Between 2022 and 2024, the city of Berkeley paid $607,000 to Berkeley Youth Alternatives and its subcontractor, Upline Solutions, for a cannabis education program funded by a Proposition 64 state grant. The program failed to deliver its core obligations: the advertising campaign Upline was hired to create was never produced; the peer education program trained students but never delivered peer-led sessions to other students; and the community task force launched nearly two years late. The California Board of State and Community Corrections nonetheless certified that Berkeley had "met all grant obligations."
State filings show that Upline Solutions was incorporated in October 2019 by Patricia Brooks and Yelda Bartlett, wife of District 3 Councilmember Ben Bartlett. The company listed its registered address as Yelda Bartlett's law office in downtown Oakland. Kevin Jenkins — now Oakland City Council President and Brooks' current employer — was also listed as a registered agent of the company when it formed.
Bartlett said he was unaware his wife had filed the incorporation paperwork and that he had no role in helping Brooks obtain the contract. He described himself as "disappointed and concerned" by the program's failures. When asked about accountability, he said: "Maybe there's a world where they could still fulfill the missing elements" — of a contract whose performance period had ended in 2024.
Bartlett's household had a documented organizational connection to the subcontractor — through his wife's incorporation filing and the use of her law office as the company's registered address — and that company received city money during his tenure. The record establishes the filing and the address. It does not establish that she owned the company, drew compensation from it, or held any role when it obtained the subcontract. No public disclosure of this connection has been identified in council records or meeting transcripts. No recusal from related votes has been identified.
No public disclosure of the connection has been identified in council records or meeting transcripts. This page does not establish that any legal recusal duty was triggered: that would turn on whether his wife retained an economic interest, whether Bartlett knew of the connection at the relevant time, and whether a particular vote bore a direct enough relationship to Upline. He has said he was unaware she filed the paperwork. Even where no recusal is legally required, disclosure is what allows the Council and the public to evaluate whether a member should take part in decisions touching an entangled contractor. That evaluation was never available to them.
Bartlett has served on the Berkeley City Council longer than any of his current colleagues. He is not encountering questions of disclosure and apparent conflict for the first time. The severity of this failure scales with the experience he brings to it.
When presented with documented evidence of the program's failures and his household's connection to the subcontractor, Bartlett said he was "disappointed and concerned" and suggested the contractors might yet complete work from a closed grant period. He proposed no review process, no attempt to recover funds for undelivered work, and no acknowledgment of his disclosure or recusal obligations.
A member exercising genuine fiscal accountability would have identified what remedies he would pursue and what his office had failed to catch. His response had the effect of minimizing a documented failure rather than confronting it, and given the household connection, that response heightened rather than resolved the appearance problem.