By the Members of the Measure EE Steering Committee
When Berkeley voters are asked to pay extra taxes, it should be for a pressing, high-priority need. Voters should be informed of what exactly they are funding and be confident that funds will be spent as promised. With these principles in mind, we crafted Measure EE to fix our streets, sidewalks, pathways and bicycle boulevards.
Measure EE allocates money for very specific purposes that are important to the whole community. Our city government has substantially underfunded street repair for over a decade, such that even its recent promise to significantly increase funding will be insufficient to bring our pavement to an acceptable condition. So, Measure EE adds funding specifically for street repair — starting with our worst streets and bicycle boulevards, along with sidewalk and pathway repairs. Measure EE also establishes an independent commission to monitor expenditures and ensure that money is spent as intended.
People are getting hurt walking on our sidewalks, and the city’s plan to repair those sidewalks will take until at least 2048. We included money in Measure EE to fully repair our sidewalks without relying on homeowner funding or bureaucratic processes. That will keep faith with the disabled community, who often use the streets to get around because the sidewalks are impassable, and will prevent trip-and-fall claims.
Many of our supporters are bicyclists. They urged us to focus on improving Berkeley’s bicycle boulevard network instead of building barricaded cycle tracks because our bicycle boulevards minimize encounters with cars and don’t slow down first responders like cycle tracks do. We listened, and that’s why Measure EE prioritizes bicycle boulevards.
Before we worked to get 4,300 signatures from Berkeley voters to put Measure EE on the ballot, we reached out to those who developed Measure FF. They told us they weren’t interested in a consensus measure focusing on what we need now. Instead, they told us they wanted more money to build cycle tracks on our main traffic corridors, like the controversial one proposed for Hopkins Street.
You can see the results of this thinking on Fulton Street, where it is not unusual to see a confused driver on the two-way cycle track. That project cost $16.5 million — enough to eliminate one-third of the broken sidewalks in our city. Fixing sidewalks is our priority since six times as many people walk to work as riding a bike, and we already have a safe bicycle boulevard network.
Our city has many urgent funding needs, including fixing the streets, sidewalks, paths and bicycle boulevards. We urge you to vote yes on Measure EE to get this done in an accountable and transparent way without jeopardizing other funding priorities.
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2024/10/21/opinion-measure-ee-will-fix-our-streets-and-sidewalks
