Berkeley has finally begun addressing its poor spending habits; however, the cost of doing so has fallen disproportionately on the city’s most vulnerable residents.
The fiscal year 2027 budget that was unanimously adopted and took effect July 1 delivered cuts to many city programs in order to bridge a nearly $30 million structural deficit.
This is not the first time that the city has faced a deficit. Year after year, Berkeley has spent more than it makes, addressing a persistent structural deficit through one-time transfers to the general fund. However, by relying on superficial fixes, the City Council has jeopardized the long-term fiscal stability of the city.
This year, the city has finally decided to face this long-standing problem by taking drastic measures to balance the budget. Twenty city employees face layoffs, more than 100 vacant positions are being cut and a multitude of programs are losing funding. But undoubtedly, the most abhorrent cuts are those to services dedicated to unhoused residents and mental health crises.
The Mobile Crisis Team, a 47-year-old initiative that connected individuals going through mental health emergencies directly with behavioral health professionals, was completely eliminated. Similarly, the STAIR Center, which provides temporary accommodation to unhoused individuals and resources to help individuals find permanent housing once they leave, lost more than $400,000 in funding.
Of course, social services are not the only victims of Berkeley’s budget reductions: Departments across the city are facing similar cuts. However, Berkeley does not exist to serve its departments but rather its residents. The Editorial Board condemns the city’s sweeping cuts to services and support for unhoused residents. Instead of maintaining a sense of supposed fairness across departments by slashing equal percentages, Berkeley must consider cuts alongside their potential impact on residents.
Butchering these safety net programs exposes the city’s failure to provide meaningful support for its residents. Rather than addressing the structural conditions that give rise to crime and psychiatric emergencies, these cuts are part and parcel of a broader transition toward a more conservative, reactive model of public safety in which policing replaces prevention.
Public safety encompasses more than just arresting criminal offenders. It means creating the conditions in which the impetus to commit a crime does not exist. By addressing the root cause of crime through offering resources such as housing, food and mental health services to those who are in need of them, Berkeley can address the root cause of what forces many to break the law.
With the elimination of the Mobile Crisis Team, police will be the default responders to even more psychiatric emergencies, replacing mental health professionals. This will likely increase the number of hospitalizations initiated without a clinical evaluation. Further, the city increased the fee it charges for ambulance trips last year. The escalating financial stress associated with hospitalization will discourage individuals who are facing mental health emergencies from reaching out for help.
When the greater possibility of hospitalization without behavioral health professionals is considered alongside the rising cost of being hospitalized in Berkeley, it becomes clear that it is now more likely that individuals who are going through mental health crises will hurt themselves or others. Berkeley is expecting to rejuvenate its finances by providing less for the residents that depend most on its public services.
Moreover, housing instability increases the incidence of 5150 interventions by leaving the most vulnerable populations subject to involuntary hospitalization and displacement. Without stable housing, consistent outpatient support or sustained community-based care, many are pushed through a revolving door of rehospitalization without resolution of long-term mental health.
City officials have deemed the cuts a tough necessity for achieving a balanced budget. In so doing, they ignore the clear alternatives available. The most obvious way to avoid cuts to social programs would be by redistributing the immense amount of money allotted to our police department.
It is not difficult to find ways in which the police department could decrease its spending. The city recognizes this and has cut back on the most obvious option: the vacant positions within the department.
Prior to this month, Berkeley had authorized 181 sworn officers on staff. However, the last time the department had this many officers was in 2010. The peak staffing levels from 2023 onward have hovered around 150. As of June 29, the number of sworn officers sits at 139.
This means that while the police department has only ever had a maximum of around 150 staffers over the past few years, it has received funding for many more positions that remain unoccupied. But in the fiscal year 2027 budget, the council has decided to cut the authorized number of sworn officers in the department from 181 to 164.
However, this budget has been made with the assumption that the sales tax increase that will be voted on in the November city elections will pass. Should the sales tax increase not pass, the number of authorized officers will drop to 149.
This so-called “worst-case scenario” seems like the most reasonable option for Berkeley to take. The Editorial Board believes that the revenue the city hopes to dedicate to vacant positions from an increased sales tax should instead be used to revitalize the social services that have lost funding. Frankly, it is nonsensical to keep pumping money into phantom positions at the expense of community welfare.
Opponents of the city’s decision to cut the number of authorized staff argue that cutting positions normalizes the department’s current state of operations, which relies heavily on mandatory overtime to meet minimum staff requirements. However, critics must come to terms with the fact that the city has not filled its former allotment of 181 authorized positions in the last 15 years, and it is extremely unlikely that the city will reach the new authorized count of 164 in the near future.
The recruitment failures seen in recent years best exhibit this. Despite being given $300,000 to spend on recruitment efforts over the past two fiscal years, the Berkeley Police Department has seen a drop in its number of sworn police officers. This shortcoming, rather than being an anomaly, is representative of the statewide data that shows low staffing across California police departments since the pandemic.
Though one could argue that the vacant positions would fill up if Berkeley invested more of its general fund into the police department, past city budgets prove otherwise. The amount of money from the general fund that the police department will be given to spend in 2027 is set to see an overall 17% increase since fiscal year 2025. In spite of the significant rise in authorized police spending, the number of sworn staff in the department has, in fact, dropped.
Increasing investments to vacant police positions in the hopes that more policing will result in less crime is, at best, a naive solution. Yet Berkeley’s budget banks on this very gambit. In an attempt to address the budgetary issues that have perennially plagued Berkeley, the City Council has created more systemic problems. Clearly, these problems will not be solved overnight. But if the city chose to embrace investment in social work and services, a safer city would be closer than we think.