Berkeley council, officials still whittling down $776 million proposed budget (2024)

Berkeley officials are making final tweaks to the city’s budget for the next two years, with several agencies proposing eight-figure increases in expenditures for the next fiscal year.

Mayor Jesse Arreguín told Berkeleyside he is still working on a final recommendation for “expenditures and budget balancing measures,” and hopes to have a final version ready by today, a day before the City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee meets again to workshop the budget proposal.

On June 25, the full council is scheduled to vote on a final version of the budget, which at present stands at a proposed $776 million for the fiscal year that begins July 1 — a 5.8% increase from what was budgeted for the current fiscal year ending June 30 — and $717 million for the one following. Salaries and benefits account for 53%, or 386.4 million, of the proposed budget for 2025.

City finance officials have warned that projected expenditures are outpacing projected revenues, meaning the city will have to find areas to trim costs or dip into reserve funds to balance its biennial budget.

Below is a rundown of increases some city agencies are proposing for the next two fiscal years — 2024-25 and 2025-26.

• Berkeley’s Health, Housing and Community Services Department is seeking to ramp up expenditures by more than a third, from roughly $99.7 million budgeted for 2024 to $136.2 million in 2025 and $135.3 million in 2026, but that increase is projected to come almost entirely from the city’s affordable housing mitigation fund rather than its general fund, and go to housing and community services, according to the proposal.
• The proposed Berkeley Fire Department budget includes a roughly $10.6 million increase, from roughly $62.3 million in 2024 to roughly $72.9 million in 2025, then to $74.7 million in 2026, citing “a rapid expansion of the organization, and the need for adequate facility space.” Nearly $8 million of that increase would go directly to fire operations, according to the proposal. A chunk of the increase, roughly $1.2 million in the first year, would come from Measure FF funds.
• The department’s “basic structure has remained unchanged since the 1980s, but the demand and need for services has greatly increased,” according to the proposal. It is reorganizing in response to new data on its own standards of coverage, wildfire danger, dispatch needs and “the needs of the community,” according to the proposal. Meanwhile, the department has coped with facilities in various stages of disrepair — some in need of total replacement — that are too small for the department’s staff and operations, according to the proposal.
• The Berkeley Police Department is seeking a roughly $6.4 million increase, from $88.2 million budgeted for 2024 to $94.6 million in 2025, then another $3.6 million for $98.2 million in expenditures in 2026. With 27 vacancies for sworn officers, six more for community services officers and supervisors, 13 in dispatch and five more around BPD, the agency has been forced “to rely heavily on overtime to meet minimum staffing and coverage needs,” according to a presentation before the Budget and Finance Committee on May 8. The department has blown past its overtime budget the last three years, although the margin for 2024 — approximately $400,000 over the $6.6 million budget — is smaller than the $2 million overrun in 2023 or the $1.7 million in 2022, according to the presentation.
• The projected expenditures of the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department have dropped from $53.7 million in 2024 to $47.6 million in 2025 and $47.4 million in 2026 and, while they remain above the $45.6 million spent in 2023, the proposed amounts are still well below the $60.8 million spent in 2021 or $53.5 million in 2022.
• The Public Works Department, with the largest projected expenditure budget of any city agency, is looking to bump its expenditures about $4 million, from $188.3 million in 2025 to $192.3 million in 2025, then back down to $182.6 million in 2026. A little more than a quarter of each year’s projected expenditures come from capital outlay. Funding for roadway and other infrastructure repairs “remains perennially underfunded,” according to the proposed budget.
• Each council district would get a roughly one-third bump in salaries and benefits in 2025, but it was not clear from the proposed budget how much of that increase would go to individual council members or other staff working in their offices. The mayor’s office would get an increase in salaries and benefits of just over 16%. (Note: These salary increases are subject to annual increases due to Measure JJ, a city charter change approved by voters in 2020.)
• Planning and Development expenditures are projected to increase from $31.3 million in 2024 to a little more or less than $33.3 million in 2025 and 2026.
• The City Attorney’s Office’s proposed expenditure budget is roughly $9.3 million for 2025 and over $9.4 million for 2026, more than $1 million higher than what was adopted for 2024 and roughly half again as much as the amount — about $6.2 million each year — that the office spent in 2021 and 2022. The office cited increased records requests, increases in frequency and sophistication of litigation the office handles and staff time spent researching council proposals as reasons for its burgeoning budget.
• The City Manager’s Office — currently in flux, with the current manager, Dee Williams-Ridley, stepping down next month, and her successor scheduled to begin in September — has asked for approximately $17.8 million for 2025 and $18 million for 2025. That’s a slight uptick from the $16.9 million budgeted for 2024 but still well below the $19.8 million it spent in 2023.
• The Finance Department has asked for a $1.6 million bump, from just over $10.6 million budgeted for 2024 to $12.2 million in 2025 and $12.3 the year after, citing challenges with recruitment and retention and outdated systems for purchasing and accounting by and payments to the city, among other issues.