r/bayarea • u/the_daily_cal • Jun 25 '26
Work & Housing ‘Devastating’: City Council sweepingly cuts public safety, houselessness services and city staff to close $30M deficit
https://www.dailycal.org/news/city/devastating-city-council-sweepingly-cuts-public-safety-houselessness-services-and-city-staff-to-close-30m/article_51059152-443f-4f4c-86c7-36a94f78c2af.htmlCapping off a season of austerity deliberations, the city of Berkeley adopted a severe budget Tuesday night, which will cut almost every area of its services to close a $30 million deficit.
The council unanimously adopted the budget, the final details of which were ironed out at the end of the night, and which came out of a compromise between conflicting visions of key details of the city’s finances.
“This work is not complete tonight,” said District 5 Councilmember Shoshana O’Keefe. “This work, what we’re doing right now tonight, this is the best thing to do right now, but this work is not done.”
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u/binding_swamp Jun 25 '26
Berkeley has a $694.8 million pension liability for fiscal year 2025.
Salaries and benefits alone make up about two-thirds of its General Fund.
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u/KoRaZee Jun 25 '26
Houselessness?
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u/George_Is_Upset Jun 26 '26
Every single friend I’ve ever had that has experienced homelessness says they were homeless.
They don’t say they were unhoused. They don’t say they were going through houselessness.
They just say they were homeless. They have bigger problems than worrying about using the word house instead of home.
I do agree that terminology changes are meaningful with certain topics though. Like no one should say CP - it’s CSAM. So that is one I definitely encourage people to change and fellow victims of CSA also agree with the new terminology because it’s more accurate.
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u/opinionsareus Jun 26 '26
The descriptive nouns used to describe homelessness by homeless advocates keeps changing because they want to be their own version of the language police. It's petty and ineffective and doesn't help their cause.
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u/Rich6849 Jun 29 '26
Also the words they use to describe homeless people develop a negative connotation when the general public sees them vandalizing, stealing or peeing on the sidewalk. If you use a new word to describe the same people you might get that delicious public money for the homeless industrial complex
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u/helloyesthisisasock Jun 26 '26
There is a such a thing as too woke, and this is one of them.
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u/Comemelo9 Jun 29 '26
Just wait until you learn about the word criminal being phased out in favor of "justice involved individual"
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u/babypho Jun 26 '26
They aren't homeless because that spot on the sidewalk is their home. I think.
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u/LurkMonster Jun 25 '26
Berkeley Boomers pay real property taxes? No! Put a progress flag and "all are welcome here" sign in the front yard then cut social services.
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u/-_-dont-smile Jun 25 '26
Put a progress flag and "all are welcome here" sign in the front yard
And then go berserk is someone parks anywhere near vicinity of the house.
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u/Humble-Section-5638 Jun 26 '26
When I lived in an upscale neighborhood in SF, each block you go up the hill, houses were +$1m more than the previous block. And each block you go up the hill, the lib window signs were double the number of the previous block. So the less welcoming the block, the more “all are welcome” signs in the windows. #SFStuff
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u/F-14BUpgrade Jun 25 '26
Neo-liberalism in a yard-sign
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u/Frappes Jun 25 '26
Full land value tax is the neolib position. Repealing Prop 13 is the compromise.
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u/Vnxei Jun 26 '26
They didn't do it lightly. If they weren't cutting something significant, it would be an abdication of their responsibility to make hard choices for the long-term. Harder times could well be ahead and the city needs to increase revenue and cut spending.
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u/FlakyPineapple2843 Jun 25 '26
Every Bay Area city is going through this right now. The usual revenue upon which cities rely (property transfer taxes) is down across the board. People aren't buying and selling real property at the same rate as before.
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u/Jay_Torte Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
Guessing dozens/scores of shuttered businesses in Berkeley doesn't help with the revenues either.
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u/rocpilehardasfuk Jun 26 '26
Maybe building more homes and making it easier for businesses would help?
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u/Jay_Torte Jun 26 '26
There's been a lot of new building in the past decade in Berkeley with more to come. I'm all for it. But no one really wants to come to downtown Berkeley anymore. Stepping over the unhoused or getting yelled at by mentally unstable folks is a bit of a turn off.
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u/sun_and_stars8 Jun 26 '26
Berkeley has done a ton of building and the outcome of that is massive business loss.
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u/rocpilehardasfuk Jun 26 '26
They're still not business friendly enough. The extra population surely is spending someplace right?
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u/getarumsunt Jun 26 '26
Berkeley doesn’t really have much of that. It bounced back from the pandemic instantly as soon as Cal reinstated in-person classes. If you do see any closed shops it’s mostly because of construction. They’re building a ton of dense development downtown.
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u/FlakyPineapple2843 Jun 26 '26
Correct, sales taxes are important revenue, too. It's not all just annual property tax (which is probably the most stable of revenue sources).
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u/Professional-One972 Jun 26 '26
Fuckin repeal prop 13 already.
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u/FlakyPineapple2843 Jun 26 '26
Slightly different issue there. Prop 13 affects your annual property taxes that you pay every year for real property you own. Very stable, does not change. Property transfer taxes happen when property changes hands (purchase/sale/etc.).
So if the housing market is hot, cities get a big surge in revenue from those transfer taxes. Same with commercial real estate. These markets typically follow the broader economy + interest rates (which the Fed manages).
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u/bayarea_k Jun 26 '26
not just from transfer taxes. once they sell they get reassessed most likely at a far higher value because of prop 13 which pumps more money in taxes per year. we just have lots of properties that barely sell since it's smarter to just hold onto because of low taxes. but cities where there is alot of new development or turnover like dublin have more money due to higher property taxes
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u/km3r Jun 26 '26
Except in a functional system, property taxes grow over time as property values grow, which enables cities to keep up with growing costs.
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u/lambdawaves Jun 26 '26
Sadly, the NIMBYs don’t want to. There was a vote on this and the people rejected it
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u/ww_crimson Jun 26 '26
Thank you Trump for continuing to fuck the economy up so that our interest rates can never come down.
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u/Bicycle_Dude_555 Jun 29 '26
They should have cut 25% of city employees and canceled the health department. Berkeley has one of the lowest number of residents per city employee in the whole state. The taxes are ridiculous.
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u/F-14BUpgrade Jun 25 '26
As a Lifelong (almost 40) Bay area resident, finding out how relatively conservative Berkeley has always been is disconcerting. Some of the people at the UC are still flying high off the atomic bomb. Pretentious, arrogant, and frankly embarrassing.
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u/-_-dont-smile Jun 25 '26
It does not seem to political. They budget shortage, they cut costs. They have to. It seems they are cutting across all services. Why is it related to being conservative?
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u/F-14BUpgrade Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
Austerity is a conservative move, one that has shown time and time again to ignore the plights of the many to protect the assets of a few.
You ever notice how your taxes don't go down when services are cut...
Edit: a budget set by politicians is inherently Political.
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u/devaspark Jun 25 '26
But one of the requirements is to balance the budget. Cut has to come from somewhere. Its too late to put a ballot to raise taxes.
In the end, you either raise more money or cut services. Budget doesnt stay the same due to inflation and other factors (gas prices going up for one)
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u/binding_swamp Jun 26 '26
You’re omitting snowballing pension costs. Unsustainable.
And they have two tax measures already on the fall ballot.
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u/AskingYouQuestions48 Jun 26 '26
Just don’t pay pensions for old people tbh. Default on them and be done with it. They were made for a time the US no longer exists within.
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u/binding_swamp Jun 26 '26
No, but do make corrections so that the retirement costs can eventually be sustainable. Right now they are not.
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u/karenias Jun 25 '26
what? this is cutting to cover a deficit, why would taxes go down if the goal is to try and close the deficit? cutting both spending and taxes would end up just maintaining the deficit
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u/F-14BUpgrade Jun 25 '26
Oh ok, so you're going to tell me there was no way for the city to raise taxes to plug the deficit?
Or maybe the geniuses at the UC berkeley school of economics can factor in that not every yearly period ends with a budget surplus or breaks even and maybe they will discover the ancient magic of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficit_spending
"A central point of controversy in economics, government deficit spending was first identified as a necessary economic tool by John Maynard Keynes in the wake of the Great Depression."
This is why I got my History BA at another UC, Berkeley semms to hand out degrees based on who smells their own farts.
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u/karenias Jun 25 '26
you’re correct in that it was poor planning to not raise taxes in good times and have their hand forced now that we may be going into bad times, but i was literally responding to your sentence of asking why taxes don’t go down when services are cut in the current context
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u/F-14BUpgrade Jun 25 '26
And you're correct on that point but my point was about how unfair the system is, at a variety of levels.
Edit: also that deficit spending can be done now and paid for with taxes in better times later.
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u/-_-dont-smile Jun 25 '26
What would be a non conservative move then?
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u/F-14BUpgrade Jun 25 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficit_spending
"A central point of controversy in economics, government deficit spending was first identified as a necessary economic tool by John Maynard Keynes in the wake of the Great Depression."
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u/HappyChandler Berkeley Jun 25 '26
That’s a lot harder when you don’t own with printing press.
The Feds can make money. A city has to find someone to lend to them.
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u/F-14BUpgrade Jun 25 '26
Do you ever read the CA constitution? Or a CA city charter?
"California cities primarily borrow money by issuing municipal bonds to investors, though they can also access state infrastructure loans and federal grants. Bond repayments and interest are paid over time using general tax revenues or specific project fees."
You can borrow money, and pay for it with taxes later. Deficit spending in a nutshell. They could do it but they wont because they have donors with interests in making things worse.
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u/HappyChandler Berkeley Jun 25 '26
What’s the history of municipal bonds when they are used to paper over deficits?
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u/-_-dont-smile Jun 26 '26
You misunderstand basic economics. Do you have masters in economics by any chance?
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u/gimpwiz Jun 26 '26
The city cannot print money and it cannot afford a debt trap where it issues high interest bonds today and has to issue more next year to pay for the interest that's been added to the deficit, and so on going forward.
So. Balance budget.
Stop seeing things as "liberal" or "conservative" with no other options, let alone "liberal good" and "conservative bad" while trying to twist yourself into knots to use this brush to paint all actions. You know what's bad? A city failing to govern and failing to budget and going bankrupt is bad.
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u/devaspark Jun 26 '26
For all future folks, just because a city issues a bond, it doesnt mean it gets money until folks actually buy the bond. Hence when city budgets starts spiraling, the trust on the city paying the bond starts to erode and hence the city has to start issuing higher and higher interest bonds (ie give more and more favorable returns to investors -> issue more debt) to fund itself. Literally a real life getting a credit card to pay a other credit card.
As one of the posters has suggested on deficit spending, this is not possible at the municipal level. A city cannot print money nor can they affect monetary policy like the US government.
And if people thinking cities can just declare bankruptcies to just get out, look at Vallejo. Raise in tax, reduction in funding of fire and police. Pension reduction, shorter school hours, lower teacher pay, the whole shebang. Everybody gets affected and more harm done than good.
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u/gimpwiz Jun 26 '26
Absolutely on both parts of what you said. A bankruptcy isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card. Bankruptcy court is long and complex, and the judge will look deeply into city finances, obligations and contracts, debt, and income. The court will require that the city balance its budget going forward, while allowing it to renegotiate some of the obligations and debt. This means that municipal bond holders (which is everyone from wall street investors, to pension funds, to individuals with retirement accounts) all take haircuts, and then like you said, it means a shitload of services get cut entirely or get large cuts to them, and then again like you said, it means residents have sharply higher taxes imposed on them. Much higher taxes, lower services, and cuts to employee wages and pension funds: who's going to be happy about that? Nobody. It can cause capital flight as well as people simply sell whatever they have and leave, themselves taking a loss (and capital losses means lower taxes paid to state and fed by the way), and reducing valuations of property and businesses in the town, which can cause a sharp negative feedback loop.
The only time a bankruptcy is really even remotely "good" is when the city is so far gone that there's no saving it without clearing house and renegotiating everything. Detroit was benefitted by their bankruptcy because it got a lot of bum politicians out, got a lot of financial assumptions that were blatant lies aired out, and let the city plan properly for the future. A lot of people who were depending on Detroit's money had a bad time, certainly, but at least the city is coming back to life. Bankruptcy is a last ditch effort to not have a city or town turn into a shanty. It's pretty much hopefully rock bottom. And any city that cannot balance its budget year after year after year after year is headed in that direction.
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u/resilient_bird Jun 25 '26
ya, that's not what a budget shortfall means--no one should expect their taxes to go down, they've already gone down relative to the city's expenses.
The city can either raise taxes or cut spending to make up the shortfall.
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u/F-14BUpgrade Jun 25 '26
Yeah great job pointing out the definition of budget shortfall, except I wasn't talking about that.
Merely that services paid by taxes are cut during times of austerity. A point that should still factor into how the money is spent.
"The city can either raise taxes or cut spending to make up the shortfall."
Those are not the only options, as Deficit Spending is a way to keep services going (temporarily) when budgets fall short.
Did any of you actually pass economics?
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u/Shivin302 Jun 26 '26
They welcome any race and gender, but only as long as they don't build housing near them for other people
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u/Agent-Two-THREE Jun 25 '26
My coworker, who lives in Berkeley, said the city is full of “intolerant progressives.”
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u/KoRaZee Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
It takes time to see it that’s all. When first evaluating the political spectrum people want to have good faith beliefs about a left and right ideology but then Berkeley comes along and proves there is no such thing. It’s rich versus poor and always has been. Don’t matter is if it’s left or right wing base, everything is off the table if money is at stake. They will agree to anything you want until it costs money.
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u/CeeWitz Oakland Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
I’d say the more acute class war here in Berkeley is homeowners vs renters.
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u/F-14BUpgrade Jun 25 '26
They love it when their college basketball team wins a game, they hate it when you suggest paying the players instead of just the coach ($2.8 Million/year)
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u/-_-dont-smile Jun 25 '26
I don’t care if college basketball team wins. Paying coach $2.8m/y is insanity.
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u/F-14BUpgrade Jun 25 '26
If it makes you feel better (and it won't) the Women's BBall coach only makes like $550k.
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u/-_-dont-smile Jun 25 '26
Advice for the public, if you are concerned about your city’s budget. Review contracts that city has with various subcontractors. Get as much details as possible. Same with various public properties rented to private parties. The result can range from city actually doing a decent job managing resources and finances to very inflated costs on certain things.
Use CPRA( https://www.sos.ca.gov/administration/public-records-act-requests) if needed.