4 Progressives Go Head to Head in Heated Race for Berkeley City Council Seat

Four progressive candidates, all with a few years to two decades of experience in public service, are vying for Berkeley’s District 4 City Council seat next week after Councilmember Kate Harrison announced her resignation from the seat in late January.

Soli Alpert, Elana Auerbach, Ruben Hernandez Story and Igor Tregub are registered for the race set for May 28.

District 4 includes Berkeley’s downtown district and several blocks of residential streets between Oxford Way and Sacramento Street. The L-shaped district has a population of about 15,700 residents as of the 2020 U.S. Census.

The four candidates are using the city’s generous public financing program, which allows them to each receive a 6-to-1 match on donations to their campaign, up to $60. (So if someone donates $60 to a candidate, that candidate receives $360 in public matching funds. The city will contribute a maximum of $49,000 per candidate.)

Those rules have resulted in fairly significant war chests for all four candidates. As of the week before the election, Hernandez Story led the pack with $49,000 in matching funds from the city, followed by Auerbach’s $41,994, Alpert’s $40,050 and Tregub’s $37,728, according to city public finance records. And that’s not including the individual campaign donations that triggered those matching funds from the city.

All four candidates spoke with Bay City News about their positions on the issues they see as most important to their community.

Harrison’s resignation

Harrison announced her resignation during a Jan. 30 City Council meeting, citing dysfunction in the city’s bureaucracy, among other local issues.

“Berkeley’s processes are broken, and I cannot in good conscience continue to serve on this body,” Harrison said during her resignation speech.

Accountability and transparency

Like Harrison, the district’s candidates expressed concerns about the city of Berkeley’s functionality. Alpert, Tregub, and Auerbach listed transparency and accountability for the City Council and management among their top five concerns for this election.

“I’ve seen a really big problem with the culture of City Hall, both from the City Council and senior management, that basically views the public and public processes as a distraction from their more enlightened work, rather than as like the fundamental job of the city,” said Alpert, who served as Harrison’s campaign manager for the Berkeley mayoral race.

Alpert is the current vice chair of the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board and has worked as a legislative assistant in Berkeley since before earning his undergraduate degree.

Like Alpert and Auerbach, if elected, Tregub plans to prioritize having a transparent, accountable, participatory process around Berkeley’s city governance and management to ensure that the city’s government is fulfilling the will of its citizens.

Tregub served on Berkeley’s Rent Board, Zoning Adjustments Board, and its Environment and Climate Commission and is currently the chair of a local Sierra Club chapter. His professional background centers around green energy and, more recently, consulting.

“We [could] be darn sure that the budgets that we approve as a city are truly a reflection of our holistic community values because we [would] have heard from as many members of the community as we could,” Tregub said.

Mass surveillance and public safety

Former councilmember Harrison’s resignation was announced during a council discussion of the potential of implementing mass surveillance technology in the city.

The city is considering adding six new general surveillance cameras across the city, although the two-year pilot program for existing license plate cameras hasn’t yet been completed, meaning full data on the effectiveness of cameras on crime isn’t yet available.

Auerbach stressed her confusion of a pilot program’s purpose if its data will not be available in the consideration of a more permanent program. Auerbach previously served on Berkeley’s Tenants Union and volunteers at the group Berkeley Copwatch; her professional background is in finance and mediation.

Hernandez Story and Tregub both voiced support for the program as a potential solution to a rise in property crimes in the area in recent years. Hernandez Story currently works as Berkeley District 2 councilmember Terry Taplin’s chief of staff and previously worked for former Richmond Mayor Tom Butt for four years. He worked in the Ohio Legislature as a college student.

All four candidates want to focus on reducing what they see as the core causes of crime. They identified unaffordable housing, homelessness and mental health crises as major contributors to public safety concerns in their district.

The candidates endorsed the expansion of Berkeley’s Specialized Care Unit, a non-police response force for residents experiencing mental health crises, to a 24/7 service and ending outsourcing of the program. Auerbach is one of several Berkeley residents who contributed to establishing the Specialized Care Unit, she said.

Alpert, Tregub and Auerbach all listed non-police response to non-criminal crises in the city as a potential solution to slow response times and understaffing issues within the Berkeley Police Department.

Housing and homelessness

Alpert and Auerbach both see corporate-owned housing projects — both for-profit and non-profit — as one of the major obstacles to affordable housing in the area.

“Every tenant deserves rights, but these big venture capital, corporate owners are much more committed to trying to squeeze things dry,” Alpert said.

The city of Berkeley allows housing developers to avoid installing mandatory affordable housing units by contributing to an in-lieu affordable housing fund in its place. Auerbach wants to see an end to this loophole.

“This is detrimental to bridging the divides of class and race that permeate our city,” Auerbach said. “And not only that, but it also doesn’t create actual affordable housing, so we need to mandate that developers build those units.”

Hernandez sees building starter homes — like duplexes and triplexes — alongside other housing as a potential solution to part of the housing crisis, while Tregub pointed more toward apartments.

Revitalizing downtown and supporting small businesses

Alpert said that landlords pricing small businesses out of their stores is the primary cause of vacant storefronts throughout Berkeley’s Downtown district and called for a commercial vacancy tax—much like the residential vacancy tax already imposed—to encourage commercial landlords to rent out their spaces at rates affordable to local businesses.

Hernandez Story and Auerbach both want to encourage pop-up events, performances and businesses downtown to revitalize the area. Hernandez Story also suggested shutting down the portion of Center Street that is often closed for events to be used as a permanent pedestrian plaza.

Tregub wants a sustainable fund to support small businesses and a streamlined permitting process to cut through red tape for business owners, while Auerbach thinks the city should invest in low- and no-interest loans for small businesses in the area, investing in a future return in sales taxes.

All candidates pointed to making the downtown area a more enjoyable public space to revitalize it economically. They pointed to recent installations of wooden benches at bus stops by community members as evidence of the lack of public spaces and seating throughout the city.

“This should not be in the community’s wheelbarrow,” Hernandez Story said. “They should be able to enjoy public spaces.”