Berkeley City Council heard the terms of UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan, or LRDP, and adopted items on its consent calendar Tuesday.
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín began the meeting by outlining the key terms of the agreement made earlier this month between UC Berkeley and the city.
Campus will transact annual payments to Berkeley amounting to $82.6 million over the next 16 years, thereby persuading the city to retract its litigation surrounding campus’s housing objectives, a press release from Arreguín’s office added.
UC Berkeley’s annual payments to the city will begin at $4.1 million, $2.8 million of which will be allocated toward fire safety and other city services, according to Arreguín. Another $1.3 million will be allocated toward capital projects and other services.
The amount of the annual payment will increase by 3% compounding each year until the agreement’s termination, Arreguín said.
This year, according to Arreguín, the city plans to allocate $920,000 of the annual campus proceeds to its Housing Trust Fund. $130,000 will be used for a permanent restroom in the Telegraph area, and an amount jointly determined by the city and campus will fund a daytime drop-in service center for the unhoused community in the Telegraph area.
The city will spend the remainder of the payment “as it determines to be appropriate,” Arreguín added.
The city will negotiate with campus over the span of the agreement to determine a “collaborative” planning process where the city can review and comment on campus’s capital projects located in the city and assess the impacts of campus undergraduate enrollment on the city, Arreguín noted.
During the consent calendar portion of the meeting, Arreguín and Councilmember Sophie Hahn introduced their item to accelerate Berkeley’s transition to plant-based foods by reducing its current animal-based product procurement 50% by 2024. In 2022, the city plans to confer with the city manager to determine the feasibility of achieving 100% plant-based food sources, according to Hahn.
“This is a very important step for the city to take as part of our broader climate efforts, as well as building on a long tradition of promoting the humane treatment of animals here in the city of Berkeley,” Arreguín said during the meeting.
City Council also approved AC Transit’s Dana Complete Street Pilot Project, which plans to improve pedestrian and bicycle conditions on Dana Street. Developments would include a boarding island for bus passengers and converting an existing traffic lane into a two-way cycle track, according to the meeting agenda.
During public comment, AC Transit external affairs representative Ryan Lau expressed support for the project, detailing the company’s “extensive” public outreach efforts.
“The Dana Complete Street Pilot Project will advance the city’s 2017 bike plan as well as Transit-First and Vision Zero policies,” Lau said during the meeting.