Update: With ⅔ of the votes counted in Alameda County, Measure FF has received more than 60% approval, according to the Berkeley Safe Streets campaign. “Although more votes have yet to be counted, this incredibly positive result indicates that it’s clear FF has passed,” informed the campaign via social media. Measure FF needed a simple majority to pass and to get more votes in the affirmative than Measure EE. The latter measure is currently 55.93% in the NO category.
Greenbelt Alliance endorsed a YES vote on Measure FF and a NO vote on competing Measure EE to ensure that Berkeley has sufficient funding to pave streets, improve bike and pedestrian infrastructure, and add green infrastructure. We are glad to see the community support for a more complete approach to street safety.
Measure FF will create a special parcel tax ($0.17/sf (residential) / $0.25/sf (commercial)) that could that will provide more than $250M over 14 years for the purposes of “street and sidewalk repair, repaving and reconstruction, pedestrian safety projects, traffic-calming measures on bicycle boulevards, and environmental infrastructure.”
Learn more about the campaign at www.yesonff.com
Why It Matters
At Greenbelt Alliance, we support the “complete streets” approach—meaning designing our cities with pedestrians, bikes, cars and multimodal types of transport in mind— and advocate for increased access to green public infrastructure to improve resilience in our communities. This measure will support Berkeley in making more investments that will improve streets and sidewalks while also making improvements that will make it easier for people to get out of their cars (helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) for a safe, comfortable, and accessible biking, walking or transit experience, while improving green infrastructure and adding native tree species.
Adding complication to this vote, Berkeley had two competing measures to fund street repair and the measure that receives the most support will be adopted.
Originally published on September 23, 2024.
This blog has been updated with further information on September 30.
