 So welcome everybody to Homecoming. My name is Dan Lindheim. I'm the faculty director of the Center on Civility and Democratic Engagement and a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy. The center was founded by the Cal class of 68 around its 40th reunion. Some classes give benches, this class gave a center. Center helps prepare current and future leaders to engage diverse perspectives in finding solutions for oppressing public policy issues. More information on the centers available on our website, you can just Google CCDE for more information. Today's panel is about town, gown or city campus relations. Recent lawsuits, court imposed, enrollment freezes and urgent legislative fixes have been headlined stories. These are really no way to make sound public policy, but the question here is what is the right path forward? The goal of this panel is not to rehash recent lawsuits or to discuss specific projects, rather to discuss the roles and responsibilities of the university, the city, the state and other stakeholders regarding campus city relations and how best to analyze and address the impacts of things like enrollment increases in campus expansions on the surrounding community. Panels comprised of Berkeley people, all are both town and gown. Everyone lives in Berkeley, everyone except Dean Wilson went to Cal and everybody on the panel has a Goldman connection. Today's panel includes Senator Nancy Skinner. Nancy has represented Berkeley and parts North in the state Senate since 2016. Cal alum, both undergrad and grad and former Goldman lecturer. Nancy was the first and only student to be elected to the Berkeley City Council. Jesse Aragine is midway through his second term as mayor of Berkeley. He's also president of ABag, the Bay Area Regional Government Agency. Jesse's a Cal alum and lectures frequently at Goldman. Kate Harrison represents District Four, which is west of campus on the city council. Kate is a Cal alum and a Goldman alum. Rogel Robinson represents District Seven, which is the South Campus area. Rogel's a Cal alum and a current Goldman master student. David Wilson is Dean of the Goldman School. He's in his second year. He writes extensively about the intersection of politics and psychology. And he has no Cal background. He has many degrees from Michigan State, but I will point out that there is no red in the Michigan State colors. A brief background note, town gown issues are not new. They date back to the early years of the university. One issue is financial. Since UC doesn't pay property tax, the city has forever sought reimbursement for the cost of providing infrastructure and services to both the university and to the student population that mostly lives off campus. This isn't a history panel, so I'm gonna fast forward to 2005. Campus LRDP, a long range development plan, stated that between 2005 and 2020, there would be an increase of 1,650 students. That would mean to reach basically a little bit less than 35,000. The required CEQA study indicated there were no impacts and hence no mitigations. Between 2005 and 2013, enrollment stayed pretty much the same. However, starting in 2014, in large part because of state pressure, enrollment took off and by 2021, enrollment had increased over 45,000, 35% increase. A lawsuit was filed by community group, arguing that UC was required to study the impacts of the major enrollment increase and mitigate those impacts, primarily the impacts of the already maxed out housing market. Fast forward again, after years of legal wrangling and multiple court opinions, the California Supreme Court sided with plaintiffs that required UC to undertake a real EIR and environmental impact report on the impacts and mitigations for that increased enrollment. The court also placed an enrollment freeze on the campus until the study was completed. The mayor, the council, all of UC, all opposed the freeze remedy and Senator Skinner shepherded a bill which was passed unanimously that nullified the freeze. In addition, it essentially removed the requirement to study and mitigate the impacts of enrollment increases. Also around the same time, the mayor and chancellor reached agreement on a new campus city payment arrangement while it was substantially larger than the 2005 one that had been negotiated previously. The mayor was criticized for the allegedly small amount of that agreement. So before opening up for the discussion, I posed two questions. Doesn't it make sense that every substantial policy initiative, public or private, not just the university, be analyzed and debated for its impacts and requisite mitigations? If not, how can policymakers or communities know whether the policy initiative is worthwhile and for whom? And who will be stuck with the bills and the consequences? Second, rather than fighting over crumbs, shouldn't the city and UC go hand in hand to the legislature and say, look, if state policy requires increased enrollment within limits, provide us, campus and city, the funds to mitigate the impacts of this increased enrollment, including funds to house a substantial part of the student population and to avoid displacing other Berkeley residents. So we'll start with three minute introductory statements from each panelist. I'll then ask questions of the panelists and then other panelists can chime in. With luck, we'll have time for questions at the end. So we'll start with the senior Berkeley official, Mr. Mayor, Jesse Odeguin. Can everyone hear me? Okay, well, thank you, Dan and thank you, Dean Wilson, for inviting me to be on this panel to talk about the important issue of town-gown relations. And for me, this is a really important, impersonal issue because I got started in city government as a student activist. I came to Berkeley 20 years ago and at the time the most critical issue was the housing crisis. We had students who were sleeping in cars, sleeping on friends' couches. The university had not built enough housing to address the needs of students. And so I got involved in efforts on campus to push the university to build more student housing. And as a result of, I think, the collective efforts of students over many years, the university constructed 1,100 new beds close to campus. We know the housing crisis is still acute and both the city and the campus are taking steps to address this issue. And that got me involved in broader housing issues in the Berkeley community as a student and as a renter. I got involved in fighting for rent control and protecting tenants' rights. It was elected to the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board and then fast forward was able to serve eight years on our city council and honored to serve as mayor. And I really have made as a top priority, developing a much stronger, closer relationship between the city and the campus because at the end of the day we're one city. And the campus does such incredible research. And I think there's a lot of opportunity for greater collaboration to support the important work of the city government, to support the innovative, progressive public policymaking that Berkeley is known for. And I really think it's also important that while we have a close collaborative relationship, that we have a fair relationship. And I do have to say that while we did negotiate this agreement a year ago, I honestly think the university could have done more. And I do think ultimately, I would like to see cities throughout California band together to advocate for legislation to require that the university pay an impact fee for the impacts that the campuses create on the city. The university doesn't have its own fire departments. They rely on our fire department. So all those calls for service of students near campus, we have to go, we have to transport those students to all debates. Increasingly our police services also are serving the campus area. And obviously the impacts on infrastructure also need to be addressed. So while I think that the agreement that we reach is a major step forward and has laid the foundation for I think a close collaborative relationship, it's for us to work together to address issues like housing and homelessness. I hope that in the future that we can create a foundation where there's a fairer share of resources, recognizing that there are real impacts while the campus brings enormous economic value to the city and the region, there are impacts and those impacts need to be addressed. I will just say, I'm closing that in respect to your question, Dan, around CEQA and environmental impacts. Yes, impacts should be studied, but we have also seen CEQA abused to prevent needed housing to be built, for example. And I think the steps the legislature took and I wanna commend our senator and our assembly member for their leadership, they got a bill passed in one day, which is pretty remarkable knowing the way our legislative process works that never should barring the next generation of students be a remedy to the two environmental impacts. And I really feel that preventing students like myself, first generation college student, be able to get a world-class education, that that's not the way to address town-gown issues, that we should not close the door to the next generation, but we also need to make sure we have a fair and productive relationship. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Dean Wilson. And good to see my other panelists, all being people that, well, I'm not exactly sure, Kate, if you moved here to go to school, if you're, okay, all right. So you're looking at four people who arrived here in this town because we got accepted to Cal and we went to school here. Now, I'm guessing there's a lot more of you in the audience. And I joked after the lawsuit was filed, or rather, the remedy that said that UC should freeze its enrollment and cap it, I thought to myself, well, maybe I need to do a law since one of the principles in that lawsuit happened to be in grad school when I was in grad school and we were both organizers for the TA Union. We started the Graduate Student Instructor Union. Anyway, I thought to myself, well, maybe I should do a law that says every student who's accepted Berkeley once they complete their studies has to move and they can make room for more students and that maybe I should make that retroactive. But look, that would affect everybody in this room probably a lot more. I arrived here 50 years ago and when I arrived here, town-gown relations were as contentious as they are now, probably worse. And the population of Berkeley was higher. Now it's about the same. But when I arrived here, the population of Berkeley was about 120,000. It dropped to 102,000 in 1990. And partly it did that because the number of people per household dropped. Now, back when I was a student, the remedy of some of our residents who didn't love the fact that there were a lot of students in this town, here's some of the remedies that they recommended. There was, they tried to pass an ordinance that would limit the number of unrelated adults who could live together. So now, even back then, housing was always an issue because Berkeley has underbuilt housing for forever as has California. The housing crisis is statewide. And many of us, of course, lived in group houses. I had lived five of us in a two-bedroom apartment. If that ordinance had passed, it would have been illegal for me and my four other roommates to live in that two-bedroom apartment. So of course, you can imagine students really organized to stop that ordinance. Another ordinance that was considered when I was an undergrad is an ordinance that would have prevented Berkeley students from registering to vote here and would not have allowed us to use this as our residence and would have required us to use the residence of wherever we lived before then. That would have affected all of us. Anyway, so the point being is that this issue around whether we have too many students or whether we have enough housing and all the rest has been forever. Now, I do think that Cal should build more housing. I think that the city of Berkeley should allow more housing. It's something I've supported for a long time. And luckily, we're now building more housing. And now our population is back to about what it was when I first moved here. The remedy that I authored that addressed the lawsuit, what it did, it did not say that long range development plans could not assess the growth of population on a campus. That still is allowed. What it did was remove language that was specifically inserted into the long range development plan requirements of Cal. It was put statutorily in state law that said, not just for Cal, but all UCs, that all UCs had to do a long range development plan. And then it said explicitly that the growth of student enrollment had to be evaluated under CEQA. Now, CEQA already would have required the growth of population as a whole to be evaluated. That's part of what CEQA's purpose is. So my point was, why single out students? Of course, I looked into the history. Who promoted it? A legislator from Santa Cruz and a legislator from Santa Barbara, both of whom did not want the student, their areas did not want the student population in their towns to grow. And that's why that language was inserted in the statute some 20, 25 years ago. So I just removed that language. It does not eliminate the requirement for campus long range development plans to be evaluated under CEQA. It just doesn't single out students alone. And the reason I did that is you think about it. UCSF has a hospital. If you expand that hospital, you're gonna have a lot more people coming in and out, patients, doctors, nurses, staff. And so maybe you should single that out as the growth there should have been evaluated. Or at the same time that we don't, maybe we don't grow students, but we here at this campus grow faculty and staff. All of that should be evaluated, but not students alone. That was my point and that was the correction that we did. I'll stop there. Thank you very much both of you for your comments. And as mentioned, I am a graduate of the Graduate School of Public Policy. And I think the proudest thing about for me of going to Berkeley is I don't accept the common wisdom. And one of the pieces of common wisdom is that we shouldn't be looking at externalities. I'm concerned that with the dismissal of the lawsuit that the externalities not of housing, but of the other things associated with UCS growth have gone unanswered. And those include the elimination of open space. And the continued provision of an enormous amount of parking for the campus. I agree with Senator Skinner that just like we should study the impact of hospital patients on our environment, we should study the impact of any population growth on our environment. That is what EIRs are for. And somehow now EIRs have a bad odor in Sacramento. A sense that they are an evil. They're not an evil. They're there to look at the mitigations. No EIR requires you to not build. They just say, well, that's what you're gonna do to mitigate that. A couple of examples are the fact that the project of Durant Street will increase beds from 1144 to 1980. That's a good. But parking slots will also increase from zero to 688. The Oxford Track Development will increase beds from zero to 1640. Excellent. Parking spaces will increase one block from campus and three blocks from BART from 28 to 627. And when I asked the campus about that, they tell me, well, our staff are living further and further out and we need parking. That's true of all of our residents. We have asked and have passed laws eliminating minimum parking requirements. Just this week, the state signed legislation eliminating parking minimums. And yet UC continues to insist on parking as the answer to the degree that it affected my alma mater. What was one of the reasons why the public policy school couldn't expand? Engineering professors said, I'm more valuable than you are. Here's how I calculate my wage. And let me tell you, if you eliminate my parking space, I have lost whatever the value was of my time. What about the value of the planet? What about the value of providing more housing for graduate students and faculty at that location? So I'm gonna challenge UC, not on student enrollment, but on the other environmental impacts of them being present here. I also have to say that the other common wisdom in America is the so-called law of supply and demand. Continually, I hear now, this is a post Reagan era, I guess, that supply and demand are a simple equation. You build more, prices go down. I don't think that's true for UC housing. I don't think there's any evidence that student housing is becoming less expensive or that in fact the building we're doing in Berkeley is bringing down prices. ECON 201, as opposed to 1A, would tell you that you have to think about things like the substitution effect. If I have a family here or I go to school here or my elderly mother lives here or I attend church here to tell me, well, don't worry, in 30 years the prices will go down. And in the meantime, you can move somewhere else is not an acceptable answer. It's not acceptable for students. It's not acceptable for other residents. And I think we have to get off this idea that just building housing is going to solve our problems. So I'm looking to UC in my ideal world to deal with parking issues and what they're going to do about the cost of student housing. I think those issues have been left aside. I also want to say I did appreciate some other UC campuses build housing before they added students, but I'd want to add the students anyway. Students are not vermin. I don't know who it was that said that. I don't think anybody on this council said that, but there's this common wisdom that someone has said that students are pollutants. No one is saying that. What I'm saying is there are real life impacts from growth. We have to think about those real life impacts. We have to figure out how to mitigate them. And UC and the city as partners need to do that. We need to not destroy our open space. We need to have to figure out how to get people around the city without cars. And without that, adding population is simply going to make everything intolerable for both students, faculty, and everybody else who lives here. So thank you. Good afternoon. Happy homecoming. And thank you, Professor Lindheim, for having us here. You've assembled a great panel, and I'm glad it's happening today and not a month ago, because I was still a student in your summer session class, and I didn't know what grade I was getting yet, and that could have been a little awkward. It's interesting, I think, coming together to discuss matters of town and gown, I think, as we've seen already just now, there's a lot of forces that would suggest to you that the state of our union between city and campus is strong. You're looking at a panel with four elected officials whose origin story in Berkeley is the campus community. Dean Wilson is the exception, but he's redeemed by having the coolest shoes on the panel. I just asked him if a dean is allowed to wear sneakers like that, and I think the jury's still out on that one. There are tangible results that come from representation such as this. We have a city council that negotiated, I think, a truly historic arrangement with the university, led by council members who come from the campus community who understand the tensions in the campus community and were represented by a state senator, chair of the budget committee who was responsible for the legislature's historic and lightning response to the unjust court ruling that would have slashed this year's freshman class by a third. I wanna underscore that. If you're here in this room or watching on Zoom, here for homecoming weekend as the parent of a new freshman, a first year student here at UC Berkeley, there's a one third chance that your student would not be able to be at Berkeley today, if not for that state senator right there. And I think that is a result of her relationship to the campus community, the advocacy of the UC Berkeley campus and the synergy between town and gown today. But if we are to be honest and committed to the needs of our constituents and to the needs of the campus community, we also need to be honest about where the growing pains are. There are costs associated with a massive increase in the population of a city that isn't well-planned for and well-accounted for. When the state imposes enrollment growth on UC campuses but doesn't support their host cities in doing so, that creates serious challenges for us in some very obvious ways and some sleepier ways. An increased population encourages significant impacts and greater demands on our first responders and on the fire department. There's a saying here in Berkeley that if you're gonna have a heart attack, you shouldn't have one on a Friday night, definitely not in the first few weeks of the semester because our first responders are gonna be busy dealing with challenges on frat row. That is a precarious situation. We have deep infrastructure needs, stormwater needs, street improvements that are necessary around the campus community that we need support to be able to build and to keep up with and the growth of the university should be part of that equation. And of course, we have a dire housing crisis and the university has not done enough for years to build the student housing that's urgently needed right next to campus. But right now, you know, I think we're experiencing a really important inflection point that is turning around or making some real progress. But to Professor Lindheim's point and to Mayor Ergene's point, I don't know that litigation every time a new LRDP is coming up to be rediscussed is the best way to land on those arrangements. I have to believe there's a better system, perhaps impact fees that could be designed to negotiate the arrangement that host cities and campuses across the state should have with each other. We have these discussions constantly in Berkeley, but they look very different in, let's say UC Santa Barbara where they work with the Isla Vista Community Services District or UC Davis, similarly surrounded by the city of Davis at UCLA, similarly surrounded by other local jurisdictions and then in Merced at UC Merced, you know, that's a campus that can grow in every direction around it and is an unincorporated Merced County. It's a different arrangement everywhere you look, but the problems are resonant. The problems are similar and we have to land on some sort of a system or protocol to deal with these issues a little more complex and a little more proactive, I think, than relying on litigation every 15 years. Thank you. Is this on? Yes, it's on. You know, I sit here as dean of a public policy school. There are about 300 or so academic department schools or programs of public policy and the Goldman School, formerly the Graduate School of Public Policy is number one. And we have very little relationship with the city, with the state, with Washington DC or a global footprint. We are academically sound. We create the art and science of policy analysis, but we all have room to grow and get better even if we're number one. And I haven't spent enough time in Berkeley to truly understand all the politics or in California to understand all the legislative acts, but what I do understand as a political psychologist is a sense of belonging and this idea that each and every one of us wants to be a part of something and when there's an impediment to that belonging, we tend to react in very, what we feel are just ways, but sometimes they don't get us to where we'd like to be. I listen to the words town and gown and it's like it's unclear to me which one is the town and which one is the gown. All right, I think more of this is more hub and spoke where you've got a core location and you've got needs. In the university, as a land-grin institution, one that was originally charged with helping to enhance prosperity of its citizens and its residents, that it can actually have an impact here. And so when we think about being a resource for the community, that means having conversations that are not just about the dichotomy of my idea versus your idea, but more about how do we know that even if we give a little bit here, maybe we can get something down the road, this notion of forbearance. The lack of forbearance is what's really threatening democracy at the national level. And I think that as a home, a location, a locus of democracy, a location of voice, Berkeley has a potential to set the model for the rest of the nation in terms of how we actually get things done as a community and as a university. The world of higher education is changing. If we don't have to believe in the status quo, we don't have to be what we've been in the past, but it takes a little bit of not letting perfection get in the way of the good. And so there may be some good done today, and we have to do a little bit more tomorrow. So we shouldn't think that every single policy that gets passed is the end of discussion. No, there's more to do. And I think once we start having kind of a mechanism for having that kind of dialogue, and the university can play a role in that, I think we'll advance our democracy at the local level, and we can lead the way. So I just wanna say that as an academic, you often hear, oh, academics are all about theory and practice. I spent 25 years in the Army. I worked in business practice consulting, helping the federal government think about how to develop its workforce. Our faculty have been governors, senators, secretaries in the cabinet. They've worked in all sorts of agencies. We have experience, and we could be a partner with the city, and we wanna be able to help you think about these issues and understand the opportunity costs, the externality effects, and the trade-offs. And then communicate that this isn't the end. Policies aren't designed to be implemented, and then you're done for the rest of eternity. We have to revisit them. We have to rethink about them, rethink them. And we have to not be fearful of somehow rethinking them, being so threatening. So as a new person to the Berkeley community, I'm proud to be a part of the Goldman School and the university, and to live in Berkeley, and to hear the democracy that exists in this space, and also know that if you're really committed to it, we can do more, and it doesn't have to be, the past was a problem, so therefore I don't like you, and that's it. So let's be kind to one another. Let's know that in order for us to actually advance the things we wanna get done, it involves communication, and we can easily shut down dialogue with the status quo. So let's think about how to innovate and be a partner, and I wanna let you know that I'm here to kind of lead Goldman and help the university think about how to do that. Thank you. Does anybody wanna respond to anybody before I ask some leading questions? So there was some mention of impact bees. They're in many places, there are in lieu of tax arrangements. Do you think, I'm asking you, Senator Skinner, because it's gonna have to come from the state, do you think there's an appetite and understanding of this issue? Is this a dead on arrival, or is this something that really could happen? There's, is that on now? Yeah. Okay, there's definitely an understanding of the issue. I think that all of the legislators who represent an area where UC is located experience and appreciate this pressure of the jurisdiction needing to provide services for which they aren't compensated. Now, this is one of those tricky things where there's not property tax, however, there's obvious, I mean, part of the problem is just the way under Prop 13, just how cities are able to generate income and revenue. And I don't wanna go into that whole history, but cities are limited. And because of that law, and it's harder to be able to raise revenues, and they are getting far less property taxes than proportionately in the past, given the value of the property. So all of those things contribute to this pressure of feeling like any entity that is in the city that does not pay its property taxes is hurting the city's revenue. Now, other state agencies, and Berkeley has a number of state agencies present here in the city that have land, they don't pay property taxes either. But back to the point of, is there appetite? So yes, there's an appreciation now. And usually what's happened, as everybody's referred to, is that each of the communities have negotiated with the individual campuses for these kinds of agreements that would cover certain costs, whether it's fire services, police services, or other. And obviously there's a sense, and it's legitimate, that that is not enough. Now, what the answer is, how to structure something that works legally because constitutionally the university has a separation between the state and the city, even the state legislature is limited. Like I couldn't just do a law, for example, in that particular lawsuit that said, that overruled the court, or directed the regents to do something, which I mean, I wouldn't have anyway, but it's why I did the fix just on removing that one phrase in the reference to the Long Range Development Plan. But I think there would be appetite, how we would design it, it's funny, Rygell and I have been talking about this recently, how to design it so that it's fair and that it works with these separations of powers, is a little challenge, but I said, hey, you're the Goldman School, here's the Goldman School hosting this, give it some thought and give us some suggestions. Rygell. I haven't figured out my capstone project for the spring yet, but I know for sure it's gonna have as little to do with the city of Berkeley as possible. But on that note, there's a feeling, I think, that comes up often when we have these very important discussions about the city's needs as it relates to the university. And it gets tangled up in a feeling that the city is trying to mitigate the growth of the university. Mitigate is a big word that can mean a lot of things, but to me, I think about this idea of impact fees, the idea of concessions we're pushing the university for, it's not so much about fighting the growth, it's about trying to create a successful campus community, trying to create an environment that our students will thrive in. And especially here, especially at UC Berkeley, the UC campus in the system that houses directly the smallest share of its campus population. The vast majority of students live in the city environments, live in private buildings, live in apartment buildings. The city environs is their campus experience. And I want students expecting to come to the number one public university in the world to arrive not in a housing crisis, not in a city that can't promise them response times from the fire department, you know, in a city with profound, rich and beautiful public infrastructure and the civic resources. Asking the university to play a more direct part in creating that environment is about enriching the campus community, not fighting the growth. You know, I think we all agree educating more Californians is a good thing. Now especially, you know, I think the last two new classes at UC Berkeley have been the most diverse in the institution's history. Now especially, we want to be educating more residents of this state. But to do that, we're gonna need some dough. Feel free to chime in anybody before, don't feel like I have to ask you the questions. I want you to, I threw up. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I think this is the result of many years of underinvestment in higher education, which Senator Skinner talked about Proposition 13 that had a huge impact in reducing our property tax base and funding for K through 12 and higher education. But I really want to credit the legislature and budget chair Skinner and Governor Newsom for I think some historic increases in funding this year for higher education, including funding, I think $2 billion for housing, $4 billion over two years. And that is critical to have those additional funds because one of the biggest constraints the campus has faced in recent years is they just don't have the bond capacity to be able to finance additional housing. So they've entered into these agreements with private entities. I think the more that the campus can construct its own housing that's publicly owned, I think that's better for the state and for the city and for the university. So I think part of what we're dealing with is an issue that's many years in the making. And I think, yeah, I think the campus and the city need to come forward and say, we have impacts, we have needs, and let's work together to try to address that and work in partnership with the state to achieve that rather than a more adversarial dynamic. And I think there's a lot of potential, particularly given the, I think, the unique opportunity we have with this new partnership with the campus to help achieve that. I wanted to, this is on, I hope so. I wanted to touch on a couple of aspects in the LRDP. And frankly, I did vote against settling the lawsuit, but these two things I think were very important to me that they got resolved after years of not being resolved. One of them was the fact that UC now has to pay parking taxes to us, just like all other entities. That was something that had not occurred for years. There was a case out of San Francisco that said that had to happen. And nonetheless, our city was ignoring it and we've now insisted on that. And a secondary thing, which really bothers residents here, is when UC builds properties and they include generating entities in the ground floor, those people were not paying us taxes. None of the planning processes for what that store might look like or how that might work were included. And I'd say a third thing, and now that's been fixed, I believe. But a third thing is actually, and we sound so soft to everyone else, is design. I live right off Shattuck. UC built this giant new building right on Shattuck, which is nice, I'm glad you have the space. But now there are shadows across my street all day, every day. And the idea that we have no role in saying this is not an environment, I'm going back to the environment that I wanna live in is not okay with me. And I don't know how to tackle that issue, but that is, I think, something that even if people are accepting of more students, they understand the need for UC and the growth, the impacts at that kind of level really affect people. And it sounds squishy, but the mayor did negotiate an improved way to deal with some of these projects in the future going ahead in terms of looking at design. And I think that was a third piece I thought was a massive improvement over what we had before. But I still think that really the major, to those of us that want to say, well, we'd like our communities to retain some of its character, I would say vote to get rid of Prop 13. The number one thing that we can do as elders is get rid of Prop 13. And until we do that, the state simply doesn't have the money. And I don't mean just commercial Prop 13 reform. I mean, we need to get rid of Prop 13 because this is what's happened to our state ever since. It was in 1977, 78. 79. Thank you. 79. Anyway, and it's not just the state that doesn't have the money, it's the cities. All cities were severely impacted by a drop in revenue due to Prop 13. And then when you look at, I'm sure some of you who are residents of Berkeley and who've owned your house for a long time, you know that you pay maybe 10% of the property taxes that your next door neighbor pays who bought a house much more recently. And yeah. I just wanna have one more thing. You're good. Testing, yeah. So one other aspect of the agreement that we were able to reach with the university is to end the use of master leasing. A lot of new residential construction that's happening because the campus has a shortage of beds. They're entering into agreements with builders to use those new projects to provide campus housing. And we want those units to be available for other people in our city. We have a housing shortage. And so we are working with the campus to reduce their and hopefully eliminate their use of master leasing. But we also need to help support their efforts to build more student housing because that is ultimately the solution to the housing shortage. And I'm really pleased that under Chancellor Chris' leadership, we finally have an administration that is really prioritizing addressing the shortage of student housing. An issue like I said at the beginning is something that I was dealing with when I came here. And I'm sure all of us on the panel dealt with when we were students at UC Berkeley. And it's an issue that's not gonna go away. And it's an issue that we have to address now. We can't kick the can down the road. So we've talked a little bit about some of these impacts on the city, but what about impacts on the neighborhoods themselves? So we have the representatives from South Campus and from West of Campus. Actually, this is not about People's Park. And so in any case, Kate and Rigel, would you please address sort of what some of these impacts that we talk about in terms of things that have to get mitigated, that how your constituents see this in each of your districts? Yeah, I would turn to Oxford Track, which is very near my house, which was established when UC was an agricultural campus. And in fact, the first owner of my house was ahead of the Agriculture Department. So I'm sure we still have his mites in our basement. But he did his work at Oxford Track. And I wanna say that I want to support housing, but I do not wanna lose all open space. And I think it does relate to People's Park. And I think there's a concern that we are not valuing open space sufficiently. And I would say that to us as well as the city. This is not just a university issue. Many times we get developers who come in and say, well, one of the mitigations I want is to get rid of all the open space. I think this is tragic and not the right direction to be going. We need to densify, but in a way that recognizes human beings are animals and needs space and air and light. So I guess I would say that I'm really interested in UC talking about the loss of open space as a specific mitigation. We're often told, those of us that live in the city, well, you have campus, you can walk on campus. Let me tell you during COVID, what is the first thing that campus did? They said, we don't want any residents walking on our campus. That was a message we got from UC. It's not acceptable, then don't walk on our streets. I mean, honestly, if we're a town-gown partnership, we need to be a partnership. So I do see a lot of, frankly, elitism by UC. I understand everyone at UC is very smart and all the faculty are very smart and everything else, but the people that live here matter too, other people. So I would say the one thing I would really like to see mitigated is this loss of open space and to consider why we're not building on the Channing Garage first, the reason I've been told is because we need to add, we need the EIR to allow the parking spaces. And I would say, get rid of the parking. I mean, I think there are answers to these questions. So I do think people's park is relevant, not because I don't want the housing there, but because I think the way that it's unfolded is unfortunate, we can do a lot more with trying to make sure that we honor the park, we make sure that the history is honored. I think it's only about a third of the park that's going for housing. Is that right? Okay, so 1.9 acres will be open space, but I'd like that to be looked at. What does that mean for the residents in that area? And as I said before, I think a lot of the agitation at UC came about with the acceptance of a project that tore down rent-controlled housing that many long-term residents were living in. And that occurred because UC can't say no to some of these developments because they don't have the money. So I remember when I was on campus, if someone came to campus and said, well, we went to the city and said, we want to build this thing and we're going to tear down rent-controlled housing, the answer would have been, well, no, we're not doing that. Now I feel like UC is looking at every spot, which they have to do, but I would beg you not to do that again. I know that this donor wanted to build there, but I would say there's a higher goal and we should say no to those things. So those are the things that make my voters angry. It's a lot of open space in the destruction of rent-controlled housing. And I think we just really need to have a more honest conversation about that. Nigel. Thank you, Council Member Harris. I mean, that campus closure during the pandemic, one of the biggest open spaces in the entire city, they should be able to be benefited and used by everyone was obscene. I would go on jogs through campus, I think a little more often after they closed it, kind of in an active protest. Thank you for the question, Dan. Well, and Nigel, in good Berkeley tradition, I think most of us just ignored. Yes, yes. A lot of buckets, a lot of buckets. I talked a little bit about first responder times to safety issues and parties even on campus in District 7, but I also think of infrastructure projects, especially for a neighborhood in the city with so many tenants, so many students who so often turn over quite rapidly. I think we often find that we don't benefit from the same years of stable advocacy for capital improvements and public projects that a lot of other neighborhoods do. And so now we're working on some really exciting projects in the Telegraph District that are gonna happen. I will fall on that sword, die on that hill that are gonna happen. I just need a few more million dollars to fund it, but projects that have been being talked about since the 70s, 80s, really beautiful public realm improvements that are so much harder to achieve when the constituency there turns over so much more quickly. And that's a really important place for, I think, the campus to play a more direct role. Telegraph Avenue is the gateway to the campus from the south side. We're talking about a potential closure, a plaza situation on Center Street, the western gateway to the campus. The campus should be playing a part in helping make sure those projects happen. Another bucket, of course, the housing crisis. You know, we just had a really interesting meeting just a couple days ago talking about our housing element and the part that the city of Berkeley is gonna play in meeting our regional housing needs allocation numbers, what I call the Rihanna numbers, R-H-N-A, and part of that is gonna mean a massive infusion of units on the south side of campus because we know just how important the student housing crisis is within the bigger housing crisis that we're dealing with as a city. We talk about the externalities of the campus' growth. One of the most significant driving factors of gentrification in the city of Berkeley is the shortage of student housing right next to campus. When the state imposes enrollment growth on the university, we want those students to come, it's a beautiful thing. But when they can't find units right next to campus, they end up competing with long-time residents and tenants elsewhere in the city for the next closest units that they can find. And for decades that has been further and further and further from the university. So now is we're looking to rezone the south side for an increase of the outside envelope, the zoned capacity of the south side by 1,000 units. That change is gonna take time, but is such an important piece of the puzzle in turning that gentrification around. Dean Wilson, Dean Wilson, you've, we're provincial people here. We're all Berkeley people. You've come from outside. You've seen other parts of the world. The main plaintiff in the lawsuit went to school in Michigan and talked about how wonderful the town-gown relations were in Michigan, in Ann Arbor, but not in, I'm sorry, in Ann Arbor, not where Michigan State is. So I was just wondering about your experience in both Michigan and Delaware and in terms of these kind of relationships. So I've just came from the University of Delaware, which Newark, Delaware is the local town, so to speak. I worked at Howard University, where Washington, D.C. was the local town. Michigan State's in East Lansing, Michigan, and the capital of Michigan is Lansing. It's local town. And the experience here is that what I find interesting is the identity boundaries are stronger here in that there's a lot of in-group, out-group, my-issue, stereotype. That is not a pathway to successful long-term effective policy. And so there is a human element that is misaligned with the policies. And some of that may be listening to one another. Some of it may be history and the like. But in other places, you don't see as strict boundaries. It is a community where you have to learn to kind of work things out. And I think that happens here. I think the benefit of Berkeley is that, again, you have a number one school of public policy that can help be a bridge in many of these conversations in that it's not just, we have to do it this way or this way, is that maybe I help you on this particular policy, this is the politics part. And maybe you help me out on this one. And then we can come back to this point of disagreement. And I don't know what the mechanism is for that in this space. And I think that we've talked about how to use city space to have these kinds of conversations that are about public learning and about campus research so that we can actually talk about the effects of policy rather than stereotype. We can actually measure some of the effects on the environment. We know how to do these things. We can actually measure the one unit increase in population and how it might affect housing costs. These are things that we can do and talk about real numbers, real information rather than how we're feeling about the policy. That's important. But from having visited other places and I went to University of Michigan as well, it seems like that is something that is absent. But I think it's also something that's an opportunity here and we can play a stronger role in it. Regill mentioned the housing element. You have this other role in which you're in charge of ABAG. In charge is not really the right word. The president of the board of ABAG. So how much of the Rihanna goals are really gonna have an impact on housing in Berkeley and how much of that's gonna be for students and what are gonna be the sort of displacement related issues that come out as part of this process? Well, I think historically the arena or Rihanna numbers have not really had a real material effect of actually resulting in housing being produced. Cities have to show that they can accommodate a certain number of housing units in their housing elements. But that was it. There really were no incentives or requirements for cities to produce the housing that they have to plan for. That's changed now. Senator Wiener's bill SB 35 says that if you don't meet certain benchmarks in producing your housing numbers that buy-right approval will kick in, meaning a builder can get a permit over the counter. The city council or the planning commission will have no say in stopping that housing development. There's also other laws, Senate Bill 330 authored by Senator Skinner that does streamline the process to make it easier for housing to get built. And so, and there are new requirements such as legislation to say we have to affirmatively further for housing. What that means is that in the process of developing these housing plans, we have to look at patterns of racial and economic segregation in our communities and our region and be intentional about how we plan in our community to break down those barriers. And I'll just say, I'm proud of many things in Berkeley. We are the first at many things. One thing I'm not proud that we were the first is the fact that in 1916, Berkeley was the first city to adopt single-family zoning deliberately to prevent African-Americans and Asian-Americans in exclusive neighborhoods in our city. And that is the foundation in which our single-family zoning is based in the city of Berkeley. But I really do think there is a sea change happening now. And Senator Skinner, several years ago, I'll mention this, gave me the book by Richard Rothstein, Color of Law. And I read that and it really opened my eyes to the fact that our housing policies, the way that our communities are planned is the result of deliberate state actions and also corporate actions to discriminate against people on the basis of race and class. And many of you that have lived in Berkeley for many years know that MLK or Grove Street was the dividing line where people of color could not buy homes. And so the way that our city is planned is the result of a lot of those intentional policies. So we are looking at how we are affirmatively furthering fair housing. We are looking at allowing multi-family housing and residential neighborhoods in our city to unlock those opportunities so more people can live here. But to your question, I'll wrap up that now with these new requirements and with a governor and an attorney general that are very intentional about holding cities accountable for their housing requirements. I do believe that we are gonna see more housing built and in Berkeley that means we have to plan for 9,000 additional units. Now we certainly can meet that. We're probably gonna exceed that number, including rezoning the South Side to accommodate more student housing. And so I think you are seeing a lot more housing being built in Berkeley. You're gonna see more housing built. It's because we are dealing with a problem that is generations in the making. And I'll just say in closing, my perspective on this has evolved over the years. I got involved in political activism in Berkeley as a tenant activist. And I still a tenant activist, but I was of the perspective that any market rate housing is a bad thing. And that it has a displacement effect and therefore we shouldn't be building market housing, we should just build affordable housing. We need affordable housing and we need market rate housing. We need housing for people at all income levels. That is the problem. And it does have a displacement impact because the less housing we have, the more pressure it puts on the market throughout our city. So I do think we are beginning to take steps to reverse that because we are seeing the exodus of working families, people of color, seniors, essential workers in our city because they cannot afford to live here. And housing is ultimately gonna be the solution to keeping people here and welcoming new people to our city. Yeah, I wanted to add something to that. I think to me the most important thing about the housing element is us looking at smaller units. We can't afford as a planet to live so large anymore. And I think that, so when Senator Skinner mentioned we used to have a higher population, that's because many, many more people lived in homes. Now we have couples without children or one child living in these enormous homes. I think it's unsustainable. I think it's not right. It keeps people out of our community, but it's also terrible for the planet. We use 10 planets each as Americans. I'm not asking us to give up everything, but I am asking that we think about the long range environmental impacts of this housing pattern, which is so bad for us. It's bad because we have to drive. It's bad because our homes use too much energy. And I actually think it's bad for community. Do we all want to be atomized in these houses where we never talk to anyone else? I think this move towards smaller units is gonna be the answer. I do get a little concern that we're building many, many, many places that have shared accommodations which are good for students, but are not acceptable to longer term residents. You know, as you get older and you have a child you may not want to share facilities so much. So I'm hopeful as we look at these smaller unit sizes we're still building units that people can live in individually because as a life cycle that's just realistically what people are gonna want. So, but I feel very strongly about this issue of the size of homes. I think it's really absurd and we need to tackle that. Thank you. Dan, you know, mine I'll jump in. I just came back from a trip to Vienna and the purpose of the trip, I was with other legislators and other housing experts and housing policy people. We were looking at Vienna's housing. Vienna houses 70% of its residents in what they call social housing, which we call public housing and has a derogatory kind of view. But the social housing in Vienna is subsidized by the city. And like I said, 70% of its residents, the rule is you have to be a resident for two years and if you're a resident for two years in Vienna you can then qualify even upper middle income. There is market rate housing but the majority of housing that's built is a partnership between its private developers but they have to do bids and the city controls a lot of the process but then the city helps subsidize it. Now, the difference is it is not single family housing it is dense, tall buildings, they are building a lot but it's well-designed, it has open space incorporated, it has much shared facilities so that the, as Kate was describing, the amount of space per occupant in their own private unit is less than we like. Though I don't mind it, I happen to live in an 800 square foot house and have lived in that 800 square foot house now not my daughter's moved out but my husband and daughter for good 30 years. But anyway, the common spaces and the open space is very, very attractive but when we think about what the, what Californians especially think of as a norm they want these big single family homes and it isn't sustainable. Absolutely, ecologically it is absolutely unsustainable and when we look at Berkeley and we look at some of our, say, San Pablo University Avenue, those could easily be densified and especially if they're well-designed and that takes, that does, you know, take some rules and some other and by limiting parking, in other words, by not requiring the builder of the housing put in parking, you can then use that otherwise would have been parking as open space and the other thing about Vienna, what they create is rooftop gardens and rooftop space so these are the kinds of things we could consider and when you look at Berkeley, we have some of the best transit access, Amtrak, AC Transit, BART, it is, they're very good transit, unfortunately has dropped in ridership due to the pandemic, I hope it comes back but it is accessible and available and we do not have to be dependent on our cars. So Nancy, you're gonna have the last word there, we have a hard stop at five, it is long after that so I wanna thank the panel, I wanna thank the audience and this is just beginning and there are a lot of topics that are gonna have to be continually discussed so thank you all. Thank you Dan.