it was budgeted at 5 million when we did it last year. But Red Board said because maybe the law is already working, but they said there's about 125 to 150 vacancies that are now not on the list. So now we've downgraded those revenues from 5 million to 3.5. That's why. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. My next question is about deferred projects. And if the project referrals that we have used as one time time resources still have earmarked funds for future fiscal years. In other words, what happens when projects are deferred? Will they have money attached to them in the future or do we have to reallocate it in later budgets? I'm just kind of just how it works. Councilmember Lunepar correct if as a Budget balancing strategies or in identified projects are deferred then What would happen is that when funding became available saved through the Amendment's Daniel appropriation ordinance or the second year of a biennial cycle those would be brought forward again to reprioritize and note that. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M. M those projects. Great. Thank you so much. And thank you for the presentation. Thank you. Councilmember Kesner-Wonney. Thank you very much, Madam Mayor. Thank you to our finance staff and our budget staff for the presentation. Ms. Friederson, your last day is tomorrow, correct? So I want to wish you well and thank you. Thank you for putting this presentation together and doing a late night. The night before your last day we appreciate all of your effort and so I just want a level set with everyone you know anyone who's up watching in the community. So slide 12 which unfortunately I don't think it's posted online, but maybe it can be posted later, or it may be available on the budget committee. But I think it should be posted here so people can find it. So that's where we see kind of the bottom line story. So it shows an 18 million deficit, 18 million, 678,282. We talked about in the budget committee that it's actually a $27 million deficit and there is a budget solution baked into that number that's making it appear less, which is the roughly 9 million of hiring frees basically. And so I did want to state that and then I know Council Member Chaplin was asking about charter officers. So I just wanted to clarify because when I read this it did look like the City Attorney's Office was going to hold one position vacant. That is a charter officer. So that is one thing that's happening. But in terms of our process for the Department of Police Accountability, City Auditor and Mayor and Council, those are the other three charter officers, officer offices, correct? Did we not look at that at all? The exercise of determining which vacancies could be held open? Because I know we did that with all the other departments under the City Manager, so I just wanted to get clarity. For those three, did we not do that because it's their charter offices? That's correct, Councilmember. We didn't do it because they're charter officers. They don't report up to the city manager and I don't have the authority to do that exercise with them. Okay, so I did just want to state that, you know, when we, but they're, we do see their vacancies. So we do have 3.0 FTE vacant with the city auditor's office. There was the 2.0 city attorney, but when we determined one could be held, and then there is 2.0 vacant in the office of the Department of Police Accountability, there's 1.0 vacant for mayor and council. So that, I'm not saying we should do that, but I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that's why I think that table correctly, so when, okay, so back to page 12, slide 12. So bottom line, when we do all of our one time budget, I'm going to call them maneuvers. These are maneuvers, right? Workers calm. Pulling from the section 115 trust. Doing it, while doing it twice, right? We did it for the adopted budget, we're gonna do it again, 3 million, 3 million. Transfer fund balance from IT cost allocation plan, these are maneuvers, right? So, and even when we do all of those budget maneuvers, we end up with a deficit of 126,000, which could be higher, right? Mr. City Manager, because you're looking at other special funds that may need a general fund backfill. Is that correct? That's correct Okay, so we may have a more of a problem to solve than just the hundred twenty six thousand so that's why We may have to just You know, it's dollar per dollar. We have to balance and so we might have to look at that's why I was suggested asking the question around the charter officers. And then the other thing, I know we had some discussion about the small sites at budget. Appreciate the public commenters. Let me move on to that topic. So does anybody have available? Because we have not had an annual allocation for small sites historically, but the last adopted budget put in significant resources. Do we? My understanding is we did 5 million last year between the Housing Trust Fund and U1, correct? That's correct, Councilmember. 2.5 from each source. Okay. And did I hear you correct, Ms. Fried Friedrichson that you said something like spend 1.4 million in fiscal year 2425 of were you talking about the U1 2.5 million allocation? We'll be generally understanding is it of the 5 million that was allocated in last year's budget, 1.4 million is unspent. Okay, and that 1.4 is from what revenue source, U1 or Housing Trust Fund? I'd have to go back and get that detail. I don't know. Okay, because if it's from U1, it helps solve the budget problem. If it's not, if it's from the Housing Trust Fund, we cannot take it correct, because it's special fund then. It would be housing trust fund money, so that would be correct. Okay, so I think we need that answer for the next budget committee. Is 1.4 million, that's significant if it's unspent. And I'm not saying that to attack small sites or the worthiness of it. I'm just going by slide 12 that shows we continue to have a deficit that will grow once we get the full picture. So we have to solve it. We have to have a balanced budget. And there's tremendous sacrifice being made by almost all departments in terms of freezing positions. So that's why I'm asking these questions. And then with the, and then we're saying we, we have assumed, we need to assume the two and a half million allocated to small sites from you one in 2526 to balances to get to only $126,000 deficit, correct? Okay, so, but I also heard on that slide, which is in this slide deck, that, because I also hear, I have heard the argument that you one was, you know, the ballot argument talked about, I don't have it in front of me, but it was homelessness housing supports, affordable housing. And homelessness prevention. Okay, so I am curious if we can look at, can we use that two and a half million, well, we can't use it, right? We have to basically not use it and use it to plug the deficit. Or, but you were just sort of saying, and again, this is mental gymnastics. Like, because each dollar is not labeled, oh, this goes for this and this goes for that, right? Oh, my time is up. I didn't know we were on a time. So, I would have done it differently if I knew we were on time. Let me just wrap this up, because this is all I have. But if we wanted to, we could say, okay, well, we're gonna use this to an a half million for the encampment resolution matching funds. Like we can do that. We can say we other monies that we've allocated from measure P, for instance, for encampment resolution, we could say it's coming from this. But the measure P we also said was homeless services. So something has to give if we're gonna balance this. And like look at our maneuvers, our maneuvers are pretty painful. Like are we gonna pull more from our section 115 trust? That's supposed to go for pension. So we have to, we're gonna say we're gonna draw down more of that roughly 25 million to That's supposed to be our piggy bank To pay the obligations that we have made to our workers We already did that for three million last year and doing it again for three million this year So so those are the trade-offs we have to make and and for those of us, you know, those are the folks asking for us to continue doing a very significant investment for small sites, I have to ask you what, well, what should we do? How should we balance this? Because the funds aren't there. Do you want to save your, I'm sorry if you have other comments, do you want to save them for later questions? Because there's a lot of questions right now. Oh, I know, I know. Everything all at once. Okay. That's all I have. Okay. So I think we'll just come back to the budget committee on the 1.4 million answer and then we'll look at the positions and the charter officers to see if there's anything there. Thank you. Thanks. I'm going to give you a minute of my time. So that way. No, no, that's okay. Council member Buhakabi. Thanks, Madam Mayor. And again, we're doing comments later. It was just question time. Okay, great. Thanks, Chair Keser-Wahni for asking. So many really good questions. A lot of mine. I just have one additional, and then I have some comments later. Just to confirm in this Q&A budget committee, on the IT budget and IT cost allocation. And he said it on the slide, but it's really important, I think, just to highlight. They currently have a surplus in that budget, right? And so they, in effect. I.T. Cost allocation and he said it on the slide but it's really important I think just to highlight. They currently have a surplus in that budget, right? And so they in effect we're not making a general fund contribution to I.T. Budget and they're spending down that surplus in a sense in the coming year, right? That's correct, Council member. Okay, so I have some thoughts on that later, but that's finally clarifying question. And I work on this later. Thank you. Thank you so much. Other questions? Yes, Councilmember Trayka. Thank you. And some of my questions have been asked. So I did notice there was approximately $2 million dollar delta for mayor and council between what was budgeted and the as a state of curious if you know what accounts for that. The increase in 2526 was primarily moving the legislative aids to step 14 and then the additional increase from the fiscal year 26 adopted to the fiscal year 26 update is just the labor agreement, Cola, and adjustments. So, okay, because I thought the adopted reflected the change, the step increases and all things that I supported that all of us did on the council. I'm curious what amounts to the $2 million difference between adopted and the current state. Again, it's the two equivalent FTE, or the legislative staff or the legislative aids, and then again, the original budget included the step 14, however, the coalas and other adjustments did not occur until the budget was the MOUs were adopted in December, and so now we're seeing the differential and the increase. But we can look at that in more detail and bring back more information to budget committee and to the council on that item in particular. I would, I'm an alternate member of the budget committee. I would find that helpful. Going along with questions. I am curious. If the city has ever done two year projections, I know that's challenging. We have a lot of uncertainty, as you said, but I would find maybe it might be helpful for me to understand are we in for continued pain in FY27, the likelihood of that. So that might influence what we ultimately do with FY 26. So thank you, Council Member. So we do do multi-year projections. One of the things that finance director Oikami presented in his revenue forecast is a look at revenues through, I believe fiscal year 29 or fiscal year 30. And when we look at that revenue stream and our expenditures, we can forecast out what we think the future will look like. And we can say with certainty that we are facing a structural deficit in our general fund. We don't have the precise number but I can tell you that it's north of $20 million at this current moment in time. Probably hovering around 22 to 23 million, but that needs to be refined for sure. But yes, we do look out over multiple years and we can say that the deficit we're experiencing this year is not one time in danger. We do have a structural deficit in our general fund. Okay. And then, I may have some brief comments later, but broadly, what kind of stakeholder analysis or slash other possible creative options could be contemplated around things like working with the county if a long time. And we have been working with the county for a long time. And we have been working with the county for a long time. And we have been working with the county for a long time. And we have been working with the county for a long time. And we have been working with the county for a long time. And we have been working with the county for a long time. And we have been working with the or elsewhere, are we engaging experts to see what could be done and how we can work effectively and collaboratively and efficiently, not in the dojo way with our neighbors around trying to do more with less. So managing this year's budget given the time constraints, this came together in a very quick manner. Knowing that we see the future with a projected structural deficit, what we would like to do is work collaboratively across all the departments and really think about this in a couple of few different buckets. We want to evaluate any and all potential revenue increases that we could propose to the council. We want to look at cost efficiencies in ways that we can operate more efficiently and we want to evaluate any and all potential revenue increases that we could propose to the council. We want to look at cost efficiencies in ways that we can operate more efficiently, and we want to look at how we might be able to restructure within the organization itself. In those buckets that will include some deep thinking about how we can operate differently, collaborate with our partner. So while I can't say that we have that ready to bring to the table today, is something that we want to kick off and do as part of the next biennial budget process. Okay, so for our rules, we need to open public hearings by 10 o'clock PM. So even though I know we're not done discussing this, I want to open the public hearing for our St. Paul Avenue landmark application appeal. So just so you know we are also opening that up but we are going to continue our discussion here. Okay sorry any other questions from folks. Okay I have one question for right now. Thank you all for asking so many of my questions. One of the question is does the increase in measure P, I know that there is a measure P increase alleviate the deficit because I know we were overextended on measure P and is it expected to keep pace next year? Okay, sorry folks, I'm sorry, can you please keep your volume down. So the revenues that our finance director has forecasted for us show that Measure P will be budgeted about $9.1 million for the next few years for sure. We will have to spend some time thinking about Measure Debbie, but it's premature for us to go down that pathway. What I can tell you with respect to Measure P is we are refining the costs associated measure P, but we're definitely spending more on the services than revenue we're bringing in. Thank you. And I'm just curious, I, the city manager, I know you had said that we're using our general fund to backfill some of the other funds. And I'm just wondering if you can explain why, because I understand that no matter what we're cutting here, we're gonna be hurting, but I just wanna make sure I understand. Well, the main one that we're proposing, that's in the presentation, is to use the general fund to backfill the marina funds, 1.2 million dollar deficit. We have staff in parks and rec, who are tied directly to the Marina fund, and if that Marina fund goes into the red, we don't have a lot of options on how we, how we write size that, if we don't use the general fund to backfill it, I will say also, and Deputy Senior Manager White mentioned this, I believe, is that the parking fund is also not in great shape. We haven't done a deep dive into that, so we're not prepared to get into the specifics on that, but that's going to be another one that we have to look at for how we're going to treat it. Okay, thank you. Appreciate that. That's really helpful. I just want to make sure folks understand that, too. And then the last thing that I want to say is I'd like to ask our charter officers to review their funds for vacancies. So I know you brought that up. Councilmember Kessler-Wonney, but I'd like to make that like an official ask. So that means all of us too. Okay. Other questions, I think? I think we can take our public comment now. Okay, so let's move on to public comment. Go ahead. I think there's a bunch of us here, a bunch of you all here so you'll have one minute. Okay, you have two minutes. Honorable Mayor and Council, I'm Steve Parton, I'm former housing director for the city of Berkeley. I'm currently on the board of the Bay Area Community Land Trust. I was the organizer of the Measure U1 campaign. Berkeley has four of what I would call moral obligation taxes. The soda tax, Measure U1, Measure P, Measure W. Put forward as majority vote taxes with promises made by the city as to how the money would be spent. So just keep in mind that if you take the measure, the measure you won money from the small sites program for general deficit reduction, you can never go to the voters and honestly promise that you're putting forward a majority vote tax, but here's how the money will be spent. Because that promise was made and you will be violating it. You one was placed on the ballot in 2016 by a unanimous vote of the city council. It increased the business license tax, the idea of being to recapture a small part of the excessively high rents in Berkeley and use it to mitigate the effects on low income tenants by helping acquire and rehab buildings is permanently affordable. Berkeley's landlords argued that the voters could not trust the Berkeley City Council to actually spend the money the way they said they would. Lori Capitelli and Jesse Aragin were running against each other for mayor, but they agreed to serve and work together on the U1 campaign, reassuring the voters that whoever they elected would follow their promises and use the money for affordable housing. Berkeley's landlord spent a1 million against the campaign, but we got 75% of the vote, with $75,000. So just keep in mind that that's the situation. Thank you. And that's it. This person is giving you a minute. Did you have anything else you wanted to say? Oh, yes, I do actually. Okay, go ahead. You've got 58 seconds. Go quick. Thank you. I appreciate it. So another thing to keep in mind is that you want to already contribute $2 million a year to the General Fund because it's now used to pay for the salaries of housing staff. They used to be paid for out of other General Fund money. So the city has, you know, broadly within the scope of the promises made, pulled out $2 million a year and it's increasing. So, again, you one is making its contribution and you've just heard you have a structural deficit if you want to make it a little bit more difficult to make going to be there again? Or are you just going to wipe out, measure U1 and use it to fill the deficit, the structural deficit that you have before you? Please don't do that. Thank you. Thank you. And folks, you can move up closer. You don't have to be so far back. Go ahead. Hi, members of the Berkeley City Council. My name is Asin NDI. I'm the executive director of the Northern California Land Trust. We're based in South Berkeley. We're the oldest land trust here in Berkeley. We're happy to call Berkeley home. As I'm sure you can probably guess, I'm here to ask you to maintain the funding for the Small Sites program. We currently have a pipeline ready for acquisition that's going into leverage state and regional dollars. We have budgeting small site program funding as the baseline to be able to make those acquisitions. We would really, really, really, really be in a horrible tight spot if we're unable to get that funding and be unable to protect those tenants and the buildings that we're currently looking at. All of those buildings are low income buildings that have majority, black and brown residents who are all at risk of being displaced. And I just want to make sure that you understand that that is the decision that you're making. I'm sorry. I'm very strict on time. Appreciate it. Thank you. Good evening, Councilmembers. I'm Tracy Parent. I'm the Director of the Bay Area Community Land Trust. I just want to say, small sites program is a very efficient and effective program here in Berkeley. It's very unique across the Bay Area. We are able to close on the sale of these existing buildings with existing Berkeley residents living in them in just six months, bringing those units into the affordable housing portfolio. After last year's budget hearing, the council sized the $10 million over two years based on an existing pipeline that both NCLT and BA CLT have put together. By December, we closed the sale on a 12 unit building, preserving 10 low income Berkeley residents, two of them actively facing eviction. This is truly an anti displacement program. It's fast, it's effective, we need the funds, please keep the funds. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I am Mary McDonald, I'm the vice president of the board for the Bay Area Community Ventress. I'll be a little more emotional on this one because yes, we are in a housing crisis and we have been for a long time and now is not the time to pull the plug on affordable housing. Our community, I've been here over three years, or over 30 years, although I'm no longer in the Berkeley community because when I was forced to move from my home of 30 years, I had to move to an adjacent community because this is no longer affordable for me. And our community just continues to become bifurcated and pulling that funding will just accelerate that trend. So I really do encourage you to honor affordable housing month and continue to support the small sites program. of us preserve affordable housing for most residents who have no options to be relocated. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you for sharing your story. Good evening. My name is Christina Oatfield. I'm a member of the Planning Commission, although I'm not here speaking on behalf of the commission. Tonight I'm just speaking in terms of my own observations and learnings. Serving on the commission, I'm sure as you are all aware, we are getting a lot of referrals from city council and a lot of kind of mandates from the state to change a lot of our policy to promote more housing in Berkeley as we should be able to move on. We are getting a lot of referrals from City Council and a lot of kind of mandates from the state to change a lot of our policy to promote more housing in Berkeley as we should and that's just been a big focus of what we talk about. And something that I've learned from the experts and the consultants that the city is hired to advise us is that even producing market rate affordable housing just like often it's like really hard to pencil out. So you can imagine affordable housing is even more in just a dire situation. So I'm asking you to keep the funding for the Small Sites program already what was allocated is woefully inadequate, but at least it's something and we shouldn't eliminate it. Thank you. Good evening Councilmembers. My name is Inti. I'm a single father of two and a proud resident of 2627 California Street Affordable Housing Building supported by the small site's program. I'm here to urge you to please do not cut funding to this programs. Thanks to the small sites and be a CLT. My neighbors and I didn't just keep our housing, we became active stewards of it. In just six months we've made immense progress. Organizing as residents systems of self-governance and creating a strong connected community. This model works, it keeps families housed, empowered residents and strengths and neighborhoods. It's a win, win, win for a suitable, safe, and diverse community. Please continue to invest in what's working. Thank you. Ten seconds. That's it. Thank you. I have a minute from David in the back in the last row here on this side. Okay. Okay. At the 1.4 million should not go into the general fund. We need housing retention monies. We're talking about how bad the city is going to be doing. We know there are all these funding cuts. People are losing jobs. We have to have housing retention monies. We don't have it in measure P. We have the deficit in the general fund, so we should be looking towards at least the substantial part of the U1 money for housing retention monies. We need it. In terms, can we please identify where the county measure W is going? Homeless alternatives. Where is this money going to come from? We just took a vote on homeless housing alternatives. So we're going to have to identify where money money is gonna have to be shifted around. Can staff look at other services, such as mental health services, that can be shifted to the county in addition to the SEU shift, so that the county can pick up some services. Hopefully those that don't have the direct contact with the clients who have to interact locally. The disability rights California and DOJ settlement, that case, the county is responsible. It includes Berkeley for providing alternative mental health services to John George, where the conditions were found to be deplorable. So there's an ongoing county. Con. services to John George, where the conditions were found to be deplorable. So there's an ongoing county contract court monitor on that. It involves essentially mostly crisis and peer respites. But how can we use that in Berkeley so that they're paying for it, the county? Possibly review the community agency funding allocations to make sure that all those monies of being used as they were allocated so that there aren't vacancies or services that aren't being provided. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening Mayor and Council. My name is Matt Gustafson. My family and I are residents in district two. I also work for the Bay Area Community Land Trust. I'm here tonight to urge you to preserve the funds allocated to the Small Sites program, a program that's approved as a proven track record of preventing the displacement of low income Berkeley residents. I'd like to thank Council members, Taplin and Bartlett for championing small science funding alongside Council Member Hahn last year in the current budget. Thanks to you, 10 Berkeley families overcame the threat of displacement in December, as you heard from into a couple minutes ago, and are now on the path to permanently affordable, self-managed and cooperatively owned housing. In the past five years, the small sites program has created 33 units at least of permanently affordable housing for 50 residents in Berkeley, half of whom are children and seniors. Affordable home ownership for low income Berkeley residents, as you know, is virtually non-existent at this point, and the small sites program is enabling, it's probably the only program that effectively creates opportunities for home ownership for low income folks. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I'm Tom Yamaguchi from District 2. My pronouns are he and him. I really appreciate the desire to reduce expenditures to Claire, but that's it. I do have concerns about the not filling vacancies. They call some member, Casua and Mexico, a high refree refreeze knowing that in the past number of years our transportation department has been understabbed having been getting through the pandemic and having to hire staff. We've just empowered for residents to get to work and making our streets safer and I just hope that they do have the staff that they need to get those projects completed. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is John Holder. I live in 1620 San Pablo Avenue. Berkeley, California. I would be surprised if you all. Some of you don't know who I am and what I've been going through. This is my dog, a key. While I was away trying to talk to Peter Radoo, he was clubbed. And his school was shattered. and no one has been able to address this because it seems like we're in a wasteland of bureaucracy of I'm sorry I Speaking of I think that are you speaking on and something that's not on the agenda? Are you speaking to the budget? I'm speaking the overall problem of You have a you have a system that works that is in place in Berkeley, but the provider is not following through with it. You can do miraculous things with the system that you have. Yes. I'm really sorry, but I think that you're speaking to an item that's not on our agenda, because we're currently discussing the budget. I was told someone just walk up and speak to the council. Yeah, I'm so sorry, but I will ask maybe if my staff would be willing to speak with you or it looks like someone from Councilmember of the new process. Is there a time when I could speak to the council about that? Our staff is actually going to come around and chat with you. Thank you. I'm so sorry about that. I know you were just saying our bureaucracy is getting in the way and here I am telling you. Yeah, so, yes, how about our online comments? Currently have 12 hands raised if you'd like to comment on the proposed mid-byaniel budget update please raise your hand currently have have 12 hands. Sophia DeWitt, you're first. Good evening Madam Mayor and Council. Reverend Sophia DeWitt, Chief Program Officer, East Bay Housing Organizations. Here tonight to ask you to preserve money for the Small Sites program in the budget. As we all know, we're in a housing crisis in Berkeley and in the region. This is not the time to pull back on these funds. Measure U1 funds were designed for exactly this purpose in terms of preserving affordable housing, helping prevent displacement, and that is also the promise that was made to Berkeley voters in 2016. As Steve Barton has said, if you break faith with Berkeley voters, you will not be able to get Berkeley voters to support other affordable housing initiatives in the future. That good will will be gone. We're facing a national rollback of housing protections at the federal. Your time is up. Thank you for your public comment. Next is Paula. Paula should be able to talk. Hi, thank you so much. Good evening, esteemed council members and community members and hello Mayor Ishi. My name is Paul St. Hoi and I am a resident of 1685 for Lana Avenue here in Berkeley I am here because I care deeply about keeping a community whole and I am urging you to fully come on this multi-pets program and that and the tenant legal aid in the upcoming budgets. Little story. I am one of the families of minority that lives here with my children. I wouldn't be able to afford this home had enough been picked up by the Bay Area Community Land Trust. So, programs like that and money that can be allocated to the small sites program can definitely help families to play self not be displaced. Be able to work in the city that we live in, be able to live in the city that we are and also for the children to be in the same city. So just overall it's a program. And it's a great organization to please keep helping other people like ourselves that can definitely benefit. And thank you so much. Appreciate your comment. Matt, next is Dustin Tranberg. Good evening, council members and Mayor Ishi. My name is Dustin Tranberg. I'm a resident of District 3. I'm urging you not to cut the small sites program. Our affordable housing crisis is ongoing. And this program helps to create permanently affordable, self-sustaining housing solutions. It's an investment in the future of the city. And it's already working as you heard about California Street. they were at risk of being displaced by real estate speculators. And now they're converting their building into a self-sustaining, permanently affordable co-op. Small size funding is transformative and cost effective. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next is Jocelyn Zorn. Oh, where'd she go? Drop. Jeff Lomax. Good morning, Mary. Council Jeff Lomax District 5. Just I may again that because the slides weren't posted to. Council member Kestor Awne's point. One observation was it looked like you were sort of accounting for projected FF revenue. If that's FF 2024, there's also with that associated spend rate. I'm just curious is that does that account because it's supposed to supposed to supposed to be increased spending on streets and sidewalks with that measure. So I'm just wondering if you're sort of accounting for the revenue but not the burn on that one. So pay attention to that. And finally, just in terms of enhanced revenue, keep in mind, with the inflation and justters built into the parcel taxes, residents are going to take a huge hit potentially if the inflation projections that were potentially forecast come through. So that's going to be a tough one on residents. So, and you're taking a lot already from folks who are mortgage holders. So keep an eye on that one as well. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Daniel Brownson. Hi. So I'm looking at the slide that I just put up. And it looks like the solution is kind of obvious. The police budget is twice as much on the FY 2026 update as any other thing in the budget. Cut from the police budget. Don't cut housing. We've got plenty of expensive toys already, ticket school district maintenance vans with, which they do. Next is Urban Habitat. Good evening mayor and council members. I'm Ellen Wu, Executive Director at Urban Habitat. Urban Habitat is a regional advocacy organization fighting for permanently affordable housing to prevent homelessness and displacement. We are strongly opposed to any effort to cut funding from the Small Sites Program or tenant legal aid services. With the creation of the Small Sites Program in 2017, Berkeley established itself as a regional leader in housing preservation and anti-displacement programs. Two critical strategies to address homelessness upstream by preventing it in the first place. Only a handful of cities across the region have such a program. The Small Sites program has proven to be a fast and cost-effective way to create more affordable housing in the city by supporting local land trust and affordable housing providers to purchase existing buildings. For example, last year the Bay Area Community Land Trust was able to leverage $3.6 million from the program to obtain additional funding from Bafa and purchase a 12-unit building at per cost of $400,000 which is needed. I'm sorry your I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I Rick Lewis. I work with the Bay Area Community Land Trust. I'm speaking in favor of keeping the $2.5 million in the small site program. There have been many important issues raised, but I want to emphasize a few. To follow up on the previous speaker. The SSSP program is an effective use of city funds. For less, we can preserve housing for less than one half the cost of new construction and preserve smaller multi-family buildings. The elimination of these funds will reduce one project in the coming year. You've heard a lot about our... and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property and the county's property do not have to move out of Berkeley. One final thing is that at a California street, we have leveraged over $200,000 for... I'm sorry. I do not have to move out of Berkeley. One final thing is that at California Street, we have leveraged over $200,000 for any of our phones that will include. Excuse me, I'm so sorry. Your time has up. I know it can be hard when you're online, but I'm a stickler for time, so the folks that are left, please know that I'm going to cut you off in a minute. Catherine, Catherine, Day. This next. That's Catherine Day. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I live in District 8 and I'm here also to express my concerns about the proposed 50% cut to the small sites program. It has a proven track record in securing people's homes in their own communities at half the cost of new construction. And so the savings to the affordable movement can be measured, a significant at about $400,000 per unit. It also supports a limited equity model which allows renters to own their apartments and get a foothold on the housing ladder and to pass this opportunity to others over time. And so the economic and social benefits is staying put and building intergenerational wealth are immeasurable, but the savings to the city are significant also at about $400,000 per unit. And so it's this proven strategy, it's time sensitive, and needs to be taken. Thank you very much. Next is David Shearer. Hi. So tough situation. Yeah. Yeah. So tough situation. I'm super uncomfortable seeing some of these one off budget fixes. The workman's comp fund, the pension funds. It just it feels feels incredibly irresponsible when we're looking at a structural and not a cyclical deficit and when we don't know what is what is coming down from Washington. I think that we will be better off if we start addressing the structural deficit this year or not next year. That said, I do think that we should use the U1 money as promised at the ballot. We've got to keep these kinds of promises when they're made. Then that's for the 1.4 million from the last year small sites fund. I do just want to call out the staff was planning to come to you to ask for 500,000 from that money to backfill some of what. Some of what a nonprofit developer spent on a building, they're deep in the hole. So just something to keep in mind. Thank you. Next is Blair Beakman. Hi, Blair Beakman. I wanted to talk about if it's possible, the idea of tiny homes in the future of this major budget issues. If it's possible, I am interested in how that the city, I don't mean to be, I want to be polite in this kind of awkward situation and gentle. The city of San Jose, in all the good work that Oakland has done with their first tiny home project. The City of San Jose noticed that the tiny home buildings were a bit environmentally unsound and unhealthy for the people who lived in them. So they developed a different style of tiny homes in San Jose. I hope in this good practices you're doing for tiny homes for the future of Berkeley, that you're better developing the future of your tiny homes and what it's health aspects for its community and residents. I just wanted to mention that this time, and I'm really impressed with how you talk about your budget issues here in Berkeley. Thank you. Thank you. Next is not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I'm not sure if you can hear me. Black families, public health nonprofit based in the Adeline corridor. We are spearheading a program called an initiative born of the Mayor's Office of the Format Administration Equity for Black Berkeley, where we've coalesced data from some of the most vulnerable in the community, Black and Brown families. Housing is their first priority. Housing is their first priorityable housing means life and death for many in our community. I encourage you to hold true to the social contract. We have to be able to trust that you'll do what you say you're going to do. And spending this money as you've agreed is that. And that's all it is, having the moral courage to do just that. We have a whole cut. Is that it? Yep, sorry, that's a minute. I appreciate your comment. Next is Jocelyn Zorn. Okay, my name is Jocelyn Zorn. I am calling to advocate for the small sites program. There's no reason that we should be cutting affordable housing funding during a housing crisis. I'm a BACL-2 resident in affordable housing for context. I live with my partner our 10 month old baby and together we make 70K annually. Living in affordable housing is allowed us to advance our education, care for six family members, and spend time with our baby. These are experiences that no one should have to sacrifice for rent. We have neighbors living in BACLT properties that have dementia and have fallen short on months of rent. BACLT was able to be compassionate and patient, connecting with social workers, neighbors and family members to try and find a way to help them along. So I think that this is just the type of organizations that we should be investing in as a city, let Berkeley be the progressive city that it wants to be and invest in compassionate organizations. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next is Cheryl D Cheryl. The former council member. Thank you. Yeah. Small sites. You should invest in that. And if you really care about. Helping your community, your residents in the city of Berkeley, you should fund those things and you can take a bunch of money from the police budgets. They're overspending on overtime. I always see folks just standing around when there could be doing something else. It's interesting how many police cars come to one incident. And then they hang out on fourth street when they're really not necessarily needed there. I don't know. It's just interesting the overtime and you should look at areas like that and see what you can cut from that budget because and you should also stop the sweeps on the unhoused and try to find some real solutions small sites would be one of that one of them. Thanks for your comment. That's it for online public commenters. Okay, I just wanted to check with council because it's been sitting a long time. Do we want to take a bring before or do we want to just finish this up? Okay. Oh. One, two, three, four, five. We're okay. We're okay. So, quorum wise. Yeah. Okay. So, yes. I... just. I think we need to close the public hearing so we can take public comments. I'm going to entertain a motion to close the public hearing. Some move. I still have a question for staff. Oh, I'm sorry, yes, please ask that first. Okay, thank you. Sorry. I have another question. I'm trying to understand the numbers here between FI26 adopted and FI26 update with in terms of the police department. It is about a $12 million increase. Is that mostly overtime? Yeah, I'm just curious where it is such a large increase compared to fire especially. So forgive me if this is a little complicated and just force me to explain it a couple of times because there are a few adjustments that were implemented. Dave, can you just move closer to the mic? Please move the mic close to you. Is that good? Okay. So this is a little complicated. So just keep asking me questions so I can get it. All of us on the same page. So between fiscal year 26 adopted an update. They're not entirely apples to apples comparison. So when you look at the update number, we have to understand and a few things that were implemented. One is you have the contracts that were adopted by Council were brought into the update numbers. You also have in the fiscal year 26 adopted budget we assumed an 8% vacancy savings rate, whereas the fiscal year 26 update number assumes the department is holding I think 13 or 14 vacant, and there's no vacancy savings built into it because that number represents what they can hold vacant and still meet their operational requirements. So it's not quite, that explains it basically, you have the cost of labor and then you also have positions that are held vacant and no vacancy savings. Can you explain again why there aren't vacancy savings? Sorry to help clarify too. So when we talk about savings twofold, sometimes we talk about just a salary savings target, which is a percentage of the overall payroll. And so as the W City Manager mentioned, in fiscal year 26 adopted, most departments had a 8% to 9% assumed salary savings target, which would, based on their payroll. When we remodeled for the update, for the recommendations that we illustrated, we actually identified positions and attributed the savings for those positions and then we put a 0% salary savings target on the payroll. So instead of just taking that sort of across the board, here's a 8% reduction. We more systematically looked at the actual vacant positions, identified which ones could be kept vacant and then modeled the savings from the vacant position. So there is still vacancies assumed in both models just not to the same extent. We definitely reduced the expectation down for 26, based on what we were seeing with the cost of overtime in 25. So that's a factor and a big driver. And more globally for 26 for the general fund, seller statements was about 15 million initially. And when we re-bredated it, we brought it down to the 7. And then we again reworked it to get to that $9 million figure. So I know it's a nuanced sort of concept, but that's largely it. And then also the continued impact of the coales and the ad page and modeling those out as well. But again, we're happy to try to clarify or go through that again to make it a little clearer. That's really helpful. Thank you so much. And during the hiring freeze, are we still, and with the salary savings, are we still spending on recruitment efforts or that chunk of money that was in recruitment efforts? Where is that going? Yes, we are still spending money on recruitment efforts and there will be an item coming to council soon on that because as the city manager has explained. It's really important we keep the hiring going and keep that machine moving forward because once it stops it has very profound impacts on the department's ability to fill their vacant position. So that recruitment and hiring will continue. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So there's a motion but there was no second to close the public hearing. So a second from Councillor Rebouacca be. I'm going to ask the clerk to take roll to close the public hearing, please. Okay. Councillor McElroy, Councillor Wanne. Yes. Patlin. Yes. Shregub. Aye. O'Keefe. Yes. Blackaby. Yes. Luna Para. Yes. Umberg. Yes. And Mary Shee. Yes. There's time for comments. Do folks have comments? Council member Blackby. Very brief comment. Thank you to the staff for bringing this all to us. I just want to say I look forward to working with you. Unfortunately, I'll be able to ask a lot of my questions in the committee and look forward to the budget meeting. I'm really interested in digging more into the UN issue, really digging more into the police over time and fire over time and a of those issues because those are big dollars and big opportunities there. I'll just say, I think we are somewhat fortunate that previous councils and previous city leaderships have over invested in a sense. We have the section 115 trust, right? We have an IT budget where we've actively invested in that budget. We do have some places to turn in the short term and we're fortunate because if we didn't have those things, the decisions we'd be faced with would be even more dire. So in a sense, we are lucky to be in the position we're in. We know that we can't sustain it. We're lucky to have one more year to be able to do that. Long term, you know, I'm also already kind of thinking ahead. I know that city managers have been thinking a lot of this as well. I'm also sensitive. I don't think we can cut our way out of this in the long term. And I think growth is really going to be key to our success over time. So a lot of what we're doing now is looking at the bottom, looking at the cost side, but we're going to need to look at the revenue side. I don't mean in terms of new taxes and new fees exclusively. I also mean this is where I think the fruit, where we will bear fruit when we're more supportive and nurturing of the business climate in Berkeley, investing in downtown, supporting small business. Like we need just to grow the tax base, right? Not necessarily tax rates, but the tax base. Our businesses coming here are the investing year. More collaboration, in cooperation with UC Berkeley in supporting the innovation ecosystem and the startup cluster, which is a big goal of the mayors and mine and others here. And certainly seeking more of the development projects that are kind of on hold for those things to come online because all of those things are revenue generators for the city. And it will make a lot of the decisions we have to make two, three, four years from now, a little easier if we do our work now to support those well. I think investment in the IT budget over time is also going to be really helpful because we know we need to gain more efficiency in terms of how we deliver our services. We are going to need to streamline some of our operations, more automation, less paper, and IT is really critical to getting those cost savings. You know, we're not going to realize them right now, but we need to make some of those investments in the out years to see those benefits down the road. So again, I look forward to continuing the conversation. Thank you for your work tonight, and look forward to the next one. Thank you. Thank you. You still have two minutes left, and while you have that two minutes, I want to say just that, you know, obviously we just talked about where I'm in 20 isch million dollar deficit and we have about four million dollars worth of council referrals, which we're obviously not going to be able to cover everything. So I just, while you have your time, since we are all here in public, would love to hear if there are specific things that you want to prioritize, that if you could share that with us now. And of course, if you have things later, you want to share, please share them with Paul. I just want to make sure that as we're thinking about the budgets that we all have a good understanding of what people's priorities are. And I know during our council retreat, we discussed in these priorities as well. But I just want to make sure I say that now, so that as you council members are sharing, If there are things on your kind of like priority list, you can share. And again, I would say look, and we have a whole budget committee meeting on the 12th to go through those referrals. So I'd say look and we have a whole budget committee meeting on the 12th to go through those referrals. So I'd say please let any of us know, let other folks know. We have to be careful because the brown app that's why. Sorry. Come to the meet year or yeah, but yes, I'm with you. But yeah, I'm not prepared to do that tonight, but I know we're going to have a session to do that. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Kessarani. Well, I'm not prepared to do that tonight, but I know we're gonna have a session do that Thank you. Okay councilmember Kessarani Well, I'm prepared to do that tonight. So I will say there is Oh, wow, okay, I thought I had I with my name was only on one item, but that's not true I see I am on independent consultant to conduct analysis of health food inspection program which is also a worthy cause. But my top item and I try to strategically, you know, limit my name to what I think is like the most important thing and I knew this was going to be a very difficult budget year. So I think even in this very difficult budget, I would respectfully request serious consideration and funding of the Alonie Greenway safety improvements. This 150,000 that were short on design funding. If we put this money in, we'll be able to draw down more than 5 million of county and other dollars that have already been awarded to the city of Berkeley to not just make this greenway nicer, but make it safer. So why didn't it where it can be widened, add lighting? Right now, these intersections are in our Vision Zero Action Plan as unsafe intersections that we can make safer. And this is just a critical route to getting to the North Berkeley bar station, which will be even more critical once we start breaking ground. You know, next year to build out that site. So I really think that this is a worthy budget referral to fund. And I also think it's not just a district one priority. This is a greenway that's used by many folks all throughout our city. So I did want to say that, but I say that knowing that to fund that, we have to find more savings. So I know the mayor also said that we want to have the charter offices come back and I think the mayor has a motion for that which I support. So that's all I have for now. Thank you. Thank you. Any other, oh, sorry, Councilmember Tapplin, I see your hand and then. Thank you Madam Mayor. Thanks everyone who spoke. My priority is critical revenue generating capital improvement projects in the waterfront such as the repair s and docs F and G which will help put them redefine back in the black. And on measure U1 we should write ballot arguments that reflect the taxes true in honest nature, how and where it lives in the budget. Trust and transparency at the ballot box for the success of the parks, tax on the library, tax over and against the public doubt exposed by the between two measure L. I want to underscore for the community and the public both the difficulty and the direness of the structural deficit. As a city, we have gotten use of spending practices in budget conditions that our physical reality can no longer sustain. Normal in any of the choices we have to make it any easier if we are on out. Council policies and actions inhibit revenue generation and remove properties from the tax rolls have material consequences and their repercussions for kicking hard choices down the road. It's becoming clear that there just isn't any road left, but we can turn this around, we correct our courts and these upcoming cycles as arduous to that will be. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Toplin. Councilmember Traykab. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, staff and Sharon, we are really going to miss you. Thank you for all of your service to the city. In terms of my priorities, now start with that first, to the extent that funding can be identified, it would be deportation legal services. After school, care, and the traffic study and pedestrian safety operations on Shadok and Delaware Street, the item number seven, which we did last year. So obviously, I think I speak for everyone on the dice on this. No one ever wants for office to try to decide what budget items will be cut. This is not where any of us want it to be. And yet here we are. And I applaud the Council for this discussion and it's willingness to make some tough choices such that we can improve readiness to respond to current and future realities. I have a few North stars around these conversations. One of them, and I applaud staff for doing this. As far as I can tell, nothing was done on the backs of police to the full-time equivalent staff that are really the backbone of our city. Another North Star that I have is making sure that when we put something on the ballot and we campaign for it, that we are transparent and should those ballot measures be approved, we follow through on our word. So, having worked on the committee that will measure you one and then campaigned for measure you one. and then worked to make recommendations for U1 allocations. I very much resonate with what several members of the public said around this not being the place where we should look at cuts. And I would submit and and I would actually ask staff to do this, whether it's for the budget committee or for the council. If we're gonna look at options around alternatives to you one, let's look at the cost of trying to find housing for someone once they're out on the street and compare that to. Because I'm pretty sure that it costs less money to keep them housed in the first place. Several other comments just on the budget. I think the deltas were really helpful between project, you know, budgeted for and current conditions. It would be useful, at least to me, where possible to identify line items where they change with percent change demarcations. So at least for me it would be easier to see what are you know the key factors in the changes. And that's really, yeah. I know that we will have to make some painful decisions and no one is looking forward to that. I certainly am not, but I would love for us to, if we're going to take a look at cutting something, let's look at all the possible externalities and opportunity costs of losing those programs. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Other comments? Council Member Lennapaga. Thank you. A couple of I'm not sure if I can do that. I'm not sure if I can do that. I'm not sure if I can do that. I'm not sure if I can do that. I'm not sure if I can do that. I'm not sure if I can do that. I'm not sure if I can do that. I'm not sure if I can do that. I'm not sure if I can do that. I'm not sure if I can do that. infrastructure for high risk intersections. Our public works department is working on that right now. But this is a, we need to be able to comply with the- infrastructure for high risk intersections. Our public works department is working on that right now. But this is a, we need to be able to comply with state law and not confuse our residents while doing so. As well as the deportation legal defense. And, you know, this is I think a tear lower. But the, any kind of, any pedestrian safety and cyclists infrastructure, so that includes in this list Oxford for all and the Alonie greenway safety improvements. I also want to, this is a really small ask. I mean, in this budget cycle, and nothing is a small ask, but the street spirit operational and programming costs would really affect their day to day operations, and they provide such an incredible service to our community and the amount of, sorry, 25,000. Yeah. And I also wanted to talk a little bit about you one and the small sites and other kind of affordable housing projects that we have. I want to emphasize that this is the cheapest way, as Council Member Trigger said, the cheapest way to address housing issues in our city is to keep people housed, that is much more expensive to help folks once they are homeless. And I know that we all are keeping that in mind. I just wanted to say it out loud as well. Thanks. Okay, yes, Councilmember. Okay, just real quick, I don't have a ton to add. This is outside of my area of expertise in general. I will say just while we're naming priorities, I want to give a plus one to the after-school program expansion. It makes an incredibly huge difference in families and for children to have access to such high quality after-school care, it can really change lives and it's worth the money. I really want to speak up for that. And I just want to echo many of the comments that my colleagues here have said. The loss of funding for small sites is heartbreaking. I really, really hope we can find a way to avoid it or less than it. I understand that asking for that without a suggestion of what else we should cut is not helpful. But I do hope, hope maybe we can figure something out that's not that because it's really a tragic loss. But thank you for all your work. I know you are all doing your best to figure out how to manage the situation. Thank you to the Budget Committee as well. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Humbert, text. Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor. I don't have any specific asks in mind, but my priorities are street and sidewalk safety. That's always money well spent to keep our residents and our visitors safe in life and limb and public safety in general. And protecting our infrastructure and trying to avoid letting it deteriorate. Thank you. Go ahead, Councilmember Kessler. Just respectfully. I really appreciate the robust discussion we're having around small sites. But I just, I can't let it go unchallenged that this is cheap or cost effective. It's just not. And we can have a discussion of the Budget and Finance Committee. The total, I want to make a request of staff. We can get the total amount put into each small site project and how many units were preserved. And I want to say it's important. We don't want to displace tenants. There's a value in it when we have the funds available to do so. We don't have it this time. So I'm just going to speak from my knowledge, doing my policy work in San Francisco and other... We don't have it this time. So I'm just going to speak from my knowledge, doing my policy work in San Francisco and other places. It's about 350,000 per unit to do small sites. That's not cheap. You know, rapid rehousing subsidies, a one-time rental assistance so that people can make their rent and not get evicted. Those are more cost-effective options actually when you look at the cost per person assisted. And actually, it's new affordable housing that is most cost-effective for the city. Because the local public subsidy that we put in draws down four outside dollars. It's the state dollars that we get, the federal tax credits that we get. So yes, those new affordable housing units cost roughly 750,000, but guess what? We only put 200,000 in them and we actually got a new unit out of it. It's not just a conversion of the type of unit. So I want to reiterate again that small sites has a value when the property is going to be sold and there's the fear of displacement for those tenants. But we are in, we have to make tough choices. I spoke out against the 10 million small site allocation last year because I did not think it was a responsible use of our resources. And now we were able to get away with it last year because we didn't have a deficit. But now we do. So again, I challenge folks who say they want to preserve it. What do you want to do to put 2.5 million in and spend 350,000 per unit? Tell me what you want to do. Do you want to pull 2.5 million out of the section 115 trust? Do you want to do some other sort of maneuvers and gimmicks around workers comp or IT cost allocation or ask our staff to come up with some other kind of one time gimmick? You know that's what you have to find out. That's what you have to figure out and present to us to convince me that that's a good investment. And I really want us to come back to the Budget and Finance Committee with the numbers. So we can all see what is the total amount put into a project for all the projects that we have done for small sites. And many units were preserved. So we're gonna see the cost per unit. And then I wanna compare, I wanna get the analysis of a new affordable housing unit. And we can look at North Berkeley Bart as an example and look at the local public subsidy put in, how many dollars that leverage is, and how many new units are created for the local public subsidy. And then when we talk about measure P, I want to hear from Peter, I want to hear how many people got housed with rapid rehousing subsidies and how much of that costs. Okay, so let's bring all of our data and evidence together and let's figure out how we can help the most people in this city stay housed. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. So I think that we have finished the comments because I have a mind. I have some comments but it's 1046. So I know that we still have one more item on the agenda and we'll need to make a motion to extend our time. I believe that Jordan has said that he thinks with comments and everything that it might take about an hour total for us to cover. So I'd like to ask that we extend our meeting till midnight and hoping that we do not go that long, but just that I want to give us wiggle room. Some moved. I'll second. Thank you. Okay, can you take the role, please clerk. Customer, we're a customer wanting? Yes. Tap one. Yes. Trigger. Aye. Okay. Yes. Black to be. Yes. Convert, yes, and Mary she. Yes. Tatlin. Yes. Trigab. Aye. Okay. Yes. Blackby. Yes. Lunapara. Yes. Combert. Yes. Ann Marie. Yes. Okay. I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who's here, staff, folks who are here out out there waiting for us. I know that there's a lot going on tonight in this conversation is really important. I really want to thank my colleagues for sharing their priorities and just their thoughts on things. It's really helpful for us. I know that there's a lot going on tonight and this conversation is really important. I really want to thank my colleagues for sharing their priorities and just their thoughts on things. It's really helpful for us to figure out how we can move forward and if folks are willing to share their thoughts now. So thank you all so much for that. I really want to thank Sharon for her service. I know this is your last night. Yeah, let's give Sharon. She will unfortunately be leaving us for Emriville. I think Emriville and Berkeley has a tug of war going currently with staff. And I really want to also recognize Shauna Amenegawan, who is sitting here and we have not acknowledged you yet. So just want to say thank you so much for being here, because you will also be our acting budget manager. And so you will be carrying on the torch from tonight on. And so, you know, that is incredibly important since we're in the middle of our process. And I really want to thank you for stepping up and for being here this evening, even though you've not had an opportunity to speak at all. So, thank you. So yeah, let's give it. Yeah, thank you. Okay. And thank you just generally, staff, as I mentioned. It's just an incredible amount of work. And I really want to say that I have a lot of confidence that that council is taking this budget deficit really seriously. And is working to address the structural deficit moving forward that we recognize that there are some things we're being asked to do that we're hoping are not long term. We recognize are not long term solutions. And just generally thank you also to staff for all the additional information. I know we've asked a lot of you from the Budget and Finance Committee. And I really appreciate you taking the time to add the notes at the bottom of the charts. I just really think making these changes makes this process a lot more transparent. And I'm really grateful because I know that the public doesn't always have time to look through such large budget documents. So anything that we can do to make things a little bit more clear, especially for folks who don't have a background in finance and any sorts. I think that that's really helpful. So I just really want to applaud you for all of your great work there. And let's see, I'll just lose track. So many things. So another thing I want to say is a big thank you because I really appreciate that we're prioritized preventing layoffs. That is major. And I think the fact that we haven't had City staff come here because they're worried about losing their jobs. That is great. And I just want to say thank you so much because that is a huge priority for me. That we're able to maintain our city services by preventing layoffs. And I do understand that there's still an impact of holding positions open. So I just want to acknowledge that. I want to also make sure folks understand that this current budget deficit does not include potential federal funding cuts. So I know that that's kind of a scary thing to say, but I want us to all come into this with our eyes open that we have been threatened as a sanctuary city that we could lose again similar that were in a deficit, 26 or 8 or something million dollars. And so this is something we need to be aware of, for sure. I want to share, I asked you all for your priorities. My priority issues are housing and homelessness, public safety and infrastructure. And I want to make sure also I appreciate Council Member Black of these comments because I'm also very interested in making sure that we're continuing to fund revenue generating aspects of our city. And I want to make some comments about the U-1 affordable. So U-1 was for affordable housing and protecting Berkeley residents from homelessness. And I do think it is very important to honor the integrity of voter approved ballot measures and using the funds the way they're intended for. Currently, it's being recommended that we use this for encampment resolution, which when we're talking about homelessness prevention and affordable housing and encampment resolution, I don't feel like is a match. So, I am concerned about small small sites I hear what you're saying councilmember Kessler wanting I think that's really important that we're looking at the benefits and like how many how many dollars we're actually spending to go towards something how effective is it and at the same time if we're talking about the purposes for measure U1 I'm not really seeing in in camp and resolution as a purpose that falls into the U1. And there was a comment earlier by Carol about alternate housing sites, if what can be used to fund this, and just wanna make a quick comment that measure W funds could be used to fund this potentially. So I think that's something I wanna flag. Okay, almost there. All right, just a few more things. So a really big thank you to our city attorney for holding a position vacant. And I want to make a motion to ask for the city manager to work with the charter officers, officers, excuse me, our officers, officers to develop a recommendation for council consideration of a hiring freeze of vacant positions. This, again, this is just, this is something, yeah, this is something that would allow us to have a conversation about savings in these charter offices. And I'm a big believer too of like, I can't say let's not spend here, but then not come up with a solution. So this is part of the solution. I see this is part of the solution. And I also want to recognize that Councilmember Trigger made a comment about like looking for other potential solutions as well. And I want to also just mention that I will be bringing my, you know, the mayor's budget recommendations to the June 12th Budget and Finance Committee meeting. And so it is very helpful that you all shared, some of you shared your priorities because that is something that I really want to take into account as we're talking about this. And again, to remind folks, if you have other things that you didn't get a chance to bring up today that you talked to our city manager about that, really trying to be careful and thoughtful about brown act violations here. And I know there is a motion on the table. So I would like to say. There's already a second. Sorry. Do we need to do a motion? You want to ask item? Question either. I just like this item. We need to like up. We can make a motion. Yes, we can make a motion also on this item to receive. So, I think that's a good idea. So, I think that's a good idea. So, like, we can make a motion. Yes, we can make a motion also on this item to receive. Okay, it's not necessary. It's not necessary. Okay, so we don't need to. No. Okay, okay, so then I think the motion can stand as is. I just want to clarify it. Okay. friendly amendment to add that we also receive the mid-bioNT budget update in public care. Sure, sure. It's either way. It doesn't change anything materially. Sure. So, yes, we can accept that. Okay. Okay. Clerk? Councillor. Councillor. Councillor. Councillor. Councillor. Councillor. Councillor. Councillor. Councillor. Councillor. Councillor. Councillor. Councillor. Councillor. Table is... the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the quick question for the city attorney is does the charter permit the CMAT or debris paid in that if it's with the other charter officers? Yes, as long as the final decision is made by the city council, I think the idea is to initiate discussions, not for the City Manager to make the decision, but to engage in discussions and bring proposals back. Wonderful. Thank you very much. Thank you for the question and for the answer as well. Okay. Clerk, could you please take the role? Councillor Wanie? Yes. Taplin? Yes. Craig? Aye. Okie? Yes. Blackby? Yes. Unipara? Yes. Yes. Humber? Yes. And Mary Eashie? Yes. Okay. Okay. Thank you all so much. I'll let you all go home. Thank you again for being here on your last night. And then I know Jordan's going to come up and we've got some other folks who need to be like shuffling in here. Again, thank you all so much for your patience for this final item. I'm going to ask that we give you give us like 10 minutes to like do our shuffling and setting up and stuff and also just like take a quick stretch and maybe some water and stuff. Okay, so we'll be back in 10. Thank you. Recording stopped. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you Yeah, I think it's gonna go fast actually. I don't think it's gonna take a full hour. I don't think it's a tough moment. Yeah, I'm gonna take a full hour. I'm gonna take a full hour. I'm gonna take a full hour. I'm gonna take a full hour. I'm gonna take a full hour. I'm gonna take a full hour. I'm gonna take a full hour. I'm gonna take a full hour. I'm gonna take a full hour. I'm gonna take a full hour. No, no, no, no, five minutes is my dad's. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. a final thing, so let's get going. Requording in progress. All right, we are coming back together. And we are moving on to our final item for the evening, which is item 31. That's the landmarks preservation commission appeal of 2500 to 2512 San Pablo Avenue, Landmark Application Number LMI and 2024-004. And I'm sorry we're going to start with a presentation. Go ahead. Thank you, Mayor and good evening councilmembers. Jordan Klein, Director of Planning development and joining me here at the staff table is Ann Hirsch, Plenty of Splining Manager. And Ann is gonna be presenting on behalf of staff. Good evening, Madam Mayor and City Council. Before you tonight is an appeal of landmarks initiation application for 2500 through 2512 San Pablo Avenue. I'll present the site features, the application process, and the points of the appeal. The subject property is located at the southwest corner of San Pablo Avenue in Dwight Way. The building was constructed in 1912. It encompasses addresses both on San Pablo Avenue and on Dwight Way. The existing uses include general retail, a co-working office space, and food service establishments, the applicant that pursued initiation as the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and the appellant is the property owner's attorney. The subject site is Zone CW West Berkeley commercial, which allows for commercial mixed use residential uses by right. There are a total of nine addresses associated with the property and 610 in its onsite. The initiation occurred on September 5th last year and then the October 7th meeting, the Landmarks Preservation Commission opened the public hearing to review the landmarking request. At that time, a continuance was requested by the property owners attorney. On November 6th, the revised land mark application was submitted for the property. And on December 5th, the LPC initiated land marking and conducted a public hearing, resulting in a land marking of the building as a city landmark. On January 31st, the appeal was filed by the property owners's attorney and that brings us to the appeal hearing this evening. The initiation process is regulated through the Berkeley Municipal Code chapter 3.24.110. The criteria for the initiation includes architectural, cultural, educational, historic, or national eligibility as resources. The site was added to an initiation list in 2021, and both the landmarking and initiation occurred in 2024. The report presented to the LPC identified, the building as an eligible resource based on the architectural merit of early 20th century commercial architectural design, as well as the buildings association with the East Bay music road during the 1960s and 70s. In the early 1960s, this building was the site of the cable, which was later named the cable creamery, which was an early 60s folk music venue. to the the application, Jerry Garcia made regular visits to the venue. The venue changed name several times and ultimately became the long branch saloon in 1971. Now we'll move on to the points of the appeal. In appeal point one, the appellant states that the city failed to properly initiate the site and comply with notification requirements. Staff does acknowledge that there were errors in the notification process. However, the application was fully re-noticed and reposted for the December 5th agenda, and the date was also accommodated at the request of the property owner. In appeal point two, the appellant states that substantial evidence is lacking for architectural merit and cultural value. Evidence in the record includes a detailed application, historic resources evaluation, and Baja archives. The distinguishing features and historical significance were identified and discussed at length by the LPC prior to their actions in December. In appeal point three, the appellant states that the designation reduces housing development potential and limits building height to one's rendering future development infeasible. It's worth noting that an SB 330 application has not been filed on the property and development is not proposed at this time. The West Berkeley plans goals and policies to support preservation and the adaptive reuse of historic buildings. The subject property is Zones CW, West Berkeley commercial, which does allow for mixed use residential uses by right. The LPC appropriately exercised their authority to designate the subject property pursuant to the requirements of the municipal code. It's worth noting that an application may be filed at any time and would be subject to objective design standards. And for reference, a recent example of a landmark building that was approved for residential mixed use development is the California theater located at 2115 Kitchwich. The project preserves the landmark ground floor facade and is also been approved to accommodate new residential development. In appeal point four, the appellant states that the designation interferes with investment-backed expectations and the ability to be competitive with other landlords and develop the site. Case law has largely held that local historic preservation ordinances do not constitute regulatory takings. As I've noted previously, mixed use residential uses are permitted by right. The designation of the property as a city of Berkeley landmark does not eliminate the possibility of future development. And as a landmark, any potential future changes to the property would be evaluated through the structural alteration permit process review with the Landmarks Preservation Commission. And with that staff recommends that the City Council conduct a public hearing and upon conclusion adopt a resolution affirming the LPC decision to approve the Landmarks initiation application for the building at 2,500 through 2012 Sam Pavlo and dismiss the appeal. Both the applicant and appellant are in attendance tonight and I'm available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Thank you so much for the presentation. And so the way that this works is that by the way we already opened the public hearing if folks missed that earlier, but just to make sure folks know we had already opened the public hearing before 10 p.m. And so how this works is we'll have five minutes to hear from the appellant and five minute from the applicant, which is the landmarks preservation commission. So I would ask that the appellant come forward and then just stay nearby because we'll have questions. Thank you, or we will have questions. Thank you or we may have questions. Good evening, Council. Thank you for staying late. For this matter, I really appreciate it. Hopefully I will be short and quick. So as I've already stated, I represent the landowner for this building. My name's Linda Klein, and I am a land use attorney. I am also reformed architect. So I just want to clarify a few points that I hope kind of clarify what the owner would like and serve as well as the points made in my letter. So the property owner doesn't object to listing of this building as a landmark. That's not the objection. So the objection is to two of the character defining features. The reason character defining features are so important is because to determine whether or not a development project like putting housing over these the storefront, which is the what the client wants and had hired an architect but just hadn't gotten around to filing an application. So you correct SB3330 doesn't kick in. But to determine whether or not that proposal would have an adverse impact on a historic resource, you have to look at whether it would impact any of the character defining features. And so here, the one story in massing and the existing modified rectangular footprint are character defining features, meaning you cannot touch them without having a significant and unavoidable impact, which means there is no housing over this one-story commercial building without a very long expensive EIR process, and the council's willingness to override a significant unavoidable impact on a historic resource. And I, in my 15 years of being a land use attorney, and in my prior career as an architect, for a project kind of the size and the scope, have rarely seen that happen. So it just doesn't offer the type of community benefits that usually a council like you would want to see to override significant unavoidable impacts. So, you know, I think my ask here is either that the council remand this back to landmarks preservation board to take a look at the character defining features and see whether they really intended to cap this building out one story forever. Or if the council could do so, to reconsider the character defining features, they're on page three of the landmarks findings in your packet and kind of consider what might be appropriate whether you might wanna delete the one story and the kind of that has to be that existing footprint because of course if we did housing, we'd want to put some foundations behind it and expand that footprint a little bit. Or word it in a different way. Like, you know, the commercial needs to be at least one story and well defined from anything that might be built over it. Something like that that just would maintain basically their space rights to do housing in the city. Thank you. Thank you. And for this particular situation, our applicant is actually the landmarks preservation commission. I know three of the members are here, so I'd just like to ask them to introduce themselves. So that way if we have questions for anyone, we sort of know who we're speaking to. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you staff for your presentation. My name is Denise Montgomery and I'm the chair of the landmarks preservation commission. And we don't have a presentation this evening evening but we are here to answer your questions. I think that our application and the staff's presentation touched on what we were, we would talk about anyway so it's late. Thank you. I appreciate that. Hello, Council. This I am Charles Entschel and I'm one of the co-authors of the landmark application. Hi, I'm Susan Orbeck and I'm also one of the co-author of the landmark application. We're here to answer any questions that you have. Thank you. Appreciate that. Do we have any public comments? Oh, yeah. Thank you. Oh, sorry. Are the online? Yeah. Yeah, so this is the time for public comment on the landmarks preservation commission appeal. So if you want to talk, please raise your hand on Zoom. We have two raised hands. First is phone number ending in 191. This is for the landmarks preservation commission appeal. And that was for the living mark, we're losing awful lot. United, you A theater in Chaddack, California theater in Ketrich Street and so on. I also left and for size that the registered market is just awful. It is going to explode when one of the biggest crash ever. One last wish, before you go to sleep tonight, please think of the thousands of kids that are getting incinerated killed by 2,000 pound bombs dropped paid by our tax money. It is time to pray for a peace. The stuff is hall horrible soon. I'm gonna make sure we're sitting on topic here. Thank you. Okay, and next is Leila on the landmarks preservation commission appeal. Good evening. I'm Lila Montcharges. I'm the president of Baja. And I'm in real life, a land use attorney attorney since 1993 and the only comment that we would add is that you know number one are our over a thousand members really are impressed by the amount of work that went into this application. The argument that it's somehow that landmarking is preventing the properties use is totally speculative and that's just not how the city operates. It doesn't normally try to figure out what might happen in the future and what what applications may come forward and then go back and remove features comments online? other comments online? that is all. that is all. we will we will take we will take we will take we will take we will take we will take we will take we will take we will take we will take working. Councillor Humbert. Councillor Treka. Councillor Meade. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I have a question of Jordan. Is it correct that this land marking wouldn't preclude creative reuse, for example, multi-story housing, so long as the facade is preserved. Yeah, that's correct. Even with the provision, with respect to, you know, single-story and horizontal massing. Yeah, I mean, I think our reading of that is that the one story massing is referenced to the existing building to be preserved and that doesn't preclude additional construction on the site. Either above or behind that facade. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, okay. Thank you. That's my question too. Council member Trigab. That was my question, Tweet. Okay, sorry. Anyone else? Okay, Council member Black. May I ask the question a slightly different way, which is what would the implication be of removing the reference to one story Sorry, I'm asking. Is there a problem with that? No, I think you can't strike that bullet from the list of features to be preserved. Because then the balance, the balance, the features to be preserved, sort of describe in more detail all the various elements, right? That's correct. Of course, Maun. Class, the, you know, even the landmark commission as well, like, there be an objection if we were to remove the one story, massing from your description of the features to be preserved. We would not be opposed to striking that character-defined feature. Okay, thank you. That's helpful. Other questions? Okay, all right. Then I will entertain a motion to close the public hearing. So moved. So can we take your roll, please? That's your second. Yeah, there was a second from Councilmember Luna Parra. Okay, to close the public hearing Councilmember Kessar Wani. Yes. Tap one. Yes. Draga. Aye. Okay. Yes. Blackady. Yes. Luna Parra. Yes. Humber. Yes. And Mary Ishi. Yes. Okay. Thank you. I know we're reaching that part of the night we're all starting to get a little silly. So I think we should have our council deliberations. Who's next? Cunning comments from folks? Oh, sorry. Yes. Councilman would try to cut. I move that we deny the appeal and approve the recommendation with the one change being on page three, bullet number two removal of the bullet that states one storymassing and report. We have a report on the report. We have a report on the report. We have a report on the report. We have a report on the report. We have a report on the A. Sorry, can you repeat that please? I'm wondering if Councillor Trigger would and Councillor Perjure would entertain a friendly amendment to also strike bullet number 5. That being the 13 storefront bays 8 along some Pablo Avenue and 5 along Del A. But, Tange, I think we just close the public here. I would be curious if the LPC has a comment on that. We just close the public hearing, so I just want to check in with City Clerk if you could speak to our ability to. You can reopen. Ask additional comment, but can we reopen it given that it's after 10 p.m.? I want to just- They can just ask a question. Yeah, it's fine to ask a question. Okay, I just want to make sure. Okay, so can- So then the question is, how does the Landmarks Preservation Commission feel about that adjustment. That friendly amendment is correct. Councillor Traigab. Yes. Okay. We would be an objection to that to striking an additional character defining feature related to the base, the storefront base. You said in objection. Yeah, we object to that. Thank you. Can I ask an additional question then of our staff? So if they have these different storefronts, does that mean they all need to stay businesses then? How does that mean for if there was a future development there? I mean, for lobby, yeah. Like it doesn't need to stay a door, I guess, is my point. You know, the character defining feature is the base. That doesn't necessarily require that, yeah, the pollsters. That doesn't necessarily that those be entrances or that the spaces themselves remain as unique subdivided spaces. It really it's just the bays Okay, that's helpful. Thank you and Councilmember First Council member taplain and then councilmember cassero. So yeah, my question was whether the motion earned a second or what you're in a family moment. So if I could have that answer, I'd appreciate it. Yeah, I'm afraid I don't feel comfortable doing that. I'm sorry. And I think the seconder was also. Yeah, I would. But but our main motion is not so. I'm sorry. And I think the seconder was also. Yeah, I would, but. But but our main motion is not so I'm sorry. Go ahead council member. Yes, are wanting. So I still have the fourth. If that's okay, I would like to make a substitute motion to adopt a resolution to 90 peel and affirming the LPC's decision to landmark that we strike both bullet points number two and number five. Can I second that? Yes. Yes, you can. Okay. Council member Kessarwani has next. Okay. Well, I want to see if I can just bring us together because it seems like Council member wereavans interested in deleting the US for the 13 storefronts bays. If it's just the bays, a 13 bays that are the, I guess, landmark worthy feature. Can we just get rid of the word storefronts so that there's flexibility of use, but we have the 13 bays. Could that be a way to thread this? I guess I would turn to planning director Klein. Yeah, I think that that. But as I said earlier, I think even with the term storefront base, we can't. That doesn't constitute a requirement that they're unique storefronts in each of those spaces. I think striking the word storefront makes sense. Okay. And what about the word 13? Is there something significant about having 13? 13 bays? I think that's a reference to the existing bays. Which are considered a landmark. And those are character. Okay, so yes, so I guess I would, let's see. So we have the two motions. Would you like to make a friendly amendment? No, I think you just seconded a second one. So you could, yeah, I seconded or seconded. Seconded, too. So I guess I'm asking would you like to make a friendly amendment? Is that what you're saying? I mean, I guess I could make a friendly amendment to the main motion because Councillor Vertrago, you had rejected wholesale.. I would be fine with that. Yeah. With 13 bays, you were okay with that. Yeah. Okay, so. I too would be fine with that. Okay, so I think that solves it. And then, Council Member Chaplin, do you want to withdraw your substitute motion then? No, I would keep it. You want to keep it. And the difference is you are completely striking the 13 storefronts bays. I'm just striking storefronts and keeping the bays. Okay, but that's what I also. That's what Council Member Triggerbiz is accepting 13 bays and not the word storefronts. Is that what you also want? Councillor Mataraghu or Tathlin? Councillor Mataraghu. Councillor Mataraghu. I'm happy to make that a note. Okay, sorry. So just so you're clear, Councillor Mataraghu. I think that Councillor Mataraghu made a friendly amendment to Councillor Mataraghu's motion. That would be exactly what we just said. So striking the word storefronts from that bullet point. And I think that you said you were okay with that, but I just wanna make sure I understand. Yes, you would just need the second or the accepted. Oh, that's... Yeah, but Mark accepts that. Okay, cool. I can get a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a here on the floor so. Yeah, yeah. So would you like to, would you like to withdraw your motion then since now the initial, the original motion is what you are also okay with? Yes. OK. Great. Thank you. OK. Thank you very much. So where are we in the agenda? We are at Councilmember Keif. Well, I don't wanna drag this out. I was going to ask why Council Member Taplin wanted to do this. I wasn't, the justification hasn't been provided and I'm curious, but, but if everyone's cool with what's happening, I'm happy to. It's so much to me. So, I am curious, but if you could just maybe briefly tell us and then I'm happy to support this motion. Yeah, the Plane Director clarified it, but my concern was that if any new development would be required to have 13 storefronts, we've had vacancies on this on this block for years, two businesses close and it's a gears reopen them so my concern was would be that we would end up with more vacant storefronts for longer. Totally, totally fair. Thank you. And I think my question had actually gone to that as well. So are there other comments? Yes, Council Member Milano-Pona. I, this makes a lot of sense and I'm glad that we came to this. I just want to double check that this is okay with the, with the commission. Okay, thank you. Sorry, do you want to say anything else or? So just to be clear, when we went through our landmark designation and we use the term storefront, it's an architectural description. It's not any intended restriction on uses or, you know, it's just purely architectural. So we don't mind striking storefront, but it's not intended to. Thank you. Yeah, wonderful. Okay, I'm always happy when we're all happy. That's great. So in that case, we've got a motion on the floor. We have a second. We've made a friendly amendment. So, Clerk, can you please take roll? And can you just clarify the motion? Just to make sure we, I want to make sure we hear it. Let's clarify the motion. So it's to affirm the landmarks preservation commission decision and dismiss the appeal with the amendment in bullet number to remove bullet number two regarding one story, massing into modifiable at number five to remove the word storefronts, just so that it says 13 days. Great. I think storefront appears later that just to be clear, storefront appears twice in that bullet. So we can just delete. So there's no reference to storefront. It's 13 bays. I would say six of these bays include a cantered corner. Anyway, there's a few storefront references. I just. Yes, we can work with the planning staff. Okay, the wording B. Thank you. Yes. Correct. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay, so in that case, clerk, can you please take the roll? Yes, Councillor Wanigas. Yes. Tablin. Yes. Trigger. Aye. Okay. Yes. Blackaby. Yes. Lunapara. Yes. Humbert. Yes. Ann Mary Ishi. Yes. Okay, motion carries. Thank you all so much. so late. I really appreciate it and thank you so much for the commission for your service. I know you're volunteers. You're here with your own free will until almost midnight and of course staff you're choosing to work here so thanks for that. So public comment items not listed on the agenda. Anyone online? Let's see. Nope. Okay. So just a reminder that we're adjourning a memory of Christina Murphy who is on this lovely shirt in front of me who is a city of Berkeley employee and former rent board commissioner. So just want to remind folks that we're adjourning in her memory and ask if there's a motion to adjourn. No moves. So good. Okay. Clerk, can you please take the roll? Okay. To adjourn the meeting, Council Member Kessler-Wanning. Yes. Taplin. Yes. Trayga. Hi. O'Keefe. Yes. Blackaby. Yes. Lina Para. Yes. Yes. Thank you all so much. I really appreciate it By Terry no, I died