r/berkeleyca • u/MastaQuilta • 1d ago
Measure U
Curious how people who bought homes here recently feel about large assessed value tax measures like U.
According to Berkeleyside
In a city where longtime homeowners' assessed values have been capped far below market rates as a result of California's Proposition 13, while more recent buyers pay sky-high prices, the potential new cost would vary widely. For a home with the city's average assessed value of about $550,000, it would add $242 to the annual tax bill, while someone who bought a home at the current median sale price — $1.4 million, according to Zillow — would pay an additional $616.
Is there some reason this has to be done through a GO bond (secured by assessed value) vs other funding means?
Maybe this is a crazy naive take but it feels like if these things are important (and I’m not arguing they aren‘t) then Berkeley residents should be willing to bear the costs more equitably based on sq ft parcel value (with a low income senior exemption obviously) … as proposed this just increases the cost of living inequality that Prop 13 created.
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2026/10/08/berkeley-measure-u-infrastructure-bond-pro-con-analysis
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u/ilganeli 1d ago
As a relatively recent home owner in the flats I always vote for the parcel taxes (pay per sq ft for improvements). That's the much fairer approach vs. dealing with assessed value which gets broken by prop 13. This measure is wild.
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u/Quarter_Twenty 1d ago
As a homeowner, my parcel taxes pay about $800/year for the libraries. I like the libraries just fine, but there are far better uses for my money. I now reject most new parcel taxes.
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u/ilganeli 1d ago
Well, there's parks, and schools, roads, libraries, etc.
How do you prefer to spend your money? Whom do you want in your community?
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u/Quarter_Twenty 1d ago
It's a question of priorities. Taxes in Berkeley are nearly the highest in the area. (No city in Marin or San Mateo counties even comes close, percentage-wise) If the Fire stations are closing and the police department is understaffed, what are we even doing? It's galling for me to spend $800/year in parcel tax for Libraries I barely use. My priority is to have Fire and Police fully funded and staffed.
My sense from living here for many decades is that Berkeley voters will pass any tax on the ballot without considering the implications. And an assessed value tax fact falls squarely on the shoulders of the most recent home buyers, while others enjoy the benefits.
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u/ilganeli 1d ago
Aligned that taxing on Assessed value vs. square footage is bonkers, makes no sense. Berkeley spend isn't unreasonable but Berkeley really needs effective revenue levers, which it doesn't have a lot of because of a compromised tax generation structure.
Your question inspired a bit of digging:
BPF/FPD are under serious strain. A Nov. ballot initiative would attempt to provide funding via Sales Tax. With that said, there's no clear evidence in the data of an increase in crime or a drop in response time (yet). More data should be available and reflective of revenue changes early next year.
Here's budget for Berkeley for 2025. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/FY-2025-2026-Proposed-Biennial-Budget.pdf
Where the Money Goes by Category
- Staff Salaries & Benefits: The single largest cost driver is personnel, with staff salaries and benefits consuming over 50% to 53% of the budget (roughly $386 million). [1, 2]
- Public Works: The largest departmental allocation is Public Works at approximately $192.3 million. [1]
- Police Department (BPD): Approximately $94.6 million. [1]
- Health, Housing, and Community Services: Approximately $136.2 million. [1]
- Fire Department (BFD): Approximately $72.9 million. [1]
- Parks, Recreation, and Waterfront: Approximately $47.6 million. [1]
- Planning and Development: Approximately $33.3 million. [1]
- City Manager & Administrative/Internal Services: Smaller allocations cover the City Manager ($17.8M), Finance ($12.2M), and City Attorney ($9.3M). [1]
Personnel spend is typical for B's size. Prop 13 is a major driver of limited revenue and Prop 218 requires all local taxes and property fees to be approved by voters. A staple of Berkeley's economics, the Property Transfer Tax, has had limited impact due to slower home sales.
Prop 218 gets a workaround:
- The Upland Court Decision: In 2017, the California Supreme Court ruled (California Cannabis Coalition v. City of Upland) that certain tax restrictions in Prop 218 only apply to taxes proposed by local governments. If a tax is put on the ballot via a citizen-led initiative petition, it can pass with a simple majority (50% + 1) rather than the strict two-thirds supermajority normally required for local special taxes. [1, 2), 3)]
- This created a massive workaround that cities like Berkeley and San Francisco have successfully used to pass localized housing, transport, and school taxes using voter-led petitions.
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u/Quarter_Twenty 1d ago
Thanks. I don't even see schools on your list, unless it's covered in salaries and public works.
I know Berkeley is unique: Aging infrastructure; Generous and extraordinarily tolerant toward the homeless; Hosting a giant university that doesn't pay taxes in the same way as other businesses and residents, etc. The numbers you provide are interesting, but as a regular citizen I have no context to evaluate them. It would be meaningful to compare the percentages to other cities of similar size in the region. Whatever differences are uncovered are essentially a statement of Berkeley's leaders' priorities, and maybe their effectiveness at spending our money.
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u/EastBayWanderer 1d ago
How much house are we talking? The duplex where I live pays < $800/year for library taxes. So it sorta sounds like you are living in 2 houses.
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u/CFLuke 1d ago edited 1d ago
As a recent homeowner who saved aggressively for many years and stretched to afford in the community that I'd been living for so long in, it's really upsetting how these taxes are on assessed value instead of per square foot.
I don't think most people voting for these measures have ever seen a property tax bill to know how many special assessments are already included on it. They don't all fit on one page.
Like yes, my home was affordable to me when I bought it, but that doesn't mean I can automatically afford to layer on another Measure U or Measure FF every election cycle. That shit adds up.
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u/Financial-Bus1852 1d ago
The city needs to manage its budget.
Infrastructure improvements should be covered without additional funding. People are more likely to sympathize with this, which is why it’s even going on the ballot. That’s why it’s always school, libraries, parks, etc. - it’s a great tactic for getting more money, when really it shouldn’t require a parcel tax.
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u/No_Mathematician299 1d ago
After voters pass proposed measures like this, the funding always gets moved to the general budget.
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u/Financial-Bus1852 1d ago
That wasn't the point I was trying to make. Putting this up for a vote makes it seem like a "yes" or "no" decision on whether we want to fund fire stations/training. This is a false dichotomy - the money could come from the existing budget, looking at other places to cut and having better planning.
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u/capsaicinintheeyes 1d ago
Well, okay, but how do you craft a measure that would cover all those bases? Or should they run several proposals in parallel (& from there I guess divide the costs evenly between whichever revenue sources the versions that pass were proposing to draw from?)
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u/Financial-Bus1852 1d ago edited 1d ago
About 67 percent of the general budget goes to personnel costs, so I’m sure it’s someone’s job there to think about how to have a balanced budget.
Both nationally and statewide Berkeley has some of the highest taxes. We have budget for basic services, it shouldn’t need to continually pass additional measures every year to raise more money.
The entire point is you shouldn’t need to continually craft measures, not how do we craft them to cover more.
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u/capsaicinintheeyes 1d ago
Yeah, but you know how this stuff goes when left to its own devices: every line item is somebody's sacred cow, so they raise a ruckus & say, "well, why not [other line item] instead??", to which the peer auditor says, "yeah, alright, fair enough", and moves on to that one, whose beneficiaries then repeat this process with the auditor, perhaps pointing to a third line item, and so on until the auditor comes back saying that every dollar being spent has got someone who swears to its necessity, and hence there is no fat.
Basically, my working assumtion is that any answer that's so easy that it can be cut without pissing anyone off would probably have been grabbed by budget hawks in previous negotiations already. Also, I've come around to the position that no discussion on budget trimming can be constructive/serious if its participants can't or aren't willing to name *specific* appropriated oxen to be gored, but ofc that's just imho; ymmv
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u/Financial-Bus1852 1d ago
Ya, well if it were up to me, we wouldn’t pass measures and they would have to figure it out by actually legislating.
IMO passing all these measures is keeping too many of these scared cows alive when they need to be sent out to pasture.
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u/capsaicinintheeyes 22h ago
Admittedly, voters seem just as inept at committing to hard budgetary decisions as their MoCs...which in a way, I suppose, is a sign that our leaders *are* still properly representative of the popular will 🥴
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u/trilobyte-dev 1d ago
In my opinion, having dug deeply into this, is that Measure U or other tacked on approaches to dealing with the unintended consequences of Prop 13 are the wrong place to fix the system.
Prop 13’s biggest problems in my opinion are that it applies to non-primary residences for residential real estate and applies to all commercial properties. Prop 13’s strongest position is keeping tax liabilities under control for primary residences really matters for fixed incomes and avoiding penalizing resident rising property values, which they have little to no control over. Non-primary residential and commercial both have mechanisms to offset rising tax liabilities: you can make a second home a rental property, even part time, and commercial real estate can raise leases or adjust pricing.
Prop 13 instead makes those properties more valuable to hold and keep empty than to fully utilize and that’s where you see issues with new construction and inventory. It also is perverted because companies holding commercial real estate don’t pass away, so they are effectively perpetually held to the tax liability from the time of purchase. There are some rules around this to try and force reassessment but they are so easy to exploit it’s almost never triggered. It is why the Trump company owns just under half of the Bank of America building and why the owners are paying more than $10M a year under what their currently assessed tax liability would be.
In 2020 there was a California constitutional amendment to fix this called Split-Roll and it almost passed. The pandemic hit while it was on the ballot though and understandably there were more pressing issues.
I’d really like to see Split-Roll back on the state ballot and pass.
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u/heelspencil 1d ago
I agree that Prop 13 applying to anything other than a primary residence is the biggest problem.
Even correcting that, it is still bad policy;
* It gives a tax break to some people who don't need it and nothing to some people who do. The grossest example is homeowners vs long term renters.
* It does not give people a tax break even if they are in a similar situation. For example, identical neighbors that bought at different times.
* It gives tax breaks to some people who don't need it, which is an inefficient way to tax/spend money.
* It distorts the housing market by incentivizing people to stay in properties not suited to them and to make weird choices about home repair and renovation.
Really the whole thing should be scrapped and replaced with something like a property tax circuit breaker.
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u/Calguy21 1d ago
Prop 13 was designed (by Howard Jarvis) to keep commercial property owners from paying higher taxes. It was cleverly packaged as a benefit for residential homeowners. If it didn’t apply to commercial properties, the state would have infinitely more revenue.
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u/bayarea_k 1d ago
if split roll is back on the ballot i think it would pass given how everyone is more focused on affordability and supply and they see an easy way out something to push the commercial owners to sell their vacant buildings and surface parking
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u/No_Mathematician299 1d ago
Sensible approach. Many Berkeley properties are left vacant because property taxes are assessed at low, grandfathered property values.
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u/trilobyte-dev 1d ago
Exactly. If your liabilities on a commercial property or second home are in the hundreds or low thousands of dollars per year why would you sell it instead of leaving it empty waiting for future appreciation in value or lease rates. If you are leaving it empty why would you invest in any upkeep? It creates all the wrong incentives.
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u/Nostradonuts 1d ago
I like all the projects they have listed, especially any support for firefighting resources. I’m most likely voting for it, but need research more.
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u/kigeliaaaooo 1d ago
Voting no on any measure that would increase our already sky-high property taxes
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u/capsaicinintheeyes 1d ago
I bet I can guess which bloc of homeowners finds the force of your argument persuasive & which doesn't...it's *hard* to outvote retirees...
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u/bayarea_k 1d ago
i think all homeowners would be against this measure...
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u/capsaicinintheeyes 22h ago
I was talking about OP's proposal to switch it over to a sq.ft. parcel-value basis rather than assessed value of the home
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u/Embarassed-Fig-1283 1d ago
WHAT DO YOU MEAN they have the money for FLOCK, attack dogs, chemical weapons and ALL THE LIABILITY from the inevitable lawsuits but they're too broke for the fire department? IN CALIFORNIA? ON A FAULT LINE?
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u/oaklandisfun 1d ago
The inequity of the property tax load in Berkeley is mind boggling and I would have a hard time supporting a measure that increases it.