Enter your own spending, assessed value, and home size for an estimate built from the measures’ own rates.
Calculate my ballot cost →In December 2025, Berkeley staff compared FY2026 property-based taxes and assessments on the same hypothetical 1,900-square-foot home with a $550,000 assessed value in Berkeley, Oakland, and Albany. Which city was already highest?
Berkeley. The City's own comparison put the modeled annual property-based taxes and assessments at $10,924 in Berkeley, $10,008 in Albany, and $9,365 in Oakland. That is about $916 more than Albany and $1,559 more than Oakland before the November 2026 measures are added.
The point is not that every Berkeley household pays these exact amounts. It is that Berkeley itself made an apples-to-apples comparison using the same home assumptions, and Berkeley was already the highest of the three.
Measure V proponents say the half-cent increase would "simply" bring Berkeley to the same sales-tax rate as neighboring cities such as Albany. What does that comparison leave out?
The word "simply" does a lot of work. It compares one tax rate in isolation. Berkeley's own December 2025 comparison already had the same modeled home paying about $916 more in annual property-based taxes and assessments than in Albany before the November ballot.
A household does not pay one line of the tax code at a time. Property taxes, parcel taxes, assessments, sales taxes, bond levies, and other charges come from the same household budget. Matching Albany on one rate therefore does not establish parity in the household pocketbook.
Berkeley's modeled property-based burden was already $1,559 above Oakland's. Which two November Berkeley measures would add further property-based obligations that Oakland voters are not being asked to approve through equivalent city measures?
Measure U and Measure Z. Measure U would add debt-service property taxes for a $300 million general-obligation bond. Measure Z would add a parcel tax based on square footage to capitalize the public bank. Oakland's city ballot contains neither an equivalent GO bond nor an equivalent public-bank capitalization tax.
Measure V matters too, but it is a sales tax, so it does not belong in this particular property-based comparison. The point here is narrower: Berkeley already started above Oakland in the City's apples-to-apples property comparison and is considering additional property-based obligations that Oakland voters are not.
Why can the same sales-tax rate impose a different relative burden across households?
California's Legislative Analyst has described the sales and use tax as generally regressive: lower-income households tend to pay a larger share of their income in sales taxes than higher-income households.
That matters when Berkeley is compared with Albany. Census QuickFacts puts Berkeley's 2020–2024 median household income at about $108,092, versus $144,107 in Albany, and Berkeley's poverty rate at 17.3%, versus 6.8% in Albany. Berkeley is also much larger: about 121,911 residents in the 2025 estimate versus about 19,195 in Albany.
So 'Albany already charges 10.75%' is not an equity analysis. The same rate lands on different populations.
Does the fact that a sales tax is regressive mean it can never be good public policy?
No. Regressivity is a cost that needs justification, not an automatic veto. The regional transit measure is a useful contrast. Its case is not merely 'transit is good': the measure is designed to prevent major service cuts and includes dedicated rider-focused funding. MTC says Clipper START provides a 50% fare discount to eligible low-income adults, and the measure could expand the program to another 100,000 low-income adults.
Those are concrete distributional benefits that can be weighed against a regressive financing method. That is the kind of showing a tax proposal should make.
When Berkeley staff recommended placing Measure V on the ballot in June 2026, what did the staff report list under Alternative Actions Considered?
The report listed two alternatives: do not place the measure on the 2026 ballot, or request that staff resubmit it for a future election.
Elsewhere the report says that without new ongoing revenue Berkeley may need service reductions, staffing reductions, expenditure controls, or other budget-balancing strategies. But the formal alternatives section does not quantify or compare those strategies, alternative service-delivery models, reprioritization of existing commitments, or other recurring-revenue choices.
Berkeley established that it has a structural deficit. This report did not establish that a 0.5% sales tax was the necessary or best response to it.
Quiz complete
Berkeley voters face three City measures and a countywide tax on the same ballot. They are presented separately; your household pays them from one wallet.
Measure V is explicitly being sold as a “modest” increase. But voters are also being asked to approve Measure U, Measure Z, and a countywide transit tax at the same election. Each measure may be debated on its own merits; none is paid from a separate household budget. Berkeley's own December 2025 comparison already put the same modeled home $1,559 above Oakland's before any of this — supporting evidence, not the headline. The relevant affordability question is the cumulative ask.
The cost may be manageable. Is it justified?
The measures are separate on the ballot, but the household burden is cumulative. Berkeley's own comparison already showed a higher modeled property-based burden than Albany or Oakland, and November can widen those differences. Measure V also asks Berkeley to rely more heavily on a tax that takes a larger share of income from lower-income households.
That does not make this an anti-tax argument. A regressive tax can still be worth paying when its demonstrated benefits justify the burden. The regional transit measure makes that case with service preservation and explicit low-income fare benefits.
The cost may be manageable. The question is whether the measure is justified for Berkeley as a whole. From here, the useful questions are not more multiplication. They are whether Berkeley demonstrated the need, tested realistic alternatives, made a clear commitment about what taxpayers will receive, and built in meaningful accountability.