by Nicole S.
“I didn’t think I would be motivated to get up on a Saturday morning to collect signatures, but to my surprise, I found myself excited to get out there and talk to voters,” said Nic Steinberg, an IEB member who volunteered for the Berkeley ballot initiative to start a public bank in the East Bay.
On May 7th, The Coalition to Keep Berkeley Money Local submitted 5,700 signatures from Berkeley residents to start a Public Bank in Berkeley. Currently, Berkeley’s tax dollars are invested into Big Banks that help fund private prisons, fossil fuel companies and industries that work against livable communities.
The grassroots campaign to establish Berkeley’s first public bank is the culmination of a decade of organizing, studies, and environmental reviews by Public Bank East Bay. The movement to take public money out of private banks started during calls for divestment from fossil fuel companies during the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Cities who wanted to divest from fossil fuels found themselves trapped by holding their money in a corporate bank, but had no other viable option for where to put large sums of public money. Thus came the idea of creating a publicly owned bank where community members, not wall street executives, decide where their money goes.
“I’m a researcher at U.C. Berkeley, under the Trump regime, there have been so many funding cuts, and the ability to do research on climate solutions have been stifled in many ways. A public bank creates a channel to provide money to research how to create more livable communities and create more affordable housing options” said Sunny Singhal, an IEB member and organizer for the public bank ballot initiative.
A public bank takes public money that the city has from taxes and fees and puts it into a government- owned institution where the money is allocated towards affordable housing, green energy solutions, and supporting local businesses. The public bank functions as a “wholesale” bank meaning individuals do not have accounts, only large entities like cities, counties, unions, and mission-aligned non-profits can open accounts; this allows interest rates to be kept low. The ballot initiative, if passed, would raise the funds to start the public bank through a temporary six year parcel tax of $0.06 on dwelling units and $0.09 on commercial properties in Berkeley. Although publicly owned, the management of the bank would not rely entirely on regional governments, but would include professional bankers and be regulated by state and federal governments. City officials would have seats on the board of directors and influence loan policy.
A public bank poses a solution to the Bay Area’s affordable housing crisis and paves the way for other East Bay cities to divest from Wall Street.
“I was living in San Francisco and struggling to find affordable housing. Whenever you bring up the issue of affordable housing, the first question is how are you going to pay for it? Well, this got me thinking that we need a separate pot of money to do just that,” said Julian LaRosa, the field director for the ballot measure.
The grassroots campaign to fund Berkeley’s first public bank started only 2 and a half months ago. Volunteers have been showing up on Saturday and Sunday to frequent pedestrian heavy areas of Berkeley including the Berkeley farmers market, 4th Street, Strawberry Creek park, and downtown Berkeley BART stations to collect signatures to get the petition on the ballot. The City of Berkeley requires 2,800 valid signatures from residents of Berkeley to qualify a measure for the city ballot. The Coalition to Keep Berkeley Money Local and Public Bank East Bay turned in 5,700 signatures to the city on May 7th. Indivisible East Bay members alone collected over 800 signatures for the ballot measure.
“I believe it’s important to divest from private banks that fund projects in fossil fuels, private prisons, and wars. Instead, I really want to help Berkeley support affordable housing, clean energy, and small business efforts” said Eliza Hicks, a volunteer who helped gather signatures.
We should know by July whether or not the City of Berkeley certified the Public Bank initiative to be on the ballot in November. We are confident it will be.
The campaign in Berkeley is the first step in a larger regional effort to get other cities in the Bay Area involved in funding a public bank.
