Services that work, dollars spent wisely, and a Council that sticks to the job. Below: seven things to get done, where I stand on the issues Berkeley is arguing about, and how to help. Open any card for the detail.
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In priority order, the way you'd sequence a job. Every item answers two questions: what's being traded, and what gets published so you can tell whether it worked.
The everyday things residents pay for and too often don't get: potholes filled, trash picked up, streetlights fixed, a call that gets a call back.
I've spent years tracking how Berkeley spends its money — building the Berkeley Transparency Hub, a public tracker of council agendas and contracts. I'll bring that scrutiny to the dais. Six departments take four out of every five dollars.
A bureaucracy that works for residents instead of the other way around. The same goes for housing: write the design standards first, then permit what fits them quickly and predictably, so no one needs a decade of design review to find out.
The shared spaces that make District 1 livable. Parks are where neighbors actually meet; keeping them clean and usable is the unglamorous work I want more of at City Hall.
Federal, state, and county dollars fund most of Berkeley's homeless services. The council's job is to make them work together and to say plainly what they bought: how many people got help, how many got indoors, and what each program delivers for what it costs.
West Berkeley's working and industrial-arts economy is local jobs. First job: put the permit process on the record — every step, its cost, its wait, and who it protects. Then fix the steps the record can't defend.
Berkeley has always cared about the wider world, and I share those values. The question is where a councilmember's hours actually change an outcome — the part we control is the part that's been slipping.
The issues Berkeley is arguing about. Each page takes a position, sources every claim to a public document, and lists what I couldn't verify.
Seven measures are on the ballot and four are taxes. The $300 million bond lists 31 projects and commits to none of them, and nothing is budgeted to run what it builds. The sales tax is a general tax: permanent, and it promises nothing anyone can check. The bank tax spends $58.3 million over six years on a bank with no charter, and says what happens to the money if it never opens. No on U, V and Z. Yes on W, X and AA; neutral on Y.
In 2022 the Council adopted targets for Berkeley's streets, sidewalks, and bicycle and pedestrian plans, with no year on any of them. The streets scored 56 in 2022 and 56 in 2024, against a target above 70. The Task Force's next steps were due this spring and summer, and I can't find them published.
$175 million buys 161 acres of shoreline, 40 of them in District 1. The price includes tearing down the buildings. It doesn't cover the cleanup, building the park, or running it, and none of those costs has been published. Whether to keep the grandstand is still open.
On July 28 the Council picked a design before anyone laid it beside the alternative. Working up a real route on Ada and Rose and comparing the two lost by a single vote, and it would have delayed nothing — Hopkins isn't due for repaving until 2027–28.
Not in 2021, 2023, 2025, or 2026 — through roughly $2 million in proposed spending with one vendor. The City Auditor and the Police Accountability Board have both now put it on the record.
Council postponed the vote on September 15 without taking it, and reset it to September 29. The resolution bundles three separable questions: who may use CS gas and under what standard, what returns to crowd settings, and how each use gets reported afterward. The text of each is public.
SB 79, AB 893 and AB 2011 fix the minimum heights on San Pablo, University and near BART; a Council vote can't undo that. There, the one lever left is design standards — shadow, wind, setbacks, street trees — adopted before the plan. On Solano and College no state floor applies, and I'd vote no on the added heights. Tenant and small-business protections go in the ordinance text. Then count what actually gets built.
The county controls referrals to the other 264. The main homelessness fund is projected $22.8 million below zero by 2029, two three-year health plans share no scorecard, and the department running all of it doesn't publish a vacancy rate. Every figure from the City's own Auditor and City Manager.
The three-year behavioral-health plan passed on the consent calendar without discussion, the public-health plan's performance measures were published blank, and the one program Berkeley truly measures covers 66 people. Housing has a scorecard; health doesn't.
They will settle the shelter beds, an unprogrammed $14.9 million, and the contracting rules. First chapter: the homelessness and behavioral-health money only. The full city budget gets the same treatment next.
37 years in Berkeley. My work is measurement and verification — checking whether claimed results were real. I built the Berkeley Transparency Hub, serve on the board of Berkeley Partners for Parks, and volunteer in District 1's parks.
At Counterfactual Designs I help organizations quantify what their energy and carbon projects really deliver, and I've written a book on the judgment that good M&V demands. I brought that same discipline home to Berkeley by building the Transparency Hub, a public tracker that turns the city's council agendas and contracts into clear, categorized records of where our money goes.
I was honored with the Chris Kindness Award for community service. I'm running because District 1 deserves a councilmember who's measured by results.
Rank Steve second if he isn't your first. Berkeley uses ranked-choice voting; ranking someone second never hurts your first choice.