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Berkeley City Council asked citizens to come out to the regular meeting last Tuesday to air their opinions on the proposed March, 2004, parcel tax increase ballot measure. A large number of Berkeley citizens complied, packing Council chambers Tuesday night, and pretty much telling Council to take their tax and shove it. 

The city faces an $8 million to $10 million budget deficit next year, projected to rise to as high as $20 million within five years. Council has proposed a parcel tax measure for next spring’s ballot that would make up half that projected deficit, hoping to institute budget cuts to make up the rest. 

The proposed tax would raise property taxes in Berkeley a little over nine cents a square foot, which would add about $110 to the tax bill for a 1,200-square-foot of property, up to a $913 increase for 10,000 square feet. 

Implementation of the measure requires approval by two-thirds of the voters. 

According to city Budget Manager Paul Navazio, without a new source of revenue, the city faces a 10 percent across-the-board cut next year of all city services. If no cuts are made to fire or police services, those necessary cuts would balloon to between 20 percent to 30 percent of the remaining city budget. 

In anticipation of the pending cuts, Mayor Tom Bates and three members of City Council (Linda Maio, Miriam Hawley, and Gordon Wozniak) have proposed a “budget crisis recovery plan” for debate before Council at its Nov. 25 meeting. Included in the proposed plan are a freeze on most new hiring by the city and a moratorium on all new city expenditures. 

Meanwhile, at the request of the mayor, the city manager’s office will do some more tweaking of the proposed parcel tax before putting it to Council for a final approval of the ballot language Nov. 25. 

Bates asked City Manager Phil Kamlarz to cap the proposed tax at $7 million, eliminating the trigger that would allow the tax to increase in proportion to any potential state cuts to Berkeley’s budget. Bates also requested that the proposed tax be automatically resubmitted to voters for approval in four years, rather than the original six. 

If Tuesday night’s hearing is any indication, however, those alterations may be a case of too little, too late. Some 30 residents spoke their minds to Council, almost all in opposition to the proposed tax, and none citing any previous Council concessions on the measure. 

Berkeley resident Patrick Finley—stressing that he isn’t a landlord—summed up the position of many when he told Council, “The structure [of the proposed parcel tax] is proposed so that the majority can impose on a minority a property tax, so only the few will carry the burden to benefit the many. I say shame on you for your divisive proposal, and your failure to fulfill the trust to manage the city’s revenue.” 

Dorothy Adriennes, an artist, an unemployed single mother, and a Berkeley property owner since 1985, told council she was at her “wit’s end” because of a property tax bill that was already more than $4,000 a year. “I’m one of those persons who is at my limit,” she said. “I need some relief here. The Berkeley artists can’t afford to live in Berkeley.” 

Bob McDow, a Berkeley homeowner and taxi driver, said “a lot of us are fed up. Last November, three of four Berkeley tax measures were voted down, with no significant opposition. This time, there’s organized opposition.” McDow said that if Council did not make significant revisions to the tax proposal, “we will fight it, we will oppose it, and we will defeat it. There is no doubt.” 

Three more Berkeley neighborhood associations—the McKinley Addison Allston Grant Neighborhood Association, the Willard Neighborhood Association, and the Blake and California Streets Neighborhood Association—came out in opposition Tuesday night, bringing to five the number of Berkeley neighborhood groups against the tax. In addition, the Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations (BANA), an umbrella coalition, has announced opposition to the parcel tax. 

Many speakers questioned why Council didn’t propose other fund-raising measures rather than the parcel tax. 

But to the complaint of some speakers that the proposed parcel tax was a “regressive tax based upon the square footage rather than the value of the property,” City Manager Phil Kamlarz said that state law “limits the types of taxes we can implement. Few, if any, progressive tax raises are possible.” 

A clearly frustrated Mayor Tom Bates took aim at some of the public speakers, saying, “A lot of misinformation was put out tonight [about the nature of the Berkeley budget and the proposed tax cut]. It’s very frustrating to sit here and listen to this misinformation.” 

But Bates seemed almost resigned to the possible—some might say probable—defeat of the measure next March, stating that while he didn’t want to preside over layoffs and radical budget cuts, he would do so if that was the will of the voters. 

Bates, in fact, seemed to be almost publicly preparing for an imminent loss. “We’re trying to craft something that we can present to the voters, and if they turn it down, they turn it down. I used to play football up at Cal,” he added. “I know how to lose. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.” 

The remark got one of the few laughs of the night. 

Council got more bad budget news during an earlier 5 p.m. hearing on the city’s labor contracts. While Council has floated the idea of renegotiating the labor pacts as a way of cutting the budget deficit, representatives of several of the city’s major labor unions flatly rejected the notion during the public hearing. 

The city is presently locked into contracts with fire personnel until 2006, with police personnel until 2007, and with all other union-represented city staff until 2008. 

City staff and union representatives both said they were continuing negotiations over several labor cost-cutting proposals that would not involve renegotiating contracts.  

The only good news for the city on the labor front on Tuesday was the announcement that city department heads had agreed to a voluntary three percent pay cut to help in the budget crisis.