Nov 2018 Local Ballot Measures

How I'm voting on Nov 2018 Local Ballot Measures

Here are my choices for local ballot measures. Summary here, details below the jump.

Schools

E: YES for Peralta Community Colleges
G: YES to Upgrade Peralta Community College Classrooms

Berkeley

O: YES YES YES for More Affordable Homes in Berkeley
P: YES to Support Homeless Services
Q: YES for Better Rent Stabilization Ordinance
R: YES for Berkeley’s Infrastructure Plan

East Bay Regional Parks District

FF: Yes for Wildfire protection in EBRPD

For details on my recommendations, read on ...

Schools

E: YES for Peralta Community Colleges

Measure E would extend an existing parcel tax that helps pay for the Peralta Community Colleges. Particularly in increasingly unaffordable and unequal California, community colleges are crucial. These funds help maintain programs that help community college students get credit towards associate’s degrees and prepare to transfer to 4-year institutions. The community colleges need your help. 

G: YES to Upgrade Peralta Community College Classrooms 

Measure G would authorize a bond to upgrade classrooms with new technology and seismic retrofits of old buildings. It will also increase STEM lab and Wi-Fi availability at the community colleges. It is such a slam dunk that no one even bothered to submit an argument against it.

City of Berkeley

O: YES YES YES for More Affordable Homes in Berkeley

This is a slam dunk YES – the most important thing on Berkeley’s ballot. Berkeley, and the rest of the Bay Area, has a housing crisis. Measure O would help. 

Measure O would allow the city to issue $135 million in general obligation bonds to create, acquire, and preserve affordable homes in Berkeley for very-low and low-income households. The city would pay for the bond by increasing property taxes by $23-33 per $100,000 of assessed value. 

Berkeley desperately needs more affordable places for people to live. We don’t have nearly enough affordable places to live now, and we’re not creating enough new ones. Measure O would help Berkeley pay for more and it would also make us more competitive for state matching funds. Since this is a tax, it needs a 2/3 vote. So PLEASE VOTE YES and tell your friends to VOTE YES too. 

P: YES to Support Homeless Services

Nearly 1% of Berkeley’s residents are homeless on any given night. Measure P would raise $6-8 million/year to pay for more services to help people who are homeless, including seniors and youth. These services include navigation centers, mental health support, and other services. Measure P would pay for those services with an increase to the transfer tax for expensive homes. The current transfer tax is 1.5% and is paid only when someone sells a house. Measure P would increase the tax to 2.5% ONLY for property sales and transfers over $1.5 million, adjusted annually to capture the top one-third of sales. 

That’s progressive, fair, and smartly designed. 

The opponents’ arguments – that this would reduce socioeconomic diversity in Berkeley – are simply incorrect. Please vote YES on P. 

Q: YES for Better Rent Stabilization Ordinance

This Berkeley measure has a connection to Prop 10, the state proposition to give cities more ability to impose rent control. Measure Q would update Berkeley’s Rent Control ordinance with some provisions that would only go into effect if Prop 10 passes and another that would apply even if Prop 10 fails. How you feel about Measure Q is probably connected to how you feel about Prop 10, but I suggest that you not have a knee-jerk Yes-Yes or No-No. 

First, here’s what Measure Q would do: 

If Prop 10 passes, Measure Q’s provisions would bring many more housing units under rent control, set the base rent as the most recent legal rent, exempt new construction for 20 years, and revise the definition of the date of new construction. If you support rent control, these are all good and reasonable changes. 

Whether or not Prop 10 passes, Measure Q would exempt accessory dwelling units (ADUs) when an owner lives on the same property, for rentals that begin after the election. The intent is to encourage more people to create and rent out ADUs. If that helps bring more ADUs onto the rental market (and it seems plausible that it would), that would be a good thing. I’m okay with exempting those from rent control because the owner-tenant relationship tends to be more personal when the owner lives on-site. 

If you support Prop 10, you should vote for Berkeley Measure Q. 

If you don’t support Prop 10, you might still want to support Measure Q anyway. Here’s why: if the rest of the state votes with you and defeats Prop 10, the provision exempting ADUs from rent control would still go into effect. And if you oppose Prop 10, you’d probably like that. 

R: YES for Berkeley’s Infrastructure Plan

Measure R is an advisory measure, placed on the ballot by the City Council, to tell the Mayor to lead a community process to develop a 30-year infrastructure plan (“Vision 2050”) that responds to threats of climate change as well as earthquakes. Doing that planning is a good idea. The Mayor has already said he agrees, offered that his office will cover the costs of the planning, and worked with city staff to start the process. Measure R is only an advisory measure: it does not create any funding for the process; it doesn’t require the city to do anything. A Yes vote just encourages the city to keep doing what it’s already doing. 

It also seems to me that a ballot measure is unnecessary. The city could’ve just done the planning without spending time or money on a ballot measure. But now that it’s on the ballot, please don’t vote No. I’ll probably vote Yes. But if you don’t bother to vote, it probably won’t hurt anything either. After all, there’s no ballot argument against this measure. It’ll probably win with 80-90% of the votes cast. 

East Bay Regional Parks District

FF: Yes for Wildfire protection in EBRPD 

Measure FF will continue funding for fire hazard programs in the East Bay. It is supported by both the taxpayers and the Sierra Club, and when those both agree… This measure guards against fire hazards and helps protect wildlife. Many environmental groups support this, and I trust them to know what is best in terms of funding for wildlife protection and environmental issues. Now is also definitely not the time to cut funding for wildfire protection given that there are four times as many wildfires in California compared to thirty years ago and that number is projected to continue to rise throughout this century.