Green New City: Public Infrastructure
2 min readAug 16, 2020
- In Berkeley, our City infrastructure is in utter disrepair despite a high tax burden. As we come out of the COVID-19 pandemic we will need to make a big investment in public infrastructure to get people back to work and ensure our streets are safe and functioning.
- The City of Berkeley is unresponsive to requests for maintenance, even when its own property is in disrepair. This level of apathy towards maintaining public property — which belongs to and serves our community — is unacceptable and must change. We want to create clear deadlines and transparency for public projects. For example, you should be able to see your request to repair a street on a City website, including a timeline for when it will get repaired.
- Our campaign wants to make a large investment into public infrastructure, employing hundreds of people to repair roads, build solar panels, and improve our parks and public spaces. The effects of this investment will be two-fold: it will create jobs and build the necessary infrastructure for a green Berkeley. In effect, this will be a Green New Deal for our city which we desperately need in order to combat the climate crisis and build a sustainable future. Notably, this would include green public transit: a free electric shuttle system that runs on all the main roads in Berkeley. We plan to fund this in part with a wealth tax on individuals and corporations with $10+ million in assets.
- Wayne has a lifetime of experience of improving the efficiency of systems and was a law and economics professor at Northwestern, where he studied how to make government work more efficiently. If you want to see a #GreenNewCity in Berkeley, sign up to join the movement at www.wayneformayor.com/volunteer!