Berkeley City Council meeting, Tuesday June 28, live coverage
Berkeleyside's Lance Knobel attended tonight's Berkeley City Council meeting and live tweeted the highlights. Look for full story on Berkeleyside tomorrow.
We're live tweeting from tonight's city council mtg. 2012 and 2013 budget up for vote tonight. #Berkeleycouncil- The first part of the meeting is about the consent calendar: lots of short items that are handled very rapidly.
- A technical error requires an amendment to the pro-business zoning changes. So it won't get a second reading tonight. #Berkeleycouncil
- Lots of Pacific Steel workers here. In support of resolution urging DHS to stop audit of I-9 forms at Pac Steel. #Berkeleycouncil
- Council passes all the items on consent calendar, including Pacific Steel resolution. #Berkeleycouncil
- Now it's on to the main issue in front of the council tonight: the two-year budget for fiscal years 2012 and 2013. The main content of the budget has been discussed in 10 previous council meetings since October, and is certain to pass. The debate tonight is all about the supplemental proposals.Before councilmembers speak, there is time for public comment. The first 10 speakers get two minutes; subsequent speakers get one minute.
- Warm pool advocates won't go away. A plea for design changes to decrease costs of warm pool in public comments. #Berkeleycouncil
- Peter Mendoza from Center for Independent Living calls for renewed funding for low-vision program. #Berkeleycouncil
- Fair number of speakers in support of pools. Budget has an amendment to look at new measure to fund pools. #Berkeleycouncil
- $50k for study on pools is the idea. Members Maio and Anderson want this. #Berkeleycouncil
- Sorry. Anderson wants to spend $40k on pools study. Maio want Kamlarz to review cost estimates and report back. #Berkeleycouncil
- Anderson's proposal for supplemental funding to a variety of community projects and agencies calls for about $100k more funding than Maio's proposal (we'll have the full details in tomorrow's Berkeleyside).The idea is to fund the extra by trimming the budget's multi-million dollar allocation for paving.
- What Anderson/Worthington are both supporting is reducing funding for paving to create allocations for community programs. #Berkeleycouncil
- Wozniak says "I think in these times we can't spend $10k on festivals." #Berkeleycouncil
Great foofaraw between Worthington and Mayor Bates over both a Worthington proposal to find the extra money and Worthington's assertion that the public wasn't given a fair hearing tonight.
