Berkeley · a civic budget tracker

Berkeley Transparency Hub

Where the City’s money comes from, where it goes, what it was promised to do, and whether anyone checks. Built from primary documents — agendas, budgets, audits, the ACFR — and written to be read in plain language.

Every figure is traceable to a cited source or marked unverified. Corrections welcome.

Start here

New to the budget? Begin with these two.

The Simple Version
The ~$29M recurring gap explained with one envelope metaphor and four levers. Five minutes.
Berkeley Budget Basics
Where every tax dollar comes from and goes, the recurring gap, and the ~$2.1B in unfunded infrastructure.

Plans & governance

What the city committed to — and how a plan actually becomes work

Adopted Plans vs. Strategic Priorities
All 27 plans scored for currency, the accountability pipeline, and the referral queue that decides what staff work on. The canonical plans tracker.
The General Plan Clock
Element-by-element: eight of the General Plan’s nine elements are frozen at 2001–02. Only Housing is current.
Plans × Audits × Budget
Each goal mapped to the City Auditor’s 384 recommendations and the FY27–28 budget. 76 recommendations dropped.

Following the money

How the ~$1.8B budget is actually structured

The Fund Map
Connecting the budget to Berkeley’s ~110 separate funds.
How Grant Money Flows
Where outside grant dollars enter and where they go.
Cross-Fund Opportunities
Six legal mechanisms by which other-fund savings could relieve the General Fund deficit.
Budget Terms, Plain English
Consent calendar, pass-through, AAO, RFP — defined without jargon.

Deficit & accountability

The recurring gap, whose watch it grew on, and what the audits found

Two Fixable Problems
Transparency and accountability, framed as fixable rather than fated.
The “Mayor’s Budget”
Where the budget really originates, and what that label obscures.
Rent Board FY27 Budget
The Rent Stabilization Board’s separate budget, examined.

Agenda watch

The council agenda — decoded, traced, and scored against the plans

Council, Decoded — the series
What happened at Council this month, decoded in under five minutes: the money moved, three items worth knowing, and what’s on the horizon.
Left Field ⚾
Agenda items that trace back to no adopted plan and no audit recommendation. Not an accusation — a fielding position. Provenance transparency for what the Council takes up.
Budget Agenda Scans
The raw, dated agenda scans that feed the monthly recap — the back catalog.

Tax measures

Every parcel tax and bond on your bill, and what’s on the 2026 ballot

Berkeley’s Tax Measures
A guide to the measures on your tax bill — links through to every individual measure, from Measure GG (2008) to the 2024 slate.

Tools & models

Interactive companions — separate apps, part of the same project

Tax Measure Impact Calculator tool ↗
Enter your assessed value and see how the 2026 measures would change your property-tax bill.
Financial Condition Dashboard tool ↗
The City’s financial condition and homeless-spending comparison, as an interactive dashboard.
Event Value Twin
A reusable model for weighing a civic event’s economic, fiscal, and public value — Kite Festival as the first case.