Berkeley City Council D4 Candidate Forum on Transportation

Start: 2024-05-08 17:30:00 UTC Pacific Daylight Time (US & Canada) (GMT-07:00)

This is a virtual event

Berkeley's District 4 Special Election on May 28 for downtown's City Councilmember will significantly impact how Berkeley residents and visitors get around. City Councilmember's ability to shape city budgets and policy means they can make Berkeley a place that is easier for everyone to get around in an affordable, low-carbon, safe and accessible way...or they can continue the status quo.

Tune in to learn directly from the candidates vying for your vote about their values, vision, and plans for how Berkeley residents and visitors get around.

Hosted by Walk Bike Berkeley, Telegraph for People, East Bay Transit Riders Union, and Transbay Coalition

Confirmed candidates in attendance: Elana Auerbach, Rubén Hernández Story, Igor Tregub, and Soli Alpert

About the Candidates (bio provided by the candidates):

Elana Auerbach, who has lived in Berkeley since 2006, is a mother, spouse, activist, and writer. She has been an organizer with the Berkeley Tenants Union, Berkeley Copwatch and People’s Park. Housing the unhoused, investigating racist police violence in the Berkeley Police Department, and supporting senior tenants from eviction are some of the ways Elana has contributed to the Berkeley community. She also wrote a regular column called “Reimagining Berkeley” for The Berkeley Times. For years, she had a mediation and facilitation practice. Elana’s compassion is her guide and will bring integrity and accountability to the Berkeley City Council.

Rubén was born in Mexico and raised in South Texas by a single mother in Section 8 housing along with his two siblings. He is a first-generation college graduate, earning a degree in International Relations and Diplomacy from the Ohio State University. He has gone on to work for four elected officials in Ohio and California at the federal, state, and local level, where he currently serves as Councilmember Terry Taplin's chief of staff. He has worked to advance initiatives on gun violence prevention and criminal justice reform, creating housing near BART stations, developing a West Berkeley Green New Deal, expanding bus and ferry service alongside electric vehicle charging, and improving safety for pedestrians and cyclists. After moving to Berkeley in 2018, he became deeply involved in the community. In addition to his work in Berkeley City Hall, he serves as president of the East Bay Young Democrats and as immediate past president of the Latine Young Democrats of the East Bay, where he has helped uplift voices of young people and people of color and give them a seat at the table.

Rubén is running because he and his fiancée have set roots in Berkeley - and they want to stay and build their lives here. As an immigrant, renter, and transit rider, he will fight to address the housing supply and affordability crisis and protect renters, advance climate and mobility justice and create safe streets, strengthen community policing and accountability, provide compassionate care for our unsheltered neighbors, and revitalize our Downtown economy while centering worker protections.

Soli Alpert serves as the Vice Chair of the Berkeley Rent Board. From 2017 to 2022 he worked as a Legislative Assistant at the Berkeley City Council, where he also served as a union steward and delegate for SEIU 1021. He has focused legislatively on tenants' and workers' rights, helping to author the Berkeley Fair Workweek Ordinance and Empty Homes Tax.

A proud Berkeley resident and community leader for more than 20 years, Igor Tregub’s values and priorities are rooted in helping our community. He is inspired by generations of Berkeleyans who have made a profound difference in the world, and is rooted in his own lived experience as an immigrant from Ukraine.

It’s easy to espouse bold progressive ideas. Throughout his public service career, Igor has gotten them accomplished, from helping craft implementing legislation and securing funding for Berkeley Way/HOPE Center, a revolutionary extremely low- and no-income affordable housing project with wraparound services in Downtown Berkeley, to getting safety lights installed for pedestrians and bicyclists on a high-collision intersection, to working with the former District 4 Councilmember to electrify our buildings - legislation now adopted in hundreds of other jurisdictions nationally.