Scope, stated up front: this first docket covers one slice of the city — the homelessness and behavioral-health money. It's the slice I've mapped end to end, so it's where the dated questions are ready. The same treatment for the entire city budget — the General Fund, the $29 million structural deficit, every department — is coming as this page's next chapter.
What follows is the docket: what already happened, what is scheduled next, and the specific question I will bring to each date — as a candidate at public comment now, and from the D1 seat if you send me there. Where a date is my estimate from the city's own prior cycles rather than a posted agenda, it says (expected).
Nothing on this page alleges misspending. The behavioral-health plan's arithmetic foots to the penny — I checked. What it shows instead is a planning gap: money moved on paper but not programmed, promises made in one document while the budget cut their foundations in another, and expiring grants with no named successor. Those are fixable, and each has a scheduled moment where fixing it is one motion.
The plan's own budget tables transfer $18,193,420 of unspent MHSA funds into the three new components, then program only the legally dedicated ~$3.3 million. Housing receives $4.5 million of the transfer and budgets zero of it. A revenue hedge may be defensible — the state fund swings 30% with capital-gains years — but a hedge you never state is just idle money during a shelter shortage. Say which it is, in the update, in writing.
The City Manager's own memo projects the Measure P fund from +$5.6 million in FY24 to −$22.8 million in FY29 under current allocations. And because Measure P is legally a general tax, its "fund" is a policy ledger, not a lockbox — a negative balance doesn't pause the spending, it quietly shifts the gap onto the same General Fund that carries the citywide deficit. The advisory panel and Council should see, on one page, what each allocation level does to that trajectory under a weak, base, and strong housing market — before voting, not after.
The record on this page shows four funding streams dying in sequence: the state grant for shelter operations (already expired, December 2025), the interim-housing money behind the $6.85 million cliff (by 2028), the encampment wellness project's innovation funds (exhausted during FY 2028-29), and the opioid-settlement line (zero after FY28). Each one gets a named successor source or a stated end-of-service date. No silent expirations.
The proposed BMC 7.18 amendment would finally require competitive solicitation for service contracts over $100,000. It should also cover amendments — the Auditor found contracts that started under $50,000 and grew by an average of $218,000 — and require an annual public report. If it stalls again, that is itself a finding.
The three-year behavioral-health plan contains projected headcounts and not a single numeric target. The city already collects the baselines; it just never connects them to a promise. This is the subject of its own page — Where's the scorecard? — and it is the condition I would attach to every annual update I vote on.
This is not a claim that anyone misspent a dollar, and not a proposal to cut these programs. It is a schedule. Cities reveal their priorities on consent calendars and committee agendas, in months when nobody is watching. The dates marked (expected) are estimates from the city's own prior cycles and are corrected here the day an agenda posts. If I have a date or a number wrong, tell me and the page changes.
The docket ahead only makes sense against the last twelve months. Every item is traceable to a public document linked at the bottom of this page.
The measure is what voters passed in November 2018, with 72% of the vote: an increase in the transfer tax on property sales over $1.5 million. The fund is the ledger where the city tracks those receipts and from which it allocates homelessness money each year — the thing that can run a balance, and whose balance is projected at −$22.8 million by FY29. The distinction matters because Measure P is legally a general tax: its dollars belong to the General Fund, the advisory panel's recommendations are advisory, and a negative "fund" balance stops nothing — the gap simply lands on the General Fund alongside the citywide deficit. When this page says "Measure P allocations," it means allocations from the fund; when it says the measure, it says so. (One more naming trap while we're here: Berkeley voters also passed a city Measure W in 2024 — extending this same transfer tax from 2027 — while the county's Measure W of 2020 is an entirely different half-cent sales tax for homelessness. Different governments, different money.)
The state HHAP grant paying for 24/7 operations at Berkeley's men's and women's shelters — about $603,000 a year — expires. The state budget contained no new round for cities like Berkeley.
The City Auditor publishes the contracts audit: 94 of 218 FY24 service contracts — $43 million — showed no documented competition, and the city tracked its competition waivers on paper, not electronically.
The Kesarwani/Ishii response — an amendment to BMC 7.18 requiring competitive solicitation for service contracts over $100,000 — is referred to the Budget & Finance Committee. It has not been heard since; the committee's July meeting was cancelled.
Council approves the three-year Behavioral Health Services Act plan — roughly $36 million of state money — on the consent calendar. The plan transfers $18.19 million of unspent MHSA funds into its components; its own three-year budget programs about $3.3 million of that.
Council adopts the FY27 budget: 138 positions eliminated (100 vacant, 38 filled — fewer if November's sales-tax measure passes). The Mobile Crisis Team is eliminated after 47 years; the city now relies on county coverage. The BHSA plan approved a week earlier had proposed building a new crisis program on that same team.
The BHSA takes effect statewide. Berkeley — one of only two city behavioral-health jurisdictions in California — begins its first plan period with a 30% housing set-aside that did not exist under the old law.
ERF Round 5 awards. The application window closed June 30. Berkeley's plan names state encampment money as central to its interim-housing strategy and discloses the $6.85 million cliff. Award or no award, the successor-funding question is live this month.
BMC 7.18 due back at Budget & Finance. The test: does the fix cover contract amendments, and does it come with an annual public report? (Ask 04.)
Allocations from the Measure P fund for the next cycle move from the Homeless Services Panel of Experts through Budget & Finance to Council. The sustainability table (Ask 02) belongs on the record before the vote.
Election day. Besides the D1 seat, the ballot carries the sales-tax measure that determines whether 38 filled city positions stay eliminated. The FY28 budget update will be written by whoever wins, under whichever revenue answer voters give.
The first BHSA Annual Update. The forcing moment for the $14.9 million (Ask 01) and for targets (Ask 05). It passes through the Behavioral Health Commission and Council — in public, with a comment period.
The FY28 budget update. Crisis-team coverage, the wellness project's successor, the interim-housing backfill, and every expiring line above — decided here. This is the first budget a new D1 councilmember votes on.
Everything on this page is sourced to a public document. If you think I've read one of them wrong, tell me and I'll correct the page.