Berkeley City Services Tops, Report Finds

Berkeley offers far more services than other comparable cities in the state, according to the first in a series of reports released Monday by Mayor Tom Bates' office.

The Benchmark Services survey compared goods and services provided by the city of Berkeley to those of eight other California cities-Concord, Fremont, Hayward, Oakland, Palo Alto, Pasadena, Richmond and Santa Monica.

Berkeley ranked above average for most services, including number of libraries, fire fighters and homeless shelter beds, and approximately average on total expenditures.

Commissioned to respond to public concern that tax money was being spent efficiently, the survey rehashed preliminary data presented by the city manager's office earlier this month.

Criteria for the eight cities chosen were proximity and comparable size to Berkeley, as well as whether they housed a major university, said Cisco DeVries, the mayor's chief of staff.

Santa Monica and Pasadena were included because they are the only other cities in the state that provide public health care, said Manager Tracy Vesely.

The mayor's office hoped to look at a cross-section of cities, DeVries said.

"We're trying to provide the citizens of Berkeley with the total picture," Vesely said.

Still, some are skeptical of the survey, especially in light of its release just two weeks before the November 2 election day, when Berkeley citizens will vote on several tax measures for the city.

The release date was timed purposefully to sway voters, said former Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean. And the cities and services used in the survey were chosen specifically to make Berkeley look reasonable by comparison, Dean added.

"They have numbers like swimming pools per resident. What does that mean?" Dean said. "You can't just take something out of the blue-they don't give the kinds of things a serious study would lay out."

Dean and her organization, BudgetWatch, fear that Berkeley voters-particularly students and renters-will be unduly swayed by the survey without considering its impact on homeowners.

If all the budget measures pass, it could increase taxes by $1,000 annually for the average taxpayer, Dean said. That could make the city of Berkeley increasingly unaffordable to ordinary people, she said.

Any delays in the release of the survey information were purely logistical, because of when the mayor's office received the report, DeVries said.

"This is a time at which people are talking a lot about these issues," he said. "It's information that people have been asking for and talking about, but the intentions are to put what the city spends and what the services are into context."

The bottom line is that the city does not have the money to do all the things it would like to do for its citizens, Vesely said.

"We're in the throws of a major budget crisis," Vesely said. "We're facing a $7.5 million deficit. If some or all of the budget measures don't pass, the council has some pretty tough choices to make in terms of what services it will be able to provide in the future."

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