One page per issue Berkeley is actually arguing about. Each takes a position rather than a posture, sources every factual claim to a public document, and says out loud what I could not verify.
Maximize recreation, and make room for travel, in that order. The current plan is a new 1,080-foot pier and breakwater. A landing in the Marina basin next to the hotel uses water that is already protected and dredged, and has never been studied. Yes to a battery-electric ferry that WETA pays for, added in steps. Recreation parking stays free.
FY2024 and FY2025 were adopted with small surpluses and ended $28.8 million and $16.7 million down. Police and fire ran $11 million over the adopted budget both years, and unspent money carried forward tripled to $130.5 million. Every number, its page in the city's reports, and the calculation.
Seven stories where four are allowed today, room for roughly 8,000 homes, an estimated 20,000 new residents. Yes to the plan and the seven stories. The wider sidewalks, street trees, lighting and plazas carry no dollar figure and no named payer. Adopted with the seven stories and the repeals in one motion. Price the street work, keep the sixteen-foot sidewalk.
The bond lists 31 projects and commits to none, with nothing budgeted to run what it builds. The sales tax is permanent and promises nothing. The bank tax has a plan for the money if the bank never opens. No on U, V and Z. Yes on W, X and AA; neutral on Y.
Vision 2050's Program Plan set a pavement score above 70, a finished sidewalk backlog and fully built bicycle and pedestrian plans. None has a year attached, and the Task Force's own 2025 report gave no progress figures. Yes to the plan. Put a year on each target and publish the score every year.
$175 million buys 161 acres of shoreline, 40 of them in District 1, with removal of the grandstand built into the price. The cleanup, construction and running costs have no published number, and Berkeley hasn't said what it loses in taxes. Yes to the park. Publish the cost to open it.
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. Bid it, then decide.
SB 79, AB 893 and AB 2011 fix the minimum heights on San Pablo, University and near BART. There, the only lever left is design standards written before the plan is adopted — shadow, wind, setbacks, street trees. On Solano and College no state floor applies, and I'd vote no on the added heights. Tenant protections in the ordinance text. Count what gets built. Revised 7 September.
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. Measure it, then fund it.
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. Publish the numbers.
First chapter: the homelessness and behavioral-health money only. Five dated decisions between September and June will settle the shelter beds, an unprogrammed $14.9 million, and the contracting rules — most of them on consent calendars and committee agendas. The full city budget gets the same treatment next.
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. Compare them, then build.
Council voted 4–5 against the resolution on September 29, so the 2020 ban stays. The resolution bundled 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. If it comes back: separate them, and report every use.
Most campaign issue pages are written so that no sentence can ever be wrong. That makes them useless. These are written so that they can be wrong — with specific numbers, named sources, and an explicit list of what I couldn't confirm. If one of them is wrong, tell me, and I'll publish the correction on the page whether I accept it or not.
My work for twenty-five years has been verifying whether claimed results were real. That's the whole job I'm asking for on the council, and this is what it looks like applied to Berkeley.