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With a Nov. 25 deadline looming to finalize any measures to be placed on the March, 2004 ballot, continuing discussion over four proposed ballot measures will dominate tonight’s (Tuesday, Nov. 4) Berkeley City Council meeting when members return from a one-week vacation. 

Council is also expected to receive a report at Tuesday’s meeting from City Finance Director Fran David on “escaped tax assessments.” 

That report was requested by Mayor Tom Bates at Council last meeting two weeks ago after a citizen informed Council that prominent developer Patrick Kennedy hadn’t been billed Berkeley fees and assessments on the Gaia Building, a downtown mixed-use development. 

Later that week, the Daily Planet reported that a second Kennedy building, the Berkleyan, had also not been billed for city fees and assessments. 

Two proposed March ballot measures would lower the percentage a Berkeley candidate needs to win an election outright without triggering a runoff, lengthen the time between the initial election and a runoff, alter the number of signatures needed to land a slot on the ballot and add a filing fee to requirements for candidates who want a slot on city election ballots. 

Council asked city staff Oct. 21 to come to this week’s meeting with preliminary ballot language for the measures. 

Council is also scheduled to receive a report back from city staff concerning an Instant Runoff Voting charter amendment for the March ballot. Several Council members have expressed a desire to hold the measure until next November’s election. 

News of the Kennedy properties’ “escaped taxed assessment” issue comes at an awkward time for City Council, as one of the proposed ballot measures would ask Berkeley voters to approve a parcel tax increase in order to help make up a city budget deficit projected at $10 million to $16 million. Some observors have suggested that Berkeley voters might not look so favorably on assessing themselves new property taxes if they believed the city was lax in collecting existing property taxes on large city developments. 

Last week, the city manager’s office, under the signature of retiring City Manager Weldon Rucker, issued a memo to the mayor and City Council entitled “Gaia Building and Tax Assessments” to try to explain how the building escaped Berkeley fees and assessments. 

“This memo is in response to…the allegation [raised at the Oct. 21 Council meeting] that the owners of the Gaia Building did not pay Berkeley assessments since the issuance of a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy (TCO),” the memo read. 

“The allegation is accurate… Generally, when a property is developed, its building square footage and land use code are updated in the city’s land database when a final Certificate of Occupancy (CO) is issued. This information is then used to calculate the various taxes and assessments… However, it is a common practice to issue a TCO [Temporary Certificate of Occupancy] when a building is almost complete and safe to occupy, but when minor modifications are still required… 

“Prior to [the Oct. 21 Council meeting], the Finance, Planning, and Information Technology departments were already working together to modify our process to capture properties issued a TCO… Staff had already identified the Gaia property as being eligible for taxation, and the Finance Department was in the process of billing the property for the current tax year, and applicable past years as well.” 

The Rucker memo also said that as for the Berkleyan property, which was issued a final Certificate of Occupancy two years ago, “Taxes should have started to be assessed effective 7/1/01, but were not. This property will also be back billed immediately.” 

The memo continued that “Staff from [the Finance, Planning, and Information Technology departments] is working to develop cost-effective techniques to identify escaped assessments in a more timely fashion.”